Jan Young, MBA, CSPO, CSM

Did someone say FREE REVOPS?! I’m finally doing this… I'm looking for 3-5 tech startups doing something great for their space to benefit from some pro-bono RevOps advisory work - yup - free! You can expect 4x sessions with me and your GTM leaders/founders focusing on a core topic each session - see it as an intro to RevOps for your org - not a replacement to fractional work. Complete the Typeform if: - You're a manager or founder at a B2B tech company that doesn't have a dedicated RevOps function - You're under £ 10M ARR (£5m and under would be even better!) - You are using HubSpot but not sure if you're getting the most out of it OR don't have a CRM (yet) - You might be VC-backed - You're doing something great in your space *Bonus points if you're a B-Corp* https://lnkd.in/eCQBnu9T So… why am I doing this? I love working with tech clients, but not every company can pay the going rate, and not all of you realise you need support - so I want to give back to the community and open up ideas for you all. If you don't qualify but know someone who might - share this post to help others see it 🙏 In a couple weeks, I'll reach out to those I've selected and tell why - if you aren't selected I'll still have something for you 👀 Thank you - and let's keep the Startup Pulse beating strong.

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The new episode of The Science of Scaling Podcast dropped today. In this episode, I speak with Ang McManamon the VP of Sales at Crunchbase. We dissect managing sales through a pivot, specifically how she managed the team as the market transitioned from one of the most bullish markets in tech in 2021 to one of the biggest down markets in tech in 2022. Example discussion points include: How to manage a board that is demanding an unrealistic revenue target? (1) Educate them on the current bottoms-up GTM model by showing them where the team has been performing on the key drivers of revenue outcomes over the past 2 quarters (i.e. the average productivity per rep (PPR), MQLs generated per month, average sales cycle and close rate on sales opportunities, etc.). We implement this framework with our portfolio companies Stage 2 Capital before issues like this even surface in order to establish the narrative from the beginning. (2) Illustrate where these metrics need to be to achieve the revenue outcomes they are demanding. Often this analysis yields the conclusion that the team would need to 2x PPR, MQL generating, and and close rates essentially overnight. Hopefully, they start to see how unrealistic the plan is and that the plan is going to lead to unnecessary burn and departures of top performers (3) Using the bottoms-up model, devise an aggressive but realistic plan that assumes say a 10%-20% Q/Q improvement in each of the performance drivers and the revenue outcomes that this performance would yield. (4) The board may ignore this line of thinking but at least we have educated them on the revenue mechanics and can use that framework to report back results at the next meeting. How to quantitatively assess whether a revenue miss is due to a macro condition, like the economy, or sales execution, like hiring and training the salespeople? An area few boards and leadership teams look at to conduct this diagnosis is the quarter-over-quarter performance of individual AEs, especially the consistent top performers on the team. If the company misses the target and you look under the hood and find that the historic consistent performers are still performing as usual and the miss was driven from AEs hired in the last year, we have a sales leadership execution issue. However, if we look under the hood and see that even the top performers' PPR decreased, perhaps at about the same time and about the same amount, then we have likely have a diagnosis outside of sales execution (i.e. economy, competition, product, etc.) Anyway, Ang is awesome and was completely open about this journey that so many leaders experienced over the past two years. Check out the episode here! https://lnkd.in/e2QiuPEH

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I'm finding the rise of RevOps is a game-changer for businesses. RevOps is helping companies find and eliminate inefficiencies in their sales processes. It’s revealing gaps and opportunities that were previously hidden. With this focus, I think companies will now be able to see the true impact of partnerships. RevOps and it's cousin PartnerOps brings data-driven insights that validate the importance of partnerships. By understanding where conversion rates drop, companies can make targeted improvements. RevOps shows that partnerships are not just a nice-to-have, but a critical go-to-market strategy. This approach ensures that partnerships are introduced at the right time, with the right focus.

