You will end up having some false negatives and some false positives— deals that look great on paper but not so well in reality. That’s fine— the important factor is always to review and refine these rules to keep your process fresh.
A sales organization, like any other, is a machine to produce knowledge. You refine your understanding of the ideal customer by adapting to the circumstances. Perhaps you thought a deal had strong product market fit on a particular vertical but then realize that it doesn’t scale or it churns more than you want. But it doesn’t matter as long as you keep up with the changes.
It’s important because it will help your salespeople understand the deals they can and cannot close. No matter what field the business is in, if you let your salespeople do what they want, eventually they will end up doing things like opening a peanut store on Times Square. Salespeople always think that you’re missing just one feature to close a deal.
The ideal customer and the perfect setup is also a way for you to give salespeople the tools to know what they sell, so they don’t diversify you in a direction you didn’t intend to take.
Yes, you want salespeople to execute on product/market fit. But you don’t want reps to try and find product/market fit. That isn’t their job. Now the consequence is that sending salespeople to sell a product that doesn’t have product/market fit to start off with often ends up in tears, but that’s another story.
The product/market fit is especially important to avoid those unnecessary sales and marketing conflicts.
Revenue as a machine! Within that machine, there are many different components, and the reality is if salespeople don’t have the machine behind them they will fail. Of course, the machine also fails without the salespeople.
To build a machine, you need marketing to feed sales, and you need to segment your sales team. You want to have fields sales; you want to have people who handle outbound; you want to have people who generate leads.
Specializing The Sales Team
Segmentation is key. If you have a setup where one person is doing every aspect, you are essentially wasting their talent and need to train them on every detail of the job. If you have a good closer, why are you wasting resources making them find leads?
When a company starts and is relatively small, it’s known as “founders sale”, where you aren’t necessarily selling your product; you’re selling the story. You want to convince people that they want to be part of your story and the brand. At this point, you’re practically doing everything as a one-person band.
Next, there is the point where you understand how to sell your product or service and try to teach others to sell it for you. That is the stage where you can have two, three or four salespeople who do everything. You’re still trying to figure out the metrics to scale from.
The third stage is where you understand the entire sales process perfectly. It’s about scale, and that’s when you diversify.
It’s more about knowing the metrics of what you are going to scale. You might have a sales company with 10-20 reps who are all doing everything because they are still trying to figure things out. Or there might be five to 10 reps at another who are segmented because they know the exact metrics and individual KPI of the machine to bring success.
You can segment with just two people if you’re far enough into fully understanding the makeup of what you are selling.
Find good KPI to grow your business.
The most exciting aspect of your jobs is knowing that one metric that you actually want to make a difference on? And then you make the metric visual and get your salespeople to obsess about it.
Salespeople come in many different forms. My job as a sales and commercial leader is to understand what input I need them to provide to get the desired output for the company.
Being a Sales Team Manager – Finding the Right Goals
How do you set goals for your salespeople?
I think a mistake that many people make is that salespeople are only motivated by the revenue target. In reality, there are two types: The lead target, which is the input, and the lag (revenue) target, which is the output.
If I ask any salesperson in the company to bring me one-million dollars, they wouldn’t be able just to go out and get the money. If they could, they wouldn’t be working for someone in the first place.
But I can tell them to make 10 calls to 10 customers per week, which illustrates a very simple concept: You can’t tell people to give you a lag metric. So, when you think about your machine in the right way, you will have to identify the activities (lead) that will lead to hitting the goals (lag).
If the input is good, the revenue will take care of itself.
If you nail customer support. If you nail your uptime and are perfect for all of your input, you will stand a good chance of success. And I believe this is the mentality of most salespeople. I do give sales targets to my sales reps because I think it’s important to be motivated, but I manage them by inputs.
I have three inputs that I measure across all salespeople.
One: Number of meetings. If you don’t reach out to customers, nothing is going to happen. It’s as simple as that.
Two: The number of “live” opportunities
Three: Number of verbal commitments per week.
These are three metrics that allow me to measure my team by on a weekly basis. If they hit the input numbers I give them; revenue will take care of itself.
Three pillars set you up for a successful team of salespeople and provide the best chances to succeed.
For every dollar I spend on customer-facing staff, try to spend a dollar on the sales infrastructure.
The sales infrastructure is made up of three big pillars.
One: Sales IT. A tool where salespeople work more efficiently, a strong CRM with simple elements. E.g., a feature that reminds them they need to work on a deal now or will tell them how they do on a small number of important metrics.
