Ask A Sales Leader Podcast

Sales leaders are sprinting to adapt as the world of B2B sales rapidly evolves; if a sales leader does not pace out change, however, they will fail to drive long-term impact. Listen to this week's episode of Ask A Sales Leader as Phil sits down with Kelley Hippler, chief sales officer at Forrester, who shares advice on how B2B sales leaders can set priorities to maximize top- and bottom-line business impact.

Sales leaders at early-stage companies need to know what they're getting themselves into, as they face unique challenges to growing business, such as the need to build stronger relationships without a foundational reputation. Listen to this week's episode of Ask A Sales Leader as Phil interviews Aaron Bollinger, chief revenue officer (CRO) of Kronologic, who shares best practices for sales leaders at early-stage companies and offers his outlook on the future of B2B sales.

The future of sales is here. Sales leaders must adapt to the changes it's bringing because they're only widening the gaps between enterprise and high-velocity SMB selling. Listen to the latest episode of Ask A Sales Leader to hear Phil interview Bill Kiriakis, chief revenue officer of Adjust, who shares insights on the differences between enterprise selling and high-velocity SMB selling.

Today's B2B buyers behave very differently from the B2B buyers of just a few years ago. Liam Halpin, vice president sales, EMEA and LATAM sales solutions at LinkedIn, joins Ask A Sales Leader to describe the recent evolution of the B2B buying process and the competencies today's sellers need to succeed.

How can you change course successfully when COVID-19 takes away your largest source of leads? Find out as Brendan Walsh, chief revenue officer at Origina, a third-party support company for IBM customers, shares his experiences of refocusing his sales organization during the pandemic.

What does it take to be a successful chief revenue officer (CRO)? And how do experiences in indirect selling help? Chris Doggett, CRO at Acquia, an open source company that provides a digital experience platform, joins Ask A Sales Leader to dive into his experiences in indirect selling and how that has helped him succeed in his current role.

How can sales technology help your sales organization improve productivity and results? And with so many options available, what technology should you purchase to assist your sellers? On this special episode of Ask A Sales Leader, host Phil Harrell takes questions from his Forrester colleagues on the ways sales technologies can benefit sales organizations and how sales leaders should navigate the convoluted landscape of sales tech solutions.

How can sales leaders implement and manage a successful channel program? Matt Harrell, global head of channels and alliances at Cloudflare, a web infrastructure and website security company, offers his perspectives on this episode of Ask A Sales Leader.

What does it take to motivate sales reps to become successful? Find out as Troy Kanter, CEO of sales talent analytics company AuctusIQ, shares his insights and experiences on this episode of Ask A Sales Leader.

In the latest episode of "Ask a Sales Leader", Phil interviews Tom Schutz, SVP of Global Revenue of Edge By Ascential.  Tom shares insights into how to motivate and develop sales reps and what it takes to be a successful sales rep.  Topic include: Why is it critical for sales leaders to spend more time on time on talent management, retention and development How to sell complex, be-spoke solutions by using solution selling Why "travel as appropriate" is a more appropriate term than inside sales vs field sales Why the keys to good selling are: sound preparation, follow up and research Why Tom believes that sales reps over index on face to face, emotive selling, since 90% of a sale is determined before the meeting and after the meeting in terms of preparation and follow up The importance of sales reps capturing insights and agreement and right actions for the next interaction. Being prepared and active listening is critical How to put the right people in the right roles to be successful by 1) proactively recruiting talent and 2) clarifying what the role entails The importance of defining success in the role and why it impacts how to measure. How to balance the use of data and analytics with experience to coach sales reps and help them perform  

