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Sales Growth vs. Effectiveness: Strategies for Success w/Chris Mills
96 Plays2 years ago
In this episode, Brian Dietmeyer talks with Chris Mills, Chief Revenue Officer at ID.me, diving into the intricacies of sales strategy and the evolving landscape of customer engagement. From the importance of understanding power structures within organizations to the shift towards a diagnostic approach during discovery, Chris Mills shares valuable insights for sales professionals looking to drive success in today's fast-changing market.
Timestamps:
04:21 Qualify buyer, give them an out.
07:25 Customer feedback drives quick development and adaptation.
09:46 Constantly asking why we win or lose.
14:51 Qualify opportunities fast, don't waste time.
17:14 Praising ServiceNow's Visualize for effective value selling.
20:30 Qualify, decide, guide, follow, discover, analyze, improve.
23:18 Focus on problem-solving, credibility, and customer success.
26:43 Chief revenue officer explains role and strategy.
30:35 Streamline sales processes for efficiency and effectiveness.
33:26 Challenges of engagement on Zoom and baseball.
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Transcript
Introduction to Clothes Mode Episode
00:00:03
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another edition of Clothes Mode, the enterprise sales show. I'm Brian Diepmeyer, CEO of Clothes Strong. And today I'm super lucky to be with my energetic pal, Chris Mills, who's the chief revenue officer at ID.me.
Understanding ID.me and its Role
00:00:18
Speaker
And if you don't know what ID.me is, I always feel like this is the part where I'm auditioning for the voiceover for ID.me.
00:00:25
Speaker
They prove and share your identity online and give you access to government services and benefits and 500 retailers. I was snooping through the site the other day. There's a lot of cool stuff in there. So, Chris, welcome to the show. Thanks, Brian. Glad to be here.
00:00:39
Speaker
Actually, so truth be told, welcome to the show for the second time because the first time, the first time our recording failed. So thank you for sharing your ideas and your insight a second time.
Impact of Macro Environment on Sales
00:00:50
Speaker
So you and I, a couple of weeks ago, we're talking about a sales process and you had some really cool insight that, and I feel like we haven't talked enough about it on the show. So let's start kind of in a,
00:01:05
Speaker
higher level, what's shifted in the kind of macro environment that impacts the way we look at sales process? I love it, right? Real softball right away, Brian, the macro environment and sales spread like, wow, okay, awesome. Good, good entry.
Public Sector Focus for ID.me
00:01:21
Speaker
Listen, I think at ID.me, as you as you mentioned, we have a we have a very important mission of protecting the United States citizens against all kinds of different threats. Yeah. But we also protect the benefits that they deserve.
00:01:34
Speaker
One of those forgotten segments that people don't talk about is public sector. That's a very important segment to IDME. Our public sector customers are amazing. At a macro, what's happening in public sector, number one, it's an election year.
00:01:49
Speaker
So it changes things because you sit there and you look and you look at sales process. Okay, who's the sponsor? Who's our champion? Who's our economic buyer? And they may not have a place at the table come January, given where they are. And so you've got to be asking those unique questions in an election year that maybe you don't in otherwise.
Role of Customer Experience in Sales
00:02:08
Speaker
The other thing happening in public sectors is customer experience. That's now moved to the forefront of a lot of public sector agency buying decisions. What's the customer or citizen experience? And so if you're not talking about that, and oh, by the way, it opens up new personas.
00:02:24
Speaker
So whereas before, you wouldn't find a customer experience officer in a public sector agency, local agency, etc. Now they're starting to pop up. So in your sales process, right, that's a new persona, have we covered them in discovery, qualification,
CFOs and Value Selling in Buying Decisions
00:02:39
Speaker
etc.
00:02:39
Speaker
most of your listeners would obviously be more on the commercial and private sector side, where, of course, I think we're starting to see a shift of where the puck is going back to growth. But for the last 18 to 24 months, that macroeconomic climate has really pushed CFOs in charge of buying decisions. And, you know, I just, you know, talking to a couple different private sector companies, anything above 75,000
00:03:06
Speaker
I had to get CFO buy off and it's like, holy cow. How does that apply to sales process? You've got to be number one, value. I grew up in a Frank Slootman area of service now where everything was moving a little faster. The
00:03:22
Speaker
the pitches were faster, better than I had experienced before. So I really grew up with value selling. Dave Schneider, Kevin Haverty, those leaders there at ServiceNow. So it's all about value selling. So you learned about creating value. So you've got to start looking at value. Are we creating value at stage two, stage three? If I see an opportunity at stage three that we're not in an active cycle to do a business value assessment and or
00:03:49
Speaker
have a business value assessment already and references that say, hey, for similar peers of yours, we created XYZ of value. And we're kind of slowing things down. Like, hey, listen.
