Every 10th episode, we tear down one topic. This time, we’re talking about landing your forecast in Q4.

Bonus: Get the 30MPC Forecasting Guide

ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

The forecast should never be a surprise to your manager. You should be able to give one-sentence pipeline review updates and get through over 15 deals in a 30-minute pipeline review into your forecast.

For your forecast, you're going to call your key deals and your worst case and move to your commit, which is your bet on what will actually happen.

Play the spread. If your commit consists of one deal landing, you should probably have two to four in inventory. Throughout the month or the quarter, your forecast will start to taper.

Don't be a sandbag - don’t set a goal or forecast that's way too high.


RESOURCES DISCUSSED

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Things you can steal

Sales Playbook: Nick and Armand Teach You How To Forecast

The #1 sales podcast in the world, fueled by hyper-actionable sales tactics from the top 1% sellers at companies like Salesforce, Gong, Outreach, Slack, LinkedIn, Keller Williams, Northwestern Mutual.

30 Minutes to President's Club cuts all the BS, fluffy mindset stories, and sales academia to give you the most actionable sales tactics that get you to President's Club. Every episode is a supercharged 30 minutes where you'll hear step-by-step breakdowns in every key dimension of sales, including:

Prospecting: How to open conversations to triple your pipeline

Discovery: How to ask questions that uncover massive pain

Process: How to get big contracts over the line

Leadership: How to hire and train world class teams.


Your founding hosts are Nick Cegelski (3x top enterprise seller) and Armand Farrokh (VP of Sales at 29, ex-Pave, ex-Carta) joined by co-hosts Jen Allen-Knuth (ex-Challenger, ex-Lavender) and Mark Kosoglow (CRO @ Catalyst, ex-Outreach). 

Whether you're seller listening to the (SELL) show or leader tuning into the (LEAD) show…

Get ready, you're going to President's Club.

Business

Investing

Careers

Management & Marketing

Business News

Shopping

Management

FOUR ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

When working with reps and trying to help them improve, work backwards from what you want to the prospect to say then build what they need to do to get them to say that

Coach forward vs. backwards, coach to prepare so that future performance will be better and they feel more prepared for actual scenarios approaching

Have each one "What Great Looks Like" exercise per manager per quarter, pick one metric, find the rep who is the best at that, then diagnose the different behaviours they exhibit to adopt across the rest of your team

Use the "Four Ds" to roll out WGLL across your team - define what good looks like, document it, demonstrate it with training, and deliberately practice it by scoring reps performing the new tactics on calls


PATH TO PRESIDENT’S CLUB

SVP of Sales and Partnerships @ Bench Accounting

Practice Lead, Revenue Leadership @ Winning by Design

VP of Inside Sales @ PatientPop Inc.

Head of Sales Enablement & Development @ ServiceTitan

VP of Sales @ SnackNation


RESOURCES DISCUSSED


Read: Join our weekly newsletter



Steal: Templates, drips, scripts



Watch: How to get an accurate picture of your team's pipeline ft. KD



Listen: How to build a winning sales team ft. KD


KD's past episodes:

Build a Winning Sales Team

Discovery Part 1

Discovery Part 2

Getting Prospects to Agree to Their Problem

221 (Lead) Cloning Your Top Reps by Identifying What Good Looks Like (Kevin "KD" Dorsey)

FOUR ACTIONABLE SALES TAKEAWAYS

Avoid interrogating the prospect with surface level questions, use vertical questions to get deeper and give meaning to your questions

Try to avoid putting words into your prospect's mouth or leading them with stereotypical sales questions that make them feel trapped

Aim to uncover the prospect's situation, problems, and impacts with questions like "Why did you take the call?", "

Recap what you've learned and give back by sharing a story or a very short "harbour tour demo"


RESOURCES DISCUSSED

Join our weekly newsletter

Things you can steal

Early access to The Book on Cold Calling

Sell Playbook: How To Ask Discovery Questions To Uncover Business Problems (Nick & Armand)

FOUR ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

Ask your inbound leads what prompted them to take the call.

Start your calls with outbound leads by calling out that they might not know what you do and explaining the problems you solve. Then make the transition into discovery. 

Categorize buyers’ answers into problem language or solutions language. Buyers often answer “problem” questions with solutions, so ensure you get the problem language.

Avoid discovery fatigue with a mix of emotionally intelligent techniques. (Examples: quick customer stories, summarizing, questions)


PATH TO PRESIDENT’S CLUB

Co-Founder & CEO @ Stealth Startup

Director of Sales & Go-To-Market @ Gong

Co-Founder & CEO @ Conversature

Regional Sales Manager - New Business @ InsideSales.com 


RESOURCES DISCUSSED

Join our weekly newsletter

Things you can steal

Hall of Fame: Chris Orlob Ep. 123

FOUR ACTIONABLE LEADERSHIP TAKEAWAYS

Do a bi-weekly "pipe squeeze" (pipeline review) with each rep share your screen and take notes as you go to save time & maintain control

Discounts drive velocity, when a deal has stalled or there is no next step, use a manager email to see if a pricing incentive will move the close date

Ask the same 5 questions in deal review - Deal size, deal close date, buyer buy in, next step, and any incentives on the deal. Send the update to your leader for upward transparency

Only have reps forecast deals in pipeline for the month then run the historical math to see what may change both positive or negative


PATH TO PRESIDENT’S CLUB

COO @ Growth Assistant

VP of Sales @ Lattice

Sales Director @ Lattice

VP of Sales @ Appcues


RESOURCES DISCUSSED

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Things you can steal

220 (Lead) Keeping Reps Accountable to Their Forecasts (John Sherer, Growth Assistant)

FOUR ACTIONABLE SALES TAKEAWAYS

Recognize your SE and team members who help you on deals & onsites

Call each attendee after a meeting to thank them for their time and ask them for their feedback

When pitching an onsite be prescriptive about what's in it for your champion and close with "Do you think your team would be open to something like that" as a softer ask

Send a multiple choice pre-meeting survey to each of a meeting's attendees to ask questions about the client's current state


PATH TO PRESIDENT’S CLUB

Commercial Sales Manager @ Procore

Account Executive, Enterprise @ Procore

Account Executive, Majors @ Procore

Account Executive, Mid-Market @ Procore


RESOURCES DISCUSSED

Join our weekly newsletter

Things you can steal

Sales Playbook: Nick and Armand Teach You How To Forecast

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