optimizing your sales stack for exponential growth in 2016

Jake Dunlap, CEO @ Skaled

Bowery Capital CRO Summit 2015 Optimizing Your Sales Stack For Exponential Growth in 2016

VP of Sales at glassdoor.com Raised over 160 million dollars

Took the company from 0-40 person sales team in 16 months

CEO of Worked with over 40 mid-staged startups over the last 16 months

Companies have raised nearly 200 million dollars in funding and generated millions of dollars in new revenue

A Little About Me

At Skaled, we re v o l u t i o n i z e

revenue development by transforming cl ients’ sales organizat ions into machines

Demand generation to grow your top-of-funnel with qualified appointments

Training led by practitioners who optimize & modernize sales processes, technology & organizations

Process: Advancing your playbooks and scripting to increase success in qualification, proposal and closing

Technology: Assessing 21 key areas of technology, we implement and maximize the right systems for your needs and goals

Organizations: Specializing roles, making data-backed hiring decisions, rapidly onboarding & building a winning culture to retain top talent.

Trends

Options

Prioritize

Implement

The Future

AGENDA

TRENDS IN 3 KEY AREAS

1.  Organization

2.  Operations

3.  Processes

Trends in the Sales Organization

Trends in the Sales Organization: Growing Pains

29% sales orgs planning for growth in 2016

But need to battle…..

Long ramp: 40% orgs report 7-12 month ramp time

High turnover: average rep turnover now 34%

Source: Qvidian Report: Accelerating Sales Rep Ramp Time

Trends in the Sales Org: Technology Augmenting the Sales Force

Purchases are driven by buyer behavior & competition

Prospects are receiving more emails and calls – takes 18 dials to connect with a buyer1

73% companies plan on sales development tech purchase 20151

Technology will replace humans in some areas

By 2020, 85% customer interactions with the enterprise will be managed without talking to humans2

1TOPO Sales Development Technology Report 2Gartner

Source: TOPO Sales Development Technology Report  

Trends in Sales Operations

Trends in Sales Ops: Data Availability vs. Data Usefulness

4 in 5 sales leaders are challenged by the amount of data available1

89% of salespeople are missing opportunities due to information overload1

4,300% projected increase in annual data generation by 20202

Data Overload

Only getting worse…

1Lattice: Why Big Data is a Big Deal for Sales 2CSC

Predictive Analytics

Source: Gartner

Predictive hit marketing first Moving into sales….

Source: Gartner

The Rise of Predictive Analytics

Source: Salesforce State of Sales Report

Trends in the Sales Process

Changes in the Sales Process

Changes in Models & Tech:

46% of businesses are moving to an inside sales model1

Customer success tech à 20% increase in up-sell revenue and 50% higher retention rates2

Growing Need for Automation:

Only 2% of cold calls result in an appointment – and it takes an average 6.25 hours to set 1 appointment3

Companies with automated lead management see a 10% or greater increase in revenue after six to nine month4

1HBR 2Gainsight 3Buzzbuilder 4Hubspot

Source: Salesforce State of Sales Report

Know your options

Reference

Bowery Capital Guide to Startup Sales Tools 2.0

Manage & Grow Your Team

Interviewing: Take the Interview

Onboarding & Training: Grovo

Coaching & Incentives: Rivalry, Hoopla

Employee feedback: 15five, Workcompass

Focus: Technology that will streamline hiring, make training more efficient and comprehensive, and increase retention.

Bowery Capital Guide to Startup Sales Tools 2.0  

Manage & Grow your team

Bowery Capital Guide to Startup Sales Tools 2.0  

Optimize Operations

CRM & Predictive:

CRM: Salesforce

Predictive: Infer

Optimization:

Operations: Insight squared, Lattice

Data Management:

Data entry: RingLead, Zapier

Focus: Technology that allows you to automate & analyze your pipeline, providing actionable insights that enable quick data-backed decisions.

Bowery Capital Guide to Startup Sales Tools 2.0  

Optimize Operations

Bowery Capital Guide to Startup Sales Tools 2.0  

Optimize the Sales Process

Smarketing:

Social sales: Socedo

Alignment: ListenLoop, Spiderbook

Sales development:

Lead gen: Salesloft, LinkedIn, Datanyze

Email management: Outreach

Sales:

Calling: ConnectAndSell

Customer success:

Customer success: Gainsight

Customer engagement: Skilljar

Focus: Technology that will streamline the sales process, and allow you to better understand and target, with more high-quality conversations.

Optimize the Sales Processes

Bowery Capital Guide to Startup Sales Tools 2.0  

ASSESS & PRIORITIZE

Needs Analysis: TOF & Pipeline

Diagram Lead & Technology Flow

Talk to Your Team

Make the Decision

Selling to Leadership

Assessment Step 1: Needs Analysis TOF

What is our ICP?

Where are our target prospects & how do they want to be engaged?

How do we generate leads? Lead flow diagram à

VS. how do we want to generate leads?

Source: ringio

TOF:

Assessment Step 2: Needs Analysis Pipeline & Metrics

What does my sales cycle look like? What type of information do our buyers consume as they move through their buying process? What type of information do I need to report? Tracking trends to determine what matters:

Stage to stage conversion rates Average deal size Sales Cycle Opportunity Pipeline  

Source: ringio

Assessment Step 3: Diagram Your Technology Flow

Source: ringio

Don’t forget: talk to your team

Use tools to streamline processes and allow reps to spend more time with prospects

Ask your team about their biggest pains

Discovery

Research

Resources: Bowery Startup Sales Tools

G2 crowd reviews

Deciding to invest

What is the

impact of solving the pain point?

What will the

project

cost?

How will your

project

disrupt existing

workflows?

How long before the

project proves

ROI?

Why should we prioritize over other projects?

Most importantly: Don’t make the investment in a new

tool unless you’re ready to also invest in necessary training and

support to maximize the tool.

Source: Insight Squared Sales Ops Handbook

Selling to Leadership: Proving ROI

Source: Insight Squared Sales Ops Handbook

IMPLEMENTATION & TRAINING

Sales reps waste over 50%1 of their time every day just trying to access the tools and content needed to do their job

1CSO Insights 2TopoHQ 3Qvidian

Consequences of Poor Training & Support

Only 15% of sales technology

purchases result in increased revenue2

Source: Qvidian Report: Accelerating Sales Rep Ramp Time

Improving Adoption

FOCUS ON THE WHY

Readily Available Materials

Use the sales training materials post training

Make sure tools and workflows are added to sales playbooks

Build Support & Feedback Infrastructure

Make sales rep and manager interactions work

Use metrics for reinforcement Source: Vorsight

PREPPING FOR THE FUTURE

Prepping for the future: Automating Calls & Analytics

Optimizing the sales process with automatic dialers & predictive analytics

Takes 18 dials to connect with a buyer1

Source: Infer

Source: Salesforce State of Sales Report

1TOPO Sales Development Technology Report

Conclusions

Changing buyer behavior à growing need to automate the sales process

Successful teams are already adopting tech and you can’t compete without it

You need a process to strategically decide on tech investments

Your systems & team must be agile to experiment & implement new tech

You must commit to training & support

Thank you!

Email me with any questions or comments

jake@skaled.com

Follow me

@JakeTDunlap

Follow Skaled

@Skaledcom