Enterprise Sales

Many ambitious sales reps have a career goal of one day moving into a top leadership role – what does it take to get there?For many software sales professionals, achieving the coveted title of VP of Sales marks the pinnacle of career development.Arriving as VP means reaching the top of the ladder - no longer a mere member of the sales team but positioned firmly in the driving seat, taking make-or-break decisions and helming the entire organization’s top-line fortunes. Adaptive Tech’s global team has recruited VP roles with startups, scale-ups and established software vendors across a range of SaaS market sectors.Through conversations with CEOs, first-time sales managers and career sales leaders, our recruiters have a privileged angle from which to observe how successful VPs developed the right mix of abilities and experience to move into top-tier roles.For all aspiring future sales leaders - how do you build the skill set needed to land, retain and excel in the role of VP of Sales? It’s not about being number oneOne of the most surprising things for up-and-coming reps to process is that the path to one day becoming a VP doesn’t necessarily involve being a superstar individual producer.Of course, you need credibility.A respectable track record of making and exceeding quota is a key requirement, but focusing on personal production at the expense of developing other important skills can hold back your rise through the ranks.Just as the fastest or strongest girl or guy doesn’t always captain a sports team, solo performance isn’t enough to build a sales leadership career on.  A rockstar account executive who can’t teach, can’t analyze their own performance and hasn’t built rapport with the rest of the team isn’t an attractive prospect for senior management looking to appoint a leader.Your current manager can teach you more than you thinkOne of the simplest ways to start building a feel for sales leadership and the skills required is to actively observe your current manager’s goals and struggles.While it’s natural to think of a sales manager’s only real concern as hitting their revenue number, detailed assessment will show a more complex picture.See what else your manager is grappling with – maybe it’s raising team morale, integrating new hires into the group, re-engineering reporting structures or getting the best out of technology…Once you understand how your manager works, you can actively start to support them in their role. This places you naturally as a leader within your team - someone in tune with the key issues and aligned with leadership goals.A natural player-coach role can often evolve from this, leaving you well positioned for promotion opportunities as a key team member who understands the nuances beyond revenue production.Learn the leversWhile mid-tier sales managers may be able to run short-term sales promotions or experiment with new meeting structures, VPs have the full range of switches and levers at their disposal to drive activity and behaviors within the organization.To excel in the role, VPs need to:Know what their options areCommissions structures, bonuses, SPIFFs, contests, sales enablement resources, recruitment, training and onboarding, CRMs, territory divisions, team structures and hierarchies… VPs have the ability to adjust and configure multiple aspects of the sales organization and processes to increase results. Learning the full breadth of possibilities is key to the development of future sales leaders.Understand how they workIt’s not enough to know what can be tweaked, it’s crucial to have fully appreciate the possible consequences of each change. Sales organizations are delicate things, made up of a complex blend of people, emotions, ambition, technology and processes.Promoting team members may cause satisfaction for some, but resentment for others. Weighting incentive towards new account acquisition could leave renewals and upsells lagging. Lower quotas may make OTEs more attainable, but limit ambition…VPs need to be prudent strategists, aware of the impact any decisions may have both positively and negatively on their teams.Know when to use themTo run a sales organization effectively, VPs also need great awareness of how long each lever takes to ‘pull’, and how long it takes to impact.Faced with a looming quarter-end deadline, for instance, there’s little sense in cranking up outbound call KPIs which won’t be able to affect the short-term need. The goal is to focus on closing pipeline and bringing viable deals over the line – levers need to be pulled which switch focus to the right activity at the right time.Similarly, better content might be a vital solution to converting prospects, but it takes time to develop.Reps and mid-level managers with an eye on one day rising to VP should analyze their own environment on an ongoing basis – study the ‘levers’ being pulled, and watch what the consequences are.It’s surprising how much you can pick up even if you’re a few hierarchy rungs removed from your current sales leadership – the changes and impacts are there for anyone who’s paying attention to observe and learn from. Embrace the importance of dataWhile early sales management roles are often all about coaching a team to success, when it comes to moving the needle for an entire organization, data is the key.Mentoring, directing. training and incentivizing are the ways a VP will seek to drive behavior in a certain direction, but it all starts with understanding the stories in the data - this means how a sales group is currently operating, where the issues are and what types of activities need to be increased or reduced in order to raise the volume and conversion rates of prospects through the sales funnel.Even with powerful analytics tools, data isn’t always a neat picture or even drawn from the same source, so VPs need to build their own visualizations by understanding what they need to know, not just poring over out-of-the-box reports and hoping a solution will appear in front of their eyes.Reps without much exposure to working with data can pro-actively ask to get more of an understanding from their managers, and start to build an awareness of the key data points, ratios and relationships that allow for big-picture thinking and strategic decision-making.Take one step at a timeA true VP role is a unique position involving a wealth of decisions and responsibilities at a strategic level which are seldom within the purview of mid-tier sales managers.Although it’s important to develop an understanding of the challenges ahead, it takes time to build the bank of experience necessary to step up and lead the organization – so don’t worry about reading up on complex incentive structures of the theories of territory management if you haven’t got a solid track record of helping junior colleagues close deals or build pipelines.Those who rise quickly to VP focus on shining at every phase of their sales career, but play the game with their heads up - aware of what their managers and corporate leadership are doing, observing the impacts, and readying their skills for their next step forwards.***Looking for your next SaaS sales opportunity? Check out Adaptive Tech's full list of sales jobs across the US and Europe here.We recruit for AEs, CSMs, SDRs, VPs and Sales Engineers across fast-growing and established SaaS vendors at all levels.

