Hi I'm Mahara, I'm with Farlan Dorwell.
-Hello, how are you? -Hi, how are you?
-Mahara. -Mahara, yeah.
-It's wonderful to meet you. -It's a pleasure to meet you too.
What are you thinking about RD Summit so far? Are you enjoying the event?
RD Summit is a crazy, fantastic circus.
Filled with a bunch of wild animals crazy about sales and marketing.
This is my crew.
I know, right? You've been into sales, marketing
and also startups marketing for more than ten years, right?
You were actually talking about sales. How was your speaking?
It was great. It was a lot of fun. This is what I live for.
Whoever knew that I could get paid to just talk?
If my parents only knew when I was six years old,
at the dinner table blabbing on like an idiot,
asking me politely: ok, please be quiet,
allow your brothers and sisters to get a word.
Who knew that people would listen to me on a grand stage?
So, it's a dream come true.
But it's also beautiful to be here to help,
to talk to people, to have fun.
And for me here, it's only karma.
I'm not giving away consulting or looking to sell CDs,
I'm not even promoting for a company right now.
It's purely just to be here to help. So, it's been wonderful.
That's awesome.
We have 8 thousand people waiting for this knowledge
and to understand a little bit more about your marketing,
and all the digital marketing strategies and sales as well.
Talking a little bit more about sales and the theme of your speaking,
What would be the first tip you'd give to someone
that is just starting to be a sales person?
If you're starting out in your sales career,
you want to learn from the best you possibly can.
Making the mistake of going to a company where you think you're going to make
a lot of money, or that has a lot of leads,
or they've sold you the dream,
the most important thing when you're first starting out in sales:
work for somebody really good.
I had four amazing mentors early on in my career
and I didn't really even look for a mentor, I was just being curious,
asking questions and wanted to learn.
But I think it really helped me accelerate my growth
in this part of my career and also the income
that you can make, the impact that you can have.
So, I'd say that early on it's all about learning from the best.
It doesn't have to be the best, the best,
like, you're not going to be able to go and sit beside Marc Benioff,
the CEO of SalesForce, but find good credible people
that know what they're doing and know what they're talking about.
I'd say that's absolutely number one.
And then, sales is hard.
You can have a big impact in sales,
you can make a lot of money in sales, but because it's hard to do.
And if you're early on in your career, you'll realize that your attitude
is the number one determinant as a young sales professional,
or as a sales professional for your whole career.
Your attitude is the number one determinant of your success.
-From what I've seen. -That's awesome.
Sometimes we have the chance to talk to someone,
or even your manager
and sometimes we don't interact with them,
to understand and to learn exactly from the best.
Sometimes people miss this opportunity
and I think it's a waste of our time, right?
And you talked about also some skills and abilities
that this person should have, just like attitude.
But what would you say is like one of the main skills
that someone that is searching for this career,
or even managers that are trying to hire
a new sales person should look for?
If we talk tactically in term of skills...
Sales is an interesting one, because sometimes people
don't get into sales because it's their dream,
it's their passion, it's their life purpose.
They get into sales because they need a freaking job.
And that's ok, because sometimes that path that you're going down,
there's a reason you're supposed to be going down there.
But tactically speaking, to be really good at sales,
whether you love it, you're passionate and this is going to be your career,
or you fall into it for another reason,
there's both an art and a science to sales.
So the art to sales, is understanding who you're talking to
and connecting on a human level.
When you're on the phone, actually having a conversation and connecting.
And there's something to that, there's a certain finesse
that some people have naturally
and some people can develop. So, that's the art part of sales.
And it's a thing. You need to have it. And then, there's the science.
That is understanding the deal process. The methodology to understand
if this customer is for real and if this deal's actually going to happen.
Yes, there's a lot of artsy, touchy, feely,
having fun in terms of being in sales,
but then, there's also getting down to brass tacks and making your number.
It's important to make your number. You want to grow the company.
You want the company that you work for to do well.
And to do that, you really have to have a science and a process
by which to understand from 100 companies that you're talking to
which are the 12 you should be talking to,
which are the eight that are going to buy?
And of those, which are the four
that are going to help you double your quota?
So, it's an art and a science tactically speaking
to be successful in sales.
And talking about science, something that has changed a little bit
in the sales industry is the outbound and inbound sales person
that is actually starting to use more data,
starting to talk more about qualified leads and opportunity
instead of wasting time talking to someone
that will not buy, or does not have the fit for your product.
