Real Stories (& Learnings) from the GTM Trenches
The GTM Newsletter
Happy New Year, my friends.
I’m thinking today is probably the last day that it’s still kosher to say that?
As I was sitting down to write this week, I was thinking about a topic that would get people motivated to go out and crush 23’ (in a tough economic environment).
But sometimes a general topic isn’t what we need.
There is a lot of places you can go to learn about enablement, alignment, outbound, demand gen., creating a brand, refining your tech stack, rev ops, etc.
Sometimes what we need is proof, proof that hitting your insane revenue number is possible.
That pulling that deal across the line may take every ounce of energy your team has…but it can be done.
So this week I wanted to just speak directly through real-world stories and the learning that came from them.
Based on feedback, we may make this a regular series in the newsletter so let us know what you think.
Anyway, let’s get into it.
Real Stories (and Learnings) from the GTM Trenches
First up:
My man, Rick Smolen, SVP Sales at Loopio shares one from his archive of war stories:
“We sourced the biggest deal in company history while out with friends socially.
My wife was chatting with a friend and learned she joined a large company in a role relevant to who we sell to.
"Hey, you should talk to Rick..." So Mrs. Smolen was the SDR on this deal.
The company was larger than who we would normally sell to, and I was a bit concerned about our ability to deliver on such a large customer. Before pursuing the opportunity further, I spent time with CS, Product, and even the CEO talking through whether or not we should go for the deal. I played the whole thing with reluctance...I didn't want to burn a personal relationship. But others convinced me that we would be at least better than any alternative and let's go for it.
The sales process went through months of normal course evaluation. Scoping sessions, on-site demonstrations, and finally a meeting between a few of us (including our CEO) and the CFO of the prospect. During the meeting, the CFO was overly friendly and repeated a couple times during the meeting..."I'm here to support the team, this is their decision. I'm not the decision maker..."
We pushed through proof of value, negotiated commercials, and agreed they would treat the first year of an agreement as a pilot. But right before Christmas, when the finish line was within reach, I got a note from who I thought was our champion that the CFO had blocked the deal, they are so sorry, they tried, and maybe we could circle back in a few quarters.
I was devastated. I even wrote an email to the key contacts that supported the evaluation that probably reeked of passive aggressive emotional reaction. BUT I didn't send that email. Instead, I sent it to our CEO as a draft and asked what he thought before sending it out...
He said to me...why don't you get in touch directly with the CFO immediately and say that it was our understanding that we were moving forward with the first year pilot and that I need to immediately understand what changed, etc. I couldn't believe how simple and appropriate that advice was...why didn't I think of that?
I called and emailed the CFO with that message and a magical thing happened. Janice from Legal reached out to me and said she was directed by the CFO to work out the deal. I don't have an exact answer as to why or how the CFO changed his mind, but it happened.
Janice asked how important it was to me that we close this out in December. And in the nicest way possible I shared that personally to me, it means a lot!
We spent the next 96 hours working through terms, the MSA, and at 9:20pm on 12/31 we closed the largest deal in company history and put the company over the annual target for the year. It was exhilarating. I experienced losing the deal and then winning it within a week, and I'll always be really proud of this one.”
Follow Rick for more here.
📈 How to take action/learnings:
Be continuously interested in others and you never know where leads may show up.
When going for an exceptional, transformative deal, get buy-in from key stakeholders in advance of the pursuit. You'll get the support you need and not burn cycles and waste time.
The folks that say out loud that they are the decision maker, rarely actually are, and the folks that say they are not the decision maker, they really are!
Sales is an emotional game. It's hard to be objective all the time. You MUST have a support system internally, whether your manager or someone else not emotionally invested in THIS deal so you can get objective advice before taking a key action.
If you bring a little charm, authenticity, and act as a real partner, people you don't even know will work hard to help you succeed (shout out to the Janice’s of the world!)
Next up, we have Martin Gontovnikas, Co-founder & GP at HyperGrowth Partners, former SVP Marketing and Growth at Auth0:
“Years ago Auth0 stopped growing in pipeline, ‘contact sales’, and signups.
We had to change what the marketing team was doing for 6 months to get us back on track. It was a hard decision to make but tough times (like now) require bold decisions.
Thanks to looking at our previously set plans and goals, we realized that if we continued the path we were at we weren't going to hit our revenue number for the year and continue doubling revenue.
We knew we had to make a big change to correct the ship.
Jared Waxman came up with a genius idea. That idea meant changing the jobs of half of the marketing team (20 people) which could potentially make things worse.
We decided to create a big team called Code Yellow.
It was a cross functional team with the mission of increasing our pipeline, talk to sales, and signups numbers. That team was going to exist until we hit certain goals for each of the above KPIs (The exit criteria).
There were 4 sub teams inside of it.
One was focused on doing small UX/UI improvements through A/B tests to increase conversions.
Another one was focused on increasing top of funnel visitors through content and other tactics.
Third team was focused on looking for alternative ways to "contact sales" to drive pipeline (like chatbot in website in dashboard).
The last team was going to try BHAG website and product experiments (Like changing signup flow, doing something different with overquota, etc)
All of the teams were cross functional with folks from engineering, design, growth, content, marketing ops, demand gen, etc.
Those on any code yellow team stopped doing their day to day tasks to only focus on this.
Half the marketing team was in code yellow
The other half of the marketing team continued doing their typical tasks but if help was needed by a code yellow team member that was P0.
