7 Salesforce Data Enrichment Tools for 2025 RevOps 10 min What is Data Enrichment? Introduction Your ideal customer is not just a name or address. It is a full-fledged human with certain buying habits, persona and social media footprint that screams of “perfect- fit”. Your salesforce data might only present a distorted or very limited picture of your buying committee. It can act like a dusty attic with crammed boxes full of half- remembered details. Your CRM is the backbone of your business decisions and you can’t rely on skewed numbers. You would want to make it as much valuable as possible to base your future plan on a solid strategy. This is exactly where data enrichment can help you. What is Data Enrichment? Data enrichment helps to fill out complete information about your leads like contact number, address, company and even company related details like size, industry, location etc. Imagine you get a lead of someone names Adam Doe, from Acme Ltd. It might sound promising but what is Acme all about? Who is this guy Adam beyond his email address and phone number? Data enrichment snoops in and pulls out information from social media activity, business directories and even internal purchase history to prepare a 3D persona. Now, Adam Doe is a tech enthusiast with a knack for technology updates and purchase history of high end gadgets. There you go! It’s time to tailor your pitch and win Adam over. Your lead has become a real person with real interest who can be engaged with at a personal level. Data enrichment precisely adds valuable information into your existing customer data on Salesforce. This additional intel can give you a holistic picture of your target audience and prospects. It can be performed in three ways: Direct: Your leads might decide to provide complete information about themselves by filling out a survey. Internal: You combine scattered information about your lead across different databases into one External: You source this out to third party data enrichment services that can access external records. Salesforce data enrichment allow teams to create a single, unified source of all CRM data so that team members can make decisions efficiently. Data can be enriched via: Data Cleansing: This means getting rid of obsolete, duplicated, partial data and making the datasets error-free. Data Appending: By collating data from multiple sources, a unified dataset can be created that offers a complete customer profile. In this article, we will walk you through the basics of sales methodologies and the top 10 sales methodologies to use for selling to the modern customer of today. Keep reading!  Why do you need a Salesforce Data enrichment tool? As per studies, 77% organisations struggle with data quality issues. While the reps are already grappling with an increasing buying committee data enrichment can essentially make their life easier by providing them as much information as possible about their leads. With right kind of data enrichment, sales teams can: Leverage better quality data: Data enrichment gives valuable context to the data by removing redundancy. This can help in creating an effective sales pipeline for your reps with less manual efforts. Craft Messages that Matter: You can uncover salient aspects about your prospects’ likes and dislikes like their favorite sports, hobby etc. This can help you tailoring your message in a way that grabs their attention and strikes the right chord with them. Target the Right People: With complete picture about your prospects’ company, you can understand the actual stakeholders and invest your efforts with accuracy. With better understanding of the buying committee, your reps are more likely to chase the right prospect and build effective account plans. Predict Success: Having proper data lets your reps understand their buying committee’s behaviour precisely. They can better equip themselves with the essential background information and forecast pipelines accurately. Bonus! Data enrichment can elevate your internal data too. Reps can identify patterns and discover new information by connecting dots and prevent potential customer churn. Our top 7 picks for Data Enrichment Now that we understand the importance of putting your CRM in a better quality. Let’s talk about the top tools that can help you achieve this. Nektar.ai Nektar.ai is a contact and activity capture solution that keeps and recovers client contacts as well as their participation details throughout various stages of the buyer’s journey, thereby becoming an invaluable resource for groups trying to harmonize their CRM procedures. It is first party data platform with zero user adoption, meaning that the admin teams don’t have to worry about adoption and enablement challenges. Why use it? Automated Contact & Opportunity Management: Teams using Nektar can automate the addition, editing and deletion of contacts in Salesforce. Contacts are automatically linked to opportunities so you are able to tell who is really going to make a decision. Its self-healing artificial intelligence (AI) makes sure that actions are taken based on current happenings and new information. Depth and Breadth of Activity Data: It has every single mail and information exchange between buyers and sellers across the customer journey. This enables syncing activity within leads, opportunities, accounts and their contacts for granular contact-level engagement visibility as well. Data Automation: Revenue professionals can define certain logic on the datasets to provide a quantitative output on Salesforce like engagement