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Scaling an Organization Globally: the Marketo story with Amy Guarino

April 6, 2018 By Barbara Giamanco Leave a Comment

In this episode, I talked with Amy Amy Guarino, COO at Kyndi. Prior to joining Kyndi as Chief Operating Officer, Amy spent eight years at Marketo, which she joined in early 2009 as the Vice President of Business Development. It is there that she learned all about scaling an organization globally from less than $1M to over $250M: the Marketo story. Scaling an organization is no easy task. Learn the growth strategies used to access such great success at Marketo.

How to properly prepare to scale your business for high performance and growth is top of mind for most companies I talk too, especially in the fast-paced and ever-changing technology world. I asked Amy to tell me how she utilized indirect sales channels to support Marketo’s sales growth.

Amy is a former IBM’er, and I asked her what she learned about IBM about sales leadership that translated to building successful sales organizations in Silicon Valley startups.

One key to driving sustainable and consistent revenue growth is in the tight alignment of sales and marketing. I asked Amy what the secret sauce was for making this happen successfully.

Amy started and led Marketo’s business in Japan. Here about her experience in the interview.

Finally, Amy offered her advice to all young salespeople on what it takes to build a successful career.

Enjoy the interview!

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About Amy:

Amy Guarino, COO at Kyndi. Prior to joining Kyndi as Chief Operating Officer, Amy spent eight years at Marketo, which she joined in early 2009 as the Vice President of Business Development (employee #25.) In 2014, Amy moved to Tokyo to start Marketo KK, a joint venture with Dentsu and Sunbridge. That organization is now the fastest international region for Marketo and was recognized as the #1 Best Place to Work in Japan. During Amy’s career at Marketo Inc, Marketo grew from less than $1M in revenue to over $250M, went public in 2013 and was acquired by Vista Private Equity for $1.8B in 2016. Amy has a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame. She has been recognized as one of the Top 100 Women of Influence in the Silicon Valley and as CRN’s Top Women in the Channel.

Connect with Amy – LinkedIn Twitter
Website: www.kyndi.com

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The Disconnect Between Social Media Spend and Business Impact

August 30, 2016 By Barbara Giamanco 1 Comment

With spend on social media channels expected to increase to a 20.9 percent share of marketing budgets in the next five years, according to a recent CMO Survey, the big question is if that spend investment is translating into an increase in overall business performance? The answer appears to be not so much. In a C-Suite Study conducted by IBM, they reported that almost half of Chief Marketing Officers feel that they – and their teams – still aren’t fully prepared to meet the challenges of operating in social media channels.

If CMO’s aren’t feeling that their teams are fully prepared to deliver on corporate objectives, what could be getting in the way?

There is no clearly defined social media strategy that aligns with core business objectives. With no formalized social media strategy in place, you leave your social media teams flying solo without a clear connection back to overall corporate business goals. In the Harvard Business Review article, Fix Your Social Media Strategy by Taking It Back to Basics, they mention that a Google search provides 140 million results for “social media marketing tips,” but no matter how many headlines promise it, there is no one-size-fits-all social media strategy. Tips, instead of a clearly defined strategy, won’t cut it if you want to see real results.Though the marketing team may be taking the lead on the creation of the social media strategy, the company’s social media efforts need to impact sales opportunities and revenue also. Don’t leave this important business strategy to marketing alone.

There is a gap between social media activity and business performance. It is important to link your sales and marketing goals to social media KPIs. Buzz, clicks, likes and followers are good initial gauges of social media marketing success, but long-term success requires that you go much deeper. Ultimately, social media activity needs to demonstrate how the effort led to improvement in revenue outcomes, either in qualified leads to nurture, new customer acquisition or retention.

The team doesn’t have the right balance of expertise. Don’t assume that young 20 something is the right person to drive your social media strategy. They may understand the inner workings of Twitter or Snapchat, but that doesn’t mean they understand how to apply social activity to core business objectives. Make sure your team includes people who understand the technology and have solid business experience. You need both!

All data sources are not being integrated. Be sure that you’ve built a plan that includes the seamless integration of social media data with other types of customer information, such as the data that comes from sales, purchasing, social media, and other communication channels. Though you might be able to source potential sales leads via Twitter, how is that information then integrated back into marketing’s lead nurture process or the sales CRM system for follow-up and tracking?

