A Guide to Outreach Salesforce Integration RevOps 10 min For sales and marketing professionals, managing and nurturing leads and prospects is a critical function that can make or break a deal. Salesforce and Outreach, two powerful tools in their own right, have emerged as game-changers in this regard.  Outreach is a unified sales engagement platform that facilitates your sales opportunities and improves productivity. It has a wide range of applications, from intelligent sales automation to buyer sentiment analysis, and it does much more. On the other hand, Salesforce is the number one Customer Relationship Management(CRM) platform that leverages your marketing, sales, IT, and other services. When you connect Outreach to Salesforce, their benefits get multiplied. This integration creates a synergy that supercharges your sales and marketing efforts, allowing you to take a more holistic approach to customer relationship management. In this blog, you will be introduced to Salesforce and Outreach, along with their key features. Following this, you will get to know the purpose behind Salesforce Outreach Integration, their connection requirements, and the steps involved in establishing these connections. What is Salesforce Integration?  Salesforce integration refers to connecting Salesforce with other software applications or systems to enable seamless data sharing and communication between them. Integration is essential for businesses because it allows them to streamline their operations, improve efficiency, and provide a unified view of customer data across different departments and systems. Integrating Salesforce with Outreach is a strategic move for many sales and marketing teams seeking to supercharge their outreach efforts. When integrated with Salesforce, Outreach gains access to Salesforce’s rich customer data, enabling sales teams to personalize outreach efforts with up-to-date information. This integration allows for seamless lead and contact synchronization, real-time activity tracking, and automated task creation, significantly improving efficiency in managing sales workflows.  The integration between Outreach and Salesforce generates and modifies records in both systems, subsequently harmonizing the two platforms to maintain identical information. Depending on their workflow, users can employ Outreach or Salesforce as their primary front-end application. This integration allows users to engage in both inbound and outbound activities, facilitating strategic communication with Leads, Contacts, and Accounts. Moreover, it empowers organizations to maintain a cohesive view of their sales pipeline, ensuring that sales and marketing teams are aligned and can effectively nurture leads and drive conversions. Purpose of Outreach Salesforce Integration By utilizing Outreach, you can monitor your entire sales pipeline, extract more insightful data, and achieve a more comprehensive understanding of revenue attribution across all your activities. Salesforce stands out as a top-tier CRM platform renowned for its exceptional features and capabilities. When you establish a connection between Outreach and Salesforce, the advantages of both platforms are mutually shared, enhancing work quality. The integration of Salesforce and Outreach enables seamless record creation and updates on both platforms. Depending on your workflow preferences post-integration, you can use Outreach or Salesforce as your primary front-end application. This flexibility allows you to significantly improve your Inbound and Outbound strategies through well-planned communication with your Accounts, Contacts, and Leads. Integrating Outreach with Salesforce offers several benefits for sales and marketing teams, including: 1. Streamlined workflow The integration eliminates manual data entry by syncing prospect and customer information between Outreach and Salesforce. This streamlines workflow, reduces data duplication, and saves time for your sales and marketing teams. 2. Improved data accuracy By keeping data consistent across both platforms, the integration enhances data accuracy and minimizes errors, leading to more reliable insights and decision-making. 3. Enhanced lead management Sales teams can efficiently manage leads, contacts, and opportunities within Salesforce and engage with them through Outreach, ensuring that no potential lead falls through the cracks. 4. Personalized outreach Sales reps can personalize outreach efforts using up-to-date information from Salesforce, such as lead status, interactions, and historical data, leading to more effective communication and higher conversion rates. 5. Automated tasks Outreach can automatically create tasks and reminders based on Salesforce data, ensuring that follow-ups and important actions are never missed. 6. Advanced reporting Integrating the two platforms allows for comprehensive reporting and analytics, providing insights into outreach performance, lead conversions, and campaign effectiveness. 7. Sales productivity Reps can work within their preferred platform (Outreach or Salesforce) while benefiting from seamless data exchange, reducing context-switching and increasing productivity. 8. Account-based marketing (ABM) With synchronized data, marketing teams can run more targeted ABM campaigns, aligning their efforts with sales strategies to engage high-value accounts effectively. 9. Sales cadences Outreach offers customizable sales cadences for email sequences, calls, and follow-ups, allowing reps to automate and optimize their outreach strategies within Salesforce. 