00:04:00
Speaker
you need to bring value into because it's eventually gonna go to the CFO. After you've got value and you feel pretty good about it, then I really start focusing on power and plan.
Effective Buyer Qualification
00:04:10
Speaker
Two other pieces of questions and discovery that we get, who's the power in this? Now, this is a hard one, right? It's like, oh, the buyer told me that they're the decision maker. Oh, fascinating, right? How did you qualify that? Like, well, what do you mean? Like, when was the last time they made a purchase of this size?
00:04:29
Speaker
And a lot of times people buy things in five, six, seven, eight year cycles, and we give the buyer too much credit because so many things have changed since the last time they bought a solution like this. We need to really qualify that buyer. Oh, really? And give them an out.
00:04:45
Speaker
Hey, we just sold two or three of these to similar companies of your size and natures and personas, and they weren't able to make it. Now, they didn't know they weren't able to make it. Things had changed underneath them, and they had to go to the CFO. How are you going to find that out, whether you actually are the buyer? It's okay. We feel like, oh, they told me they're the buyer. I don't feel comfortable pushing them. You have to. That's a job. Help them discover what their own internal buying processes are.
00:05:15
Speaker
that is power and then plan. Great, right? Now we understand the CFO is the the power here.
Importance of Mutual Plans with Customers
00:05:23
Speaker
What's the plan? And can I get it written down? And is it mutual? It's not this is my sales. This isn't my plan. Well, that's great. It's your plan. What's the customer's plan? Is it a mutual plan? And can we get that in writing is something we just got to do in a tougher macroeconomic environment.
00:05:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's, I was just fortunate to be at the Strategic Account Management Association conference yesterday. It was, did a couple of sessions talking with, you know, groups of, of Sam leaders and, and, you know, the discussion was the world has shifted. Much of the old stuff that we're flinging at the wall just isn't sticking anymore. Like we lived in this environment of expansion and now, you know, someone said, yeah, we had, we used to have four to six X funnel to make our number. Now we're at two X.
00:06:08
Speaker
So like, and that impacts sales process as well.
Adapting Sales Processes Dynamically
00:06:12
Speaker
And you said something on our previous call about, you know, the goal used to be, right, we need a more systemic sales process with entry and exit gates. And then it's like, okay, guess what? Now in today's world, we need a sales process that's dynamic. Can you talk a little bit about that?
00:06:30
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it's a lot of semantics there, Brian, right? What is the sales process? Well, you know, I think I've used the same sales process for 20 some years in terms of stage one is the stage two is this really like that's as a name. But inside of that, that's where we need to be way more dynamic to your point. Like in 2000, when I started in sales, you'd have one product release a year.
00:06:53
Speaker
Okay, right? These are the new features or the new solutions that we're going to take to market. Here's the persona that we're going to sell to. Here's the value that we're going to create for them. Go. And so you build the playbook and it was pretty stagnant to your point. And then the next sales kick off the next year, you maybe do some adjustments to that. But now, because all of these variables have to be taken into account, and we all know the cliche is like changes is just constant.
00:07:19
Speaker
But the speed of change is what is changing now faster and faster than ever. And so when you have a customer say, hey, it'd be great if I could do this feature or have this kind of a report, etc. And then we quickly pull back and say,
00:07:34
Speaker
hey, product teams, is this something that most of our customers would get advantage of? Or is this going to be a one off for this customer? And if it's the 60 to 70%, let's go, let's develop it. And three weeks later, you're sitting there with a new feature that needs to be now enabled and trained and talked about to other customers, because they're inevitably going to find value in
Updating Sales Training Rapidly
00:07:53
Speaker
it.
