PE Value Creation – Sales Excellence & Revenue Acceleration

Historically, Private Equity (PE) firms looked to add value to their portfolio companies in the following ways: Financial engineering Strategic initiatives Operational improvements Over the years, financial engineering was no longer as impactful on value creation as it was in the 80’s and 90’s so PE firms started adding value with  Read More >

PE: Top GTM Acceleration Drivers to Create Sustainable Value (Revenue Growth, Higher EBITDA Margin, & Multiple Expansion)

Today, creating value in Growth PE & Middle-Market PE primarily begins after you invest or own the portfolio company. Historically, the strategy was different – you could rely much more on financial engineering, buying low to sell higher, and using leverage (which today is a smaller portion of the deal  Read More >

Forecasting – the Commit Process

I know every other VP of Sales or a front-line sales manager (FLM) struggles with forecasting accuracy so I thought to share what has worked really well for me with very high level of accuracy.  It’s the Commit Process.  This is part of the way to build up your rep  Read More >

Best Practices for Effective Decision-Making (and My 6 Steps for Making Better Decisions)

Business managers/executives are hired for the primary reason to make good decisions.  But making good and smart decisions is very complex. Additionally, many business decisions can affect a lot of important things in the organization including people (and their families).  Good decision-making requires more than just critical thinking skills (analyzing  Read More >

CHAMP Sales – Selling Qualification Methodology

  The CHAMP Sales System Qualification Criteria   Here is a summary of the CHAMP Qualification Criteria and you can find some example questions below.     The best way to align with your Buyer – is to ask them questions and actively listen with the goal of being helpful  Read More >

The 4 Things You Must Nail Down To Scale Your SaaS Sales

Every B2B SaaS company must be able to communicate to every employee on the Revenue Team (sales or marketing or customer success) the following: Who – who is the ideal type of buyer – or what is called the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)? Your targeted Ideal Company Profile (size, type,  Read More >

Sales Org Design: Sales Management – Scope of Control

I notice in many B2B SaaS companies there is a wrong organizational design starting with too many “player/coaching” issues which is function of what is known as a “Scope of Control“.  Read on… and if this is feeling like it’s just academic or theoretical then I really recommend you to  Read More >

Why Managing Sales is Far Harder Than Just Selling

The other day there was a post on LinkedIn about how some AEs (Account Execs / sellers) want to be promoted to sales managers.  I posted a comment that it is necessary for any executive to help illuminate for all AEs out there that they are misconstruing what management is  Read More >

PE Portfolio – Responsibilities of a VP of Sales

Several years ago, Jason Lemkin at SaaStr wrote the post “What a Great VP Sales Actually Does. Where The Magic Is. And When to Hire One.” Recruiting – 20% of the time must be invested here the most important thing to do well for a Sales Leader is recruiting great  Read More >

Sales Management: The 4 Managing Roles of a VP of Sales

Every VP of Sales has 3 key managing responsibilities and roles at the company: People manager: Build a successful sales team Customer manager: Provide exceptional customer experience Business manager: Attain the business and sales goals Sales Manager: Create and manage the system for the sales force Originally this was covered by  Read More >

Price vs. Cost (and Price vs. Value)

Price vs. Cost There is a big difference between Price vs. Cost that is important to communicate when helping a prospect make a buying decision. A price is what you pay.  A cost is the “Total Cost of Ownership” (TCO = Cost) of something.  For example, you can look at  Read More >

The Consistent Pillars of Sales Growth That Never Change

The Permanent and Unchanging Pillars of a Blueprint for Scaling Sales   Synopsis: In B2B SaaS, there are many commonalities and fundamental consistencies These don’t change much from one B2B SaaS company to another – they are fairly consistent I call them “Sales Pillars” when it comes to the commonalities  Read More >

Scaling Revenue: $10M ARR to $100M ARR

The stage of growing sales revenue from $10M to $100M is really exciting.  I’ve had experience in this sales revenue range at 3 companies: AppAssure – we went from $10M to $25 Million in sales around the acquisition by DELL Acronis – we went from $19 Million to $100+ Million  Read More >

PE Growth Insights: Sales Effectiveness & Growth Drivers

The sales function at any company is very complex. A successful sales organization is the result of many variegated factors which are directly affected and also indirectly influenced by the sales leaders of those organization (i.e. a EVP or VP of Sales or the CRO – the executive who is  Read More >

