Discovery deserves to die… Well, at least the discovery we have now. It does little to help the buyer.  Doug Landis is a renowned Growth Partner at Emergence Capital, a venture capital firm specializing in early and growth-stage enterprise cloud companies. With extensive experience in sales and marketing, Landis is widely recognized for his expertise in building and scaling high-performance revenue organizations. He has a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities faced by SaaS companies, particularly in the areas of sales strategy, customer engagement, and team development. Doug works closely with Emergence Capital's portfolio companies, providing strategic guidance and hands-on support to drive their growth and success In this episode, Doug and Kyle discuss the importance of data in sales and the role of a Rev Ops partner. They touch on the pitfalls of being too focused on discovery and the need to shift towards meaningful business conversations that take into account the risk-averse nature of buyers, the impact of the pandemic on sales, the potential of AI to accelerate research and provide insights for sales conversations while recognizing the importance of tangible outcomes that matter to revenue leaders, and more. Let’s avoid revenue leak and achieve revenue precision, together.    Here’s what’s inside:  Meaningful interactions are key: Sales reps should focus on having business conversations with potential clients and strive to understand why they need to change and why they should do it now. This approach can lead to more genuine and productive conversations. Embrace hypothesis-based selling: Sellers should use hypothesis-based selling to build a hypothesis around what problems the person or organization they are selling to may be going through. This can help sellers prepare before getting on calls with prospects and tailor their offerings to better meet the client's needs. Re-assess ideal customer profiles: Due to the pandemic and its impact on the market, many companies may need to reassess their ideal customer profiles (ICP) and shift their buyer targets. CFOs are now getting involved in smaller deals, so it's important to adjust ICPs accordingly.   Grab this week’s Checklist    Check out RunRevenue.Pro for tips, playbooks, and advice for stopping revenue leak and achieving revenue precision.    See how Clari's Revenue Platform can help you win more deals, protect your customer base, and achieve revenue precision—even in a downturn.  → Clari.com  

The secret sauce to approach RevOps in a successful way? Enablement, platforms, analytics, compensation plan, and strategy. Focusing on these five things will take your operations to new heights.   On this episode of Run Revenue Show, our guest, Sam Sutton-Reid, shares his experience as a RevOps leader at Pearson. He breaks down the approach to RevOps into five areas of focus - enablement, platforms, analytics, compensation plan, and strategy. Sam emphasizes the importance of creativity in post-COVID times, stakeholder management, and planning ahead for revenue operations leaders while also sharing his journey from coffee shops to sales and eventually to RevOps. Sam Sutton-Reid is the Director of Revenue Operations at Pearson, a leading educational publishing and assessment service company. As an accomplished professional in the field, Sam oversees and manages the revenue operations function, which involves optimizing sales processes, driving revenue growth, and enhancing operational efficiency within the organization. With a strong background in revenue management and business strategy, Sam brings a wealth of experience to the role. He is responsible for implementing effective sales strategies, analyzing market trends, and identifying opportunities for revenue enhancement.  Here’s what’s inside:  Develop a persona-based approach. To use technology tools effectively in sales and marketing, it is important to develop a persona-based approach that considers individual skills and behaviors. The focus should be on driving sales velocity rather than just increasing activity levels, and this involves addressing problems with opportunities, conversion rates, and people. Plan ahead! Planning ahead is crucial for revenue operations leaders, both in terms of timelines and budgets. It is important to assess the total cost of ownership or return on investment for any new ideas or initiatives, especially if they replace manual processes. Focus on communication within your sales team. Communication is key in effectively implementing new tools and processes. Salespersons and marketing teams need to simplify explanations, bring it back to basics, and make it accessible. Customers want to see and use the product, not just listen to the sales pitch.   Grab this week’s Checklist    Check out RunRevenue.Pro for tips, playbooks, and advice for stopping revenue leak and achieving revenue precision.    See how Clari's Revenue Platform can help you win more deals, protect your customer base, and achieve revenue precision—even in a downturn.  → Clari.com  

