Sam Jacobs’ Post

Sam Jacobs does a great job calling out CROs who are just glorified heads of sales. The inflated C-level title is why there is often friction with heads of marketing, and why in the CMO community a major red flag is reporting to a CRO and not the CEO or President. The modern CRO needs depth in sales, marketing, and CS - plus some finance, to successfully do their job. If you’re just giving a C-title to your head of sales, you have the wrong person for the job.

A good CRO, or Commercial Leader, can indeed come from sales, marketing, or CS - the main thing is that this is a holistic role, not a gloried sales leader with a higher title. Great words of wisdom from Sam - thanks for sharing. #leadership

Them: "You need Sales/Marketing alignment" Me: "If only it were that simple..." You actually need alignment across 4 teams: 1. Marketing 2. Sales 3. Customer success 4. Account management It's great to drive new revenue. But the real $$$ comes from: - New revenue - Recurring revenue - Upsell revenue - Referral revenue. Which requires: - Marketing campaigns that generate qualified demand for sales. - Sales teams that close the right deals, turn away poor fits and manage expectations. - Customer success teams that get new clients that first win. - Account management teams that keep the relationship alive, upsell when there's an opportunity, and feed data back to the other teams. Complex? Yes. Difficult? Yes Doable? Yes Lucrative? Hell yes!

Did you know that sales organizations that thoughtfully design and optimize sales territories are proven to realize 10-20% increases in sales productivity?   What does it take to redesign your approach to territory design? It all comes down to a mindset shift. https://lnkd.in/gi-Rb9Bd #sales #RevOps #GTM

Part of creating a frictionless sales process is abandoning the traditional sales paradigm. I see CEOs, CROs and VPs all fall into this trap of continuing how they were doing sales 5, 10 or 15+ years ago. But times have changed! Sometimes, without a culture of learning, your sales reps will hit quota and miss quota, and you won't know why if you're just silo'd in on reporting MoM. Furthermore, interpreting a spreadsheet leaves room for error and even manipulation of the actual leads. And time and time again I see the last step, sales will close the deal and then move on. Instead, they need to be solely focused on making the customer experience the best it can be. A warm intro to your CS rep, a gentle and friendly reminder or thank you every few months as a check in. When your sales team is focused on learning, growing, supporting one another and using data to make informed decisions, you'll eliminate "friction" in your sales efforts, and that makes everyone happy. Want more tips on sales, marketing and lead gen? Follow Kris Jonson #revenuegoals #leadgeneration #frictionlesssales #salesstrategies #smarketing

3 Stupid Mistakes CROs and other Sales Leaders Make that Hinder Revenue Growth💥. That absolutely CAN be avoided. 1️⃣ Sales bias? Many CROs come from sales backgrounds, but true revenue acceleration requires alignment across functions. Sales is important, but you can't keep low-key neglecting marketing and customer success. Embrace all functions on the GTM team to create a harmonious revenue engine that propels your business forward. 🚀 2️⃣ Data neglect stops here! Yes, data is crucial, but it's the critical aspects that often get overlooked. Ensure seamless reporting functions under RevOps, empowering your team with valuable insights. Develop dashboards in Salesforce and a BI tool for consistent leadership review. Don't forget to incorporate AI into your analytics stack for even greater awareness. And remember, weekly insights are imperative to stay ahead of the curve. 📊 3️⃣ Say no to RevOps surprises! Establish a streamlined process for tool decisions. Include IT and/or RevOps in the evaluation process to prevent unexpected implementations. Stick to your RevOps roadmap and avoid overwhelming your team with unnecessary tools. Train efficiently on existing tools and fully unleash their potential. It's time to optimize and simplify! 💡 Don't let these mistakes hold back your revenue growth potential! 💰 These are pretty simple changes that I promise will have a tremendous impact on revenue growth. Take action now and embrace effective Revenue Operations strategies. Listen to your RevOps team. If you don't trust them, then add a Consultant until you do. Drop a comment or DM me to discuss how you can maximize your revenue growth with aligned RevOps practices, data-driven decisions, and the power of AI. 🌟

