Webinar Q&A: Grow revenue with a modern sales approach

Dina Osman

Dear Pipedrivers,

Thank you for attending our webinar "Grow revenue with a modern sales approach" last week! We hope you enjoyed it.

We received a lot of great questions and, unfortunately, couldn’t get to all of them live. As promised, Collin Cadmus has answered all the remaining questions in writing - you can find his responses in the Comments section.

If you missed the webinar, feel free to watch the recording.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taR5qr5YuAg

See you at our next webinars! 🤩

Dina Osman

How to grow revenue/generate leads with a modern approach for services you cannot induce demand much - such as contract manufacturing of specialized equipment?
This is not my area of expertise (outside of tech) but I would consider starting a YouTube channel for the business where your top industry expert creates videos on each relevant subject, problem, and solution. YouTube is filled with channels like this and they care capitalizing on the fact that people search both Google and YouTube for answers to questions. So you want the titles of your videos to address the common questions in your industry. Let that channel become a source of truth and knowledge and that is the start to using a "modern approach" to generating demand and brand awareness.

How do you know that there is a high quota vs low activity or effort from the sales rep?
There are stages to discovering an accurate quota. You start with Founding AEs who generally have no quota. They are hired as the first sellers and they are incentivize with large equity grants and are generally people who aspire to build their own company someday. They are a very specific hiring profile because you know they are going to do everything they can to maimize revenue and continuously break last month's record. Repeating this process while refining your ICP and perfecting your sales process is what eventually leads you to discovering what a repeatable quota should look like. The key is that you always need people on the team who are acheiving the quota (with equal leads and resources as the rest of the team). If you don't have these people then the quota has not been "proven" and personally in that situation I think it's wrong to hold reps accountable to those numbers and fire them for missing them because there's no evidence that it's possible. So you need to focus on first having a base of top reps that prove what's possible, then you teach the rest to follow that same process (or idealy iterate and improve it). Everyone's activity metrics in modern sales will look different. This is one of the big differences from predictable revenue where everyone would aim for the same inputs. With modern sales, multi threading, social media, and mult-channel approach, the activities will look different for everyone as they each lean into their strengths and weaknesses. I suggest calculating Sales Velocity to help normalize these numbers into something that's comparable across each rep. Here is a post on how to calculate Sales Velocity: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/collincadmus_what-is-your-sales-velocity-heres-how-activity-7314654938263941121-eau2?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAANhWdIBS9zAsFwhvHDPQsbDZbJKchuvets

What are those three AEs? founding, growth, and what? Thank you.
Founding AE, Growth AE, and Scaled AE. Here's a post describing each: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/collincadmus_which-ae-profile-do-you-fit-best-believe-activity-7315369761322786818-1hxv?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAANhWdIBS9zAsFwhvHDPQsbDZbJKchuvets

I am not sure about GTM engineering being a new trend. Sales-to-Engineering has been present for some time! It has morphed a little but not sure if it is a new fad!
Yes and no. GTM Engineering is a bit different from traditional Sales Engineers as SE's typically focus on helping the prospects and customers on the technical side whereas a GTM Engineer is helping the internal team with developing lead, contact, and account lists, and ideally diving deep into intent data and helping to use modern tools that identify WHEN a prospect is in market for a solution. So SE's support the buyer while GTME supports the sellers. I think that's a good way to break down the difference at a high level, but yes, the GTM Engineer role is brand new and still being established in terms of it's true role description.

Hi Collin. Can you recommend the best resources to learn and implement LLM SEO and other useful tools like Kajabi you use for your sales process?
I don't know of anyone even talking about LLM SEO yet. I actually started saying that phrase before hearing it anywhere so I'm not even sure if you'll see it mentioned anywhere yet but I know marketers are thinking about it and speculating on how to do it. As of now most seem to think it's going to be the same practices as traditional SEO-- i.e. publish a LOT of content and hope ChatGPT picks it up over time. I also think talking to ChatGPT about your products in an extrmeley technical way might help but there's no evidence that private chat data makes it's way into the database yet. However, I'm willing to bet this is why so many BigCo's are eager to have ownership in a major LLM... because it's going to drive and steer a lot of revenue through recommendations and Q&A... it is becoming the defacto salesperson and referral source.

