REVENUE SUCCESS SECRETS - Gongpages.gong.io/wp-content/uploads/Revenue-Success-Secrets.pdfsuccess functions. Ever wondered how those folks succeed? We did too. That’s why we asked

REVENUE SUCCESS SECRETS

Based on the Advice of 15 of Today's Top CROs

A Quick Intro

People success

Deal success

Strategy success

The Wrap Up

The position of CRO is fairly new to most organizations, and many of them

are still hashing out the role’s nuances.

That said, a few outstanding CROs have demonstrated an ability to

drive revenue growth while aligning the sales, marketing, and customer

success functions. Ever wondered how those folks succeed? We did too.

That’s why we asked some of the top SaaS CROs to share their secrets.

Three themes emerged in their answers: They focus on people success,

deal success, and strategy success.

Table of Contents A Quick Intro

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CROs focus on their teams’ skills to achieve people success. They create a culture of loyalty and

excellence and make sure their sales leaders know how to help reps hit and exceed quota.

Successful CROs also know how to achieve deal success. They make sure their teams’

processes move more deals through the pipeline to the finish line.

And finally, the best CROs use a clear plan to achieve strategy success. Their plans are fueled by

the market’s voice, and ensure that their teams execute against top priorities.

Without further delay, here are the tips our 15 SaaS CROs offered on how they do their jobs

exceptionally well.

tl;dr

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Ryan Longfield

CRO, Gong

People Success

Use the people-focused strategies below to create the best

environment possible for everyone you rely on. Set your

teams up to excel. Create quota-shattering super sellers

and client support superstars. Prioritize your people so they

can go out and win.

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Pat O’Brien

CRO, Aptrinsic (acquired by Gainsight)

I’ve learned that the number one job of a sales leader — or any leader — is to attract and retain top talent. I’m also a fan of busting conventional wisdom as a lot of it is wrong when it comes to hiring and managing sales people. Here are a few lessons that makes these concepts concrete:

1. Hire sales folks who can challenge. The book is practically mainstream, so it’s surprising that the main conclusion from The Challenger Sale still isn’t widely understood. It states that relationship-based salespeople are not the most effective type. Compelling data shows that “relationship builders” are actually the worst kind of complex sellers.

2. Don’t try to put in what was left out.Conventional wisdom says to focus on improving sales people’s weaknesses. But in the book First Break All the Rules, the authors use an exhaustive study to prove it doesn’t work. Ask these 13 questions of your sales team and you’ll be much more likely to keep your best talent. 3. Salespeople are motivated by more than money. People are not endlessly manipulable robots. They’re humans, and motivating them is not just about money and a better compensation plan. Dan Pink’s Ted Talk on human motivation is a fascinating must-watch for anyone who manages people. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose matter.

People are not endlessly manipulable robots.

They’re humans, and motivating them is not just about

money and a better compensation plan.

PEOPLE SUCCESS Back To Menu

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Kevin Gaither

Senior Vice President of Sales, ZipRecruiter

Be Humble. Leave your ego at the door. If you find yourself taking credit when things go right and deflecting when things go wrong, you're not a true sales leader. Share the credit. Take the blame. Make improvements and try your best to fix problems. Realize that you're not perfect and you can always learn. You should always learn. Always look for incremental improvements on your sales team.

Listen. There’s a reason you have two ears and one mouth, so use them in that order and ratio. You don't know it all, but hopefully you hired good people and listen to them. Listen to other opinions too, even ones from NON-sales people! Ask them about their opinions and then listen some more. They might not sway you, but you might learn something that helps you improve on your original decision.

Hire people who are better than you. If you're too insecure to do this, you're not a true sales leader. Hire people who could (eventually) take your job. If you're the single point of failure, that's bad on you. Build a legacy. Build a system. Build an organization that you can step away from for a vacation, knowing that any one of your direct reports could pick up where you left off. You'll sleep better at night. Trust me.

Keep reading. Consume book after book after book. Read everything you can get your hands on. Sure, maybe only 5% of it will relate directly to you, but if you keep consuming books, you'll be loaded with dozens of new ideas. Let's face it, there's not a lot of great training for sales leaders out there. If you sit around and wait for someone to make you better, you'll be waiting a long, long time. Go out and seek new knowledge on your own. Your career will thank you.

