Rich Campbell

To all SDRs or anyone entering B2B sales, read this post to avoid falling into common traps. 1. The most successful AEs I have met were the best SDRs. 2. SDRs who didn’t excel in the role and are now AEs are still struggling to generate their own pipeline. 3. AEs who skipped the SDR role, often due to an MBA or strong interview skills, fear switching jobs and roles without inbound leads. They’ve never faced the grind of building a pipeline from scratch, filled with rejections. 4. AEs who have never been an SDR majorly rely on their SDRs or Inbound leads from marketing to help them build pipeline and if any Quarter they don't get inbound or enough meetings from SDRs they sh** in their pants. 5. When these AEs become managers, they often question their team—"Where are the numbers?" or "Why isn’t there a pipeline?"—instead of guiding them on building it. Lacking experience in pipeline generation, they fail to lead by example and eventually lose the respect of their team. Learn the art and science of being an SDR and excel at this job at any cost, you will never have to look back or depend on anyone for pipeline EVER. Prospecting and Generating Pipelines is fundamental to Sales whether you are an SDR, AE, Sr Manager, or VP if you don't know how to do OUTBOUND you will continuously live a sales life of fear and anxiety. So SDRs ask yourselves do you want to be such AE and Managers in the future who depend on others to determine their performance and faith or would you like to own your job? #sales #prospecting #outbound #pipeline #sdr #ae #b2b #saas

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Multi-threading... A skill that's fast becoming the most critical in a sales reps arsenal. Why? 🤔 The market is tough at the moment. 🤔 Buyers are more budget conscious. 🤔 CFOs are asking teams to reduce spend and cut back on investment. 🤔 Prospects that once had buying power and sign off capability now have to get approval from C-Suite. It sounds like an uphill battle 🏃‍♂️‍➡️⛰️ but the truth is, multi-threading is not as daunting as you might think. ⭐️ Here's some tips that have worked well for me in the last 6 months ⭐️ 🗺 Map out your accounts. Org charts are critical for multi-threading. You need to understand who your prospects are, who they report to, and who holds decision making power. Tip - LinkedIn SalesNav let's you build drag and drop org charts! 🗣️ Check with your your champion. Confirm your org chart is correct. Ask them what the process is for bringing on a new vendor. If they don't know, 🆘 they are not a true champion. 📧 Share content early. Begin introducing yourself to key stakeholders quickly. Tip - Connect on LinkedIn with a short and sweet connection request, something like "Wanted to put a face to a name following some great conversations I've been having with (champion name) re (challenge). I'll send over some content via email shortly. I look forward to hearing your thoughts." 🎺 Make sure your content is personalised, engaging, and stands out. TOP TIP - Using a tool like trumpet 🎺 (digital sales room) is a sure fire way to encourage stakeholder engagement. Upload clear and concise value props, how you can solve their businesses challenges, client case studies and more. Ask these contacts to bookmark the page as you will regular update it with content as the deal progresses. And, track their engagement, so you can meet them in the moment. So far, my prospects have been LOVING it! 📞 Pick up the phone. Once you've connected on LinkedIn and sent content, call prospects to ensure that they have seen it. Ask what questions they have and tell them about next steps. By doing the above, when it comes to negotiation these stakeholders will be informed and aware of the entire process to date, and you and your product will be top of mind 🧠 Tenured AE's in my network (I know there are a lot of you), what do you do to successfully multi-thread? P.S. You can guess what I'll be doing in the office today :😉 #multithreading #sales #digitalsalesrooms #dsr #aestrategies

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Ashi from Gong is fast (😮‍💨10k) But not as fast as Gong Engage users when they use Lavender. Access to your Gong calls in our personalization assistant ✅ Access to our coach & "Ashi fast" personalization in Gong ✅ Better 🤝 Faster 3.0 (and so much more) coming soon

