“So I'm like, this is Kade from Common Room. I'm calling to book a meeting with you.”
Sales process & deals
Where they agree
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AI should take over call prep, documentation and follow-up so reps spend most of their time actually selling.
10 independent voices · 5 shows1 new this month
On Topline, Mark Roberge Roberge says the first milestone for AI in go-to-market is lifting rep selling time from about 25% to 80%, which could roughly triple productivity.
11 sources
The best reps on Brad's team have automated daily and weekly work such as prospect lists, LinkedIn outreach and customer value decks, freeing time to learn and get in front of customers. Listen
Brad says the freed time lets top reps learn from the best people, study their process and spend time in customers' offices. He says AI makes the best reps much more productive, while average reps can level up by removing manual work like QBR decks and research.
“they have automated their like daily and weekly processes. So their prospecting list, their LinkedIn outreach, their, you know, creation of customer value decks, etc, like all of that happens.”
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Meeting note-takers let sellers spend discovery calls on rapport and deeper questions, because nothing missed will be lost and already-answered questions can be skipped. Listen
Christopher says that with AI note-takers the seller can pay full attention, build personal rapport and go deep in discovery. If something is missed it will 'pop up and remind us', and if another channel has already answered a question it doesn't need to be asked again. The seller can focus on what is still unknown about how this prospect could succeed.
“We can get very deep into discovery because we know that if we miss something in discovery, it's gonna pop up and remind us.”
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Building the perspective slide and ROI calculator during the call, rather than a week later, saves time that otherwise kills deals. Listen
Amanda Kahlow says her sellers usually go away after a call and take another week to produce a perspective slide, and she says that lost time kills deals. Her superhuman builds the slide and an ROI calculator in the moment, based on what the buyer said about their business and pain points. The aim is to give the human seller the tools to move the deal forward immediately.
“Usually our sellers go away and build that themselves and it takes them another week to get that out and then all like time is lost, time kills all deals.”
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Call preparation, meeting documentation, follow-up and quote preparation are waste that AI should handle, leaving relationships and strategy to people. Listen
Kropp said any time sales teams spend on preparing for calls, documenting meetings, following up, or preparing quotes is toil. He said humans should manage customer relationships and think about strategy and how to sell, while AI does the rest.
“That's all waste, toil.”
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A call-recording agent can push deal updates into Salesforce, which removes the need for verbal deal updates during the week. Listen
Daniel said his forecast is due in Salesforce each Thursday before a Friday call. He uses Glean agents to pull recent emails and call recordings and push the next steps into Salesforce, and he said they no longer have to give their manager verbal updates on deals throughout the week.
“you could actually take the call recording Upload it to our Salesforce update agent that we have”
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Salesforce hygiene is no longer a sales motion, because AI now handles research so reps can spend their time in front of customers. Listen
He said the research and information gathering reps used to do is now automated, so salespeople can spend their time with customers rather than back-office work. He pointed to teams he managed in previous roles where people spent more than half their week on Salesforce hygiene and updating Salesforce, and said those days are gone.
“like Salesforce hygiene and people spending more than half their week updating Salesforce.”
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Most sellers spend only 25 to 30 percent of their time selling face to face, with the rest on admin and research. Listen
McMahon says the remaining 75 to 80 percent goes to admin, updating the tech stack, researching customers and use cases, and coordinating calendars and information. He believes AI can at least halve that non-selling work, which could lift selling time to 50 to 75 percent. Alex agrees.
“I'm spending 80 % of my time doing that crap that AI can help me at least cut in half, maybe even more.”
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AI does the pre-call research so a BDR gets only two or three points for each cold call instead of about 20. Listen
Kyle Norton says that to speed up the funnel, his team uses AI to do the research and fill in the information so the rep does not need to research before dialing. The BDR gets exactly what they need, which he describes as two or three things to say rather than 20. He says that from there the team can test different pattern interrupts and value offers.
“make sure that the rep doesn't have to do any research before picking up the phone and calling.”
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The first milestone for AI in go-to-market is raising rep selling time from about 25% to 80%. Listen
Mark defined selling time as the share of a rep's week spent face to face or on Zoom with a customer or prospect. He said this is possible today but not easy. He said that if admin work is removed while skills, demand and product-market fit stay the same, rep productivity could roughly triple.
“what is accessible to unlock massive efficiency improvements in every go to market org is first milestone drive selling time from 25 % to 80%”
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The largest sales productivity gains so far have come from simple tools that remove admin, not from purpose-built go-to-market products. Listen
The speaker says many productivity unlocks come from very generic tools doing simple things that used to take a lot of time. The speaker says the massive unlock has come from freeing salespeople from admin so they have more time for what they are good at, and that AI CRM or modules from HubSpot or Salesforce could be a later form of this.
“the massive unlock has come from simple things being done for these people to give them more time to do what they're really good at”
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Before a sales meeting, ask an AI search tool about the company and the person to get most of the discovery answers in advance. Listen
Dmitri said using Perplexity before a meeting to research the company and the person can save a lot of prep time. He said many of the discovery questions a rep would ask in the meeting can be answered ahead of time, with maybe 80% of the answer available in advance.
“you can actually get maybe 80 % of the answer ahead of time.”
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The seller's core job is to diagnose and define the buyer's problem in depth before pitching or discussing commercials.
9 independent voices · 5 shows2 new this month
On Topline, Keenan says nobody buys unless they see their current state as untenable, and teams over-invest in training selling behaviour.
18 sources
Gilbo starts retail pricing sales conversations by mapping how the prospect goes to market on price before pitching anything. Listen
He first asks whether the retailer sells mainly through everyday pricing (a Walmart-esque model with infrequent promos) or high-low promotion like some grocers, whether it has seasonality and one-time buys, and whether it relies on markdowns. He says markdowns can be a huge drag on margin and a lot of work to manage. He describes his role as coming in to solve problems rather than sell.
“I just try to understand how they go to market to their end consumer from a pricing perspective. And then I just try to come, I truthfully just come to be a problem solver”
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Rushing discovery can leave buyers unwilling to share the metrics needed for a value case. Listen
McMahon said that if a seller moves too fast through discovery, the customer may grasp what the product does and then withhold the metrics needed for a compelling ROI or value proposition. He said the buyer does this because they know what the seller is doing to them, which makes it harder to justify price and the purchase later.
“I've seen it where the customers now unwilling to give you the metrics required for you to create a compelling ROI or value proposition because they know what you're doing to them.”
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Keenan's Gap method measures whether a rep produced a defined problem, not whether they performed a specific behaviour. Listen
He said that in his operating system the question is whether the rep got a defined problem, starting from the organisation's root causes. The definition covers how many root causes there are, how often each occurs, the downstream impact and whose impact it is, internal or external. He said the aim is to see the problem defined in the buyer's terms.
“we're looking for, did you get a defined problem?”
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The sales job is to get a buyer to see their current state as untenable and intolerable. Listen
He called this sales physics and said nobody buys anything unless that condition holds. He argued that teams over-invest in training the behaviour of selling and under-invest in understanding what the customer experiences and what would drive them to switch. He said a good system helps the buyer recognise that state, which allows the deal to close.
“nobody buys anything unless their current state is untenable and intolerable.”
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The winning seller now diagnoses a customer's problem better than the buyer can, rather than relying on product expertise. Listen
Rick contrasts the past, when product expertise won because information was scarce and product knowledge had to be installed and taught by the vendor, with today, when information is everywhere and switching costs are low. He says sellers now need industry expertise, knowledge of where CFOs will spend, and alignment to customer outcomes. He says the methodology used by leaders such as John McMahon is about creating customer value by uncovering problems worth solving.
“the winner is in somebody that can actually diagnose the problem better than the actual buyer can do it themselves.”
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False velocity at the front of a deal, pushing to advance before the real pain is found, damages the deal later on. Listen
Randy says false velocity is one of the things that screws deals most, because a seller who does not slow down early cannot keep the deal out of danger later. He says reps should discover the customer's pain or problem that they can then solve, rather than throwing product features at the buyer. He sums this up as slowing down to speed up.
“I think one of the things that screws deals immensely is false velocity at the front end.”
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Asking 'so what?' repeatedly at second and third levels is how a rep uncovers the business implication of a problem. Listen
Stuart says good reps sit in discovery and ask follow-up questions to understand implication, such as what happens if you do nothing or if the outcome is achieved. He coaches inside reps to follow the money and ask how a change would make or save the customer money, a method he used while covering a large bank at MongoDB.
“the biggest two words I like to say is, so what?”
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Discovery is the most important sales stage because it is where a rep identifies pain, attaches positive business outcomes, and learns where executives would reassign budget. Listen
Stuart says a rep has to do this work in discovery to have an educated opinion that an executive will listen to and partner on. He describes listening with intellectual curiosity and in a personal way, rather than treating discovery as filling out the capture sheet MongoDB uses.
“I think the most important stage in you know, sales process is discovery.”
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Buyers most often say sellers do not understand their business and do not listen Listen
Kaplan describes what he and his team call seller deficit disorder. It is based on buyer surveys where the first complaint is that the seller does not understand my business and the second is that the seller does not listen. He says these complaints have been the core ones for thousands of years, and that sellers pitch from an inside-out view rather than trying to understand the buyer first.
“when they survey buyers, the first thing they come back and say, you don't understand my business.”
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Early sales calls do not need budget questions, and that the buyer's pain, problem and impact should come first. Listen
Usha says HiveBright used to use the SPICE framework, which put reps into a mindset of asking budget questions on the first call. She says this is not necessary in her view, because budget will come up quickly anyway. She recommends finding the pain point, the problem to solve and the impact it can create before moving into the commercial process.
“it's not necessary in my mind. You will get to it anyway very quickly.”
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In discovery, sales reps should go beyond superficial questions about what the buyer wants and ask about the specifics of their use case. Listen
Usha uses an event example to show how a product mindset digs deeper: asking what kind of event it is, how long it runs, how many attendees it has and how the agenda is typically structured. She says the goal is to find where the most value is created and solve for that. She lists this alongside, but separately from, thinking from first principles and not applying patterns or frameworks right away.
