This episode of Revenue Today features Angela Bunner, Vice President of Solutions at ClickUp. Today, she digs into the 3 main focuses of customer experience, namely best-in-class support, innovative engineering, and design.

Angela discusses the key elements of their highly-rated customer experience which focuses on listening to customer feedback and utilizing customer success managers as business partners to educate on the product's best uses and features.

Takeaways

• Dependability, personalization, ease of use, accessibility, and customizable offerings are all factors that influence customer experience
• Grow your product by constantly listening to your customers and deploying customer success managers

Quote of the Show

"We also have customer success managers who are basically business partners to our larger accounts to make sure that the product is being adopted. We're monitoring usage in areas where folks maybe aren't utilizing the product as much as they can and pushing them to use the product more." - Angela Bunner 

Connect with Angela in the links below:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelabunner/
• Website: https://clickup.com/

Ways to tune in:

• Amazon Music
• Apple Podcast
• Spotify
• Google Podcast
• YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

This episode of Revenue Today features Alina Vandenberghe, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Chili Piper. Today, she digs into finding product-market fit that skyrocketed her company from 0 to $20 million.

She shares how motivation is the number 1 factor she wants to understand from a customer. Next, is the dollar sign behind it. Alina also discusses how they found product-market fit by signing a contract with a company before building their product. This was to ensure that all the features made sense for their buyer. 

Takeaways

• Finding product-market fit in 50 companies as prior experience was essential in growing Chili Piper
• Discover the motivation behind why someone buys a certain product, and then find out how much they are willing to pay for it

Quote of the Show

"I made sure that all the features that I was building made sense for my buyer and that buyer had a repeatable need and repeatable motivation as well." - Alina Vandenberghe 

Connect with Alina in the links below:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alinav/
• Website: https://www.chilipiper.com/

Ways to tune in:

• Amazon Music
• Apple Podcast
• Spotify
• Google Podcast

YouTube:

 https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

Today, we welcome Alex Boyd, Founder and CEO of RevenueZen. In this conversation, he debunks the myth that hiring more sales reps will generate more revenue. To scale, a company needs to have sales, marketing, and the rest of the company on the same narrative about the problem you are solving. 

Alex highlights the importance of organic growth and leaders leading from the front amidst economic forecasts. He discusses how uncomfortable yet necessary it is to really get to know your customer for a marketing-driven approach to succeed. Alex also digs into the value of taking a minute to ponder to open up new perspectives.

Takeaways

• SaaS companies need a subject matter expert to tie in the narrative between sales and marketing
• KPIs to watch for are win rate on qualified ops by source and acceptance rate from meeting to qualified opportunity
• Hire SDRs for the job that only they can do and technology cannot

Quote of the Show

"Revenue always represents what is working. When you make money, you do so by what is working. And the problem is that marketers and sales leaders don't always know what's working, so their techniques to try to generate revenue lag behind reality." - Alex Boyd

Connect with Alex in the links below:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexcboyd/
• Website: https://revenuezen.com/

Ways to tune in:

• Amazon Music
• Apple Podcast
• Spotify
• Google Podcast
• YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

This episode of Revenue Today features Mary Vue, Head of Partnerships and Alliances at Syncari. Today, she lays down a few examples of good B2B-PMF (Product-Market Fit) partnering. Mary also shares some partnership types that can fit well for B2B start-ups.

Takeaways

• Think about where your product helps you fit and what role your partner plays
• You want to establish partnerships that will have meaning to your sales, marketing, and product teams

Quote of the Show

"Even when you start to say, 'I'm going to go and establish some partnerships'. You want to be able to establish partnerships that are going to be meaningful to your ideal customer profile. You don't want to just be shooting a bunch of blanks in the dark." - Mary Vue 

Connect with Mary in the link below:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryvue/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/maryvue

Ways to tune in:

• Amazon Music
• Apple Podcast
• Spotify
• Google Podcast
• YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

This episode of Revenue Today features Donald Kelly, Founder and Chief Sales Evangelist at The Sales Evangelist! He talks about a crucial mistake that many start-ups have early on in that they don't even determine if there's something that they can bring to the market. Donald also shares his insights on which areas start-ups should focus on and why it is important to establish your value proposition early on.

Takeaways

• As a start-up, focus on an industry and try to make sure you actually fit and can solve the problem
• Your value proposition has to be clear and established from the get-go

Quote of the Show

"Before you get to that part, let's determine if there's even something we can bring to market, that we can have salespeople sell, and we can have marketing share to the world. We need to establish this thing first and that's where it's a sucky part, it's just a lot of research and gathering information and doing the grunt work so you can make sure that this is something the customers want." - Donald Kelly

Connect with Donald in the links below:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldckelly/
• Website: https://thesalesevangelist.com/

Ways to tune in:

• Amazon Music
• Apple Podcast
• Spotify
• Google Podcast
• YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

This episode of Revenue Today features Alina Vandenberghe, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Chili Piper! She talks about how many clients they had before actually building the product. Alina also shares the thought process and decision-making involved as many in the company had different ideas on how the problem should be solved.