00:07:53
Speaker
So just the product changes and how fast we can now reiterate and develop code and develop features and functionality that provide value, that changes how you do things. But you know, all of those things from financial situation, how some industries are better than others right now. So how is that changing? CFOs are controlled here, but it's more growth over on this side, they're still expanding. So how do you look at different industries, different different
00:08:16
Speaker
personas, inside of those, as I talked about in public sector, new personas. So now there's AI hitting all of these companies, and these companies are being forced to do something with AI. So typically, there's a, there's an AI leader, right? Some somewhere inside the company, maybe that's whom you're selling to, that's a new persona that you didn't have just a year ago.
Identifying New Buyer Personas
00:08:35
Speaker
inside of cybersecurity. He used to have a small team. Well, now he has a big team with new personas. And so how does that change your sales process? So you just got to be dynamic. How you be dynamic is you're going to be myopic. Every deal you win, you got to say, OK. And again, Dave Schneider, Kevin Haber, you just beat this into us. Who won?
00:09:00
Speaker
Why'd we win? Why'd they buy us? Why'd they buy us now? And what value are they expecting to get out of it? And so every win, you sit there and say, okay, who bought?
00:09:12
Speaker
Is it a persona? What persona was the actual? Okay, that's interesting. That's a new one. Does that apply to all of these other opportunities? Uh oh, we may need to start multithreading in a different way. Why did they buy? Is there something going on in the industry? Is there something going on with that company specifically? Does that apply to others? Why did they buy us? That's a new differentiation. Maybe I didn't even know. They saw us in a different way.
00:09:35
Speaker
OK, how do I apply that? Why they buy us now? Is there something, you know, macro, micro going on in the industry? Like, why now? Like, we've had that in the funnel for four years. Like, why now? That's weird. And does that apply to others? And then and then what value are they expecting to get? Is there a new value equation that is going on from a CFO
Analyzing Wins and Losses in Sales
00:09:54
Speaker
or that industry? And so just like you constantly know, by the way, if you're not asking about your wins, which everyone loves to ask about because that's easy, then someone else lost.
00:10:04
Speaker
right? Someone else typically lost in those situations, they're asking why they lost, right? And if they find out new persona, and you didn't adapt, right, a new persona, if they find out why now, if they find out why us if they find out all these things, and they adapt, but we haven't adapted, we're gonna lose the next one. And so things you got constantly be asking, like, why do we win? Why do we lose? Are there new changes I need to make to the playbooks, right, etc. So that's what's exciting about this role, right?
00:10:32
Speaker
Yeah. Well, you hit on a couple of things that are so right on the speed of change. Like you mentioned that, and I have one of my advisors talk about it's not about competing or selling at the speed of change. And I talked to a VPS sales who said the equivalent of annual planning now happens quarterly. And now it's probably even faster than that.
00:10:54
Speaker
Like speed of change connected to dynamic everything is real time i want one of my favorite and very sad books is written business book is written by rita hunter mcgrath. The title of the book is the end of competitive advantage so for those of us who do what we do that that's a very depressing title but the point she made wise.
00:11:13
Speaker
You know it's kind of that annual planning thing that we used to go okay. Here's what we got here's where we sit in the market boom let's execute the plan will go visit it next year and what she said is everything's changing so quickly customer needs competitive positions your value. That she she said we now need to learn to compete on a series of short term transient advantages.
00:11:34
Speaker
And and most of our most of our systems and our thought process are not set up to catch these and how do we monetize like we have the shift in this moment how we gonna monetize that we've got about a minute and a half. Get that get that thing out to market and have words coming out of people's mouths to monetize it but that's i completely agree with you it's everywhere.
Competing with Short-Term Advantages
00:11:55
Speaker
No, I love that. Frankly, I love to hire salespeople from commodity industries, really mature industries, because they have to do this. One little thing makes all the difference to show an advantage, and it's dependent on sales. So it's job security for sales, good salespeople, good sales leaders, because they can be that changing to really drive that change.
00:12:16
Speaker
Yeah, I remember asking an EVP of a fortune 50 who acquired a massive competitor and Europe and expanded their footprint globally. And I said, how long before words are coming out of reps mouths?
00:12:28
Speaker
to monetize that investment. And he said probably nine months, just can't, and this was, this was seven, eight years ago. And that, you know, in today's market, those shifts are happening always. And then you go back to sales process, you know, and as you said, even, even yeah, that the high level stages are one thing, but the detail underneath what needs to shift at a micro level right here because of this thing that just happened.