Listen to other opinions too, even ones from NON-sales

people! Ask them about their opinions and then

listen some more.


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Jeff Hazard

VP Sales, Zenefits

First and foremost, be yourself, genuine, and humble. No one likes a big ego they can't relate to. Leadership has some key principles: Hire good people.Empower your people to be innovative and make decisions. In other words, don't micromanage.Be close to the customer.Have an open door and be approachable.Tell it like it is.Make your team better and foster a learning culture. All of these tie into a core principle: Motivate your team to win. That creates long-term relationships and loyalty.

Motivate your team to win.

That creates long-term relationships and loyalty.


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Eric Gilpin

Senior Vice President, Enterprise Sales, UpWork

I believe that leadership happens when you do these things:

1. At all costs, without question, hire the very best people. This is about more than just numbers. It’s about more complex concepts, like team culture, which is the sum of everyone’s attitude.

2. Give your people all the tools they need to be successful. That includes training, access to resources, and coaching feedback.

3. Make sure everyone has absolute clarity on their mission. Get rid of anything (or anyone) who says “So what? Who cares? We’ll figure it out when we get there.”

4. Stay out of your team’s way. This is the toughest one for a sales leader. Start by considering how you focus on their performance each quarter.


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Stay out of your team’s way.

This is the toughest one for a sales leader.

Josh Allen

CRO, Drift

Being an effective leader requires solving for motivation at an individual level. As sales leaders move up and take on more responsibility, larger quotas, and bigger teams, there is a natural tendency to gravitate toward spreadsheet and dashboard management. That’s a mistake.

The truth is, every person on a team has a different motivation for being there. Truly great leaders make an effort to understand those motivations and tie them back to results. At the CRO level, my job is to equip the directors, managers, team leads, and individual contributors to create their own formulas for what success looks and feels like. Naturally, individual goals need to align with the company’s expected outputs, but those two items should be directly intertwined. Because when a personal goal is tied directly to a professional goal, that’s when an individual's best work happens.

When I began my career in sales, I had just left college with a pile of student loan debt bigger than any amount of money I'd ever known. That’s a common situation, especially for salespeople early on in their careers. It was overwhelming and painful. Sales gave me an opportunity to earn what I wanted to earn based on how hard I was willing to work and how much I was willing to learn. I learned a valuable lesson when I realized that my personal goals (paying off my debt, buying my first house, and developing financial independence) and the company's goals were directly aligned. I was motivated by both.

When I first took on leadership roles in sales, I followed the playbook I had learned from those before me and used universal KPI's to measure all individuals. For example, I'd tell the salespeople on my team they needed to make 50 calls per day and complete five demos per week. Because that was their job. But I quickly realized there is no universal sales person who is going to average 50 calls and five demos per week. Each person is motivated by something a bit different. Each seller has strengths and weaknesses. If we optimize strengths and work on weaknesses, a good leader can show anyone who has the willingness to learn, a path to success. A solid sales leader teaches each member of their team how to tie personal and professional success together.


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Every person on a team has a different motivation for being

there. Truly great leaders make an effort to understand those

motivations and tie them back to results.

Deal Success

Dig into your team’s operational side. Invest in

understanding your buyers. Set a game plan from contact

to close so deals never stray or stall. Make sure everyone’s

processes are as smooth as possible so every person can

punch above their weight. Let your teams focus on the real

work of revenue generation.

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Marc Maloy

CRO, Glint

Alleviate pressure, don’t create it. Sales careers are tough. They’re deadline driven and have pressure-packed highs and lows. Great sales leaders know there’s already enough demand associated with the job, so they do everything they can to keep it light and fun. It's hard to hit home runs when you're gripping the bat too tightly.

Great sales leaders know there’s already

enough demand associated with the job,

so they do everything they can to keep it

light and fun.

DEAL SUCCESS Back To Menu

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Ben Sardella

Co-Founder & CRO, OutboundWorks

A successful CRO acts as the conductor, getting multiple business functions to work cohesively together. That includes marketing, sales/business development, direct inside/outside sales, channel management, and customer success. The CRO should also define the common denominator across these units: the ideal customer profile (ICP).