Strong sales enablement resources can close the gap between potential and closed deals. How does your support measure up?Think about the last sales job you interviewed for – what kinds of questions did you ask?You probably asked about salary. Almost definitely asked about commission. Maybe requested some data or insight around product traction, or asked to learn more about close market competitors.Sales enablement?Probably not.It’s not top of many people’s lists when vetting a new opportunity to ask for details on a company’s sales enablement processes and resources - but the support you’ll receive in articulating the value proposition of a product to prospective customers can have a major impact on your ability to turn interest into revenue.In a career built around incentive compensation and ability to convert prospects to paying customers, sales enablement has a key role to play in equipping reps to be successful and meet (or beat) their numbers. A world-class sales enablement program works to continually optimize the processes, content and resources available to sales employees at all phases of the customer buying journey, ensuring that raw product functionality or salesmanship aren’t the only components driving the sale. This can give reps a critical advantage in the market, while under-equipped or poorly-structured enablement processes leave sales teams fighting with one hand tied behind their backs.So what does ‘good’ look like in sales enablement, and how does your current environment compare?Here’s how to spot the foundational pillars of an elite sales enablement program. - It’s comprehensiveA key function of sales enablement is to create content which educates, guides, inspires or reassures customers throughout their purchase journey. Anything from traditional product overviews, white papers, video tutorials or customer testimonials can fall under this heading.But effective enablement goes far beyond these marketing basics, and looks at the entire sales cycle from multiple angles for both new and existing customers.This means everything from optimizing CRM configuration and prospect data to ensuring sales reps are trained and informed on the resources available to them, and how and when they should be deployed. Leading sales enablement experts obsess over aligning an organization’s sales processes and tools to align perfectly with the journeys of both prospects and repeat clients.- It’s data-drivenThe key to building sales processes which deliver scalable and repeatable results is letting data do the talking.Sales enablement programs which fail to gather, analyze and learn from the data generated throughout the sales cycle miss invaluable information which should be used to shape the development of future resources and workflows in an ongoing feedback loop.In the fast-paced environment of many high-growth SaaS companies, it takes a cool head from leadership to override emotion and gut instinct and find the story contained within the data – but tracking and learning from this provides vital clues as to where and why prospects are failing to convert, and monitoring how effectively new resources resolve those issues.- It’s high-priorityHow high the sales enablement function ranks within organizational hierarchy gives some insight into how its importance is seen by executive leadership. In some companies ‘sales enablement’ is bundled in with corporate marketing (if it even has a name).In others, sales enablement leaders are key members of senior teams, highly-paid experts with substantial budgets and a high-pressure mandate to deliver tangible improvements to a company’s top line and per-rep revenue production.- It adapts quicklyGreat sales enablement needs to move fast.If a sales team detects a gap or obstacle in their workflow, a swift response to offer a solution can mean the difference between righting the ship or missed quotas all round.For most SaaS companies, prospecting is a high-volume activity engaging thousands of customer contacts per week, and an enablement team that takes eons to produce much-needed resources allows painful missed revenue opportunity to slip by unconverted while they deliver.- It’s innovativeThe sales support industry is a vast universe of technology and service-based solutions designed to help sales teams and individuals perform better.Top enablement teams are continually scouring this universe in search of tools and resources that will give their reps a leading edge.Whether it’s collaboration platforms, lead generation tools, prospect data sources, training, marketing or other areas, the sales enablement function should be under continual review and evaluation to see how it might be improved.This doesn’t mean frequent and wholesale change – most sales processes are finely balanced and don’t react well to constant tinkering.What it does mean is a high level of curiosity around exploring and evaluating new opportunities to give reps an advantage or better meet prospect and customer needs.How does your sales enablement environment stack up – world class, or bare-bones basic?Looking for your next SaaS sales opportunity? Check out Adaptive Tech's full list of sales jobs across the US and Europe here.We recruit for AEs, CSMs, SDRs, VPs and Sales Engineers across fast-growing and established SaaS vendors at all levels.