Avoiding Common Sales Mistakes
00:12:52
Speaker
Oh, that's it. And, you know, it's awesome for us to sit here and pontificate and talk about it. I've got this, you know, anxiety right now, just talking about it, going, Oh crap. I know I can, I probably should have done better yesterday. You know what I mean? Like there's gaps, right? So, you know, don't, don't feel bad. Everybody has them. Right. So what, what, what do you think, um, what are, what mistakes are people making with sales process? Like where do we spend too much time or not enough? How would you characterize that? Yeah.
00:13:22
Speaker
Great question. I've got my little sales process thing right here. Discovery is a single stage? Yeah. Bullshit. That's not right. You should be discovering and qualifying in every stage.
00:13:38
Speaker
You can never discover enough. You can never qualify enough when you're doing the demo, right? You should be discovering. You should be qualifying. You should be doing outside. And to your point, I've got 2x coverage. Well, I happen to have better than that, thankfully. Knock on wood. But companies are having 2x coverage. And that's just what it is right now, given the buying cycles. OK, well, what does that mean? Well, that means
00:14:00
Speaker
right? That I need to get the most out of what I have. And so I got to be really myopic. I got to be really detailed. I got to really dive into the multi-threading, etc, etc. And so I think we spend, you know, typical, right? I think every sales leader will tell you this, right? We spend way too much time in the proposal late stage. We don't spend enough in discovering, right? I had a great sales leader in 2000.
00:14:23
Speaker
who like I was shocked. I came out of the Air Force and I couldn't believe how much money we paid sales people like it was it was unbelievable. I'm going to go into sales. It was just like crazy money. And I remember having a conversation in the first couple weeks. I was like, gosh, you know, sales is is a really lucrative career. And he had the you know, the vision at that time to mentor me saying, Chris, the salesperson is the least expensive person in the entire company. When they win. Yeah.
00:14:52
Speaker
And so the key is you can't lose, well, that's impossible, or you're gonna lose. And so the key is to lose fast. And so to your point, like how do you lose fast? Well, you have a set of criteria that you're looking for. And you see these folks who like have 2x pipeline and their bosses pushing them for 3x, they don't qualify out.
00:15:10
Speaker
And so now you're just sitting there dealing with an opportunity that's just not going to win. But you're spending time and you're bringing in other resources from the company to spend more time on an opportunity that's not going to win, you should have qualified it out and moved on, right? We got to get better. We got to get better at really qualifications. What you can't do, it's really expensive. And it's an end of a sales career is to lose slow.
00:15:32
Speaker
Yeah, you just can't do it. Yeah. And so right we we we like to right we can always do better at it. We'd like to really reward losing fast. It's as good as as winning winning slow. I really it's it's making good decisions, which is a whole whole whole nother podcast we could have about empowering people to make those kind of decisions. But we yeah, in building out close strong, we interviewed
00:15:56
Speaker
executives, revenue and sales executives and sales enablement pros at 60 different companies. And it's amazing to me and you just touched on both of these two kind of basics. One is qualify. I had a bunch of execs say to me, you know what I was saying? So talk to me about your pipe, talk to me about your forecast. What are you frustrated with? And they're like, I'm called in to get these deals closed and we shouldn't have gone after these pieces of crap in the first place. So it's, yeah, you just said it and we heard that loud and clear. The other thing you talked about was discovery.
00:16:25
Speaker
that that everybody was frustrated with discovery. You know, how can you how can you put a sort of winning off around the table of why me unless you've done the proper discovery. And it's, it's still there. And those qualifications is probably similar. But I do agree with you discovery has changed radically in this market, because shit stuff is shifting so quickly. There's so many buyers, like it's constant. And I'm curious how you feel about this.
00:16:52
Speaker
We were talking yesterday at this conference about guided discovery, you know, the old days of, hey, Chris, what keeps you awake at night, you know, blah, blah, blah. And now, but now leading with guided discovery to say, I've got 10 business problems that I want to talk to you about that similar customers have, you know, and we know we can solve those. And yeah, I'm wondering how you feel about the evolution of discovery in this market.
00:17:14
Speaker
Listen, I'll give props to the same firm that I've used over and over again, Sense Service now, called Visualize. They do value selling. But 80% of the training is doing exactly this. And now, right, I know it like a back of my hand. I hope all my salespeople now know it like the back of their hand. They enter a discovery process with some very, like, you know, it's an art.
