Reading Time: 6 minutes
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Deepak Shukla’s Notes On Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross, Marylou Tyler
Hey guys,
I finished reading this book on the 10th of January 2021.
Here’s a synopsis of the book I grabbed from Amazon:
“Discover the outbound sales process that, in just a few years, helped add $100 million in recurring revenue to Salesforce.com, almost doubling their enterprise growth… with zero cold calls.”
And here are my actual notes I took whilst I was listening to this on Audible:
- Commit to making team self-managing
- If the report doesn’t help you prioritize decisions or take actions something is wrong with it
- Reporting – what is must have Vs luxury to have
- Goal setting lead – someone to monitor leads
- Part of veteran sales commission based upon newbies ability to bring leads / close deals – ie group compensation
- Outgoing lead always train incoming lead
- Team leads in these sub-teams (rotate this person every 3 months)
- Once have more than 5 people in a team create sub-teams of 5 People to keep a small team feel
- What can be eliminated, what can be automated, what can be outsourced
- Remember you work for your people they don’t work for you
- Grow your people
- Choose people based on fast learning and hungry hires. Passion over experience
- Leaders should be inspiring where possible – will get more from their people
- Identify leaders in the company and give them leadership and general training
- The best Development for the team is regular training (do it weekly)
- Each team can develop a team behind them
- Help your team enjoy their work – they will then produce great work
- If you want 1 year of prosperity to grow grain, if you want 10 years of prosperity to grow trees, if you want 100 years of prosperity – grow people
- Need a customer happiness officer specifically
- Take baby steps – change takes longer than you think
- Be patient with building a sales process
- Need to measure sales and marketing activities daily
- Need two sales reps in any organisation
- CEOs make these common mistakes
- Eg when a lead visits a site X amount of times automatic notification for a sales rep to follow up
- Build a lead scoring system based upon actions users take on the site
- If truly is bad time they will tell you OR say ‘I’ve got a minute what’s up’
- The best opener is “Did I catch you at a bad time?” – putting them at ease and making them less defensive
- If they ask for a proposal ask to setup scoping call to determine exact wants and needs and then can send a proposal
- Proposals should be earned not given freely
- Prospects often don’t know what their true problems are – when complaining just uncover the root issue
- Map out the sales process
- Dragging your feet and not disqualifying
- Telling instead of showing – show!
- Focusing on their success and not rushing the sale leads to more trust
- Do you have insights into how you can help their business in general? – show them you care?
- “How can we get this done?”
- When asking bold questions – it’s about how you ask – with confidence and enthusiasm
- What will it take to close in 30/60/90 days?
- What’s your usual buying process for a product like this?
- When doing outbound have prospecting happen at 1/2 levels higher than a target to get referred down
- Ask reps for pipeline reviews
- Selling too low
- Selling selfishly rather than solving
- The fantastic but unused sales process
- No sales process
- Pick a niche to get rich
- Wrong prospect/ poor messaging
- Be a non-threatening researcher, not pushy salesperson
- Call above target level then get referred down
- Do you have a calendar handy?
- After you talk with someone whose helpful but not the right person – “I’m doing some research to determine if we’re a good fit – what would you do if you were me?’
- “May I ask you how your X is structured?”
- “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
- Measure results that are proven to lead to revenue, not just activity alone
- Track call conversations per day not dials per day
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- Be persistent until you get a no
- The plan calls into fortune 1000 divisions and maps out calls into 3-5 different departments
- Roleplays and Calls for the teammate
- Call Executive Assistant to the President and ask for a referral to the right contact
- Listen to a sales call. Listen to prospecting call
- Send a mass email – meet with a mentor – meet with another team
- Best sales guys should focus on only 5 key accounts and channel or referral partners
- Proposals should be earned not given freely
- Prospects often don’t know what their true problems are – when complaining just uncover root issue
- Map out sales process
- Dragging your feet and not disqualifying
- Telling instead of showing – show!
- Focusing on their success and not rushing the sale leads to more trust
- Do you have insights into how you can help their business in general? – show them you care?
- “How can we get this done?”
- When asking bold questions – it’s about how you ask – with confidence and enthusiasm
- Call 5 old not cold leads to practice discussing their business needs in a conversation
- Sample intermediate daily goals
- What will it take to close in 30/60/90 days?
- What’s your usual buying process for a product like this?
- When doing outbound have prospecting happen at 1/2 levels higher than the target to get referred down
- Ask reps for pipeline reviews
- Selling too low
- Selling selfishly rather than solving
- Fantastic but unused sales process
- No sales process
- Pick a niche to get rich
- Wrong prospect/ poor messaging
- 9 ways you lengthen your sales cycles (ie slow the sale down)
- Current months activity/current month deals/long term results year to date
- 3-5 goals for the day
- Always have a next step
- Only ever ask one question per email
- Bite-sized emails – make it a blackberry email
- Would it be a waste of time to discuss ‘X’, to see if we could help?
- Call above target level then get referred down
- Do you have a calendar handy
- After you talk with someone whose helpful but not the right person – “I’m doing some research to determine if we’re a good fit – what would you do if you were me?’
- Draft your day in the life
- 3-5 goals for the day
- Sample beginning daily goals
- Weeks 4-5 – every day 3 goals
- Send 100 outbound emails before Friday
- Practice logging and responding to emails correctly
- Work up to 5 call conversations every day before the end of the week
- Have a veteran SDR sit with you everyday
- Draft a personal dashboard
- Discuss a new section of the training materials with the team
- Week 3 – every day 3 goals
- First 2-4 weeks on general company, service and product training
- Simplified training for an SDR
- SDRs are your customers – they shout from the rooftops about who you are
- Commission paid 50% upon deals closed / 50% on new opportunities this month
- Salary = is X plus commission is 1/3rd to 1/2 of total
- Money structure for sales people – base salary + commission
- Bins/Account statuses
- Hi, Richard, this is Deepak Shukla from Pearl Lemon on 07877994351 and I’m calling to see if….once again my number is….
- Speak slowly and clearly
- Leave phone number at start and finish of voice mail
- When leaving voicemail – leave it like you would for a friend – consider the tone
- Goal one is to identify the right person and get an internal referral
- Learn to love out of office replies – their job is to route you to the right person in the company
- Avoid Monday and Friday for email sends
- Send emails before 9 or after 6 not before
- Try angel/job funnel with CEO of same company
- Send 50 emails a day
- Have dedicated outbound prospector or SDR
- Low volume but ultra-high quality for quota carrying sales rep
- Best sales guys should focus on only 5 key accounts and channel or referral partners
- Use cold email to CEO asking for internal referrals
- Outbound prospecting
- Predictable lead generation needed
- Above all – jealousy guard your enjoyment
