The question is a cold lead straight to demo the right play? For some it's about an initial call first to earn the right to ask them to come to a demo. Not suggesting your hypothesis is wrong. Similar to you, wondering what the right steps might be. And...
Everyone is using AI, so your message may be perfect, timing spot on, etc. However you're now competiting against volume.
AI is easy to spot in messaging.
Need more humanity in messaging.
Call it out, "Hi ____, First, I am typing this myself, no automation, no bots, no AI...."
Following thread as well.
jahangir.danish my please.
Agree with Siddharth S.. And I'll add it feels like you should probably still be doing the selling as the founder.
How many paying customers do you have right now?
How did you get them?
What makes you think you're ready for someone to do sales whether it's fractional or part time?
Paying someone part time to do a job they probably don't care about is just throwing money away. You wouldn't be asking the question otherwise.
Anyone good that you try to seduce with a big equity package won't take it.
You need help with messaging, nobody cares about this, "Algebrix is security-first: cybersecurity, IAM/identity (we've also got our own identity as a service platform, AlgebrixIdentity, built for startups/SMEs), plus cloud, AI, and digital transformation."
All they care about are their own use cases and pains. Suggest you shift messaging to discuss those items, not what you do.
Ok, I am going to disagree with everyone other than Sayanta G.. All these other things matter, but these are strategies, and they are good, and they aren't going to move the needle. Frankly doing all this drilling down into ICP and stuff should be a regular motion, not a reaction to being behind on the revenue. Here's what I mean specifically. You're looking at the wrong end of the funnel. If you know your close ratio, and you add more to the funnel, when is that revenue gonna actually hit. What I think people should be focusing on is improving the conversions of what's already in the funnel. You're missing your number not because of the top of the funnel, you're missing it because your sales team probably sucks to be frank.
Deals slipping = Bad Discovery
Discount Dystopia = Bad Discovery and Negotiation
Competitor Loss = Bad discovery + Cowardly Crossroads
Ghosting = Clueless on how to actually ask for an appointment other than some weak and lame attempt.
Didn't Have Right Champion = Bad Discovery
Blindsided = Happy Ears and Bad Discovery
Why does this happen? It's simple.
The CRO and VP of Sales want to blame someone other than themselves.
They want to blame the SDR team.
Yeah, let's blame the people with the least amount of experience SDR managers who were promoted because they could set meetings, not the real human skills to manage.
Let's blame the player/ coach person because we are too cheap to pay for real leadership.
What do you mean they can't get better we bought them Gong and ChatGPT?!!
SDR leader, I need 16 reports now that the quarter is over to prep for the board meeting. (Yeah, that won't affect coaching at all)
What you should be doing is teaching your sales team how to earn the right to ask questions, which questions to ask, and when to ask them. Sorry, not sorry. If I offended anyone, especially a CRO or VP of Sales, good. Hit me up, I'll prove it all to you. Jared R. happy to do a live knock-down, drag out, no holds bard, lumber jack cage match! And for those who want to send this to your leadership, use the hashtag #BlameRichard. 🫳 🎤
I think you need to also view it the other way. Who are the skeptics and what are the skeptical about? End of every first meeting if a second meeting isn't scheudled it's always, "take it back to my team" So stop asking about decision makers, you aren't ever gonna get to them that soon. Instead ask the following. You can even tee it up. "Hey, I'm willing to bet after this call you're gonna go share this with your team? I am curious, who do you think will be the most skeptical person on the team and what would they be skeptical about?" Get the answer and then say, Ok, that makes sense, would it be helpful if I include ____ to help you address that? Hopefully I can help reduce you becoming a ping-pong ball." I teach this to every single client. And every time they are blown away by how much more real intelligence and info they get.
Literally just learned about scheduled tasks with claude. I have it running a bunch of things and competitor updates as well. Shhhh, don't tell them. :)
400+ episodes of the Surf and Sales podast. Happy to share anything you'd like to know, Marisa S.
Time? IRL or virtual?
Hannah A. Show me a list of people saying you're wrong and I'll show you a list of people who will be the first in the unemployment line.
Nikhat I. ok, so here's a challenge based on the question you posed. The true definition of attribution is about the causes of behaviors and events to assign credit or blame to internal dispositions. Yes, I pulled that from google. In sales/ marketing, the term attribution has been high-jacked to relate more towards who gets credit for the deal. Technically they are the same thing, however different minds use those words with different concepts. Hence my question. It took me a minute to re-navigate. So, now that I figured that out, I understand you looking to drive the behaviors and events of the prospect as to why they should buy, aka, "why right now." i And here's what I think you are running into. Please correct me if I am still not understanding the picture you are painting. The issue is that executives think "right now" is always, "right now". T he prospect doesn't care about what your board wants, your VCs, your C-Levels, Wallstreet or your teams comp structure. "Why right now" only applies to the specific use case that the person you are targeting is most likely feeling based on the pains you solve related to their day to day activities. And even with the best AI, right now (no pun intended), you still cannot accurately measure that in a statistically significant way on a regular basis. Potentially, sure, not yet imo. So to your real concern... "they need clarity on who to reach out to and why right now."
That's a clearly defined ICP by company, title and role issue. That's your job, not the reps.
It's further requirement is excellent and accurate data. Again, your job, not the reps.
Compounding on that are having the right use cases and case studies in relation to your ICP and your current customers. Again, your job, not your reps.
Going deeper, this means you cannot assume your solution is for everyone, it's not. It's for the people who align with your current customer, verticals and titles. If you're still thinking your solution is a horizontal solution, it may be in theory, it's not when it comes to sales conversations.
And this is where training comes in, whether its you or someone else you have to take all I mentioned and teach them.
Don't put it in a playbook and ask them to read or memorize it.
Don't expect them to figure it out on their own, no matter what generation they are from.
And just because it's easy for executives to have this in their mind and know how to do it is completley different than a sales person.
Adjust expectations accordingly away from the team and back to leadership first.
TLDR - Your reps don't need clarity on who to reach out to and why now. You do, and then its up to you to teach your reps.
