Key Takeaways From TOPO Sales Summit 20161 PDF

2016
World’s Best
Sales Leaders
Learn how they drive
exceptional growth
2016
Introduction
Talkdesk team members attended TOPO Sales

Summit on April 7-8, 2016 in San Francisco to
mingle with more than 600 sales leaders and
learn about best practices, organizational design
and metrics in the sales space, with a particular
eye towards driving scalable revenue growth.
This Ebook is a compilation of everything

Talkdesk learned at Topo Sales Summit 2016.
Note: This content is a reflection of all of the insights and

information Talkdesk team members pulled from the Summit.
It was a whirlwind two days, so please excuse a few typos!
Index
Introduction
Sales Leadership
Sales Technology
Sales Development
Sales Ef fectiveness
2016
Introduction
Table of Contents
Keynote
The State of Sales in 2016
Scott Albro (TOPO)
The Power of Data and Sales
Jeffrey Ma (Twitter, ESPN, MIT)
Investor Panel
What Investors Want from a Sales
Organization
Q&A
Selling from the Buyer’s Perspective
Keynote
Time: 9:00AM on Thursday
Scott Albro
CEO, TOPO
@scottalbro
Scott Albro is the Founder and CEO of TOPO. TOPO

is a research and advisory firm that helps sales and marketing
adopt the patterns and plays that drive faster revenue growth.
Keynote
Sales is undergoing a radical transformation. Driven by changing

buyer behavior, evolving business models, new technologies, and
innovative best practices, the sales organization of 2016 looks
nothing like the sales organization of 2010. In the opening session
of Sales Summit 2016, TOPO CEO, Scott Albro, analyzed the
biggest trends shaping sales today. He also shared the specific
strategies and tactics that the world’s best sales leaders and reps
are adapting to drive exceptional revenue growth in this rapidly
changing environment.
What Are the Key Trends in Sales Today?
1. Data-Driven Sales
Modern companies use market, behavioral and internal data.
Proper data use and consumption should influence decisions
on GTM strategy, sales process, organizational design, hiring,
messaging, channel strategy, playbook and tech stack.
2. Sales Specialization
Task specialization and account assignment drive higher
efficiency in the economic model.
Keynote
3. Value + Volume + Velocity

The new model for companies today is a hybrid of value with
high lead volume and sales velocity. The key to selling value
to the customer is to break out of the above habits and
ensure you are delivering customer value in each step of your
sales process.
4. Account Based Everything (ABE)

a. Target high-value accounts
b. Run data-driven campaigns
c. Optimize and coordinate efforts across teams
d. Ensure that the experiences you deliver are valuable and relevant
e. High efficiency
5. Sales Tech Stack

Your sales stack should allow you to capture more data,
more effectively.
Keynote
“Sales used to define how we use

technology. Now technology is
defining how we sell.”
Scott Albro
Keynote
Time: 1:30PM on Friday
Jeffrey Ma
Twitter, ESPN, MIT
@jeffma
Jeffrey Ma is best known for his role on the infamous MIT

Blackjack team where he was the inspiration for the bestselling
novel, "Bringing Down the House," and the blockbuster movie, "21."
Ma is currently the Director of Business Insights at Twitter where he
helps drive data-driven decision making. He also works as ESPN’s
Predictive Analytics Expert where he marries analytics and gambling
content to provide unique insights on air on SportsCenter and in
print on ESPN.com. Ma was the founder of tenXer (acquired by
Twitter) an analytics tool to improve engineering efficiency and
was also the founder of Citizen Sports (acquired by Yahoo).
He is the author of the business bestseller “The House Advantage:
Playing the Odds to Win Big in Business.”
Keynote
1. Embrace Failure
The challenge with blackjack and business is that emotion
can color your decision-making. When making difficult
decisions, it’s crucial to avoid inadvertently self-imposed
omission bias.
2. Trust Data Over Gut Feelings

There’s a difference between right decisions and right
outcomes. Data-driven decisions can result in a poor
outcomes. That doesn’t mean the decisions were wrong.
3. Life Lessons from Blackjack

a. Build Team Trust
b. Carry Intrinsic Motivation
c. Open Communication
d. Leverage Metrics
e. Practice Transparency
f. Promote Competition
Keynote
4. Avoid Cognitive Biases

Don’t fall for groupthink and loss aversion when you’re
making decisions.
5. Believe in the Numbers

Optimize for the long term, not one event or one timeframe.
When it comes to gut feeling, apply it to believing in and
sticking with the right strategy based on data.
Keynote
“Every decision is data-driven,

blackjack was big data before
it was big data.”
Jeffrey Ma
Investor Panel
What Investors Want from
a Sales Organization
Time: 9:00AM on Friday
Glenn Solomon What do the world’s top

Partner, GGV investors care about when
Capital they look at sales
organizations?
Brett Rochkind Investors Glenn Solomon

from GGV Capital, Brett
Managing Director,
Rochkind from General
General Atlantic
Atlantic, and Kempton
Dunn at Morgan Stanley
joined a panel at TOPO
Kempton Dunn Summit to go over
Managing Director, everything they look at
Morgan Stanley when evaluating the
health of sales
organizations within
promising companies.
Investor Panel
Before investing, what do you look for in a sales
organization?
Glenn Solomon: Great revenue performance and sales. We first

look at the leadership and how they are building a culture where
sales is a critical part of the business.
Brett Rochkind: I look at the four M’s - Market, Management,

Model and Money. When I think about sales in the context of that
framework, I look at the market size and the competitive
landscape, whether the leadership team is well-positioned to win
that large market opportunity, the business model and I evaluate
their efficiency. As for the money factor, the price and right
structure of investment to have ROI is critical. Sales leadership are
often the first people shot if something is going wrong in the
company.
Kempton Dunn: When you get to the IPO stage, we want to see
sales leaders who have done this before, ideally in the same
space, in the hopes that they can replicate their success.
Investor Panel
What are the most important sales metrics at a growing
company?
GS: Sometimes the metrics at growing organizations are not

clear. We look for patterns, whether things evolve the way the
companies want them to evolve. We check if the team has the
tools and skills necessary to drive growth. The more data the
better, even at an early stage.
BR: We look very heavily at the metrics. There’s the magic

number - the change in revenue over the year (or ARR), divided
by the sales costs. We also look at customer retention numbers
since the cost of acquiring customers can be high.
KD: I look at one year’s marketing and sales cost over the next
year’s revenue increase. Metrics at enterprise are so much more
favorable than for SMBs.
Investor Panel
What teams are important in the revenue process?
GS: Renewing customers and keeping them happy is critical. I’ve

seen models that place that responsibility on the sales team and
others on the customer success team. Both have their advantages
and disadvantages.
BR: Retention management not only impacts the valuation and

revenue model, but also references. Implementation is key
because it’s your first opportunity to make an impression.
Any commonalities in sales leaderships that works out?
GS: I’ve been involved in a lot of sales leadership changes. It’s one
of the most difficult roles to hire for. Sales leadership are often the
first people shot if something is going wrong in the company.
BR: We look at efficiency first. We’ll look at what is their

opportunity to increase retention, what is the value of the solution
and what is their quota attainment rate.
Q&A
Selling from the Buyer’s Perspective
Meagen Eisenberg
Chief Marketing Officer,
MongoDB
@meisenberg
Meagen Eisenberg is a veteran technology marketing executive

with nearly 20 years of experience in high-tech, specializing in
demand generation, marketing operations and automation, and
field marketing strategy and execution. Now CMO at MongoDB,
Meagen has held roles at DocuSign, ArcSight (an HP Company),
TRIRIGA (acquired by IBM, Postini (acquired by Google) and IBM.
Q&A
Q: What are some of the bad experiences you’ve had with

technology vendors?
A: It’s exhausting explaining to a vendor everything about our

goals and how our business works. I just want to hear how your
solution works and how it’s helped other businesses like me. It’s a
waste of my time telling you what I’m working on.
Q: How many vendors that approach you do you pass

onto your team?
A: I’ll ask my team to check out probably 30% of cold reach outs I’ve
received from vendors. I’ll reject the ones that I think may be too
early, or we’re already using a tool that’s working really well for us.
Q: What makes a vendor do a great job?
A: I really appreciate when they’ve done their homework. They’ve

researched a ton about me and my challenges, so off the bat I don’t
have to do a lot of the talking. It’s great when they just have thirty
minutes to sell me their product instead of interrogating me.
Q&A
Q: Is a face-to-face meeting better than a virtual one?
A: I used to prefer thirty minutes face to face, but now that I’m
traveling more I prefer over the phone.
Q: Does it impact your decision to meet with a rep if they

bring their CEO?
A: I prefer it if they don’t because it makes me feel more tied to

the committed time and date. I’d rather not make that
commitment because of my schedule.
Q: Do you read the content reps send over to you?
A: I actually do! I appreciate thoughtful information that educates

