Lesson 9 - Meet Your Team

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Your team is a critical resource for your success. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to build relationships and leverage the expertise of your colleagues to accelerate your ramp time. Your assignment will involve scheduling a one-on-one meeting with at least one team member to learn about their role and how they can support your sales journey.

Transcript

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Nicholas, welcome back to the daily quota. I'm your host, Nicholas Hill, and in today's lesson, you are going to meet your team. Now it is crucially important that you understand all of the different roles that you're going to be working with, cross functionally across the sales cycle. Sales is a team sport. It's not just you alone. Now, if you're at a startup, it might just be you alone, but for the most part, you're going to be working with a wide variety of team members, and it's important that you know who they are, what their goals are, what they care about, what they do. So in this lesson, we're going to walk through some of the different team members that you're likely to work with, and then your assignment is going to be to meet with those team members. You'll be asking them questions, basically doing like an internal informational interview to learn about what they care, about what they do. You'll also be it will also be suggested that you shadow calls with these different team members so that you can get an understanding of the types of interactions they have with customers. So let's talk about the different team members you're likely to work with. The first is sales development. So this is your SDR or OB, our outbound business representative, SDR, sales development representative. But essentially these are, you might also hear them called inside sales reps. There are a lot of different names, but essentially your sales development rep is responsible for creating pipeline. They're the ones that are going to be you know, you probably think of them as the cold callers, right? But in a lot of organizations these days, they're doing warm calling, user based calling, emailing, LinkedIn connection requests. You're also going to see them field marketing qualified leads or product qualified leads, anytime prospect fills out like a white paper or subscribes to a newsletter, they could potentially become a lead for a sales development rep, but ultimately, a sales development rep is charged with creating pipeline they have. They have a very difficult and very interesting job, right where they are going to be creating pipeline, in a lot of cases, out of nothing. So when you're working with an SDR or OBR, their goal is to create qualified opportunities. So they are trying to create as many net new opportunities as possible, or as many expansion opportunities as possible, and then pass those opportunities off to the salesperson. In a lot of cases, the SDR, OBR, they're going to be thinking about some basic qualification, things like budget, authority, need and timeline. They might be doing some basic discovery to understand kind of if there's a need or a pain that we're able to address, but ultimately they're going to do a handoff to the sales rep for them to kind of take the ball and run with it through the sales cycle. You should be setting up a one on one with your OBR or SDR, if you have one. And as you're talking to them, you should be asking a few questions. What types of outreach messaging have been the most successful? What are the titles that have been the most receptive to our solution? What are the competitors that are coming up the most on your calls, and what is the best way for us to to work together? Right? What is their cadence, what is their preferred style of communication? Are you going to meet with them at the beginning of the week to strategize, or at the end of the week to strategize the following week? Are you going to meet with them weekly, monthly, daily, right? How close do you do? You need your relationship to be. You should definitely be shadowing calls with them. You should shadow an outbound call to a cold lead, an outbound call to a warm lead or a referral, a qualification call for an inbound lead, and a discovery call handoff to understand how those calls are run. A little bit further down the sales cycle is the solutions engineer or the solutions architect or the SE again, they have a lot of different names, but a solutions engineer or a technical engineer, they are your technical resources. They are the ones that have in depth technical knowledge of your solution. A lot of people think of them as, oh, they're the ones that demo. They're the ones that do the demos for for the customer. And you'd be right. In a lot of cases, the SE or the technical lead is the one doing the in depth demonstrations. They are also, though, talking about integration, security, compliance, customization. They are ensuring that demo environments are clean and telling a good story. They're ensuring that products meet the specific technical. Hill qualifications for the customer. More and more often they're talking to IT teams, security teams, trust teams. They are very, very intelligent and important members of the sales process. And the primary goal of an SE or solution engineer architect, is to support the sales process by providing deep technical expertise and ensuring that the solution fits their environment, their requirements, ultimately securing the technical win. A lot of time their specific goals, their goals can vary, but a lot of times, their specific goals are tied to sales goal success, so because they are an integral part of the sales cycle, if you are or not, if, when you interview a solutions engineer, Solutions Architect, and you absolutely should, if you have one, you should be asking these questions, how is the task of discovery shared between an SE and an AE? How do you typically prepare for a demo that's tailored to a prospects needs? What information do you need from me to be successful in that preparation? Don't skip that question. Very, very important question they need. You need to know what you need to be getting for them so that they can run a successful demo. That way you can work as a team. Number three, in your eyes, what does a successful demo look like, and what is the sales reps role in it? Number four, what are the biggest technical roadblocks you run into consistently? Where do our competitors currently have us beat? It's a scary question, but it's a good question to ask. And what traps should I be avoiding? Right? Your SES are going to be very, very smart. They are going to be able to tell you, these are the traps to avoid. These are the things to look out for. These are the differentiators to lean into. These are the things where the customer goes, Whoa, cool. That's awesome. Show me more, right? So you need to be, you need to be asking them about that calls that you should be shadowing with an SE product demos, customized product demos, for sure, technical deep dive sessions, post demo follow up calls, joint sales and technical discovery calls, integrations, calls, security calls, compliance calls, All of the above, if you can right? So that's your solutions engineer or Solutions Architect. The next one, again, going a little further down the sales process, is your customer success manager. A customer success manager is incredibly important when you sell something to a prospect. For you, that sale may be over, but for them, the relationship is really just getting started, and the CSM is the person or persons responsible for making sure that that relationship gets off to a good start and stays positive. The CSM or the customer success manager is typically thinking about, how many licenses did this person buy? How can we maximize their usage and adoption of those licenses? How can we make sure they are getting the most out of our solution, using it in all of the ways that they should be using it for. How can we make