10. Scalability As your business grows, the integration scales with you, accommodating larger prospect and customer databases and supporting your evolving sales and marketing needs. Integrating Salesforce with Outreach enhances efficiency by automating many manual tasks, such as data entry and lead nurturing. This not only saves valuable time but also reduces the risk of errors. It also provides a 360-degree view of prospect and customer interactions by syncing data between the two platforms, enabling teams to make more informed decisions and deliver personalized outreach. Steps in Outreach Salesforce Integration Now that we have looked at the benefits of Outreach Salesforce integration let’s go through the steps and requirements for the merger: 1. Outreach requirements To establish a connection between Outreach and Salesforce, several prerequisites need to be met: As an Outreach User, you must hold the Admin role within the Outreach Platform to access the plugin settings for establishing connections. To facilitate communication and synchronization with Salesforce, REST API calls are essential. It’s important to note that REST API calls are accessible exclusively in the Enterprise and Unlimited editions, and they are not available in the Professional Edition. In the case of the Salesforce Professional Edition, it’s necessary to procure API Call Bundles and acquire Web API Packages to meet the requirements for integration. 2. Salesforce requirements To establish a connection between Salesforce and Outreach, these conditions must be met: As a Salesforce User, you should possess knowledge of the procedures for creating, modifying, and removing

7 Elements of a Successful Deal Review RevOps 10 min Knowing the in-and-out of deals will make your revenue generation predictable. With a deal review, you can know what’s going on in your pipeline, pivot wherever necessary and get ahead of risks. But it’s easier said than done. Most deal reviews end up being futile exercises. Instead of being organized sessions that empower your reps to sell better, they end up being unplanned, ad-hoc sessions that add little to no value to your sales team. The result? Inaccurate revenue forecasts, missed targets, and a dip in rep morale.  With the right strategy, you can use your next deal review to unlock your revenue potential. And most importantly – help your reps win more. This guide covers details on how you can use a deal review to your advantage. What is a Deal Review? A deal review is a meeting between a sales manager and a sales rep about the deals in a rep’s pipeline. Sales managers and reps review engagements with accounts. The aim is to determine the probability of closing specific deals. For deals that are stuck, next-best actions are agreed upon. The primary purpose of a deal review is to help the sales person develop sales strategies to win a deal. It focuses on a myriad of factors for sales reps to help customers reach a confident buying decision. If done right, deal reviews can be a game changer for sales execution. They can usher in a culture of consistent improvement across the organization. And help sales teams deliver exceptional results.  A well-structured deal review process clarifies sales issues and uncovers reasons why a prospect might not buy, as well as assists the sales team in removing roadblocks and accelerating the opportunity.  Deal review sessions are sometimes viewed as inspection or even micromanagement by sales leaders by many vendors. But they are very important if the company wants to grow in the right direction. Aseem Kishore, CEO, AKInternetconsulting.com Why Do You Need Deal Reviews? The pandemic-induced move to virtual selling has made selling harder than ever. 40% of companies failed to meet their quota in 2021. 93% of sales reps are experiencing significant challenges with virtual selling. Sales people are only spending one-third of their time talking to prospects. It’s a crucial time for leaders to help reps navigate this complex environment and win more deals. Deal review is that tool leaders can use to address these challenges. Here are some top advantages of deal reviews. 1. Identify risks and opportunities Deal reviews enable sales teams to bring the most effective deals to the forefront. An effective deal review can warn your sales teams of deal risks early on. With the right information, reps can act fast and influence the outcome of the deal to their advantage. Sales teams can focus on deals that are most likely to close. This prevents wastage of time and energy on deals that are probably not even real. Focusing on the right deals translates to better productivity and higher win rates. 2. Align with cross-functional teams An effective deal review throws light on why some deals are stuck due to a lack of collaboration. For example, a manager might see that a rep is not going beyond the demo stage. To help add more value to the demo, the rep can take help from a solution engineer for insights. Or the marketing team can help with some collateral. The product team can help with a better understanding of your feature differentiation. Working together can help sell more. A deal review can enable such cross-functional collaborations. Customer-facing teams can support each other and work towards common goals. 