Cody Norris

To all SDRs or anyone entering B2B sales, read this post to avoid falling into common traps. 1. The most successful AEs I have met were the best SDRs. 2. SDRs who didn’t excel in the role and are now AEs are still struggling to generate their own pipeline. 3. AEs who skipped the SDR role, often due to an MBA or strong interview skills, fear switching jobs and roles without inbound leads. They’ve never faced the grind of building a pipeline from scratch, filled with rejections. 4. AEs who have never been an SDR majorly rely on their SDRs or Inbound leads from marketing to help them build pipeline and if any Quarter they don't get inbound or enough meetings from SDRs they sh** in their pants. 5. When these AEs become managers, they often question their team—"Where are the numbers?" or "Why isn’t there a pipeline?"—instead of guiding them on building it. Lacking experience in pipeline generation, they fail to lead by example and eventually lose the respect of their team. Learn the art and science of being an SDR and excel at this job at any cost, you will never have to look back or depend on anyone for pipeline EVER. Prospecting and Generating Pipelines is fundamental to Sales whether you are an SDR, AE, Sr Manager, or VP if you don't know how to do OUTBOUND you will continuously live a sales life of fear and anxiety. So SDRs ask yourselves do you want to be such AE and Managers in the future who depend on others to determine their performance and faith or would you like to own your job? #sales #prospecting #outbound #pipeline #sdr #ae #b2b #saas

102

12 Comments

What will work for future SDRs? The same thing past SDR greats focused on. Deep account research Deep contact research Unique + bespoke value props Building real relationships The fundamentals exist for a reason. Focus on those and you'll go very far. Obsess over silver bullets, shortcuts, and "scaling" everything... and you'll be stuck on the treadmill. #gtmai #sdr #sales

96

22 Comments

I was asked what is the fasted way to win new business for sales - get warm introductions in your target accounts. Here are 7 steps that I think will help you get radically more pipeline fast:🔥📈 Inboxes are overflowing, cold outreach is losing its punch. Warm introductions are the key to breaking through the noise and accelerating your sales pipeline. 1. Define Target Accounts 🎯 Zero in on accounts that align with your ideal customer profile. Know their challenges, and understand how your solution uniquely solves them. Focus on a subset you’re confident about – don’t let analysis paralysis slow you down. Key: Don’t get stuck on the first step; just go for it! 2. Identify Connectors in Your Network 🕸️ Expand your network (or automate this with platforms like https://lnkd.in/e-XsFVmR) to match up with contacts who have trusted relationships with key players in your target accounts. Look for people with deep industry and solution experience- they’ll help boost your credibility.  3. Engage with Value First 💬 When requesting an intro, lead with value. Show why the intro matters to their connection and how it benefits them. Remember, your Trusted Advisor isn’t your sales rep – they’re a facilitator of value for their network. Offer insights, unique perspectives, and collaborate in a knowledge exchange. This will set you apart as more than “just another sales rep.” 4. Personalize Your Outreach to the New Contact 🧑‍💼 After a warm into, skip the canned pitch. Reference your mutual connection, then tailor your message to your target accounts needs. Tap into your advisor’s inside knowledge on what truly matters, from active projects to key priorities. This approach makes you relevant, aware, and genuinely interesting. 5. Nurture the Relationship, Not Just the Opportunity 🤝 Warm intros open doors, but it’s the relationships that close deals. Focus on building trust, actively listening, and providing value. Even if there’s no immediate sale. 6. Don’t Forget Your Sales Process 🚀 Whether it’s Solution Selling, MEDDICC, or MEDDPICC, stick to your process to stay on track. Use your advisor’s insights to set you apart, but also to qualify out quickly – if it’s not a fit, pivot to protect your credibility and the trust of your connection. 7. Reward Your Trusted Advisor 🏆 Recognize your advisor’s role in your success! A thoughtful gesture, creative reward, or a few percentage points on the deal can make a significant impact. It shows appreciation, strengthens the partnership, and sets the stage for future collaboration. Warm introductions are your ticket to stronger connections, faster cycles, and higher close rates. Are you tapping into them? 🔑 And if you want to make this easy, check out https://lnkd.in/e-XsFVmR – the first platform designed to automate and scale your ability to find and leverage warm introductions into all of your target accounts. 🔗 #SalesTips #Sales #SDR #SalesPipeline #WarmIntroductions #ForceEquals

