David is the leading expert when it comes to sales compensation. His book - Compensating the Sales Force - talks about building out a sales team: how to build a sales team, compensate your sales team, decide between paying commissions vs. bonuses, and so much more. Aside from David’s book, Compensating the Sales Force, he is also the author of The Sales Growth Imperative, and he publishes the Sales Compensation Almanac annually. He is the Senior Vice President at the Alexander Group where he works on Sales Compensation.

In this episode we talk about the difference between Professional Sales ‘Producers’ and Sales Representatives, when to use stock options for sales compensation, why it’s important to adjust quotas on a regular basis, the cost of selling, and much more.

Show Notes
0:33 - Introduction to David and his book, Compensating the Sales Force

3:00 - What The Alexander Group does and how Sales Compensation fits into the broader spectrum

7:30 - The 3 Modes of Startups - Start Up, Ramp Up, Scale Up

11:00 - Sales Professional as Shakespearean Actor vs Playwright
12:20 - Market Makers - Part sales / part marketing. Situational Job b/t Founder Selling and Professional Scalable Sales Organization
15:00 - Two types of sellers :
1) Producer  - Real estate agents
2) Sales Representative - Buying Labor, Paying for Persuasion, Base + Commission; Quota-based.
20:30 - When to use stock options for sales comp, and why it shouldn’t be a significant amount of compensation
22:55 - The risks of the Producer Model

25:16 - Expiring vs Flat Guarantee
29:25 - Varied revenue types and sales models

33:30 - $100,000 and $160,000 are the standard pay levels for the tech market
34:23 - Why you need to adjust your quotas all the time
36:30 - Why you shouldn’t do a draw commission, no clawbacks
38:00 - Paying SDR-AE-CS
40:50 - The Cost of Selling & Persuasion Responsibilities
46:12 - Commit to the Money, and not the Mechanics

Resources:
www.alexandergroup.com
https://www.worldatwork.org/
https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/08/inside-boxs-updated-s-1/

Guest: Stacy McKenzie

Stacy McKenzie is the director of Lucid Studios--at Lucid they are developing the next level of camera technology to enable VR and AR content creation with real-time image processing. She is also the founder of Optical North, a San Francisco based video and film production team dedicated to bringing vision and creativity to every story.

Show Notes & Topics:

• Description of what Stacy does
• “Hour glass effect” model for scaling business and growth
• How startups should leverage video to market and sell to their target market
• The importance of building long-term relationships with clients
• Know your message
• Reasons to use video; e.g., appeal to mobile users, tutorials, company introductions
• Video is like a personal conversation, solves problems with first impressions
• Stats and sales benefits; e.g.,  email campaigns, Google stats, ROI
• Think “one on one” conversation with ideal customer
• Video based on vanity or branding strategy--what’s the goal of your video?
• Have a platform for sharing video
• Look smart as an authority in your market
• Video is the “hook”
• Tradeoff: low-end quality video vs. professional video
• Starter package for cadence of low-end and high-quality videos; e.g., elevator pitch, call to action, video blogs
• How to get seen in your target market
• Qualification questions for hiring video companies
• Find videos you like and refer to those when qualifying a company
• Document special events
• Communication is key between you and video company

Links & Resources:

Stacy McKenzie on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stacymckenzie/

Contact email: opticalnorth@gmail.com

Lucid Studios: http://getlucidcam.com/

Optical North Productions: http://www.opticalnorth.com/

Optical North videos: https://vimeo.com/user28608336

TedX Talk on Virtual Memory with Stacy McKenzie: https://vimeo.com/200733646

UN Women, inequality in the workplace: http://www.unwomen.org/en

He for She Campaign, Emma Watson: www.heforshe.org/en

Guest: Steven Benson, CEO of Badger

Badger’s tag line is “automating busy work for outside sales reps to save ten hours a week.” Badger is #1-selling sales app in the Apple App store. The app optimizes and plans sales routes. Prior to founding Badger, Steven was a sales manager for Google and IBM. He’s also a contributor to The Huffington Post, and has written over 180 LinkedIn posts on sales, company management, and running a startup.

Show Notes & Topics:

• An explanation of Badger and what their app does.
• Description of the Traveling Salesman Problem

• One of the most important hats that founders wear in business is sales.  
• Sales as a trade or craft
• Three basic tips for how a founder should think about outside sales, instead of solely relying on inside sales, including price and deal size thresholds

• Ways to create a valuable reason for someone to want to meet you

• Using referrals to gain meetings.
• Leveraging LinkedIn to prospect and set meetings.
• Tips on how to move deals forward faster
• Building and managing a multi-day meeting itinerary and using “anchor meetings”
• The purpose and outcomes of a face-to-face meetings vs. phone meetings

• The value of cold calling; where and when cold calling is most appropriate
• Other key questions for company founders to ask when building their sales process: What is your go-to market strategy?  Should you be making cold calls over the phone? Should you be selling with partners?  Should you be selling with an inside sales team? Should you be selling with an outside sales team?

