CRO and Stage 2 Limited Partner, Lesley Young - Empower Your Business with Data and Metrics

Data-driven selling, KPIs, and risk management. 0:00

• Leslie emphasizes a data-driven approach to inform conversations and drive business growth.

• Importance of people and process in sales, specifically the need to remove risk from the forecasting and pipeline management process.

KPIs and data analysis in sales meetings. 3:45

• KPIs in tracking business performance and providing valuable insights

• KPI meetings to be actionable and provide hypotheses for improvement

• Speaker 1 discusses their experience with KPIs, mentioning how they used data to inform their work and make progress in their business.

• Pioritizing meetings and executing deals, highlighting the importance of having decision-makers and influencers in the room.

Managing sales teams and tracking KPIs. 8:45

• Salesforce for capturing interactions, but challenging to see AES business health.

• Importance of armoring frontline managers with tools to facilitate productive one-on-one conversations with AEs.

• Consistent KPIs across mid-market and enterprise teams include pipeline health, with pipelines serving as a lifeline for success.

Sales pipeline management and optimization. 12:39

• Importance of pipeline generation and progression, particularly in the enterprise segment, where deals can take months to close.

• Challenges of asking SMB sellers to develop pipeline, including the need for technology and resources to help progress deals.

• Importance of understanding the velocity of the sales process and setting KPIs accordingly for their segment.

• Need to engage with customer success to increase lifetime value and generate new business opportunities.

Sales planning and strategy for success. 17:33

• Importance of account and territory planning, highlighting the need for a detailed hypothesis for revenue growth.

• Have a plan to achieve sales goals, citing the need to track progress and make adjustments as necessary.

• "path to cash plan" that was helpful in their previous role at ppl AI, which every rep should already be doing.

• Frankie emphasizes the importance of sales reps taking their businesses seriously and coming to QBRs with a point of view, rather than just hoping to avoid criticism.

• QBRs should be a collaborative session where reps can get input and ideas on their plans, rather than a time for management to "beat up" on them.

Sales data analysis and its impact on business success. 24:14

• Griffin Reilly emphasizes the importance of using data and KPIs to understand where improvements are needed in a QBR.

• importance of accountability in sales, citing the need to be intellectually honest with oneself and to take action based on data insights.

• value of sales ops in providing data and insights to sales teams, allowing them to focus on improving their processes and closing deals.

• partnering with rev ops to get a formula for deals, conversion rate, ACV, sales cycle time, and book of business.

• partnering with customer success to identify opportunities for growth in accounts.

Sales strategies and elite seller characteristics. 31:27

• "The Sales Acceleration Formula" by Mark Robear and "Qualified Sales Leader" by John McMahon for sales leaders looking to improve their skills.

• team, company, and customer interests over personal gain, seeking elite sellers who share this mindset.

• looks for daily practice of the sales craft, including qualifying and developing hypotheses for delivering value to customers.

• Leslie's definition of an elite seller is a partnership where both parties win in the long term.