MongoDB

Second-line leader building Mongo's corporate sales org.

Regional Vice President, Corporate Sales

Qualtrics

Responsibility increased to oversee all SAAS revenue for all Midwest accounts up to $2 billion in annual revenue as well as all SMB revenue in North America.

Second-line leader working with a phenomenal leadership team that oversees 60+  fantastic Account Executives.

2021 President's Club winner.

Proudest accomplishments of tenure were:

1) Lowest attrition of any sales leader across the company
2) Helping ten individuals achieve their goals of promoting into leadership roles

Vice President of Sales, Corporate Midwest

Building out our new Chicago office. Second line leader responsible for all Customer Experience, Product Experience, and Brand Experience revenue for Midwest accounts up to $1 billion in annual revenue. Qualified for my 4th straight President's Club. All of my eligible direct reports (Sales Directors) also qualified for President’s Club.

Regional Vice President of Sales, Midwest CX

Asked to take on second-line leadership responsibilities to begin building our new Midwest Market Unit for our CX, PX, and BX product lines.

Director, Corporate Sales

I was the #1 CX Sales Manager for FY 2019 (out of 15+). In addition to being the top performing team as measured by revenue over quota, our group also led out in percentage of reps attaining quota as well as employee engagement. President's Club winner.

Senior Manager, Corporate Sales

I was the #1 CX Team Lead for FY 2018 out of 20+ in my cohort. The highlight of this year / role was Q4 when 100% of the reps on my team exceeded quota which gave us momentum into our record breaking 2019. President's Club winner.

Manager, Corporate Sales

- 2017 #1 Account Executive (out of 200+ AEs worldwide)
-  Averaged 157% of quota across five quarters
- President's Club
- I finished the personal quota chapter of my career story at a cumulative 140% quota attainment ($2.15 million in new business bookings on a $1.5 million quota)

Senior Account Executive

Account Executive

Sales Development

Brigham Young University

- Led team that presented findings to director as well as partner level PwC employees
- Gathered and compiled information relating to most efficient practices that laid the groundwork for process changes within the organization

Field Study Intern with PwC - Team Lead

I've been fortunate to see my career accelerate from SDR to VP at a publicly-traded, $16 billion company in seven years. At Qualtrics, I qualified for five consecutive President's Clubs as an AE, front-line leader, and second-line leader. 

Now, I’m fortunate to help MongoDB build their corporate sales team. 

When I'm not building my sales organization, I'm creating frameworks to help others replicate the success I've enjoyed. You can view those and sign up for updates on new projects at SalesIntroverts.com.

I’ve sat on hundreds of discovery calls in my career - many feel uncomfortable until a key shift occurs.

I think this tension comes from buyer skepticism:

- Does this rep know anything about me?

- Are they going to push me to buy, even if it’s not a fit?

Two ways to remove this tension:

1) Ask questions that show you understand your buyer

Instead of:

“Tell me about your role.”

 Try: 

“Many [insert role] we are working with are focused on improving [key priority]. How are you approaching this opportunity?”


2) Empower the no

Instead of:

 “Thanks for taking the time to help me understand your business today. Let’s find 30 minutes to dive deeper into how we might be able to help.” 

Try: 

“Based on our conversation today, we may be able to help you improve [outcome] by improving how you approach [use case]. 

If we were to continue the conversation, we’d be sharing in more depth our approach to driving [outcome] through [how you improve their current state]. 

Last thing we want to do is waste either of our time pursuing a non-priority. Is [outcome] enough of a priority to warrant further discussion?” 


Fair or not, many buyers enter sales conversations with skepticism. Try these tactics to reduce that skepticism, and you’ll find your discovery calls turning into conversations. 

Kyle Asay

Why you should care about buyer psychology:

- What you say is not what your buyer hears

- Buyer bias left unaddressed will cost you deals you should win

- Decisions are made emotionally, validated logically

- Understanding behavior leads to influencing behavior (sick of being ghosted? That’s buyer psychology)

- Buyers spend very little time thinking about your solution. Understanding buyer psychology will help you know what they are thinking and how to influence how they think about your solution.


Incredibly excited about my upcoming course that will help unlock the secrets of buyer psychology. Filming starts soon! 

You don’t want to miss the early pricing window - make sure you get updates when it launches by signing up here: https://lnkd.in/eh57EABT

Demos that fail vs demos that sell:

Demos that fail:

- Offer a "30,000-foot view"

If your buyer wanted a high-level overview, they'd visit your website. 

- 80% of the time on "table-stakes" functionality

Your buyer needs to know you offer the "must-have" features. But, if you spend most of the demo covering those, you look the same as all the other demos they'll see.

Demos that sell:

- Help your buyer envision your solution in their environment

Less "product tour." More "here's how you'll use our product."

