Tuesday, April 13 - 9 AM Pacific

Digital Panel: Nerds vs Jocks - Align Sales And Marketing To Exceed Your Goals

One team, one dream, right? It’s 2021 and we’re still talking about aligning sales and marketing - why is it so damn difficult to get everyone on the same page? Where do you start and why should you care? Join this panel of experts to dive into why marketing and sales are misaligned in the first place, how alignment helps with the flywheel, practical and tactical steps you can take right now to get these teams working better together, and the last opinion you’ll ever need on where sales development should live in your organization.

Our speakers for this session were Markus Knight, David Dulany, Caroline Kinlin, Betty Wetherell Gustafson, and Travis Henry.

Key Takeaways

  • Currently, many orgs align GTM teams based on dogmatic structures; be forward thinking and build your org to support the customer journey

  • Marketing and sales often aren’t speaking the same language. Have your marketing team listen to call recordings, create a feedback loop from sales about marketing copy

  • Build service level agreements to ensure all groups are on the same page; consistent project management across the silos and enforcing the service level agreement is a good start

  • Aligning on what you won’t do is as important as aligning on what you will do

    At the end of the day: constant communication creates better alignment

Tuesday, April 13 - 1 PM Pacific

Masterclass: How To Build A Resilient Sales Forecast Using Reps And Algorithms
Masterclass hosted by SalesLoft's Jeremey Donovan. Sales leaders must forecast upcoming sales with confidence, but their approach must be resilient to adjust to drastic changes in the market. In a time when it seems that the future is just as uncertain as the present, that resiliency is even more critical to creating and managing forecasts. Learn how SalesLoft combines the pipeline management of individual sales reps with machine learning algorithms to create forecasts that the organization can count on today and in the future.

Key Takeaways

  • This is a prospecting tip, but still important - make sure your prospecting is adding value to your prospect’s life - don’t be self-serving

  • Find ways to give people value in ways they can realize before becoming your customer. i.e. SalesLoft offers all of these for free to all prospects (non-prospects) https://salesloft.com/resources/salesloft-labs/

  • Adapt your forecast approach to the dynamics of each sales segment (SMB vs mid-market vs enterprise)

  • A deal methodology is more than a qualification tool - use your methodology to examine the deals: each facet, in each deal, every time

  • Get your processes nailed before you get your tech. It’s always people, process, THEN tech

  • Don’t buy technology to solve a problem. If your comp plans suck, an expensive compensation software isn’t going to solve it

  • We don’t have enough high-quality input data to build a superior, standalone AI forecast, but machines CAN augment humans during the process

Wednesday, April 14 - 9 AM Pacific

Digital Panel: Revenge Of The Nerds - The Role Of Data In Building More Pipe, More Quickly
It’s the real-life encapsulation of revenge of the nerds! This panel will focus on tactics to deploy and build pipeline, at scale. We’ll cover the role of data in personalization and automation, top tips for a scalable “show me you know me”, and exactly how much personalization is too much.

Our speakers for this session were Lem Lloyd, Samantha McKenna, Will Ritchings, Valari Faccenda, and Richard Sgro.

Key Takeaways

  • When it comes to data, the hardest part is simply to start. Then it becomes about using data to iterate upon the process.

  • It all comes down to personalization: Be authentic, be human, and do your research!

  • Solid data should serve as your foundational layer.

  • Double down on having your data enriched and prospects segmented in the right way to set them up for success. Otherwise, garbage in → garbage out.

Wednesday, April 14 - 11 AM Pacific

Keynote: The Future of Sales Development with Kevin Dorsey
Should SDRs report to marketing or sales? Will chatbots & AI automate away the need for sales development completely? What role does sales development play in the emerging "revenue flywheel"? Join Modern Sales Pros General Manager, Richard Sgro as he sits down with keynote speaker Kevin "KD" Dorsey for an exploration of the future of sales development.

Key Takeaways

  • You manage a process but you develop people. Sales managers will need to ensure they’re better coaches, as well as better process & system design thinkers.

  • Selling during the pandemic has been hard, and managing has been hard too. Managers that have struggled the most are ones who didn't connect with their team before, and haven’t connected now - your attention to detail needs to be higher and managers must block time for one on one, personal conversations.