I am wondering what the main takeaway for the modern sales approach is to grow revenue? Understand stakeholders beyond POC, understand the generational shift, do an ungated demo! What else?
From a high level you need to re-think your entire GTM motion from the perspective of the modern buyer (or younger gen). You need to analyze your customer and prospect base to understand when these generational changes will impact your org. Most of this is obvious when looking at the data, so the intention of this discussion is to provide context around WHY the data is changing and help you to understand how to assess the root causes. There's an endless amount of examples to get into since it's different for each situation. If you need help diving into your specific situation this is something I can help with on a consulting basis and you can book some time to chat at the bottom of my homepage on collincadmus.com and I also have a course called The Modern Outbound System where I dive deeper into many of these topics (it's currently buy one get one free) so if you join the course you can invite a friend or co-worker for free.

Dina Osman

Q: Our product is both hardware and SaaS so how do we show that value to grow revenue when the SaaS isn't the 'star' of our offering but an extension of it.
A: We did this at Doctor.com in my first VP Sales role. We had a device called ReviewHub™ which was a mini laptop that would sit inside a doctor’s office to collect patient reviews that we would syndicate out to their health profiles to improve their reputation. Since we were selling a physical device that was powered by our software and partnership integrations, we had a lot of success at tradeshows (attended over 70 per year) and our booth setup was entirely focused on displaying the ReviewHub™ and getting people to try it first-hand. We also had outside salespeople that would bring demo devices into doctors' offices to show them, although I eventually did away with this team since we were more efficient with inside sales (we moved the outside salespeople to tradeshows). Not sure if this addresses your specific situation but that’s one way to think about it. Although generally speaking I don’t think selling hardware means you necessarily need an entirely different sales approach than just selling software—either way you’re pitching a problem and solution. I would just make sure to frame the hardware as an upside and ensure your pitch is justifying the need for it and why it’s better than a software-only solution. Make the hardware your advantage since the barrier to entry is much greater for competitors.

Q: How do you manage the transition from one employer to another in your LinkedIn. How do you navigate cheerleading for one employer in your personal LinkedIn and then cheer for a new employer?
A: Assuming you’ve done nothing wrong and you’re a good employee, even if you’ve missed your sales targets and got fired this is not a big deal today. Everyone in sales gets fired, it’s part of the game. You have to acknowledge the reality of the tech industry (assuming you’re in tech) that venture portfolios consist of 20+ companies and usually only 1 or 2 will become unicorns, meanwhile they push all 20 to hire aggressively and aim for unicorn growth metrics. The result of this is an industry with excessive turnover, low average tenure, and low quota attainment below 40%. Because of this, job hopping has become the norm and any experienced hiring manager knows this. That said, the truth is golden but you need to craft your story in a simple and non-combative way. Don’t speak negatively about your past employer, just state as a matter of fact what took place. Usually it’s as simple as our company downsized or they over-hired and let people go, etc. If you keep the explanation super simple and logical, there’s usually no need for follow up questions. But if you start going on a long rant with excuses and negative tone—that’s a red flag. Just remember this is a game where people get traded more frequently than sports players. It’s part of what we do and there’s nothing wrong with it.
🔗 Job hopping is OK for salespeople

Q: We are about to start using campaigns in PipeDrive, but based on this webinar, I am not sure that that is the best way to move forward… are we just adding to the noise?
A: Do not stop your email or cold call campaigns. The takeaway from this presentation should not be to stop what you’re doing. The takeaway should be to add to it. Might cold calls and emails entirely die someday? Perhaps, but they’re not dead today (they’re just declining in performance). This means we need to start adding to the pipeline from other places, which may over time replace the legacy motions—but we’re definitely not there yet and may never be entirely. The point is, you need a social media play at your company, you need a podcast play, you need a YouTube play, etc. If buyers are searching for information in these places, we need to be there. But it doesn’t mean we want to pull away from things that are still delivering results, even if those results decline in performance YoY. A lot of this is simply brand visibility and awareness. If you’re not in the places your competitors are, you may become irrelevant.

