Sales Process Management

My client fired their entire SDR team on Tuesday By Friday, their pipeline had grown by 60% This sounds impossible It's not After auditing 50 B2B sales organizations over 10 years, I've uncovered the most expensive myth in modern selling: → The belief that MORE activity at the TOP of your funnel will fix conversion problems at the BOTTOM Let me share what actually happened: This mid-market software company was spending $350,000 annually on their 4-person SDR team - 100+ cold calls per rep daily - 17 meetings booked weekly - "Incredible metrics" according to leadership - But their close rate? A devastating 1.2% The VP of Sales was convinced they needed MORE outreach, MORE automation, MORE top-of-funnel I suggested something different: pause all prospecting for 7 days Instead, we had their account executives do something radical - engage with the 215 prospects already in their pipeline who'd gone cold after initial meetings Using a framework we developed: - 65 prospects responded within 24 hours - 41 booked follow-up meetings - 23 re-entered active buying cycles - 6 closed within 14 days (total value: $212K) The shocking revelation? - Their pipeline wasn't empty - It was overflowing with neglected opportunity. This company didn't have a lead generation problem. They had a lead nurturing catastrophe. By reallocating resources from mindless prospecting to strategic engagement, they've now: - Reduced CAC by 60% - Shortened sales cycles by 30% - 2x their close rate The counterintuitive truth: Sometimes the fastest path to growth is to stop chasing new opportunities and start converting the ones you've already earned. What percentage of your marketing and sales budget is focused on prospects who've already shown interest vs those who haven't? That ratio reveals everything about your future growth trajectory P.S. If you need help with your sales, send me a message

Last week, I heard from a super impressive customer who has cracked the code on how to give salespeople something they’ve always wanted: more selling time. Here’s how he transformed their process. This customer runs the full B2B sales motion at an awesome printing business based in the U.S. For years, his team divided their time across six key areas: 1. Task prioritization 2. Meeting prep 3. Customer responses 4. Prospecting 5. Closing deals 6. Sales strategy Like every sales leader I know, he wants his team to spend most of their time on #5 and #6 — closing deals and sales strategy. But together, those only made up about 30% of their week. (Hearing this gave me flashbacks to my time in sales…and all that admin tasks 😱) Now, his team uses AI across the sales process to compress the amount of time spent on #1-4: 1. Task prioritization → AI scores leads and organizes daily tasks 2. Meeting prep → AI surfaces insights from calls and contact records before meetings 3. Customer responses → Breeze Customer Agent instantly answers customer questions 4. Prospecting → Breeze Prospecting Agent automatically researches accounts and books meetings The result? Higher quantity of AI-powered work: More prospecting. More pipeline.  Higher quality of human-led work: More thoughtful conversations. Sharper strategy. This COO's story made my week. It's a reminder of just how big a shift we're going through – and why it’s such an exciting time to be in go-to-market right now.