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hey RevOps - if you're a high-velocity SMB shop selling a large number of small deals, how should you grant quota credit to AEs? 🤔 Signature date? Payment date? Contract effective date? Like most things in RevOps, simple questions like this do not have simple answers. This question was posted in the RevOps Co-op Slack group recently and the community provided some 🔥 feedback like: 📍 Signature date seems to be the most popular choice, but always with a big caveat 📍 That caveat relates to the amount of churn or turnover when it comes to signed deals that don't pay - if the AEs are closing crumby customers that don't pay, then you want to use payment date instead 📍 If you have deals that get signed far in advance of the contract effective date / subscription start date, this adds additional risk to revenue - so may want to consider using the contract effective date instead 📍 Some folks do a mix; for example, 50% at signature, and 50% at payment (or some other metric, like 6 months after deal signature) 📍 In all cases, you want to make sure the structure is set up to drive the behavior you want to encourage without a huge delay between the work done and incentive provided Anything else you'd add to this list? #revops #revenueoperations #salesops #salesoperations #compensation #incentivemanagement

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Amen to this. Senior leaders need to get involved in the details and understand the structural and operational issues in their organizations that lead to customer churn. You hold the power to improve the quality of your product and the value of your service - you're customer facing Sales and CSM teams do not.

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Top Sellers aren't begging for specific features to beat competitors Or more training... what do they think will help drive more revenue?? 👀 See the report below for the real data 👀 Met with killer revenue leaders at Gong's annual conference last week and read their report on the "State of Sales Productivity" Similar to what we saw re: GTM Execution being a top priority for Founders / CEOs, this report shed light on top challenges impacting reps and hindering productivity... And it resonated. The least motivating thing when I was a seller? Wasting time OFF THE FIELD updating fields + busywork that didn't help my customers / prospects. I've yet to meet a successful seller who'd rather focus on internal tasks vs spending time moving deals forward... No surprised the top 3 areas that negatively impact rep productivity: 61% - Admin Tasks 47% - Inneficient processes 37% - Time management *Spending time on non-selling activities is de-motivating *BS internal processes slows down deals *Time is the most valuable asset to sellers / Opps (time does kill all deals) From spending time obsessed with making customers successful and being at the top of the leaderboard, I can tell you firsthand most GTM tools don't help with what frustrates the field the most. And is why I felt passionate enough to quit an amazing gig at Stripe to build Accord. To win in 2024's market, every moment counts. Revenue leaders can’t expect their team to be hit targets if they are not setting them up for success. Take the admin work out of it, and have fields populated automatically IN the flow of work. Build a repeatable playbook that is foolproof and can help leaders identify slipped deals, before they slip Make sure you team isn’t spinning their wheels on pipeline or activities that don’t move the needle. Are you making sure your team is motivated, focused on their customers, and setting them up for success going into the final weeks of the year and into 2025?? 📈

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Dear fellow salespeople: If you have friends, family, clients, or colleagues in the LA area, please extend a little extra kindness right now; they’re likely not doing okay. Press pause on calling your California prospects and instead take a moment to check in with them. A quick message or thoughtful gesture can go a long way in offering support during tough times. Let's prioritize empathy and genuine connections in our work. After all, sales is not just about closing deals; it's about building relationships that matter. Stay safe, everyone 💜

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Average Contract Value by segment: Strat - $278K ENT - $180K MM - $57K Direct correlation with your expected payouts? Yes. Average OTE by segment: Strat AE - $280K See more: https://lnkd.in/gEqj9YQz ENT AE - $255K See more: https://lnkd.in/gb7GeWzW MM AE - $165k See more: https://lnkd.in/gDkDDg5w The larger the deals you're selling, the more earning potential. The more earnings potential, the higher the expectations. All open SaaS roles here: https://lnkd.in/ggz4efaD Any of these surprise you? 🦙