me in the space rather than a product brief.
Q: When do you want to know the price?
A: As soon as possible. I know reps will avoid answering the question,

but it really helps me understand if we can invest in this or not.
Q&A
Q: Do you need a reference?
A: It’s certainly great to have a reference, but if the company is

really small, I would take a price cut instead.
Q: True or false:
You should send a prospect a LinkedIn request.
A: I have accepted requests from reps on LinkedIn. But I will scroll

down and look at how many real people have vouched for your
skills to make sure you’re not just wasting my time.
2016
Sales
Leadership
2016
Sales
Leadership
See how sales leaders design,
build and manage their sales
organizations.
Table of Contents
Sales Leadership
Designing Your Sales Process
Craig Rosenberg (TOPO)
Massively Scalable Sales
Ryan Azus (RingCentral)
Kathleen Lord (Intacct)
Modern Cloud Sales Models
Richard Dufty (AppDirect)
Knobs, Dials, and Levers for Sales
Bobby Napiltonia (Enlighted)
Volume and Velocity Sales
Jeff Imm (When I Work)
Sales Leadership
Craig Rosenberg
Founder and Chief Analyst,
TOPO
@funnelholic
Craig Rosenberg is the Co-Founder and Chief Analyst at TOPO,

a research and advisory firm that helps companies grow faster.
Before launching TOPO, Craig held sales and marketing
leadership roles at various organizations in the Bay Area.
Sales Leadership
A World-Class sales Process Includes
An understanding of target buyers’ desired experience
Detailed definitions of plays, content and exit criteria
Adherence to process by everyone in organization
Enforcement levers and tools
4 Reasons Why Most Companies Fail with Sales Process
They designed it, but don’t enforce it
They narrowly view sales process as opportunity management
They don’t dedicate enough time to creating it
They view reps as “artists” or “athletes” who are “rolling out

the balls” and not on the creation of a scalable entity
Sales Leadership
5 Key Benefits of a World-Class Sales Process
Predictability
Standardization - Allows for organization-wide changes
Onboarding
Enablement
Scale - Winning formula established, just add headcount
How to Ramp Up a Global Sales Team
Learn how to win
Establish the baseline
Create a bullet-proof formula
Once you’re confident, add gas

Sales Leadership
Ryan Azus
SVP World Wide Sales,
RingCentral
Ryan Azus is a sales leader with experience working at

organizations that include RingCentral and Cisco WebEx.
He has a special talent for developing sales strategy and
motivating teams.
Sales Leadership
The 6 Core Pillars for Scaling Sales
1. Direct or Indirect Channel

When you are outlining your go-to-market strategy and
building out your Salesforce, most companies question if they
should have an indirect or direct sales channel. Dive into your
market and, if the Service Accessible Market (SAM) will
support it, build out both.
2. Focus = Results
Micro-segmenting can generate efficient and fast processes.
3. Sales and Marketing Alignment

The mantra “The product should sell itself” is the biggest
myth in modern business. Marketing and sales need to work
together closely to ensure that they are aligned. By partnering
sales with marketing, you empower and modernize the
marketing function with lead goals to drive results that we
march to and measure every week.
4. Measure, Measure, Measure

When it comes to sales and the human element, you will
find that “humans break the A/B tests,” but that you can still
measure output and results. You can utilize “stoplight”
measurement for programs and campaigns.
Sales Leadership
5. Culture of Success
As you grow, it’s critical to understand where you come
from to ensure your process is continually getting better.
By looking backwards, you can chart and determine your
progress. Focus on getting incrementally better.
Think of progress as a process.
As you build learning in your organization, you need

to evolve the systems and the people together. You’ll find
that the collective intelligence gets better. A great manager
can drive this process and will make all the difference.
6. Grow your Team

With sales, get a farm system in place where reps can be
challenged to step up, deliver and do their job to earn their
promotion upwards. This is invaluable as you expand
regionally. The core of a company is the people.
Sales Leadership
“Speed is everything,
it drives results.”
Ryan Azus
Sales Leadership
Time: 3:45PM on Thursday
Kathleen Lord
SVP of Sales and Customer
Success, Intacct
Kathleen Lord helps high-growth organizations execute on their

vision and drive improved performance. She is currently the VP of
Sales & Customer Success at Inacct, and has held sales leadership
roles at Proofpoint, Biz360 and Ariba.
Sales Leadership
To effectively design your sales process, you need to first define

your ICP, Ideal Customer Profile. At Intacct we zeroed in on the
domain knowledge we needed to be credible with buyers:
Understanding of our ideal buyer
Understanding of the buyer's complete journey
Every step of that journey
Outlined how they pay first year (who and what amount)
Outlined how they pay for all future years
It’s much more than selling vision; you need to map out how they
will be successful and convince the buyer of that journey. This
understanding allows you to better design your sales organization
from roles to hiring to timeframe.
Sales Leadership
Determine Sales Channels
At Intacct, we have three paths to acquire customers: Intacct

account partners, direct sales, VARs. Our challenge was “How can
we transition from an end user being our customer to a VAR as
being our customer?” For us to be successful, we needed to answer:
How do I structure the organization?
How can you organize sales and revenue by channel?
How does company size drive growth and targeting?
How does the type of business we sell into determine strategy?
Can we align resources by problem adoption, by vertical,

by geography?
As we grew, we needed to compete against VARs, so how could

we level the playing field?
We broke the market up by size where the sales process held

together against how users in those companies buy. Once we had
that, we mapped against what the profile of the companies, look,
sound and feel like.
Sales Leadership
Emerging: 1-35 employees (Fed by marketing)
SMB: 36- 149 employees (Mainly fed by marketing)
Mid Market: 150- 499 employees (IT gets involved,

120 day sales cycle)
Strategic: 500+ employees
We chose to dedicate reps to the verticals, organized those reps

and CSMs around same three dimensional hierarchy. We helped
people understand they are transforming growth of business
across the organization.
The Challenges of Hiring
Most important aspect of a hire is coachability and motivation. The

people must be self-aware. Impossible to recruit and only hire in
the Bay Area. To succeed for the long term, you need to think long
term. Start creating centers of excellence across the US. We used
LinkedIn to find candidate pools.
Sales Leadership
Richard Dufty
Senior Vice President, Worldwide
Sales, Customer Success
and Alliances, AppDirect
@duftydownunder
Richard Dufty is a sales leader with experience in software and

cloud/SaaS solutions. He has experience expanding and leading
sales teams, markets, channel partners and programs at
companies like AppDirect, Symantec and FrontRange Solutions.
Sales Leadership
AppDirect has experienced truly remarkable growth over the last

few years. From the outside looking in, AppDirect makes revenue
growth look easy. But on the inside, the company has made a
series of strategic decisions that have driven that success. Covering
market planning, go-to-market strategy, organizational design, and
sales process, Richard Dufty shared the details behind AppDirect’s
remarkable journey as one of the technology industry’s fastest
growing companies.
Here were some key takeaways:
Who is AppDirect?
The company’s mission is to power the majority of the world’s

software transactions, founded to solve challenges of distributing
cloud services. The problem they are trying to solve is that there is
no centralized platform for cloud apps. Most organizations use
multiple cloud apps which causes a disjointed experience which
can be hard to manage. AppDirect’s goal is the remove that friction.
Sales Leadership
What are the core pieces to AppDirect’s Business?
Expanding - Cement the verticals, then the size and then

follow through.
Leadership - Who you were yesterday and who you are today
defines who you will become tomorrow. It’s about helping
people be the best they can be.
Engage - How can we engage with customers to drive revenue?

How can we engage our prospects to better convert them?
People - You don’t know people until you know your

customers (ICP, or Ideal Customer Profile). The secret sauce is
people, a broad understanding of market and the product
background.
Innovation - Internal and external innovation as a team. Without

constricting your core sales team, create a new team (“Alpha
Beta Scale”) to help you test out and understand market gaps
and opportunities before the sales team goes full throttle.
Sales Leadership
AppDirect’s four important pillars of their cloud model:
Define your market and build the future.
Ask hard questions early and often.
Build principles and values.
ABG (always be growing).