score to auto-fill Salesforce fields (eg, Competitor, MEDDICC) and even for auto-updating a sales stage like marking an opportunity closed lost if there was no engagement in last three months. This simplifies CRM data automation upto a great extent. ⁠ZoomInfo Zoominfo provides a 360 degree intelligence about individuals and companies like firmographic data (company name, size, industry & location). It is neatly optimized for Salesforce and automatically appends your data with existing or new records. Why use it? Massive database for comprehensive searches Deep data insights (firmographics & technographics) Excellent for finding hard-to-reach decision-makers ⁠Clearbit Clearbit offers real-time data appendage for all your prospects by providing information “early-on”. Its intent-based outreach can help teams identify when a lead does something that signals buying intent- like

Top 15 Guided Selling Tools for 2025 RevOps 10 min Imagine that you are planning to build a new house but are unsure where to start. You have a basic idea of what you want but are not an expert in home construction or design. In such a situation, you would need a skilled architect who understands your needs, preferences, and budget and then guides you through designing your dream home. The architect would help you make informed decisions about your new home’s design, materials, and features. Similarly, a guided selling tool uses customer data and sales expertise to help customers navigate the purchasing process and make informed decisions. It can provide personalized recommendations based on the customer’s needs and preferences, answer questions, and offer advice to help them choose the right product or service. What is Guided Selling? Guided selling is a strategy involving a structured approach to lead potential customers through the sales process. It is the process of analyzing current sales, historical sales, and customer data to help sales reps provide tailored product recommendations to customers and increase the likelihood of conversion.  Let’s say you are shopping for a new laptop. You visit a website that offers guided selling, and you’re prompted to answer a series of questions. The questions might include things like: What will you primarily use the laptop for? Do you need a large screen or a lightweight design? How important is battery life to you? What is your budget? Based on your responses, the website would then recommend a few different laptops that meet your needs. It might provide detailed information about each laptop, such as the processor, RAM, and storage capacity, as well as customer reviews and ratings. The website might offer additional guidance, such as recommending accessories or providing information on warranties and support. Throughout the process, the focus is on helping you make an informed decision based on your unique needs and preferences. Guided selling can be particularly effective for complex or high-value products or services where customers may require more personalized guidance and support to make informed purchasing decisions. By providing a more consultative sales approach, guided selling also helps to establish long-term customer relationships. How Does Guided Selling Work in B2B SaaS In B2B SaaS, guided selling typically involves a sales representative or a customer success manager who guides the customer. The process usually begins with the customer expressing their needs and goals and the guide using that information to suggest relevant products or services. The guide may use various tools, such as a software demo, to help the customer understand the features and benefits of each option. In addition, guided selling often involves providing educational resources to the customer to help them better understand the product or service and how it can help them achieve their goals. This may include case studies, white papers, or other content that provides valuable insights into the benefits and use cases of the product. Let’s have a look at the guided selling process in detail: The Process of Guided Selling Tools The guided selling process is a customer-centric approach to sales that involves guiding potential customers through the buying process by providing personalized recommendations, advice, and support. The following are the general steps involved in a typical guided selling process: 1. Gathering customer information The first step of the process involves collecting data on the customer’s needs, preferences, budget, and any other relevant information that can help the sales process. 2. Identifying customer pain points In this stage, the sales team uses the information gathered in the previous stage to identify the customer’s pain points or areas of concern.This is typically done through a series of questions or a needs assessment. 3. Providing product recommendations Based on the customer information and pain points identified, the sales team provides recommendations on the products or services that best meet the customer’s needs. 4. Presenting solutions At this stage, the sales team presents the recommended products or services to the customer and explains how they address the customer’s pain points. The sales representative provides information about the recommended products or services, including their features, benefits, and pricing. 5. Handling objections If the customer has any objections or concerns, the sales team addresses them and provides additional information or alternative solutions as needed.  