3. Increase rep accountability Each deal review finishes with a list of activities for the rep to do. A regular follow-up on those activities through deal reviews makes reps more accountable. Depending on what the rep has to do next to close the deal, progress can be tracked. This regular overview makes reps more aware of their own actions. It pushes them to do their best to close the deal. 4. Gain executive support Executive deal reviews present an opportunity for reps to seek support from leadership to help them close a top deal. This can include leveraging executive connections with a champion of an account. Or provide sponsorship to close a high priority deal. Reps can leverage the expertise and network of their executives to strengthen the deal. Executives can also bring in a new perspective into approaching the deal. For example, your rep might find that the champion of the deal went to the same business school as your CEO. Reps can use an executive deal review as an opportunity to leverage this connection and take advantage of it. 5. Develop sales reps Deal reviews tell managers where reps are lacking. By knowing the areas reps need help with, managers can get straight to the point and develop reps in 1-1 sessions. Knowing where to coach on reduces time wastage and leads to action that pushes deals forward. With more action-oriented coaching, sales reps keep getting better at selling. This has a multiplier effect on win rates and revenue generated. For example, a deal review can inform a manager that the rep has not followed up with a prospect in over 30 days. The manager can focus on telling the rep to follow-up, and coach on the best ways to reach out to the prospect that might have gone cold.  A successful deal review should be able to validate and bring in more clarity to certain key areas. Are we solving the customer problem or helping them achieve their goals with our approach or product? Are we interacting with the right set of stakeholders? Have we understood the key concerns and objections? Are we prepared to handle them?Are we good on the pricing as well as the model? Is the implementation timeline good enough?In short, a good deal review should increase the chance of winning by helping to handle customer

Don’t overpay for People.ai, get these 10 instead RevOps 10 min Data-driven decision-making reigns supreme today for any modern sales team. And revenue intelligence solutions have emerged as essential tools for them to stay competitive and achieve their sales targets. People.ai has garnered attention as a comprehensive platform that harnesses AI to enhance revenue operations.  However, in the pursuit of optimizing their revenue strategies, prudent sales teams recognize the importance of exploring People AI alternatives that align more precisely with their specific requirements. This article looks at the best alternatives to People.ai to understand the diverse options that will help you enhance efficiency in your sales operations. What is PeopleAI? People.ai has established itself as a prominent player in sales operations . It has gained widespread recognition for its expertise in guiding enterprise sales teams toward optimal pipeline growth and revenue generation strategies. People.ai’s enterprise revenue intelligence platform is a strategic tool for organizations striving to navigate intricate sales cycles efficiently. Fueled by its proprietary AI technology, People.ai empowers sales teams to engage discerningly with critical stakeholders within targeted accounts. The platform takes a methodical approach that expedites sales cycles and positions businesses to secure high-value deals. Embedded within this approach is an acute awareness of the fundamental role of interpersonal connections in driving successful transactions. Top PeopleAI Alternatives Here are ten People AI alternatives you should consider for your business. 1. Nektar.ai Nektar is a top-tier People AI alternative focusing on revenue operations and intelligence. A cohesive contact and activity capture system, Nektar’s primary commitment revolves around maintaining CRM data integrity and cleanliness. Nektar’s driving force is seamless aggregation and proficient management of contact interactions and activities. They contribute to a comprehensive vantage point for revenue intelligence.  The systematic approach lays the foundation for organizational workflows for enhanced efficiency. Furthermore, Nektar offers an unobstructed perspective into the intricacies of revenue generation processes. The unwavering dedication to preserving CRM integrity and ensuring data hygiene solidifies Nektar’s role as an indispensable revenue intelligence platform. Key features: Actionable pipeline visibility Accurate, complete CRM data and reporting Account-based selling Targeting untapped revenue opportunities 2. Setsail Setsail is a pioneering player in sales optimization. It offers a comprehensive solution that empowers organizations to discern the winning selling behaviors propelling revenue growth. Meticulously monitoring the activities of sales representatives, deals, and accounts helps Setsail equip you with the insights necessary to maintain a competitive edge.  A cutting-edge revenue intelligence solution, it goes beyond mere sales activity tracking. It provides the means to gauge the alignment of reps’ actions with strategic objectives. With Setsail, integrating revenue intelligence into the sales process becomes a transformative step. It lets you stay informed about your sales team’s performance and ensure that suitable activities are pursued for optimal results. Key features: Analyze top reps’ activities Track behaviors that drive revenue for your business. Data-backed signals to identify prosperous areas in your sales process 3. Einstein Activity Capture (EAC) EAC introduces a fluid solution that harmonizes data interchange between Salesforce and email and calendar applications. It guarantees data precision and up-to-the-moment relevance. The tool effectively establishes a live linkage between essential platforms of your sales operations.  