• Treating sales as an experiment.
• Field sales is underutilized right now. If you’re not doing field sales at all, then you could be missing out a huge opportunity to generate some leads.

Links & Resources:

Steven Benson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenbenson/

Badger Maps - Route Planner for Sales: Mention The Startup Selling Podcast (http://salesqualia.com/the-sales-podcast/) and get two months free of Badger mapping for free at www.badgermapping.com!

Badger Maps on the Apple App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/badger-map/id789934914

The Traveling Salesman Problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem

Steve’s recent article on Huffington Post – 4 Valuable Leadership Lessons From My Google Days: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/4-valuable-leadership-lessons-from-my-google-days_us_59e5e6c0e4b08c75593ce659

Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, on Selling Fax Machines door-to-door: http://nymag.com/vindicated/2016/10/how-selling-fax-machines-helped-sara-blakely-invent-spanx.html

Sara Blakely on the James Altucher Show: https://jamesaltucher.com/2017/02/sara-blakely/

Episode 35: Scott Sambucci

Today’s featured guest is…. me! – Scott Sambucci – your podcast host and Sales Geek extraordinaire.  I’ve spent more than two decades building and selling technology products, leading three Silicon Valley startups each to their first millions in revenue.

Now with SalesQualia, I’m the Founder of SalesQualia where I work with enterprise/B2B startups on achieving scalable revenue growth. I’ve authored two books on Startup Selling, spoken at a TEDx and presented at The Lean Startup Conference (to name a few accolades I’m awfully proud of…)

Outside of work, I tackle crazy long endurance events, including three Ironman triathlons, marathon swims across The Catalina Channel, Uberman and most recently, the Tahoe 200 – a 200-mile foot race circumnavigating Lake Tahoe. Call or email anytime at scott@salesqualia.com or (415) 596-0804.

With SalesQualia, I help early stage B2B enterprise startups achieve scalable revenue growth.

• Find our website here: www.salesqualia.com
• Follow us on Facebook here where I host a weekly Facebook Live Sales Q&A: https://www.facebook.com/salesqualia
• Our clients span across several verticals and industries, including AI, FinTech, EdTech, RetailTech & HeathTech, to name a few including companies like Octane, Butter, Shift Messenger, Kanopi Studios, Better Manager & Data Dwell. Our clients include graduates of accelerator and incubator programs such as Y-Combinator, TINC and All-Turtles.

Show Notes & Topics:

• Why me this in this episode?
• What is the ONE sales activity in your company that matters most?
• I've worked with hundreds of startups either in a 1:1 relationship, and via live webinars workshops. And almost in every single case, as I'm first starting conversations with startup teams, I hear are things like, "Hey, I need to work on my pricing, and I need to work on my slide deck, and I need to work on my demo, I need to close more deals, I need to do a better job prospecting, I'm trying to figure out cold emailing."
• Obviously there's a lot of places in your sales process, but… The reason, that I'm asking the question I’m asking in this episode is that in every case with clients and workshop attendees, there is ONE specific sales activity that matters most.
• The problem is that most startup teams fail to 1) Recognize that ONE activity, and 2) Focus on that activity as a key driver to growth.
• In this episode, I’ll dive deep into three startups where I’ve worked as examples – Altos Research, Aplia and Blend – to illustrate this point.
• By recording this episode, my hope for you is that you can begin to identify the ONE sales activity that matters most for YOUR startup, so that you can achieve sales velocity and scalable revenue growth.

Links & Resources:

Love the podcast? Leave a review on iTunes right here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sales-podcast/id1044359904?mt=2

Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottsambucci

Request Your Sales Audit: www.salesqualia.com/salesaudit

Altos Research: www.altosresearch.com

Mike Simonson, Founder & CEO @ Altos Research: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonsen/

Aplia: www.aplia.com

Paul Romer: http://www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/paul-romer

Blend: www.blend.com

Guest: John Roberts, Successly

 About our guest…

 John Roberts founded Successly in 2016, a company dedicated to helping Customer Success teams make a big impact. John recently moved to Silicon Valley after a successful run guiding his previous startup – Buzz.Report – in North Carolina.

3 Key Takeaways:

1. Customer Success is a Business Model.
2. If you have to choose between Customer Success or Sales, choose Customer Success first.
3. Customer Success should be at the head of the table for every company.

 On moving from the Research Triangle (North Carolina) to Silicon Valley

• If you want to sell B2B software, there's no better place than San Francisco to be close to your customers, and being face-to-face with your customers is one of the most valuable parts to being here.
• We've seen other regions (Atlanta, Austin, Portland, Phoenix, Boulder, Denver, New York City) emerge, but the density of opportunity is not the same outside of Silicon Valley.
• You don’t have to have the whole team in San Francisco.