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I like to think I’m good at organizing my podcast… but I don’t want to do it? This is not teasing, just a discussion about my process. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy — “just press record, publish, and you’re done, profit”. I actually set up a sort of pipeline, each person I’m talking to is in a different stage just like a sales pipeline for a business, I have reminders, a flux, everything — but the execution is the problem. I’m finding it hard to actually get the time to execute it. Ummm… I noticed several things: ⇒ Whenever I conduct the interviews or if I’m even just thinking about the questions, I’m super-mega enthusiastic and I get a boost of energy. (But, paradoxically) ⇒ When I actually have to write to those people, shoot them a reminder, book a meeting or whatever… I deflate. (I would like to take this opportunity to ask a therapist… “Why?” I’m looking for a good one, do you know somebody?) But, back to the matter at hand, this is what happens in business. Especially in startups, there are millions of ideas, everybody is enthusiastic, “let’s do it!” But then… when you need to actually work on them… you deflate: blockers, people get bored, “neah, let’s not do it…” When… realistically speaking, that’s THE KEY to success. It lies within execution and putting in the work, in that semi-hustle. So no, the saying that goes “you won’t work a minute of your life if you enjoy what you’re doing”... bullshit. No matter what you’re f*cking doing, there will be tasks that you have to do, necessary for success, but you won’t enjoy them. They are related to your business, not the actual sh!t, but you still have to do them. It is what it is. Consistency/grit is what gets you through these moments and tasks. It’s what gets you closer to success. What’s more, it’s a lot harder to achieve success when you want to do everything right, without hacks, boobs or whatever sells

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People fail at strategic sales because they do shallow work: - Focusing too much on outbound activity - Over-indexing on presenting a stale POV - Closing small POCs without a plan to grow - Measuring success based on meetings run Here’s what actually creates impact: - Coming to the table w/ key insights - Delivering a compelling point of view - Co-designing a narrative w/ the mobilizer - Measuring success based on your win rate And these are best done in person with the client and the help of a whiteboard. Winning in strategic selling is about going deep. It’s about designing a stellar experience with the right accounts. This puts you in a better position to win bigger deals with fewer tries. 🐝

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What should your "About" section on LinkedIn say? 🤔 You should NOT use generic descriptors like: 👎🏼 Results driven 👎🏼 Excellent communicator 👎🏼 Detail oriented 👎🏼 Highly motivated 👎🏼 Self-starter ....if yours sounds something like: "Fred is a seasoned customer success professional with a proven track record of exceeding goals & delighting customers." .... I'm talking to you. Stuff like this? ☝🏼 It doesn't tell me anything. ⭐️ RULES OF THUMB ⭐️ 1️⃣ Don't be too formal 2️⃣ Use the "About" section as an opportunity to showcase your unique value. What do you want people to know? 3️⃣ If yours reads like it would apply to any Tom, Dick, or Harry, scrap it ⭐️ THINGS TO INCLUDE ⭐️ 1️⃣ Brief description of who you are -> Try to keep it to a few sentences or at most, a short paragraph -> What is your area of expertise (sales, marketing, CS, etc)? -> What do you love about what you do? -> How'd you get to where you are? 2️⃣ Get even more specific about your area of expertise (even if you've mentioned it above) -> What industry are you in? -> What size/stage of companies have you worked for? For startups, this can be expressed in terms of amount of funding, ARR, employee count... -> For leaders: have you led global teams? Managed manangers? What sizes of teams have you led? Who was on your team? -> For GTM IC's: what does your book of business look like? Who is your primary stakeholder? What part of the customer journey are you managing? 3️⃣ What are some of your biggest accomplishments? -> Add METRICS whenever possible. I'm talking ARR, % to goal, awards, etc. -> If you have a cool story, add it! 4️⃣ ✨✨✨Add your skills ✨✨✨ -> This usually goes at the bottom but is probably the MOST IMPORTANT part because you can cram in a bunch of valuable keywords, and your viewer can get a really good sense of your level of expertise -> Keep in list/bullet format, categorize (if you a long list), and be comprehensive -> Don't be afraid to repeat whatever you said above i.e. Industries: healthcare, insurance, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology Tools: Looker, Tableau, Power BI, Databricks, Snowflake, Segment, Slack, Zoom, Asana, Trello, Confluence, Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, Powerpoint) Languages: SQL, Python, HTML, CSS, Javascript If you've read this whole thing, let me know - does this help? Do you want to see more of this content? #jobtips #jobsearch #personalbrand

