Eliza Cohen Belbeck

It's not uncommon in fractional sales to come across orgs that are asking for 10-15x pipeline coverage. Sales is hard. Sales isn't THAT hard. Reality check: about 6% of sellers account for 92% of ARR, and they all run processes that look a lot alike. If you haven't cracked sales yet, you're not alone. In fact, you are the 94%. BUT you can use the same process as the 6% and dramatically increase your revenue for a hell of a lot less than it will cost you to 10x your pipeline.

9

3 Comments

It's getting to that time of year when your CFO sends an email asking for your help to save $1M or $10M in costs... It's a common tactic when Sales teams don't hit their H1 targets or when the Q3 and Q4 pipeline is looking weaker than expected. If you didn't fill your open headcount fast enough or spend your travel and training budget, you might start to panic and scramble to protect your budget. It's tempting to keep your head down and remain out of sight, hoping you will stay off the Finance team's radar. There's a better way to approach this. A company-wide push for cost savings is a golden opportunity to bring attention to your best ideas. Here are 5 ways you can seize it: 1️⃣ Volunteer to swap some open headcount for outsourced or contingency spending. If you believe your headcount may be trimmed anyway, lean into it by proposing to trade in a portion of your open headcount for agency or outsourced spending. It can help secure your remaining open headcount while simultaneously accelerating your key projects with external resources 2️⃣ Ramp up short-term spending on opportunities with strong ROAS & LTV:CAC. Although your CFO wants to cut costs, spending for revenue growth is a more efficient way to achieve this. Do you have strong Marketing channels where you can accelerate customer acquisition with more paid search spend? Perhaps you've been holding back on Mobile ad spend or non-English paid search - this is the right time to make a case for highly focused investment. 3️⃣ Modernize your tech stack. If you haven't overhauled your technology stack in the past 3 years, take a look at some modern tools and platforms that can eliminate manual effort or reduce high third party spend. It's the perfect time to consolidate and overhaul your use of technology. 4️⃣ Ask for your vendors help. Don't wait until your budget is cut to renegotiate contracts and service agreements with your vendors. They are experts in their field - ask for their ideas and suggestions to reduce costs or gain efficiencies. Ask your web developer agencies how you can reduce costly manual work with routine processes and standardization. Ask your localization agency how AI and Machine Translation can make your budget go farther. 5️⃣ Fast-track revenue growth opportunities. Where are the low-hanging fruit opportunities to expand or grow revenue in your team? Consider adapting your roadmap to fast-track initiatives that drive monetization and lower churn. Perhaps you can repurpose open headcount towards initiatives that have strong revenue potential. How else have you approached company-wide cost saving goals?

16

2 Comments

If you decide your sales team needs to help with renewals make sure they are incentivized correctly (I usually see a 70% new bookings goal and a 30% renewal / upsell goal). If you don't incentivize hunting, sales tend to farm too much and your growth will slow.

7

2 Comments

If your solution requires behavior change of any amount, you require a top down selling motion. Why? Behavior change is too hard to do bottoms up. It just doesn’t work. A pretty large number of SaaS apps think that they can go middle up or bottoms up. Then they are frustrated that their “champion” or “power user” isn’t driving the change they want. If your solution requires change, get good at selling to the c-level.

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2 Comments

I remember the days when Enablement had a squiggly red line underneath when you typed it out, and not a single Sales Leader I spoke to knew what I meant when I said the word... Fast forward to 2024, and tens of thousands of enablement professionals later... welcome to Generation Enablement. 👋 These folks are not defined by their age or their titles, but by their mission critical role & impact on go-to-market strategy, behaviors, and results. See how they drive strategic change across their organizations, and how you can too, in Seismic's latest study. 📖 https://bit.ly/4cSrnFI Learn more about #GenerationEnablement: https://bit.ly/3TPmdSp ​

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5 Comments