The intricacies of data management are effectively alleviated by EAC, allowing your sales team the liberty to channel its energies toward sales activities of greater strategic significance. This tool’s advanced data synchronization capabilities empower you to allocate your attention to pursuits contributing to revenue enhancement. Key features: Captures email and events from Microsoft or Google account  Adds events to the activity timeline of Salesforce records Captures contact data for email insights 4. MatchMyEmail MatchMyEmail is a dedicated tool working with a mission to enhance the efficiency of Salesforce users. It enables users to maximize productivity and accomplish more extraordinary feats within their designated time frames. Their offerings are a catalyst in liberating employees from the burdensome manual chore of selecting and logging customer communications into the Salesforce system. The underlying strength of automation lies at the core of this software. It effectively eradicates the time-consuming tasks associated with data entry. The dynamic feature empowers Sales professionals to redirect their efforts toward more value-driven endeavors. Seamlessly ingrained within the Salesforce framework, the platform also harmonizes the process of capturing pivotal customer interactions. Key features: Ensures accurate email and calendar data Permanently stores email and calendar data Compatible with any email client and host. 5. RevenueGrid RevenueGrid presents multifaceted capabilities that grant your sales teams an unparalleled edge. Pioneering the domain of sales strategies, Revenue Grid offers many advantages, like 360-degree pipeline visibility. This unique feature positions your team with the precision required to navigate intricate sales terrains seamlessly. Beyond this, the platform’s prowess extends to recalibrating sales forecasting accuracy. Facilitating strategic decision-making rooted in dependable insights allows Revenue Grid to empower your team to chart its course with heightened certainty. Furthermore, the platform imparts a transformative impetus to revenue teams bolstered by an unwavering dedication to elevating peak performance.  Key features: 360-degree pipeline visibility Actual and forecasted revenue match up Revenue signals to improve the sales process 6. Clari Capture Clari Capture unlocks the latent potential for revenue performance optimization across organizational echelons. It unveils dynamic tools engineered to ignite growth trajectories and catalyze tangible sales outcomes. Sales teams can harvest actionable insights and execute decisions grounded in informed acumen. Clari Capture allows you to bridge the gap between revenue generation and strategic decision-making effectively. Key features: Reduced administration time with automated data Real-time coaching in revenue-critical moments Enhanced forecasting accuracy for revenue precision 7. Collectivei Collectivei‘s platform harnesses the potency of AI-driven insights and provides an avenue for precise forecasting and assessing opportunity odds. This unique capability empowers sales professionals to refine their strategic focus rapidly. The platform automates activity and contact inputs into CRMs and associated tools. Collectivei addresses the challenge of unforeseen oversights by seamlessly integrating collaboration tools that enhance the buyer experience. Key features: AI-generated forecasting and opportunity odds Automated activity and contact input into CRM Transparency to remove unexpected misses with collaboration tools 8. Linkpoint LinkPoint catalyzes

Watch Out for These 8 Types of Dirty Data in Your CRM in 2024 RevOps 10 min One of the most significant sources of business cost is dirty data – a towering $13 million on average, per year.  And it’s not just the financial impact.  With dirty data, your reps have difficulty tracking the lead’s source. They lose precious time and face the brunt of lower productivity. Not only this, it also causes resource disruptions, failed communication (both internal and external), and wasted marketing expenditures.  In contrast, high-quality data is key to a solid revenue operations function. Accessible and relevant data can help leaders gain timely and actionable insights, streamline processes, and make informed business decisions.  Since dirty data has a devastating influence on business – a sobering understatement – it’s critical to understand what it is, how it affects business, and how you can deal with it. What is Dirty Data? While data is essential to every organization, not all of it adds value to your business. One bad apple that ruins the whole marketing and sales basket is dirty data.  As much as 74% of organizations admit they need to improve data management to avoid competitive and financial disadvantages. In essence, dirty data is inaccurate information that disrupts a company’s database and impacts key functions like GTM, segmentation, personalization, lead scoring, prospecting, and ideal customer profile planning, among others. The result? Poor business decisions, inefficiencies, missed opportunities, and reputational damage.  And that’s not it. Poor data quality hits organizations where it hurts the most – on average, $15 million per year in losses.  Dirty data enters the CRM mainly through manual data recording, human error, poor inter-departmental coordination, or third-party integrations. To guarantee that every lead touchpoint is exceptional, you need to understand different types of dirty data and how to clean it. Types of Dirty Data in your CRM While dirty data comes in many forms, we’ve clubbed them under 8 categories. Let’s take a look below. 