Revenue Growth: The Magic Sales Formula (from my “The Science of Sales” presentation at the Sales Summit)

Sales Management is a scientific process and you can use this formula to focus your team on the key factors that drive $ Sales.
A couple of years ago, I was invited to present at the annual Inside Sales – Sales Acceleration Summit and I talked about “The Science of Sales” (InsideSales.com posted the presentation on Slideshare). It was fun to see that the other presenters at this event were the likes of Steve Young, a  Read More >

Sales Management: Creating a Repeatable “Sales Process”

“If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”  – W. Edwards Deming To grow your team that sells effectively and efficiently and to scale your revenue growth, every VP of Sales must operationalize selling into a defined, formal, structured framework for the  Read More >

Revenue Growth: Lead Generation is the #1 Lever to Drive Revenue Growth

If you read “From Impossible To Inevitable: How Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue“, you probably remember one of the first top takeaways when Jason Lemkin and Aaron Ross wrote in their best-seller: “Lead generation is the #1 lever that drives revenue growth, and can create hypergrowth. You’ve been trying to grow your  Read More >

Developing a B2B Marketing & Demand Generation Strategy to Drive Sales

How to craft an effective B2B Marketing & Lead Generation Strategy
As you kickoff the new year, you need to have your integrated Strategy in place – your company must start with the overarching Corporate Strategy before you develop your Sales Strategy or B2B Marketing & Demand Generation Strategy. As a CRO or VP of Sales, you can’t scale revenue effectively  Read More >

A Simple 6-Step Management System For Any Executive

When an executive is looking for a way to simplify how they manage their company or a business unit, I recommend the following system that I’ve used consistently over the years. You can use the following simplified 6-step Management System to run a business function and it covers most requirements  Read More >

Building Teams: Creating a Successful Organizational Culture

A couple of years ago I wrote “What is a Company Culture and why CEOs must care?“.  There I mentioned that there is no universal definition of an organizational culture.  But how can we then define culture? Let’s start with Wikipedia – Wikipedia defines Organizational Culture as follows: a company culture is  Read More >

Organizational Issues That Prevent Effective Leadership

There are several problems that organizations face with a typical/average manager based on research published in the Harvard Business Review.  It turns out that many “leaders” are actually not able to perform a leadership function effectively.  It is a real obstacle for companies if someone who is supposed to be  Read More >

Leading Teams: Adaptive & Situational Servant Leadership

A lot of folks in the business world have senior titles but don’t understand how to lead. There is a difference between managing people and actually being a true leader. Many managers are task-masters who know how to control and crack the whip, not how to lead. Dwight D. Eisenhower,  Read More >

PE – Building Teams & Leadership Lessons for CEOs

Here is what I learned reading well over 150+ books on Leadership (over 20+ years of reading)
The Essence of Leadership: What It Takes and How It Works Leadership is about driving results through people—setting direction, inspiring teams, and fostering a culture of trust and high performance. While styles vary, the core remains the same: great leaders balance decisiveness with empathy, vision with execution, and authority with  Read More >

The 3 Critical Gaps Between Planned Outcomes vs. Actual Results

There are always gaps between Strategy and its Execution, between business expectations and the actual results.  You can invest a lot of time into a solid Corporate Strategy or your Sales Strategy that you think will deliver exceptional results but some times the result will be off from what you intended to achieve.  Read More >

PE Diligence – How To Know They Have an Effective Sales Team?

Originally Posted on VentureFizz Sales Blog
Most PE funds look exclusively at results of the potential investment’s sales team, rather than inputs, and answer based on whether their sales team hits their number. Here’s the rub: hitting the number does not necessarily mean you have a good sales team. Alternatively, if your sales team misses their number (even  Read More >

PE Insights – Jason Jordan & Cracking the Sales Management Code

Sales management is a difficult endeavor to master, with many nuances amid a constantly-changing environment. Enter Jason Jordan, an author, recognized thought leader and a partner of Vantage Point Performance, a leading sales management training and development firm. Jason wrote “Cracking the Sales Management Code: The Secrets to Measuring and  Read More >

The Biggest Sales Management Mistake all VPs Make

As a sports fan, you are familiar with the adage, “Practice like you play.” Coaches preach this mantra repeatedly, to instill a mindset of intensity and improvement among their players. Unless a player practices as if they were actually playing in a competitive game – running plays against defenders, competing  Read More >