- Share outcomes through stories, not stats

No one cares about "37% more productivity." They do love to hear stories about someone like them turning more productivity into a promotion. 

- Effectively use differentiators

Knowing how to use comparative and unique differentiators can make or break your demo. 

This morning, nearly 3,700 motivated sellers learned how to use those differentiators to create compelling demonstrations that capture and keep their buyer's attention. 

Want to run the best demo of your career next week? Take three minutes to read this: https://lnkd.in/gYmVuBdS

The last time the economy tanked (COVID), I was desperate to strengthen my forecast with some quick wins. 

Here’s how my team quickly found $100k of unexpected revenue:


1) Identified the most common advanced features our customers buy

2) Built a survey listing those features with this flow:

- Customers dealing with [pain] use [feature] to drive [outcome].

- Screenshot of feature 

- Would you be interested in discussing this feature? 

Very few of our customers knew about all the features we offered, so most responded to at least one or two with a “yes, we’d like to learn more.”

Ended up winning ~$100k of new business with accelerated deal cycles, providing a much-needed boost to our quarter. 

Nothing replaces being close to your customers, but sometimes scaled approaches + transactional deal cycles have value. 

If you want to give this a try you can easily build it out for free with Google Forms. Let me know how it goes! 

“People hate being sold, but... please follow a rigid sales process that makes people feel like they are being sold."

Yikes.

IMO this is the biggest misalignment in sales.

Look, I get it. I empathize with companies trying to build sales orgs. Process scales and scale is necessary.

Unfortunately, most scalable processes are built for the lowest common denominator. And top performers don't excel by following those processes better than their peers.

The good news is that sales process isn’t the enemy, as long as you put the buyer first. Here's one simple tweak to get you started:

Stop thinking, "how do I get my buyer to the next step in the sales process?"

Start thinking, "what does my buyer need from me to get to the next stage in their buying process?"

Sure, this may mean you give pricing before discovery. Could mean you show a bit of a demo on the first call. Supporting your buyer on their journey may lead to "breaking" all sorts of rules.

I'd rather break some rules and win instead of progressing a deal along the proper "process" all the way through "Closed-Lost."


p.s. My frameworks will help you adapt your sales process to match how your buyers evaluate your solution. Join ~700 AEs accelerating their career at hitmyquota.com! 

Many professionals wonder, “how can I become more irreplaceable at work.” 

Developing these traits is a great start:

1) Being adaptable to change
2) Being proactive
3) Letting ego and selfishness go
4) Scaling your strengths 

Let me know what you would add if you take 3 minutes to watch! 

Most companies think their reps can execute a sales process as long as it’s taught. I think it requires much more - here are four crucial elements to successfully implementing a sales process for your teams:


1) Effective onboarding

No seller leaves onboarding without a foundational understanding of your process. 
 
2) Continuous enablement of sales process 

If formal sales process training only happens in onboarding, your reps stop trying to use it within a couple of months of finishing onboarding. 

3) Consistent updates to sales process to adjust to market/customer needs 

Blows my mind that some companies still rely on sales processes created decades ago. 

If your buyers and market have evolved, and your sales process hasn’t, you’re losing. 

4) Performance management metrics that map to your sales process 

Reps won’t follow your sales process if it doesn’t lead to success in the metrics you use to measure rep productivity. Build productivity metrics on the foundation of your sales process. Otherwise, your reps will break your sales process as they try to hit metrics. 


Curious: is this kind of post helpful? Anything stand out? 

Currently going through Kyle Asay's "FRAMEWORKS". 

I strongly recommend every AE in the tech industry out there to purchase this e-book now! Kyle went from SDR to VP of Sales for Qualtrics in 7 short years.  He is the real deal! 

Go to https://hitmyquota.com/ and get your copy right now. Trust me. The value of this is incredible! 

Incredibly grateful for kind people that are willing to share their experience with my Frameworks. 

Thank you, Juan Manuel Vivas Carbo for your endorsement! 

I’m biased, but I do agree with Juan in saying you should head to hitmyquota.com to grab my Frameworks :)

Two types of risk that may burn you as you work to wrap up January deals:

1) Known risk (risk your buyer is always considering)
2) Potential risk (risk your buyer may not be considering… yet)

Failing to proactively address both types could prove disastrous. 

Here are the risks your buyers are always worried about:

- Value: buying something that works but isn’t worth the money 

- Failed implementation: buying something that doesn’t work as expected

Here are the risks they may not be thinking about that could also derail your deal:

- IT/project management bandwidth to implement your solution

- Security assessments

- New approval processes

Correctly address these risks, and you’ll finish the month strong. Fail to address, and you are asking for bad surprises. 

To help, I teach how to address all of these risks here: https://lnkd.in/gCqN2d6w

Any other risks we should be addressing as we wrap up January? 

Taplio

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