1. Duplicate Data Duplicate data is the most common type of dirty data. Repetitive leads, accounts, and contacts are just a few data points unintentionally shared with other records in the CRM. Although carbon copy duplicates are the simplest to identify and remove, partial duplicates – which are occasionally the result of human error – cause more significant issues. Duplicate data can lead to skewed analysis, inefficient workflows, overloaded storage systems, inaccurate data recovery, ineffective personalization, and repetitive customer communication. For instance, each account receives or expects a tailored interaction when it comes to ABM. If you have the same prospect listed three times in your database and repeatedly send them the same email, the prospect may feel that your campaign is automated and not personalized. It only frustrates the prospect, lowering the chances of conversion. How to clean Duplicate Data? In the current scenario, where businesses deal with enormous amounts of data daily, manual data cleansing is insufficient. Besides, manual cleaning doesn’t always get rid of partial duplicates. Invest in an automation platform that detects and cleans up data and merges or deletes duplicates. Additionally, it can sort and integrate duplicate data using criteria unique to your company. 2. Insecure Data Driven by data expansion, security regulations have transformed the marketing landscape. In parallel, significant privacy issues have disrupted consumer-firm relationships, prompting changes in both regulatory interventions and people’s privacy-protective behaviours. Important privacy and data security laws, such as GDPR and CCPA, are now in place. Data that is non-compliant with these laws, or insecure data, can attract steep financial penalties. For instance, a user may have previously provided their data without consenting to your data sharing and privacy policy. This kind of insecure data can result in serious repercussions. Today’s business environment is growing more and more consumer-focused, and digital consent, opt-ins, and privacy notifications are becoming the new standard. Being compliant with these rules becomes practically impossible without good CRM hygiene. And let’s not forget the negative impact on brand reputation. Giants like Amazon and WhatsApp have already paid hefty fines totalling more than $800 million and $270 million, respectively, for alleged GDPR non-compliance while battling public criticism. How to clean Insecure Data? Having a clean database can directly contribute to complying with data privacy laws. Best practices to clean insecure data include deleting unusable and insecure records from your CRM, merging duplicates for more up-to-date information, consolidating your data stack and automating the lead-to-account linking process, and hosting your CRM on legally compliant cloud software. 3. Outdated Data Would an old report from five years ago help your business make intelligent decisions? Data that seems significant today might no longer be relevant tomorrow. Analytics based on outdated data is like traveling with the wrong GPS Data only to drive over a ledge. Consider this. A website user fills out a form to get your resource. They turn into a prospect during the following months and interact with your company more, subscribing to newsletters and responding to emails. However, your CRM isn’t updated with this information. Therefore, the content you provide them is still geared toward a fresh lead rather than one already being nurtured. It limits their ability to proceed further down the funnel toward becoming customers. Other reasons for outdated data could be job changes, organizational reorganizations or mergers, and antiquated software systems that can’t keep up with the rapid rate of technological advancement. How to clean Outdated Data? The best way to get rid of outdated data is to purge and cleanse data before migrating it or integrating new systems. Another thing is to determine the critical period for your business. Delete any data in the system from before. While manual cleansing can take days or weeks, automation can finish this task for you in a matter of hours. So, switch to an automated tool. 4. Incomplete Data If a record is missing essential elements to process the incoming data before sales and marketing take action, it’s considered incomplete. Data gaps make the job of sales reps significantly harder. Unfortunately, incomplete data issues are pretty

MEDDIC vs Challenger: What’s the Difference? RevOps 10 min Hitting targets is one of the topmost goals for any sales rep. Understandably, all sales teams want to perform consistently well and achieve their goals.  But if you’ve seen your teams struggle in the last few years, you’re certainly not alone.  A recent crowdsourced survey by SaaStr shows that only 18% of sales teams hit a 70%+ quota attainment level. Average quota attainment for reps is down 5 points in 2023 from 2021. Quota attainment is also down for 5 out of 7 such teams.  To change the narrative, you’re probably digging into different sales methods that more successful businesses use. Or, you may simply want to level up your sales game as organizational growth becomes stagnant.  The first few methods popping up will undoubtedly be the MEDDIC and Challenger Sale. Both are useful with proven results for different companies. But confusion may persist on MEDDIC vs Challenger Sale and which one’s the best for you.  We’ve put together a quick overview of both methods that could help you make a decision.  Understanding the MEDDIC Academy Sales Method For 71.4% of sales professionals, only 50% or less of their initial leads are a good fit for their ICP. Reps blame poor qualification of potential customers before taking them through the entire sales process for 67% of lost deals.   There’s one method that shines in these situations.  MEDDIC is a B2B sales qualification methodology used to understand the customer at each stage of the buyer journey. The process drives revenue and business growth by qualifying buyers more accurately.  Here’s how the MEDDIC Academy explains what the process stands for: 1. Metrics What is the quantifiable value of your product for the customer?  