Sales Leadership
“People don’t buy cloud apps…

They are sold.”
Richard Dufty
Sales Leadership
Bobby Napiltonia
EVP Sales and Strategic
Partnerships, Enlighted
Bobby Napiltonia has over 25 years of success in information

technology sales, marketing and business development. Formerly
Twilio’s Chief Revenue Officer and SVP of Worldwide Channels
and Alliances at Salesforce, Bobby is currently EVP of Sales and
Strategic Partnerships at Enlighted.
Sales Leadership
Bobby Napolitana has an impressive background in sales and

revenue leadership roles. During his session at TOPO Sales Summit
2016, he used the analogy of knobs, dials and levers to delve into
sales leadership best practices. Here are some key takeaways:
Knobs
Build a strong, application-specific product that you can test

and invest in to get it into a healthy place. Salesforce, for
example, had unimpressive competitors, yet their market was
very saturated. What helped them stand out was a solid
product.
Fail fast. If it isn’t going to work, then find out sooner than
later so you can stop what you’re doing and trying something
new. Hope simply isn’t a strategy.
Match patterns. Sit with your peers and look through the
model. It’s essential to be honest.
Once you have your knobs set, you can turn it up.
Sales Leadership
Dials
Once you’ve built a strong model, you can develop a

repeatable playbook.
Align your verticals. You can’t win an entire market, so try

venturing into other verticals and applications. For example,
if you’ve saturated the US market, try targeting your product
to an Australian or English market.
Delve into the data. Numbers don’t lie.
Levers
Go global. Land and expand. Find out what resources you

need to get you where you want to be to grow.
Sales operations. When approaching investors, talk to them

about the health of your team, the levers and patterns. What
are the things that actually matter and can mark a difference?
Sales Leadership
“If you can’t go global, go home.

You’re just a feature set;
someone else will beat you.”
Richard Dufty
Sales Leadership
Jeff Imm
President & COO,
When I Work
@ImmJeffrey
Jeff Imm is a business executive with years of experience in sales,

marketing, operations and business development. He is currently
the President and COO of When I Work.
Sales Leadership
When I Work is a mobile software company that is 'consumerizing'

B2B software in the workforce management space. Jeff Imm shared
how When I Work designs, builds, and manages a high velocity and
high volume sales function targeting SMBs. Since launching in 2010,
the company has experienced remarkable growth, managing the
work schedules of over 1.5 million employees in 50 countries
around the world. Jeff Imm shared key aspects of the framework,
metrics and tools used to drive over 10K+ trials and 1K+ new
customers each month while simultaneously and rapidly moving
upmarket.
Here are some key takeaways from his session:
Let Your Mission Drive
When I Work’s mission is to be the hourly workforce’s most trusted

ally on the job, off the job and between jobs. Sales should not be
your key driver, your mission should. First your mission, then
marketing and then sales.
When I Work wanted to solve the problem that scheduling hourly

workers can often cause to make it more efficient and simple. Their
tool provides a better way to schedule, communicate and track time
with employees who are on hourly schedules.
Sales Leadership
First time sales challenges:
How to focus on a vertical.
How to target different audiences: SMB and enterprise prospects.
How to choose the right sales technology stack.
What is the right balance of staff.
What When I Work found to move their sales development

in the right direction:
Software fits the need
Cognitive simplicity
Customer advocacy
Sales strategy enables adoption
Celebrate success
Sales Leadership
“If you can’t go global, go home.

You’re just a feature set;
someone else will beat you.”
Richard Dufty
2016
Sales
Technology
2016
Sales
Technology
Learn how new technologies
arechanging how we sell and
how they can help you grow faster.
Table of Contents
Sales Technology
Scaling with Sales Technology
Doug Landis (Box)
The Sales Technology Stack
Craig Rosenberg (TOPO)
The Account Based Tech Stack
Jason Seeba (BloomReach)
Technology: The Great Pipeline Multiplier
Andrew McGuire (Duo Security)
The Sales Management Revolution
Rickie Goyal (Nutanix)
Scaling Freemium and Pay-As-You-Go Sales
Jairaj Sounderrajan (Twilio)
Sales Technology
Doug Landis
Chief Storyteller, Box
@douglandis
Doug Landis is the Chief Storyteller at Box, the largest enterprise

cloud storage company. He was previously Box's VP of Sales
Productivity and has also held positions at Salesforce, Google and
Oracle. At Box, Doug is in charge of making the sales organization
mkore efficient.
Sales Technology
While Doug Landis’ talk was titled “Scaling with Sales Technology”,
he took a unique route, emphasizing that technology is only part
of the ideal sales equation. The fact is that with so many tools and
technologies out there, it’s difficult to choose.
Perfect Sales Equation

=
Technology + Unconsidered Needs +
Contrast + Insight
Technology
While 37% of all sales leaders name technology as the most

effective investment they’re making, the other 63%, like Doug,
believe that technology is simply an enabler. Technology is meant
to be an enabler; it helps you get to the door but it helps you get
to the door but it doesn’t help you get inside - that’s all up to your
sales reps.
Sales Technology
Unconsidered Needs
Help customers understand what problems they should be

thinking about and paying attention to, issues they didn’t even
know they were experiencing. This is what Tim Riesterer calls
“unconsidered needs.” Landis outlined three types of
unconsidered needs:
1. Undervalued needs: Needs that our customers/prospects

don't fully appreciate and are coming fast.
2. Unmet needs: Needs that our customers/prospects

don't even realize they have because they've created a work
around or assume are annoyances that can't be fixed.
3. Unknown needs: Needs that customers/prospects don’t

even know exist.
How are your sales reps combining these unconsidered needs

with your solution’s strengths? You want to be at the intersection
of the unconsidered need and your business strength that is
unique to your organization.
Sales Technology
Contrast
It’s important to paint a contrasting picture for your prospective

customers - a message that tells them what the problem is and
then what the future looks like if they could fix it successfully. It’s
essentially showing them what your prospects’ lives look like
without your solution at present and what their lives could be like
if they went with your solution.
Insight
Provide better insights for your prospects and customers. Before

asking your prospect a ton of questions in a cold email, give your
prospect some insight - something they didn’t know, a nugget of
information. For example, starting off with “Did you know that
your SDRs are taking 15 minutes to create an opportunity? What if
they could reach out to five more prospects in that time?” is a
much more insightful approach. Give your prospects some insight
and then ask validating questions.
Sales Leadership
“We get too wrapped up in

technology thinking that there’s
one solution out there that’s
a silver bullet.”
Doug Landis
Sales Technology
Craig Rosenberg
Chief Analyst, TOPO
@funnelholic
Craig Rosenberg is the Co-Founder and Chief Analyst at TOPO,

a research and advisory firm that helps companies grow faster.
Before launching TOPO, Craig held sales and marketing
leadership roles at various organizations in the Bay Area.
Sales Technology
As the Chief Analyst and Co-Founder of TOPO, Craig Rosenberg

has helped many organizations choose the right sales tools to
meet their business needs and help them grow in a scalable
manner. When it comes to knowing what technology sales leaders
need, Craig Rosenberg knows his stuff.
During his TOPO Summit talk, Rosenberg emphasized that

choosing the right technologies and tools is a huge challenge for
several reasons:
There are so many available! It’s challenging to constantly

compare apples to apples, and oranges to oranges.
Sales leaders are extremely busy focusing on helping their

team hit their numbers and evaluating solutions is time
consuming.
Adopting new tools is easier said than done. Once you’re

ready to purchase, considering the effort it takes to
implement, integrate and adopt the solution across your
team is a whole other ball game.
Sales Technology
Building a scalable sales machine that meets the growing demands

of customers can only be achieved through great technology. To
make things easier for buyers and sellers, technology vendors are
building revenue-driving products with good UX, SaaS delivery
models and cost effective ROI. The market is perfect for shopping
sales technology. Craig Rosenberg outlined a new sales technology
stack focused on driving revenue that has emerged:
Sales Productivity
Individual sales reps use applications to manage prospects and

opportunities throughout the sales process. The technology you
use should simultaneously help your reps deliver better buyer
experiences and improve sales cycles. These tools could focus on
data intelligence, deal management or sales touches.
Sales Management
These are applications and tools that the sales leadership uses
to manage their team. They are mostly comprised of print
technologies that cover cycles of planning, tracking and analyzing
selling efforts.
Sales Technology
CRM
These are applications that enable your sales team to manage

opportunities, contacts, leads, accounts and activities within the
context of the sales process. They enable better visibility, more
effective reps and better management.
Which solutions are you using? Where are you missing out?
Evaluate your solutions and which tier of the sales technology
stack they fall under to better understand where your opportunities
for improvement lie.
Sales Technology
Jason Seeba
Chief Technologist,
BloomReach
@jseeba
Jason Seeba is one of the world’s foremost sales and marketing

technology experts. He has years of experience running teams
of marketers and sales development reps with an expertise in
technical marketing.
Sales Technology
For companies that have an enterprise focus, moving towards an

account-based model makes sense. Nevertheless, moving from
traditional marketing and sales strategies that focus on lead
volume, automation and quick wins requires a huge change in
mindset as well. Here are a few core tenets to prepare for when
building out your account-based program:
Understand Your Ideal Customer
Look at the data of your current customer base to begin to

understand what your ideal customer looks like. What job functions
are you seeing? Do you have different customer profiles for your
different products or use cases? Ideally you look beyond job titles.
Multiple analytics companies dedicate themselves to helping
businesses map this out.
Identify Your Target Accounts
Account-based marketing has a longer sales cycle, so a lot of