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If I was in a full time enablement role right now my #1 focus would be working to become my CRO’s go-to person when they want to see rep’s in-call behavior change. Every sales leader I’ve ever worked with has been unsettled by the behaviors they see when they watch reps calls and frustrated by how nothing seems to change no matter how much training they do with the team. If you can become their go-to person when they need to get reps to change how they sell, and if you can establish a track record of successfully doing so, you'll probably be the last person on the enablement team to get cut. To accomplish this though you’ll need to adopt a different approach to training than what’s been done in the past; one more focused on helping reps rewire their brains with new skills, reflexes, and abilities rather than just learning the material. On July 23rd I’ll be hosting a Hackathon along with The Enablement Squad in Denver where you can spend the afternoon learning how to build behavior change programs modeled after how Olympic athletes and professional musicians train. In this session you will learn about a new approach to sales training, and you'll spend time collaborating with your peers figuring out how to apply what you're learning to each create a practice-based behavior change program tailored to the specific needs of your own sales team. ⌚Date & Time: July 23rd from 1-4pm MST 🗺️Location: Oracle Office, 7700 Technology Way, Denver CO 80237 🖊️Register: https://lnkd.in/esfDYcrS Happy hour to follow for more networking - details to come. 👀 #SalesEnablement #Practice #TheEnablementSquad

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Customer Success folks, are you new to a leadership role? To be honest, I think it can be pretty overwhelming! There is so much to look after, so much to plan and so much to execute. 😨 What should be your plan of action when you've just entered a new CS leadership role? Join me in my latest webinar as I host my dear friend Raman Bindra (CS Director Recruiterflow) who will be discussing 👇 💎 What should be your first steps and critical actions you need to take as a CS leader 💎 What are the key tasks that must be at the top of your agenda? 💎 Why it is crucial to understand your team, your processes and your product itself, and 💎 How to move beyond quick wins and focus on actions that will foster long-term customer satisfaction and growth
 The webinar is happening on 6th June, just 2 days to go!! Register here if you're interested https://lnkd.in/ge4DwvRg #Webinar #CustomerSuccess #Leader

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Stop being the victim in Customer Success Create partnerships with Sales if you want to change for the better As customer success leaders, we understand the challenges that arise when partnering with sales teams and building effective relationships. It's time to shift our perspective from victimhood to partnership and unlock the potential for exceptional customer success. 🤝 🔥 The Challenges We Face: Building strong partnerships with sales teams can sometimes feel like an uphill battle. Misalignment of goals, conflicting priorities, and a lack of communication can hinder our ability to deliver outstanding customer experiences. But it's crucial to remember that our success is interdependent, and by embracing a partnership mindset, we can overcome these challenges together. When I think of companies that I was part of that had amazing outcomes and exits, sales and post-sales were aligned. Was that 100% - No. Did we braid each other's hair on road trips? No. But we worked together as partners. 💡 Strategies for Building Strong Partnerships: 1️⃣ Know What's in it for Sales. You need to let the sales team know why it's better to work with your team, rather than in silos. Better retention rates, better customer quotes, etc. 2️⃣ Establish Mutual Goals: Collaborate with sales to define common objectives and KPIs. When both teams are driving towards the same goals, it enhances teamwork, ensures collective accountability, and fuels productivity. 3️⃣ Share Customer Success Stories: Highlight successful outcomes driven by the partnership between customer success and sales. By showcasing concrete examples of how collaboration has led to satisfied customers and increased revenue, we can inspire others and encourage a positive shift in mindset. ✨ The Benefits of Partnership: Adopting a partnership approach between customer success and sales yields remarkable benefits. Conflict does not. How are you partnering with sales? How have you successfully created working relationships that push both teams to better outcomes internally and externally?

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Awesome blog published by Ben Siegel on why we created Abode 💡 What resonates most with me is that the traditional post-offer experience is disconnected... We ask our incoming hires to change their entire means of communicating via their phones and use what one of our partners referenced as "🐌 mail". And expect them to be just as engaged as we are as full-time employees! It's crazy when you put yourself in your incoming hires shoes and think of all of the systems we ask them to use before they even join us. Why not give them one centralized dashboard to go to for everything from communication to community to events? 🤔 The whole article is below, I recommend giving it a read!