Lack of cross-functional skill and leadership stymies success. Today’s marketing leaders must be adept at traditional marketing strategies, and they also need to be proficient in the use and understanding of how new technologies impact their efforts. I believe this applies to sales leaders as well. Reaching buyers through the traditional avenues of phone calls (rarely answered) and emails (often ignored) mean that everyone in sales is using the appropriate social media channels to engage buyers in advance of clearly defined sales opportunities.

Investing in social media marketing and social selling strategies is important and must continue. Buyer behavior is the key factor driving the importance of engaging prospects and customers on multiple channels. To justify that investment, though, also means that your social media/social selling strategy goes beyond the surface indicators of success and aligns to key business drivers like new customer acquisition, revenue growth, and customer retention.

Social Selling – The Real Story

October 9, 2014 By Barbara Giamanco 2 Comments

The real story?

Too much noise and far too many people polarizing the sales conversation by insisting that their way is the only way, or that all prior strategies and sales techniques are no longer relevant. It is creating mass confusion for sales leaders and salespeople.

Cold calling is a great example.

Do I think cold calling has reached a point of zero return on effectiveness? Yes. Are there people out there who insist that it works for them? Absolutely. I’ve said many times that it is the cold that is dead NOT the call. I don’t see the value in blindly smiling and dialing, but that’s me. If you are sure it works for you, do it.

I’m not a believer in cold emailing either, but if it works for you, great. The point is that you don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. You have to look holistically at your process, your prospects behavior, your sales cycle, your industry and determine how and when social selling fits for you.

Social selling is NOT all that you need to succeed.

Perceived as a hot buzz term, it seems everyone – even people who’ve never sold anything – are trying to capitalize on being seen as a social selling expert. Much of the expert advice is creating false expectations of what sellers can achieve and how long it takes, and for me, that’s a problem.

For example, I read a blog post recently that said you need three things to succeed with social selling:

Presence
Profile
Participation

With all due respect, that is patently ridiculous. Let’s see – have a nice LinkedIn and Twitter profile, which means I’m present, answer a few questions in social networking groups or share a few pieces of content and boom – deals will roll in. They won’t.

Yes, you need a social profile. Having a branded online presence is the price of admission these days. If a prospect finds you while doing preliminary research on products or services, what they find better be compelling to them. But folks that only scratches the surface of what it takes it achieve your sales objectives.

Maybe the time has come to stop calling it “social selling”, as if it stands apart or replaces selling. I think it is time we just got back to talking about sales.

Can we please get back to sales basics?

Salespeople need to get back to the basics of good selling. They are lacking in a big way. Training is needed and fast! When salespeople can’t be bothered to call someone back who has expressed interest in their product, how exactly does social selling fix that problem?

Good selling requires excellent business and communication skills – listening, writing and speaking. You are cold calling and blindly sending emails, but no one gets back to you. Could it be your message? Your approach?

We have salespeople refusing to make phone calls.

When these sellers do pick up the phone, their communication and listening skills are subpar. Let’s bust a major myth right now – social selling alone only takes you so far. Your activity should lead to a phone or face-to-face meeting. I know few B2B sales scenarios where “personal sales interaction” is not needed. But if sellers cannot handle themselves well on the phone or in face-to-face meetings, what now? Are they going to text across the table? The need for great interpersonal skills is only going to heighten in importance as video conversations become more mainstream.

Do salespeople even know what problem their product or service solves?

Are they able to clearly articulate that message? Prospects can gather preliminary information from the web to narrow their focus, but those insights are a starting point. When they decide to talk to a salesperson, they don’t need another feature dump. If that’s all you’ve got, you are not selling. Social won’t help with that.

Sales is sales.

Selling is a process NOT an event. Social is one – only one – aspect of the cycle. If you think that sharing content, always connecting and yakking away on Twitter all day will net you sales, because some expert told you so, good luck with that.

Is social selling useful when done well? Yes.

Can social selling help you secure net/new meetings and increase leads in the pipeline. Done right, yes.

Do all your other business development strategies need to be tossed in favor of social selling? Hardly.