things can change within the time period it takes to close an
enterprise deal. For this reason it’s better to focus on things outside
the actual job titles of decision-makers you want to talk to. Focus
Sales Technology
on their revenue, website traffic, pages indexed and industry. In

order to capture each of these data points, you’ll probably need a
different technology solution to support your research.
Prioritize by Fit-to-Persona
Once you’ve identified your ideal customer (or customers), take

that data and share it with the rest of your organization. That
information will impact how you tackle your marketing efforts
(from lead generation to nurturing), sales efforts (from prospecting
to goal setting) and customer success (from implementation to
support). With this information, you should map your CRM to your
personas and route all leads into these different persona profiles.
Personalization is Key
Nothing can replace the authenticity of a personal touch. In

account-based marketing and sales, you want to treat every
prospect like they’re your only prospect in the entire world. Jason
gave the example of writing handwritten notes and mailing a book
reps think their account lead would like to read. Creativity goes a
long way in account-based sales, so encourage your SDRs to let
Sales Technology
their imagination run wild and trust them to execute their ideas
(yet provide them with reasonable constraints).
Choose the Right Tools
Selecting the right software for any problem you’re trying to solve
carries with it a lot of work. Jason suggestions the following:
1. Set minimums - Just like venture capitalists, look at

traction and the team. Place big bets, but not on core
infrastructure.
2. Find your tribe - Proactively cultivate a brutally honest

community that can help you evaluate and buy.
3. Limit people involved in decisions - Each person adds

complication. A more complicated buying process means
you will have more regret.
Sales Technology
Technology: The Great
Pipeline Multiplier
Andrew McGuire
Director of Pipeline Strategy,
Duo Security
@andrewcmcguire
Andrew McGuire is a sales development leader in San Francisco

who specializes in simplifying the lives of sales development reps
through people, processes and technology best practices.
Sales Technology
Pipeline Multiplier
With years of experience in different sales roles within organizations
like Salesforce and Zendesk, Andrew McGuire has seen a lot of
different tools and sales processes. As Director of Pipeline Strategy at
Duo Security, he shared his pipeline framework and the tools he uses
from the lead generation stage to account nurturing.
Here are some takeaways from his talk at TOPO Sales Summit 2016:
The Pipeline Framework
Types of pipeline - Rolling pipeline, forecasted pipeline and

their segment
Sources of pipeline - Marketing MQLs, meetings set by

outbound SDRs, and contacts generated by the partner or
channel team
Pipeline KPIs - ASP, age, conversion rates, gross pipeline,

weighted pipeline, close rate, etc.
Sales process - The different stages within your sales process

Sales Technology
Pipeline Multiplier
Know Your Numbers
Before you get started and decide what your pipeline growth
strategy will be, take a look at your data. What is your weighted
pipeline ratio for each pipeline source/segment? What is your
conversion rate at each stage in the pipeline? How much pipeline
do you need to create in order to meet your goals? This
information will designate where to distribute your efforts and
hence which tools to invest in.
Lead Prospecting Tools to Think About
Lead prospecting and data cleanup tools vary in different shapes

and sizes. Consider solutions like LeadSpace, Zoominfo and
LeadGenius that Andrew uses, or do it by hand with a team of data
analysts via Upwork.
Sales Technology
Pipeline Multiplier
Get Creative With Setting Meetings
Getting meetings doesn’t have to happen over the phone or email.

Andrew has tried different tools to get the job done. MailLift writes
handwritten letters on your behalf and sends them out to your
prospects with whatever supporting material you like. This is a great
way to customize and personalize your messaging at scale. He also
uses solutions like Kapow to organize field dinners and events after
making new friends and contacts at a tradeshow, as well as Wistia
to film short and unique demos or pitches after receiving a “not
interested” email back from a prospect.
Few organizations are wise enough to assign a single person to

control the health and growth of their pipeline, in which case
greater synergy amongst marketing and sales teams is required in
order to share data and insights from the tools they are using.
Sales Technology
Rickie Goyal
Director of Worldwide Sales
Operations, Nutanix
@RickieGoyal
Rickie Goyal is the Director of Worldwide Sales Operations

at Nutanix, a computer software company based in San Jose.
He has a wealth of experience running large and small sales teams.
Sales Technology
Rickie Goyal has run a lot of sales teams and seen a lot of tools out
there during his career. Now Director of Worldwide Sales
Operations at Nutanix, Rickie shares the suite of technologies they
use to make their sales teams more efficient and effective. Here are
some of the areas in which technology has helped improve the
sales process for Rickie’s team:
Training and Communication
Sales reps can have a short attention span, so a tool that has been
very helpful for both sales training and communication has been
video. Recording a weekly three-minute video of company updates
as opposed to to sending out an email has had a 91% view rate
compared to low email open rates Rickie has seen. Using videos for
sales training also standardizes the training quality for every rep, no
matter when they join the organization.
Sales Technology
Automating Workflows
Every sales manager wants their reps to focus on selling, talking on

the phone with their prospects and sending emails, so any time
spent on logging information and performing tedious tasks that can
be avoided is high priority. Tools like Ombud help adjust every RFP
Rickie's team receives to a master template. This makes it easier to
assign certain questions or tasks to different team members through
the tool. The dashboard also allows managers to track which
questions and answers led deals closing.
Sales Commissions
Since reps are driven by numbers and hitting their commission

goals, giving them more visibility into where they stand at present
in relation to their monthly commission goals is crucial. Compgun
is a tool that builds live commission reports within Salesforce.
It takes into consideration exceptions (ex: if other team members
contributed to the closing of a deal) and calculates theircut of the
commission within the report.
Sales Technology
CRM Management and Insights
Another tool Rickie recommended is the mobile app Clarity. Clarity

integrates with reps’ LinkedIn accounts, calendars and Salesforce to
show their daily meetings and LinkedIn connections they have in
common to help fully prepare them for every meetings.. After the
meeting, Clarity has a popup that requires that the rep answer
certain questions about the conversation in real-time, as opposed
to logging all their calls and updates at the end of the day which
loses accuracy. Managers also win by gaining visibility into their reps'
calendars and LinkedIn activity to track their performance without
the reps having to log it.
Forecasting and Predictive Analytics
Before, Rickie used to manage a master spreadsheet manually with

formulas, asking each team lead to update it every Friday. By
switching to Aviso, reps can log in and only need to update three
numbers which are then aggregated to every level. Aviso takes data
from all of your closed won accounts and gives you predictions of
what open opportunities have the greatest probability of closing. It
takes the guessing and estimation out of the equation. It also helps
managers and reps zero in on deals that really matter and can make
a swing for the quarter.
Sales Technology
Scaling Freemium
and Pay-As-You-Go Sales
Jairaj Sounderrajan
Head of Global Sales Ops,
Twilio
Jairaj Sounderrajan is a seasoned business leader with experience

in direct selling, sales strategy, sales operations, and marketing.
He has worked at organizations that include Twilio, Yammer,
HP and Cisco.
Sales Technology
Scaling Freemium
Jairaj Sounderrajan has years of experience in sales operations
leadership roles at companies like HP, Yammer and now Twilio.
His discussion at the TOPO Sales Summit 2016 journeyed
through the unique challenges and opportunities when your
business follows a freemium or pay-as-you-go (PAYG) model
and what those implications are on your sales team.
The greatest challenge companies that follow the PAYG model

face is that consumers become so happy with the free version,
they ask themselves, “Why would I bother paying for your
product when it’s already so great?” The upside of this challenge
is that it allows you to gather a ton of user data on how your
customers are consuming your product. This provides you with
a unique opportunity to encourage greater innovation from your
product team.
Sales Technology
Scaling Freemium
Here are a few things to consider to help your sales team work
within a PAYG system that drives growth and revenue:
Use the Data
Since you have plenty of free users, use that data from your
customers' use of your product to give you insight into your target
customers. At Yammer, there were hundreds of inbound leads, so
Jairaj started with lead scoring their basic demographic
information, industry information, and activity information. When
you have users on your product, look at data like volume of users,
frequency of usage, type of usage and upgrading triggers. What
inspired them to move into a paid account? It helps you identify
the tipping point. Look into insights from your support team to
find out what your customers are complaining about. They can
give you insight into what features customers say they want or
lack in the free account as an upgrading trigger.
Sales Compensation
Align sales compensation to the customer journey. As accounts

naturally grow in a PAYG model, the reps usually continue to
receive the fruits of the growth. But if you map your compensation
Sales Technology
Scaling Freemium
model to your customer journey more thoughtfully, you can have
your reps feel more responsible for the growth. Then, they are
more likely to take accounts to an even greater level than the
account would have organically reached.
Sales and Product Working Together
Although product marketing is intended to understand the