“don't leave it at a superficial level, try and ask deeper questions to really understand where is the most value getting created”
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Ask the customer about their pain first, then return with a phased plan that includes cost. Listen
Michelle said customers will tell you how to sell to them if you ask the right questions. Her sequence is to understand the pain, then present phase one, phase two and phase three, the sales process, implementation, the long-term picture and what it will cost.
“Here's phase one, phase two, phase three. Here's what it looks like through the sales process.”
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In a committee presentation, the first slide should recap the problem as you understand it from discovery rather than describe your company. Listen
Mark says the instinctive first slide is about the company, its years in business, customer count and funding raised, and that this is wrong. He says the first slide should recap what you have learned, for example that the customer is losing market share because demand generation has fallen apart, and then ask whether you have it right. He hopes even the CEO disagrees, because that opens a conversation that is hard to have in a group meeting.
“the first slide is a recap of what you know about their situation”
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For technical products, early sales has to teach customers how to use the product, so discovery matters more than pitching. Listen
Ron Gabrisko says early on at Databricks his selling was less about the pitch and more about discovery and asking questions. He says messaging was too technical, so it had to help customers understand how to use the product rather than starting from a blank sheet. He describes a common belief among technical founders that the best product at the lowest price will win the whole market, and says that belief is wrong.
“sales people need to teach your customers how to use it and how to get value out of it.”
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Many startups design their sales process inside out, starting from a deck of what they built instead of the buyer's view. Listen
Mark Roberge says that when a founder moves to selling and thinks it needs a sales process, they usually build a deck covering what was built, the features and benefits, and the problems solved. He calls this an inside-out approach and argues it goes against sales research. He recommends an outside-in process that focuses on how the buyer sees the world before they know the product exists.
“It's what I call an inside out approach.”
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Enterprise selling starts by uncovering the pain more deeply than the customer first describes, then painting a vision of the outcome Listen
Sangeeta describes the enterprise method: uncover the pain more deeply than the customer first says, paint a positive vision with the implications of not acting, and show what the product needs to succeed. The result is a business case for the executive buyer, a timeline worked backwards from the outcomes, and metrics that show success. She calls it a tried and tested sales methodology.
“So the net result is you're painting a vision, you're helping the customer understand the exact characteristics of how this process would look like, you also help them understand the metrics that will show success.”
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Selling to developers means adding value by understanding their user journey and pain before qualifying, which is still fundamental selling but done in a more technical way. Listen
Andrew said a salesperson cannot simply sell to developers and must first show they can help and have empathy for the problems. Once the seller understands the user journey and the pain in the buyer's environment, they can understand the impact they could have. He described this as qualification led by technical understanding rather than by sales process.
“once you understand that user journey, you can understand the pain that they're in, in their environment, their situation, ultimately the impact you could have”
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Keep asking why until you reach the business reason a buyer has to act. Listen
Mark role-played a rep who accepted that a prospect needed to be SOC 2 compliant next week and was the decision maker. Stevie, as the manager, asked why it was urgent and whether the rep knew why. Mark praised this, said you keep going because the why often will not be there at first, and compared it to a two-year-old asking why until the answer reaches a business reason.
“They're like, okay, why do they want to buy? Well, they're trying to get SOC 2 compliant. Okay, why do they want SOC 2 compliance?”
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Deals should be multithreaded across several functions, such as IT, finance and the line of business.
9 independent voices · 3 shows3 new this month
On The Science of Scaling, Andy Shorkey says Writer's enterprise deals have two sponsors: the line of business owns outcomes and the CIO owns platform standardization.
12 sources
Gilbo recommends multi-threading pricing deals across IT, finance, business teams and merchants, but admits he doesn't always do it. Listen
He calls this a '360 approach' to reaching both blockers and advocates. He lists the IT team, the CFO group (for ROI), business teams and merchants. He notes you can't always get access and that salespeople sometimes simply forget.
“You want to hit the IT teams, the CFO group to talk about, you know, the ROI, the business teams, the merchants. You want to cover off on all of that. And it's one, you can't always get access, but two, you forget like you're human.”
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A seller should find several champions during the process rather than relying on one. Listen
Gary said a seller should not stop after finding one champion but should find many champions throughout the process, because winning the collective yes in today's larger, more political organizations requires it. Another speaker then added that technical software deals can involve technical and political champions, and that a political champion may not be able to tell the financial metrics story.
“je vindt veel champions door de proces ook”
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Relying on a single contact is risky, and the speaker had not seen a single-threaded deal in years. Listen
The speaker said that if you are single-threaded on one person you are at risk, and that while sellers could once be more single-threaded with an economic buyer, they had not seen single-threaded deals in years.
“single -threaded, je bent op het risico”
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A technical platform deal usually needs two to three champions across the platform, developer and security teams, and without mindshare in each the deal gets stuck Listen
Sam Costello says Harness sells a technical platform of 14 products, so it usually has to win two to three champions per deal. These are a platform team that built the tooling, a developer or engineering team consuming it, and a security team with standards and governance it wants followed. He says that without technical mindshare in each of those places, the deal will get stuck.
“we must go win usually two to three champions to do a deal”
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A deal forecast at about a million dollars closed at four to five times that after the team found missing executive champions and went multi-threaded. Listen
Bove says the team realised they were missing executive champions and had not understood the customer's why or ideal future state. They mapped the current state to the future state, met more people, and stopped being single-threaded, then closed a much larger deal on a shorter timeline, which she says has happened on several deals.
“We weren't single threaded anymore.”
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Building support across several selling avenues makes a deal move faster than going single-threaded into an account. Listen
At Lacework Daniel sold to security owners, IT, DevOps and cloud ops, and development leaders, because each group had a different role in the decision. He said the more he built a ground swell across these groups, the more business value he could support for a higher deal size, and the faster the deal moved.
“moves my deal. much faster than just going single-threaded into the account.”
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Relying on a single champion puts a seller's deal at risk, whatever they sell. Listen
Kaplan said multi-threading is non-negotiable today and that a seller who has one champion in an account will be in jeopardy. He framed this as a reason to keep the principles of qualification active rather than treating them as a checkbox.
“If you're not multi-threading, you're going to be in jeopardy.”
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The AE must orchestrate a cross-functional buying committee, since technical wins alone do not close the business case. Listen
Alex says that after the technical team wins the math, the business win still has to be built with infrastructure owners, product leaders, engineering and other technical experts, each of whom can win logic battles. He says the AE must listen, find where the value is and command a premium for the fastest tokens.
“But the AE has got to be an extreme orchestrator.”
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At MongoDB, reps who brought in the line-of-business general manager early in a project had much faster sales cycles than reps who worked only with developers and IT ops. Listen
Carlos said some reps found projects being built, identified the line-of-business owner and explained how MongoDB would help that business get to market faster and realise revenue sooner. Doing this early in the cycle made deals move quickly, whereas dealing only with developers and IT ops took much longer.
“If I do that early in my sales cycle, my sales cycle goes super fast, where if I deal with just the developers and the IT ops people, it's going to take a lot longer.”
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Enterprise AI platform deals at Writer have two executive sponsors: the line of business owns the outcome, and the CIO or head of AI owns platform standardization. Listen
Writer originally sold mainly to line-of-business buyers such as marketing and UX teams. As demand for AI surged, CIOs and heads of AI became more prevalent sponsors because they had to get their arms around all the tooling options. Andy Shorkey says Writer evolved its playbook to engage CIOs, heads of AI and other technical stakeholders directly, while continuing to drive outcomes for the line of business, which could be the CRO, CFO or CMO.
“ultimately in our world, we have two executive sponsors.”
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In a buying group, each role cares about different things, so a rep who engages only one contact leaves the others unaddressed. Listen
Donald Kelly said the Formlabs rep was not getting everyone engaged in dental sales. He needed to get past gatekeepers to office managers, get doctors engaged, engage people working directly with patients, and do so early in the process. Mark Roberge added that each member of the decision-making unit cares about different things, for example the doctor about patient care and the CFO about price.
“The doctor cares about like, I'm going to get patient care up. I need to do my job easily.”
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Gong data shows that multi-threading deals affects win rates by 23%. Listen
He gave this figure, hedged with 'I think', while describing a manager who notices across a rep's whole pipeline that the rep does not multi-thread well, and then uses the one-on-one to focus on that theme.
“we know from Gong that that affects win rates by 23%”
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Peer customer references are decisive in winning late-stage and competitive deals.
5 independent voices · 5 shows1 new this month
On The Science of Scaling, Mark Roberge Roberge called customers who switched from competitors and asked each to take about one reference call a month for competitive deals.
5 sources
Kayde Givens puts late-stage prospects alongside customers on a kickoff panel and says the prospects always end up sold. Listen
She works with reps to find later-stage prospects facing problems similar to the customers on the panel. She preps panelists beforehand and pairs a CS leader or strong CSM with a rep as moderators, and always opens up Q&A. She asks panelists not to sugarcoat, for example saying if the sales process was too long or procurement was never discussed, so the team learns how the experience could have been better. Customers and prospects have stayed for closing night parties.
“pro tip, put customers No matter what happens, that prospect always gets old. I've never had a situation where you put a prospect on stage and they're like, eh”
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Buyers of software they rarely purchase look for independent social proof, such as references and review sites, because they assume sellers are biased. Listen
He explained that people who have reached a late stage of evaluation often want to talk to unbiased references, even though those references may be paid or may be investors. He said the underlying purpose is to reduce anxiety about whether what they have been told is accurate. He presented this as a buyer pattern he experiences himself.
