Sales 2.0

Book notes: The Sales Acceleration Formula

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I’ve been using the summer to review some of the classic books in sales and marketing and refresh some of the fundamentals to building world-class “revenue engines” described.

I started with Mark Roberge’s book “The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million”.

The part of Mark’s book I like the most is about hiring salespeople. If you’re going to take advice on hiring salespeople, Mark seems like a great guy to trust in my opinion. He hired hundreds of salespeople over his time at Hubspot, while building their sales and services area from 1 employee (him) to 450 employees.

The first point Mark makes in this section of the book is a killer: “World-class sales hiring is the most important driver of sales success”. He goes on to say, “Even if I was world-class at sales training, managing, coaching, and forecasting, it would not be enough to offset a team of mediocre salespeople.”

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Sales prospecting made easier

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I don’t understand why it is acceptable for a process like cold calling (now often started via email) to work one in a hundred times–or in email efforts one in a thousand times.

I used to work for a major semiconductor manufacturer. In the chip business “yield” from a silicon wafer is critical to profitability. Teams of people spend their life pushing to get a few more chips out of each silicon wafer.

I picture how a company in the high tech chip business could survive when only 1 in 100 of their chips was usable (or 1 in 1,000). Meanwhile most high tech companies accept this level of productivity in their sales departments. This content is for those who are not willing to accept those success rates.

This post describes a framework that I have found over the last two decades can really change the math on prospecting.

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Make time for sales “magic”

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“Win the day by noon”.

I love that expression and I’ve found great happiness in trying to implement it. There’s something really great about having lunch and knowing the day is already a good one. It certainly does not happen every day, but it’s a great goal to strive for.

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Account Executive Inc.

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If you’re an AE, I recommend appointing yourself a small business owner.

Just like most small business owners you probably feel like you have no time. You may also feel unsupported by your company and that you need to do everything yourself.

Just like small business owners there are things you can do to make this situation a lot better. By doing so you will (a) sell more, (b) get a bigger commission check, and (c) be less stressed. Not a bad combo.

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Go through the motions

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In sales we need to go through the motions.

Our buyers are “frazzled” as Jill Konrath says.

Even if you use social selling techniques that get you a referral or help you connect to a potential buyer using your mutual background, it is still likely to take some follow up before you confirm a meeting time (or virtual meeting time these days).

Research from XANT looked at the optimal “cadence” for prospecting based on the masses of data available to them through companies’ usage of their software. Their study looked at 479,140 outbound cadences from nearly 9,000 companies.

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