What do you think about this change,
what was the biggest challenge of doing it
for someone that usually
is adapted and used to work as outbound sales person
now is an inbound sales person
and is not used to use that much amount of data
that much statistic.
Ok.
So, let's talk about data and then let's talk about outbound.
And we can touch on some of the technology and some of the data.
No matter how many tool sets and how much data you have,
you still have to have people that have the guts and the intuition
to make a call.
So, for example, in my last opportunity
I tasked inbound reps
with what a good inbound lead looks like
and what the criteria for that is.
And also for outbound, it's very important
that they need to have some direction for what a good
ICP, or ideal customer profile looks like.
And sometimes you're not going to have data early on to identify that.
So, I made a call and I said: this is what that profile looks like.
And it was a very distinct profile.
A certain position title internally, a certain geographic region,
a certain segment of a company or industry.
And then with that,
the outbound team, for instance, they could take that direction
and formulate messaging to actually target
this specific set of buyers.
And I said specific set of buyers very intentionally.
Once they target them with the right message,
And it's easier to have the right message
when you're targeting specifics.
They could then put it into e-mail cadence.
So, a tool that I really like is outreach.io.
I think outreach is great.
They are a great cadence tool for messaging a prospect
seven or nine times.
So, it's not all just call to action: Hey, I want to talk to you.
It's like: here is the case study that we did
on a company that is relevant to your space.
That's it. You're just helping with information.
That outbound SDR can look at the cadence and look at the e-mails
and understand what percentages are actually being open,
what percentages are being responded to
and then they can actually take those messages
and refine them more and increase their response rate, AKA
deliver content to the customer that they actually want.
So, it's a really beautiful thing to have that...
Don't discount the human element.
But then, to have the tool set and have the data,
to more effectively target and also effectively help customers
is what is happening today.
So, talking a little bit more about how to manage a team
and establishing KPI for your sales team,
what would you say is the most important KPI
or at least a direction that managers
should look at to manage well their team
and to get good results in sales?
Early on, so let's talk about US$ 1 to 10 million,
if the company is about US$ 1 to 10 million in revenue, ARR.
The most important KPI or metric is:
how many deals are you going to close this month.
It's all that matters.
Especially early on. Everyone is talking about pipeline,
I've got this many deals in my pipe and we've go this much velocity
through each state of the pipeline. That's all bullshit.
Especially at US$ 1 to 5 million,
How many deals are you going to close this month?
And you better F* close it. That's it.
For SDRs and Outbound SDRs,
how many qualified opportunities are you going to set up
for calls this month? That's it.
As you progress, later stage,
let's talk US$ 5 to 15 million in ARR.
You can look at a reps conversion rate, from lead to close.
And that's important for the business
because you don't want to waste leads.
It's also important because when you sit down with reps
you can look at where their deals are stalling in different stages
and you can coach them.
If their deal is stalling at a demo stage,
they're probably not doing a great job talking about pricing
if they can't get it to a term sheet,
so, you might want to work on that and coach that a little bit.
But you can get any dashboard you want
in SalesForce or People.ai and all these sales tools.
It's about how many deals are you going to close this month?
Particularly early on and then you can get a lot fancier.
That's not actually an easy task to do, right?
Well, I really appreciate the tips you've given us.
They are really useful and they're actually
tips that you can start using in your company
like tomorrow or today, if you have the time.
So, I really appreciate having you here and hopefully we can see you next year
in RD Summit, right?
-Is this an invitation? -I don't know, is it?
Have I just been given a formal invitation to come back to RD Summit?
You guys better re-watch the talk that I did this morning
because there were a couple of explicatives, hopefully that's ok,
but I thoroughly enjoyed it, I'd love to come back
and talk next year.
And I would even love to open up the conference
for 8 thousand people strong.
I make you a deal.
You guys let me open up the conference, I'll speak to 8 thousand people,
and I'll learn Portuguese for next year.
I'll do it in Portuguese. How does that sound?
It's a big challenge to learn Portuguese in one year.
If I was responsible for that, I'd definetely take that bet.
I really appreciate it. I hope you learn Portuguese.
And next year, it's going to be more than 8 thousand, you bet.
-Thank you so much for having me. -Thanks so much for your time.
It was wonderful having you with us, thank you.
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