4

People don’t realize what “closing skills” are in sales, and they’re not “is persuasive.” Reps with closing skills CONSISTENTLY know, can choreograph and advise on how the deal gets signed and returned. And their forecast accuracy reflects those skills.

4

3 Comments

When I start hiring SDRs, I won’t be hiring traditional SDRs. Here’s what I’m planning… 150k OTE. 50/25/25 comp structure. - 50% base - 25% variable on Enterprise opps created - 25% variable on SMB revenue closed 📈 Let’s start with Opportunities created. These are qualified opportunities you set up for the enterprise sales team. Every month, we’ll align on the 100 accounts you should prioritize with your outreach. The marketing team will focus on the same 100 accounts with its account-based marketing efforts. You’ll use Copy.ai to build account plans, research prospects, and develop outreach strategies for each account. You’ll use Copy.ai to create custom landing pages, ads, and hyper-relevant outreach. You’ll be the quarterback, ensuring the right buying group is engaged, and doing the high-touch, white glove outreach to key contacts. I’m thinking 30 opps generated per month as a quota. The marketing team will share that quota and be incentivized to generate opps. You’re the quarterback. We won’t fight over “who gets credit” because we’re completely aligned on the accounts, budget, and strategies. Having sticker shock at that 30/month number? We have insane momentum right now and are only gaining steam. We’ll set you up for success. 💰 Now, about that SMB revenue. These are SMB deals that are too small for our enterprise sellers to focus on. Call it, under $25k ARR. 100% inbound. You’ll be full cycle here, from qualification through close. Again, you’ll have support from the marketing team to ensure you have what you need to fully engage the buying group, allow buyers to self-serve much of their education, and move deals through the funnel quickly. You’ll have managerial support, of course. But you’ll also have Copy.ai doing deal coaching, giving feedback, suggesting deal strategies, and keeping you focused on real deals. I’m thinking 6-8 deals / quarter = $400k annual quota. Logo velocity is the name of the game. We’ll figure out the accelerator balance so you get rewarded for over-performance, as long as you’re performing against BOTH elements of your variable. You’ll get exposure to the whole GTM engine. You’ll get real, complete sales training. You’re the talent bench for the enterprise accounts team. 👀 Title? I’m thinking Inside Account Director. Two questions: 1. Interested? Let me know. We’re not hiring for this yet (need to hash out plans internally), but we’ll start keeping a warm list so we can hire fast. Fill out this li'l form to join the wait list: https://lnkd.in/esbA4ZVp 2. What am I missing? Any suggestions for what to change? We’re building in public here, and architecting a different approach to all things GTM. Open to feedback. #gtmai #sales #gtm

975

153 Comments

Most sales leaders focus on their top performers. But your best reps will crush quota whether you help them or not. Here's the uncomfortable truth about scaling revenue... Your top 10% will succeed despite you. They'll figure out how to sell your product and close deals even if you give them zero support, no collateral, and an undefined ICP. But you can't build a scalable revenue engine on top 10% talent alone. It's just math. Even with a rigorous interview process and strong recruiting brand, our 12-month retention rate at Levelset was around 55%. And that was GOOD. The key to scaling isn't finding more unicorns. It's raising the floor for everyone else. That means writing down exactly what success looks like. Not just hoping good people will "figure it out." I learned this the hard way. For the first 4 years (or so), we closed deals almost in spite of ourselves. No real sales playbook. No defined process. Just talented people working hard. When we finally documented our exact process - from first touch to close - our ramp time plummeted and consistency shot up. The uncomfortable truth? Most founders spend way more time recruiting than preparing to train and support their hires. Your playbook doesn't need to be fancy. Start with one document: "How to Run a Demo." Make it painfully detailed. Your top reps will hate it. Your new reps will love you for it.