I got executive sponsorship from Product, Engineering, Sales, and CS that if there was help needed from Code Yellow team they would consider that their priority number 1. After all we were all f**ked if we didn't get to the revenue number
Each sub team was self sufficient, had a leader and reported weekly on progress and results to all the company.
Code Yellow was working very fast and lean. The progress reported every week was huge.
It took us 6 months to hit the milestones we wanted to and ensure we were back to growing our metrics every month
After 6 months everybody went back to their original role but the experience of working together made the team have less silos and work much better together.
It accelerated our output for the years to come.
Sometimes making bold decisions are scary but we wouldn't have grown revenue from 40M to 80M that year if it wasn't for this change.
War times require war leaders and war decisions as Ben Horowitz says.”
See full post with comments/discussion here.
📈 How to take action/learnings:
Take decisive action quickly. When you can see that you won’t hit your number, no action is an action.
Rally your team behind one collective banner ie. “Code Yellow”
Group cross-functional teams into smaller, self-sufficient BUs with their own leadership, all hyper-focused on one specific agreed upon outcome with clear KPIs. Report to broader group weekly on progress.
Remember: War times require war leaders and war decisions.
Last but certainly not least, a story from the legendary Bob Elliot, former CRO at Built & Forter, SVP Sales at Hootsuite and Managing Director at SAP Canada.
Bob has 30 years experience helping teams exceed revenue targets, let’s get the goods directly from him:
“Our largest account at their peak for SAP Canada was (a redacted, very large, fast growing company that you likely know).
We had our best AE on the account and not coincidentally, it was his only account.
At the beginning of each year, he and I would plan out the account for the year. The first year we set a goal of $10M in new incremental license fees. He achieved $9M.
The next year we said let’s go for $15M more and he achieved $14.5M.
The third year we said let’s go for $25M and he closed $25.5M.
One key moral of this story is that your imagination always remains your biggest limitation.
What if we had said let’s get $50M, $100M?
When you put a number on a deal, you have usually just set the maximum you will ever get and we proved it, albeit in a mostly good way, three years in a row.
How did he create (which is key here - these deals were all truly created - none were customer acknowledged demand, a fav phrase of mine) this much business?
He was the best networker within large customers I have ever met. He would literally introduce (redacted) VPs to other (redacted) VPs. He had a badge to all of their campus offices.
Of the key secrets to why he personally made $5M in commission from this account over a 36 month period:
Ultra high business acumen (always top of my hiring criteria for all roles)
He connected dots constantly, not just internally but with and for the customer.
The customer never felt they were being sold to once. Everything was truly in the best interests of their business.
His curiosity was insatiable. A trait most highly successful people in high growth industries share.
When mega deals like this are run well, the internal pyramid flips on its head. Everyone works for the AE, as the conductor of the orchestra.
In this case, the AE constantly used the fact that we were tech partners in addition to mutual customers. SAPs and
(redacted)’s CEOs were briefed monthly throughout the partnership so that we had constant CEO air cover.
You just don’t close mega deals, or medium sized deals for that matter, without strong economic buyer sponsorship that is maintained over time with the customer.”
Follow Bob for more here.
📈 How to take action/learnings:
Imagination is often your biggest limitation.
Put ‘high business acumen’ and ‘curiosity’ at the top of your hiring criteria when hiring Enterprise reps.
Flip the internal org structure on its head for Mega Deals, ELT now reports to the AE.
Get CEO alignment early and often.
Large transaction are partnership not ‘deals’ - look for ways to mutually benefit each other’s business beyond product offerings.
👀 More for your eyeballs:
Well this went viral….56,208 likes. I don’t think I’ve seen anything go more viral on LinkedIn before and for good reason. Audrey W. compiled every major financial institutions outlooks for 2023. Very interesting read.
Caution: you will go down a rabbit hole for a min. of ~2hrs…
Did you really just feature yourself in your own newsletter? Yes, yes I did.
I hope it’s valuable to some.
Full post here.
Quick announcement:
I’m not sure if anyone has compiled stats on how many start-up employees who are given equity ever see a meaningful financial gain from that equity but I imagine it’s lower than most think.
Having been on the investing side of the house now for two years, there’s certainly a reason why VC firms don’t make one bet every fours years…
Having all your eggs in one basket is a risky game.
That’s part of the reason we created GTMfund to give more diversified equity/ownership to the actual value creators (operators).
If you’re a Director+ GTM leader who is an accredited investors looking to bolster their ownership, investing acumen or increase their diversification - we opened up a few more spots in our GTMramp membership program.
GTMramp is for the up and coming generation of future CRO, CMOs and VPs who want to be part of a community and learn how to angel invest alongside the best of the best.
First priority will always be given to underrepresented groups in tech.
We’re hoping to tip the scale and get more $ back in the hands of the people who create the value in the tech ecosystem.
👂More for your eardrums:
Brendan Dell has working on messaging, positioning and GTM strategy for companies like HP, Panasonic and SAP and we covered a lot of ground in this episode of the GTM pod.
“Its not the best product that wins, it’s the best positioned product that wins.”
🚀 Start-ups to watch:
2023 will be the year SaaS start-ups truly fall in love with their customers (out of necessity). UserEvidence is there to support that renewed focus. Expect big things from them this year 👀
🔥Hottest GTM job of the week:
Sales Development Rep at UserEvidence, more details here.
See more top GTM jobs here.
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That’s it.
First 2023 newsletter in the books.
Let us know if you like the story-based format.
We’ve got a lot more war stories in the hopper from some incredible operators that we can share.
Have a great rest of your Friday and enjoy your weekend.
Barker.
✌️