Marketing can run the most clever campaigns and have the best booth at the biggest conference. Perfect cadences can flow out of sales development. Account executives can nail their pitch and demo. But if the units within the revenue department don’t focus their resources entirely on their ICP, it can have lasting negative effects. I mean the kind that lead to churn, which is a number the CRO also owns.

For CROs, having laser sharp focus on an ICP can feel risky in the short term. We’re conditioned to believe that more is better … more deals in the pipeline, more phone calls, more emails sent. Using the ICP as your starting point may feel small, but it has significant long-term benefits that far outweigh the short term. These include honestly sizing your current and future total addressable market, aligning your value proposition across sales and marketing, and allowing customer success to build relationships with customers to whom you deliver the most value. With an ICP, you’ll save time and money, build a stronger brand, and create incredibly efficient sales people. And your customers will renew and grow with you.

Using the Ideal Customer Profile as your starting point may

feel small, but it has significant long-term benefits

that far outweigh the short term.


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Mike Lambert

President of Field Operations at SentryOne, Former CRO at Outsystems

As sales teams scale, it’s very important that you maintain operational excellence. Think of sales as a car. The field team is your engine, sales operations is the mechanic, and as a leader, you are the driver. The operational aspects need to be finely tuned or the machine will break down as you grow.

Also, you need to make sure that delegation works on your team. That means you need the right leaders in place. Your organization can’t scale if you have to be in every meeting.

Think of sales as a car. The field team is your

engine, sales operations is the mechanic,

and as a leader, you are the driver.


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Strategy Success

Craft an overarching picture of where you are and where

you’re going. Hear your market and be ready to respond

to its needs with sharp, new initiatives. Agility and focus

matter, so make sure you have them covered.

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Jaakko Paalanen

CRO, Leadfeeder

Have a healthy balance between manual and automation. In other words, use a process in which machines help your sales team reach quota and increase their effectiveness over time. As a sales leader you need to understand the power of automation so you can bring tools together to make your process smarter. If you do that, your sales team can focus on their manual work.

Have a technical sales ops/software developer on your sales team. With them on board, you can create a sales process that gets the best out of manual and 'machine' work. You’ll know you have an intelligent process if your team doesn’t want to live without it (i.e., do the work manually). If they can do without it, your process is not good enough.

At its core, this approach is about focusing on the right target. An intelligent process helps your team focus on their goals and prevents negative news from having an effect on them. Get rid of distractions and let your team’s focus land where it should.

As a sales leader you need to understand the power of

automation so you can bring tools together to make

your process smarter.

STRATEGY SUCCESS Back To Menu

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Ryan Barry

CRO, Zappi

Listen and be empathetic. Hear your customers, your project team, the market, and your sales team. Know your space inside and out and don’t rely on templated sales management frameworks that don’t recognize your unique market nuance. If you listen well enough, you’ll naturally create empathy for how you coach, manage, roll out processes, develop and execute strategies, and get the team and market to follow you.

Know your space inside and out and don’t

rely on templated sales management

frameworks that don’t recognize your

unique market nuance.


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Steve Molen

CRO, Viewpoint Construction Software

Establish and stick to daily, weekly, monthly, one-year and five-year goals. When I “start with the end in mind,” to quote Jim Collins, I overcome obstacles and stay focused on the journey. I set my vision on a clear goal, whether it’s short- or long-term, to help me overcome setbacks that happen along the way.

Establish and stick to daily, weekly,

monthly, one-year and five-year goals.


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Rose Bentley

SVP of Sales & GM North America, CloudCherry

Someone once told me this definition of hell: “On your last day on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.”

In sales, you will have more bad days than good. So leave your excuses behind and work harder than anyone. When you wake up at 7 AM, know that someone was up at 4 AM going after your prospects. Your buyers are someone else's best prospects! Never forget that.

And when you need time away from the grind, take it. Never let your work take you away from what matters: your health, your family, and your life. You only get one life. Make it work writing about.

In sales, you will have more bad days

than good. So leave your excuses behind

and work harder than anyone.