“they know that you do that because you're paid to do that”
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Late-stage deals need strong customer referrals, executive alignment and daily contact with the champion to hold the buyer's hand. Listen
Randy says that in the final zone the champion is going to be getting nervous, so the seller has to be texting them daily and hold their hand. He lists customer referrals, executive alignment and execution excellence on the seller's side as the things that must go very well. He says the buyer has already decided about the product and agreed to the business case by this point, so the work is about the buyer's confidence.
“We have to be texting with our champion on a daily basis at this zone because they are going to be getting nervous.”
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In enterprise security, buyers tend to buy what other large enterprises have bought, creating a contagion effect. Listen
Mandia calls this the dirty secret of enterprise sales, especially in security. He says winning large brands such as JP Morgan, Exxon, Walmart and Target leads others to want the same product. He says he saw this effect at FireEye and that it applies to companies like CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks.
“Everybody buys what everybody else bought.”
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Roberge, as CRO, personally called customers who switched from competitors, then asked them to take roughly one reference call a month for competitive deals. Listen
Even while closing hundreds of customers a quarter, Roberge called the few who switched from a competitor, asked why they switched, gave them his cell phone and offered dinner or coffee when in their city. In return he asked that, about once a month, they speak with a prospect weighing that competitor, and he trained reps to offer prospects a call with a customer who had used both. He says he believes he learned this from Salesforce.
“If we have a customer that's considering competitor A and us, I want my salespeople to be trained to say, hey, would you like to talk to a customer that's used both?”
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Ranked by how many independent voices make each point and how specific their evidence is. Co-hosts of a show count as one voice, and a point needs at least two shows to appear here.
Where they split
AI should take over call prep, documentation and follow-up so reps spend most of their time actually selling.
said Brad Scott (Revenue Builders), Christopher O'Donnell (The Science of Scaling), Amanda Kahlow (Topline), Matthew Kropp ([Un]Churned), Daniel Simon (Revenue Builders), Ghazi Masood (The Revenue Leadership Podcast) and 4 more
11 sources
The best reps on Brad's team have automated daily and weekly work such as prospect lists, LinkedIn outreach and customer value decks, freeing time to learn and get in front of customers. Listen
Brad says the freed time lets top reps learn from the best people, study their process and spend time in customers' offices. He says AI makes the best reps much more productive, while average reps can level up by removing manual work like QBR decks and research.
“they have automated their like daily and weekly processes. So their prospecting list, their LinkedIn outreach, their, you know, creation of customer value decks, etc, like all of that happens.”
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Meeting note-takers let sellers spend discovery calls on rapport and deeper questions, because nothing missed will be lost and already-answered questions can be skipped. Listen
Christopher says that with AI note-takers the seller can pay full attention, build personal rapport and go deep in discovery. If something is missed it will 'pop up and remind us', and if another channel has already answered a question it doesn't need to be asked again. The seller can focus on what is still unknown about how this prospect could succeed.
“We can get very deep into discovery because we know that if we miss something in discovery, it's gonna pop up and remind us.”
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Building the perspective slide and ROI calculator during the call, rather than a week later, saves time that otherwise kills deals. Listen
Amanda Kahlow says her sellers usually go away after a call and take another week to produce a perspective slide, and she says that lost time kills deals. Her superhuman builds the slide and an ROI calculator in the moment, based on what the buyer said about their business and pain points. The aim is to give the human seller the tools to move the deal forward immediately.
“Usually our sellers go away and build that themselves and it takes them another week to get that out and then all like time is lost, time kills all deals.”
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Call preparation, meeting documentation, follow-up and quote preparation are waste that AI should handle, leaving relationships and strategy to people. Listen
Kropp said any time sales teams spend on preparing for calls, documenting meetings, following up, or preparing quotes is toil. He said humans should manage customer relationships and think about strategy and how to sell, while AI does the rest.
“That's all waste, toil.”
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A call-recording agent can push deal updates into Salesforce, which removes the need for verbal deal updates during the week. Listen
Daniel said his forecast is due in Salesforce each Thursday before a Friday call. He uses Glean agents to pull recent emails and call recordings and push the next steps into Salesforce, and he said they no longer have to give their manager verbal updates on deals throughout the week.
“you could actually take the call recording Upload it to our Salesforce update agent that we have”
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Salesforce hygiene is no longer a sales motion, because AI now handles research so reps can spend their time in front of customers. Listen
He said the research and information gathering reps used to do is now automated, so salespeople can spend their time with customers rather than back-office work. He pointed to teams he managed in previous roles where people spent more than half their week on Salesforce hygiene and updating Salesforce, and said those days are gone.
“like Salesforce hygiene and people spending more than half their week updating Salesforce.”
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Most sellers spend only 25 to 30 percent of their time selling face to face, with the rest on admin and research. Listen
McMahon says the remaining 75 to 80 percent goes to admin, updating the tech stack, researching customers and use cases, and coordinating calendars and information. He believes AI can at least halve that non-selling work, which could lift selling time to 50 to 75 percent. Alex agrees.
“I'm spending 80 % of my time doing that crap that AI can help me at least cut in half, maybe even more.”
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AI does the pre-call research so a BDR gets only two or three points for each cold call instead of about 20. Listen
Kyle Norton says that to speed up the funnel, his team uses AI to do the research and fill in the information so the rep does not need to research before dialing. The BDR gets exactly what they need, which he describes as two or three things to say rather than 20. He says that from there the team can test different pattern interrupts and value offers.
“make sure that the rep doesn't have to do any research before picking up the phone and calling.”
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The first milestone for AI in go-to-market is raising rep selling time from about 25% to 80%. Listen
Mark defined selling time as the share of a rep's week spent face to face or on Zoom with a customer or prospect. He said this is possible today but not easy. He said that if admin work is removed while skills, demand and product-market fit stay the same, rep productivity could roughly triple.
“what is accessible to unlock massive efficiency improvements in every go to market org is first milestone drive selling time from 25 % to 80%”
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The largest sales productivity gains so far have come from simple tools that remove admin, not from purpose-built go-to-market products. Listen
The speaker says many productivity unlocks come from very generic tools doing simple things that used to take a lot of time. The speaker says the massive unlock has come from freeing salespeople from admin so they have more time for what they are good at, and that AI CRM or modules from HubSpot or Salesforce could be a later form of this.
“the massive unlock has come from simple things being done for these people to give them more time to do what they're really good at”
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Before a sales meeting, ask an AI search tool about the company and the person to get most of the discovery answers in advance. Listen
Dmitri said using Perplexity before a meeting to research the company and the person can save a lot of prep time. He said many of the discovery questions a rep would ask in the meeting can be answered ahead of time, with maybe 80% of the answer available in advance.
“you can actually get maybe 80 % of the answer ahead of time.”
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Handing note-taking and deal processing entirely to AI makes sellers worse because the thinking happens in that work.
said Rick Smolen (Topline), Jeremey Donovan (The Revenue Leadership Podcast)
3 sources
Much of the valuable work in sales happens between meetings, and he thinks having sellers on calls 85% of the time is too much. Listen
Rick says sellers need time after a call to think through next steps and strategy. He says he does not agree with a target of putting sellers on the phone with customers 85% of the time. He frames this as a reason sellers should not hand note-taking or processing entirely to a tool.
“the magic in sales is often happening between the meetings”
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AI note-takers capture objective events but miss tone, nuance and emotion, so sellers who rely on them may perform worse. Listen
Rick argues that a seller's notes are where they process what happened and decide the next action, and that an AI note-taker captures much of the objective content but not the buyer's reactions. He cited an old study he could not detail, in which computer-scored tests gave results without the context teachers had when grading by hand. He warns that a seller who treats note-taking as saved time may see performance decline.
“the computer can't capture the tone, can't capture the nuance, can't capture the content”
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A portfolio company removed an AI tool that extracted MEDDIC from call transcripts into Salesforce, even though the output was near perfect. Listen
Jeremey Donovan said the company used a tool, homegrown or licensed, that pulled the MEDDIC framework from call transcripts and pasted it into Salesforce. He said it did a near-perfect job, but full replacement of that human step was not effective, and he said the company took the tool out of commission. He thinks an augmented approach probably works better.
“The good news is whatever they were doing again in -house versus tool did a perfect job, near perfect job.”
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Those focused on efficiency see admin as pure waste, while those focused on complex deals see note-taking and reflection as where sellers form strategy.
Teams should adopt a standard qualification methodology such as MEDDIC and inspect deals against it rigorously.
said Mark Roberge (The Science of Scaling), Randy Riemersma (Revenue Builders), Jason Forget (Revenue Builders), Jeremey Donovan (The Revenue Leadership Podcast), Frederic Kerrest (The Science of Scaling)
8 sources
For enterprise deals with many stakeholders, Mark says to qualify with MEDDIC, whereas BANT suits one-person SMB buying decisions. Listen
BANT covers budget, authority, need and timing. MEDDIC covers metrics, economic buyer, decision process, decision-making unit, identify pain and champion. Mark says enterprise needs a more consultative seller who understands champions and internal politics.
“In SMB, we often use BANT, which is budget, authority, need, timing, because it's one person. In enterprise, we often use MEDDIC.”
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A deal without an identified business pain, a mobilizing champion and access to an economic buyer is likely to lose momentum. Listen
Randy describes a deal inspection process he calls MEDDIC, and says he asks reps early on to explain the identified business pain, the champion and the economic buyer. He says the pain should matter and ideally tie back to a corporate objective, and the economic buyer should have discretionary use of funds. He says if the problem sponsor is weak, the rest of the deal slows down.
“If we don't have a strong problem sponsor, then the rest of the deal is also going to get slowed down or, you know, lacks the momentum, the energy behind that we want.”
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Standardising deal qualification across all managers is what makes pipeline quality and predictability visible. Listen
Jason said that as a company grows and adds sales managers, each one must vet deals the same way. Otherwise leaders cannot know the quality of the pipeline, such as who the economic buyer is or whether the champion will act. He said consistent qualification improves intel on win rate and loss rate, which then lets the company train, enable and hire managers.