Two: Product Marketing. Give reps ammunition, decks, objection handling documents etc..
The art of selling is repeating something you have said a million times but saying it like it’s the first time you’ve ever said it.
Three: Training. Train, train, train. Teaching people objection handling, sales techniques, giving them constant tools to use.
What should be the first move of a Sales Manager or a CEO who wants to build its sales machine?
If you hire the right people and put them in front of a problem that is visually represented, they spontaneously try to solve it in the right way. Most of us are wired to fix issues when we find them.
For me, being able to visualize how we are doing is the most important thing.
Add a CRM that has the data you need so you can visualize how you are performing as a commercial organization. Without one, you don’t have the basic numbers to understand the process and you will try to solve the wrong problems.
Going even further back in the process, you need a CRM that lets salespeople do their job and helps managers to see the whole process— something that enables them, rather than hinders.
Start by collecting data, find your market fit and build your perfect customer.
Segment your team, give your sales activities based targets and support them with training and marketing.
Recruiting Great Sales People and Building a Team
The top criteria I am searching for when recruiting (for startups because it is the only thing I know) is hunger and eagerness to learn. I think you can find these skills in random people who have been in random organizations doing random things.
It’s important to filter through these skills and build a process that identifies key qualities you believe in, rather than go to huge quota salespeople from Fortune 500 companies.
Finding a process that removes people that are good at marketing themselves and invest in people that are obsessed with learning is the key.
Take anyone who can reinvent themselves.
You need coachability— people willing to learn. That’s the most important characteristic.
There is another book, “Mindset”, that explains how the ability is something that can always grow as long as you have the correct mindset and that you continue to learn. You can find growth mindset and fixed mindset at any stage of life, at any level of success.
If you’re in a startup, you want people with a growth mindset. Irrespectively of what they achieved, you want people willing to put themselves into question and who believe that efforts leads to improvement.
The best performing salespeople archetype is not the lone-wolf but the one that brings unique ideas to the table. The one that can challenge those around them.
If you want to close deals, you need to listen to the problems of the customer. People often think they have to talk, but asking questions and listening is a much more powerful when you want to learn.
https://www.nocrm.io/blog/built-sales-team-in-the-us-revenue-0-to-100 Notes:
Qualifying Customers
You will end up having some false negatives and some false positives— deals that look great on paper but not so well in reality. That’s fine— the important factor is always to review and refine these rules to keep your process fresh.
A sales organization, like any other, is a machine to produce knowledge. You refine your understanding of the ideal customer by adapting to the circumstances. Perhaps you thought a deal had strong product market fit on a particular vertical but then realize that it doesn’t scale or it churns more than you want. But it doesn’t matter as long as you keep up with the changes. It’s important because it will help your salespeople understand the deals they can and cannot close. No matter what field the business is in, if you let your salespeople do what they want, eventually they will end up doing things like opening a peanut store on Times Square. Salespeople always think that you’re missing just one feature to close a deal.
The ideal customer and the perfect setup is also a way for you to give salespeople the tools to know what they sell, so they don’t diversify you in a direction you didn’t intend to take. Yes, you want salespeople to execute on product/market fit. But you don’t want reps to try and find product/market fit. That isn’t their job. Now the consequence is that sending salespeople to sell a product that doesn’t have product/market fit to start off with often ends up in tears, but that’s another story.
The product/market fit is especially important to avoid those unnecessary sales and marketing conflicts.
Revenue as a machine! Within that machine, there are many different components, and the reality is if salespeople don’t have the machine behind them they will fail. Of course, the machine also fails without the salespeople. To build a machine, you need marketing to feed sales, and you need to segment your sales team. You want to have fields sales; you want to have people who handle outbound; you want to have people who generate leads.
Specializing The Sales Team
Segmentation is key. If you have a setup where one person is doing every aspect, you are essentially wasting their talent and need to train them on every detail of the job. If you have a good closer, why are you wasting resources making them find leads?
When a company starts and is relatively small, it’s known as “founders sale”, where you aren’t necessarily selling your product; you’re selling the story. You want to convince people that they want to be part of your story and the brand. At this point, you’re practically doing everything as a one-person band. Next, there is the point where you understand how to sell your product or service and try to teach others to sell it for you. That is the stage where you can have two, three or four salespeople who do everything. You’re still trying to figure out the metrics to scale from. The third stage is where you understand the entire sales process perfectly. It’s about scale, and that’s when you diversify.