6. Closing the sale Once the customer is satisfied with the recommended product or service, the sales team closes the sale by facilitating the purchase process. 7. Follow-up and customer support After the sale is complete, the sales team provides follow-up support to ensure the customer is satisfied with their purchase and offers any additional assistance or support as needed.   Examples of Guided Selling Tools in Businesses Here are some examples of techniques of guided selling tools:  1. Automate sales playbook To ensure consistent performance, sales playbooks should be automated. Guided selling relies on a solid foundation of methodologies, blueprints, and plays that facilitate the sales process. It’s important to choose a solution that simplifies the playbook for sellers, allowing them to follow the plan and consistently advance deals easily. 2. Identify specific needs In some situations, customers may need a clearer idea of what they are looking for when they visit your website. In such cases, a brief questionnaire can be used to determine and guide their specific requirements. For instance, if you run an online clothing store, you could ask customers questions about their preferred fit and fabric to steer them toward products that best match their preferences. This approach can increase the likelihood of a purchase by helping customers make informed decisions based on their needs. 3. Real-time response For a guided selling software to be effective, it needs to be adaptable and flexible, able to react to changing circumstances in real time. At a fundamental level, ensuring that sales representatives remain attentive to communication and other sales activities can reduce the time it takes to close deals and result in higher revenue velocity. In other cases,

10 Ways to Improve Sales Efficiency in 2025 RevOps 10 min In every business, strategies are crafted, deals are made, and profits are pursued,  But there exists a hidden force that can make or break a business’ journey toward success.  Efficiency. That’s right!  Efficiency in business is like the wind beneath the wings of a soaring eagle, pushing it to new heights with minimal effort.  To be precise, efficiency is the ability to achieve maximum output with minimal wasted resources, time, or effort.  And within sales, efficiency is a pretty important aspect of a healthy sales pipeline. It is the guiding star that illuminates the way to increased revenue, more conversions, and sustainable growth.  In this blog, we will delve into the impact of sales efficiency, actionable insights to boost it, calculation methods, and the metrics you need to track. Let’s get started with the basics.  What is Sales Efficiency? Sales efficiency refers to the ability of a sales team/rep to generate better results with the least amount of resources, time, and effort.  It is about finding ways to simplify and optimize every stage of the sales cycle, from lead generation and prospecting to qualification, presentation, negotiation, and closing.  That doesn’t mean your reps have to constantly make more calls or send more emails. Instead, they must focus on high-quality leads, prioritize activities that have better ROI, and eliminate unnecessary steps without hampering sales success. In a nutshell, sales efficiency is about focusing on the right activities, with the right people, at the right time. But, isn’t this sales effectiveness?  Definitely not! Keep reading!  Sales Efficiency vs. Sales Effectiveness Businesses often use sales efficiency and sales effectiveness interchangeably. While they are closely related, they focus on different aspects of the sales process.  Sales efficiency is working optimally towards achieving the sales goals while sales effectiveness is more about setting the right goals and making sure progress is made in that direction.  Think of the concept of sales efficiency as a car’s speed, while sales effectiveness is the destination the car is trying to reach. Sales efficiency involves optimizing the car’s speed, fuel, and minimizing stops, allowing it to reach its destination faster and with less cost.  In contrast, sales effectiveness is all about choosing the right route, navigating through traffic, and making necessary adjustments to ensure the car reaches its desired destination. Sales effectiveness is the quality of the actions, while efficiency is the speed of the actions. Julie Thomas, President and CEO at Value Selling Associates To achieve success in sales, it’s essential to prioritize both efficiency and effectiveness.  Neglecting efficiency could result in a sales team struggling to achieve its goals within the required timeframe. Meanwhile, ignoring effectiveness could lead to a lot of effort being put in without making any progress toward the right goals. Enough of pessimism! Let’s shift our perspective to how sales efficiency can positively impact your business outcomes.  How Does Sales Efficiency Boost Revenue? Sales efficiency can indeed make a significant difference in the success and growth of a business. Here are some ways in which sales efficiency can have a positive impact: 1. Resource optimization Sales efficiency plays an integral role in optimizing resources within the sales function. By identifying areas of inefficiency and eliminating low-impact activities, businesses can allocate their resources effectively.  This includes streamlining sales processes, automating routine tasks, and leveraging tech to introduce productivity in processes. It also helps to identify the most effective sales channels and optimize human resources by aligning suitable responsibilities with the reps’ skill sets. Optimal resource allocation helps businesses create a lean and effective sales operation. 