“if every deal is vetted differently, then I don't actually know the quality of my pipeline and therefore I don't know how predictable I really am”
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If he could do one thing in a company, it would be incredibly disciplined weekly deal reviews using MEDDIC or a variant. Listen
He said that in the survey, the most common sales qualification and deal inspection framework is MEDDIC, MEDPIC or a variation, especially in upper mid-market to enterprise sales. He said his first steps would be rigorous MEDDIC deal inspection, then disciplined pipeline generation with time carved out, then checking that the company is going after the ICP it thinks it is.
“if I could do one thing, it would be incredibly disciplined, weekly. deal reviews.”
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Roberge recommends starting with a standard sales methodology and then customising it; BANT for non-enterprise motions, MEDDIC for complex enterprise sales. Listen
Roberge lists options: BANT (budget, authority, need, timing), which he has most people start with, especially outside enterprise; MEDDIC for complex enterprise deals; Winning by Design's SPICED (situation, pain, impact, critical event, decision); and GPCT (goal, plan, challenge, timeline), which HubSpot used and which he calls great for discovery. You can then add or remove a letter to fit your business, as Okta did with MEDDPIC.
“Other popular ones, BANT, budget, authority, need timing. Super simple. I like to have most people start there, especially if you're not doing enterprise sales.”
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Okta used MEDDPIC, an extension of MEDDIC, to qualify who is buying, why, the process, coach versus champion, and who is working against the deal. Listen
Kerrest's qualification questions include: who is buying and why, what their process is, whether you are replacing something or opening a greenfield category (evangelical sell versus a 10x better mousetrap), who your coach is versus your champion, and who is trying to block you when you're not in the room. He says any innovative product is guaranteed to upset someone's apple cart.
“And by the way, who's trying to jam you when you're not there? You're guaranteed whatever super innovative product you're bringing to market is going to upset someone's apple cart.”
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Many technical founder-CEOs mistake a product deck with an ask at the end for a sales process. Listen
Kerrest says he has heard this from technical founder-CEOs multiple times this week already. He argues sales methodologies refined over the past 20 years are very useful to today's technical founders and advocates something simple like MEDDIC.
“I have a deck that explains what my product does. That's my sales process.”
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Deals ran as a guessing game until the team qualified who the decision makers were Listen
Paul says the pre-sales team was working deals without a method for finding who the decision makers were or what their criteria were, so when a deal came in it was a guessing game. He says there was never a science to it, which he saw as a gap in the sales process.
“There was never a sort of a science to it.”
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Off-the-shelf sales methodologies often don't fit, so teams should build their playbook from what their own top reps do.
said Kyle Norton (The Revenue Leadership Podcast), Justin Shriber (Topline), Jason Forget (Revenue Builders)
4 sources
A sales methodology his team built from clips of its own top reps lifted win rates almost overnight. Listen
In a high-velocity SMB environment, he found off-the-shelf options either too pushy or too enterprise, such as Command of the Message. His team combined elements of methodologies he liked with specific lines and approaches that worked in the field, and trained using call clips of top reps. It took heavy time from the AE, BDR and enablement leaders, managers and reps. He said adoption came because the playbook was built from the reps outward rather than imposed.
“And it wasn't because they were executing the playbook. It was because the playbook was like built on them.”
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A win-loss analysis can be turned into a playbook of what top closers do differently, with adoption tracked across the team. Listen
He described the first use case Terret tends to start with: a leader who wants to know why deals are lost and what closers do differently. The goal is to capture that approach as a playbook and then make sure the rest of the team adopts it.
“I want to know what my closers are doing differently. I want a playbook that actually bottles up that secret sauce.”
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Selling is an art for the top 5 to 10% of sellers, but a science for the rest, so the top performers' methods need to be turned into process. Listen
Jason said that in the early 2000s he came to believe selling is an art form for the top handful of sellers but a science for everyone else. He said his finance and process background led him to turn the art into a system that leaders and reps can use. He credited the approach with his move into RevOps and then sales leadership.
“as much as it's selling as an art form for the top five or 10 % of sellers, it truly is a science for the rest.”
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Sales playbooks do not transfer between companies because every company and product is different. Listen
Jonathan said that if playbooks were that simple, any company could be taken to a billion-dollar company easily. He said every product and every demo is different, so a leader should not arrive with a ready-made playbook.
“Every company is different. So if the playbook was that simple, you could take any company to a billion dollar company.”
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Standard frameworks fit complex enterprise deals, while high-velocity SMB motions find them too heavy and do better with playbooks built from their own reps.
From one operator's experience
What one named guest described doing or seeing. Each is a single account, not a point several operators agree on.
“we're currently working with the engineering team, one of your organizations. I saw you swing by my profile and simply wanted to say hello.”
“I'm going to bring a monetization consultant. Somebody has worked at Simon-Kucher, McKinsey, BCG, or whatever, and he's going to sit down with you and do a quick back of the envelope design of how your pricing should be before I sell you anything.”
“we convert um 70% of like trials to paid customers”
“they're leaving kickoff with their plan for the quarter, their territory plan, their account plans and understanding, here's my number and here's what I need to do to hit it.”
Freya Ward, Associate Managing Director at Headley Media said on The Dave Gerhardt Show · 28 Sep 2026
Make the sales rejection reason a mandatory CRM field with five or six buckets.
“create one simple mandatory field in the sales Crm.”
What to do
- Test every champion as Mark Roberge Roberge (The Science of Scaling) does: ask about the last time they got a $1M deal through, who handled security and procurement, and what those people's red lines are. If they cannot answer, ask who would and go to that person.
4 sources
To test whether a potential champion is real, ask them about the last time they got a million-dollar deal through the company, including the process and the people involved. Listen
Mark gives a sample script asking the champion to tell about the last time they got a million-dollar deal through the company, then probing who they worked with, who handles procurement and legal, and what those people's red lines are. He says a strong champion answers confidently because they have done it before. If the champion lacks the answers, he says you ask who would know, and you move on to that person while keeping the relationship friendly.
“Tell me about the last time you got a million dollar deal through this company.”
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Test a champion by asking how they will get the deal through security and procurement, since willingness is not the same as ability. Listen
Mark Roberge said a great champion is willing and able, and that his mentor John McMahon taught him to ask whether they are able. He suggested asking who the security contact is, what questions they will ask and what the right answers are, what happens if security delays for three months, and where procurement will push. The answers show whether the champion can get the deal done.
“They're all willing, but are they able?”
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A champion can be tested by asking them the so-what question about the pain, since someone who is only a coach either lacks the answer or will not go get it. Listen
Stuart says a true champion will work with him to get the answer, or will introduce him to the executive buyer, and together they document how the solution saves money, earns money, or speeds revenue or time to market. If the person cannot answer or will not go get the answer, he treats them as a coach rather than a champion. He says quantifying pain depends on having a champion, since no champion means no deal.
“Are they really a champion or are they a coach? If they're a coach, they're either not going to have the answer or they're not willing to go get that answer.”
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Someone who helps but lacks power or budget is a coach, and a deal depending on a coach will not close. Listen
The speaker said a deal will not close if the contact helping the seller is a coach without the power or budget to push the purchase through. They said this is common, and that many people believe they have a champion when they only have a coach.
“Als mensen denken dat ze een champion hebben, dan hebben ze een coach.”
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- Before any proof of value, require Sam Costello's (Revenue Builders) checks: a champion, defined criteria, economic-buyer alignment and known competition including doing nothing. Settle Anne Gary's five items too: people, process, technology, timing and metrics.
5 sources
A POV should only go ahead when there is at least one champion, defined success criteria, economic buyer alignment and known competition, including the customer doing nothing Listen
Sam Costello lists the checks Harness runs before a POV: whether there is at least one champion and ideally several, whether the POV criteria are well defined and the team is highly differentiated, whether the economic buyer would discuss changes if the criteria changed, and whether the team knows its competitors. He says the global SE leader and he both sign off on each POV, and that competition is often a customer choosing to do nothing.
“do we have champion, at least one, but multiple champions ideally?”
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See the economic buyer before running the POV to confirm the problem, the criteria and the straw-man business case Listen
Sam Costello says that before the POV, the team should check with the economic buyer whether this is the problem they care about, whether these are the criteria they want to see, and whether they have faith in the straw-man business case, which may only need to be directionally accurate. He also asks whether other people need to be involved.
“is going to see the economic buyer before you do the POV”
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Before starting a proof of value, a seller should have five things settled: people, process, technology, timing and metrics. Listen
Gary listed these five things and said she does not walk into a proof of value without having all of them nailed down. She said the process needs to cover who the people are, where they go through the process, what technology will be measured, the timing, and the metrics.
“So there's five things i think about in terms oe going into a proof of value.”
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Early-stage companies get burned by proofs of value that absorb engineering and product time for months without a result, so Glean now uses checkpoints before starting one. Listen
Brad says that early on, when companies are begging for people to talk to them, they run into proofs of value that drag on. Four months later they have spent sales, engineering and product time and have nothing, and the deal sits on the forecast for quarters, which is why Glean now sets checkpoints.
“And then it's four months later, you've sunk all of your time, all of your engineers time”
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Glean's blueprint stage maps a customer's real workflows, with the economic buyer bought in, before any proof of value starts and data is connected. Listen
Brad says the second stage of Glean's sales process is the blueprint process, where the team sits with business units such as sales, engineering and legal to map how work gets done today. They then ask whether transforming that process has value and ties to the outcomes the customer wants, and only after the economic buyer is on board do they plug in data sources and systems for a proof of value.
“we call the blueprint process, we actually come into your office, we sit down with you”
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- Tie each POV to a straw-man business case with a before-and-after metric, as Costello (Revenue Builders) does, and build it with the customer early so they co-own it, per Bob Kocis.
3 sources
Tie the POV to a business case with a before-and-after metric so each technical result maps to a business outcome Listen
Sam Costello says the ideal POV is tied to a business case that states the value of solving the problem, even if it is not fully baked. The POV is then designed to prove the points in that case, with a metric such as how long a task took before and how long it takes now. He describes creating this linkage as the most important step.