sure that we're addressing any challenges that come up, and the support team will be involved in that too. But CSMs can get ahead of challenges. They can get ahead of churn risk. They can look out for opportunities where the customer might be a good candidate for things like beta programs or new features. They are going to be presenting QBRs and ROI Return on Investment presentations for these customers, they're going to be filling out things like, you know, ongoing success plans with these customers to understand what good looks like for them. The CSM is typically measured on customer satisfaction NPS scores, they might be measured on customer retention. They are most likely going to be measured on some form of adoption metric like active annual usage or monthly usage. They might be you might look at license adoption overall. They may also have a hand in upsell or cross sell functions, although that's a little bit more rare. When you meet with the CSM, your goal should be to understand what does the CSM look like at your organization for your solution. So asking questions like, what are some of the biggest things that are over promised during the sales cycle that are hard to deliver once it's handed off to the CSM, if you can ask that, is the most important question, making sure that you're not over promising and setting your CSM up for failure. What are the commonly raised issues or challenges with the adoption of our solution? How do we handle customer escalations? Complaints. Can you share strategies for identifying upsell opportunities within the existing customer base? What are the signals of customer churn that you look for, what communication methods and meeting cadence have been most effective with our long term customers? So like, how often are we getting in front of them? What are customers happy with? Look for the success stories too. What are some of the coolest use cases you've heard about, the most unique use cases you've heard about, what do they love about us? Right? It's always nice to get talking about about the good stuff, and not just the the churn or the objections or the the challenges, right? Um, calls that you should be shadowing with your CSM, onboarding calls, quarterly business reviews, joint success plan reviews or alignment calls, renewal discussions, escalation calls, those are all going to be calls that you should jump on with your CSM, your renewals managers, your onboarding specialists, so that you can understand what the customer journey looks like after the sale is complete. The next one is deal desk if you haven't heard of your deal Desk team, they are going to soon become your best friend. The deal Desk team facilitates the sales process by managing pricing strategies, contract negotiation transaction processes. They're the ones that do things like price negotiation, multi year contracts. They come up with creative ways to structure deals that work for both you and the customer. If you don't have a deal Desk team, then you don't have to worry about this section. If you do have a deal Desk team, I would encourage you to meet with them to understand how you can best work together, because you're going to be working together a lot, and typically, you're going to be working with the deal Desk team towards the end of your sales cycle, when it is the most crucial for you to get deals across the finish line, and when it's most risky for you to lose a deal because you're not negotiating with the customer In the correct way. So when you meet with your deal desk partner, you should be asking them things like, what are the common issues or pitfalls that you tend to see in deal structures? How can sales reps better prepare the customer in advance for a smooth deal closure later in the sales cycle? That's probably the most important one, right? How can I make sure my customers well prepared in advance so that this is all smooth. What are effective strategies for negotiating terms with prospects? How do you recommend handling special pricing requests? Another thing that you might ask them is just like, what can be automated? What can I do myself? What are the things that I can do without you, right? Because deal desk, they don't want to be involved anywhere. They don't have to be they want to be involved when it's the most impactful. So it can be very valuable for you to to get the automation question out there so that you can understand what you can do yourself. Calls that you should shadow with deal desk. Your any pricing strategy discussion that's being held contract review sessions, final deal approval meetings. Those should all. Those are all going to be valuable. Then there's your legal team. You should absolutely meet with your legal team. I shouldn't have to explain the importance of a legal team, but just in case, they're the ones that are going to be signing the contract, making sure that the terms of the agreement match the terms that we are able to accept. They are going to be protecting our organization and keeping us safe. They can sometimes feel like the enemy, because they're the ones that are going to say, sorry, the contract isn't ready yet. It needs this. It needs this. It needs so and so red line agreement, right? Or no, we're not able to sign the MSA of the customer for this and this reasons it can feel like they're providing a lot of friction, but they're keeping you safe. They're keeping the company safe, and you should absolutely meet with them and ask the following questions. One, what are the most common pitfalls that happen in customer contracts that have killed deals before that's the most important question. Number two, how can salespeople better align their deals with legal requirements? What is the best way to work with you? What are the signals to me that I should be bringing legal in earlier than usual? What are some steps that I can take to expedite the contractor view process to make your job easier. And how does our organization approach things like signing an NDA or signing an MSA review, right? And if you don't know what those are, you know you can ask your legal team about them, and they'll talk you through them. Some of the calls that you should ask to shadow here. Contract negotiation call is going to be the biggest one, right? If there are legal Red Line discussions happening, you can talk through that a lot of times though legal notes will go back and forth in your CRM system, or they'll go back and forth in slack on your deal review deal rooms, if you have deal rooms in Slack. That's not something every org does, but a lot of orgs do. So yeah, these are not the only people that you need to meet with, but these are definitely some of the top folks you need to meet with. So now it's your turn for your assignment. Now that you have a high level understanding of these roles, I want you to set up one on ones with your partners for each of these roles. If you have an SE, an SDR, a CSM, a deal desk member, deal desk partner, a legal partner, set up one on ones with them. It doesn't have to be long, you know, 2030, minutes is fine. If you're at an early stage startup. You might not have all these roles. It might just be you doing all of these roles, but set up as many of these as you can when you meet with them, be polite. Introduce yourself, express your eagerness to learn from them. Make it clear that your goal is to make their jobs easier, not your job easier, right? You are trying to understand the best ways to work together to get their recommendations, and they will have some excellent recommendations for you. And a lot of times they're going to become your friends. You're going to work with these individuals on a lot of different deals. You're going to be talking to them about multiple accounts across your tenure at your organization. So make sure to really, really take notes and take an effort to act on what you've learned. Your study guide will walk you through all of this, and that is it for today's lesson on the daily quota. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time you.