Declan Healey

This is some of the best advice for job seekers I've ever seen. Geared toward #SaaS, but relevant to most industries. Study this! #hiring #jobsearch #jobseeker #jobseeking #career

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There are two ways to solve gaps in signal-based selling. Only one is guaranteed to work at scale. 1) Revenue Enablement Provide continuous training for (a) every new hire who joins a team and (b) every 6 months to refresh reps on essential information, workflows, and processes. Many factors can impact the effectiveness of enablement activities (from the comprehensiveness of training materials to the trainer’s institutional knowledge, to how closely the individual reps were paying attention that day). Enablement only becomes harder as more people and processes are added to the mix because there are so many moving parts. 2) Revenue Operations Through automation, RevOps can reduce gaps — especially from human error — that cause friction or inaction among reps. Specifically, end-to-end automation. Most common “automations” in signal-based selling usually don’t go far enough. Therefore teams are overly reliant on enablement touchpoints to stay aligned. Ex: A champion moves to a new role and this is automatically updated in Salesforce This automation gets the process from point A to point B, but still relies on multiple human touches from B to Z. End-to-end automation ensures that essential tasks throughout an entire workflow are set up to keep the process moving toward an end goal. It anticipates gaps and opportunities for human error from point A to point Z (meeting booked). Ex: A champion moves to a new role, the CRM record is updated, a rep is notified, and a multi-step persona-specific email sequence is triggered. Would every rep follow this process if it was entirely manual (even with enablement training)? Probably not. That’s why every signal play should be accompanied by clear workflows enabled with end-to-end automation. The play can scale with your team. Signals without action are just noise for reps. Automation guarantees signals get actioned.

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Should CRO’s even exist? Not if they’re going to be: - Super expensive glorified head of sales - With no marketing or CS experience - Compensated like an account executive  - No focus on ICP or aligning the entire GTM motion - No coordination with peers in cross-functions - No P&L fluency or ability to read a P&L  - Only focused on new business with no understanding of recurring impact - No knowledge of the bowtie or systems designed to deliver ongoing customer value - Have a short term view and only care about the quarter CROs should absolutely exist if they: - Can come from Marketing, CS, or RevOps not just Sales - Have foundational understanding and respect for other functions - Are compensated like all other executives - Are focused on driving tight alignment across the GTM motion - Are focused on collaborating across Sales, Marketing, CS leveraging data generated from RevOps - Are focused on a customer journey that begins when the prospect lands on the website and continues through at least 3 annual renewals - Have a deep knowledge of the bowtie  - Have built expertise as revenue architects - Have a long term view that balances short term urgency with long term enterprise value Revenue generation is a team sport. Recurring revenue is driven by recurring impact. If you’re leading the revenue function, you have to understand that and you have to be an expert at driving tight alignment across the customer journey to deliver that impact. This is the way.

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There’s a dramatic divide in how GTM teams are setting up signal-driven outbound. Some teams are thrilled with a 2% conversion rate, and others expect 20%. Here’s why: It comes down to whether your motion is for SMBs or MM / ENT. Companies selling to SMBs have a massive TAM. Using Bluebirds, we found ~500k accounts in the US with less than 200 employees. With smaller ACVs and this large of a TAM, SMB motions need to rely on automation to make the economics work. Here are the benchmarks at an account level: - 0.3% meeting rate with just email sequences, no signals - 1% meeting rate with email sequences that are signal-driven (job change, job postings, fundraising, etc.) - 3% to 5% meeting rate with email, call, connection requests and signals It’s difficult to scale beyond these benchmarks without smaller territories and higher-touch rep involvement, which breaks the unit economics. Luckily this works really well if you can automatically touch thousands of accounts per week using tools like Smartleads, Bluebirds, Clay, dozens of inboxes, Orum / Nooks, etc. On the flip side, companies selling to MM / ENT have a much tighter TAM of ~50k accounts. After tiering, reps might be responsible for 100-200 accounts and need to drive $30k+ ACVs. Three VP of Sales running this GTM motion said they expect their reps to convert at a 15-30% meeting book rate, within 2 weeks of working an account. These teams still want signals to improve productivity and know where to focus, but don’t wan’t extreme outbound automation. Their tech stack looks more traditional, using Outreach instead of Smartleads, a moderate number of inboxes, and something like Bluebirds for signals. One approach isn’t better than the other, it just depends on your GTM motion. Feels like this nuance has been glossed over in the signal-driven outbound conversation on LinkedIn.

