Real Stories (and Learnings) from the GTM Trenches Pt.3
The GTM Newsletters
Alright, the tribe has spoken.
You all love these real world stories so we’re going to keep them coming.
We’ll make sure we release a story edition at least once a month.
BTW we write these for you (yes you!) so if there’s ever a topic that you want us to cover feel free to reply to me directly or ping me on LinkedIn.
We’re trying to make this the most valuable go-to-market resource in your inbox and you’re in the driver’s seat so tell us what you’re struggling with and we’ll get some of the smartest GTM leaders in our network to weigh in on it.
Oh and sometimes I’ll share a completely random track that I’ve been listening to lately just because…
🎶
Anyway, let’s get into it.
Real Stories (and Learnings) from the GTM Trenches Pt. 3
“Budgets frozen, do more with less, try to crack the code of survival if not growth. Am I talking about our tech world right now in 2023?
Actually, no.
I’m talking about the brief moment in time in March/April of 2020, when COVID first hit, when the world economy came to a startling halt and everyone was collectively holding their breaths to see if we’re going to crash into a recession. Those first few weeks very much remind me of the ongoing sense and thesis of operation right now.”
Back then Julia Gilinets, now CRO at Pocus was leading revenue at Sourcegraph.
“I was at Sourcegraph (a dev tools company which I took from series A, to series B by Craft Ventures, to series C by Sequoia, and since then to series D by a16z) when all active deals came to a screeching halt. It was up to me and my team to dive in and try to unfreeze every deal one by one.
Many late night texts, phone calls, and interesting negotiations followed, but one particularly stands out as a good reminder of sales fundamentals applicable to today.
One of the POCs we had in flight was with Toast Inc. We had an amazing champion who used us previously at another client, we’d slowly captured the hearts (and workflows!) of more and more of their teams, and management was seeing the benefits. Unfortunately, Toast was, at the time, in-person dining restaurant software.
Within weeks of the start of the pandemic, Toast laid off about 50% of its staff. We got the dreaded call — we love you guys, but budgets are frozen and we need to be heads down to survive as a business vs going through the process of buying tooling.
What to do? Do you try to still get budget together somewhere or do you let it go & see if they survive and add a task to follow up in 6 months?
We did neither. We played the long game, and we gave. We said, we know your dev teams are moving faster, able to do more with less, thanks to Sourcegraph. Keep us, let us power your teams. What’s your credit card spend that will fly under the radar without additional need for approval? Let’s sign up with that as an “extended paid trial” of sorts, and revisit in 6 or 9 months when hopefully you, and the world, is in a better place.
We welcomed them on as a “paid” customer, and they proceeded to have (imo) one of the most successful pivot stories of the pandemic, going public in September of 2021. We got to negotiate a more fitting deal, ended up with a meaningful logo and case study, and got to be a part of their story.”
📈 How to take action/learnings:
1. Yes there are quotas, but it’s imperative to take the long term, strategic view with your deals, with your relationships, and with your team. This will be how you unlock some of your biggest wins.
2. Give. Give value without always knowing whether it’ll come back to benefit you. And it won’t always. Be ok with that.
3. Never forget that your champions are risking their reputation by bringing you in. Always go out of your way to be a value add for them, their team, and their management, and they will keep bringing you in everywhere they go.
Josh Roth, now VP Commercial Sales at Lob, went way back into his war chest to pull one of his favorite win stories back from when he was an AE:
“I was under one year into my Enterprise AE career. This was when CRMs were still very basic a decade ago (we were using Microsoft Dynamics).
I filtered our CRM for our largest customers previously to run a "win back" campaign of churned enterprise customers.
I cold called the CEO of a recruiting company. 10 times and no answer. Finally on the 11th cold call he picked up.
After I introduced myself the first thing he said was, "The Mets? Oh f**k off. Why the f**k would I buy from the Mets?"
He had, in his own way, tipped me off right from the jump that I would need to add value to him before he'd even consider making a purchase.
Whenever I had something he considered of value (free tickets, a Mets event, a lunch or dinner in the city) I invited him. Knowing he would only respond to me if I provided value that was the only time I would call him. By doing this I was able to build credibility with him.
Then I started going to those that I knew would influence him the most: his customers.
I account mapped his customers that he had on his website. I started reaching out to them and filtering which ones were Mets fans. Who would be the most impacted by an agreement.
After knowing which of his biggest customers would be influenced by a purchase we scoped out what a deal could look like. We went through a value analysis to determine the annual revenue of each of the customers I spoke to. The outside in assumptions were helpful, the CEO then offered a handful of additional companies I hadn't spoken to which pushed the value analysis to a "no brainer" type of agreement for him if even 50% of our estimates were correct.
He was convinced of the numbers and wanted to see it in action.
We built a plan and because of the credibility I'd built, I'd earned the right to recommend how he structure his pilot. The influence I'd earned allowed me to be in the room and structure the event in a way I knew we would be successful.
They generated a 20x return on the pilot. Halfway through our "pilot" (when I say pilot I'm referring to a Mets game. So in the 6th inning of the Mets game) he pulled me aside quickly and said he thought we should hammer this out.
The next day he agreed to what was (and might still be) the largest new business ticket deal in Citi FIeld history.
This has always been my favorite deal because I went from being cussed out 10 seconds into a cold call into New York Mets history…”
📈 How to take action/learnings:
Persistence pays off…f**k off doesn’t always mean f**k off.
Add value every step of the deal cycle and establish a foundation of credibility.
Do the work! Make the business case for them, don’t expect your decision maker (or champion) to be able to articulate the ROI on your behalf.
Multi-thread and not just internally! Go outside their org. too and try to turn their biggest customers into your champions.
👀 More for your eyeballs:
“A great fund model is a game changer - it can help a fund go from good to great, driving millions of dollars of additional returns for funds of all sizes and strategies.” - solid read from Doug Dyer:
A classic written by Fred Wilson:
👂More for your eardrums:
The infamous John Barrows, CEO/Founder at Sell Better, and I talked through the impact that AI is having (and going to have) on the sales profession:
I recently started working with a Performance Coach, Kevin Bailey, CEO/Founder at Dreamfuel (best investment I’ve made in a long time) and I liked this simple re-frame on how to deal with stressful situations:
🚀 Start-ups to watch:
Pocus is a Product-Led Sales platform that gives go-to-market teams access to product usage data...without relying on engineers 👀
Check out the Product-Led Sales Playbook they recently released:
🔥Hottest GTM job of the week:
Content Marketer at TestBox, more details here.
See more top GTM jobs here.
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Thanks for rocking with us until the end.
If you’ve been finding this newsletter valuable, please share it with your friends/colleagues.
Have a great weekend.
Appreciate you.
Barker,
✌️