Selling Intelligence (formerly Selling the Cloud)

Latest Episodes:

Data Driven and Metric Based Selling in B2B Pt.1 - Kevin Knieriem, President, Strategic GTM at Clari May 08, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, we had the pleasure of hosting Kevin Knieriem, the President, Strategic GTM of Clari. Our discussion revolved around three key themes:

Data-Driven Companies: We delved into what it takes for companies to become truly data-driven in today's landscape.
AI and B2B Sales: Exploring the evolving role of AI and machine learning in shaping the future of B2B sales.
Metric-Based Sales Culture: We discussed how revenue leaders can seamlessly blend metric-based business approaches with people-driven sales cultures.

Kevin shared insights from his career journey, highlighting pivotal moments where AI and data-driven strategies made a significant impact. We explored how SaaS metrics are leveraged in sales leadership and team coaching, focusing on the top metrics that matter most.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Selling with AI, How Buyers Want to Buy Pt.2 - Andy Paul, Host of the Win rate Podcast May 01, 2024

Show notes

Today we will be covering part 2. of our show with Andy Paul, the host of the Win Rate Podcast:

The Evolution of Sales in the B2B SaaS era
Integrating AI into Sales Strategies
Leadership and Scaling Sales Teams

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Selling with AI How Buyers Want to Buy Pt. 1 - Andy Paul, Host of the Win Rate Podcast Apr 24, 2024

Show notes

Today we will be covering three main areas with Andy Paul, the host of the Win Rate Podcast:

The Evolution of Sales in the B2B SaaS era
Integrating AI into Sales Strategics
Leadership and Scaling Sales Teams

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Aligning Strategy in Marketing, RevOps, and Sales Part 2 with Kunal Mehta, Bain Consulting Apr 18, 2024

Show notes

Today we are covering three main areas.

1) the strategies that B2B companies can use to alignment strategy across marketing, rev ops, and sales.

2) how data analytics helps marketing, rev ops, and sales work more effectively together.

3) how should we be thinking about continuous improvement across marketing, rev ops, and sales.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Aligning Strategy in Marketing, RevOps, and Sales - Kunal Mehta, Bain Consulting Apr 09, 2024

Show notes

Today we are covering three main areas.

1) the strategies that B2B companies can use to alignment strategy across marketing, rev ops, and sales.

2) how data analytics helps marketing, rev ops, and sales work more effectively together.

3) how should we be thinking about continuous improvement across marketing, rev ops, and sales.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Disruption Ready Selling - with Dipanjan Das, Genpact May 23, 2022

Show notes

B2B Sales professionals are continuously faced with new challenges and obstacles they need to overcome on the path to success. In the past two years alone, sellers were forced to move to a 100% virtual roll due to a global pandemic. Most recently, the economy has quickly transformed from growth at all costs to efficient, profitable growth as the new imperative.

Dipanjan Das, Service Line Leader for Sales & Commercial Service Line, Cloud, Hi-Tech and Media, at Genpact joined the Selling the Cloud Podcast to discuss the need for "disruption ready selling".

The first disruption we discussed was that most B2B Buyers (70 - 75%) prefer to conduct the majority of the buying process online, beginning with research. One of the factors driving this new reality is the presence of millennials as buyers. As a result, traditional sales processes must transform to meet the buyers where they are.

Dipanjan sees three major factors driving the need for B2B Sales transformation:

The majority of selling will be a data insights-led process.

Customer experience will be critical and must be digital first throughout the customer journey.

Sales culture must change to focus on leading as a trusted advisor.

Point number three was referred to as a "Sherpa led" where a modern B2B Seller serves as a guide to help the buyer maneuver through a very noisy buying journey.

Over 30% of a B2B seller's time is spent on non revenue-generating activities, such as data entry, data analysis, and internal administrative tasks. Dipanjan said one of a company's primary goals is to find ways to bring JOY back to selling.

Another key goal is to understand and focus on the "Value" that is being delivered to the buyer - both during the buying process and following the buying process as measured by the value that the client receives from the product...and even that the client's client is receiving.

"Disruption Ready Selling" is not a static concept; it is a continuously changing and evolving engagement process, especially for companies using a recurring revenue, subscription-based model. Traditionally, most companies viewed selling as a point in time, transactional process versus an on-going relationship where the customer could cancel the revenue relationship multiple times throughout the process.

