David Cummings on Startups

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  • Video of the Week: Make Body Language Your Superpower

    Continuing with our recent sales theme, our video of the week is from Stanford titled Make Body Language Your Superpower. Enjoy!

    From YouTube: Making Body Language Your Superpower – an instructional video on using body language effectively. Presented by Stanford graduate students Matt Levy, Colin Bailie, Jeong Joon Ha, and Jennifer Rosenfeld. Created as an exemplary final project in Lecturer JD Schramm’s Strategic Communication course in March 2014. Body language – both the speaker’s and the audience’s – is a powerful form of communication that is difficult to master, especially if the speaker is nervous. This video will teach you how to use your body language effectively, even if you are nervous. This video will also show you how to read the audience’s body language and what you should do when they look bored or disconnected from the presentation. Use these tools to enhance your nonverbal communication abilities and better connect with your audiences.

  • Benchmarking Sales Development Reps

    After talking to a number of entrepreneurs that are getting value out of their sales development rep (SDR) team (especially when using SalesLoft Cadence), a common question comes up: what are some SDR benchmarks? Entrepreneurs want to know where they are in relation to average, and areas to improve.

    Here are a few questions to benchmark the sales development reps:

    • What’s the average number of successes (demos, appointments, meetings, etc.) per rep per month?
    • What’s the ratio of demos/appointments scheduled to completed (e.g. how many people don’t show up)?
    • What’s the average number of calls per day?
    • What’s the average ratio of calls to connects (calls that result in talking to someone)?
    • What’s the average ratio of positive conversations to calls?
    • What’s the average ratio of voicemails left to calls?
    • What’s the average number of emails per day?
    • What’s the average ratio of email opens to emails sent?
    • What’s the average ratio of email clicks to emails sent?
    • What’s the average ratio of email replies to emails sent?

    While I don’t have the benchmarks (yet), I’m sure we’ll be seeing them soon. Look for more data to emerge as the sales engagement industry grows.

    What else? What are some more questions to ask around benchmarking sales development reps?

  • The Different Meeting Rhythms in Sales

    Recently I was meeting with an entrepreneur and he was telling me about the weekly sales pipeline review he does with their head of sales where they talk about every opportunity that’s expected to close in the next 30 days. This got me thinking about the different meeting rhythms throughout a sales organization.

    Here are some of the common sales meetings:

    • Daily stand up or check-in meeting where everyone goes around and answers the questions “what did you accomplish yesterday?”, “what are you going to do today?”, and “are there any roadblocks?”
    • Weekly 1-on-1s where the sales manager meets individually with their direct reports and provides coaching and feedback (WideAngle is recommended for managing this process)
    • Weekly pipeline review with the sales managers and the executive that’s responsible for sales (often the CEO)
    • Weekly product training session where the sales team is trained on a different aspect of the product, both new and old features
    • Weekly sales meeting where the team huddles for a few minutes and talks about what is, and isn’t, working
    • Quarterly board meeting where the sales leader provides an update for the board
    • Annual sales kick-off meeting to talk about the new year and new opportunities

    These are some of the more common recurring sales meetings found in a scaling startup. The goal is to find the right balance between too many meetings and too few.

    What else? What are some other common recurring sales meetings?

  • Analyzing the Sales Opportunity Pipeline

    Continuing with yesterday’s post on Mining the Sales Opportunity History for Insights, there’s another more common sales leader and executive function: regularly reviewing the sales pipeline. Early in the startup lifecycle, the sales pipeline is often more sporadic as the sales stages and process are being developed. Then, as the sales process matures and there’s more operating history, the pipeline becomes an importance source of forecasting.

    Here are a few questions to ask when analyzing the sales opportunity pipeline:

    • What’s our coverage ratio goal? What’s our current coverage ratio? Coverage ratio is the sales pipeline relative to quota (typically 3:1 is a starting point).
    • What opportunities are in our normal range for average amount (value), average sales cycle (days from opportunity creation to close), and any other key data points?
    • How well does each opportunity meet the MEDDICC qualification standard?
    • How has each opportunity moved forward or backward in the time period since the last review?
    • What is the next step with the opportunity?
    • Anything else we need to know about the opportunity?