Takeaways

• You can observe patterns from people's feedback and use that to build your product
• People don't see problems as fast or in the same way that you do so you may need to provide more education for your production

Quote of the Show

"I observed that people are very poor and judging what they really need. They just see some specific part of the problem that they have right now and they may not be fully plugged in to all the other things that the product may be able to do to make their life better overall." - Aline Vandenberghe

Connect with Alina in the links below:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alinav/
• Website: https://www.chilipiper.com/

Ways to tune in:

• Amazon Music
• Apple Podcast
• Spotify
• Google Podcast
• YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

This episode of Revenue Today features Nadja Komnenic, previously Head of Business Development at lemlist and now Senior Sales Development Manager at Lokalise. Today, she talks about growing lemlist from one million to ten million dollars in less than two years with the help of the founder in identifying the right product-market fit.

Takeaways

• Use a sales automation tool for cold emails
• Always identify the pain you want to address first

Quote of the Show

"Before you even start building a product, it's not only about the demand that you potentially see in your market, it's also about what is the pain that you want to solve and making sure that the pain is existent in a large enough audience that you're going to be able to address it." - Nadja Komnenic

Connect with Nadja in the link below:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadjakomnenic/

Ways to tune in:

• Amazon Music
• Apple Podcast
• Spotify
• Google Podcast
• YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

Today, we welcome Ian Koniak, Dean of Enterprise Sales School at Pavillion and the Founder and CEO of Ian Koniak Sales Coaching Inc. Long-lasting relationships are at the core of Ian’s success as the top enterprise sales rep at Salesforce. He shares how the 80-20 Pareto rule applies to prioritizing your clients and his eventual move to entrepreneurship. 

Ian digs into his KPIs for growing a multimillion-dollar business and his copyrighted PREDICT test that sales reps can use to measure if a deal is going to close or not. He also stresses that you are not your number however, when your ego is high, you behave badly too. 

Takeaways

• Less is more, so the 80-20 rule lets you focus a majority of your efforts into the top 20% of your A accounts.
• PREDICT Test:

P - Problem with pain

R - Reason

E - Engagement

D - Decision-maker/Decision process

I - Impact

C - Cost of inaction

T - Timeline

• You are not alone with your mental health struggles, especially around addiction and recovery.

Quote of the Show

"The myth I want to debunk is that more activity equals better results and that actually is not true. It's true if you're in a transactional role. It's true if you have a quick sales cycle and you're selling and you have a huge list, but for enterprise selling, more does not mean better. Less is more. It's the 80-20 rule." - Ian Koniak

Connect with Ian on addiction recovery or sales coaching in the links below:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iankoniak/
• Website: https://www.untapyoursalespotential.com/

Ways to tune in:

• Amazon Music
• Apple Podcast
• Spotify
• Google Podcast
• YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

Today, we have an amazing panel of guests to talk about how to scale your revenue operations. We are joined by Darrell Alfonso, Global Marketing Operations at Amazon Web Services; Mollie Bodensteiner, Global Revenue Operations Leader at Deal; and Eddie Reynolds, CEO and Revenue Operations Strategy Consultant at Union Square Consulting.

The panel discusses the utilization of service-level agreements (SLAs) and, more specifically, knowing when not to use them or if you're using them way too much. They also talk about using this along with the other processes to create a roadmap for revenue operations.

Takeaways

• You can't use SLAs everywhere to fix things they're not designed to fix
• Make sure there is alignment across all departments to roadmap efficiently in revenue operations

Quote of the Show

"In an ideal world, sales should want to follow up on the leads that marketing passes over as fast as possible because they're really good. And the benefit is understood by both, that more deals is going to be better for everyone. So if you're trying to force that with an SLA, it's indicative of a larger problem." - Darrell Alfonso

Connect with our guests in the links below:

Eddie: 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwardreynolds/
• Website: https://www.unionsquareconsulting.com/

Mollie

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/molliebodensteiner

Darrell

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrellalfonso/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemandDarrell

Ways to tune in:

• Amazon Music
• Apple Podcast
• Spotify
• Google Podcast
• YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs

This episode of Revenue Today features Mark Roberge, Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital. Today, he talks about the main factors that kill companies when it comes to hiring, whether it be because of slow or fast-paced reasons. Mark then discusses the right way to approach how fast you should scale as a company.

Takeaways

• Many companies hire too recklessly and don't think about how to onboard or manage reps as the number increases more and more
• Use the product-market and go-to-market fit as your growth speedometer

Quote of the Show

"Your peers are deciding if they are scaling too fast based on the quarterly board results and most of us know that those results are what happened to your business six months ago. Your peers are using old data to dictate this decision, if you use the lead indicators of retention and unit economics, you're getting a good feel for your business today." - Mark Roberge

Connect with Mark in the links below:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markroberge/
• Website: https://www.stage2.capital/

Ways to tune in:

• Amazon Music
• Apple Podcast
• Spotify
• Google Podcast
• YouTube: https://youtu.be/6KEho9RSaHs