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We have bootstrapped Exit Five to $1M revenue. V1 of Exit Five: Paid Community V2 of Exit Five (now in progress): Community, Content, Events We're evolving from a community to media company. Instead of one product line, we'll have three. Starting with our first event in September. And there's some trends we're riding: 1. More companies are wanting to move money from Google + Meta and spend it with niche communities and influencers (we're doing that for B2B marketing). 2. We've built a small but powerful brand over the last two years; people from the community and various roles in marketing reach out weekly asking if there are opportunities to work together. I think we can build a great team of 3-10 people over the next few years. 3. Remote first. And we can do this all remotely - we run the business with Slack, Looms, and the occasional meeting. We'll eventually get to the point where in-person time is important, maybe once a quarter. But I've been really happy with how much we can get done with Slack and working asynchronously - on our own time, while balancing a healthy life with family, friends, fitness, etc. 4. Information overload. There's more content than ever. People don't need more content right? Another podcast? More webinars? Another newsletter? A focused media business like Exit Five gives people in this niche the ability to shrink their focus - instead of trying to keep up with 20 websites to grow your career you can pick one. As one member said on a call this week: "It's like LinkedIn on steroids but better because people aren't trying to drive engagement on here. They are commenting & posting because they genuinely want to help or get help with their marketing problems." Follow Exit Five if you're interested in working with us as a teammate, contractor, sponsor, or partner. Here's the business plan I drew up btw:

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AltiSales is revolutionizing SDR Leadership (and even for SDRs). It's not just about the Call Funnels (which are awesome, check them out) Or the Email Tracker (what's your Positive Reply Ratio?!?) It's the Notifications! I never realized how crucial notifications are for staying on top of things. As sales leaders, we juggle 5-10 different tools daily. Each with different reporting. Each with different tracking. And as a Sales Leader, you often have ZERO idea where to start troubleshooting. [Enter AltiSales.io] Every morning, I receive email notifications (and Slack messages) highlighting the areas that need troubleshooting. Whether it's templates in my sequences that need to be deactivated due to low positive replies, Or identifying which variant of an email from an A/B test has a better Positive Reply Ratio, Or addressing low connect rates for some users, Or overdue tasks piling up for reps, Or failed emails throughout all your sequences, Or pinpointing where, in the last 1, 2, 3, or 4 weeks, my reps are struggling with their cold calls, And so much more… Having more tools isn't the solution for your SDRs and leaders, but having the right visibility and notifications is. Before AltiSales, I thought I had a good grasp on the visibility I needed for troubleshooting, but I was operating on a chaotic model. With AltiSales, I am more zen and aware of every detail. Notifications... who would have thought... Check it out – it's free for Outreach users. #salesdevelopment #businessdevelopment #sales

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F*** is my favorite four-letter F-word. F*** = Free...obviously. 😏 Speaking of free, here's something I'm really excited about. Over at RevOps Co-op, we've got not one, but TWO complimentary RevOpsAF conference passes to give away courtesy of our friends at Enlyft. 🎁 Maybe you're a revenue operator in between gigs who wants to expand your network? 🤝 Or an employed RevOps pro who wants to attend #RevOpsAF 2024 in San Diego but your company isn't able to sponsor you? If this sounds like you then throw the 🙋 emoji in the comments and DM me to toss your name in the literal raffle hat. Sound like someone you know? Tag 'em on this post and have them do the same! Big shout out to Michael Schultz and Phil Gray from Enlyft for making this happen. ❤️ PS - learn more about RevOpsAF 2024 at revopsaf(dot)com #revops #revenueoperations #salesops #salesoperations #marketingops #marketingoperations #mops