    Reviewing the sales opportunity pipeline is a regular part of growing a startup. Build a process and include a consistent set of questions.

    What else? What are some more questions to ask when analyzing the sales opportunity pipeline?

  • Mining the Sales Opportunity History for Insights

    Continuing with yesterday’s post on the sales ops role, there’s an extremely useful table in Salesforce.com called Opportunity History (API info). Opportunity History is based on the Opportunity object which is used to keep track of potential deals so as to manage the sales pipeline. As expected, Opportunity has fields like Account (the company), Amount (the potential value), Close Date (when it’s expected to close), Stage (the current sales stage), and more.

    Now, Opportunity History comes in as the audit trail of all changes to the Opportunity object. So, if a sales rep changes the Close Date of a potential deal, a new Opportunity History object is created reflecting that change. Why is this important? Opportunity History contains a treasure trove of information relating to how opportunities progress through the sales stages, how often reps change key values like Amount and Close Date, as well helps inform projections.

    Here are a few questions to ask from the Opportunity History info:

    • How often does the close date get pushed out, on average? How does it vary by sales rep?
    • When an opportunity close date is pushed out, how many days of lead time is there on average? How does it vary by sales rep?
    • How many days does an opportunity stay on a stage, on average? How does it vary by sales rep?
    • How does the number of days in a stage compare between opportunities that were won vs opportunities that were lost?
    • What’s the win rate of opportunities by stage (e.g. for all opps that reach the third stage, how many make it through to a sale)? How does it vary by sales rep (this is a much better way to do sales forecast as compared to a basic probability by stage)?
    • What’s changed recently in the pipeline? Which opportunities moved stages? How is this month/quarter progressing against the previous one?

    These types of questions can be answered by exporting the data into a spreadsheet and building a model or by using an automated analytics platform. Overall, the Opportunity History object has very valuable data and should be mined for insights.

    What else? What are some more questions to ask of the Opportunity History object in Salesforce.com?

  • The Sales Ops Role – Operational Rigor for the Sales Team

    One of the sales roles I hear talked about more lately is sales operations, better known as sales ops. As sales organizations worked to become more data driven and process oriented, it became clear that there often wasn’t the time, or skill set, to bring more operational rigor to the department. Enter the sales ops role.

    Here are a few thoughts on the sales ops role:

    • Think of the sales ops person (or team) like an industrial engineer that’s constantly evaluating the data and process
    • For the data, the common systems are the CRM, the sales engagement platform, and an automated analytics platform
    • Analysis is also done in Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel to find trends and areas of improvement
    • Ensuring consistent usage of the systems, like recording activities and changes to opportunities, is critical otherwise it won’t be possible to analyze the real data (e.g. follow the sales stages)
    • Monitoring data quality and integrity is an ongoing element to make sure standards are met and processes followed
    • Training and documentation is another important part of the role

    Sales ops operationalizes the sales department by incorporating more process and data analysis resulting in more predictability and success. Look for the sales ops role to grow and become more commonplace.

    What else? What are some more thoughts on the sales ops role?

  • Hire a Sales Assistant First

    One of the best hires for an entrepreneur that’s starting to get some traction is a sales assistant. With limited resources, a sales assistant can help make the entrepreneur’s time much more productive by freeing up some of the more tactical work, getting in front of potential prospects, and running aspects of the sales process. Think of the sales assistant as a way to help the entrepreneur continue juggling a number of initiatives while maintaining momentum on the sales front.

    Here are a few thoughts on the sales assistant hire:

    • Implement a sales development system like SalesLoft with corresponding best practices
    • Hold the sales assistant accountable to a lightweight process (e.g. figure out the sales stages and map out how the sales assistant fits into those stages)
    • Have the sales assistant sit in on the discovery calls and take notes
    • Ensure all to do items, follow ups, etc. are off-loaded to the sales assistant and tracked (too many entrepreneurs hold on to details that are better off delegated)

    The sales assistant is like a cross between a sales development rep and an assistant. Hiring a sales assistant early will help the entrepreneur sell more while ensuring that all aspects of the business continue to improve.