There are NO shortcuts in Enterprise Sales. Period. Tell your CEO. Tell your board. Rush your $400K deal—and it collapses. Guaranteed. Here are 8 ways you’re failing upmarket running it like SMB (and why slowing down actually closes deals faster): 1. Cut Corners? Execs Will Kill it in 5 Minutes You spent months, heck, maybe years. Execs need just one 5-min hallway chat to kill your deal. DON’T skip steps—build a bulletproof business case: unignorable problem, rock-solid ROI, strategic, risk mitigation. Or say goodbye. 2. Procurement Smells Desperation Your champion says, “EOY close works, thanks for the discount!” Procurement? They’ll squeeze more, introduce extra steps, and question your credibility if you seem desperate. Stop discounting. Stop pressuring. Bring the best deal. 3. Fast POCs = Endless Evaluations This is Enterprise graveyard. Quick, poorly planned POCs drag deals indefinitely, or worse—fail to achieve solution fit. Take the time to set explicit success criteria, time frames, and stakeholders involved upfront. Treat the POC like a mini-project with regular check-ins and outcome tracking. 4. Skipping Stakeholders = Going to Court w/o a Lawyer Getting to the CxO, isolating the Tech Buyer…feels like hard work? It is, but Ent Sales isn’t Vegas—don’t gamble. Engage stakeholders EARLY. Map their needs, concerns, and build separate threads. Multi-threading is your insurance policy. 5. Security Sees Your Rush as a Threat Their timelines and concerns always come first. Pressuring will only raise red flags: “What loopholes are they pushing past us?”. Provide docs proactively, run calls early, and treat them as allies, not obstacles. 6. Legal Has NO Quota Legal doesn't care about your quarter-end. They're there to kill risk, not help your sales quota. Start legal reviews early, surface red flags ASAP, and don’t leave it to legal teams to run—orchestrate the process. Easy = Faster. 7. Rushed Discovery = Dysfunctional Buying Groups Fast disco stacks risk—time bombs waiting to explode when new stakeholders are looped in. The more you involve them early and co-create a compelling problem statement together, the faster everyone rallies to make a deal happen. 8. Rushed Next Steps = More Steps Booking quick next steps? Good luck. You’ll soon face endless unexpected steps that go around in circles. Slow down—create a clear Mutual Action Plan. Lay out future steps explicitly, confirm buy-in, and execute intentionally. —— Enterprise deals dragging 18 months? Not because you aren’t pushing hard enough— But because you’re pushing TOO HARD. Shortcuts just leave you chasing hidden stakeholders. Or juggling endless surprise steps. You CAN'T 'hack' Enterprise Sales. Solid case. Consensus. Processes. All take time. So go slow. Build it right. And watch it fly. Slow IS fast. P.S. We built Aligned to help manage the complexity of Enterprise Sales. 100% FREE Deal Room used by 40k sellers. Try it: https://lnkd.in/d_49kHZE

The typical commercial team vs. legal team struggle: Sales: "Can you review this contract today? Customer needs to sign by EOD." Legal: "I'll try to fit it in." Legal reviews 42-page agreement, finds problematic liability clause Legal: "We need to modify clause 18.3 - exposes us to unlimited liability." Sales: "But the customer is waiting!" Slack notification 30 mins later: "Legal is blocking another deal 🙄" What Sales didn't see: --> The GC was simultaneously managing a data breach incident --> 27 other contracts were in the queue --> The "quick review" took 2.5 hours of specialized expertise --> That "problematic clause" could have cost millions in future liability The real cost isn't just the legal team's time. It's: --> Strategic initiatives delayed --> Business-critical advice postponed --> Preventable risks missed --> Legal talent burning out Why do so many companies still use in-house counsel as human document processors instead of strategic business partners with specialized expertise? To my fellow legal leaders: We must find better ways to handle document volume without sacrificing quality or burning out our teams. What's the most time-consuming document processing task your team faces?

We just interviewed 15 different agencies for a $60k+ brand project. I was not impressed with the agency sales process. Here’s what agencies should stop, start, and continue with their sales process: Here’s What You Should Stop: - Stop sending your CEO in to charm people. Most are not that charming. - Stop talking about your success with clients who are in different industries. For example, B2B companies don’t care about your DTC experience. - Stop talking in vagueitees. Go into detail about your process, methodology, and passions. Here’s What You Should Start: - Start connecting with prospects on LinkedIn before your call and let them know you are excited to chat. - Start (if you are an exec) following up with prospects after the call to see if your team nailed it or what you still may need alignment on. - Start developing a methodology, approach, and process deck that you can share during and after the call with prospects. It’s more effective to sell why you are different instead of selling why you are better. Here’s What You Should Continue: - Continue involving SME’s on sales calls. Best call I had was with my team and their team. No CEO present. - Continue turning every engagement into a case study. - Continue involving current customers in reference calls and recommend this as a next step proactively. There are no heroes in sales. There’s only the prepared and the unprepared.

