The 3x Sales Pipeline Coverage Ratio Is Wrong

Some CROs / VPs of Sales (typically with lack of experience) tell their teams that to have 3x in the Pipeline (in terms of $ value) or 3x of the quota target / sales bookings goal. But this is a mistake. It’s not only a generalized way of looking at…  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 >

Sales Management: 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 >

Sharing the CHAMP System Internal Training Materials

As part of the complete CHAMP System – I will be publishing my internal slide decks that I’ve used to build teams and develop them – it includes the following: CHAMP Selling Methodology Training CHAMP Sales Process – Engineering an Effective Sales Process CHAMP Sales Leadership & Sales Coaching CHAMP…  Read More >

Building an Effective Sales Org – The Skillset Matrix

Every effective VP of Sales needs to create and use a tool known as a Skillset Matrix to validate the skills, knowledge, and proficiency of their sales teams. There are different types – one can be based on ratings which rate the skills available on the team.  And it will…  Read More >

Hiring Sales Talent: Wisdom from a CEO of VISA on Hiring Well

When hiring sales talent – it’s wise to always remember where “experience” fits in the order of priority.  This is one of the most counter-intuitive things that many average CROs/VPs of Sales in B2B SaaS may not get but some of the experienced great ones definitely know. I was reviewing Trish…  Read More >

Sales Management: Core KPIs and Goals for a VP of Sales

There are several options for key performance objectives or core KPIs that a company sets for the sales leader.  The obvious KPI would be the actual Sales $ closed but there is more to the job.  The key areas of measurable responsibilities of a sales executive (or any operational executive for…  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 >

Building Teams: How Coach & GM Bill Belichick Recruits Talent (Which Other Teams Under-Value)

Building “Winning Teams” is not about getting a bunch of stars to contribute their individual effort together – it’s much more about the collective and collaborative effort. This is how Belichick builds exceptional teams fairly consistently year after year. Here is the Synopsis: Belichick has a unique talent for seeing…  Read More >

The Job of a Sales Leader at a Series-A Startup

Unlike a VP of Sales at a larger company, a VP of Sales at an early stage Series A startup is more focused and hands-on: Startup sales motions Helps work on refine the Product-Market Fit Helps create or improve the optimal Go-to-Market (GTM) Develops the right Messaging for sales: Positioning,…  Read More >

The Analytical Sales VP’s Essential List of Sales Analyses

I’ve written extensively on Data-Driven and Analytical Management of Sales (as well as Sales & Marketing). I also wrote few books (http://www.zorian.com/books/) on the Quant Sales Management methods. But in this article I decided to share actual lists of the most essential analyses and reports that I regularly use to…  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 >

What Exactly is “Sales Strategy”?

Every successful Sales Leader knows what “Sales Strategy” means. But this term is sometimes over-used or thrown around in ways that don’t really refer to the correct definition of Sales Strategy.  So what is the correct definition of Sales Strategy? To state simply, it’s an operating plan for the sales…  Read More >

Building Teams: The Fallacy of Industry Experience

Don’t make the common mistake of making a specific industry experience a key factor when building sales teams, hiring sales reps or sales executives.  It’s called “The Fallacy of Industry Experience” and is well described here in the Harvard Business Review article “What Makes a Good Salesman”: “Many sales executives…  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 >

Category: CEO/ Leadership

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 >

Category: CEO/ Leadership

Building Teams: Leadership Lessons for CEOs from 150+ Books on Leadership (Over 20+ Years of Reading)

Here is what I learned reading well over 150+ books on Leadership (over 20+ years of reading)
Over the past 20+ years I’ve always had an interest in Team and Organizational Leadership and have read well over 150+ books on the topic of Leadership (including insights from biographies on leaders like Washington, Lincoln, Churchill, Carnegie, and many modern executives and leaders, etc.).  I think it was only…  Read More >

What a CEO Does: the Many Jobs of a Growth-Stage CEO

What exactly does a CEO Do?  In the simplest terms, the job of the CEO is to make their company succeed and win. More specifically, this means that the CEO’s job is to lead the company to achieve its long-term goals (3-yr to 5-yr goals) and short-term objectives (quarterly and 1-yr) which…  Read More >

The CHAMP Selling System (& the Book)

It’s been over a decade since I developed the CHAMP Selling System (part of which is the CH.A.M.P. qualification acronym that some organizations use today to qualify Leads and Opportunities). I started working on it after selling at IBM and realizing that I was hoping for a different and more…  Read More >

3 Phases of Opportunity Management

In every Sales Pipeline you have multiple stages of the Sales Process but there are 3 over-arching phases of managing every Opportunity (aka “managing a sales cycle”). Opportunity Creation I use the PIF approach Opportunity Pursuit Opportunity Closing These 3 phases are the big part of selling.  In each one you…  Read More >