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Nobody realizes that Apollo and ZoomInfo were both stuck at single-digit ARR for YEARS. When they finally got unstuck, unlocked rapid growth, and hit billion dollar valuations, both companies had ONE THING in common: They hired Santosh Sharan. Here are the 7 things that makes Santosh a top 0.1% unicorn builder: 1. He understands the mechanics of exponential growth Santosh believes that sustained growth is about “Stacking S-Curves”. Meaning, you bang your head against the wall for years, then something hits, explosively. During that explosion you're working on your next S-curve. Steady exponential growth is about stacking these curve. He also appreciates initiatives that have the potential to unlock non-linear growth (such as LinkedIn for RB2B), and the drivers of growth you can’t measure. 2. He doesn’t play to win; he plays to destroy all competitors Santosh’s instinct is to design businesses and GTM strategies that are impossible to compete with, which usually means forgoing near-term revenue in favor of virally expanding user bases. When you become the 800lb gorilla and synonymous with the category you can charge premium prices and see exponential revenue growth. 3. He deeply understands all of the key departments of a startup Santosh started as an engineer, moved into Product and Growth, and then moved on to running Sales and Marketing teams. He approaches all teams with an engineer’s mindset. He sees his role as removing blockers in one department and moving to the next. 4. He knows what the building blocks of massive future success look like Santosh has been a part of the largest data companies when they were fledgling startups. He has seen, over and over again, what a unicorn looks like as it’s being born, and knows the opportunities worth pursuing. 5. He is empathetic towards employees and customers No matter the problem, Santosh has seen it. He understands the immense pain that we go through as we grow. He also believes in creating businesses that treat customers well and make the world a better place. 6. He knows how to put together a killer data asset Few people in the world could put together a fixed-price data asset that would allow us to make the free offer we have at RB2B. Santosh is one of them. 7. He understands fundraising and M&A Santosh has run many transactions as the buyer and seller, and has done countless VC and Growth Equity rounds. He understands what investors and acquirers look for in companies, which informs growth and product strategy. TAKEAWAY Santosh is a Unicorn builder. A look at his LinkedIn profile will show you exactly what I’m talking about. People always ask me how I convinced him to work with us. I don’t have a great answer, other than “I somehow did”. Next Tuesday (3pm EST), we all have the honor of learning from him directly He’s going to talk: - The Mechanics of Growth - How he gets exec teams unstuck - The building blocks of unicorns Join here: https://lnkd.in/gkSJSGeu

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The skills to be an effective SaaS CRO have changed. That's not my opinion, but that's basically the crux of what bona fide CROs, and those that hire them, are telling me. Just a few years ago these were 5 desired skills when hiring a CRO. --Proven "scaler", which often meant doing more with MORE (people) --Willing to take calculated risks to and set ambitious goals --Ability to thrive in unpredictable environments with frequent changes (sadly lots of change was caused by literal CRO changes) --Laser focus on achieving revenue targets no matter the cost  --Inspire and motivate large sales teams These are 5 desired skills when hiring a CRO today: --Analytical with the ability to interpret data and identify trends to make decisions --Deep understanding of sales methodology, customer segmentation, and pricing strategies  --Financial acumen to understand unit economics --Customer focused to build long term relationships and loyalty  --Cross-functional relationship builder That said, in MY opinion, the skills needed few years ago are still necessary, but the trick is finding people, or becoming, the person, who straddles both profiles. Those people are also known as The GOATS of Growth, or at least well on their way.