00:17:39
Speaker
It's an art as how you do discovery without pissing off, you know, the person you've got to do this nice dance of giving them credibility.
00:17:49
Speaker
as to why they should open up to you at the same time asking the hard, good questions that move them down the path. You can sit there and say, hey, we're the best product because X, Y, and Z, et cetera, et cetera. They might get a little bit of that, but you haven't built the credibility. They're not going to get all of that. It's far better to go off and, number one, figure out what problems they're trying to solve, what business issue they're trying to attach to.
00:18:15
Speaker
and then let them self-discover why you are the best, right? And you can throw PowerPoints and fancy demos, et cetera, but if they haven't self-discovered why you're the best, you're not getting across, you're not communicating.
00:18:31
Speaker
So they really teach a scripted way to do this. What's the business issue? Business issue has a hard dollar value, financial impact, and a time. So I'm always asking, hey, what's the business issue we're solving? And if I don't get both of those, let's go back to the drawing board. We don't have enough to really attach to get this deal done.
Using Structured Discovery in Sales
00:18:51
Speaker
Then I move to problems, keeping them from getting to that business issue. Hey, what's the problems keeping you? By the way, in any points in time, that customer, that prospect,
00:18:59
Speaker
is going to be like, hey, wait a minute. Who the hell are you? What's up with the 20 questions? And you've got to be ready to be like, hey, you're right. My apologies. We met with your peer over at company XYZ, and they had this problem to keeping them from getting to the business issue. Is that something you guys have? So what did I do there? I built credibility with my statement that I solved this problem for them. And at the same time, I got back into discovery. But it was a dance.
00:19:25
Speaker
And that's a real art that you've got to work on. So now I do problems and I clean the plate, what they call clean the plate there. And then I move over to solutions. And it's not my solution. It's what do they believe the solution is to solve those problems, to fix their business issue. And then I moved to value. Hey, have you done any work?
00:19:45
Speaker
around if I were to solve these problems or a company were to solve these problems, I don't even know if I can, right? Again, I just I just I've just kind of built a consultative mindset in them. I'm not selling them anything. I don't know if I can solve these problems or not yet. But if we were to solve these problems or someone else, have you done any value recognition as to what that is to you to solve that business issue?
00:20:06
Speaker
Oh, by the way, value exists in two ways, business and personal. So that's a business value, Brian, but gosh, Brian, like, is there personal value? If you were to solve this and hit that business, here's the personal value for you. Now you're in there like, ooh, pathos, ethos, logos, right? Like, boom, now you're into it. And then you move into power and plan. Great. I've got your business, you've got your problems, I got your solutions, the value. And by the way, I'm going to help you create that value. If you allow me, we can help do some things here.
00:20:33
Speaker
And then who's going to make this decision? Is it you, Brian? Is it someone else? So you really qualify it as I talk about power. And then, great, what do you want to do next? What do you want to do next? And by the way, I've found the best way, if you want to solve this business issue, these are the steps you need to take in this purchase decision. You've got to guide them. You've got to lead them. That's our job. So that scripted discovery, that should be happening. If I look at my gong calls and I put those keywords in,
00:21:03
Speaker
I'm asking gong did my sales team do this have they followed this discovery are we asking the right way are we dancing appropriately are they getting shut down how are they handling it right but we gotta get that information may not happen on the same call.
00:21:20
Speaker
Right. But we've got to go back to it. And then by the way, that's for every persona. So now, right, enterprise decisions are being made by six, seven different groups inside of companies, not just one. So now I've got to do that for six or seven different entities inside of an organization. And, and those, those questions. It's funny as I'm, as I'm hearing you talk through this, you talked about, you know, 20 questions, what the hell you're killing me with 20 questions. But it's, it's the words we use now. It's like, I just like a doc.
00:21:49
Speaker
I cannot prescribe a solution until I've diagnosed your problem. And so I think discovery is morphing into a diagnostic sort of process, which is different than, and this, this is what I'm hearing you say. It's like, I've got to get in and diagnose. And it's more, it's more of a consultant approach, right? Of diagnosing that problem. That like, to me, that's what I'm hearing you talk about.
00:22:12
Speaker
100%. Marketing, and my CEO Blake Hall, Kudos to him, marketing has become education. Sales has become consulting. Marketing goes out and educates the market as to who you are, what you do, what value you bring. Then our job as sales is to get out there and understand what problems you're trying to solve.