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Fellow RevOps professionals, what's your opinion on measuring RevOps success? 📈 Love to hear from you as to what's proven to be successful 👍 and what perhaps hasn't been 👎

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Pipeline isn't built with a one 5-step cadence. We invest significant time crafting "killer" emails, only to face silence in return. 📧😕 When you're outbounding (cold calls, cold emails), how many times are you willing to send that email or make that call without a response before you give up? If your answer isn't "forever," then why bother? 🤔 Consider it from the other side: when was the last time someone convinced you to purchase on the first try? 🚀 🤔 Follow my logic? 😳 👽 It's not the quality of the email past a certain level. In fact, I would even argue that the "simpler" and in some cases "dumber" the email, the better. Because guess what: "Simple" and "dumb" can be memorable. But in any case, the only thing really matters is if you are willing to send that next email out. Who's stopping you? 👨‍🎤

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Free resource for those wondering "do I really need to rearchitect my GTM?" Hopefully it helps some folks reorient around the LinkedIn GTM hype. I have had so many conversations about the pressure revops/GTM/founder leaders feel to completely reimagine their GTM process in light of a recent wave of tools such as... - Signal-based selling - Intent and scoring - Clay - AI for GTM And in our recent outreach for our SDR Relief Fund, so many replies indicate how often SDR/BDR teams get laid off. Let's take a first principles approach to this instead, and talk about the problem. And if you can go through this, get to the end, and say you've taken these steps, I think you'll either find: A) Product does not have PMF. It's back to the drawing board *like the drawing board of the founders back when it was just an idea in their heads* B) Experimentation reveals TAM is smaller than imagined but there is profitability to be had within a couple niche sectors - that's great, as long as you didn't raise too much you can plan to reach profitability with those sectors while building for other sectors or launching something new... or (crazy idea) enjoying your life C) There is a real need for automating manual work. Great, there are tons of excellent tools for this now. Get help from 🤖 Jacob Tuwiner and Joe Rhew and Brigitta ☀️ Ruha. Ocean.io, Keyplay are worth testing here. D) There is a need to better manage, enable, and use AI/Clay/etc to supercharge SDR/BDR teams so that they can all succeed, not just have a small subset succeed. Sit down with Scott Martinis, Jordan Crawford, Alex Boyd and feel way better about the work in front of you. Another title for this could be "don't get drawn too deeply into the hype; figure out what you need and evaluate from there." I know this doesn't answer the questions out there like "what is Clay?" but it's really a tool for solving some (not all) of the problems mentioned here. So you'll get there.

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A few years ago, I checked in for a medical appointment, and when I said I worked at HubSpot, the woman said, "Oh, so you work in software?" As our brand was becoming more recognizable globally, I beamed with pride, "Oh, so you've heard of HubSpot..." 😊 She said, "No, but when you can't figure out what they do from the name, it's usually a software company." 🤣 I had to laugh out loud. She is SO right. This applies to not just one, two, or three... but all four tech companies I've worked at. You simply cannot figure out what most software companies do from the name alone. It's the norm in our space! You also can't usually figure out what B2B SaaS companies do just by looking at their websites either. Last night, driving on the way home from taking my kids to see Inside Out 2 (great movie btw), I saw a roadside sign for this local business: Instock Flooring and Cabinets Could it be any easier to figure out what they do, but also, their value proposition? It's literally right there in the name of the business. Building a tech company is a different beast than standing up a small business selling physical products locally. That said, the principles of great marketing tend to be similar no matter what you're selling. While you don't have to put what you sell right in your company name, I do believe that in B2B SaaS, as an industry, we are on the other extreme end of the spectrum. I believe brand awareness is more key than ever for SaaS companies lately. A new metric that we might all want to pay attention to? Speed of understanding what your company offers. I'm hoping that the recent post-pandemic growth slowdown the tech industry has faced will herald in some new realizations and self-awareness about what we need to do as an industry to create better marketing as part of our go-to-market strategies overall. I think this entire area will be part of it. What do you think? #SaaS #marketing #branding #gotomarket

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Question for the SaaS Sales, Sales Enablement and DEI folks: What in-person events are you attending this year? Inbound 2024 by HubSpot? SaaStr? SalesLove by Salesloft? Dreamforce by Salesforce? What's on your list and what should by on mine?