Q: We are still getting a lot of leads through relationships. We have been attending conferences lately, and those are working well. As AI becomes more prominent, do you think face-to-face selling will make a comeback?
A: This is a big debate right now and I don’t think there’s a clear answer. For many companies, face-to-face selling never went away. For others, they’re looking for alternative places to invest their capital after downsizing their outbound sales teams and in-person events are a good place to put that money. That said, in-person selling goes entirely against the notion of improving efficiency, so that’s where I get hung up on the idea because it seems like more of a band-aid for many companies today rather than a long-term strategy. That said, if your ACV is high enough to support it then it can make sense. In either regard, focus on what works for your company more than you focus on the industry trends. If in-person works and makes sense, keep doing it and/or try to do more of it. A big part of the problem in the industry today is everyone switched to doing the exact same thing… so we don’t need to make that same mistake again.
Another thing to consider is influencer partnerships. This is a huge new channel for growth in social media since you can literally pay people with large audiences in your space to talk about your product. These types of brand partnerships are quickly taking over a large chunk of B2B marketing budgets because they work and they work fast. If relevant to your industry, I’d look into that and consider setting aside a budget for it. There are agencies that can facilitate this for you if you don’t want to build it in-house but it is generally as easy as cold messaging influencers and making them an offer. This play became saturated in B2C but it’s just getting started in B2B and the deal sizes are so much larger than B2C that it makes even more sense.

Q: We are a technology services company coming out with our first SAAS product. Are there any of the recommendations you are making for the product-oriented companies that would cross over for services?
A: I love when software companies also sell professional services. Salespeople generally love this because it means we have more things to sell and can drive the deal sizes up. My advice is to try to keep your base offering simple and easy to understand. This will take some testing and tuning to get right but you need to avoid letting your messaging become overly complicated. So you need to decide what your flagship product or service is. Is it going to be the SaaS and then the prof services are add-ons? Or is it the other way around and you're only offering your software to people who are first using your services? The challenge here is adding this complexity while keeping your customer acquisition process simple. If you need help working through this we can chat on a consulting basis and see if it's something I can help with. Feel free to book a one-time consult on the bottom of my homepage if you'd like to discuss: collincadmus.com

Dina Osman

Q: How can those of us who sell services translate the ungated video question? How is this of value when our company sells a service (not a product that can be demonstrated)? Thank you.
A: It may not be necessary but I'd say it depends on how complex it is to tell your story. Is that something you feel your website copy does effectively? Or would a 30–60 second video make it significantly more impactful? The best way to find out is an A/B test. So the video may not be a demo, but an explainer. Take a look at what Michel does at coldiq.com for an example of a non-demo video on the homepage. You will also see he's using video to add social proof to his homepage by showing video testimonials. This allows you to meet the CEO and his customers all in video without leaving their homepage. His website is an excellent example of how to use video. They say a picture says a thousand words... imagine what a video says. I interviewed Michel on my podcast here if you want to check it out: YouTube link

Q: What about protecting IP from competitors (e.g. UX)?
A: There are some instances where this is important but I would say they are very rare and in general you're going to find more upside by not worrying about this than you will by making efforts to keep things secret from competitors because everything you keep secret from a competitor is also essentially being kept secret from prospects and customers. Where I think this is important is in the early startup stages you want to make sure before you announce your company and launch publicly, that you have enough of a head start on your core product that it's not going to be too easy for someone to copy you. That said, if your idea is good they ARE GOING TO COPY YOU and that's ok, in fact it's good because it's validation that what you're building is good. The key is to stay ahead and stay differentiated through brand, community, and service quality. Companies who spend too much energy thinking about their competitors always lose in the end. Rare exceptions to this if you are creating something extremely proprietary but in most cases just plan on being copied and don't let it bother you, let it inspire you. If no one is copying you, the problem is likely not big enough to care about, or you are in an extremely rare situation.

Q: We are a service business helping savvy business professionals who want to invest in a franchise business. How might a service business benefit from this information to adapt the sales process?
A: I would use the same advice I gave in an above question about starting a YouTube channel. People who are thinking about starting franchises are definitely watching videos to learn how to do it. You want to create a channel that positions yourself as a domain expert on franchises. Make videos that answer common questions and make sure the titles of your videos address the common questions so when people are searching Google or YouTube for these topics they will find you. Building on YouTube takes time and effort but this is one of the best ways to build a brand and become a demand generator. Remember, go where the people are already spending their time and attention. Be consistent, deliver great quality, and be patient over time as it builds. This is just one idea.