Shift to Consulting Role in Sales
00:22:32
Speaker
right? And then and then match a solution to that. And listen, this is where that qualification comes in. Hey, listen, you're trying to solve some problems. I don't think I have the best solution for it. I really appreciate it. You should go reach out to these couple companies, right? Oh, my God, you've got it. You've got a customer for life that later on, right? You're gonna be fine, right? But that's just what you have to do.
00:22:52
Speaker
it's, it's, it's such a such great insight into discovery. And we often start the conversation with that saying, I don't know if I have anything to sell you. And we've, I've got to build enough credibility to then get in and do that diagnostic work. So I need to lean in a little bit. And I feel that you allow people to lean in a little when you're saying,
00:23:12
Speaker
i don't know if i have anything for you yet you know but let let me do this work so yeah i love and i see and i see too many people using marketing slides and marketing slogans and let you write the education the best way to build credibility is.
Onboarding and Post-Purchase Validation
00:23:28
Speaker
how you solved problems for that persona that existed in your other customers. And that's why if I step back a little bit on our conversation, there's another sales stage that I put into sales, which is onboarding and go live.
00:23:44
Speaker
So that's a process. And if our sales people aren't following how people onboard it, how they go live, and then validate the value that we thought we were going to get when we sold the deal, like I do a business value assessment upfront pre-sales, then I validate the value six, nine months after with that customer. Hey, Mr. Customer, I'm not going to drop you on our head. This is SaaS.
00:24:08
Speaker
right? Yeah, I'm gonna drop you off your head. I'm not successful unless you're successful unless you're using the product and you're consuming. So we're in the boat together, we have aligned incentives. And nine months later, six months later, we're gonna be back with customer success, we're gonna validate the value you got.
00:24:24
Speaker
More importantly, it becomes a wonderful sales motion when you don't have that pipeline, you don't have the funnel, because that's where cross sells and upsells happen. That's where I take those credibility stories of validating the value. And I go back and I start doing discovery with them in other places. By the way, I we just went live with john, and john had these problems. And this is what we did for him. And now he's getting, you know, a four month return on on investment with these exact solutions
00:24:52
Speaker
that you said you need. The only way I know that is because I was there during onboarding, I was there during Go Live and I saw them get successful. Yeah.
Focus on Revenue Enablement
00:25:04
Speaker
What you make me think of, and I think it's a really good shift, the sales enablement society just rebranded to the revenue enablement society, which
00:25:12
Speaker
is kind of what you're talking about. It's like, all right, we sold something, cycle's done, right? No, when it's revenue enablement, that cycle is a living, breathing cycle. And it's funny, we coached a billion dollars in renewals at probably 4, 10, 10. And the most common reaction was, why do you want me to renew? I'm not using half the crap you sold me a year ago, which is like that's, yeah, you just cannot do that anymore. So let's, you talked a little bit about,
00:25:41
Speaker
not only designing sales process, but but redesigning maybe real time about leveraging data, you know, so what and I know that there's a lot, right? So we probably have drowning and more than we need today. But what do you think are the two or three key data points that impact sales process?
Essential Sales Metrics
00:26:00
Speaker
I love it. I'll take the opportunity to give a plug to my amazing RevOps leader, AJ. AJ came to me after a long hiring process to try to find someone. And if you get a good RevOps leader,
00:26:17
Speaker
It's a cheat code. It's a cheat code. So they come in, they clean up Salesforce, they put in the best tech stack possible. They're really driving the go-to-market strategy. So she's not only my RevOps leader, she's my chief of staff.
00:26:32
Speaker
Um, which is fascinating, right? Because I, you know, I was like, Hey, I need you to, whoa, I got some fireworks going. Right. Well that, that was in honor of AJ. We appreciate that. Nice job, AJ. So, so like, if you, if you get them both in the same role, like sometimes I just have to, like, AJ, I need you to put your chief of staff hat on. Like if this is a tough conversation, I need to have cross-functioning or whatever.
00:26:54
Speaker
but for the most part, they're one and the same for a chief revenue officer is to have that VP of RevOps. So the data points that we're really driving and frankly, it's the board, right? So we're a series D company.