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Michael Tarbet

VP of Sales, LogicMonitor

First, invest in sales operations. Measure your business beyond the forecast. Consider the leading performance indicators that test adherence to your sales process and the efficacy of your: • Hiring strategy• Employee ramp strategy• Joint sales and marketing GTM plan• Current sellers’ motions• Full customer touchpoint lifecycle Get clarity on that data. Effective sales leaders are agile and able to respond. They consistently assess the performance productivity of their organization.

This insight will also inform your acceleration planning and organizational investments. You have to know the ROI of every dollar invested into your sales machine. Second, invest in training. Sales strategy and the training that supports it is never ‘one and done’. Training leaks. Effective leaders are buffeted by organizations that constantly train to enable new hires to get to quota quicker and reinforce best practices in sellers. Good training means having more sellers at or above quota. Third, invest in business development personnel (SDRs and MDRs) for accelerated pipeline growth. You must have this engine. Make sure it’s regularly assessed, tuned, and turned on to support your sellers and marketing investments.

Get clarity on that data. Effective sales leaders are

agile and able to respond. They consistently assess the

performance productivity of their organization.


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Steve De Marco

President & CRO, TopOpps

Never forget what it's like to be a salesperson working in the trenches, dealing with the sales grind day in and day out. Sales is a hard job and it requires intelligence, hard work, determination, and resilience. It's not easy to stay focused, positive, and driven every single day. Many leaders lose sight of what their individual contributor sales reps face each day. Those less-than-stellar leaders hyperfocus on tools, metrics, process, pipeline, and managing up — which are all important — but they forget to focus on what their sales reps struggle against. They become disengaged and turn into "ivory tower" sales leaders. That’s usually the beginning of the end. If you lose sight of what your reps deal with, you’ll alienate and eventually lose them.

Your reps are the most valuable part of your team, so talk to them frequently. The best leaders make time to meet, communicate, and collaborate with their sales reps. They do skip-level one-on-ones to make sure they know how their reps are doing, what they’re working on, what they struggle with, and what they aspire to become. They find out what hinders their reps’ success and what they can do to help. Then they follow through.

When sales leaders focus on individual contributor sales reps, they cultivate great ideas and find creative solutions to problems. They instill a culture of teamwork, collaboration, and caring that fosters success and intense loyalty.

The best leaders make time to meet, communicate,

and collaborate with their sales reps.


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Your teams have unique struggles. That’s why you need a personalized roadmap to achieve your coaching, training, and selling goals.

Gong can show you what that roadmap looks like and help you create an environment where your teams thrive. It’s is the #1 conversation intelligence platform for sales teams.

Gong automatically records, transcribes, and analyzes your team’s sales conversations so you can ensure better coaching and higher quota attainment across your organization.

Gong makes it possible to coach everyone upward with specific instructions about sales calls.

About GongGong is the #1 conversation intelligence platform for sales. It gives you unfiltered visibility into your customer conversations. Gong captures and analyzes every customer conversation across every channel. You can win more deals, skyrocket rep success, and change the way you go-to-market. Learn why sales teams at Hubspot, LinkedIn, and Pinterest rave about Gong at www.gong.io.

The Wrap Up Request DemoConnect with us to learn more by requesting a demo:

About DriftDrift is the new way businesses buy from businesses. With its quickly evolving set of tools and playbooks, Drift is the world’s leading conversational marketing platform, trusted by top enterprise businesses like Ellie Mae, GrubHub, InVision, Marketo, MongoDB, Okta, Outreach, Eventbrite, Vidyard, and over 150,000 other businesses. Sales and marketing teams rely on Drift to connect now with the customers who are ready to buy now. Based in Boston, Drift was founded by serial marketing technology entrepreneurs David Cancel and Elias Torres and is backed by leading venture capitalists including CRV, General Catalyst, and Sequoia. Learn more at www.drift.com.

About OpenViewOpenView, the expansion stage venture firm, helps build rapidly expanding software companies into market leaders. Through our expansion platform, we help companies hire the best talent, acquire and retain the right customers and partner with industry leaders so they can dominate their markets. Our focus on the expansion stage makes us uniquely suited to provide truly tailored operational support to our portfolio companies. Learn more about OpenView at ov.vc.

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REVENUE SUCCESS SECRETS - Gongpages.gong.io/wp-content/uploads/Revenue-Success-Secrets.pdfsuccess functions. Ever wondered how those folks succeed? We did too. That’s why we asked