Let’s face it… AI is on the rise. It’s a powerful, technological tool that gives us information at our fingertips. But looking through a business lens, how can we use this tool to boost our revenue?   On this episode of Run Revenue Show, Craig Walker and Kyle Coleman explore Dialpad's success in implementing its business communication product and their emphasis on simplicity, usability, and design. They also discuss how engagement and adoption are leading indicators to revenue and how AI-powered chatbots and real-time AI tools are used to improve customer and employee satisfaction, the importance of communication and how the company moved into the enterprise communication space to address the lack of usability and design in traditional business communication products, and dive into the challenges of product launches and how setting targets and monitoring adoption rates is essential for a product manager's success.    Craig Walker is a visionary entrepreneur and business leader, renowned as the Founder and CEO of Dialpad. With an unwavering commitment to innovation and a deep understanding of the evolving communication landscape, Walker has propelled Dialpad to the forefront of cloud-based communications and collaboration solutions. Under his guidance, the company has revolutionized the way organizations connect and communicate, empowering businesses of all sizes to streamline their operations, enhance productivity, and achieve their goals with seamless, cutting-edge technology.    Here’s what’s inside:  Always adapt to new technologies for business success: Dialpad's success in the communication space has largely been due to their ability to quickly adapt to new technologies and integrate them into their products. This has given them a competitive advantage over companies that are slower to adapt. Measure engagement and adoption: These are crucial indicators of success. For Dialpad, the success of their products is measured by the level of engagement and adoption from their customers. This is especially true for their business communication product, which depends on engagement from their pro services team. Use case studies and customer success stories to sell products: Communicating the value of a product often involves using real-life examples of successful implementations. For Dialpad, this means gathering case studies and customer success stories to help sell their products to different personas and industry segments.   Grab this week’s Checklist    Check out RunRevenue.Pro for tips, playbooks, and advice for stopping revenue leak and achieving revenue precision.    See how Clari's Revenue Platform can help you win more deals, protect your customer base, and achieve revenue precision—even in a downturn.  → Clari.com  

It’s the end of the quarter. The lynchpin deal you were sure was coming through? It hasn’t. Clock strikes midnight, and just like that: it’s over. How did this happen? Deal slippage is ruining your forecast.  But, Kevin “KD” Dorsey knows how to avoid it. On this episode of The Run Revenue Show, Kevin, SVP of Sales at Bench Accounting, shares his secrets for avoiding slipped deals.    Here’s what’s inside:  The ONE thing to create if you want to stop deals from slipping Questions managers can (and should) ask reps to maintain control of their pipeline Step-by-step process for keeping your team aligned and your pipeline healthy   Grab this week’s checklist:    Check out RunRevenue.Pro for tips, playbooks, and advice for stopping revenue leak and achieving revenue precision.    See how Clari's Revenue Platform can help you win more deals, protect your customer base, and achieve revenue precision—even in a downturn.  → Clari.com  

POV: You’re a salesperson trying to sell your product to a customer, but they are just not making a decision because they’re scared… they have been consumed with the enemy of indecision. Let’s face it. Sometimes it’s just hard to get a customer to close a deal for a number of reasons, but the leading factor is fear. So what’s the trick to helping your hesitant customers overcome their fear so you can close that deal you’ve been waiting for? Matt Dixon is the co-author of The Challenger Sale, The Challenger Customer and The Effortless Experience and is also the founding partner of DCM Insights. In this episode of the Run Revenue Show, Matt shares the challenges that salespeople face when customers express hesitation and objections during the sales process, he explores the concept of the omission bias and shares insights from large-scale studies on sales effectiveness, he provides practical advice on how to overcome indecision, and more.   Here’s what’s inside:  Understanding the “omission bias” is a priority!: Understanding this is crucial for salespeople to help customers overcome their fear of failure and make the right decision. Customers are often okay with doing nothing and having a bad outcome but not with doing something and having a bad outcome, even if both result in the same loss. Use ‘pings and echoes’ to make the customer feel safe: The majority of customers don’t feel safe to discuss their indecision due to fear of embarrassment or failure to make the right decision. ‘Pings and echoes’ involve high-performing salespeople trying to articulate the fears they think the customer is struggling with in a way that doesn't out the customer or make them feel embarrassed. Guide your customer to a narrower consideration set: Doing this and advocating for a specific course of action while still reinforcing the customer's autonomy involves being brutally honest with the customer and showing that their job is to get the customer to the right decision, even if that means buying from a competitor or not at all.   Grab this week’s Checklist    Check out RunRevenue.Pro for tips, playbooks, and advice for stopping revenue leak and achieving revenue precision.    See how Clari's Revenue Platform can help you win more deals, protect your customer base, and achieve revenue precision—even in a downturn.  → Clari.com  