Does the same approach work for every salesperson in every conceivable industry? No and no.

Will every prospect you need to reach respond to social selling? Again, no.

When you are faced with leads or revenue challenges, examine your entire sales process and the skills of your people from beginning to end first. Broken process and people who can’t sell? Sorry. Social selling (as currently defined by most experts) doesn’t solve these problems for you.

That, my friends, is truth based on actual experience selling and managing sales teams for over 25 years, and that same number of years understanding how technology fits the selling process. Social media is the newest technological wave, but like all technologies before, technology will never sell for you!

Sales Blunder #1: Selling Features Not Value

July 31, 2014 By Barbara Giamanco Leave a Comment

In the early days of my sales career, I was taught to sell features and benefits. Later, Solution Selling, Consultative Selling, Precision Questions, Spin Selling and other sales methodologies like them espoused the importance of asking the right questions to understand buyer pain in order to sell your solution.

For there to be pain, a problem had to be identified. Once identified, you then draw the correlation between the buyer’s pain and how your product or service is the buyer’s cure. Taking it further, if you are doing your job well, you also have to break through the inertia of what is likely your toughest competitor – the status quo. Your prospect may have identified a problem that is causing them business pain, but is the pain acute or chronic? In other words, is the pain something that they’ve lived with long enough that they will continue to allow it to go on, OR has the problem become so acutely painful that they absolutely must make a change?

These last few days, I’ve been having conversations with Judy Mod and Matt Rosenhaft, Principals at Social Gastronomy. They work with technology companies to overcome what they call the “buyer adoption” problem. Turns out that companies are getting in their own way. They very often hinder the buying process rather than further it along. In an April 2014 blog post, Chuck Carey had this to say, “Buyers measure success based on how well you resolved their problem, not how well you met their expectations.”

When it comes to problems, there are two things happening.

1. Your prospect thinks they have identified a business problem that they need to fix. Is it the right problem? Are you sure?

Doubtful that your buyer is sure. According to Matt and Judy, the challenge sellers (and marketers) face is that it is darn difficult for internal teams to all agree on what the acute problem is much less agree on how to fix it. As with so many things in life, most folks simply focus their attention on symptoms without delving deeper into the root cause of the pain the organization suffers from.

I think of countless sales situations I’ve found myself in where the buyer tells me the problem is X, and after I ask more questions, I find out that on surface X looks to be correct, but the deeper digging uncovered something more revealing.

In one sales meeting, the buyer tells me that the “problem” is that their salespeople are having trouble getting access to decision makers. They reached out to me thinking that social selling was the way to go. Maybe. During the conversation, the buyer assured me that once a salesperson secured the meeting, they “always closed the deal”. When I hear that, I’m suspicious. I don’t care how good a salesperson you are, you never win them all. Curious, I ask them to tell me the percentage ratio of meetings to closed deals. Guess what. They can’t. Why? Because by their own admission, their salespeople are notoriously bad about entering sales opportunities and communication into their CRM system. They just don’t do it most of the time. If there is very little data regarding the sales pipeline and funnel progression stages, how do they know salespeople always close the deal? The discussion went on from there but you get the idea. They were not close to being clear about the real problem.

2. Do you know what problem your solution solves and can you clearly articulate that message?

Given how many sales presentations I’ve listened to, I’d say that the answer is no. If you, as the salesperson, don’t know what problem your solution solves, do you really think your prospect can simply connect the random dots and figure it out on their own? When it comes to marketing and selling your products and services, your potential customers DO NOT CARE about the process of how you get things done. Nor do they really care about the technical details. Sure, if it is a technology solution the IT guys might, but that comes later. In the initial stages of determining what product or service to purchase, your prospect cares about one thing – finding the right solution to solve their problem.

Forget the Features

I cannot say this enough. Though I know this is sooooo difficult for sellers to hear. They’ve been brainwashed to think that buyers make decisions based on features. They don’t.

Consider this basic recipe:

1. Understand the problem your solution solves. If you can’t speak to that, you’re sunk.

2. Get to the core of the problem that the buyer you are talking with needs to solve.

3. Determine if there is a match.

4. If so, help the buyer connect the dots by mapping your solution to their problem. Again, it isn’t the features that will win the deal!