00:27:08
Speaker
looking to do some fantastic things over the next 18 months. In order to do that, we got to ask for money and show that the money that they've given us is proving out in a good investment. We publish a go-to-market tracker every month to the board of IDME that says, here's the investment that you gave us. Here's all the new reps that we hired.
00:27:32
Speaker
from a coverage plan standpoint. Here's the days in market they are. Here's how they're ramping. Here's their pipeline. Here's their enablement scores. Here's their wins. Here's their performance against quota by name. And I've told my team, I was like, hey, your name is going to the board every month.
00:27:49
Speaker
Um, and it's my job to make you efficient and make you effective, right? Those are things that we didn't necessarily have to do for 10 plus years in sales is CAC, right? Cost to acquire a customer or a magic number. So I'm seeing a lot of boards, a lot of investments, a lot of public sector companies, public, you know, traded company saying, Hey, it's either CAC or magic number. What do you follow?
00:28:12
Speaker
And for 10 plus years, we didn't. It was all about growth, growth, growth, growth, growth, growth, higher into it. Well, now we got to get more efficient. So I look at CAC. I look at magic number as a data. CFO is helping me look at that every day.
00:28:26
Speaker
And then how do we get more efficient? And so it's stage progression, our deal staying in stages longer than they should. Am I driving down stage progression? Am I driving up conversion rates? Am I driving up average sale?
00:28:42
Speaker
Right? Yeah. And so we're constantly looking at that by segment, by industry, like chopping it all kinds of different ways, building this graph of data so that we can see, you know, in strategic changes, right? We took one of our segments and we moved them to more of an enterprise based focus. I took, you know, sales folks that had 200 accounts, we moved them. Hey, sorry, this year, you're having 40 accounts.
00:29:05
Speaker
40 to 50 accounts. And of course, like, you know, mutiny on your hands, like, Oh, my God, like, there's no way I'm gonna make my number. Turns out, everybody's crushing their number. Why? Yeah. Because of focus, right? Now, now they only have these, they have as defined playbook, they building solid account plans, they're able to run proper sales process. And so we're seeing sales cycles go up.
00:29:25
Speaker
which is expected, you move them to an enterprise sales motion with bigger, bigger accounts, but we're also seeing the dollar values go up. We're seeing their coverage go up. So it's those kinds of things like, Hey, I implemented this strategic change. What do I expect to happen? Well, I expect sales process to take longer. Deal cycle is going to expand, but we're going to make that up because we're going to do million dollar deals now versus $50,000 deals that have a high likelihood to churn a year from now. Like who cares? So right. It's those kinds of things that you're, and unfortunately to your point, it's a lot.
00:29:55
Speaker
Like, what are the important ones? And then nailing that, putting it into a spreadsheet, revisiting it every day. What kind of changes do I need to make based on what I'm seeing?
00:30:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny too. Cause those, those who listen to the show, I'm a huge fan of slow down to hurry up. And that's just what you, you spoke about, right? It's like, okay, there's going to be this hiccup. We're going to go from 400 to 40. And there's going to be this hiccup, but then boom, that's where they're in. People only hear the slow down. They miss the hurry up part, which is the million dollar deal you just got. No, you're like, you know, all this stuff is like, trust me. Right.
00:30:30
Speaker
Go talk to a race car driver. We're going to go fast. It's fine. I want to get into the weeds on my last question here.
00:30:41
Speaker
looked at a lot of sales processes and entry and exit criteria. And I feel like so many of those things are over-engineered. And difficult, I look at some of these and it's like, this is a research project for rep to evidence this out. What's your advice on making that a little more efficient and effective, the whole exit, exit, and entry criteria? Well, I can talk through it. I don't know that I have a silver bullet on this one either, Brian, but I think
00:31:12
Speaker
And again, I laminate these things. My ex boss, Craig Pratt was the king of lamination. You'd show up and he'd bring out all his laminates and say, hip, blah, blah, blah. But on the back of this are all the different, you see that. It's crazy, entry and exit criteria. We've got some medic in there. We got all the stuff. And this is that balance.
00:31:35
Speaker
And, and if I'm not having salespeople kind of complain every now and then saying, Hey, Chris, like this deal is stuck in two because I don't have this and they're not allowing, you know, rev ops isn't allowing me to move it to three. Um, because I don't, it's like, let's talk about that. Right. And then it provides a wonderful discussion.