Enduring a time of economic downturn takes more than just the normal. It takes grit, perseverance, taking risks, and most importantly, mastering your time to run revenue.   Something has to change, an action needs to take place. But what is that change and how do we properly master our revenue?    In this bonus episode of the Run Revenue Show, we take a break from our regularly scheduled interviews, and listen to three executives who have successfully mastered their revenue - the Head of Content at Clari, Devin Reed, CEO and Prime Minister of Revenue at Clari, Andy Byrn, and CEO of Gainsight, Nick Mehta. Tune in to learn how consolidation can offer customers a combined solution and improve sales efficiency, why time to revenue is crucial in driving customer satisfaction and growth, how legacy systems like CRM and Excel can lead to revenue leakage, how to operate your business more effectively and how to protect your revenue in uncertain times.  Here’s what’s inside:  Use strong customer relationships for your benefit: Relationships are the key to building a lasting business growth trajectory and it all starts with you and the customers. This involves retaining and expanding customers, making them advocates, and having a product that serves them well. Implement vendor consolidation to boost sales: This is the biggest opportunity and threat in the SaaS industry. Consolidation can help companies offer combined solutions to customers and improve their sales efficiency, while failure to consolidate can lead to losing customers to competitors who offer a combined solution. Measuring impact is crucial for deciding investment in new systems: Sales representatives require a system that automates manual data entry and highlights areas of risk and potential investment to save time and improve conversions, and CROs and boards need an always-on interface that provides multidimensional revenue tracking.   Grab this week’s Checklist    Check out RunRevenue.Pro for tips, playbooks, and advice for stopping revenue leak and achieving revenue precision.    See how Clari's Revenue Platform can help you win more deals, protect your customer base, and achieve revenue precision—even in a downturn.  → Clari.com  

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to product-led companies. It's all about how the product becomes central to the customer experience.   But what are the secrets for making your product central to the customer experience?   In this episode, Kyle is joined by Todd Olson, CEO and Founder of Pendo - a platform that focuses on improving product experiences. They dive into what it takes to build a successful company using a PLG motion, Todd’s journey with Pendo, the importance of validating ideas, obsessively monitoring beta users, and finding product-market fit. They also explore the three key areas for implementing product-led growth and the myth of a product selling itself. Join us for an insightful conversation on how to create a product-led organization that puts the customer experience first.   Here’s what’s inside:  Get rid of the product-led misconceptions: A common misconception for Product-Led Growth is “the product sells itself.” Todd says this isn’t the case. If you’re selling to a large organization, you’re going to need a human involved. You can’t sell a product without somebody to understand the customers’ needs and tailoring things to their business. Become product-led for effective inbound demand: A Product-Led organization can help optimize inbound demand by directing customers to a tailored experience based on their segment. Todd says this involves creating a culture centered around using data to understand company goals, automating high-volume tasks, promoting cross-functional collaboration, and embracing an experimental mindset. Prioritize self-service to free up time and energy: By providing customers with a range of self-service options, such as chatbots and in-product help, Product-Led companies offer a better user experience and reduce support volume. This time and energy saved, can be put towards other areas of the business for improvements and meeting customers needs.    Grab this week’s Checklist    Check out RunRevenue.Pro for tips, playbooks, and advice for stopping revenue leak and achieving revenue precision.    See how Clari's Revenue Platform can help you win more deals, protect your customer base, and achieve revenue precision—even in a downturn.  → Clari.com  

We’re in a season of recession. So what should be your priority for your business in terms of revenue? Putting your magnifying lenses on all areas of your company and spot the areas of revenue leak. Where are you inefficient? Where are the handoffs getting missed? Where are there areas of revenue that are leaking out of any stage in the funnel? In this episode, Kyle is joined by not just one, but two CEOs. Alex Atzberger is the CEO of Optimizely - a company that provides digital experience platform software as a service. Andy Byrne is the CEO of Clari - a company that transforms the way enterprises sell, delivering new insights to drive action. In this episode of The Run Revenue Show, Alex and Andy share why your business needs to be following the rule of 40, proper prep for every step of the revenue cadence and finding your board superpowers.    Here’s what’s inside:  Build a durable company with the Rule Of 40: Andy mentions the Rule Of 40, a mindset that allows you to look at your company in a more multi-dimensional way. It forces you to unpack the percentage of revenue in each department, leading to healthy conversations of what needs to be changed. So what does this do? It leads to more discipline and efficiency. Your business shouldn’t be an artist. It should produce consistently: Just like a chef, your business shouldn’t produce a different outcome every time. It should be creating the same number every quarter. Having clarity, knowing where you’re going to land, not just this quarter, but next quarter, and having a good sense of how you're trending, allows you to flow in more strategic space and less tactical updates. Your board meeting is your biggest brains: Andy mentions that a key component of your board is to zoom out and drive a discussion that reveals things that other execs did not realize that were happening. Your meeting shouldn’t just be an update, it should be discussing long-term strategy. Drive challenging discussions  that will reveal new things others have not thought about.   Grab this week’s Checklist   Check out RunRevenue.Pro for tips, playbooks, and advice for stopping revenue leak and achieving revenue precision.    See how Clari's Revenue Platform can help you win more deals, protect your customer base, and achieve revenue precision—even in a downturn.  → Clari.com  