2. Economic Buyer Who has the final word on the financial decision at the buyer’s end?  3. Decision Criteria What factors or criteria influence the purchase decision?  4. Decision Process How does the buyer reach a decision?  5. Implicate Pain What is a problem serious enough for the buyer to seek an external solution?  6. Champion Who is the stakeholder most invested in onboarding your solution?  MEDDIC places the focus on customer experience instead of selling with the sole objective of making money. It works because 56% of sales leaders consider engaging and paying attention to gain a client’s trust as the best approach.  With the MEDDIC Academy method, you can: Find leads that are the right fit for you Access critical stakeholders in the buyer committee  Build better forecasts  Boost winning rates  Over time, the MEDDIC Academy has included more steps, such as MEDDPICC, where P stands for paper process and C is competition.  Understanding the Challenger Sale Method Today, 32% of B2B buyers use more sources to research and evaluate processes than before. And 31% spend more time on social media to check out vendors and their solutions.  This means customers enter into a sales transaction with preconceived notions about the product. Reps need to develop an experience going beyond features and benefits. Instead, sellers could challenge the buyer and disrupt their current thinking. This is the Challenger Sale Method. You’re a challenge seller if you: Have a unique perspective of the world Understand the customer’s business in and out Create constructive tension using a casual debate Intentionally dispute the customer’s thinking Push the customer to get out of their comfort zone  Here’s what the Challenger Sale process looks like: 1. Warm-up First up, you build credibility with prospects by researching and investigating their pain points, challenges, and needs. Then, you describe these issues to the buyer in a way they agree.  2. Reframe You reframe the problem as a growth opportunity. This switch is made by sharing an insight that the buyer may not have considered before. 3. Rational drowning You back your reframing with quantitative data and the latest statistics. Numbers illustrate the risk of leaving the problem unresolved. It uses rational thinking to appeal to the customer’s emotions.  4. Value proposition Show the buyer possibilities of a better future. Tie their value drivers with your solution’s capabilities (without explicitly introducing the product).  5. Introducing the solution After the building blocks are in place, you can introduce your product. This is when you explain exactly how it solves the buyer’s problem. With Challenger Sale, you deliver insights into an unknown problem or opportunity in the buyer’s business. Your product is uniquely positioned to solve this problem. By encouraging the buyer to consider new opportunities, a Challenger Seller offers alternative ways forward. But they need three essential skills to succeed:  Teach by providing insights on new or better ways to solve the buyer’s problem  Tailor the message to the buyer’s needs Take control of the sale and guide the customer to closure MEDDIC vs Challenger Sale: How Do They Compare? Some sales experts consider MEDDIC as a sales methodology and Challenger Sale as simply an approach. But there’s more to it.  We’ve listed each MEDDIC vs Challenger Sale comparison below.  Despite the long list of MEDDIC vs Challenger Sale differences, both methods have three things in common: 1. Buyer evolution Both methods take into account the evolving buyer. MEDDIC considers the transformation from the individual buyer to a buying committee with multiple members.  Similarly, Challenger Sale knows that buyers are gathering more information online and contacting the seller later during their journey.  2. Buyer’s drivers Both MEDDIC and Challenger Sale identify the buyer’s value and economic drivers for the selling process.  3. Cross-functional alignment  MEDDIC and Challenger Sale need alignment between revenue teams and leadership buy-in. Marketing managers and leaders provide training and resources for all reps.  Challenger vs MEDDIC Academy Process: What’s the Verdict? Here’s a list of things to keep in mind when considering MEDDIC vs Challenger Sale.   MEDDIC Use the MEDDIC Academy sales process to determine if a prospect is the right fit for your company. It helps teams that are struggling to keep up with the existing sales process and want to improve.  MEDDIC can intervene to help you: Sell to the correct buyer Identify the right stakeholders in a complex enterprise B2B buying committee Regardless of so

Migrating your CRM to Salesforce? Don’t Leave Behind Crucial Activity Data! RevOps 10 min Salesforce data migration is a challenging project for most operations leaders. Your CRM system contains critical information about your customers that can help drive positive business outcomes. When you decide to migrate to a new CRM system like Salesforce, you don’t want to lose out on this valuable data from the old system.  But loss of critical activity data during Salesforce data migration is common. This loss directly translates to missed opportunities that already exist in your CRM. In this article, we will explore the challenges related to capture of activity data while migrating your CRM to Salesforce. And how you can avoid this major pitfall with the right data strategy.    