00:31:54
Speaker
And it's like, okay, I'll let it go to three. We're gonna overlook that particular one. I'll provide you an exception because you have X, Y, and Z and et cetera. But for the most part, I lean on RevOps, right? Their job is to make sure that the forecast accuracy is good. They have, you know, forecast accuracy as their main KPI. Of course, salespeople don't necessarily get rewarded or et cetera for forecast actuary. They get rewarded and compensated for bookings. And so it's that healthy friction
00:32:23
Speaker
That is okay. It's okay. And so it's just that constant argument. Sometimes I have to ask RevOps to be a little more lenient. Let's pull back on a couple things, but I like what you're doing there. I got to go back to the salesperson and say, hey, sorry, we're going to have to hold the line on that one. That's a very important thing. And here's why. These last three deals, they got this in stage two. Or, hey, those last two losses we had, we didn't have that data point. So I can't let any more go forward
00:32:52
Speaker
until you get the data point, right? So it there's no silver bullet, I don't think it's got to be your own individual situation. And you've you've got to create healthy friction. It's okay. It's okay. Yes. Well, you you spoke my last question is is leaning on a baseball analogy. You gave me in a baseball kind of coaching analogy. And, you know, running those meetings, the pipeline review review meetings. Yeah, what's what's your thoughts on like sort of best practice?
00:33:19
Speaker
for running. There's a lot of just pure auditing that happens in those and that not sure that provides a lot of value to an over zoom like maybe what's different when you're in person. I doubt it but you know over zoom it's even tougher.
00:33:35
Speaker
And I don't want to talk about my other comforters like WebEx. I don't want to just zoom, zoom right now. But you know, you into the baseball analogy, played a lot of baseball in my life was fortunate enough to play in college. But you know, the best baseball coaches I had growing up were those that during batting practice, everyone was still involved. So right.
Conducting Pipeline Reviews
00:33:59
Speaker
The worst ones, there's one guy up there, or gal, if they're playing softball, et cetera, getting their swings and getting their hacks. Everyone else is picking their nose, picking their buddy's nose, talking about what they're going to do on the weekend, staring into space, chasing butterflies. It's ridiculous. It's like an hour of wasted time, and everyone gets five minutes of value.
00:34:18
Speaker
That's what I'm viewing most pipeline reviews are. You got one person on the hot seat. And unfortunately, what's fascinating is the one person on the hot seat is the one that has the deal, that built the quota, that built the pipeline, whatever. This person that doesn't have the pipeline, doesn't have the coverage, doesn't have the deal, he's off the hook.
00:34:37
Speaker
We're putting so much pressure on that one person. So it's like, you know, how do you do that? Well, you know, it's a combination of, hey, I like to do a lot of those one on one. So we're just reviewing the pipeline and talking about best practices when we're in pipeline reviews. What did we learn, right? Who bought, how they bought, why they buy, where are you at in the stage process, etc. And it's hard over zoom, you're watching because everybody's multitasking.
00:34:58
Speaker
It's like, hey, listen, did everybody, did everybody catch that kind of like the professor giving the foot stomp, right? Like, hey, this might be on the test, foot stomp, foot stomp. And everyone's like, what, what was he saying? Like, you know, so it's like, hey, guys, did everybody catch that, right? That's a new persona.
00:35:12
Speaker
If you're not taking a note and you just got to call folks out, it's like, guys, I don't see you writing stuff down. Write this down. We just learned something here in this deal review, opportunity review, go. Then do one-on-ones around the real opportunities, your top 10 opportunities of the week, month, quarter, whatever your cadence is. Do those really specific one-on-one because then you can go deep and
00:35:39
Speaker
Not everyone's going to get a lot of value out of that. So take the time, efficiency, and use it to your advantage. But where things can be learned as a group, you got to do it.
00:35:53
Speaker
So yeah, I will and I mean this sincerely, it's a really interesting and cool time to be doing what we're doing because intellectually like it's sort of like the, you know, we need maybe not a brand new playbook, but we need a severely adjusted playbook given the two things that we've hit on today, which is speed.
Continuous Adaptation in Sales Processes
00:36:12
Speaker
and dynamic reacting to it. So you've been super generous with your time and your ideas twice. So thank you. Thank you for coming back. And I think we even did better the second time. So I really appreciate it. You're adding a lot to this community. And thank you. Thank you so much, Brian. It's been super fun. Enjoy.