customer’s use of the product, generally product marketers only
engage with 5-10 customers. The sales team, on the other hand,
talks to hundreds of potential customers who can give you vast
amount of insights. Try aligning product and sales by encouraging
sales reps to fill out more information in their CRM after their
conversations that could provide value to the product team. While
sales reps may be repeatedly saying, “Sorry. We don’t have that
feature. Check back next year,” the product team can often be
completely unaware of what those features are. Getting these two
teams aligned could provide great insights into what your customers
actually want.
2016
Sales
Development
2016
Sales
Development
Learn how sales
development is driving
pipeline and revenue at
high growth companies.
Table of Contents
Sales Development
The Sales Development Framework
Kristina McMillan (TOPO)
Lessons Learned from a World Class Sales
Development Organization
Scott Keane (Google)
Scaling Talent and Pipeline via Sales Development
James Burnette (LinkedIn)
Account Based Sales Development
Lars Nilsson (Cloudera)
Sales Development Hyper Growth
Julie Drimel (NetSuite)
The New Sales Development Paradigm
Steven Broudy (MuleSoft)
Best Practices for Sales Development Alignment
David Hershenson (TOPO)
Sales Development
Kristina McMillan
Sales Development Practice
Leader, TOPO
@Lifeiterated
Kristina McMillan has years of experience as a sales leader in

organizations like Five9 and SalesRamp. She is currently a Sales
Development Practice Leader at TOPO.
Sales Development
Leveraging TOPO’s research on hundreds of the fastest growing sales

development organizations combined with years of experience, the
TOPO Sales Development practice has developed The TOPO Sales
Development Framework. The Framework provides a comprehensive
view of the elements that make up an effective sales development
strategy. Here are four ways in which your company can design a
more strategic sales development framework:
1. Create your ideal customer profile (ICP)

ICP can be created from three data sets: Internal data (ex:
historical closed-won data by account type); Qualitative
data (ex: sales rep feedback); and External data (ex:
predictive data/analytics). ICP guides your go-to-market
strategy, sales processes, organizational design, hiring,
messaging, sales plays, etc.
2. Determine the go-to-market (GTM) strategy

There are different types of strategies: account-based
(coordinated inbound/outbound around account plans),
greenfield (broad outbound to a territory or vertical to find
the most responsive accounts), and volume & velocity
(emphasis on inbound leads that are fastest to close,
regardless of deal size). Look at your ICP to determine what
the appropriate GTM strategy is.
Sales Development
3. Create buyer-centric messaging

In order to create messaging specific to your buyer, you’ll
need personas that detail the top priorities of each target
buyer, value props aligned to each buyer, use cases that
emphasize the value to each specific buyer, and content
aligned to buyer pain and properties. Case studies are often
focused on one company. Try and create case studies on a
specific persona.
4. Create a strategic plan for automation

The average sales development team uses nine different
tools. End users are demanding consolidation to simplify
how they leverage available information. Build out your sales
development technology stack in three phases as the team
matures - level one being essential tools, level two being
growth fostering tools, and level three being tools that help
you optimize.
Sales Development
“At the end of the day, it’s about

making your sales development
reps more effective.”
Kristina McMillan
Sales Development
Lessons Learned from a World Class
Sales Development Organization
Scott Keane
Director, Global Demand
Management, Google
@scottckeane
Scott Keane is the Director of Global Demand Management at

Google. He has held sales leadership roles at Salesforce and Oracle.
Sales Development
With many years of experience as a sales leader in top-level
organizations like Google, Salesforce and Oracle, Scott Keane has
encountered and overcome a variety of sales development
obstacles. While being an expert in this field, he steers clear from
the term “sales development” and prefers to call it “demand
management.” During his session at TOPO Sales Summit 2016,
Scott shared nine lessons learned from a world class sales
development organization:
1. Always start with the problem you’re trying to solve

Break down your problem into smaller components to
identify metrics and variables. For an inbound value chain,
for example, you want to look at the following formula and
break down its components:
Leads x Conversion Rate x

Average Deal Size x Win Rate
= Bookings
Sales Development
2. If your go-to-market model doesn’t solve your
main problem, then change it
Develop a multi-media touch framework that includes
pre-call research, voicemail, email and a dark stage.
3. Agree with stakeholders on definitions

and expectations
Particularly with sales and marketing, ask relevant
stakeholders what the definition of an opportunity is.
Ask yourself, do these stakeholders have authority, need,
urgency or money?
4. Ensure your top priorities are shared by your

top leaders
Figure out the priorities of your leaders and then convince
them that your priorities are the same. This ensures that
everyone is aligned and all efforts are focused in the right
direction.
5. Rome wasn’t built in a day

Always prioritize and create a realistic timeline because you
can’t improve everything at once. Improvement should
come in stages, not just from bad to good.
Sales Development
6. Sales doesn’t care where pipelines comes from,
they just want more
7. Sales will focus more on closing deals than

progressing new deals if you let them
8. The most important factor in outbound pipeline

generation is capacity, or hiring
Set expectations early on for what you expect to generate in
pipeline when you’ve just started hiring.
9. If you’re going to outsource anything, make sure

you’ve mastered the process internally. And fast.
Sales Development
“Getting butts in seats and

people ramped up is the most
important thing you can do to
ramp up pipeline generation… If
you have that quota, get people
in as fast as you can.”
Scott Keane
Sales Development
Scaling Talent and Pipeline via
Sales Development
James Burnette
Director of Global Sales
Development, LinkedIn
Now Global Sales Development lead at LinkedIn, James Burnette

has held sales leadership roles at Microsoft, NexTag and the
American Power Conversion.
Sales Development
Sales Development
LinkedIn has built one of the world’s most powerful sales
development organizations. In this detailed session, James
Burnette, Director of Global Sales Development at LinkedIn,
provided key insights into how the world’s largest professional
network built a world-class sales development organization. Here
were some key takeaways from his session:
Macro trends in the software sector
There is a massive proliferation of software into our regular lives.

The outcomes of this are that:
Software is cheaper and easier to make than ever before
Development cycles are drastically shortened
Consumerization of enterprise software is putting more

of a focus on the user experience
Rise of SaaS = decline of on-premise software
Sales process is becoming more transactional in nature

Sales Development
Sales Development
LinkedIn has built a huge data set over the last 7 years
There are 400M members around the world. A growth of

over two new members per second.
The value LinkedIn has been able to deliver to their

members is connecting them to their professional networks
and helping them find their dream job.
There’s a wealth of data on industry, job function, education,

etc. It’s unique, “first-party data.”
LinkedIn uses this data to build different products:
Talent solutions
Marketing solutions
Sales solutions
Lynda
Elevate (enterprise employee activation)
LinkedIn’s sales development team is able to leverage

the data they’ve collected. With this data they are able to
provide the best sales training ground in the world,
which in turn attracts high potential talent.
Sales Development
Sales Development
In order to build a winning sales development team,
LinkedIn focuses on a few things:
Talent - number of promotions, percentage of roles filled by

sales dev, percentage of attainment of sales development
promotions vs. external hires.
Results - hiring efficiency (butts in seat/headcount), sales

development productivity (sales qualified opportunities per
rep, for example), MQL to SAO conversion rates, total
revenue in bookings, and so on.
Leverage - ROI, NPS of sales, time to touch, etc. Calculate

your Social Selling Index (SSI) to help you create a
professional brand, find the right people, engage with
insights and build strong relationships.
Sales Development
“We anchor all of our

decision-making in data.”
James Burnette
Sales Development
Lars Nilsson
VP of Global Inside Sales,
Cloudera
@larsnilsson65
Lars Nilsson is the VP of Global Inside Sales at Cloudera

and has held sales leadership roles at HP, Reverb Technology
and Pronto Networks.
Sales Development
Lars Nilsson has spent his career building inside sales teams at high
growth companies. Now he has built a sales methodology that
transforms how sales teams can approach and penetrate high-value
targets – Account Based Sales Development (ABSD). Here are key
takeaways from his session:
The high level trends that led Cloudera to follow

an ABSD model
Advances in technology - When he was a salesperson for his

first company, Xerox, people still had to mail in when they
were interested; there were no cell phones. Lars had to be
SDR by visiting businesses first-hand.
Adoption of SDR role - The average company in Silicon

Valley has one SDR for every three AEs. However,
companies have come to add more and more SDRs, which
has given the role greater legitimacy.
“Open sourcing” of SDR process, procedure & execution -

Lots of Google + LinkedIn groups where people are talking
about how they’re succeeding and share their best practices
with each other. Networking is is much easier today.
Sales Development
Internal best practices at Cloudera that led to ABSD
Implementation of a more targeted approach to sales.