“it used to take this long to do it, now it takes this long”
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A unique value proposition only holds up when the customer co-owns it, so the business case should be built with them early in the sales process. Listen
Bob Kocis said the strongest deals had a unique value proposition that the customer helped build and therefore owns, which he said makes deals ironclad. He warned that an ROI calculator nobody owns is not enough, and that if quantifying questions come too late, the customer has already built their own justification. He said the work has to be done up front.
“it has to be owned by you and the company that's buying from you and your champion, right?”
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Rushing discovery can leave buyers unwilling to share the metrics needed for a value case. Listen
McMahon said that if a seller moves too fast through discovery, the customer may grasp what the product does and then withhold the metrics needed for a compelling ROI or value proposition. He said the buyer does this because they know what the seller is doing to them, which makes it harder to justify price and the purchase later.
“I've seen it where the customers now unwilling to give you the metrics required for you to create a compelling ROI or value proposition because they know what you're doing to them.”
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- Multithread without seeming salesy by asking your champion questions only their executive can answer, such as forecast, roadmap and growth plan, so the champion brings the executive in, as Samantha McKenna (30 Minutes to President's Club) does.
3 sources
To multithread without seeming salesy, ask your champion questions only their executive can answer so the champion brings that person in. Listen
McKenna's example has Armand as the champion and Nick as the decision maker. Rather than asking what Nick will care about, she asks Armand about this year's priorities, forecast, growth, roadmap and plan. She expects Armand to say Nick is better placed to answer and offer to bring him in. The show notes list this as a main takeaway: ask questions the champion may not know so they involve higher-ups.
“Start asking questions that Armand can't answer instead of being like, what's Nick gonna care about?”
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A deal forecast at about a million dollars closed at four to five times that after the team found missing executive champions and went multi-threaded. Listen
Bove says the team realised they were missing executive champions and had not understood the customer's why or ideal future state. They mapped the current state to the future state, met more people, and stopped being single-threaded, then closed a much larger deal on a shorter timeline, which she says has happened on several deals.
“We weren't single threaded anymore.”
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At MongoDB, reps who brought in the line-of-business general manager early in a project had much faster sales cycles than reps who worked only with developers and IT ops. Listen
Carlos said some reps found projects being built, identified the line-of-business owner and explained how MongoDB would help that business get to market faster and realise revenue sooner. Doing this early in the cycle made deals move quickly, whereas dealing only with developers and IT ops took much longer.
“If I do that early in my sales cycle, my sales cycle goes super fast, where if I deal with just the developers and the IT ops people, it's going to take a lot longer.”
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- When a decision is months away, follow McKenna (30 Minutes to President's Club). Start MSA redlines at your commit threshold, book the procurement meeting for right after the board meeting, and ask whether the champion will present, ask permission or tell the board.
3 sources
Start parallel vendor review once a deal reaches your commit threshold, so about 95% of the paperwork is done when the decision comes. Listen
McKenna says the trigger is whatever your qualification standard is, whether BANT is confirmed, the buyer says they're moving forward, or the deal is a 75% or 90% commit. Her example is a deal in August that won't close until December. By then she wants the MSA redlined and sign-off from everyone on her side on the terms they won't accept. She keeps asking her leader 'why won't this deal happen?'
“By the time the person comes back from vacation that's going to sign your MSA, whatever that is, you're going to have 95% of the paperwork done.”
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If the decision is months away, book the procurement meeting for directly after the decision meeting now. Listen
Her example is a buyer who says in August that nothing can happen until a December board presentation, and that outsourced procurement can't be engaged without internal approval. Rather than accept that, she would schedule the procurement meeting for right after the presentation. She says it does no harm, gets you on the buyer's calendar before others rush for it, and gets you on your own legal and procurement team's calendar early too.
“There's absolutely no harm in getting the meeting scheduled. Not only will this help you make sure that you get on their calendar now before everybody else is trying to do it.”
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When a champion is taking a deal to the board, find out whether they will present options, ask for permission or tell the board their decision, because each means a different path for the deal. Listen
McKenna says most reps accept 'we can't do anything until the board meeting' and wait. She asks whether the buyer will present and wait for feedback, ask permission to spend, or announce a decision they already have authority to make. She also asks whether they have presented this kind of deal before, what pushback usually comes up, and how she can help them prepare. A first-time presenter who is presenting rather than asking or telling means a different story for the deal than the seller probably assumed.
“Are you going to be presenting, telling, or asking the board for permission? Are they presenting and waiting for feedback? Are they asking for permission to spend money with you? Or are they saying, hey, this is what we're going to do?”
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6 more
- Reframe budget objections the way McKenna (30 Minutes to President's Club) does: ask which existing spend has poor ROI and bring those budget owners onto the call. As the Anne Gary episode of Revenue Builders advises, ask whether the buyer can access funds rather than whether budget exists.
3 sources
Raise the budget objection early and find funding by asking which of the buyer's existing spend has poor ROI, then bring in the owners of those budgets. Listen
Nick Cegelski said his 30MPC sponsorship deals usually start with a marketing manager, need VP or CMO approval, and are often lost after the manager takes information to their boss. McKenna argued that budget objections often mean value wasn't proven. She would tell the manager early that buyers often lack allocated budget and you'll need to get creative. She would then ask which channels, such as syndicated content or pay-per-click, have and haven't delivered ROI, and suggest bringing those owners onto the call.
“Well, no shit budget wasn't allocated for this, especially if it's something new that you're selling. But you have to figure out how to partner in multi -thread to pull from different budgets.”
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No budget is not the same as no access to funds, so a seller should ask whether the buyer can access funds. Listen
The speaker said having no budget differs from having access to funds, and that the key question is whether the person with the business problem can access funds for a purchase. They said a budget objection can be reframed by tying the solution to revenue, profitability, risk or time to market.
“Nou, je hebt het gezegd, hebben ze accesse voor funds? Dat is verschillend dan hebben ze budget.”
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Look for budget in departments that wouldn't usually buy your product, based on secondary value it gives them. Listen
Using 30MPC sponsorships as her example, McKenna suggests positioning them as a way to attract new talent and asking to speak with HR or the chief people officer. She says the audience is maybe 6% VP, while the BDRs and AEs investing in themselves are the ones listening.
“Can we talk to HR? Can we talk to your chief people officer? What are you guys doing to bring in fresh young minds?”
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- Pitch the economic buyer in their language, following Randy Riemersma (Revenue Builders): a few slides on EBITDA, earnings per share and corporate initiatives, not operational benefits for staff below the line.
3 sources
Reframing a contact-center cost problem around EBITDA and earnings per share, without discussing technology, led to a six-year contract in Randy's example. Listen
Randy says the customer had 14% revenue growth but 17% operating expense growth from consolidations. He says his message to the executive was three slides showing how to bring operating expense growth down to 11% and then to 8%, discussing EBITDA and earnings per share, and never talking about the technology. He says the approach led to a six-year contract with forecasted committed base utilization in minutes and a 20% premium on flex minutes over baseline.
“Revenue growth was 14%. Their operational expense growth was 17%.”
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Executives do not care about operational benefits for below-the-line staff unless those benefits tie to a corporate initiative. Listen
Randy says reps get stuck when they sell operational benefits below the line, such as avoiding thirteen spreadsheets or writing code, and forget to tie them back to the economic buyer's priorities. He says economic buyers care about earnings per share, EBITDA and the three or four corporate initiatives they are tied to. He says reps who do not talk that language get booted out of the room.
“The C-suite doesn't care about operational benefits making other people's lives easier below the line”
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Asking what the customer's biggest business issue is on every deal tends to produce technical answers, so reps need to be pushed back to the business question Listen
John Kaplan says that when he asks anyone inside a selling company what the customer's biggest business issue is, he usually gets a technical answer, and the question has to be reframed repeatedly to reach a business issue. He suggests asking it on every deal and counting how many times it has to be reframed, and thinks it is getting worse partly because of the focus on AI. Sam Costello adds that it has never been easier to solve, since an LLM can identify a company's biggest business problems.
“Ask on every deal that you have. Just start off with what's the biggest business issue.”
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- Run deal reviews as gap hunts rather than compliance checks. Michelle Bove (Revenue Builders) uses a 15-question rep-completed sheet that cuts reviews to 30 minutes. Stuart Gwynn (Revenue Builders) tests why anything, why now and why us with an uninvested peer.
3 sources
Run deal reviews with a 15-question spreadsheet that takes about 30 minutes rather than an hour or more. Listen
Bove's leaders review current-quarter and next-quarter top deals using a spreadsheet of 15 questions, filled in by the rep. The questions cover the close date and why it is that date, the economic buyer and when they last met, the champions, and when a proof of value started and ends, so reps often spot gaps themselves.
“there's a deal review spreadsheet we have that asks 15 questions. It saves time. So a deal review isn't an hour, an hour and a half, but it's actually only 30 minutes.”
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Three questions, why anything, why now, and why this vendor, are the basis for reviewing whether a deal is real. Listen
Stuart says in a deal review he checks whether the rep has answers to the three Ys, then whether there is a champion, then tests that champion. He recommends reviewing with a peer who is not emotionally invested, since that person can look at the deal without knowing the names. He says his own leadership asked him these same questions, and a champion should be able to answer them to their leadership.
“Why anything? Why now? Why Mongo?”
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MEDDPIC reviews work as hunts for gaps, and a rep who leaves a review not excited means something did not go right Listen
Sam Costello says in a compliance-style review the rep only tries to prove they already have what the reviewer wants so they can get off the call, while in a hunt the team assumes there is something it does not know and looks for what could go wrong. He says if a rep does not leave a MEDDPIC review excited, something went wrong, since the review should uncover gaps. He adds that if a rep follows a compliance process and still loses, the process loses mindshare.