The feature dance leads nowhere, and if you keep selling that way, you’ll be dancing all alone! That sounds kinda lonely to me.

Go Beyond Social Selling

April 27, 2014 By Barbara Giamanco 6 Comments

The social selling noise has become deafening with the constant and repetitive missives telling sellers what to do to succeed. Not many original thoughts on the topic these days. Comical, in a sad sort of way, because if you follow the #socialselling hashtag on Twitter, you will soon discover that the experts are pretty much just pitching to each other.

I’m concerned about the hype…

Sales leaders are dealing with serious issues. For all the hype, surface level social selling tactics won’t solve them. Period.

In 2011, estimates pegged the average tenure of a Sales VP as roughly 24 months. By all accounts that number now hovers in the 16-19 month range. Sales leaders need serious solutions to help them deal with the challenges that plague their sales organization – like faltering pipeline and revenue, people with the right sales skills, competitive threats and more. The job depends on it!

In the next 5-6 years, we will continue to see a shift in the sales profession unlike almost anything we’ve seen before now. This goes well beyond today’s trend of using social media as part of a selling process. By 2020, the role and required skill set for the consultative B2B seller will have changed even more dramatically. The question is whether sales leaders are investing in the skills training that salespeople will need to make the transition. And are they hiring people today with the skills and ability to adapt to what’s needed tomorrow?

Customer experience = sales…

The challenges facing sales leaders will not be solved with a few crash courses on how to put Social Selling to work in their organization. Revenue goals are not achieved by sales alone. Sales may carry the quota, but other functional departments – Marketing, Service, Operations, Accounting and the C-Suite – play a big role in wins and losses.

According to a CEI Survey, 86% of buyers will pay MORE for a better customer experience. But only 1% of customers feel that vendors consistently meet their expectations. Let that sink in for a moment – one percent feel their expectations are met.

In 2013, only 37% of brands received good or excellent customer experience index scores. That leaves a 64% gap of brands earning a rating ranging from OK to very poor from their customers.

And what about the buyers who never become customers at all? Do you know why? Is it the broadcast sales pitches? Salespeople who don’t understand their business? To much time spent waiting for someone to get back to them with information? No phone number on your website? The poorly trained receptionist who answered the phone?

Experience matters…

Aberdeen reported that “85% of business leaders who participated in their 2012 Chief Service Officer (CSO) Summit, stated that their organization was placing an increased importance on customer service, given the constraints of the global economy and an extremely competitive marketplace.”

Isn’t it interesting that eight-five percent of business leaders said “service” was important, but there was very little improvement in overall experience statistics in 2013.

And in Oracle’s report: Why Customer Satisfaction is No Longer Good Enough, they report that one of the key drivers for a customer to spend more with a company is the overall improvement of the customer experience.

Why aren’t more companies focused on experience?

It’s hard work. All departments must come together to design the experience that a potential buyer and customer will encounter. For experience, as a strategy to work, you need an organized and phased approach for integrating the right processes into your business. Agendas and assumptions have to be put aside. Everything has to be considered from the prospect and customer point of view. It is not easy to challenge every thing you think you know about what your customers want.

That’s why I believe banging the drum of – all you need is social selling – is no longer good enough. Experience – at all levels, with all departments and with all employees – drives revenue.

At the “zero moment of truth”, when the buyer is pondering whether to talk to sales or determining if they buy from your company or not, how will their experience inform their decision?

Today’s Social Selling Moment

April 3, 2014 By Barbara Giamanco Leave a Comment

I recently decided to do a little experimenting with media. Being the social selling gal that I am, I know how important content is to your overall strategy. Video, in particular, can really drive additional traffic and engagement.

But what if you think you look better on audio and hesitate to do video? Well, that’s me.

So I said, what the heck, let’s get creative and have a little fun. That led me to team up with my friend, colleague and video brand ambassador pal, Doug Lehman to create a mash up of video and audio to bring you the Social Selling Moment of the Day.

Enjoy!

Traits of a Social Selling Rockstar

January 21, 2014 By Barbara Giamanco 2 Comments

As I’m on my way to Seattle to work with a client, I have been having a most interesting conversation with my seat mate. It is always refreshing to talk with like minded people in the world of selling. Both of us have been in the business for quite some time and both agree that the more things change, the more they always seem to stay the same.