42

6 Comments

We see 300 candidates before hiring a sales rep... And you all know the kind of reps we've had at Apex Revenue and TitanX (formerly Phone Ready Leads®) 2800-3500 dials per month per rep 650-800 connects per month per rep (thanks TitanX (formerly Phone Ready Leads®) 130-180 activated leads per month per rep 30-55 meetings per month per rep on phone only Here is our hiring process simplified: - Apply (this is either through a job ad or through a linkedin post) - Must cold call the hiring manager after that - We reject every single candidate NO MATTER how good they are. Why? I want to see how they handle rejection. If they fold like a lawn chair. Bye. If they push back or don't take 'no' as an answer we move them on. - Trial by fire day (session 1) -- Script and message handed to them. Role Play with hiring manager. Role Play with another rep on the team. Get coaching. See how they apply it. - Trial by fire day (session 2) -- Hit the phones with actual prospects. Load them up in FrontSpin, feed them scored data through TitanX (formerly Phone Ready Leads®) so they can be in a conversation within 2 minutes, use the script, see how it goes. Ask them how they feel, ask them what they didn't like, take some coaching... wash, rinse, repeat. Are they taking coaching? Are they getting better? - Culture call -- they meet with the other reps on the team to see if they fit. The candidate could rush everything but if the team rejects them, we reject them. They know what is required by their peers. - Offer call When we were running Apex, 1 single SDR was doing the output of 8-10 reps. The entire time we ran Apex we had 1 (yes, only 1) rep quit and he quit in his first week. Now, nearly every single one of the reps that we had at Apex before we pushed all of our eggs in the titanX basket are AEs, Revops leaders, #1 performers, or running their own company. Why won't most companies do this? They won't make someone cold call them They won't reject every candidate no matter what They won't role play They won't force someone to make cold calls in the bullpen in front of you They don't trust their other reps to vet the candidate... trust your team. They know what it takes.

76

48 Comments

Average Contract Value by segment: Strat - $278K ENT - $180K MM - $57K Direct correlation with your expected payouts? Yes. Average OTE by segment: Strat AE - $280K See more: https://lnkd.in/gEqj9YQz ENT AE - $255K See more: https://lnkd.in/gb7GeWzW MM AE - $165k See more: https://lnkd.in/gDkDDg5w The larger the deals you're selling, the more earning potential. The more earnings potential, the higher the expectations. All open SaaS roles here: https://lnkd.in/ggz4efaD Any of these surprise you? 🦙

122

44 Comments

AE: "Can you demo to this super warm prospect?" SE: "Sure, what top outcomes are they looking for?" AE: "Umm, here's the e-mail thread. Figure it out." SE: "We might need more information than this..." AE: "But we NEED the demo to sell it to them." SE: "Okay, when's the call scheduled for?" AE: "At 3pm. Today." SE: 😭😭😭 Can anyone relate? Let's change the narrative. #presalesevolution #solutions #sales

356

77 Comments

If you decide your sales team needs to help with renewals make sure they are incentivized correctly (I usually see a 70% new bookings goal and a 30% renewal / upsell goal). If you don't incentivize hunting, sales tend to farm too much and your growth will slow.

7

2 Comments

Mega dealers vs the rest I’ve spent the best part of the last decade working in hyper growth SaaS (Salesforce & ServiceNow) In that time I’ve worked with & led some incredible sellers, and studied them Here’s what sets the true big deal giants (high 7 and 8 figure ACV deals) apart: 1) Belief They believe almost fanatically in their pursuit and ability to help their customer fix big problems They inherently also understand that they must focus. This is important as it shows 2) It’s on them - they take FULL responsibility They show up, and understand that the buck stops with them No excuses 3) They go together, not alone. They understand that an unfair share of resource on their customer will lead to oversized reward As such they recruit people (at all levels) to their cause Lead without authority And orchestrate for success Whether the markets good, or bad these people deliver time & time again Right now I think there’s a lot to learn in this!