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☁️ Only 12% of sales leaders strongly believe their CRM delivers actionable insights ...an even more challenging stat .... 77% of sellers' time is spent on NON selling activities... like updating CRM 🤦‍♀️ 🫨 Find more insights like these from the just released ✨ ROAD TO REVENUE IN 2025 ✨ Hear the big bets revenue leaders are making next year and how they plan to win them with data from 1400+ organizations in Gong labs new report, The State of Revenue Growth 2025. Get your copy here: https://lnkd.in/ezy8VPX2

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Most sales leaders focus on their top performers. But your best reps will crush quota whether you help them or not. Here's the uncomfortable truth about scaling revenue... Your top 10% will succeed despite you. They'll figure out how to sell your product and close deals even if you give them zero support, no collateral, and an undefined ICP. But you can't build a scalable revenue engine on top 10% talent alone. It's just math. Even with a rigorous interview process and strong recruiting brand, our 12-month retention rate at Levelset was around 55%. And that was GOOD. The key to scaling isn't finding more unicorns. It's raising the floor for everyone else. That means writing down exactly what success looks like. Not just hoping good people will "figure it out." I learned this the hard way. For the first 4 years (or so), we closed deals almost in spite of ourselves. No real sales playbook. No defined process. Just talented people working hard. When we finally documented our exact process - from first touch to close - our ramp time plummeted and consistency shot up. The uncomfortable truth? Most founders spend way more time recruiting than preparing to train and support their hires. Your playbook doesn't need to be fancy. Start with one document: "How to Run a Demo." Make it painfully detailed. Your top reps will hate it. Your new reps will love you for it.

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Do not read this post if your quota attainment per seller is >70%, Average Deal Sizes have grown >2x in the last year and if you don't need more Sales Pipeline. For those of you that do, I'm proud to announce a revolutionary way for your GTM teams to drive productivity with DatabookGPT. But, don't listen to me, listen to our customers: “As we pilot the new DatabookGPT, we find it’s driving down the creation of our initial account plans from seven weeks to seven minutes,” said Chris Smith, Chief Strategy Officer at Grant Thornton. “It's a game changer." "Every AE at Databricks lives by our value of 'customer obsessed.' Understanding the value the Data Intelligence Platform delivers for every customer is essential. DatabookGPT was built on Databricks and supports our sellers by giving them that account intelligence," said Ron Gabrisko, Chief Revenue Officer at Databricks. "Through our teams' use of Databook, we saw our average deal size increase by 54.8% in FY24", said Kirsty Mundy, WW Field Enablement Microsoft, Industry Solutions Delivery Learn more at www.databook.com. It's Generally Available now for companies looking to grow their deal sizes, shorten their sales cycles, and grow pipeline. #accountintelligence #enterprisesales #strategicrelationshipmanagement

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🤯 “Ramping up SDRs, AEs and CS people  takes us no less than 6 months.” 💣 🙈 This is what I heard on a recent demo from  a CRO of a rapidly scaling tech business. 📈 Time to efficiency is a struggle Heads of Sales Enablement and Customer Success are going through across their commercially-driven teams… 📖 At the moment, they expect internal  sales and CS decks, call recordings,  business pitches, etc. should do the job. 🙄 But it doesn’t! 🗓️ They're wasting too much time for people to start performing, closing deals, effectively onboarding customers, reducing churn & upselling… ❌ Sometimes, they still don’t perform... And then guess what? Off leaders go through to recruiting mode again starting from ground 0. 🎯 Hence the need for action-based learning.  Not just passively reading through PDFs  and listening to call recordings. 👨‍💻 Below are some use cases we see our customers here at UJJI AI ✨ leveraging our tech for: 🔸 Business-specific lead gen and outbound 🔸 Pitching quick and easy over the phone 🔸 Delivering demos and answering queries 🔸 Effectively onboarding new customers 🔸 Efficiently implementing product features 🔸 Practising great customer support 🔸 Guiding customers to upselling 🚀 Ultimately, growing tech businesses comes down to predictable new business development, high customer retention and low churn. 💬 So, DM me if you want to see examples  of AI-powered. easy to build and consume knowledge equipping experiences. 👇 Anything to add to this, Sales and CS leaders? Gautam Rishi Rohan Dickinson George Heron Russell Mitchell Callum Hartley Jon Teale James Dixon Seán Colfer Caroline L. Guy Rubin Jake Carter David Muscat Arun Raveendran Steve Eveleigh Ayo Kukoyi,