2. Identify improvement areas & refine sales performance As a company strives for sales efficiency, it carries out a thorough evaluation of its sales processes and team performance, exposing multiple areas for improvement and growth opportunities. By analyzing data and metrics, companies are able to pinpoint bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and areas of underperformance. This then allows them to correct measures for increasing productivity, optimizing workflows, and eliminating blockers.  3. Improved customer experience Sales efficiency goes beyond just closing deals; it also focuses on delivering an exceptional customer experience throughout the sales journey.  Efficient sales processes ensure that every interaction with customers is meaningful, valuable, and tailored to their specific requirements, leading to higher customer satisfaction, retention, and ultimately, efficient growth. Eric Welsh, Director of RevOps at Demostack defines efficient growth as “every team in a go-to-market function working towards the same objective.” Check out his full conversation with us below. Ep #7: Driving Efficient Growth With RevOps ft. Eric Welsh 4. Improved sales forecasting Sales efficiency empowers businesses to improve their sales forecasting capabilities as well. With streamlined processes, data analysis, historical trends, and market insights, businesses can collect relevant data points consistently and promptly, facilitating more accurate sales forecasting.  This enables them to allocate resources effectively, set realistic targets, and make informed business decisions. 5. Adaptability to market changes Sales efficiency equips businesses with the agility and flexibility to adapt to dynamic market conditions.  By continuously monitoring market trends, customer behavior, and competitor activities, companies can proactively adjust their sales strategies and approaches. This allows them to seize emerging opportunities and overcome challenges.  Efficient sales processes also help them to quickly respond to changing customer needs, competitive landscape, and tech advancements, ensuring sustained growth.  Measuring Sales Efficiency Measuring sales efficiency is a must for businesses to assess their performance and identify areas where improvement is needed.  One commonly used formula to measure sales efficiency is:  Sales Efficiency = (Revenue / Sales & Marketing Costs) x 100 This formula calculates the ratio of revenue generated to the costs incurred in sales and marketing activities. It provides a quantitative measure of how effectively a company is utilizing its resources to generate revenue.  A higher sales efficiency ratio indicates that the business is generating more revenue relative to its sales and marketing costs, suggesting a more efficient and effective sales operations. Now, you may want to ask – what is a good sales efficiency ratio? A high sales

Top 10 Relationship Intelligence Tools for 2025 RevOps 10 min When it comes to sales, building strong relationships is essential.  But let’s face it, the process can be incredibly time-consuming and demands a significant amount of effort from the sales reps. But here’s the kicker: Today, 44% of millennial buyers prefer minimal contact with a sales rep during the buying process. That means your sales rep has ~5% of the prospect’s time to establish a connection. It’s tougher than ever to develop relationships from a seller’s point of view. Does this mean that your reps should stop building relationships? Should your reps just try and sell whatever they can to whoever you find? The answer to that is a resounding NO. In the digital era, data and insights are what drive sales . They have the potential to give out more information than you know about your prospects. CRMs capture all possible data, churning it and spurting out information that otherwise was not visible earlier. But wait. There’s more to sales success than your CRM. To truly understand your prospects, you need to dig deeper to uncover hidden insights to help close your deals faster. That means mining your CRM data for a wealth of valuable information that will give you a competitive edge. This is exactly what relationship intelligence does. What is a Relationship Intelligence Tool? Picture this: You have access to a wealth of data from your clients, colleagues, and partners, but it’s scattered across various touchpoints like emails, phone calls, messages, meetings, and more.  How do you make sense of all that information? That’s where relationship intelligence comes in.  By pooling in, processing, and analyzing all that data, relationship intelligence technology provides invaluable insights, builds stronger relationships, and helps you make smarter decisions.   With relationship intelligence, you can discover a treasure of data-driven and actionable insights that support the organization’s understanding of the customer, identify the optimal solutions, and determine the best communication strategies. This results in a more tailored and informed approach to prospects to maximize the best chance of a positive outcome. Your prospects are more than just a phone number or an email. Relationship intelligence broadens your potential and plays a strong role in connecting the dots from other sources. It supplements your CRM, finding other & useful opportunities to close prospects, otherwise not visible to us. Why Does a Relationship Intelligence Tool Matter? Enterprise-based selling in B2B is no walk in the park.  