Actionable steps to improve quarter-on-quarter sales bookings...1. Make smarter use of contentWhether in the form of blog articles, videos, news & PR, case studies or customer testimonials, good content helps you to sell your product by articulating and showcasing its benefits.Reviewing your content use can be a great way to make a quick and easy impact on sales performance. Take stock of the resources available to you – what materials does your website include, what are the latest entries in your news and blog section, does your company have a YouTube channel, or has your marketing or sales enablement team created any new support materials?Once you’ve laid out your content tools, it’s time to make them work harder for you. Simple tweaks like adding a link in your auto-signature to your company’s latest piece of content can generate hundreds of additional high-quality brand engagements for the many prospects you correspond with each day. Adding testimonial links to your LinkedIn profile can have similar results, pushing curious potential customers straight to heartfelt product endorsements by key clients.Look for other areas of your sales process where including quality content could help shorten your discussion or consolidate your pitch and enhance your credibility.2. Embrace incremental improvementMany salespeople are so caught up in the ever-spinning carousel of prospecting, pitching and closing that they’re forever waiting for a chance to step back and make some wholesale changes to their sales process.In reality, that opportunity may never come, and you might not need it. Instead of waiting for an illusory ‘break’ on the horizon where you can overhaul your sales approach, try focusing on small daily or weekly changes you can make which will have a cumulative effect across the quarter.Just five more prospecting InMails or connections per day while you finish your morning coffee adds up to twenty-five new potential conversations in a week. That’s a hundred each month, and four hundred across the quarter.You might choose to spend a few extra minutes preparing for prospect calls, add a new layer of detail or personalization to follow-up notes, or send a higher-value ‘check in’ email to prospects who are between phases of the sales process.Whatever you decide, concentrating on simple bite-size improvements can keep you moving forwards and increasing your performance without suspending any improvement until you take time out for a major review.3. Switch it upWe’re all familiar with the much-used quote (usually attributed to Einstein) that the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”While sticking to an established sales pattern doesn’t qualify as insanity (especially if it’s working), the old adage holds true with regard for the need to change something in a process in order to produce a different outcome.Consistency is good, and it’s a dangerous move to interfere with a workflow that’s producing steady results, but it’s always important to leave some room for experimentation in sales and to keep trying new things out.Whether it’s the way you deliver your pitch, the questions you ask in discovery calls, the length or tone of email you send, the case studies you reference or the way you conduct your prospect research, there are hundreds of points along the buying journey where you can adjust your interaction to impact the course of events.Don’t fix what isn’t broken, but equally don’t expect next quarter to crush this one if you do the exact same thing.4. Put yourself out thereWhat about creating some content of your own? It’s not only marketing who can talk expertly about your product, market or the challenges you help your customers overcome.LinkedIn articles (such as this one right here) are a great way to get in front of prospects by talking about what matters most to them. You might also consider a short video pitch, a guest blog entry or an article on Medium.If content production’s not your thing, you can make an effort to be more active on social media channels with likes, shares and comments, or get involved in relevant LinkedIn group discussions. The more visible you are (in the right places for the right reasons), the more you do to boost your pipeline.5. Review your network for leadsSocial and business networks grow at a rate of knots, and over the course of last quarter it’s likely that you made many new connections as well as accepting outreach from other professionals. To prep for the quarter ahead, review who’s new in your network (friends, colleagues and wider business associates) and score each one for lead potential. If they themselves don’t represent an opportunity, can they link you to someone that does? Have a look through their connections, check out their employers… It’s always surprising to find just how much potential is a few degrees of separation away.6. Attack a weaknessIf you’re serious about next quarter eclipsing the previous one, it’s not enough just to do a few things better - you need to get better too.We’re always keen to work on what we’re good at, but the easiest place to start to see quick improvement in your performance is pro-actively working to minimize weak areas of your sales process and skill set.Whether it’s establishing early rapport with prospects, asking effective qualifying questions, up-selling, cross-selling or closing, invest some time addressing aspects of your game where you know you’re not yet firing on all cylinders.Ask your employer what resources the company has for internal or external training, and supplement any support they offer with your own research. On top of the countless sales books on offer, resources like Quora can be a great place to pick up insight from industry peers, as well as leading sales blogs like HubSpot or Salesforce.7. Gather internal feedbackLast but not least, don’t forget to learn from those who know you best – your own team. If you’re lucky enough to have a hands-on VP who invests time in coaching his or her team, you may be getting some good input from your direct manager already.What’s less common is for sales reps to go their own team members to seek our constructive criticism. Your peers are the ones who’ve probably heard you make the most calls, who know your routine best and who are most clued-in about the ins and outs of each promising deal in your pipeline.While they may not offer it up uninvited, your colleagues can often provide some useful objective advice that helps you fix things you’re not seeing.***Looking for your next SaaS sales opportunity? Adaptive Tech has sales vacancies at levels across the US and Europe: LDR, SDR, Account Executive, Customer Success, Regional Director and VP+.We recruit for established industry leaders and red hot start-ups – explore our full list of job postings here.