Social selling aside, in other words the ability to use social technology to support your sales activities, there are core traits that define top Sales Rockstars. I don’t think that will ever change.

1. They are chameleons. My colleagues over at CEB might disagree with me, but I think the ability to adapt to different personality styles makes a big difference in successful selling. Years ago, I sold the same way to everyone. Miss optimistic. Suzy cheerleader, I would discover didn’t work for everyone. If I was meeting with a decision maker who had a high need for details, my “we can do it” attitude didn’t exactly win them over. Later, I would become certified in DiSC and learned that different personality styles have different needs. The extremely detailed person wants detailed answers to their questions. Cheerleading won’t cut it.

2. They listen. Too many sales people these days are enamored with the sound of their own voice. They talk and talk and talk and talk and… OMG, they bore their prospects to death. Listening is not about pretending to be interested while waiting for your moment to pounce with your pitch. Listening is being present. Listening with all of your senses to learn about what is important to your prospect and gain greater connection with them.

3. They care. Once in a management meeting, a peer of mine accursed me of being too touchy feeley because I had the audacity to believe that caring about what was important to others meant something. Call me old school, but I believe Ziglar, Carnegie and other greats who remind us that when you care enough to help others get what they want, you win too.

4. They are learners. I believe that sales people who put a high priority on learning have the ability to relate to people at all levels. I realize that the ability to create great “relationships” is not the only factor in winning deals. Still, people buy from people, and if you can’t connect with them, it will be tough to secure the meeting and advance the deal. Avid learners, however, position themselves who as someone bringing fresh insight to the table and being able to challenge the status quo based on their breadth and depth of knowledge and experience.

5. They have vast networks and cultivate referrals constantly. I am a huge fan of Joanne Black of No More Cold Calling fame. She is one of the most ardent proponents for referral selling, and guess what, she’s right. Yes, I’m a huge supporter of using social media to augment your sales process AND cultivating a reputable referral network should always top your priority list. When I have been introduced by someone trusted and respected by the decision maker…I got the appointment. Hard to beat how a referral introduction can get you in the door…fast. After that you are on your own.

What do the super star social sellers do in addition to the 5 traits above?

They know they are simultaneously a brand and representing one at the same time.
They accept that buyer behavior has absolutely changed. They merge the tried and true with what works now.
They understand that pitching is dead. Sharing educational and informative content is what demonstrates credibility and brings prospects to their doorstep.
They don’t live in the past. What worked back in the day has lost effectiveness. Adapt, adjust, thrive.
They know that “social” isn’t for the kids. Anyone interested in keeping their skills fresh will up their game day in and day out.

Rockstars evolve and only get better. Will you differentiate or stagnate? Up to you…

I AM a Customer But You Don’t Know It

August 8, 2013 By Barbara Giamanco 1 Comment

I am breaking my rule today. Typically, I keep ineptness anonymous. Today, in good conscience I cannot.

I have continuously railed against the sad state of selling, which bothers me in a big way. Poor messaging. Lack of relevance for the buyer. No understanding of the buyers business. These things gnaw at me and then some.

But I can think of no more serious grievousness than sending messages to CUSTOMERS that make it clear that YOU have no clue that they ARE a customer.

It isn’t Matt’s fault. Someone may have cued up the email for him. You could argue, however, that he should have double checked who he was emailing.

I have been a Salesforce customer for the past 3 years, but clearly Matt doesn’t know that. If he does, that sure does not come across in his sales pitch.

Matt knows nothing about me. He hasn’t bothered to try and figure out what is important to me. His sales answer is that I “click” on a link to learn more.

He wants a demo appointment. He has no idea that I’m a customer or what is important to me. He just wants to sell something.

Game over.

Sales leaders must get engaged. This type of messaging and “spray and pray” broadcast approach is killing your sales! Schedule 30 minutes with me…I’ll help you understand why.

In the meantime…sorry Matt…a little homework goes a long way!

“Hi Barbara,

My name is Matt (insert last name here) with Saleforce.com — cloud-based marketing automation software powered by Pardot.