With a plethora of relationship intelligence tools out in the market, organizations are spoilt for choice. However, tools that leverage AI/ML, offering data-driven intelligence with invaluable and actionable insights, will be the ones that will dominate the market. On the flip side, the process of onboarding a tool no longer rests in the hands of a single decision-maker. Gartner states that the number of buyers involved in the last decade has increased from 5 to 20. A potential account will have multiple stakeholders who will be involved in the decision-making process. Hence, it becomes critical for sales reps to identify and engage with key stakeholders regularly. With the rise of digital selling, organizations can now track the process of selling in a more in-depth manner. All forms of digital outreaches and communication with prospects can now be tracked, analyzed, and acted upon with the help of relationship intelligence.  Today, with markets being down and companies being extremely meticulous in their choice of tools to invest, having a relationship intelligence tech stack will be the game-changer. Here’s how 1. Showcasing a single view of all your relationships with your prospects Having relationship intelligence data will bring together all the stakeholders in one view, so sales reps have a clear idea of the sales cycle the account is currently in.  2. Identify every stakeholder involved With the buying process evolving constantly, the final decision often lies not with one but multiple owners. In other words, for a sales rep, multithreading is the best way forward. And in this process, it’s very easy to confuse the right person to engage with, especially if there is a handover involved.  Sales reps often fail to map out the stakeholders involved. The dots are not connected and not visible, which can lead to confusion and no clarity to other higher authorities. Relationship intelligence tools fill these gaps. It will identify each & every stakeholder involved at every stage of the selling process, bring them together, and map out the relationship of each, and provide all the information about these stakeholders. Not only that, but the data also provide insights to those who are frequently engaging and also point out the next best champion to continue the sales process seamlessly if the key decision maker is unavailable at any stage of the sales process. 3. Give detailed insights about each prospect The thing about relationship intelligence tools is that not only do they provide details in one place, but they also show you the best possible way to contact and reach out to your prospects. It can be email, phone calls, or video calls; it will give you solutions that are sure to boost your process of converting. 4. Recover lost leads In the world of sales, not all leads or prospects will convert.  If the target is to convert 2 leads in a month with a value of X, sales reps need to build a pipeline of at least 10 leads with a value of 10X. This results in 8 leads that will not convert or be disqualified or lost in the process. However, these 8 leads don’t have to be lost forever. With relationship intelligence, you can identify the most engaged buyers and reignite the relationship with them. And here’s the kicker: the relationship intelligence technology considers all the data even before onboarding the tool.  This kind of intelligence will only unleash hidden superpowers for your sales reps. Who knows, your lost prospect’s business priorities might have changed over time, and getting back to them might just make all the difference. 4. Discover trends in

Top 5 Trends That Will Impact Sales Operations in 2025 RevOps 10 min Sales operations has become one of the fastest growing functions over the last few years. According to LinkedIn’s State of Sales Operations 2021 Report, the number of sales operations professionals increased by 38% around the world between 2018 and 2020. What’s the reason behind this growth? Bradley Gray, Director of Business Development at Enterprise Holdings attributes two reasons for the growth in this role. There has been a significant increase in the amount of data that gets generated within organizations. The proliferation of data is creating a need for sales operations to generate contextualised insights for sales teams to succeed.   RELATED RESOURCE : SALES OPERATIONS TRENDS FOR 2025   A well run sales operations function enables businesses to operate efficiently with data-driven decisions, and also identify gaps that exist in the sales process, and help fill them up through analytical insights.  In short, a great sales operations function can help an organization unlock massive productivity gains.  To make the most out of your sales operations function, it is important to be aware of the trends that will shape in 2025 (and beyond). Let’s take a look. 1. Multithreading Will Be a Key Sales Tactic The world is in the midst of a great reshuffle for talent. The turnover among corporate director-level-and above, that constitutes the majority of B2B buyers, increased by 31% in 2021. With key people in the B2B buying committee quitting jobs so often, many deals fall apart because reps fail to develop strong relationships with more than one buyer. And with an average of 6.8 decision makers in every B2B purchase, not having strong relationships with all of the key players within the buying committee can be a big risk. When a key stakeholder leaves the organization, reps are forced to start from scratch, causing 80% of them to lose deals. Having just one primary contact for an account, or single-threading, thus increases the chances of missing out on deals. This is where adopting multithreading as a sales practice becomes extremely crucial. Multithreading is when reps form relationships with multiple stakeholders on the buying committee of an account.  