Your operation doesn’t need to sell to everyone in the
world. It’s important to be targeted.
Lean data. All accounts go into a lean data library.
Changed their focus to outbound. Reporting showed 80%

of revenue came from expansions due to enterprise
accounts in the last couple years.
How ABSD at Cloudera works

SDRs and AEs align regularly and get to pick their accounts.
Source relevant titles/buyer personas. There are 50-200
names per account.
It’s important to understand who has opted in and who

hasn’t. They discovered that people who had opted in were
in fact not the ones they wanted to sell to.
SDRs craft a two to four email drip sequence with a compelling

first sentence, layer in use cases and told an overall story.
Sales Development
What the cadence looks like of an ABSD drip
Day 1: First email is sent with a subject line that captures the
attention and a strong hook referencing a known initiative.
A relevant use case is included.
Day 3: For those who didn’t reply, we send an additional industry

use case a demonstration of success.
Day 5: This is the “Hail Mary” email. Are you A, B or C (not interested,
interested but prefer to follow up later, or not interested at this
time.) Educate the prospect on a way out with a link to an article
or other useful information.
Sales Development
“When you send an email to 250

people in one company, you
can’t do it again two weeks later.
We take a lot of time when
building these programs out.”
Lars Nilsson
Sales Development
Julie Drimel
Director, Global
Business Development,
NetSuite
Julie Drimel is the Director of Global Business Development

at NetSuite, an organization that provides companies around
the globe with a cloud-based, unified system that delivers
unprecedented capabilities to drive their business.
Sales Development
Growing and managing a sales development team with hundreds

of people that spans multiple geographies and market segments is
no small task. Julie Drimel has spent several years building
NetSuite’s global sales development organization. In this session,
she provided a detailed look inside the company’s sales
development function. Here are some key insights from a real
business case:
When Julie decided to cut efforts on outbound and focus

on inbound:
They hired five managers, 50 BDRs, promoted 30 of 50, and

onboarded over 80 new people.
How did they do it? They started with a solid team culture;
a “we must” mentality; and a policy to leave your ego
at the door.
Sales Development
Operational design - Define what success looks like.

For NetSuite it was:
Lead generation - Get more out of marketing generated leads
Talent development - Look at BDRs as future talent pool for

sales. Hire fresh out of college, don’t have any preconceived
notions, bring an energy to the department.
Cohort hiring model - Hire in classes and promote in

classes. Start dates are affected by graduation dates, when
promotion is needed.
Regional hubs vs. centralized team - Put BDRs in different

places across the country. Easy to hire in other cities outside
of the bay.
Who owns what? Look at trends across the dierent oces

and grow the management layer before scaling up.
Specialization is key - by vertical, company size, geography,

inbound/outbound BDRs
Hiring - have a recruiting funnel, it should be as important to

you as your sales funnel
Sales Development
Culture is king for BDRs and managers.
Create a repeatable interview experience and process.
Onboarding:
Phase 1: New hire onboarding.

Phase 2: Product training, building sales skills.
Phase 3: Reinforcing sales and prospecting skills.
Phase 4: Transition training.
Measure success via results as well as activity. What

actions/activities lead to the results we need? How do we
then coach and compensate based on those activities?
Sales Development
The New Sales Development
Paradigm
Steven Broudy
Head of Account Development,
MuleSoft
@stevenbroudy
Steven Broudy is the Head of Account Development at MuleSoft. He

has held sales leadership roles at other organizations including Evolv.
Sales Development
Paradigm
Spurred by a move into the enterprise market and the rise of
account based sales development, the role of sales
development at MuleSoft has evolved rapidly. Whereas SDRs
once focused on setting appointments for sales, now many high
growth companies view the sales development organization as a
function with real strategic importance. SDRs are increasingly
finding themselves serving in the role of trusted advisor
performing strategic functions at target accounts, as a member
of a “joint account team.”
Steven led a detailed discussion on this transformation, sharing

specific examples of sales development’s role at MuleSoft. Here
are some key takeaways:
Sales development really means account development
For SDRs, there’s no “one size fits all” play. The path from
$1M-10M should look very little like the path from $10k to
$100k. MuleSoft recently shifted from an organization of
SDRs to an organization of “sales development consultants.”
Sales Development
Paradigm
MuleSoft’s 3 tenets of sales development
1. Building, fueling and maintaining your talent engine.
2. Developing the next generation of leaders within your

organization.
3. Driving tangible business impact that extends beyond

your SDR organization.
Hiring is everything
Talent acquisition is critical. There is no such thing as an

ideal candidate profile. Find people who are interested in a
future in sales, but remember people fresh out of college
won’t really know what they want. Go beyond career goals
and look for leaders.
Get ahead of your headcount. Consider your typical sales

cycle and think ahead if you want to reach your ARR goals.
Hire the right rep at the right time. There’s a different rep
and rep profile for where you’re at versus where you want to
be. Hire for intellectual curiosity, strategic, member of a joint
Sales Development
Paradigm
account team, responsible for creating/shaping a vision.
Hire future leaders, not future AEs. Build out programs to

bridge the gaps between AEs, CSMs, management,
partners and channels.
Create actual opportunities for your SDRs to lead
MuleSoft has their SDRs report on their top 25 accounts

during quarterly business reviews which help inform the AEs.
We also encourage them to circulate great
messaging/feedback, celebrate wins throughout the entire
company, and so on.
Enablement sessions: have manager-led enablement

sessions as well as SDR-led enablement sessions to help
create stronger bonds.
Tangible business results. Consider what metrics you care

about vs. what your stakeholders care about vs. what your
customer/prospect cares about. Why not deliver on the
metrics that matter most to the customer/prospect?
Sales Development
Paradigm
“Build a talent pipeline that

creates the future leaders for
your organization.”
Steven Broudy
Sales Development
Best Practices for Sales
Development Alignment
David Hershenson
Senior Analyst,
TOPO
@dahersh
David Hershenson is a Senior Analyst at TOPO and has experience

as a sales development leader in companies like Zenefits, Zendesk
and Yammer.
Sales Development
The most common challenges to achieving sales alignment:
Loose adherence to the SQL definition
Lack of a closed loop process
Failure to frequently communicate
Define a marketing-opportunity process that allows strong

cross-departmental groups to generate more revenue and
close sales deals.
Document how leads enter and exit the marketing-opportunity

workstream. MQLs determine which leads a SDR follows-up
with and in which order. SQLs meet the qualification criteria and
are ready for a conversation with sales. Opportunities occur
when the handoff call is complete and sales has agreed that the
prospect meets the criteria in the SQL definition.
Sales Development
Define the MQL requirements
Marketing and sales development must agree upon what leads

should be worked by the SDR team and in what order of priority.
Get feedback from sales on which leads are higher priority.
Provide context around what the lead did to become an MQL.
Revisit the MQL definition every quarter to refine the handoff.
Establish priorities for lead follow-up.
Design a follow-up process for high conversion
High-growth SDR teams are given strict guidance on how to

succeed in their role. Invest in sales dev specific enablement.
Document necessary steps for successful campaign execution.
Provide relevant content that can be used in their outreach.
Mutually agree on a SQL definition
Determine dynamics of the size of target market, inbound lead

traffic, length of sales cycle, ASP and market maturity. SQL def is
the minimum threshold for sales to accept. Provide SDRs with
the right types of questions to elicit the answers they need. Train
all relevant stakeholders.
Sales Development
Build a closed-loop handoff process with sales
Define the handoff, acceptance and feedback process. Only give

credit if the introductory meeting occurs and agree to a SLA.
Establish an ongoing cadence for feedback
66.7% of organizations will meet at least once a month to review

key metrics (for companies that have defined and agreed upon a
set marketing-opp process). Hold monthly meetings to review
process, metrics and SLAs. Conduct an audit once a quarter to
reassess process and milestone definitions. Standardize the metrics
used that will offer insights into the success of the process.
2016
Sales
Effectiveness
2016
Sales
Effectiveness
Discover the plays and
tactics that the world’s
best sales reps use.
Table of Contents
Sales Effectiveness
Lessons from 100 Playbooks
Greg Tapper (TOPO)
High Value Sales Messaging
Robert Koehler (TOPO)
6 Critical Strategies for Outbound Prospecting
David Hershenson (TOPO)
Key Discovery and Demo Plays
Greg Tapper (TOPO)
Viral Selling into your Customer’s Value Chain
Charles Lawson (Egnyte)
Selling More Effectively with Customer Workshops
Chris Albro (Zendesk)
Selling More Effectively with LinkedIn
Robert Koehler (TOPO)
Sales Effectiveness
Greg Tapper
Director of Consulting,
TOPO
@tapperg
Greg Tapper is a business leader and TOPO’s Director of Consulting.

