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Sink or Swim: Manage Your Sales Through a Downturn

Sink or Swim: Manage Your Sales Through a Downturn

You can either sink, swim or be the captain of the ship. 
When sh*t hits the fan and the market takes a dip, venture capital goes running.
When VCs start to tighten their purse strings go-to-market leaders are the first to feel it. 

If you’ve been a sales manager for any length of time in 2022, you’ve learned that downturns happen for many reasons including, but not limited to economic market bubble popping, worldwide pandemics grinding everyone to a halt, and many others…

There’s a lot out of your control as a sales leader, but something you can control is understanding the situation you’re in and pivoting the team to survive - and thrive - in whatever the new normal may be. 

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

  • How to pivot your sales team in a downturn (go from growth first to efficiency first)

  • How to find a new baseline for your once reliable sales motion

  • How to focus on and drive effort and efficiency in your AE & SDR teams

  • How to optimize your management and operations staff (nice to have vs need to have vs automate it)

  • Is your sales team the right size? How to make data-backed, fair decisions when deciding whether to RIF

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Use your existing metrics harness to observe new realities

  • Moving from “there’s more where that came from” attitude to “every opp / lead is

    precious” mindset

  • Once visualizations and tooling are in place, weave distribution and consumption

    into the workflow to detect issues and drive compliance

  • When looking for which specific reps should go, decisions should be based on performance

    KPIs.

RESOURCES

[Book] Get Your Free Copy of Founding Sales

[Deck] Pete’s slide deck

[Guide] Instrumenting Work from Home (WFH) Sales Teams

[Guide] Atrium’s Sales Math

[Guide] Be Amazing at Sales Operational Excellence

[Masterclass] Setting SDR & AE Goals That Don't Suck