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At the Gainsight conference last week, I had several folks ask me some version of "everyone used to talk about adoption....now everyone says that it's just about outcomes and ROI. What's your take?" It is and has always been about both. Can you get ROI without adoption? No. Is adoption by itself sufficient to guarantee value realization? Also no. You have to have adoption of the right capabilities that tie to customer business priorities with attached measurable outcomes. That is and has always been the formula. This is easy to say, really hard to implement and manage at scale. Which is why very few companies do it.

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🌶🌶🌶 Spicy take alert! 🌶🌶🌶 No one will tell you this, definitely not someone at Google, but my gut is that the odds of a delay of some kind of a 3rd party cookie deprecation are getting pretty high. There’s only one thing that can trigger a delay: If the UK CMA (the regulator monitoring Google during this process) says that Google has to delay - they’ve got the power here. And it's doubtful that a delay would be announced until much closer to the planned deprecation in order to keep the pressure on companies in the ecosystem. In my opinion, there are three reasons that the CMA might call for a delay: 1) Currently, the "Top Level Seller," which controls the Protected Audiences (PA) ad auction inside of Chrome, can't really be anything except for Google Ad Manager, extending Google's monopoly position in the market. 2) The reported data around ad latency being massively worse in PA is true - and few publishers will use it if this continues. Much of the latency is caused by problem #1, so fixing that would create an opening to fix this. 3) Ecosystem readiness. While many companies have invested a ton of time in building new solutions, this is such an enormous effort that some extra time really would help. There's also a fourth - it was always a crazy bad idea to do this in Q4 of any year. So what could this mean? I think maybe three possible components of a delay: 1) Google makes some token modification to show it is serious about privacy - maybe the expiry window on a 3rd party cookie decreases to 100 days (from 400), or maybe the test group increases to 5%. 2) A delay pushes this into Q1/Q2 of 2025, but not further - the industry has to get this done. Also packaged with this is some ramp-up period, maybe cookie deprecation increases to 50% in early Jan 2025, which will cause enough pain to get the final laggards moving but not enough pain to totally dislocate the ecosystem. And then the full deprecation hits on April 15 (Tax Day and the day the Titanic sank, poetic justice!) 3) Google Ads (since this is an Ads decision, not Chrome) is forced to open up the Top Level Seller functionality to a small number of other companies that meet some objective criteria. This wouldn't solve all of the problems of 3PCD or the Sandbox (cough, all of this is great for Google's core business), but it would make things significantly better than now for publishers and advertisers. I think the odds are better than 50% of a delay, I'm curious what others think and how others think it might happen!

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Is your SaaS company a feature, product, or platform? I remember the first time one of Northpass' board members challenged me with this question. My gut response was: "Of course, we're a platform! We have so much functionality and serve many use cases, and we will conquer so much more! Eventually, developers will want to build on us!" Classic, right? But after humbling myself and objectively approaching the question, I decided we were a component of a much larger ecosystem. For us, that was customer success. That realization brought tremendous clarity to our product, marketing, sales, and exit strategies. This question is critical for founders approaching 20-30M in ARR. At this stage, your company is at the prime size for a strategic acquisition as a tuck-in feature or new product within an integrated suite. However, once you cross this ARR threshold, M&A interest can go dark until you scale to $100M ARR or more. The reality is that the buyer pool for companies with $10-30M ARR is significant but dramatically shrinks after that. So, if you decide to be a platform, you're signing up to go big, which means you're also signing up to go long. Embracing the feature/product path is not a demotion. It's a strategic move. I've been part of two startups where we recognized that we were ultimately add-ons to larger platforms and that awareness led to solid exits. Platform, product, or feature: the only proper way to answer this question is to be brutally honest and intentional. Play forward the various scenarios and consider all the implications. I found that once you decide, you and your leadership team will gain tremendous clarity, alignment, and motivation. It's exciting. What do you think? Are you building a feature, product, or platform? How does this perspective shape your strategy? #SaaS #Startups #founder #Entrepreneurship