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Hot off the press! Next week, I’ll be joining Amber Illig and Sonia Baschez to swap some of our best GTM tactics and strategies for B2B founders. Sonia is bringing the marketing gold which means I'm on the hook for sales 😬 This is a founders-only conversation and we're gonna get tactical. Here are a few topics I've been thinking about... - The recipe for effective sales meetings - Defining your sales process - Hiring your first salesperson - Writing emails that land - Leveraging your network - Creating your weekly scorecard for success What else do you want help with??

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your job as a sales rep: find clients nurture clients close clients learn to listen to clients be a therapist for your clients, your colleagues know when to prompt with questions build external alignment with buyer panel build internal alignment with pricing, legal, solution engineer get along well with customer success be generous with advice coach and be coachable don't take feedback to heart it's nothing personal, choose between constructive feedback be proactive about tasks be curious, go discover latest case studies before you're told make your peers love you if people love you you'll promote if not no understand your boss' priorities know when to overwhelm people with info practice negotiation skills with your friends don’t be cocky be humble but know your self worth empathize with other roles, know your actions or inactions have an impact on others' jobs ask for feedback ask to shadow calls ask people to join your calls to give you feedback don't be afraid to try new things be organized, organize your week so you dont miss frequent activities go to events meet people represent your business ask for more responsibility delegate non-core tasks to others, such as allies you build in other departments understand sales enablement follow the latest sales tools be a champion of change internally advice clients on not only your product, but on the future and innovation! AND MY FAVORITE: network religiously - sales is the only job you get paid to meet others :) and enjoy, it's the best job if you're the right fit that gives you the freedom to be the owner of your own business without taking all the risks of investment!

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For any PMM having a hard time nailing messaging… Facts - There’s no ‘Don Draper’ moment where inspiration will strike in the middle of a meeting. The good news is you have everything you need. 1. Look at your wins. Find the last 6 months of closed/won deals in your CRM. Find the patterns, and talk to the AEs if you need to. Better yet go talk to the customers themselves. Why did they buy? What made them pick you? 2. Once you have a good sample, use your judgement and distill out 3-5 ‘winning use cases’. These are the foundational proof points of why you’re differentiated. And they’re real 3. Then build the top and bottom. Top = what’s the one unifying value prop across the winning use cases. Bottom = what’s the product capabilities that support those use cases 4. Document this, turn it into your first call deck, and your website nav + core pages Refine this every 6 months. Sales will love it, and customers will actually believe you #productmarketing #messaging

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The amazing thing about events is the networking and learning opportunity from peers, colleagues, old friends and meeting up with people IRL! Were having an ‘inspiring’ day at 6sense Inspire. Some take outs from the talks today: First up ‘Moving from Inbound vs. Outbound to Allbound’ Alex Olley Reachdesk discussed how to transition from siloed inbound and outbound marketing strategies to an integrated 'Allbound' approach and build unified revenue teams focused on collective goals. Next long live creativity! Reuben Webb at Stein IAS, served us all a lesson in creativity in B2B marketing - clue it’s falling a bit short team!. He shared some inspired B2B creativity examples, elevating creativity from a tactical to strategic capability. The whirlwind 🐶 Jacco van der Kooij explored the "Revenue Factory" concept for SaaS GTM strategies, showing how cost-efficient, sustainable growth can be achieved through GTM approaches to diversify revenue streams, employ Revenue Architecture frameworks, and transform your team into a cost-efficient, high-quality revenue factory. And of course Benjamin O'Dell and I did our bit on the leverage you can gain from integrating brand and demand and how we orchestrate ABM and full funnel for growth Exclaimer. Do come find our team at our booth if you haven’t yet and keep learning 🤓🧠 #b2bmarketing #marketing

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