It’s more about knowing the metrics of what you are going to scale. You might have a sales company with 10-20 reps who are all doing everything because they are still trying to figure things out. Or there might be five to 10 reps at another who are segmented because they know the exact metrics and individual KPI of the machine to bring success. You can segment with just two people if you’re far enough into fully understanding the makeup of what you are selling.
Find good KPI to grow your business. The most exciting aspect of your jobs is knowing that one metric that you actually want to make a difference on? And then you make the metric visual and get your salespeople to obsess about it.
Salespeople come in many different forms. My job as a sales and commercial leader is to understand what input I need them to provide to get the desired output for the company.
Being a Sales Team Manager – Finding the Right Goals
How do you set goals for your salespeople? I think a mistake that many people make is that salespeople are only motivated by the revenue target. In reality, there are two types: The lead target, which is the input, and the lag (revenue) target, which is the output.
If I ask any salesperson in the company to bring me one-million dollars, they wouldn’t be able just to go out and get the money. If they could, they wouldn’t be working for someone in the first place.
But I can tell them to make 10 calls to 10 customers per week, which illustrates a very simple concept: You can’t tell people to give you a lag metric. So, when you think about your machine in the right way, you will have to identify the activities (lead) that will lead to hitting the goals (lag).
If the input is good, the revenue will take care of itself.
If you nail customer support. If you nail your uptime and are perfect for all of your input, you will stand a good chance of success. And I believe this is the mentality of most salespeople. I do give sales targets to my sales reps because I think it’s important to be motivated, but I manage them by inputs. I have three inputs that I measure across all salespeople. One: Number of meetings. If you don’t reach out to customers, nothing is going to happen. It’s as simple as that. Two: The number of “live” opportunities Three: Number of verbal commitments per week. These are three metrics that allow me to measure my team by on a weekly basis. If they hit the input numbers I give them; revenue will take care of itself.
Three pillars set you up for a successful team of salespeople and provide the best chances to succeed. For every dollar I spend on customer-facing staff, try to spend a dollar on the sales infrastructure. The sales infrastructure is made up of three big pillars. One: Sales IT. A tool where salespeople work more efficiently, a strong CRM with simple elements. E.g., a feature that reminds them they need to work on a deal now or will tell them how they do on a small number of important metrics. Two: Product Marketing. Give reps ammunition, decks, objection handling documents etc.. The art of selling is repeating something you have said a million times but saying it like it’s the first time you’ve ever said it. Three: Training. Train, train, train. Teaching people objection handling, sales techniques, giving them constant tools to use.
What should be the first move of a Sales Manager or a CEO who wants to build its sales machine?
If you hire the right people and put them in front of a problem that is visually represented, they spontaneously try to solve it in the right way. Most of us are wired to fix issues when we find them.
For me, being able to visualize how we are doing is the most important thing. Add a CRM that has the data you need so you can visualize how you are performing as a commercial organization. Without one, you don’t have the basic numbers to understand the process and you will try to solve the wrong problems. Going even further back in the process, you need a CRM that lets salespeople do their job and helps managers to see the whole process— something that enables them, rather than hinders. Start by collecting data, find your market fit and build your perfect customer. Segment your team, give your sales activities based targets and support them with training and marketing.
Recruiting Great Sales People and Building a Team
The top criteria I am searching for when recruiting (for startups because it is the only thing I know) is hunger and eagerness to learn. I think you can find these skills in random people who have been in random organizations doing random things. It’s important to filter through these skills and build a process that identifies key qualities you believe in, rather than go to huge quota salespeople from Fortune 500 companies. Finding a process that removes people that are good at marketing themselves and invest in people that are obsessed with learning is the key. Take anyone who can reinvent themselves. You need coachability— people willing to learn. That’s the most important characteristic. There is another book, “Mindset”, that explains how the ability is something that can always grow as long as you have the correct mindset and that you continue to learn. You can find growth mindset and fixed mindset at any stage of life, at any level of success. If you’re in a startup, you want people with a growth mindset. Irrespectively of what they achieved, you want people willing to put themselves into question and who believe that efforts leads to improvement. The best performing salespeople archetype is not the lone-wolf but the one that brings unique ideas to the table. The one that can challenge those around them. If you want to close deals, you need to listen to the problems of the customer. People often think they have to talk, but asking questions and listening is a much more powerful when you want to learn.