He has held analyst and consulting roles at organizations that
include Forrester Research and Menlo Pacific LLC.
Sales Effectiveness
TOPO Director of Consulting, Greg Tapper, shared specific sales

plays that can be used to increase conversion rates, shorten sales
cycles, and drive higher average deal sizes. Here were key takeaways
from his session:
Playbook Lessons
Best companies use sales playbooks
Successful playbooks are based on sales frameworks
Frameworks identify leverage points in sales processes
Leverage wins deals
The best companies use sales frameworks
Use playbooks to introduce standards, consistency, clarity
Playbooks are account driven, rep specific, include detailed plays
Playbooks are framework-based… recommendations, flexible,

tools
Look at the sales framework. Identify what is working, what’s broken

Sales Effectiveness
Define your sales process
Your sales process should mirror your CRM stages, but your
process should be the driver, not the CRM. The best companies
have a specific sales process that is not driven by their CRM.
Always include account planning, discovery, demo, trials, etc.
How to get leverage
The best reps use a “leverage cycle” to win: Identify (disco) 

Build (demo/trial)  Apply leverage when you hit the proposal.
Focus on the right prospects, then understand their pain, and
show them a solution. It’s really that simple.
Create sales-driven personas
Personas are factors that drive conversions. Instead of title, focus

on persona pains and challenges. Factors include demographics
(career stage, SMB vs big company), title, level, psychology (risk
taker vs. risk averse), day-in-the-life (what problems are they
trying to solve?), personal goals, key challenges, and so on. Use
personas to drive messaging and create a persona framework for
every deal.
Sales Effectiveness
Maintain leverage with an active trial
The best reps actively manage trials to gain leverage and control.
Confirm goals  Verify  Add value  Close. Tell them to try
the features that solve their specific pains and then confirm
they’ve done it.
Sales Efectiveness
“Sales are lost at discovery, not

at proposal. If you do one thing
well, run a good disco.”
“Qualification = should I do this

deal? Discovery = how do I do
this deal? They are not the same.”
Greg Tapper
Sales Effectiveness
Robert Koehler
Senior Analyst, Sales Practice,
TOPO
@RobertKoehler4
Robert Koehler is the the Senior Analyst for TOPO’s Sales Practice,
helping B2B sales and marketing leaders accelerate and replicate
growth based on best practices. He has held sales leadership roles
at LinkedIn, IBM and HP.
Sales Effectiveness
Can you or your reps deliver an easy-to-understand value

proposition? In sales, reps often have less than 30 seconds to
explain to a prospect who you are and what you do. In this session,
Robert Koehler, Senior Analyst at TOPO, led an interactive session
on the TOPO Messaging Builder which allows anyone to create a
sales value prop and use cases in 10 minutes or less. Here five steps
to the TOPO Buyer-Centric Messaging Framework:
Step 1: Define the ICP

ICPs are accounts that are the highest priority for the
organization (most likely to purchase). The entire organization
must align to a single ICP. It drives where sales reps should
spend time and what they say. Companies must ruthlessly
adhere to the ICP based on reality rather than ideals.
Step 2: Build Sales-Centric Buyer Personas

Create personas that are specific in language and can be
used by sales reps to have conversations that resonate with
potential buyers. Include detailed, specific language that
buyers actually use and provide a basic understanding of the
day-to-day challenges and goals. The ultimate goal of the
buyer persona is to build empathy.
Sales Effectiveness
Step 3: Deliver Buyer-Centric Value Props

Use the buyer personas to build 30 second value props for sales
to use in all customer communications. This is description of
what you do and how you are unique delivered in 30 seconds
or less. They should align with buyer-centric messaging with
the use of specific language from buyer challenges. Emphasize
pain statements rather than discussing the product, and by all
means avoid jargon and marketing terms.
Step 4: Tell Relevant Use Case Stories

Your customer stories should be short descriptions that
illustrate how you address a specific pain that will resonate with
the buyer. Effective use case stories are more personal than
case studies because they have a protagonist. Combine both
qualitative and quantitative results. Each sales rep should be
able to recite 3-4 customer stories immediately, by memory.
Step 5: Reinforce Messaging Through Sales Enablement

Reps cannot fully understand buyers until they can
emphasize their challenges and internalize the messaging.
Sales leaders need to deliver onboarding, training and 1:1
coaching. To reinforce relevant, simple messaging, training
should include buyer persona workshops, messaging
workshops, practice on use case stories, etc. The focus is
NOT on the product and its features.
Sales Effectiveness
“People remember information

from stories up to 22x more
than facts alone.”
“Sales training should focus on

buyer personas, messaging and
customer stories...not the
product. If your training focuses
on the product, then your sales
reps will only sell the product.”
Robert Koehler
Sales Effectiveness
6 Critical Strategies for
Outbound Prospecting
David Hershenson
Sales Development Analyst,
TOPO
@dahersh
David Hershenson is a Senior Analyst at TOPO and has experience

as a sales development leader in companies like Zenefits, Zendesk
and Yammer.
Sales Effectiveness
Outbound prospecting is the hardest thing to do in sales. This
challenge has been around since the days of door-to-door sales
to the phone to the digital sales era. In this workshop, TOPO Sales
Development Analyst Dave Hershenson, presented the TOPO
Outbound Prospecting Playbook. Here are the key takeaways
from the workshop:
Outbound Prospecting Framework - Initiating a standard set

of prospecting steps will give sales the best chance of getting
a response:
Step 1: Prospect Data

Identify contacts that align to key buyer personas and
collect contact info. Understand who these people are and
where they fit in the organization. Identify 2-3 additional
stakeholders related to the target personas. Source contact
info (phone/email) or find an alternate path to contact
(LinkedIn/social media).
Step 2: Pre-Call Research

Focus on gathering only the most essential info. Use the 3x3
rule: Find 3 pieces of info you can use to sell to them in 3
minutes. Take note of current customers that are similar
(peers). Review all prior account history to gain context and
perspective. Research company data and contact info.
Sales Effectiveness
Step 3: Multi-Touch Campaign
Maintain a volume of at least 8-12 touches per contact.
Utilize multiple touch types (email, dials, voicemail, LinkedIn).
Messaging should include buyer-specific content designed
to educate the prospect over the course of the campaign.
Step 4: Live Call Execution

Successful sales reps create a call plan that directs the
conversation with the prospect to achieve a very specific
outcome. Develop a structure: Create an agenda, follow a
detailed structure, use transition phases to change direction
and help the conversation flow, avoid jargon and filler
words, and agree to next steps.
Step 5: Nurture
Systematic approach to reach out to high value prospects
over time to re-engage them. Educate prospects by being a
source of high-value content. CTA should center around
discussing the content, not your offer. Frequency should be
every 3-4 weeks.
Sales Effectiveness
Step 6: Time Management
High performing reps organize their days to achieve specific
outbounding activities. 83.4% of SDRs fail to consistently hit
quota due to poor time management skills. Create aggressive
activity goals daily, schedule and protect critical activities on
your calendar, stay focused on tasks related to achieving
quota and end each day by preparing for tomorrow.
Sales Effectiveness
“87.5% of best sales teams

do touches via three
or more channels.”
David Hershenson
Sales Effectiveness
Greg Tapper
Director of Consulting,
TOPO
@tapperg
Greg Tapper is a business leader and TOPO’s Director of Consulting.

He has held analyst and consulting roles at organizations that
include Forrester Research and Menlo Pacific LLC.
Sales Effectiveness
In ranking the top performing sales teams, one pattern is consistent

– the highest performing sales teams have a distinct discovery step
before demoing the product. Conversely, the lowest ranking sales
team do not. TOPO Director of Consulting, Greg Tapper presented
specific best practices for executing the front end of the sales
process. Here are the key takeaways:
Key insights
1. Best companies have a strong sales process
2. Discovery & demo are critical steps in the sales process
3. Successful reps execute deep discovery, build leverage
4. Reps who demo against discovery win more deals
Why Discovery?
You gain insights into why the customer is calling, identify pains,
challenges and goals.
Sales Effectiveness
Why Demo?
It’s not about showing off the product, it’s an initial proof of solution.
Highlight product quality and demonstrate value.
Create Sales-Driven Personas

Personas are factors that drive conversions. Instead of title,
focus on personas based on pains and challenges. Use
personas to drive messaging. Create a persona framework
for every deal.
Factors: demographics (career stage, SMB vs big company),

title, level, psychology (risk taker vs. risk averse),
day-in-the-life (what problems are they trying to solve?),
personal goals, key challenges, and so on.
Use Discovery to Identify Pains & Build Leverage

Introduction  Discovery  Deliver Value  Close
Introduction - Not a mundane process, you are establishing

their role, psychology, challenges, etc.
Discovery - It’s not the same as qualification. Always take

Sales Effectiveness
Use Discovery to Identify Pains & Build Leverage

notes to help capture leverage for later.
Recap disco - ”I understand this. Can you please confirm.

Did I miss anything?”
Deliver brief value prop relevant to buyer’s stated pains.