“If it's a compliance effort, then you're just trying to prove that you already got what that person wants”
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- Revive stalled deals as John McMahon (Revenue Builders) does, by re-anchoring the buyer to the deadline and cost of inaction they gave you earlier.
2 sources
Re-anchoring a stalled prospect to a deadline and cost they gave earlier can restore urgency. Listen
McMahon described calling a prospect who had earlier said a problem needed solving by October 31 and reminding him of the implications of that date. He said a five-minute call can become half an hour once the implications are clear, whereas without a stated consequence of not solving the problem the buyer stays with daily issues.
“de laatste keer dat we gesproken hebben, had je me gezegd dat als je deze pain, of deze problemen, in oktober 31”
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Big strategic decisions are not started in a buyer's everyday state, so sellers must first create fear and pain that something is wrong. Listen
Randy uses personal examples: he would need to win the lottery to buy a Ferrari, and would need a bad doctor's report to change his health benefits. He says the seller should show the current state, its true negative consequences and the cost of inaction, creating both an emotional and a rational reason to move. He says deals that do not start this way will lack momentum and emotion over time.
“Nobody makes big strategic decisions or starts the process in this zone of, you know, small decisions.”
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- Close demos as Garrett Marker ([Un]Churned) does: restate the prospect's own reasons to buy, then ask directly what the reasons are for not moving forward.
2 sources
Garrett's demo-closing question is to restate the prospect's own reasons to buy and then ask what the reasons are for not moving forward. Listen
He said he would recap the reasons the prospect gave for why the tool was better, to have them revalidate those. He would then ask what might stop them from moving forward, and said the aim was to resolve concerns either way. He said most sellers avoid this question because it is scary.
“so what are the reasons why you're not going to move forward?”
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Late-stage deals lost inside the 10-yard line usually come down to buyer confidence rather than product capability. Listen
Randy says that when selling software worth around $3 million, the buyer's job is at risk if the purchase goes wrong, so nerves rise late in the cycle even after the buyer has agreed to the business case. He says the seller's job in that final zone is to make sure the buyer does not lose their job for the decision. He describes the confidence built there as what creates the urgency that carries the deal to close.
“I think all deals lost inside the 10 yard line had nothing to do with your capabilities. It has everything to do with their lack of confidence.”
Listen to the episode Episode Sales process & deals Link to this Report a problem
- In cold outreach, offer something of value instead of asking about interest, based on a 30MPC and Gong analysis of over 300 million cold emails cited by Nick Cegelski Cegelski (30 Minutes to President's Club). On calls, keep handling objections and re-asking for the meeting, since Mark Roberge Roberge (The Science of Scaling) says top SDRs handle three or four.
4 sources
A 30MPC and Gong analysis of over 300 million cold emails found that offering something of value beats an interest-based CTA. Listen
According to Nick, interest-based CTAs such as 'do you want to learn more?' used to be the most effective. The analysis found that an offer of value, such as 'I can send over a couple of ideas or examples,' is much more likely to get the prospect to agree to a meeting or keep the conversation going.
“what we actually learned was that making an offer, an offer of value, actually has a much higher likelihood of getting someone to agree to a meeting and continue the conversation.”
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The best SDRs and cold callers typically handle three or four objections before they book a meeting. Listen
Roberge says the data shows that the best SDRs and cold callers, on average, handle three or four objections before booking a meeting. He mentions this while describing the objection flywheel.
“And the data shows that the best SDRs and cold callers out there, on average, will handle three or four of those before they book a meeting.”
Listen to the episode Episode Sales process & deals Link to this Report a problem
After each objection, handle it and re-ask for the meeting, and keep doing this until the prospect agrees or hangs up. Listen
Roberge describes an objection flywheel: the rep asks for the meeting, listens to the objection, handles it, and asks again. He says he never lets the prospect out of the loop until they hang up. He credits the simple script with freeing mental energy to listen and respond to objections.
“So I'm in this flywheel, and I'm never gonna let the person out of the flywheel until they hang up.”
Listen to the episode Episode Sales process & deals Link to this Report a problem
The goal of outbound is to make clear you'll add value in the meeting, and praises Kade Hinkle for giving value in the message itself so the prospect benefits even if they never reply. Listen
Alex points out that Kade's pitch named specific signals to watch, so a prospect who ignores it might still think they should be checking Discord more. He says this shows the seller will add value in the first meeting and builds trust. Kade says nearly every pitch he sends includes two ideas the prospect could use the product for.
“my whole goal without bound is to make it clear that I'm going to add value in the meeting even if you never talked to me again afterward.”
Listen to the episode Episode Sales process & deals Link to this Report a problem
All 40 positions best supported first
- AI should take over call prep, documentation and follow-up so reps spend most of their time actually selling.
10 independent voices · 5 shows1 new this month
said Brad Scott (Revenue Builders), Christopher O'Donnell (The Science of Scaling), Amanda Kahlow (Topline), Matthew Kropp ([Un]Churned), Daniel Simon (Revenue Builders), Ghazi Masood (The Revenue Leadership Podcast) and 4 more
11 sources
- The seller's core job is to diagnose and define the buyer's problem in depth before pitching or discussing commercials.
9 independent voices · 5 shows2 new this month
said John Gilbo (Impact Pricing), John McMahon (Revenue Builders), Keenan (Topline), Rick Smolen (Topline), Randy Riemersma (Revenue Builders), Stuart Gwynn (Revenue Builders) and 4 more
18 sources
- Deals should be multithreaded across several functions, such as IT, finance and the line of business.
9 independent voices · 3 shows3 new this month
said John Gilbo (Impact Pricing), Anne Gary (Revenue Builders), Sam Costello (Revenue Builders), Michelle Bove (Revenue Builders), Daniel Simon (Revenue Builders), John Kaplan (Revenue Builders) and 3 more
12 sources
- Peer customer references are decisive in winning late-stage and competitive deals.
5 independent voices · 5 shows1 new this month
said Kayde Givens (30 Minutes to President's Club), Garrett Marker ([Un]Churned), Randy Riemersma (Revenue Builders), Kevin Mandia (Grit), Mark Roberge (The Science of Scaling)
5 sources
- Teams should adopt a standard qualification methodology such as MEDDIC and inspect deals against it rigorously.
5 independent voices · 3 shows
said Mark Roberge (The Science of Scaling), Randy Riemersma (Revenue Builders), Jason Forget (Revenue Builders), Jeremey Donovan (The Revenue Leadership Podcast), Frederic Kerrest (The Science of Scaling)
8 sources
- Sellers must ask the uncomfortable questions they usually avoid, about budget, authority and why the deal might not close.
4 independent voices · 4 shows2 new this month
said Samantha McKenna (30 Minutes to President's Club), Garrett Marker ([Un]Churned), Amanda Kahlow (Topline), Bob Kocis (Revenue Builders)
5 sources
- Sellers should reach executive power as early as possible instead of waiting for a champion to be convinced.
4 independent voices · 2 shows3 new this month
said Samantha McKenna (30 Minutes to President's Club), Daniel Simon (Revenue Builders), Chris Vik (Revenue Builders), Carlos Delatorre (Revenue Builders)
7 sources
- Vendors should openly disqualify and walk away from deals where they can't deliver enough value.
5 independent voices · 4 shows3 new this month
said John Gilbo (Impact Pricing), Manny Medina (Topline), Jen Igartua (Topline), Stuart Gwynn (Revenue Builders), Andy Shorkey (The Science of Scaling)
7 sources
- Outbound messages should hand the prospect something of value up front rather than ask whether they want to learn more.
4 independent voices · 3 shows5 new this month
said Alex Murphy (30 Minutes to President's Club), Kade Hinkle (30 Minutes to President's Club), Nick Cegelski (30 Minutes to President's Club), Matt Allison (Topline), Mark Roberge (The Science of Scaling)
7 sources
- Sellers shouldn't accept 'we'll take it to the board or team'; they should map exactly how the decision gets made and by whom.
3 independent voices · 3 shows4 new this month
said Dan Lee (The Science of Scaling), Samantha McKenna (30 Minutes to President's Club), Stuart Gwynn (Revenue Builders)
5 sources
- Value becomes believable when built from specific quantified problems or realistic ranges rather than by leading with a big headline ROI figure.
3 independent voices · 2 shows2 new this month
said Mark Stiving (Impact Pricing), John Gilbo (Impact Pricing), Bob Kocis (Revenue Builders)
3 sources
- Generic demos should be replaced with prospect-specific environments or prototypes built quickly from the prospect's own data.
3 independent voices · 3 shows
said Rick Smolen (Topline), Joubin Mirzadegan (Grit), Michelle Donnelly (The Revenue Leadership Podcast)
4 sources
- Sharing industry insight and examples from similar customers early earns the buyer's trust and willingness to share information.
4 independent voices · 2 shows1 new this month
said Anne Gary (Revenue Builders), Sam Costello (Revenue Builders), Stuart Gwynn (Revenue Builders), Michelle Donnelly (The Revenue Leadership Podcast)
5 sources
- Off-the-shelf sales methodologies often don't fit, so teams should build their playbook from what their own top reps do.
3 independent voices · 3 shows
said Kyle Norton (The Revenue Leadership Podcast), Justin Shriber (Topline), Jason Forget (Revenue Builders)
4 sources
- Start legal, security and procurement work in parallel well before the buying decision so deals close faster.
3 independent voices · 2 shows6 new this month
said Nick Cegelski (30 Minutes to President's Club), Samantha McKenna (30 Minutes to President's Club), Jordan Crawford (Topline)
8 sources
- Imposing rigid, uniform scripts and stage-by-stage process on reps strips out the judgment that wins deals.
3 independent voices · 2 shows1 new this month
said Jen Igartua (Topline), Keenan (Topline), John McMahon (Revenue Builders)
3 sources
- A helpful contact is only a champion if they can actually push the deal through, so sellers must test a champion's ability, not just their willingness.