We provide over 1,500 companies like yours with software that helps them manage all of their online marketing programs to deliver qualified leads to sales, shorten sales cycles and track campaign ROI. According to Gartner, companies that automate their lead management process experience a 10% or greater lift in revenue within 6-9 months while reducing costs by 33%. Click here for more information on Pardot’s platform.

Do you have time for a quick conversation or web demo this week or next? If so, what day/time works for you?

I look forward to talking with you soon!

Thanks,

Matt”

SocialTech Tuesday: Solving the Social Selling Puzzle

July 23, 2013 By Barbara Giamanco 1 Comment

Sales leaders are often quite puzzled when it comes to making social selling work for their sales organization. Who can blame them? Ask 10 people who promote their expertise in social selling, and it is highly likely that you will hear 10 different definitions of the term. Listen closely and many of the pundits are simply telling you that all your people need is to use LinkedIn. Not the entire story!

I have defined “social selling” as the process of using social media to network, prospect, research, engage, collaborate, educate and close all with the purpose of attaining quota and increasing revenue.

Notice that I mention that social selling is a process that incorporates the effective use of the right technology to achieve some very specific sales objectives. It certainly seems pretty straightforward, right? Then why are sales people struggling to make it work for them? For starters…

It Is a Brand New Ball Game Folks

1. Gaining access to prospects is much harder these days. Buyers just tune out your cold calls and broadcast emails. Even a recognized brand name doesn’t guarantee a sales meeting these days.

2. The decision making process in most companies is much more complex. I read somewhere that on average there will be 12-15 people involved in the purchase decision. Sales people need to build relationships with multiple influencers and sometimes it isn’t easy to tell who those key influencers actually are.

3. Getting a meeting at the C-level doesn’t necessarily move your solution to the front of the line. Yes, you should definitely set your sights on securing a meeting with the right decision maker at the highest level that you can, but you are fooling yourself if you think that the gal at the top isn’t going to involve her people in the process.

4. Social networking tools like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and more have entered the mix. Sales people need to understand how social fits the sales process, but they also need to learn the nuances of participating in a social environment where there are unspoken rules and generally accepted best practices when trying to engage someone in the socialsphere. If you don’t know what they are, you will make a misstep that could be costly.

There Are No Short Cuts

Adopting a social selling approach is about change and change just isn’t easy. It also takes time. It takes setting a STRATEGY, ensuring that sales people have the right sales and technology SKILLS and that EXECUTION of the strategy is happening consistently.

On Thursday, July 25 @ 1pm Eastern, join me over at Top Sales World Academy for a FREE educational session about what it really takes to Solve the Social Selling Puzzle. REGISTER HERE! By the way, there are other educational sessions being conducted by some of the best in the field of sales!

SocialTech Tuesday: Another Kind of Handshake

June 18, 2013 By Barbara Giamanco 1 Comment

As the co-author of the second book about social selling to hit bookshelves in August 2010, I am delighted to see that a philosophical approach to selling that I began evangelizing as early as 2006 is gathering steam.

At the time that The New Handshake: Sales Meets Social Media was published individual sales contributors were testing the waters on their own. Their managers, however, snubbed their noses at the idea that using social media as part of selling could help to generate revenue. More sales leaders get it today, but we still have far to go.

Part of the social selling process relies on sales people creating a perception of expert credibility and that’s where content comes in. Largely misunderstood, I want you to think about content in the context of helping the buyer make their decision to buy from you and your company and not someone else.

Recently, I sat down with Jason Wesbecher CEO and Co-Founder of Handshakez to talk about content and a unique platform that he and his team have developed to help sales people use content to close deals. Jason is a seasoned sales leader, so I know that you’ll benefit from his perspective as much as I have.

By the way, on Thursday, June 27 at 12N Eastern, I’m hosting a complimentary webinar with Jason that you need to attend. You’ll want to see for yourself what Handshakez can do for your teams sales results!

BG: Jason, why is content such an important part of the sales process?

JW: So much of the sales process unfolds these days outside the presence of an actual salesperson. Because of this, it has never been more important to produce and share compelling content that can help provoke your customer to ask a question, start a dialogue… to engage with you.

BG: Isn’t interacting with our prospects and sending information back and forth sort of boring and wasting time? How does Handshakez overcome that challenge?