Efficiency is what every business wants… Efficiency with low expenses. But how do we get this? What are the steps we need to take as a business? This is what Justin says: “Efficiency begins with headcount. Making sure that your workers are not ‘employees,’ but ‘owners.’ They need to look at the greater whole of the company and step into different roles.” Justin Borgman is the Chairman and CEO at Starburst - an analytics engine that provides a modern solution that addresses these data silo & speed of access problems. In this episode, Justin shares how he developed a culture centered around grit to endure downturns, experiments that helped him build Starburst, how to run a business with efficiency, the importance of focusing on the strongest elements of your business, revenue models, and more.   Here’s what’s inside:  Culture will get you through the downturn: Justin says when the macro environment is going through a recession, company culture is what will get you through it. Reinforce your values every chance you get, create expectations, and develop grit. Embody your level of ownership: Justin mentions that the most efficiency comes with a proper headcount of valuable workers. There is a difference between an ‘employee’ and an ‘owner.’ Owner’s look at the greater whole of the company and how they can make it grow holistically while employees just do one job. Be an owner. Utilize consumption patterns: Consumption patterns are essential for seeing future patterns. Justin and Starburst use it to study and obtain important information on databases and to forecast future patterns from a sales, marketing, and management perspective. This is a key way to drive revenue.   Grab this week’s Checklist   Check out RunRevenue.Pro for tips, playbooks, and advice for stopping revenue leak and achieving revenue precision.    See how Clari's Revenue Platform can help you win more deals, protect your customer base, and achieve revenue precision—even in a downturn.  → Clari.com  

When the revenue process is neglected, the results are devastating. The average company is losing 14.9% of its revenue to leaks across the revenue process.   So…what can we do to stop revenue leak?    In this episode, Kyle Coleman, SVP of Marketing at Clari and host of the Run Revenue Show, is here to walk you through the foolproof ways that the most successful businesses are running revenue. Listen in as he shares the power of teamwork and governance in combating revenue leaks, the importance of utilizing meaningful data for managing revenue processes proactively, how to establish a shared metrics glossary for crystal-clear communication, and more. Plus, he dives into optimizing revenue processes by embracing continuous improvement and reviews, and finding the perfect balance between collaboration and governance for a thriving revenue ecosystem.   Here’s what’s inside:  1. Revenue is the most important business process: Kyle mentions when the revenue process is neglected, the results are devastating. The average company is losing 14.9% of its revenue to leaks across the revenue process. When companies are able to find all the different areas of revenue leak that exist in their process and stop those leaks, the results are profound: 24% increase in win rates, 39% increase in revenue capture for committed deals, and 96% forecast accuracy. 2. Don’t be stuck in the past!: Many companies are not running their revenue the right way. They’re stuck in the past and are not making use of the data at their fingertips. You can’t expect your revenue results to change if you stay stagnant. Kyle says you need to make sure you have the right things in place to motivate every different revenue-critical employee to take the right action in the right way at the right time. 3. Collaboration and governance: Kyle says these are the two main components of the revenue process. Collaboration is people working together and determining what you do. Governance is how you do it, the data, and the systems that make it all happen. Take a step back and assess where the breakage lies in your team and provide a shared metrics glossary to ensure that people are defining key metrics the same way.   Check out RunRevenue.Pro for tips, playbooks, and advice for stopping revenue leak and achieving revenue precision.    See how Clari's Revenue Platform can help you win more deals, protect your customer base, and achieve revenue precision—even in a downturn.  → Clari.com