Sales leaders: After working with 5,000 revenue orgs, I've seen 5 patterns in every great sales team. From InsideSales, to Gong, to pclub.io – my career has been in the walls of revenue teams. 5 things the best do: 1. They know where they win. They don’t chase the market. They chase the segment where they have unfair advantage. They define a surgical ICP and stop wasting cycles on deals that never close. They’re obsessed with: • Where they win • Where they lose • Where win-rate is too low Then they operationalize it. They don’t just "know" where they win. They run the business around it. One CRO I talked to said this: “If you want higher close rates, stop chasing bad deals.” 2. They’re obsessed with narrative. Once they know the territory, they design the narrative that unlocks it. They refine messaging until buyers think: “They understand my world better than I do.” Narrative isn’t a marketing exercise. It’s fuel that drives revenue. When you nail it, everything is easier. Whether it’s the CMO, CRO, or even CEO, someone holds this job: “Chief Narrative Officer.” 3. They build a performance culture. The best sales teams take a page from Netflix: “We’re not a family. We’re a pro sports team.” • Camaraderie? Yes. • Psychological safety? Yes. But also: We’re here to perform. If someone isn’t pulling their weight, the culture addresses it. Elite teams balance two forces: A) High standards B) High safety The paradox: The more transparent you are about: • Performance expectations • PIP criteria …the less fear exists. Performance expectations create short-term fear. But ambiguity creates permanent fear. Open expectations remove "wondering." Reps know where they stand. That frees them. 4. They build rock-solid stages & exit criteria. Great teams don’t use vague stages like Discovery → Demo → Proposal. They design a sales process that exposes the reality of a deal. • Clear stage definition • Binary exit criteria • Aging discipline This clarity drives predictability: • Reps stop guessing • Managers coach w/precision • Forecasts stop lying Process definition is the compass. But here’s the trap: Having a clean process still isn't enough for consistency. Sales stages and exit criteria only define what to do. They do not equip reps with how to do it. 5. They treat skills like a performance system. Strong leaders don’t just tell reps what to do. They build the skill capacity to do it. Once you define a great process, a hard truth emerges: Many reps don’t have enough skill capacity to do it. Great teams systematize skill excellence. They treat skill capacity like a monetizeable asset. These teams don’t view skills as “our people should already have these.” They design skill profiles, measure them, train them. Process without skill is academically strong, commercially weak. Skill without process is chaos. Do both? You unlock revenue excellence. Which of these 5 stood out most?

For my first 16 years in tech sales, I averaged 240K/year. In my last 4 years, I averaged 720K/year. I did this by using an approach I call Yo-yo selling: 🪀 It’s how you win large, complex enterprise deals by building credibility with senior executives at the beginning of a sales cycle. This will save you months of spending time with mid or lower level Directors on a deal cycle, only to have your deal stall because it's not a priority for Executives. Here’s the concept: You start at the top, get senior level sponsorship for a deep discovery, drop down into the business, then bounce back up with a report of findings. This is the process I've used for nearly every 7-figure deal I've ever closed. Step 0: Research before outreach Before asking for time, I do deep strategic research. Earnings calls. Investor decks. Press releases. Executive interviews. I also spend time talking to their team to see if the problem that I solve exists in their company. Using that research, I build a Point of View that connects their top business goals to real execution gaps. This earns executive time. Today, AI tools like ChatGPT make this easier than ever. What used to take hours now takes minutes. If you skip this step, you lose your edge. Step 1: Prospect to the top and gain their sponsorship to engage Lead with your POV. The key is to teach them something new about their business which they aren't already aware of, and show them how it's putting their highest level goals at risk. If they lean in, offer up a deep discovery with your team and their team. Lock in a date to come back for a readout. Have them assign a project manager to help you coordinate Step 2: Drop down Once you have executive sponsorship, meet with their team. The key is to have the Exec sponsor send out a note to their team explaining what it's for. This will keep the assessment moving forward. Study workflows. Capture friction. Collect quotes. Do not pitch. Just listen. Step 3: Bounce back up Bring it all together in an executive summary. Show how their vision connects directly to what’s broken below. Present a focused business case. Build a custom demo. Create a roadmap and implementation plan. That’s where deals close. Real example from my career At Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, we were told “no” on a point solution. Instead of walking away, I stepped back and asked what the company really needed. After deep research, I re-engaged the COO with a transformation POV centered on the experience of 50,000+ agents. The result was one of the largest new logo deals in Salesforce history. But Yo-yo selling alone isn’t enough. Because it's hard to execute and takes patience. Top performers also master their mindset, habits, and discipline. That’s why I put together a free masterclass for sellers who want to break into the top 1 percent. 👉 Watch the free training here: https://lnkd.in/eWD8mTqH If you’re serious about enterprise sales, this will change how you sell.