40

4 Comments

I’m all about AI—it’s exposing all those sales reps that need to be replaced. Let’s just call them Autobots…. If you're one of those SDRs or BDRs cranking out hundreds of generic messages a day, hoping that sheer volume will get you a reply, I've got some news for you: AI is coming for your job. Your latest 'bumping this up' or ‘catchy email’ isn't fooling anyone. If your outreach highlights a job switch or where someone went to school instead of delivering actual value—like insights on real problems your prospects are facing or a unique perspective on an industry trend—you're not selling, you're spamming. Here's what a good message looks like: Hey [Prospect Name], we’ve noticed a lot of companies in your space struggling with [specific challenge]. Recently, we helped [another company in their industry] address this by [solution]. If this is something you're dealing with, I can share how we approached it and the results we’ve seen. Lazy, automated outreach isn’t just annoying; it’s a ticket to obsolescence. AI is great at one thing: exposing who’s playing the numbers game and who’s actually bringing expertise to the table. If you're just another autobot, it might be time to update that resume. Or, better yet, start learning how to become a true industry expert who can offer real solutions and insights that matter. The choice is yours: evolve or get replaced.

27

When RevOps is really just SalesOps (And the CRO is really just the VP of Sales) 𝗦𝗔𝗟𝗘𝗦 𝗘𝗡𝗚𝗜𝗡𝗘 - Closing deals should work - Clear pipeline management process - Forecasting is as accurate as possible - But everything before & after is an issue 𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗞𝗘𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚 - Has different goals - Maybe the target is MQLs - Has their definition of MQLs - And their definition of SALs, SQOs - Has systems with different metrics - Their reports don't match sales' reports - Leads routed from one system to the next - With lots of things falling through the cracks - Classic case of marketing/sales misalignment 𝗢𝗨𝗧𝗕𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 - Do SDRs report to marketing? - If so, we're misaligned there too - The goal may be meetings booked - So AEs have lots of leads and meetings - But maybe not the ones they really need - The ones that convert to pipeline/revenue - We have more misalignment & finger pointing - Do SDRs report to sales? - What content do they have? - What events and assets do they share? - What visibility do they have into engagement? - How does marketing align with their outreach? 𝗢𝗡𝗕𝗢𝗔𝗥𝗗𝗜𝗡𝗚 - Sales is paid to close deals - How do they hand off customers? - What is the onboarding process? - Who builds/maintains that process? - What is done if sales drops the ball? - What is done if sales overpromises? - How are incentives and comp aligned? 𝗥𝗘𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 & 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗔𝗡𝗦𝗜𝗢𝗡 - Which customers are easiest to retain? - Which customers are most likely to churn? - Which customers are the easiest to expand? - How is this data used to improve sales targeting? - How do we maximize NRR if sales is in their own silo? For me RevOps drives value by getting into the weeds and finding ways to generate more revenue with the resources available. That includes SalesOps and optimizing the sales process to close more deals. However, if we stop there we end up with an expensive and inefficient revenue engine with high CAC, high Churn and low LTV. We end up with different departments chasing different goals in different systems with different reports and different definitions of success. What would you add to this? Anything I missed? ✌️

142

21 Comments

New sales ops hires have no idea what they are getting into with Salesforce. Here's why: Imagine you’re building a deck. And you are given the keys to a Home Depot. You have access to unlimited equipment and supplies. But you get no instructions on what deck you are building or how to build it. This is what situation most sales ops roles are in with Salesforce. Without training in its full capabilities, admins will be stuck and overwhelmed. This is why I created the Salesforce Accidental Admin Accelerator for sales admins. I recently did a webinar on YouTube that talks about how we are helping SalesOps and sales administrators with Salesforce. You can view it here: https://lnkd.in/g297XegA

1

SDR Dashboards - what do you want to see? Gimme your top 3 stats/charts/reports you like to see on YOUR dashboard for pipeline gen. There's the obvious activity levels and SQL/SAL volumes but what else do you like to see.....