"They'll Thank Me Later" I was chatting with a Sales SVP at one of our top accounts not too long ago and he was discussing a reference call he'd recently done for us. He said something in our conversation that struck me. The prospect's decision maker asked this SVP for advice on how you drive sales rep adoption in a CRM. His response: "Do you have a plan? Do you know what you're looking to achieve and how this CRM is going to help you get there? Have you communicated this plan to your team - and have you made it mandatory?" The SVP shared his story on how he overcame the naysayers by getting them to trust in him and the new Map My Customers CRM suite he was rolling out to empower his sales team. Essentially all he asked was that this ~150 person sales team follow his process for six months -- and if they didn't see an increase in sales, then they could go back to their old sales motions. "But more than anything", he said to the reference, "you have to make CRM core to your outbound sales team's cadence to see success." He's one of more compelling customer success stories to date with tens of millions of gross revenue added to the top line because of his leadership. He built a vision, put the systems in place to support the vision, and then asked his team to follow him. We're building a community of true sales leaders here at Map My Customers. We'll always look to add to the ranks, so DM me if you have interest in exploring the community.

I don't expect that everyone will agree with this, or jump on this bandwagon, but this is how I'm starting to look at the future of #enablement. My take on this is evolving, and I already regret not specifically calling out Sales/Rev Ops, which I was including (quietly in my head, I guess) in Enablement, when I wrote, "Sales enablement equips the sales force with the mindsets, knowledge, skills, and tools to generate their own leads, convert marketing/demand gen leads, and turn both leads into opportunities they can win." I'd also like to call out the difference between account management (territory, key, and strategic accounts) compared to Customer Success or Service. So, with those coming expansions/edits/clarifications in mind, here's what I've got, so far: 🔹READ HERE: https://lnkd.in/eSdusZDV Edits coming in the relatively near future.

Marketing and sales teams have serious issues. And when sales and marketing clash, revenue pays the price. Company revenue thrives on a powerful one-two punch - sales delivering on closing deals and marketing driving the pipeline. But at too many organizations, a tag-team has become a grudge match. Sales blames marketing for lackluster lead quality. Marketing accuses sales of promptly dismissing premium prospects. Executives are frustrated by spotty revenue growth. In reality, flawed processes and misaligned goals pit these functions against each other. Teams wasting time on territory disputes means dollars left on the table. The core issues driving dysfunction typically include: 🤔 Confusing definitions of sales-ready leads 😡 Unshared metrics for success 😲 Lack of visibility into strategies 😤 No clear ownership of customer journey stages The impacts of this misalignment are real - higher customer acquisition costs, lower win rates, and extended sales cycles. So how can organizations foster collaboration between sales and marketing? 🏆 Set unified goals and metrics for pipeline and revenue. Incentivize hitting shared targets 💕 Increase transparency through regular meetings, shared CRM systems, and integrated messaging platforms 🛠 Provide proper lead qualification training and tools to marketing to meet sales' standards 📄 Document responsibilities and handoff points for each funnel stage A strong alliance between sales and marketing teams is critical for execution of the customer journey and overall business success. So marketing and sales leaders, what steps are you taking to break down silos and encourage alignment at your organization? It starts with you! #marketing #sales

Trust is the new data!? Partner-enabled sales may be the most powerful motions right now! Because it focuses on trust. If you've been watching and taking part in this thing called Nearbound. It’s essentially a partner-led ABM motion. It gets its intent straight from your partners who have already done deals with your future customers.  This creates an understanding of true need and allows for alignment to solve problems. Fear of making mistakes is at an all-time high. People have less budget and more problems to solve.  And a feeling of trust and assurance is needed in most deals to move forward.  Knowing this, having insight into accounts to understand needs becomes table stakes. More powerful than that is introductions into accounts by already trusted vendors. But to win in today's environment, we need to create trust in every aspect of our communications and interactions.  Don’t believe me? Think about the last time you bought a high-ticket item. Did you trust in the brand and value you were going to get? Even when you buy for value, you trust that the product or service will meet our expectations, whatever those may be.  So, if trust is going to move the needle, why don’t more companies build trust into their ENTIRE growth engine from the start?