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Most SDRs and sales teams often overlook inbound prospecting because they tend to associate sales prospecting with outbound efforts—cold calling, email outreach, and list building. This mindset creates a huge missed opportunity. Inbound leads are warm—they’re actively engaged, making them prime candidates for conversion. By ignoring this, SDRs are leaving low-hanging fruit on the table, focusing only on the more difficult outbound sales without realizing how much potential exists right in front of them. Not a complete guide, but in my last PLG Stack post, I shared some insights 👇

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SDRs can be taught to be AEs SDRs can be taught to be CSMs [shoutout to Eric Partaker for the post inspo] Also... SDRs can be taught to be Managers SDRs can be taught to be Marketeers SDRs can be taught to do almost any role Fact: It's better to hire someone who is 60% ready with the right behaviours. Than 100% ready with the wrong ones. SDRs deserve a chance. Do you agree? PS. Share ♻️ with others in your network. And follow Chris Ritson for more sales content like this.

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Outbound Sequences can do more harm than good for SDRs. (I think when used appropriately, they can be a massive help, but most teams use & abuse them -- completely missing the point of them & wonder why they can't land in the primary inbox & get no responses) I think the days of the traditional 27 day sequence are over. We need change. Most tasks get long overdue anyway and end up not being completed. Here's the issue with them: Often, SDRs are reactive to their sequences/cadences... When in reality, you should be pro-active. Let me explain: Imagine you send your first initial email and it gets opened 5+ times. Or you send a LI connect request and they accept it + look at your profile. Most SDRs will move onto their next task and ignore the intent signal. Instead, use prospect engagement as a way to be more pro-active. IE: do not wait 3 days from the day you sent your first email if there's a ton of engagement. Try calling them same day, bumping your email the next day and throwing a connect request on LI. You should try and switch your messaging up based on prospect engagement, too. IE: your cold call opener should be different for someone who has accepted your LI request + looked at your profile / opened your email a bunch vs someone who hasn't engaged at all. Be the quarterback of your sequences.. Don't let them control you! Second issue: most sequences end up piling up overdue tasks.. This is because sequences have way too many steps. If you liked this, I share 1 free outbound prospecting tip that 4200+ SDRs and AEs read every week. https://lnkd.in/e2cJkJqr

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In 3 months, we’ve seen a 20% increase of pipeline in validation stage or greater. And here’s why… ✅ We’re aggressively training all SDRs on exactly what the full sales cycle looks like for our prospects. 👉 Driving stronger alignment with AEs. 👉 Supporting the team's development into closing roles. 👉 Allowing us to compensate our SDRs for activity further down the funnel. If you’re looking to improve the retention rate of your team, remove the disconnect, and build better pipeline, don’t cut SDR enablement at just the initial meeting. This approach will have a strong impact on pipeline - yes. But more importantly, it’ll have a huge impact on the development of SDRs 🏆

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Reducing BDR territories from 300 to 80 accounts sounded crazy at first. But here’s what happened: - BDR-influenced ARR jumped from 30% to 70%. - Fewer accounts = deeper focus = faster lead cycles. - Weekly attribution of 10-15 new companies kept the pipeline moving. Sometimes less really is more. 

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Imagine a world where selling is as easy as logging into your ZoomInfo home page. A world where your whole day was planned for you of who to contact, when, and how. A world with perfectly curated account summaries of your top ICP accounts served to you without you having do anything. That’s the world that ZoomInfo Copilot, the next big innovation to go-to-market promises to deliver. As a ZoomInfo partner and power user, I get to be one of the first ones to try out this new AI powered platform. Follow along with me as I explore the ins and outs! #ZoomInfoCopilot #zoominfo

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