JW: The challenge with information exchange in today’s B2B environment is that it’s done much in the same way it was 15 years ago – via email. What’s changed, though, is the sheer amount of email customers receive these days – as much as 600 new emails per week. That is a tremendous amount of noise that sales reps now need to cut through. Moreover, unlike 15 years ago, there just isn’t the same social obligation associated with responding to emails today. Customers will easily delete dozens of external emails per week without thinking twice.

BG: Sales people often spend a lot of time chasing opportunities that really aren’t opportunities. How does your platform help sales people with that?

JW: As a former technology salesperson for 17 years, I can tell you with certainty that the next best thing to a “yes” is a “fast no.” Quickly disqualifying opportunities is a valuable skill, as it reduces the time and cost of chasing conversations that will likely never come to fruition. Our platform is focused on fostering engaging and transparent conversations between sales teams and buying teams. When a salesperson using Handshakez starts to see declining engagement levels during a sales cycle – or worse yet, no engagement at all – it can inform next steps, sales stage and forecastability.

BG: Why did you start the company in the first place?

JW: I have been in enterprise software for 68 quarters and flown 2 million miles, selling to some of the toughest clients in the world. What I learned is that oftentimes it’s a dance between a sales team that has an immature or undifferentiated product and a buyer who has multiple alternatives and very complex requirements. In other words, selling is really, really hard and only getting harder.

BG: We all know that the length of time to close deals has only gotten longer because multiple stakeholders are involved and some have more influence than others. What are some of the benefits of using your platform to address this reality?

JW: For today’s sales professionals to be successful, they must navigate the complex politics of committees staffed with informed and frugal buyers. Successful reps in this environment tend to engage customers rather than manage them. And they differentiate their sales process as much as their products & services. The best reps may already do this very well, but they only account for 10-20% of your sales force. What about the rest?

BG: Jason, you’ve told me that the buying and selling of B2B products is one of the most opaque and adversarial processes in the world. Does it really have to be that way?

JW: No, it doesn’t. I started Handshakez to make the B2B sales process incrementally easier and more enjoyable for all involved by humanizing it and taking it out of email.

BG: Humanizing it. I like that a lot, Jason. I rant quite often about how I think that sales people are using technology as a substitute for great selling skills. What are your top 3 pet peeves about the way people are selling today?

JW: As CEO of a company, I am now both a salesperson and a buyer. We have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building out our infrastructure, oftentimes with 3^rd party tools and services from vendors. My 3 pet peeves in working with these vendors have been:

Long PowerPoint presentations that emphasize the history and values of the vendor rather than my specific business challenge and how they can help address it.
Lack of awareness as to who the buyer actually is. While I may be CEO, I generally outsource all technology decisions to my partner & CTO. You would be surprised by how many vendors lack an appreciation for the differences between a buyer and an influencer.
Providing me with boilerplate vendor slicks as opposed to 3^rd party content (HBR blog entries, industry best practices, etc) that can help influence my thinking.

BG: We definitely share the same pet peeves. As you know, I have strong opinions about why I believe sales people need to change their approach to selling. Why do you think it is important?

JW: Research by CSO insights suggests that only 46% of forecasted deals close.

BG: Ouch, only 46%? That’s a lot of lost revenue sitting out there. What’s the problem?

JW: After the countless hours of training and millions of dollars spent on tools, today’s B2B salesperson still has better odds at a Las Vegas craps table. The definition of insanity is to repeat the same behaviors while expecting different results. Handshakez helps sales reps redefine their approach, grow closer to the customer, and differentiate themselves. We help clients close this forecast gap.

BG: Everybody talks about their ability to deliver ROI, but often they really can’t. What kind of ROI can sales leaders expect to see when their teams use your social selling platform?

JW: We help our customers realize a 10% increase in renewal rates and a 10 hour reduction per week in time each sales rep spends doing manual and administrative tasks within CRM.

BG: That’s what I would call ROI. And just think what could happen if each member of the sales team was spending 10 more hours per week on selling.

BG: Jason, I have enjoyed our conversation today, and I’m looking forward to our webinar on Thursday, June 27 at 12N Eastern.

Scaling an Organization Globally: the Marketo story with Amy Guarino

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