    What else? What are some more thoughts on the sales assistant as an early hire?

  • The Best Sales Demos are Conversations

    After mapping out the sales stages, it’s time to refine the sales demo. First Round Review has a great post up Your Product Demo Sucks Because It’s Focused on Your Product. Here are a few notes from the article:

    • Craft the demo for the audience
    • Distill the dozens of features down to the few that matter
    • Use the “You-They-You” framework where you show them what they need to get what you want
    • Write out all the common questions and answer (include them in the Sales Playbook)
    • 10% of demos are great and 10% are bad, it’s the 80% in the middle where you win or lose
    • Take at least five minutes to ask discovery questions (see Discovery Calls – A Critical Part of the Sales Process)
    • Common discovery question ideas:
      • What are they doing today that they aren’t happy about?
      • Where are their existing pain points?
      • What slows people down?
    • Have the audience envision what it will be like with the product or service
    • Get to here’s what you told me your goal is, here’s the challenge you told me is in the way, here’s what it will look like when our product takes down that challenge.
    • Always echo the tone and desire of your audience
    • Start with a macro view of the solution and then go micro (don’t overwhelm the prospect)
    • When getting into the more specific product details, connect it to what the prospect described earlier as part of the discovery
    • Leave the awkward silence in the conversation intentionally
    • Great demos are simply conversations with the product as the backdrop
    • Ask open-ended questions
    • Ask a point question to magnify part of the problem
    • Ask a response question where you ask a question back after getting a question

    The best sales demos are conversations. Follow these ideas and make your sales demos even better.

    What else? What are some more thoughts on the idea that the best sales demos are conversations?

  • Mapping Out the Sales Stages

    As the startup moves past the search for product/market fit and into the search for a repeatable customer acquisition model, mapping out the sales stages becomes much more important. Now, the sales process should start with a discovery call, but what’s next? Here’s an example group of stages in a sales process:

    1. Discovery
    2. Demo
    3. Trial
    4. Negotiation
    5. Won / Lost

    There’s a balance with having the stages fine-grained enough to reflect where things are in the process, but not so fine-grained that the stages don’t reflect useful information. One best practice is to include the stages that the majority of winning opportunities pass through. For example, some products require two or three demos before purchase, and most deals go through at least two demos, so it’d be useful to rename the “Demo” stage to “Demo 1” and add a new stage after it “Demo 2” since it’s a key part of the normal flow.

    Here’s a more advanced set of stages:

    1. Discovery Scheduled
    2. Discovery Complete
    3. Demo Scheduled
    4. Demo Complete
    5. Trial Started
    6. Trial Complete
    7. Negotiations
    8. Contracting
    9. Won / Lost

    Entrepreneurs should map out the sales stages and continually refine them as the business matures.

    What else? What are some more thoughts on mapping out the sales stages?

  • Discovery Calls – A Critical Part of the Sales Process

    One of the most important elements of the sales process is to really understand the problem that needs to be solved. This sounds obvious, but too often sales people just “show up and throw up” providing the same information without context. The solution is to always do a discovery call (or discovery questions) before proceeding to other aspects of the engagement.

    Here are some example discovery call questions:

    • How do you currently do X?
    • What tools, system or process do you use to do X?
    • What works well with X?
    • What are some challenges with X?
    • Who else is involved with X?
    • How much time do you spend on X?
    • If you could wave a magic wand, how would X work?
    • What’s your timeline for changing X?
    • Anything else I need to know about X?

    Of course, these questions would be more specific to the product or solution being offered as well as tailored to the audience (e.g. different questions for C-level execs vs front-line managers). The answers to each question should be documented in the CRM and applied to MEDDICC, where applicable.

    Sales discovery calls are a critical part of the sales process and should be structured and valuable.

    What else? What are some more thoughts on sales discovery calls?