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This is partly what why I prefer bootstrapped businesses. VC-backed companies can be rocket-fuelled skates with unnecessary pressure from boards. And unless you know exactly what you're doing, there's a high probability going in the wrong direction. #bootstrap #product #tech #vc

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True or False: You should scale sales quickly after achieving product-market fit? From my POV, this one’s false. Before you can scale your sales team, you need to spend some time in action with your customers. You need to learn from them, relieve friction, and craft repeatable GTM processes. In other words, when you build without laying the proper foundation, customers and deals can fall through the cracks. Do you agree with Sales Myth #10? Please let me know in the comments! #Sales #GTM #GoToMarket

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Hey RevOps: Data has limited value without a story Our CROs are already looking at the data every day - They know what’s open and closed - They see conversion rates and close rates - We built the dashboard for this exact reason So, just sharing data points is not enough - We need to uncover deeper insights - We need to dig through layers of data - We need to bring “Insights” they don’t have And we need to tell a story - We all know the target - We know our leading indicators - We know what’s working and not - But we don’t know the WHY behind it Here’s a tangible example. 1. Inbound Close Rate is 10% 2. This is down from 15% previously 3. We’ve generated 50% more leads though This doesn’t really tell us anything, so let’s go deeper. 1. We have 3X leads from white papers 2. Historic Close Rate on white papers is 5% This tells us a little more. But we need a narrative. “We generated 50% more inbound leads last quarter but our Close Rate dropped from 15% to 10% so we ended up with the same revenue from inbound. As we dug deeper into the data we saw that most of this growth came from white papers where we have historically had our worst Close Rates across our marketing engine. We also saw a decrease in leads from webinars, which have had the highest Close Rates across our marketing engine. If we reallocate resources to more webinars and less white papers we will likely generate more revenue from our marketing engine.” This is how you take the data from the dashboard and turn it into valuable insights fro revenue leaders. Anything you’d add here? 🤔 ---------- For more on this, check out tomorrow’s 📰 RevOps Weekly 📰 Subscribe here to get it: https://bit.ly/49RCm0h ✌️

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We did an analysis for a HockeyStack customer (B2B SaaS ≈$100M ARR) And found out that certain content pieces have a 4x incremental lift on conversions But only 0.32% of the visitors check them out because the team didn’t know about this and never distributed these pieces Instead, they were distributing pieces that didn’t have any impact on conversions Getting these insights is one of my favorite parts of working with customers If you are a HockeyStack customer and haven’t used this report, you need to use it today

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The path to $10MM ARR is about finding your repeatable, scalable sales motion. The formula is simple, but not easy. It looks like this: Effort + Enthusiasm + Messaging + Lead Quality = Results When you are scaling a sales team, your job is to manage the inputs. Those are the things on the left side of this equation. If you can reduce the variability of the inputs, you will have more consistent results. Put another way. Consistent inputs leads to consistent outputs. Let's break it down... 1. Effort is the driver for your sales performance. You cannot scale without consistent effort. Effort includes the velocity of sales activity (phone calls, emails, meetings, etc.). Effort also includes the way that you execute your sales activity. This is your sales process and sales playbook. You can improve the quality of your effort with learning and development. 2. Enthusiasm is an amplifier for your effort. You have to act like you want to earn the business. A little enthusiasm goes a long way in closing more business. I've found that you can't teach enthusiasm. You must hire for it. 3. Messaging is how you get prospects to believe what you believe. Your messaging is your value prop. It's how you approach your ICP. It's the way that you convince customers that their current version of the world is no longer acceptable and they must make a chance. The best messaging illustrates the consequences of inaction. 4. Lead quality drives your conversion rate You have to stay focused on your ICP. The more variable your lead quality, the more inconsistent your sales results. The best effort, enthusiasm, and messaging are helpless if you are focused on the wrong accounts. This is the formula for predictable, repeatable, scalable sales. Manage the consistency of your inputs and you will have consistent outputs. What about you? What's your formula for repeatable results?

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