Selling the Cloud – Détails, épisodes et analyse

As we revisit this episode, Doug Landis' insights on storytelling in B2B sales are more important than ever. Learn how compelling stories can help differentiate and elevate your message in a crowded market.

Doug Landis, Growth Partner at Emergence Capital was formerly the Chief Storyteller at Box. Before being the Chief Storyteller at Box, Doug was an executive in the Sales Productivity group at Salesforce.

In this episode of Selling the Cloud, we dive deep into how storytelling has become a critical skill for enterprise-class, B2B sales professionals.

One of Doug's early learnings came directly from paying his dues initially as a quota-carrying sales professional at Oracle. Over those early years, Doug discovered his passion for helping others and sharing the secrets that made him successful as an individual sales contributor with his colleagues, thus the move to sales enablement/productivity at Salesforce.

The journey to becoming the "Chief Storyteller" at Box started with the hiring of a new SVP Sales. As the new executive interviewed sales reps across the company, he quickly identified that Box did not have one common message that they were communicating to the market. 

This inconsistently led to the new SVP Sales challenging Doug with the task to replicate and scale his ability to communicate consistently through storytelling to the entire sales organization. One of the key areas Doug first identified was that most customer stories were very "rote", and needed to become more interesting to the target buyer(s).

First, Doug engaged Customer Success to capture the Voice of the Customer, and start the journey to train the sales force how to storytelling by focusing on the customer and their experiences and stories. Secondly, the story could not be the same story that the founder and CEO of Box told, because that was his own story and did not easily translate to being told by Account Executives. 

Storytelling is not just for natural storytellers, it can be learned by listening to your environment. But it does take thoughtful practice and needs to be tailored to a relevant story, that resonates with the individual buyer(s) needs.

Improv was highlighted as an interesting format to learn how to put yourself in the persona of the person you are speaking with and make your storytelling more impactful. 

Storytelling helps one to learn how to transition from one part of the story to the next. This skill is highly relevant to how a B2B Sales professional can learn to enhance the transition from one slide to the next in their sales presentation or demo.

The discussion evolved into "Getting to WOW" and why storytelling is so relevant to founders and CEOs pitching to investors. A common theme for B2B Sales professionals and founders pitching to investors is about getting to the "why" you or your company are uniquely positioned to help the recipient of the story.

Finally, we discussed the benefit of establishing a "Story Library" by stage, by buyer persona, and even the creation of a "storytelling" coach role in the sales enablement function. 

Stories should focus on telling stories that relate to individuals by telling the story about how your solution impacted people (buyer personas) not companies.

In today's extremely noisy and saturated B2B SaaS and Cloud market, making your solution and value stand above all others is critical. Storytelling may just be the best way to differentiate yourself and your solution. 

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We are excited to revisit this episode of Selling the Cloud. featuring Paul Melchiorre, a legendary Silicon Valley Chief Revenue Officer at leading Saas companies like Ariba and AnaPlan. Paul's unique perspectives on scaling high-growth companies, the role of a CRO, and the impact ofProduct Led Growth remains just as relevant today.

Over thirty years, Paul has had the change to be a part of industry leading, high growth companies beginning with SAP where Paul was an early executive for their entry into the North American market.

Paul then in 1998 joined Ariba, an early market entrant and ultimately the acknowledged leader in indirect procurement automation. Paul experienced a unique journey in early stage, venture backed companies by staying at Ariba for over 15 years, including being the Global Sales, Services and Partner top executive for the majority of that time.

Paul shared why, in the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) role that being responsible for marketing, sales and customer success is a critical element for success. Several reasons that this is so important is that the customer lifecycle has been changed by the SaaS industry, including the growing importance of existing customer expansion revenue in the evolving "Land and Expand" customer acquisition model.

The growing trend of Product Led Growth (PLG) as a customer acquisition motion will continue to increase the importance of an integrated approach to customer acquisition, retention and expansion. This need for an integrated approach to the customer lifecycle is further highlighted when up to 50% of revenue growth is generated by existing customers.

Paul also shares how investing in himself, including earning his MBA in Finance in the middle of his career journey was critical to being a well rounded, CRO that could build credibility with the CFO.

Paul further explored how PLG also impacts the need for product management to become a more integrated part of the revenue generation team. 

Another variable discussed is how the stage of the company impacts both the CRO role and the profile of the CRO. Being able to identify CRO's that have hands-on experience in both early stage, Product Market Fit (PMF) to Minimum Viable Repeatability (MVR) and then from MVR to Minimum Viable Traction (MVT) to true scale is a hard find, but more CRO's like that exist in 2021 than every before.

If you have just become a Chief Revenue Officer or have the aspiration to become a CRO in a SaaS or Cloud company, this is a great listen.

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In this episode of Selling the Cloud, co-hosts Mark and Cathy sit down with Rob Schilling, SVP ERP Cloud at Oracle, to delve into the pivotal moments that have shaped his career in enterprise sales. Rob shares insights into the fundamentals of sales, emphasizing the importance of being the "CEO of your own territory," focusing on the customer, and selling business value. Additionally, Rob explores today's access to data and metrics and the balance between a customer-centric buyer's perspective and data-driven sales strategies, offering practical advice on encouraging teams to adopt this two-sided approach.

Co-Hosts: Mark Petruzzi and Cathy Minter

Guest: Rob Schilling, SVP, ERP Sales NA, Services Industries at Oracle

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In this episode of Selling the Cloud, we sit down with Steve Richards from Mediafly to discuss the future state of sales enablement. We explore the balance between leveraging data and maintaining the human element in sales, strategies to alleviate friction points in the sales funnel, and the critical role of cross-functional collaboration among high-performing leaders and companies.