3 independent voices · 2 shows2 new this month
said Sam Costello (Revenue Builders), Stuart Gwynn (Revenue Builders), Mark Roberge (The Science of Scaling)
9 sources
- Proofs of concept often should be paid or tied to a signed contract rather than given away, so vendors work only with buyers serious about deploying.
2 independent voices · 2 shows1 new this month
said Keith Peiris (Topline), Bret Taylor (Grit)
3 sources
- In-person effort differentiates sellers, especially as AI-generated outreach floods inboxes.
4 independent voices · 2 shows1 new this month
said Brad Scott (Revenue Builders), Daniel Simon (Revenue Builders), Lou Shipley (Revenue Builders), Frederic Kerrest (The Science of Scaling)
4 sources
- Restating the buyer's situation back and asking them to correct it builds trust and makes them feel heard.
3 independent voices · 2 shows1 new this month
said Ann Davis (Revenue Builders), Amanda Kahlow (Topline), Randy Riemersma (Revenue Builders)
3 sources
- Handing note-taking and deal processing entirely to AI makes sellers worse because the thinking happens in that work.
2 independent voices · 2 shows
said Rick Smolen (Topline), Jeremey Donovan (The Revenue Leadership Podcast)
3 sources
- Sales should hand off to customer success using a structured record of objectives, stakeholders and value drivers.
2 independent voices · 2 shows1 new this month
said Seong Park (Revenue Builders), Chael Banks ([Un]Churned)
3 sources
- A sales methodology only sticks when its terms are defined precisely and built into the CRM, not just trained.
2 independent voices · 2 shows
said Keenan (Topline), Kyle Norton (The Revenue Leadership Podcast)
2 sources
- A project that matters to a champion or a department may not be funded, so sellers must confirm it is a priority for whoever holds the budget.
2 independent voices · 2 shows
said Sam Jacobs (Topline), Randy Riemersma (Revenue Builders)
2 sources
- The sales process should be built from a map of how buyers actually buy, learned by talking to buyers.
3 independent voices · 3 shows
said John Kaplan (Revenue Builders), Eric Gilpin ([Un]Churned), Mark Roberge (The Science of Scaling)
7 sources
- Land with a small, focused first deal and expand later rather than pitching a big platform deal upfront.
2 independent voices · 2 shows
said Sam Costello (Revenue Builders), Ghazi Masood ([Un]Churned)
6 sources
- Sales should handle leads differently depending on their source rather than opening every meeting the same way.
2 independent voices · 2 shows1 new this month
said Freya Ward (The Dave Gerhardt Show), Greg Casale (Revenue Builders)
2 sources
- Each member of the buying group has different concerns, so each needs tailored messaging and their own discovery.
2 independent voices · 2 shows
said Carlos Delatorre (Revenue Builders), Mark Roberge (The Science of Scaling)
5 sources
- Qualification frameworks should match deal complexity: simple ones like BANT for SMB and mid-market, MEDDIC-style for large complex deals.
2 independent voices · 2 shows
said Lauren Hughes (The Revenue Leadership Podcast), Mark Roberge (The Science of Scaling)
3 sources
- A proof of value should start only after the people, success metrics, business case and economic buyer alignment are settled.
3 independent voices · 1 show6 new this month
said Anne Gary (Revenue Builders), Brad Scott (Revenue Builders), Sam Costello (Revenue Builders)
9 sources
- Deal reviews and qualification tools should actively hunt for gaps rather than confirm what the rep says.
3 independent voices · 1 show
said Sam Costello (Revenue Builders), Daniel Simon (Revenue Builders), Stuart Gwynn (Revenue Builders)
3 sources
- Champions are built by tying the solution to the individual's personal win as well as the company's pain.
3 independent voices · 1 show
said Frederik Maris (Revenue Builders), Brian McCarthy (Revenue Builders), Bob Kocis (Revenue Builders)
4 sources
- Urgency comes from quantifying the cost of not solving the problem, not just the benefits of solving it.
2 independent voices · 1 show2 new this month
said John McMahon (Revenue Builders), Randy Riemersma (Revenue Builders)
3 sources
- Transitions between SDRs, AEs, SEs and post-sale teams should be continuous rather than thrown over the wall.
3 independent voices · 1 show
said John Kaplan (Revenue Builders), Alex Bilmes (Revenue Builders), Greg Casale (Revenue Builders)
3 sources
- Product-led adoption doesn't replace discovery and top-down selling to the business buyer.
2 independent voices · 1 show
said Jason Forget (Revenue Builders), Brian McCarthy (Revenue Builders)
4 sources
- Sellers shouldn't let a champion pitch executives alone, and a champion's reluctance to involve them signals an unresolved problem.
2 independent voices · 1 show
said Sam Costello (Revenue Builders), Stuart Gwynn (Revenue Builders)
4 sources
- AI improves sales work more when leaders prescribe specific standards and use cases for it rather than leaving reps or the model to figure it out.
2 independent voices · 1 show1 new this month
said Keith Peiris (Topline), AJ Bruno (Topline)
2 sources
- Sellers should shape the buyer's decision criteria around their own differentiators before the evaluation is run.
2 independent voices · 1 show1 new this month
said John Kaplan (Revenue Builders)
5 sources
- Deal teams should rehearse important customer meetings together beforehand rather than walking in under-prepared.
2 independent voices · 1 show
said Stuart Gwynn (Revenue Builders), Bob Kocis (Revenue Builders)
3 sources
- A great product does not sell itself; companies need deliberate go-to-market machinery to win large deals.
2 independent voices · 1 show
said Ryan Smith (Grit), Joubin Mirzadegan (Grit)
5 sources
Actions written 10 Oct 2026 from the most useful of 442 recent insights and checked against them.
What was said 67 insights matching
Manual calling work limited reps to two or three conversations an hour Listen
Dan Lee said reps using Nooks loved the collaboration but were only having two or three conversations in an hour because of manual work. That work included building call lists, finding phone numbers, waiting through ringing and voicemail, preparing scripts, taking notes and logging calls to the CRM. Nooks then focused on automating the calling step first.
“they're only having like two or three conversations in an hour.”
Listen to the episode Episode Sales process & deals Link to this Report a problem
One host described a founder who reached the economic buyer too early, on the second call, while the champion was still weighing two or three vendors. Listen
For that founder's future deals, they agreed to delay multithreading up until at least one or two people were bought in. The host asked McKenna whether it ever makes sense to slow down reaching power to get your ducks in a row. McKenna disagreed and said to start with power if you can.
“let's delay multi-threading up until we can at least say that we have one or two people bought on board.”
Listen to the episode Episode Sales process & deals Link to this Report a problem
Early-stage companies get burned by proofs of value that absorb engineering and product time for months without a result, so Glean now uses checkpoints before starting one. Listen
Brad says that early on, when companies are begging for people to talk to them, they run into proofs of value that drag on. Four months later they have spent sales, engineering and product time and have nothing, and the deal sits on the forecast for quarters, which is why Glean now sets checkpoints.
“And then it's four months later, you've sunk all of your time, all of your engineers time”
Listen to the episode Episode Sales process & deals Link to this Report a problem
Handraise plans focused outreach with product screenshots instead of AI-generated mass outreach, though Matt says they are still learning. Listen
Matt said TrendKite started with cold call selling and later added an inbound motion. For Handraise he expects much more focused, high-quality outreach that uses screenshots of the product to send real value, rather than throwing everything into an AI machine on day one. He said the company is still learning what will work well.
“And I think for us, it's going to just be like much more of a highly focused, high quality outreach where we're using screenshots of the product and trying to send real value versus anything that we're just, at least on day one, throwing into an AI machine to call it spam in the tam.”
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Enterprise go-to-market requires the patience and stomach not to sell aggressively from day one. Listen
Matt contrasted Handraise with TrendKite, which he called a sales machine from day one, with he and AJ Bruno cold call selling before the product was ready. For Handraise he framed the key question as whether the team can resist aggressive selling early on. He said the answer depends on the investors as well as the team having the stomach for slower growth.
“can we have the patience and do we have the stomach to not go out and sell deals like crazy Day one? I mean Trend Kite was a sales machine from day one.”
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Mirzadegan pushed his solutions team to automate custom demo-environment setup with Claude skills instead of adding headcount. Listen
Prospects of his company Roadrunner want demos built on their own messy SKUs, and setting up each environment took his head of solutions architecture a couple of days of 'hand-to-hand combat.' He asked what it would take to cut that to a couple of hours, and suggested embedding the needed engineering skills into Claude to try to automate it, while acknowledging it might fail. His framing: with 15 customers at once the manual process breaks, so the choice is hiring ten more people or automating and hiring three.
“either we go hire another ten people or we figure out how to automate this process and we can hire three.”
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A conversation at a lunch table during a Nashville GTM conference became airspeed's first six-figure deal, according to Adam. Listen
Adam was at the GTM Pavilion conference in Nashville as a founder doing founder-led sales, which he says meant being close to buyers and attending events and conferences. At the last lunch he joined a table of strangers and talked with them, and that conversation became the company's biggest deal and first six-figure deal at that time. He notes the founder-led hassle is still true.
“At the last lunch, I just decided, okay, let me join this table and talk to these people here. And it turned into our biggest deal, our first, I think, six -figure deal back then.”
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Once product-market fit is achieved, the next gate is profitable acquisition, onboarding and service of customers, which needs a sales process, a scalable demand channel and right quotas, comp and pricing. Listen
Roberge says that after product-market fit, the company should move to go-to-market fit by hiring a couple of reps, building a sales process, a scalable demand generation channel, and getting quotas, compensation and pricing right. He says this phase might take a week, a month or two quarters. He says it is measured by unit economics rather than accounting profit.
“We need a couple reps. We need a sales process. We need a scalable demand gen channel. We need to get the quotas right. We need to get the comp right. We need to get the pricing model right.”