1

5 Comments

Here is the real impact that value selling is having for revenue teams: Tom Pisello David Yockelson 🔑48% improvement in winrate 🔑35% increase in deal size 🔑25% reduction in sales cycle time BUT...... ⛔️ only 19% of reps and 19% of pipeline is using value selling today. BIGGGG opportunity here...!

17

4 Comments

How to know if you have a good comp plan? Ask your GTM team what type of revenue it's motivating them to close, and why. The revenue that earns a seller the highest commission rate should be the revenue that is best for the business. "I earn the highest commission rate on 3-year contracts in the pharmaceutical industry because we're trying to drive long-term relationships in pharma." If your marketer/BDR/AE/AM can't give you that sentence, your comp plan isn't driving their performance in real-time. And at that point, your comp plan isn't doing its job.

25

1 Comment

🚨 The uncomfortable truth about sales leadership 🚨 Sales managers obsess over data, forecasts, and quotas. Sales reps chase autonomy and quick wins. But the buyer? They just want their problems solved. See the disconnect? If your sales team isn’t leading buyers through their journey, you’re not closing deals—you’re becoming just another vendor. Let’s get real. Are we enabling reps to be buyer mentors, or are we stuck managing quotas? Drop your thoughts in the comments 👇 #SalesStrategy #BuyersJourney #CustomerCentricity #SalesTransformation #ComplexSales #HeroJourney

5

4 Comments

The Demand Waterfall / Predictable Revenue MQL hamster wheel is cracking like cheap glass. In fact, it has been for more than 5 years. The data was clear in 2018 that this strategy of getting tons of cheap MQLs so our SDRs can cold call them results in: -Untenable customer acquisition cost (CAC) -Extreme sales/marketing alignment issues  -Low Sales productivity  -Poor Marketing ROI  -Totally breaks with scale But we were in the boom times from 2018-2022. Money was cheap and companies were operating for “growth at all costs”. Investors pushed companies to deploy massive amounts of capital to grow, regardless of the unit economics. Most companies didn’t care (or didn’t even look at the data to see) that their “MQLs” converted to customers at 0.1% (1 out of 1,000 “leads” actually become a customer). This extreme inefficiency forced companies to overhire SDRs and Sales Reps to sort through all this garbage trying to find a needle in a haystack. Marketing programs, SDR headcount, and Sales headcount costs bloated across the entire GTM. Now, it’s 2024 and there’s been a total 180-degree turn in B2B. Every company is forced to operate for “profitable, efficient growth”. -Revenue growth rates are down > 50% -NRR has consistently declined for the past 6+ quarters -CAC payback periods have more than doubled to 36 to 48+ months -Budgets are tightening -GTM teams are shrinking -More layoffs are coming -And unit economics and EBITDA margin are now the top priorities Companies are stuck making incremental optimizations to these outdated models like trying to improve the MQL:SQL conversion rate by 2% or improve outbound connect rates by 1% or lowering the cost per lead by $12. But Incremental improvements aren’t going to get the job done. This new era of profitable, efficient growth (PEG) requires a fundamentally new approach to B2B Go-To-Market. The financial metrics *require* it and we've just about reached the breaking point. #b2b #gtm #marketing #sales #gotomarket p.s. Changing from an MQL to an MQA feels like a good solution but doesn’t solve the root cause problem. It’s the exact same motion just with a different trigger to activate outbound Sales. Lots of companies and executives I talk to are scratching their heads wondering why ABM and account intent data isn’t living up to its promise.

327

74 Comments