This way, even if the primary stakeholder quits the organization, reps can capitalize on the relationships they have with the rest of the stakeholders within that account. Multithreading increases the chances of closing a deal by 16%. Successful sales teams in 2025 will master multithreading by gathering champions, influencers and decision-makers, and engaging with them on a regular basis. 2. An Increase in Regulations Will Impact Tech Stack Decisions There has been an increase in the number of regulations across the globe around protection of consumer information and data privacy.  Non-compliance of these regulations can be a huge cost. Organizations lose an average of $4 million in revenue due to a single non-compliance event.  To prevent such events from taking place, sales and revenue leaders must narrow down on their tech investments from a compliance-first lens. With the world increasingly moving towards a cookie-less world, highly compliant first-party data will become key in helping sales teams make data-driven decisions. First-party data is the information that is handed off with consent from a user to a company. This can be from sources like email, calendar, Zoom or other tools that buyers use.  For example, organizations can use their own first-party data to drive contextual insights that can help them make their sales operations function more efficient, while staying compliant with GDPR regulations.  Forward thinking leaders will realize this and take control of their first-party data in 2025, and use it to make powerful data-driven decisions.  Technologies like artificial intelligence can help enrich CRM with first-party buyer and seller interaction data. Nektar has built an advanced data capture solution that intelligently connects first-party data to the CRM and enriches it for sales teams. 3. AI Based Guided Selling Will Help Sellers Win More Deals B2B sales is getting increasingly complex, with buyers getting bombarded with information across channels, and sellers tackling multiple tasks and responsibilities while chasing their quota. AI based guided selling is helping sellers navigate this complex selling environment by helping them improve their sales execution through a data-driven approach.  Along with increasing productivity, AI based guided selling helps identify patterns that lead to more intelligent business decision making, ultimately helping in revenue generation. The pandemic exposed cracks in many organization’s sales processes. Knowing that sales process discipline must be improved to increase the chances of closing new deals, sales leaders are investigating new data-driven, AI-based guided selling functions for improving sales execution. Tad Travis, VP, Gartner AI-based guided selling offers prescriptive as well as predictive insights to sellers to close more deals.  From a prescriptive lens, it recommends the next best actions for sales reps and managers to undertake within the sales process. As an example, organizations can use AI to improve their playbook compliance within teams for consistent selling.  From a predictive lens, it offers insights that help identify lead indicators to make the sales process more efficient.  For example, by having insights on the activity data of sales reps, sales managers can define which deals are real and which need to be eliminated from the pipeline. With such functionalities, sales teams can decide on what to do next to move a relationship, deal or quote forward on the basis of analytics (rather than relying on instinct to make decisions). 2025 will see organizations add AI based guided selling solutions to their tech stack. 4. Training in Consultative Sales Will Take Priority Today’s B2B buyers prefer to conduct their own research before they speak with sales reps.  According to research, most buyers engage with more than 13 pieces of content before connecting with a seller.  Forrester’s research found that buyers went to all forums for information in 2021 – from webinars and online events to learn about the category and competitors, to speaking with peers and industry experts to have their questions answered. These changes in buyer preferences have raised the bar for sales. Understanding the buyer’s intent and offering them personalized solutions

Top 10 Sales Methodologies to Use in 2025 RevOps 10 min Every business out there is trying to sell something, whether it’s tangible products, services, knowledge, or software.  But the real question is – are they keeping up with the changing trends in customer buying patterns?  Customers have become wiser, and their preferences & behavior have evolved with time. To cement this statement, today, 67% of customers now prefer self-service over speaking to a company representative. As a result, businesses must tailor their sales methods to meet such changing needs.  It’s not enough to just sell something; they need to do it in a way that resonates with the customer and meets their expectations.  Businesses often struggle to do just this without a structured and strategic approach.  After-effects? Poor sales results and low adoption.  