Hey Salespeople: Do you truly understand the Challenger sales methodology (teach, tailor, take control)? It does not mean being aggressive. TEACH – Provide insights that challenge the prospect’s current thinking and help them see an unrecognized problem or opportunity. This approach positions the salesperson as a trusted advisor rather than just a vendor. Example: Instead of just pitching accounting software, show a CFO data revealing they're spending 40% more time on compliance than industry peers, costing them $200K annually in labor inefficiency. TAILOR – Customize the conversation to align with the prospect’s industry, company priorities, and individual stakeholder concerns. Example: When speaking with the IT Director, focus on integration and security features; with the CFO, emphasize ROI and cost reduction; with end-users, highlight ease of use and time savings. TAKE CONTROL – Taking control involves guiding the sales conversation confidently, addressing objections proactively, and steering the prospect towards a decision. This doesn't mean being aggressive, but rather being assertive and value-focused Example: After demonstrating value, saying "Based on what we've discussed, I recommend starting with our enterprise package at $85K annually. To hit your Q3 goals, we should begin implementation within three weeks. Does your team have the authority to move forward, or should we include someone else in our next conversation?"

Set and forget is not a pricing strategy ! Price--> Design--> Build We know that's what everyone says, but thats an oversimplification of what the entire process should look like. The assumption your pricing was correct in the pre-design phase and doesn't need change is dangerous, dangerous, dangerous !! I have seen too many physical and software products change drastically between initial design to final delivery. Product owners will typically assume that pricing still holds. You have to change that philosophy. In the real world we need a lot more iteration in price: Step 1: Initial Price: This stage you quantify the value and set an initial target price. This is a combination of internal/external research, some value quantification and pricing knowledge. Step 2: Design: With that price info, the product team designs a product that hits product and profitability targets. This is also where you need to keep track of the product margins. Often product will go design a better product at the expense of higher cost, and margins suffer before launch. Step 3: Reprice: Now that we know the new design constraints that impact the profitability, this stage gives you the opportunity to reprice the product based on the design. If substantial value has been added, price should go up. Do not fall into the 'lets over deliver on value and keep price same' trap. Step 4: Build: Now with that new price info and product roadmap the product goes through the build stage. Step 5: Pre launch reprice : Now significant time may have passed since last price review. The market for the product, the economy etc may have changed. This stage can assist in making last changes before product goes out. Good time to also establish guardrails for price performance, discount strategy, or sales strategy. Step 6: Launch: Goes without saying the product is out in the real world. Great way to capture feedback. Also a stage where performance is measured against the price guardrails. Step 7: Reprice 3: Based on sales feedback, you start charting next steps. Selling too slow, you may need discount or reprice. Selling too fast, it may be overdelivering on price vs value. Pricing metric may need change. Fx may have changed. This is the price adjustment stage, should be annual or semi annual. You can incorporate these steps into new product introduction framework or annual or semi annual pricing strategy process, either ways it will help establish good pricing principles in the org. I know of many products that once designed were never repriced years into its life.. Surely things must have changed all those years... Think of Pricing as a lifecycle !! -------------------------- We are in #Pricingtribe.

Your pipeline is full. Your calendar isn’t. I see this a lot in £1 - 5m teams. The CRM looks healthy. New leads coming in every day. But when you check the actual diary, there are gaps everywhere. The issue usually isn’t volume. It’s alignment. Too many leads that look right on paper but never turn into real conversations. So the team stays busy managing the pipeline instead of moving deals forward. Over time, this creates a false sense of progress. It’s a bit like having a shop full of footfall but no one picking anything up. Activity is there, but intent isn’t. You end up optimising for more traffic instead of better buyers. One simple shift is to qualify harder earlier. Add one question that forces intent. Something like “What needs to change for you to take action on this in the next 30 days?” If they can’t answer that clearly, they’re not ready. Are you optimising for more leads or better conversations? #DigitalMarketing #B2B #StartUps #leadership #saas