Listen to the episode Episode Sales process & deals Link to this Report a problem
False velocity at the front of a deal, pushing to advance before the real pain is found, damages the deal later on. Listen
Randy says false velocity is one of the things that screws deals most, because a seller who does not slow down early cannot keep the deal out of danger later. He says reps should discover the customer's pain or problem that they can then solve, rather than throwing product features at the buyer. He sums this up as slowing down to speed up.
“I think one of the things that screws deals immensely is false velocity at the front end.”
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Open-source adoption can create a false sense of security for AEs, because developer enthusiasm does not mean the business buyer is committed. Listen
Jason said the developer enthusiasm around open-source products at Redis was a double-edged sword. Developers loved the product, but they were often solving tactical problems rather than the larger business problems that executives care about. He said the same false sense of security appears in product-led growth motions.
“It was sometimes a double -edged sword in the sense that it sometimes created a false sense of security, especially with our AEs.”
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A founder-CEO has to be the chief salesperson and cannot delegate sales until they understand the problem well enough themselves. Listen
Lou says that when you join a company as CEO you are on the front line as the chief salesperson. He argues you cannot just delegate sales, you have to know it, and that intellectual curiosity about why a problem costs what it does is part of that. He frames this as the core reason founders must own early selling.
“You're the chief salesperson as a CEO You have to be able to do it because you can't just delegate this you got to know it”
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Before taking the CEO job, he demoed the product on a laptop to about six Wall Street CIOs and got three pilots from those calls. Listen
Lou says he joined a startup as CEO after screening deals at a VC and meeting its founder, who had built software to detect early signs of application performance problems. Before joining, he took a laptop with the product to about six CIOs at Wall Street firms. He used the calls to find out whether the problem was isolated or applied across other use cases, and came away with three pilots.
“I went out and demoed it to you know like a half a dozen CIOs of Wall Street”
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Qualtrics took about 13 years to close its first million-dollar deal, a figure he gave with the word probably. Listen
He said early Qualtrics had a 25K club on its whiteboard with customers including Royal Caribbean and Phillips Electronics. He said the early problem was getting the buyer on the other side to act when they were fighting for their jobs, and that momentum built around 2005 to 2008 before stalling in 2008 to 2010, when the people he called no longer had jobs.
“Probably 13. 13 years.”
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Building a great product does not make it sell itself, and companies that skip building sales machinery can lose demand once early growth flattens. Listen
Joubin Mirzadegan said technical founders often assume a great product sells itself, and Trae Stephens agreed this is not true. Joubin described a COVID-era pattern where growth looked strong until it turned out no one was buying without active selling. The conversation concluded that when the curve flattens and the machinery has not been built, the company is in real trouble.
“it's actually even worse if you build it and they do come, because eventually they'll stop coming.”
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Early on, Snowflake's sales lead held himself to eight new-business calls a week and emailed the whole company, including the board, a summary of that activity. Listen
Chris Degnan, then director of sales before Snowflake had a product, built outbound lists of chief data officers and CTOs and asked for 15-minute meetings. He adopted the standard he had held his teams to at Avexa and EMC, eight sales calls a week, and at Snowflake all of them were new-business meetings for a long time. He also sent a weekly summary of his activity to the entire company, including the board. He said he did this because he was so afraid of failure, and some founding engineers still keep those emails.
“I would hold my sales team accountable to go on, you know, eight sales calls a week, three, two to three net new business meetings.”
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In the product-market fit phase, Roberge recommends doing unscalable things early, such as founder-led selling through networks. Listen
He describes needing a few dozen meetings, probably 50 intros, 30 meetings, 10 pipeline and five customers depending on ACV, reached through professional networks rather than an SDR program or content marketing. He says early reps should be paid in equity rather than commission, like founding engineers.
“do unscalable things early”
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Mirzadegan describes a planned approval flow where each approver sees the context relevant to them, such as COGS, CAC and LTV for an executive and other details for RevOps. Listen
He describes a pager-duty-like approval flow for quotes at his new company, with different context for different approvers. He says Michael would see items on COGS, CAC and LTV, while Deals Desk or RevOps would see other information. He says this does not exist in software today, which he calls insane, and that he comes from this world and has dealt with it for years.
“Because that doesn't really exist in software today, which is insane.”
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The founder or CEO should be the salesperson from day one, and he personally closed Okta's first 20 customers. Listen
Kerrest says founders must not disassociate themselves from what is happening with customers and must do active listening to spot the trends customers describe. His metaphor is to be the fennec fox, with a small mouth and big ears, not the alligator.
“I closed the first 20 customers.”
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Kerrest won an early 2011 Okta deal after making a finalist meeting in Tulsa that the buyer refused to reschedule, walking through a blizzard to get there. Listen
An oil pipeline servicing company using Salesforce and Workday had two finalists for identity management, and Workday-as-master was brand-new functionality for Okta. When Kerrest's flight was booked for the wrong month, the IT director told him the decision was being made that week and he had to be there the next morning. He took a red-eye via Chicago, walked about two miles along a highway in a blizzard because no cabs were running, ran a two-hour sales call, and Okta won the deal a month later.
“He said, well, there's two finalists. You're going tomorrow. The other guy's going Tuesday. We're making a decision.”
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Many technical founder-CEOs mistake a product deck with an ask at the end for a sales process. Listen
Kerrest says he has heard this from technical founder-CEOs multiple times this week already. He argues sales methodologies refined over the past 20 years are very useful to today's technical founders and advocates something simple like MEDDIC.
“I have a deck that explains what my product does. That's my sales process.”
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Early enterprise sales comes down to identifying whether the product increases revenue, decreases costs or enhances security, and then helping the buyer put a number on it. Listen
Kerrest notes that prospects readily say they'd use a product but balk at a $100,000 price. He says the ROI and TCO buckets in enterprise software are usually simple, and the key part of early sales is pinning down which one applies and quantifying it for the buyer.
“In enterprise software, you're usually increasing revenue, you're decreasing costs, you're enhancing security.”
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Founders make a mistake by thinking their selling role ends once they get first revenue, raise the Series A and hire a professional sales team. Listen
Roberge says founder selling has become more common for technical founders in the earliest days: the first dozen customers, design partners and first revenue. His point is that the founder's role continues after that, not just with investors and the vision, but in the revenue funnel alongside the reps.
“But I think the mistake is they think it's over. Once that's done, once they get the A, once they hire the professional team. No. The founder still has a role, not just with the customers and the investors and selling them and the buy and the vision, but still in the funnel at the revenue with the reps.”
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Founders should see a cold call as solving the prospect's problem rather than protecting a relationship with them. Listen
Roberge compares sales to a doctor who gives hard news because the doctor's mission is to solve your problem. He says a product founder is working on important things and should put solving the problem ahead of being friends with everyone, even though there will be resistance.
“You're not there for a relationship. You're not there to like. make friends with this person and protect the like a friendship. You're here to like solve a problem for them and in the process selling whatever your product is.”
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Most cold-call objections can be grouped into a short list of five to 10, so reps can prepare responses after a few weeks. Listen
Roberge says that when you study cold calls, 90% of objections simplify to a list of five to 10, with examples such as I don't have time, I don't have the money, and it's not healthy. He says that once a rep has done this for a week, the objections become familiar, and that it gets easier with weeks of practice.
“In fact, like when you study these things, 90 % of the objections will be simplified to a five to 10 list.”
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Keep a script for the opening of a cold call, because the first seconds decide the call and new reps need something repeatable. Listen
Roberge says he normally dislikes scripts but recommends one for the cold connect for two reasons. The first 5 to 10 seconds carry the most weight, and cold callers are usually new to sales, in an entry-level role he calls the hardest in sales. A repeatable script lets the rep focus on listening and handling objections.
“I hate scripts. But in this case, we kind of have to use them. It's such an intense moment.”
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Most companies Perplexity works with already have someone who loves the product, and that champion needs help fighting their own bureaucracy. Listen
Dmitri said that, unlike a pure B2B product, most companies Perplexity tries to work with already have someone inside who loves it. The task is to help that champion get through their own organisation's bureaucracy. He said he started with consumer and prosumer subscription products, where he thought progress would be quicker than with carriers.
“it's about having that champion kind of you know help us fight their own bureaucracy to get to the other side, right?”
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Before pursuing a partnership, ask for all past email threads with the target to judge whether a real champion exists. Listen
Dmitri asked Aravind to forward every email chain he had with potential partners. He said he could read between the lines to see whether anyone there really wanted the partnership to happen. He then advised not to focus on partners where nobody wanted it to happen.
“ask them like, forward me all the email chains you've ever had. And I could kind of read in between the lines of like, there's nobody there that really wanted it to happen.”
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A partnership pitch has to show the partner's decision-maker how the deal improves their customer acquisition or retention. Listen
Dmitri said Aravind's earlier attempts failed because he did not tie the story together for the partner, meaning how the deal would improve that partner's customer acquisition or retention. Dmitri called getting the person on the other side of the table promoted the most important task when doing something zero to one.
“How do you get the person on the other side the table promoted? That's your most important task in trying to do something zero to one”
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Senior business leaders who back a deal can speed up enterprise procurement from inside the company. Listen
Ed said procurement's job is to limit vendors and standardise, which makes it hard to get through, even for his current, well-capitalised company with over $100 million in ARR. He said networking with business leaders at a high enough level can make procurement go faster. At his current company, the team is working on a deal with a big bank where an EVP of retail banking is making behind-the-scenes moves to speed the process.
“the business leaders, if you get high enough, can make procurement go faster.”
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Large companies' innovation groups are worth selling to when the solution is compelling, despite advice to avoid them. Listen
Ed rejected the common advice to avoid innovation groups, saying a compelling solution that delivers value will be taken seriously. He said Fidelity's innovation lab was highly regarded and staffed by former business leaders, and that GE had a rule to adopt good ideas from other divisions. That led to a GE CIO putting Seismic forward at a conference of business-line CIOs.
“if you have a compelling enough solution and you're offering value, like they will take you seriously.”
Listen to the episode Episode Sales process & deals Link to this Report a problem