Implementing the right sales methodology can help you stay on track and focus on the customer journey. But there are many sales methodologies out there that can be confusing. Which is why we have created this exclusive guide for you. In this article, we will walk you through the basics of sales methodologies and the top 10 sales methodologies to use for selling to the modern customer of today. Keep reading!  What is a Sales Methodology? Sales methodologies are a systematic and strategic approach to the sales process. They involve a set of principles and practices that guide sales teams in their interactions with customers. The ultimate goal is to gain a better understanding of customers’ needs, foster trust, and ultimately increase the chances of closing more deals. The history of sales methodologies dates back to the early 20th century when sales techniques were mainly focused on personal persuasion and hard-selling tactics. However, in the 1950s, the concept of consultative selling emerged, which prioritized building relationships with customers and understanding their needs. This approach got popular in the book “Spin Selling” by Neil Rackham in the late 1980s. Since then, many sales methodologies have emerged, each with its unique features and benefits. Some of the most popular sales methodologies include the Challenger Sale, Solution Selling, MEDDIC, SPIN Selling, and Value Selling, among others. But, how are these methodologies different from the sales process? That’s what the next section is about. Sales Methodology vs Sales Process Sales methodology is a framework that guides salespeople in their approach to selling, with the aim of understanding customer needs, fostering trust, and winning more deals. It includes principles and practices that inform the sales team’s overall strategy for selling, such as how to approach customers,  how to position products or services,  how to handle objections and more.  On the other hand, a sales process is a series of steps that a sales team takes to move a potential customer from initial contact to closing a sale. The process typically includes stages such as  prospecting,  lead qualification,  needs assessment, presentation, and demonstration,  negotiation, and closing.  This process can be mapped out in a flowchart or diagram. To be precise, sales methodology is an overarching philosophy to sell while the sales process outlines the specific steps that reps need to follow for carrying out that sales methodology. Advantages of Sales Methodologies Sales methodologies can greatly help a business and fuel its sales efforts in more ways than one.  1. Increased efficiency It provides a structured approach to selling, helping salespeople to be more organized and efficient in their work. 2. Improved customer satisfaction It helps to build trust with customers by focusing on understanding their needs and pain points. 3. Personalized sales It enables salespeople to tailor their approach to different customers, based on their unique buying motivations and preferences. 4. Better collaboration It facilitates teamwork among sales team members, who can work together more effectively when they are all following the same methodology. 5. Measurable sales efforts It makes it easier to track progress and measure success, as each step of the sales process is clearly defined and measurable. 6. Sales optimization It helps to identify areas for improvement, as businesses can analyze their sales data to see which parts of the methodology are working well and which need to be adjusted. 7. Guaranteed sales It leads to better sales results as salespeople are equipped with a proven approach to selling that has been shown to be successful in similar situations. This is not it! Having sales methodologies in place has immense benefits and it is more like having a map in the jungle. It helps your sales teams navigate through the complex and often unpredictable sales landscape.  With a well-defined methodology, they can stay on the path toward achieving their sales goals and ultimately, closing more deals and bringing more money into your business. How to Choose the Best Sales Methodology for your Business As an industry, we cling to this incorrect notion that there’s a single best way to sell. We select a sales process or methodology that we believe is a “best practice,’ and we tell our sellers to repeat that same sales approach with every customer in every circumstance. It’s a fundamentally flawed strategy . Dr. Leff Bonney, Marketing Professor When it comes to selecting the right sales methodology for your business, there are a few key things that you simply shouldn’t ignore. It’s essential to take the time to carefully consider these factors and not rush into a decision without proper evaluation.  1. Needs of your target audience Your customers’ needs, preferences, and buying habits should be at the center of your decision of selecting a sales methodology.  For instance, if your customers tend to do their own research and make decisions independently, a self-service approach like Value Selling Framework could be a good choice. On the other hand, if your customers prefer a more interactive approach, a hands-on technique like Spin Selling might be a better fit.  2. Sales cycle & complexity The duration and complexity of the sales process can be different for every business. It depends on a few factors like what you’re selling, how the decision-making works, and how many people are involved in