Sales Effectiveness
“There are two places where

sales processes typically break
down: discovery and demo.”
“Unhappy sales leaders ALL

complain about their reps
inability to demo. The problem
is actually their inability to do
discovery, not demo.”
Greg Tapper
Sales Effectiveness
Viral Selling into your Customer’s
Value Chain
Charles Lawson
VP of Sales,
Egnyte
@clawson27
Charles Lawson is the VP of Sales at Egnyte, and has sales

leadership experience at organizations like Arena Solutions
and Questra Corporation.
Sales Effectiveness
Value Chain
One of the most difficult parts of sales is prospecting for new
business. There are many tips and tricks for prospecting, but not
many proven methodologies. Charles Lawson, VP of Sales from
Egnyte, has developed a winning strategy for outbound pipeline
building known as Value Chain Selling. Here are key takeaways
from his session:
Three Steps for Value Chain Selling:
1. Discovery - Ask the who
a. How do you get started? Value chain selling.

b. Conversation to higher level company objectives -
What are their pain points?
c. End discussion on revenue generation.
2. Targeting
a. Map out the value chain by identifying gaps. Follow

up to fill in any gaps - companies appreciate that you
want to understand and learn about their business.
b. Understand relationships - Leverage in future
conversations.
Sales Effectiveness
Value Chain
3. Messaging
a. The perfect message - It’s always changing and

customized.
Understand the buyer - Create compelling messaging.
Value props - Don’t recycle the same pitch, create tailored

value props.
Use cases - Be prepared to provide these prospects relevant

use cases, not just case studies to tell a valuable story.
Did it Work? Results You Can Expect:
1. Vertical Expertise - Reps will verticalize themselves.
2. Pipeline Inspection - There will be physical links

between opportunities.
3. Referenceable Customers Will Skyrocket - Reps will

develop deeper relationships.
Sales Effectiveness
Selling More Effectively with
Customer Workshops
Chris Albro
Director Enterprise Account
Management, Zendesk
@albrochris
Chris Albro is the Director of Enterprise Account Management at

Zendesk. He has held leadership roles at Oracle, RightNow and
Guthy-Renker.
Sales Effectiveness
Customer Workshops
In this customer engagement workshop, Chris Alboro covered
the following topics:
1. Customer journey mapping
Customers want to hear a solution to their problems.
Map out the customer journey by the different engagement

points your business will have with your customer.
Take into consideration the customer’s pain points

throughout every stage in the journey.
2. Workshops should have an end goal
Always have a goal for your customer workshops, but be

prepared to abandon it if the workshop organically takes
a different direction.
Offer an elevator pitch for your workshops with consistent

messaging.
Prospects should be taking notes instead of collateral.

Sales Effectiveness
Customer Workshops
3. Your workshops must be customer-focused
It’s not a sales pitch.
Keep your workshops laser-focused on the customer to pin

down customer pain points.
4. Workshops must engage customers
Your workshops should focus on providing new and relevant

information for your customers.
They should have the goal of making customers more

successful in their role.
Facilitate relationship building amongst your customers to

foster this sense of community.
Sales Effectiveness
Robert Koehler
Senior Analyst, Sales Practice,
TOPO
@RobertKoehler4
Robert Koehler is the the Senior Analyst for TOPO’s Sales Practice,
helping B2B sales and marketing leaders accelerate and replicate
growth based on best practices. He has held sales leadership roles
at LinkedIn, IBM and HP.
Sales Effectiveness
100% of high growth sales organizations use some version of

LinkedIn and 75% use a paid version. This data from TOPO’s
research of the best sales teams is why LinkedIn is the 2nd screen
on every salesperson’s desk (next to their CRM). Robert Koehler,
TOPO Sr. Sales Analyst and former LinkedIn Sales Solutions
consultant, presented TOPO’s Linkedin Platform for Sales
Communications. Here are six core steps from his session:
Step 1: Define your ideal customer profile
Define the ICP and the probability of winning deals with this
customer profile. This will influence the sales rep’s profile.
Step 2: Build a killer buyer-centric LinkedIn profile
Think of it as a voicemail (i.e. you have 30 seconds to influence

your prospect).
Create a deadline for the profile remodel. Start with content

above the fold. Get a professional headshot.
Place an enticing headline. Most include their job title.

For example, “Sales Analyst: Helping sales leaders sell better.”
Sales Effectiveness
In your “Summary” section, address the challenges and goals

of your buyers. LinkedIn is no longer just an online resume.
Step 3: Target the buyers in your ideal customer profile
Build advanced searches to find the low hanging fruit.
Save your searches. Set up automated alerts in LinkedIn and

leverage trigger events.
Build searches aligned with your ICP. Use the title field and
brackets.
Step 4: Do your research
Meeting acceptance most often comes from

commonalities - schools, connections, companies, etc.
Be ready with high-value messaging once you contact
based on commonality.
Referral Request Play - Ask a connection for an

introduction. Mention why are you asking for an intro and
make it easy by giving them a note that you’re asking them
to forward.
Sales Effectiveness
Step 4: Do your research
Review their groups and recommendations they wrote.

This will give you clues and insights into what they think and what
they value.
Step 5: Engage your prospects and clients
Look for prospects in the ICP who viewed your profile, but don’t
mention their profile view. Send a custom version of your email
outreach.
Step 6: Connect with your prospects and customers
Top sales performers are over 50% more connected with their
current clients. Always personalize your connection requests.
Connect after some two-way interaction. Reinforce your latest
conversation or meeting.
Find out how Talkdesk can help your sales reps reach twice
the number of leads and have more personalized,
real-time conversations.
Request a free trial
About TOPO Sales Summit

The Sales Summit is an intensive, engaging learning experience that brings together sales leaders from high growth
companies to share specific best practices, patterns, and plays for driving scalable revenue growth.
About Talkdesk
Talkdesk is next-generation cloud-based call center software that helps you connect with your customers. The easy-to-use
interface offers robust functionality with advanced features, comprehensive reporting and seamless integrations with 25+
business tools to empower sales and service teams to have personalized, real-time conversations with customers.

Key Takeaways From TOPO Sales Summit 20161 PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Key Takeaways From TOPO Sales Summit 20161 PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Key Takeaways From TOPO Sales Summit 20161 PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

2016

Talkdesk team members attended TOPO Sales

This Ebook is a compilation of everything

Note: This content is a reflection of all of the insights and

Time: 9:00AM on Thursday

Scott Albro is the Founder and CEO of TOPO. TOPO

Sales is undergoing a radical transformation. Driven by changing

What Are the Key Trends in Sales Today?

3. Value + Volume + Velocity

4. Account Based Everything (ABE)

5. Sales Tech Stack

“Sales used to define how we use

Time: 1:30PM on Friday

Jeffrey Ma is best known for his role on the infamous MIT

2. Trust Data Over Gut Feelings

3. Life Lessons from Blackjack

4. Avoid Cognitive Biases

5. Believe in the Numbers

“Every decision is data-driven,

Time: 9:00AM on Friday

Glenn Solomon What do the world’s top

Brett Rochkind Investors Glenn Solomon

Glenn Solomon: Great revenue performance and sales. We first

Brett Rochkind: I look at the four M’s - Market, Management,

GS: Sometimes the metrics at growing organizations are not

BR: We look very heavily at the metrics. There’s the magic

GS: Renewing customers and keeping them happy is critical. I’ve

BR: Retention management not only impacts the valuation and

Any commonalities in sales leaderships that works out?

BR: We look at efficiency first. We’ll look at what is their

Time: 2:00PM on Friday

Meagen Eisenberg is a veteran technology marketing executive

Q: What are some of the bad experiences you’ve had with

A: It’s exhausting explaining to a vendor everything about our

Q: How many vendors that approach you do you pass

Q: What makes a vendor do a great job?

A: I really appreciate when they’ve done their homework. They’ve

Q: Is a face-to-face meeting better than a virtual one?

Q: Does it impact your decision to meet with a rep if they

A: I prefer it if they don’t because it makes me feel more tied to

Q: Do you read the content reps send over to you?

A: I actually do! I appreciate thoughtful information that educates

Q: When do you want to know the price?

A: As soon as possible. I know reps will avoid answering the question,

Q: Do you need a reference?

A: It’s certainly great to have a reference, but if the company is

A: I have accepted requests from reps on LinkedIn. But I will scroll

Time: 10:15AM on Thursday

Craig Rosenberg is the Co-Founder and Chief Analyst at TOPO,

A World-Class sales Process Includes

An understanding of target buyers’ desired experience

Detailed definitions of plays, content and exit criteria

Adherence to process by everyone in organization

Enforcement levers and tools

4 Reasons Why Most Companies Fail with Sales Process

They designed it, but don’t enforce it

They narrowly view sales process as opportunity management