Activity Data Loss During Salesforce Data Migration The biggest problem during Salesforce data migration is loss of historical data. This does not include data related to opportunities and accounts in the old CRM. This data loss caters to multiple fields within opportunities. Examples include email exchanges, opportunity contacts, or notes associated with deals. With such crucial activity data missing, revenue teams lose sight of many deals. With the loss of this activity data, revenue leaders miss out on finding answers to critical questions that move the revenue needs. Examples include: How many emails were exchanged? What was the context of those emails? Who were the contacts involved in the deal? What was the role these contacts were playing in the purchase process? What were the pricing related details that came up during conversations? These granular details give a clear view of the sales pipeline to revenue leaders. And armour them with information they can use to coach their reps better and lock in more deals every quarter. This data also provides leading indicators that can act as predictive measures of future performance. Despite best efforts, this revenue data gets lost during Salesforce data migration. There are different data transfer woes operations leaders face when they migrate their CRM to Salesforce. Failure to transfer the data under the right fields. For example, instead of going under the “opportunity” field, it might get fed into the “account” field. The ability to parse the metadata from Gmail to get into Salesforce remains a challenge.  Even if the data gets added to Salesforce, the activity data is mostly of the migration date and not the actual date in which the activity actually took place. This makes the information lose its relevance.  There is a chance of losing a lot of other data from the old CRM while migrating to Salesforce. While most CRMs do offer plugins to transfer activity data into Salesforce, these plugins do not work effectively under all conditions. As a result, they end up being unreliable mediums to capture data.  Most tools also require the contacts to be already in Salesforce for the activity to be captured. When nobody adds the contacts, associated activities automatically get missed out from the new CRM.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpJxlPnfIoQ&t=2727s 5 Alarming Consequences of Data Loss The consequences of activity data loss during a CRM data migration can have catastrophic effects on your business.  Data loss can cause a direct dent on your revenue engine. Let’s look at some of these alarming consequences: 1. Poor deal reviews Deal reviews form an integral part of closing more sales. It helps sales managers know what’s going on in their pipeline, and devise strategies to pivot wherever necessary to avoid risks.  Data is the fuel that runs successful deal reviews. To conduct effective reviews and 1-1 coaching sessions, sales teams need access to the right data. They also need to be able to use that data to drive intelligence across the revenue engine. But with lost data during migration, sales teams lose access to critical revenue data that can help them close more opportunities during the quarter. And with missing data, organizations fail to create those data-driven strategies that can help devise successful sales strategies.  For example, backing up data in deal reviews during CRM data migration becomes questionable. Without historical data and associated activities getting tracked, sales teams won’t know which stakeholders are a part of the buying committee.  In short, without the right data, deal reviews fail to make sales teams more successful. The results in failed campaigns to drive sales forward, more gaps in the selling process, frustrated sales teams and inability to meet quotas. 2. Inaccurate sales forecasting Sales forecast is a critical element of running a successful revenue operations function. With sales forecasting numbers, revenue leaders are in a better position to carefully align resources towards the right areas.  But less than 50% of sales leaders and sellers have high confidence in their forecasting accuracy. Without the right data at the right place, making accurate sales forecasts becomes very challenging. To be able to make an accurate forecast, revenue leaders need access to historical data to get a visibility of how the sales pipeline is progressing at an organizational level. Bit losing this critical data during a migration project translates into lack of clarity into critical questions like: Which are the deals moving towards closure this quarter? What is the stage different deals are at? Which deals are not likely to close? Longer sales cycles, missed quotas and an unclear picture of deals make predicting accurate sales figures an ambiguous exercise. And relying on human tendencies like guesswork and instinct give rise to ambiguous forecast numbers. Complete and trustworthy data in CRM and other GTM tools is the first step to achieving confidence in sales forecasts. Without this unified data visibility, sales teams fail to focus on the right deals and fall prey to risks that fail to predict the fate of their deals.  3. Surge in operational cost  The loss of data during Salesforce data migration is usually realized when the decision to migrate to Salesforce has already been taken. This puts businesses in panic mode as the possibility of significant data loss hits them in the last few days of the migration.  The second realization that hits organizations is

How a Revenue Intelligence System Eliminates CRM Data Challenges RevOps 10 min In this blog