  • Customer led selling is the future; there is no greater conflict of interest than a commissioned salesperson, but customer led selling is the purest form of selling and no one can better explain the why or the how.

  • The future of the sales tech stack is smaller - all you need is a data tool, a dynamic sales process tool, a call recording/coaching tool, and a calendaring/time management tool.

  • Sellers today must be able to connect the dots, problem solve, understand the complete day of the people they’re selling to, be more detailed, and understand the technicalities of their product. The best seller in a few years is basically going to be a sales engineer.

Wednesday, April 14 - 1 PM Pacific

Masterclass: Why Everyone Needs A Technical Sales Team & How To Do It
Join Spiff's Tanner Lacey as he takes a deeper dive into why every organization needs a technical sales team. For this session, Tanner will cover the importance of a technical sales team and how it compliments the sales organization, how to structure the team, and how to set the team up for success and continue to motivate them.

Key Takeaways

  • One of the most important relationships in a revenue organization is account executive and sales engineering - that relationship can be the best thing or the worst thing to happen to a company so make it a priority.

  • Revenue management PSA: You need to have a good scope of what your team should be working on and avoid burnout; by being prescriptive about work life balance, you’ll improve culture and employee retention.

  • The SE needs to be the ultimate utility player. SEs are more relatable than AEs for your customers and having a good SE and AE play into that really leverages the rapport.

  • The future of sales is interdisciplinary sales leaders with sales engineering backgrounds.

  • Just focused on how TF you need to be paying your SE team. We promise, they deserve more than they’re getting now.

Thursday, April 15 - 9 AM Pacific

Digital Panel: Leading The Gen-Z Remote SDR
Ever tried to coach your track team remotely? Remote management isn’t easy. Managing team members who are fresh out of school isn’t easy, either. Layer on the general demands of sales development, the challenges of a pandemic, plus the loss of the “drive by” check-in, and you have a recipe for underperformance. Join our panel of experts as they share decades of experience on managing fresh, remote SDRs. They’ll be chatting about is the Gen-Z SDR really different from previous, how to set a fresh, remote SDR up for success, ideas for inclusive morale & team building events, managing the person and the jobs-to-be-done.

Our speakers were Brooke Lengsfelder, Ryann Morrow, Jaime Kronick, Patrick Buckley, and Richard Sgro.

  • Gen-Z is educated about financial literacy, benefits, and social impact more than ever - these are essential motivational features for a job.

  • Prove you're invested in their development, not just their performance - especially if they have more options of where to work. Dig in on values and show people finding success in moving up and out of roles.

  • Connect with your new hires - you can have an impact on how they grow and how they contend with stress. Be more than a manager, use your personal experience or the experiences of people you can put them in touch to invest in your hires.

  • Lead by example - it’s okay to be vulnerable, ask if yourself and your team have work/life balance and are following your individual values.

Thursday, April 15 - 1 PM Pacific

Masterclass: How Your SDR Team Evolves to Support Growing GTM
As an organization scales, their SDR function specializes. We're sitting down with Sean Dwyer, Senior Manager of Sales Development, at ZoomInfo to chat about the ways in which your SDR team should evolve as your business scales.

  • The Ultimate goal is to upskill SDRS - do this by creating specialized functions within the SDR role, promote within, and incorporate consistent training and establish strong, valuable mentorship.

  • Data driven optimization based on specialized roles in your GTM team: start with the demand generation marketing, leverage your own data to optimize lead flow, and ultimately look at campaign effectiveness from the inbound and outbound perspectives.

  • Specialize roles beyond inbound and outbound teams to customer and new business teams - this will help you better understand the data, what's coming through, and where it's coming from so you can dedicate the right people and resources to adequately route and book meetings.

  • Hire the right talent by auditing your top sales reps to identify some common traits that are driving the right business outcomes, incorporating a cognitive assessment that catches the qualities you're looking for, and have potential hires meet the leadership group that they may eventually report to.

  • When you have an SDR motion that’s based on accountability, you get increased retention and productivity, reduced ramp time, and it’s possible to have a lead response time under 90 seconds.