Customer Success: Definition & Importance

• Why every subscription company is only successful when you retain your customers because the real value is how long you can retain those customers.
• How can you make that customer successful in a way that creates value?
• Completing 290 Customer Success Interviews with VPs about customer success 

Customer Success & Its Role in the Sales Process

• What are the goals we're striving for over the next year with the product?
• Should Customer Success teams have veto power over new customer acquisition?
• Aligning top-line sales growth while avoiding churn and misaligned incentives?
• How can you make sure the customer success team is compensated Renewals?
• Casting in the sales process – Sales focuses on education and Customer Success focuses on implementation.
• Focusing on the “jobs to be done.”
• Customer Success is the crucible of all communication and activity.
• Why Customer success should be at the head of the table in product companies.
• Customer success as a business model.
• Customer success teams and capturing the voice of the customer. 

Organizational Design for Start-up CEOs

• The case for why Customer success should be the first team to build.

• Questions to ask: What’s the experience with the customer?  How can we watch the customer use the system or product?  How can we understand every aspect of the customer’s interaction with the product? 

Customer Success teams vs Product teams

• Customer success should focus on what the customers needs.
• The Product Team should focus on best feature to build in response to the customer success team’s list of problems. 

Hiring customer success teams when someone wants to be the sales or the product manager:

• Set expectations very clearly.
• All other departments relate to customer success.
• You’ll be seeing is more salespeople in the customer success role in the future. 

Links & Resources: 

John Roberts on LinkedIn

Adam O'Donnell, John’s cofounder @ Successly, on LinkedIn

 Website: www.Successly.io

Check out Successly Live video-cast/podcast: Interviews with CS Executives and leaders from companies like MixPanel, Coursera, Splunk & HelloSign

The Podcast Version on iTunes & SoundCloud:

• https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/successly-live/id1224654077
• https://soundcloud.com/successlylive/tracks

Marylou Tyler is the author of Predictable Revenue and Predictable Prospecting. She has worked with a number of few co-authors and produced a book that will certainly help any startup company out there. Being one of the best sales enablement strategist, she is an expert when it comes to maximizing your resources and is always willing to share her knowledge to everyone who needs help.

This podcast focuses both on the incredible things that a startup business owner can do to improve sales and the common mistakes everyone should avoid. The following are some of the topics tackled by Scott and Marylou:

• Internalizing Your Competitive Position
• Six-Factor SWOT Analysis
• Developing an Ideal Account Profile
• Compel with ContentTM
• McKinsey’s MECE model
• How you can send your emails wisely, and so many more

Podcast Notes:

05:10 – The three sections of Predictable Prospecting: Target, Engage, Optimize

05:42 – Internalizing Your Competitive Position 

07:25 – Six-Factor SWOT Analysis

14:00 – Importance of taking a break

15: 33 – Developing an Ideal Account Profile

20:16 – McKinsey’s MECE model and Issue Tree 

23:33 – Compel with ContentTM

25:07 – Common mistakes start-up businesses make in the selling process

27:42 – Emails and when to use each type

31:38 - Mass personalized versus Hyper personalized emails

37:47 – Eight-Touch, 13-Business Day Email

39:01 – Customer Referral Program

48:12 – Campaign Formula, Appointment-setting and sales funnels

53:26 – Neil Rackham, “The Professor of Professional Selling”

Quick links:

• “Predictable Prospecting: How to Radically Increase Your B2B Sales Pipeline” (Amazon) by Marylou Tyler and Jeremey Donovan
• Marylou’s website & book-related resources
• Marylou Tyler on LinkedIn
• Jeremey Donovan on LinkedIn
• “SPIN Selling” by Neil Rackham (Amazon)
• “Major Account Sales Strategy” by Neil Rackham (Amazon) 

Dionne Mischler is a sales expert. She is the CEO and Founder of Inside Sales by Design, which helps companies to be “deliberate, intentional, and successful”. Aside from that, she is also the Founder of Sales Enablement Society.

In this podcast episode, the main focus is on how you can hire the best people for your sales team and when you should scale it up as a startup selling company. Scott and Dionne tackled a wide range of topics:

• How to hire and when to hire;
• How and when to scale up your sales team;
• All kinds of really specific practical tips and frameworks that you can use;
• Understanding and being clear about your view of time versus your customer’s view of time;
• How to map out a customer’s organization;
• The signals you can use to identify when you should be ramping up your sales team; and so many more

Podcast Notes:

5:37 – Why Dionne chose the appendage “…by Design”, why “Inside Sales by Design”

9:00 – Scalability of Inside Sales by Design

12:00 – The importance, process, and options in conducting market validation

18:45 – Why I do what I do at SalesQualia

20:53 – Dionne’s presentation “Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan”; Different views of and approaches to time

31:05 – Sales process; the importance of good customer experience; how we can keep our current customers

35:17 – How we can influence people’s perspective on time; our ideal customer

41:57 – Account-based Sales Development; what you should do in using the account-based approach; who’s who in the zoo

53:54 – Mistakes people commit in hiring more people for their sales team; Realistic revenue expectations, underestimating how hard it is to find good talent

58:50 – Signals that tell whether or not you are ready to ramp on your sales team

Websites mentioned:

Dionne Mischler’s LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/dionnemischler

Inside Sales by Design: http://www.insidesalesbydesign.com/

Sales Enablement Society on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/15155218