Q: How do you keep competition from using your open information against you?
A: Generally speaking I think people spend too much time worrying about competitors. We are working in a world where every great idea has 10 competitors next month... so we can't avoid it, we can only plan for it. The best way to plan for it is to simply not care. It's good to be aware of what competitors are up to, but when you start subtracting from your prospects in order to hide things from your competitors, you're hurting your business more than you're helping it. That said, if there are things that a competitor knows about you that could be harmful for the public to know, that is a problem and the answer to it is not secrecy, it's eliminating that situation entirely. Your company should be capable of being an open book—that's the easiest way to market and sell something. When companies are rooted in secrecy, it doesn't land well today, unless they're in a specific sector where this is legally necessary. Just look at what happened with Rippling and their recent lawsuit against a competitor who had a plant working at Rippling and feeding information back to them (allegedly)... if competitors want to know things, they'll find them. You're best off positioning yourself where you have nothing to hide, in the same way politicians are now announcing their world's biggest mistakes so it can't be used against them, instead they own it. That's the new world essentially.

Q: When would offering a demo not be beneficial?
A: This is a vague question because there are countless potential answers. That said, assuming you're selling software, generally you want to start by offering demos to anyone who wants to see one, but if you run into a problem where you're running demos for a large volume of unqualified leads, you want to then start to play with the messaging on your website to help them to realize the product isn't right for them before they book the demo. In other words, your website messaging needs to accurately speak to and describe the audience you're aiming to help. If it does this effectively your website visitors should be essentially qualifying or disqualifying themselves before deciding if they want the demo.

Q: We are a jet company and we were formed to call and email the client. How can we improve our close? Or how can we say to become the one they are looking for?
A: This one is too vague for me to give an answer. I'm sorry but I'd need to ask a handful of follow up questions to give you the right advice here. I'd need to dive into what your success/failure rates look like today, who you're getting beat by, what they're doing differently, etc. That said, the high level answer here is testing and tuning. You need a baseline process that everyone follows (usually modeled after your most successful sellers) and from there each month it's worth testing small iterations to see what moves the needle. This is an ongoing and neverending aspect of evolving your sales process. I wish there was an easier answer to this one but it's a BIG question. While software and tech is my expertise I'd be happy to try to talk through this on a call if you'd like. You can book time at the bottom of my website if needed: collincadmus.com

Dina Osman

Q: Any special suggestions for the aviation industry?
A: Sorry not my area of expertise. Although I would say there's too many plane crashes the past couple years so I hope they do something about that :)

Q: "Does this question only apply to software companies? We are a biotech launching a new product."
A: Yes we're primarily talking about tech, software, cloud, and AI companies.

Q: I am in biotech and a lot is very relatable!
A: A lot of what's taking place in tech translates well into other industries.

Q: Can you touch on alternatives to free trials for non-software sales? We are a packaging distributor, makes it difficult to come up with something similar for us?
A: Not sure how the economics of this would work for you but if you're looking for a way to pull people over the finish line with less friction, you may consider offering a paid trial period where they pay to test your service for a limited amount of time. You may also consider having a back-out clause, where you say hey we're going to close this deal today but you have 30 or 90 days to back out if you're not happy. These are alternatives to free trials that may be applicable for what you're selling. You may even want to offer a full refund on the back-out clause (economics depending). These risks may turn out to be worth it if it helps close more deals or close deals faster... needs to be tested to see what happens and how often they actually back out.

Q: Buyers want to hear the authentic voice of their peers, your advocates, not your marketing. I am a baby boomer, my clients do 90% of their research before ever speaking with my company.
A: Video testimonials are a great way to leverage this. Take a look at what Michel is doing on coldiq.com where he uses video at the top of the page to explain his services but then uses customer videos lower down to show the social proof. This allows you to meet the CEO and his customers all without leaving his homepage.

Q: Is this stat specific to Tech B2B
A: Yes although likely applies elsewhere too.