Growing Beyond $1M ARR: Mistakes to Avoid in the Valley of Death RevOps 10 min If you are a SaaS business that has crossed the $1m ARR mark, congratulations! You belong to a group of <1% of businesses that manage to reach this number. A bigger challenge lies ahead in the form of the valley of death. Only 4% of SaaS companies reach $1 million in revenue, and only 0.4% make it to $10 million. This is the Valley of Death that has eliminated countless businesses. Scaling to $10 million ARR and beyond is where a lot of promising startups dissolve. As revenue numbers increase, that number shrinks even more.  What is the Valley of Death? The valley of death is that period in the life of a start-up where it has begun operations, but hasn’t started generating revenue. From a start-up receiving its initial capital contribution until it finally starts to generate revenue is what this period covers.  The valley of death is a challenging period for start-ups. This period marks a heightened risk of failure. The longer the time spent in the valley of death, the higher the chances of the company fizzling out. Surviving this death valley is considered a significant milestone for a start-up. It signals better chances of the company reaching maturity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPwF4TeXSQ4&t=5s Carving the Journey from $0-$50 Million According to Abhijeet Vijayvergiya, CEO at Nektar.ai, all start-ups go through similar challenges and they have to navigate through them. The challenges a startup will face at $0-$1m journey will be very different from the challenges at $10-$25m, or $25-$50m. Each stage requires a different approach. Let’s deep dive. 1. Getting to $1 million –  Find your Product Market Fit   In the 0-1 journey, focusing on the core mission of why a startup was formulated is key. This is the stage where founders try to validate their product’s value proposition. They answer questions like: Is there a market for my product? Is there a product fit to that market? Focus is key in this stage. Trying to do a bunch of different things and picking up on what works can be a recipe for disaster. $0-1m is more about taking calibrated steps that help a founder validate their value proposition. A lot of startups fail to go beyond this stage is because of a lack of focus. It’s very easy to get distracted. I think a lot of startups die because they lose focus and they get distracted from their core mission. This does not mean that you can’t pivot. You definitely should pivot when you evolve as a company, you achieve product market fit or you see traction. But at the same time, you should not be doing too many things. That’s a very common mistake I have seen that a lot of start-ups make. Figure out what you’re solving for. Every start-up starts with a vision. You have a problem that you feel is unsolved and something that you can uniquely solve in a way nobody is solving it today. And you can do it X times better in case it’s already sold by somebody. Abhijeet Vijayvergiya Trying to force growth is what makes several startups fail to go beyond this stage. Abhijeet says that an initial team member will always see whether there is a product market fit or not. He advises founders to not force the scale of motion till the time they hit that product market fit.  In the 0-1 million journey, it’s important for any startup to stay focused, get to that product market fit, iterate fast, evolve to solve the problem that was intended for, and do all of it in a way that there is a commercial value attached to it. 2. $1m – $10m – Double Down on what Has Worked This is where the valley of death begins. A stage where you are with a million dollars in revenue with a core value proposition that is validated. But you have this looming danger of scaling to $10 million, where a very minuscule number of startups are able to successfully achieve. So how do you do that? According to Abhijeet, if a startup has achieved product market fit, they will be in a great position to start scaling. He warns against startups starting to open new markets, launch new products, or start talking to different sectors of customers, all in a haste to reach 10 million ARR. What’s important is to constantly look at the problem that the company has solved and how they have solved it. Learn from that and templatize all those learnings into a playbook.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSI_OSEpot8 Do more of what has worked for you. Just doing this makes the $1-$10m journey quite easy. In my past experience, we figured out how the founders sold to the first 5, 10, 20 and 50 people. We could really onboard sales teams in a way that they started delivering their first deal within the first 6 months of joining in a new market. Abhijeet Vijayvergiya Abhijeet also emphasizes on the importance of customer retention while talking of his experience at Capillary Technologies. He says, “We did a great job at retaining our customers. We still have the lowest churn rate in the industry. We’ve always focused on delivering that delight to our users and customers so that they become our evangelists.”  Surviving the valley of death requires founders to understand the pain their company is solving for. They need to be really looking at why the company or the product exists in the first place. Founders also need to find a way to covert the tribal knowledge floating in their minds into a working playbook that can be executed. “The first and foremost thing that you should do once you hit a product market fit & you’re looking to scale and ramp up is to articulate that knowledge that is in your head into a playbook and templatize it. That gives you a solid foundation and a scalable model,” advises Abhijeet. 3. The Journey from $10m to