Everything You Need to Know About Sales Commission Structures RevOps 10 min Compensation (of which sales commission structure is a critical part) plays a highly influential role in driving rep behavior. And it becomes particularly important when reps don’t want to stay around in one company for too long.  It takes an average of 3 months for a new seller to interact with buyers, 9 for them to perform competently, and 15 for them to become top performers. However, the average tenure that reps remain with an organization for is only 1.4 years in 2022.  This shows that once reps have learned all they can with you, they’ll move on to a new organization (most likely one that pays better).  Just hiring the best reps isn’t enough to increase sales. They should be motivated enough to stick around through the ups and down and simultaneously improve their performance.  To achieve this, you need to tailor a sales commission structure template that gives them the incentive to always come out on top.  Let’s find out how. What Is a Sales Commission Structure? “Sales commission” is the amount sales reps earn on each sale.  “Sales commission structure” outlines how you will compensate the rep with a commission and how much this amount should be, based on the sale.  It also includes the timelines for commission payment, i.e., when you’ll pay reps their commission—weekly, monthly, quarterly, or something else.  Remember, the plan you choose directly impacts your reps’ earnings. Therefore, it’s vital that you set up a fair and sufficiently rewarding sales commission structure template. How Does a Sales Commission Structure Compare to a Sales Compensation Plan? Sometimes, commission may be confused with compensation. Here’s a simple tip to differentiate between them.  A compensation plan includes the rep’s total earnings—salary (or fixed pay), commission, incentives, bonus, and on-target earnings (OTE).  As you can see, the commission is just one part of the overall compensation plan. It doesn’t denote compensation in its entirety. Types of Sales Commission Structure Templates There are several sales commission structures you can choose from. It could also be that your team or organization needs a unique sales commission structure template. So, sometimes you may need to combine a couple of these plans.  Below are 10 popular structures you can try.   1. Straight Commission This sales commission structure doesn’t include a base pay or fixed salary. Instead, reps earn 100% commission based entirely on deals they close.  For instance, if a rep closes a deal for $100,000 and the straight commission rate is 10%, the rep will earn $10,000 as commission (without any base pay).  Straight commission is gradually moving out of favor among sales organizations because retaining talent is challenging without the security of fixed pay. It only increases reps’ stress levels and may push them to partake in bad sales practices.  Also, each rep has their own set of skills and practices that make them unique. A straight sales commission structure template doesn’t account for these skills.  When to use this structure:  Shortcomings of the straight commission structure don’t completely nullify its usefulness. You can turn to this plan if you’re a startup or a small organization with limited capital. 2. Base Salary Plus Commission This structure is the most widely adopted across industries and organizations.  Typically, a rep’s compensation is split between salary and variable pay (which includes commission). The split may be 50/50 or 60/40, depending on what you can offer as a salary while still incentivizing reps.  A “base salary plus commission” structure works well because commission motivates reps to continue improving their performance, whereas salary acts as a safety net to retain them in tough situations.  When to use this structure:  You can deploy this sales commission structure template if you’re striving to maintain a good balance between your sales budget and commission. 3. Revenue Commission  In a “revenue commission” structure, reps earn a flat commission percentage on each deal won. So, if your rep closes a deal for $100,000 and the commission is set at 7%, they earn a commission of $7,000.    However, this structure again doesn’t consider each rep’s distinctive selling capabilities.  When to use this structure:  Revenue commission works well when your team is small, your product offerings aren’t too complex, or you’re selling only one product with fixed pricing. 4. Gross Margin Commission  The gross margin commission structure follows a similar approach to the revenue commission structure.  However, instead of revenue (ARR or contract value), reps earn commission on the gross revenue (or profit on sales). Say your rep sold a contract for $150,000 but incurred a cost of $25,000 for the company. These costs may include travel to meet the client or a discount for the buyer. Under the gross margin commission structure, the rep will earn a commission on $125,000 ($150,000 less $25,000). Gross margin commission motivates reps to close deals at higher margins, ultimately benefiting the organization. When to use this structure:  If you aim to ensure bottom line profitability, this sales commission structure template can help reps win deals without incurring too much expense. This may also speed up the sales cycle. 5. Tiered Commission  In tiered commission, reps earn incremental commission on each deal closed, depending on the tier in which it falls.  The bigger the deal closed, the higher the tier and the higher the commission earned.  For example, for deals under $50,000, reps earn a commission of 5%, but for deals under $100,000, the commission moves up to 7%, and so on.  Tier Deal Size Commission  A Up to $50,000 5% B $50,000 to $100,000 7% C $100,000 to $150,000 10$ Tiered commission encourages reps to continually achieve and exceed targets for higher rewards. But, to maintain your business’s profitability, you may want to cap the maximum commission a rep can take home. When to use this structure:  A tiered commission structure works best when scaling your team, as it promotes over-performance and separates top performers from low. Not just that, it also motivates average and low performers to push