Dipanjan provides many thought-provoking insights on how to drive an "outcome-centric, data-driven sales process" that prepares a sales organization for the inevitable disruptions that B2B Sales professionals will face as the buyer's journey evolves and becomes even more digital.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sell without Selling Out - with Andy Paul Apr 05, 2022

Show notes

The professional of Sales continues to evolve, and is much more nuanced and complex these days - especially in the world of B2B Sales in the Cloud.
Andy Paul is one of the foremost experts in B2B Sales. His 1,000 + episodes of the "Sales Enablement Podcast" and his latest best selling book entitled "Sell without Selling Out" provides unique insights, experiences and recommendations Andy has from over 30 years in the profession.
What is the motivation for writing a Sales book? Andy's perspective is that selling is not evolving quick enough - and that we are basically just automating many of the same old processes used for decades! Why is that the case - that was the fundamental question Andy sought to understand and answer.
Why does B2B Sales need to evolve? One is that the market continues to evolve and have been accentuated over time. First, the internet has enabled more self-service by the buyers. Secondly, information about a company and their products is much more readily available by the buyers. Third, if Sales does not evolve as a professional, buyers will find away to buy even complex, considered products without engaging with a sales person.
One of the metrics shared was that 54% of buyers regret their purchase decision when they did not engage with a sales person before making the purchase. Andy highlighted that as a society we have become less social as measured by actual human to human interactions and this is leading to a higher level of buyer satisfaction. In fact, for decades buyers did not really want to speak to sales professionals unless the sales professional can actually help them and their company.
The primary goal of a B2B Sales professional? It's not to persuade, but it is to listen to what the buyer's need is and help them achieve that. Buyers need sellers to be curious and go beyond gathering information (discovery), but is to truly understand the priorities, who else it is important to and what is the value of using your product or service? The goal is not to get an "ORDER", it is to understand what the buyer's needs really are.
Andy has a unique ability to blend great stories from his own experiences, the insights he has gained form interviewing over 1,000 guests on his podcast and from the broad research he conducts daily in the pursuit of his natural "continuous learning" personality.
For anyone interested in learning more about the art of "Selling without Selling Out" this podcast and Andy's book are great investments.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Is Cold Calling Dead - with Chris Beall, CEO ConnectandSell Mar 10, 2022

Show notes

Cold calling is both the bane of existence for many sales professionals, while also being the key to success for sustained revenue generation growth!
Chris Beall is the CEO of ConnectAndSell, an assisted dialing, technology enabled managed services company conducting over 60 million outbound calls for their clients every year.
The human voice is the most powerful thing in business. The phrase the Chris started the conversation with. In a day where social media engagement is promoted as a top strategy to engage in buyer discussions, Chris is running a company that helps sales organizations unlock the potential of the telephone call and human to human conversations.
Voice mail became the first "obstacle" to successful outbound cold calling. As a result of this challenge and the evolving use of email, the phone became a secondary prospecting tool to email. Moreover, humans have a fear of the "invisible stranger" and an unexpected phone call can often trigger that fear that someone, who was uninvited is interrupting their day.
ConnectAndSell has empirical evidence from over 60,000,000 fully navigated calls resulting in 3,000,000 targeted conversations. Think about that, insights and experience from over 60 millions calls being applied to your outbound cold calling efforts?
Chris Voss, a leading FBI hostage negotiator shared that a seller only have 7 seconds to gain the initial trust of a cold calling recipient. The secret to gaining this trust - ensure you show the person you see the world through their eyes (tactical empathy) and then show you are competence to solve the problem they have right now! That first problem to disarm their fear that you are wasting their time, and they are not sure how much time it will take to get you off the phone - thus the hang-up syndrome.
One technique is to use two voice inflections, the first being a hard flat, self-indictment voice to a playful, come with me voice during those first 7 seconds. Do not apologize or ask for permission in those first seven seconds, simply state the fact of your call.
As an example of this technique, a team of 9 sales resources conducted a 2 hour flight-school and the results per rep hour standard of .5 meetings increased to 1.78 meetings per rep hour. This represented a 3x increase in meetings schedule per rep hour.
If you or your company uses outbound prospecting as a tactic to drive meetings and opportunity, this conversation with Chris Beall is a highly insightful chalked full of strategic insights and tactical advice to dramatically increase the efficacy of your outbound sales programs and sales professionals.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Rebranding in the B2B Cloud with William Tyree, CMO Revenue.io Dec 06, 2021