Guest: Steve Richards, SVP Revenue Enablement at: Mediafly

Co Hosts: Mark Petruzzi and Paul Melchiorre

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Show mentions:

Gold Rush, with Tony Beets

Doug May

The book: The Family Board Meeting

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In Part 2 of our conversation with Toni Hohlbein, we delve into how macro trends in the markets are forcing changes in the way we operate SaaS companies, with a focus on doubling down on efficiency and prioritizing effective channels. We discuss how incremental improvements in the funnel compound over time and can significantly impact revenue growth. Toni also highlights geographic differences in maturity between US and EMEA companies, discusses which C-suite persona feels these pains the most, and where RevOps should sit in the organization to have the most impact. 

Co-hosts: Mark Petruzzi and Katerina Ostrovsky

Guest: Toni Hohlbein, Growblocks

------- Mentions:

Clay, data enrichment platform

Mark Roberge, The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million

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In Part 1 of this episode of "Selling the Cloud," we sit down with Toni Hohlbein, CEO and co-founder of Growblocks, to explore the transformative power of full-funnel visibility in revenue operations.

Toni shares insights on the evolving role of RevOps, leveraging factory-like efficiency in B2B SaaS, the impact of digital twins on business planning, and navigating the current SaaS recession. We discuss the importance of precise metric tracking, the pitfalls of indiscriminate cost-cutting, and how Growblocks helps companies optimize their go-to-market strategies.

Guest: Toni Hohlbein, CEO of Growblocks

Co Hosts of Selling the Cloud: Katerina Ostrovsky and Mark Petruzzi.

Tony mentions CaC Payback quite a bit so let's define:

Customer Acquisition Cost Payback period is: How many months it takes to recoup the cost of acquiring a customer.

CAC Payback Period is calculated as: 

Fully Loaded Sales and Marketing Expenses to Acquire New Customers

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - x 12

(CARR¹ from New Customers * Subscription Gross Margin Percentage)

¹CARR is Contracted Annual Recurring Revenue 

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And for those of you wondering, yes, my cat likes to make an appearance in these podcasts. And yes, he is not starving; he is well-fed despite his complaints.

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Welcome to today's episode of the 'Selling the Cloud' Podcast! We are thrilled to have Frank Cespedes as our guest. Frank is a Senior Lecturer of Business Administration in the Entrepreneurial Unit at Harvard Business School. With a wealth of experience in running businesses, serving on boards for start-ups and corporations, and consulting globally, Frank brings a unique perspective to our discussion. He is the author of six books, including our topic for today, Aligning Strategy and Sales.

In this episode, we dive into these key areas:

• The importance of clear communication of strategic choices to sales teams.
• Common challenges in aligning sales with strategic objectives and ways to overcome them.
• Integrating internal performance management factors with external market characteristics.
• Strategies for recruiting and developing salespeople who can execute the strategy effectively.
• Key considerations for developing metrics that evaluate and reward performance in line with strategic goals.

Frank Cespedes, Author "Sales Management that Works"

Co Hosts Mark Petruzzi and Cathy Minter

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Welcome to part two of the RevOps edition of "Selling the Cloud," featuring Lindsey Meyl, CEO of RevAmp. In this episode we explore how companies can leverage their data for a competitive advantage, manage business strategy around a shared set of metrics and an ICP, and execute on recommended growth levers based on data signals in a scalable manner. Lindsey also discusses overcoming obstacles in data integration, the critical role of RevOps in handling priorities, and the shift towards viewing revenue as a science. Tune in for actionable insights on optimizing your RevOps strategy and driving business growth.

Books mentioned on the show:

Data & Diagnosis Driven Selling, by Mark Petruzzi, Robert Scarperi, Ray Rike, and Paul Melchiorre

The Sales Acceleration Formula by Mark Roberge

Ecosystem Led Growth, by Bob Moore

Revenue Architecture, by Jacco van der Kooij

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Tom Chavez, CEO of superset

Lindsey Meyl, Co-Founder RevAmp

Accelerant Growth Solutions

Co-host: Katerina Ostrovsky

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In this episode of the "Selling the Cloud - RevOps Edition" podcast, Lindsey Meyl, co-founder of RevAmp, discusses optimizing go-to-market strategies through comprehensive data insights. Key topics include the importance of a dynamic data strategy, the transformative role of observability in RevOps, and leveraging AI for competitive advantage.

1. Lindsey explains how many GTM leaders struggle with data confidence, comparing traditional CRM data processes to agile software development, and highlighting the need for a more dynamic approach to data collection and analysis.
2. We delve into how observability can transform revenue operations by integrating various data signals, such as website activity and email interactions, to provide deeper insights and actionable recommendations.
3. Lindsey discusses the difference between AI that enhances productivity and AI that drives a competitive edge, emphasizing the importance of organizing and utilizing unique data assets.

As mentioned in the show: to build GTM infrastructure supporting data-driven decisions, you need to understand what data you have. Greg Meyer recently published a great maturity framework on LinkedIn, found HERE.

Lindsey Meyl

RevAmp

Co-Hosts: Mark Petruzzi and Katerina Ostrovsky

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This is Part 2 of Data Driven and Metric Based Selling in B2B, Kevin shares insights from his career journey, highlighting pivotal moments where AI and data-driven strategies made a significant impact.

And we continue to cover these topics:

1. Data-Driven Companies: We delved into what it takes for companies to become truly data-driven in today's landscape.
2. AI and B2B Sales: Exploring the evolving role of AI and machine learning in shaping the future of B2B sales.
3. Metric-Based Sales Culture: We discussed how revenue leaders can seamlessly blend metric-based business approaches with people-driven sales cultures.

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