How to Control the Chaos?
Holding your sales organization accountable is a constant. Maximizing the focus for your team(s) during the quarter can be challenging. Often a feeling leaders have is “I don’t even know what is going on on a day-to-day basis.” It can feel like there is a circus going on with all acts firing off at once.
Mile markers to measure activity, pipe creation, etc are quick tactical fixes. But you want to think more strategically. How can you drive your reps and management team to be more effective? Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) are not only the way to focus your sellers but also hold them accountable that they are doing what they should be doing. Selling.
Now I have worked for several different orgs as a seller as well as a leader. The most effective QBR I had to deliver was at Duo Security. They got the entire org together and you had to methodically walk through what you did last quarter as well as your plan for this quarter. It was incredibly effective for a few reasons.
You had to report on your forecast accuracy and revenue attainment
You had to present the amount of pipeline you received vs created
You had to present on your activity count as well as onsite trips made into territory
You had to highlight your flagship deals and where they were at
This was a very simple and easy structure that was outlined. What it did was make you think as a rep?
I need to hit my number and forecast it accurately.
I also need to show that I am creating a pipeline and not just the happy recipient of a great territory with a ton of inbound pipeline.
Am I making my calls, sending my emails, creating new accounts and visiting them face to face?
What big deals am I driving to help the org and myself?
If I was behind my number or widely off then I was presenting that in front of the entire sales organization. If my activity or pipeline creation was half of my peers that is not a good look. I don’t want to look like an idiot and I am not alone in that fear. Everyone wants to look good in front of their peers. Sales folks are also competitive so they want to be the best. The QBR was your chance to shine.
Now the Duo Security team was a room of triple blackbelt sellers. Every single one of them were EXCELLENT. We all held ourselves to a higher standard. Here are the things I learned from that experience.
Forecasting Accuracy
Taking a wild guess on where you were going to end up was no longer an option. I had to be able to have an understanding of where I was truly at and what I needed to do to hit my number. There is no way that I am going to show I forecasted to hit my number and only closed 40% of it.
My pipeline was going to be scrubbed, updated and in the proper stage based on defined entry/exit criteria. I also had a daily Gap plan that I would review before I started my day so I knew which deals I needed to 1) keep secured 2) to move forward and 3) needed to qualify in or out.
This led to my 1:1s being very structured. I was running them and not my manager… I had specific things I needed. My opportunities were prepped, ready to review and I had clean, concise asks for what is needed. I didn’t know it at the time but this was preparing me for how I would run my team, my org and board presentations. Additionally, it was molding my process for forecasting and how to think about different models to use.
Pipeline Creation
As a rep I have had all walks of life when being assigned a territory. I’ve carried a bag for high producing territories like New York, California or Texas. I’ve been assigned mid tier spots like Illinois, Utah, Minnesota or Missouri. I’ve experienced the dead zones as well like the Mid Atlantic or Deep South.
Some were cash registers right away and others needed to be built up before they popped. Each experience was a different scenario that needed to be solved. Figuring out the chess board was always different.
Developing my pipeline from a cold standpoint was challenging. Eventually, I was able to master who the ideal target was, what message resonated the most and consistent (none annoying) outbounding that was effective.
Also, I shifted my mind set to “I am individually marketing my company and name into a region.” These were the first steps in being able to define a larger GTM strategy. I could think on a more regional level on how to drive awareness, interest and then revenue. Additionally, I was able to trial and error. I made mistakes that only hurt me and I could quickly pivot from them.
For territories that had heavy inbound interest it was a different ballgame. The pressure was on to perform and not screw up. I also had to be hyper focused on my pipeline staging and why it was in a particular stage. I also knew that leadership would be all over my deals and marketing events in the area would require my involvement.
Not only did these opportunities help accelerate my career but they allowed me to get a strong understanding of process alignment. This planting the seeds of how to manage a much larger pipeline and how to tie that back into revenue planning models.
Driving Activity to Generate More
When people talk to you about their career you should think about the narrative. A couple examples of this could be did you manage an inbound pipeline or outbound? Did you work in velocity deals or large 7 figure deals? From my experience you want to be well rounded as each scenario is different. But let’s focus on the outbounding scenario.
Blitzing out calls and emails to make sure I was in the green for daily activities was my initial approach. Calling old dead opps or stalled leads is where I initially focused but that well ran dry fast. So I had to start thinking about getting into the green for target rich environments.
Now back in my day when we used to hike 10 miles in the snow to get to work there were no email cadence systems or dialers. Everything was manual and time consuming. I highlight this not to point out how tough we were back in the day but rather if you didn’t have a prospecting plan then the days could get dull. No responses, being hung up on or ignored will mess with anyone’s mentality.
Rather, I started to analyze the industries and titles by role in current customers. I could see which industries, use cases and titles were more prone to buy my software. I then could look at the reasons “why they bought” and what value it gave them. These were powerful lessons.
I could glean on how to perform more powerful discovery calls and demonstrations. How to develop drip campaigns with messaging targeted by persona, industry and use case. Then how to call and leave voice messages. I would think that we were “long lost friends” and I was keeping them posted on developments at my company. Much easier than a cold call.
At first, nothing… But then after a few months I noticed that I was getting hand raises, my onsite trips were extending from 2 to 4 days and ultimately more revenue came in. I also discovered that when you find a deal that they are ALWAYS bigger in size then an inbound deal. Creating need, finding an initiative and generating revenue is a special kind of skill. It produces special and larger deals.
It allowed me to think about what makes up an Account Executive? What should you look for in a seller and why? Being able to know every type of territory and how to attack it was valuable. If nothing more it gave me perspective on how to assign territories as a leader so they were balanced.
The Big Deals
Walking through the signature deals in your pipeline. Incredibly important. If nothing else just have a QBR slide dedicated to this. These are the logos and revenue that really move the needle forward. So when they are being discussed amongst the group you need to understand several things.
Who are you selling to and why?
What is the initiative or problem you are fixing?
When does it need to get done and why?
How can you quantify the fix? Hours saved? Revenue?
Where are the gaps in your deal?
Who am I competing against and what are my advantages?
I also wanted to make sure that I didn’t get into “story telling.” We’ve all experienced this… a rep just started talking about a deal and you cannot follow them. They are just spinning a yarn on how great the deal is.
Rather, I wanted to be succinct and efficient with how I talked about the deal. I needed to be able to talk about the deal in a way that was easy to follow but also covered all the complexity. I broke it down into simple categories of pain, gain, roi, timeline, compelling event, competition and gaps. This was the foundation block for how I looked at the rep pipeline and aligned discovery calls to opportunity management.
It also gave me perspective on how to think about Enterprise sellers. What is important to train and develop these sellers. How can you identify which ones will be successful and why? Experiencing big deals first hand gave me the proper perspective on how to think of these.
Final Thoughts
I wasn’t really aware of it at the time but learned from a retroactive perspective. A good QBR became a training tool for myself to get prepared as a VP. How I thought about my business, managed revenue and talked about personal initiatives were all building blocks for my “executive voice.”
What I also learned is that when having a QBR it kept everyone focused. Just like myself, no one wanted to get up there and present a bad QBR. It kept a healthy amount of pressure on the sales teams and drove accountability across the org.
If you aren’t performing QBRs on a regular basis then you are doing a disservice to yourself as well as your reps. You are robbing them of important career development.