Show notes

Has the market segment you participate in evolved over the years?
Have you considered rebranding your company to ensure it's aligned with the market you serve?
William Tyree, Chief Marketing Officer at Revenue.io, found his company faced these difficult questions when it was known as "ringDNA"!
The B2B SaaS market has evolved as many companies consolidate their Go-To-Market departments under one revenue leader - the Chief Revenue Officer. This trend is based upon companies viewing the customer journey as a vital area of focus, as historic department-centric processes are not optimizing the customer experience.
As a result, or maybe even as a leading indicator, many revenue technologies have been broadening their features to address the needs of Marketing and Sales, and Customer Success in one consolidated platform. This trend was a catalyst for ringDNA, which was originally known for inbound lead routing and automated dialing for sales to rebrand themselves to reflect the cross-functional feature set in their solution.
Revenue.io was fortunate to have a world-class team of brand, design, and communications professionals who managed the strategy and execution of their rebrand internally - using resources who were intimately familiar with the market segment of B2B SaaS they were serving.
One of the driving forces to the rebrand to "Revenue.io" was the increased focus by B2B Cloud companies on optimizing the customer experience across every stage of the revenue-creating journey, including acquisition, retention, and expansion. One strategy companies are using is introducing a "Revenue Operations" function, further promoting the concept of the need for a solution and company to provide an automation platform to enable accelerated revenue growth.
When thinking about rebranding - how do you measure the ultimate impact of the rebrand? William highlighted their measurements, including social media impressions, video views, content marketing asset downloads, and even email open rates, to measure the engagement with the newly introduced "Revenue.io" brand - especially within their target Ideal Customer Profile.
One example of a tool Revenue.io uses is Shield Analytics to measure engagement trends on LinkedIn for a brand or even an individual.
How do you bridge the connection from a former brand "ringDNA" to "Revenue.io"? Initially, Revenue.io will highlight phrases like "ringDNA is now Revenue.io" - even for Google searches. Then after 6 months, the reference ringDNA will be eliminated, and then 6-9 months later, the plan is to drop the ".io" and be known as the "Revenue" company.
What are some key learnings from going through a rebrand? Understand it is a long process, and you have to trust your employees to work confidentially to pull off all of the work that goes into rebranding.
ringDNA engaged all employees early in the process. In fact, every employee knew four months before the rebrand was introduced.
How important was it to "rebrand" every company asset? Revenue.io eliminated 30% of their content assets and then used the rebranding to refresh every piece of content to ensure messaging reflected the new brand. Revenue.io reviews most content on a regular basis, and after much discussion, it was decided that every asset should be reviewed on a quarterly basis in partnership with Sales during the Quarterly Business Review process.
William's parting advice is to ensure you have the right metrics in place to measure if your customers and target buyers are aware of the brand change, and then ensure the rebranding is meaningful as measured by market opportunity and brand engagement.
If you are considering whether a rebrand is right for your company, William Tyree is a great source of insights and hands-on experience.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Growth of the Chief Revenue Officer with Warren Zenna, Founder and CEO of The CRO Collective Nov 02, 2021

Show notes

The Chief Revenue Officer title is growing in popularity across the B2B Cloud industry. Is the CRO a new role in companies, or just a fancy new "C-Level" title for the head of sales?
Warren Zenna has recently launched "The CRO Collective" to educate and inform CEOs, first-time CROs, and aspiring CROs on the role of the Chief Revenue Officer.
Warren identified that the CRO role was often being mispositioned within a company and too often ending in failure. His goal is to help hire, onboard and enable first-time CROs to be successful.
The desire to found and lead his own company, not work for a big company, and passion to leverage his own leadership experiences across marketing, sales, and customer success to help fellow revenue leaders who aspire to become CROs. When Warren shared his vision to advise and assist CRO's and the CEOs who hire them to find success, he was pleasantly surprised by the overwhelming confirmation that this was a much-needed service.
The traditional customer acquisition and expansion models are not performing well in concert with the evolving customer buying journey. Traditional metrics that are siloed within marketing or sales or customer do not provide valuable insights into the entire customer journey. Moreover, the siloed nature of these three different departments is not in alignment with the need to provide each potential buyer and then customer a consistent customer experience across the entire lifecycle.
How can a head of sales develop the experiences and competency in marketing to become an effective CRO? Warren's path started with selling marketing services and solutions to CMOs. This experience allowed him to apply the practice of enterprise sales directly to impact and improve marketing ROI. After thousands of conversations and deal cycles with marketing departments and executives, he had built the foundation to include marketing into his responsibilities as he advanced his career.
When asked if we invest too much time on internal processes versus the external customer experience, Warren responded with three reasons this is the case:
1. Venture Capital money comes with expectations that are primarily focused on revenue growth and not necessarily customer experience...in the short term. This heightened focus on growth often affects the priorities and focus
2. Most CROs come from a sales background, and their experience is often far too focused on "closing new customers" and not on the longer-term customer satisfaction or the skills required to create brand awareness and/or target buyer engagement
3. When companies have three separate departments focused on specific phases of the customer journey, no one owns the customer experience across their entire journey.
So what does the "CRO Collective" do? There are three unique components to the CRO Collective members:
1. Advisory services to CEOs considering the introduction of the first CRO role
2. Advisory services to first time CROs as they maneuver through their first CRO role
3. Educational services to aspiring CRO candidates
If your company is considering introducing a CRO role or you are a sales, marketing, or customer success professional that aspires to become a CRO, this conversation with Warren Zenna and the CRO Collective is a great listen.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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