In this episode of "Ask A Sales Leader", Phil interviews Ciena's VP and GM of Americas, Bruce Hembree, who leads 500 sales reps for the $3B revenue provider of Network Solutions for Optical Transport and Switching, Carrier Ethernet, Data and Broadband Networks. Topics include: *The keys to leading complex, sales organizations selling multi-hundred thousand dollar technical solutions by setting vision, strategy and execution *What it takes to be a successful enterprise sales rep today *Why the most critical process for enterprise sales is deal management-and how important it is to collaborate to close deals *The most common mistakes that enterprise sales organizations make-including taking a cookie cutter approach to customers, and having unrealistic expectations for time to get traction *Why enterprise selling is different today because of the availability of data, the knowledge level of buyers, and the availability of technology *Why it's important for enterprise sales reps to understand both the technical elements of their offerings as well as the business impact those solutions have *How to develop next generation enterprise sales reps by partnering new sales reps with experienced  *How to turn channel partners into hunting organizations

In this episode of "Ask A Sales Leader", Phil interviews Tony Rossabi, EVP and CRO of Tierpoint, a high-end provider of enterprise-grade data center and web hosting services, including cloud computing, colocation, and managed IT. Tony is responsible for all GTM functions-including sales, marketing, customer success, and professional services. Topics include: *Best practices of how to integrate sales teams, including the need to evaluate talent quickly and why it's important to minimize the number of people involved in the integration *How to sell complex solutions to mid-market enterprise companies in the financial services, healthcare, government and education verticals *Why team selling is critical doing enterprise deals *Why sales reps need to be the QB on enterprise opportunities and bring in the right resources to help advance the deal *How to use your chief security officer to help advance deals in highly regulated verticals *Why having a CRO position helps get everyone on the same page *Why being organized is critical to being a successful VP of Sales and why it allows you to properly manage your customers and people  *Why taking initiative and being a creative thinker is so important to success in sales *How selling has changed and why using data and analytics in sales  is critical           

In this episode of "Ask A Sales Leader", Phil interviews, Kurt Heusner, VP of Americas Digital Sales for Citrix. Kurt is responsible for Citrix's inside sales team in US that drives $1B in revenue from mid-market and SMB prospect and customers. Topics include: *How to have inside sales both close business in the SMB and mid-market segments and also partner with outside sales teams and partners to facilitate demand for the enterprise segment *Best practices for renewals teams focused on maintenance renewals *What does it mean to be a modern seller-including the ability to quickly establish rapport in short increments (socially, digitally, over the phone) with a broader set of buyers *Why modern sellers need the ability to consume all the relevant information and bring it to action *Why modern first line sales managers need to be on the front lines coaching and why leaders need to hire the best coaches, not just the best sellers *The definition of digital sales transformation-the ways that you're directly engaging with customers, how to retain information about engagements, how to make it easy for your customers to engage with you *The role of tools and data in digital transformation to help sellers *How sales leaders should ensure that they're getting the demand that they require from the marketing organization in order to be successful *The importance of having a data science analytics team to understand the underlying data to enable the sales team to be more adaptable *Why sales leaders should look at customer acquisition costs and why you need these metrics to ensure that you're investing properly *How to develop talent by instituting competency maps as a forcing function between rep and managers

In this episode of "Ask A Sales Leader", Phil shares part 2 of his interview with HBS Professor Mark Roberge, who was the Chief Revenue Officer of HubSpot for 7 years, and grew revenue from $0 to $100M: Topics include: *Why companies should put sales, marketing and customer success under CROs-ensure a seamless experience for the buyer *How sales leaders should align with marketing leaders to get the leads they need to be successful *Why setting up a 3x3 matrix for leads that are generated helps align sales and marketing *How sales leaders should set up a service level agreement (SLAs) with marketing *The critical processes that sales leaders in high velocity sales motions should set up *Why a modern sales motion means not trying to gouge your customers in the initial contract *Why compensating reps more on follow on deals to existing clients fits the way modern buyers want to buy *Why having a promotion path for SDRs, BDRs and reps is the right way to find and keep sales talent

In this episode of "Ask A Sales Leader", Phil interviews Cyrille Brisson, VP of Sales and Marketing of EMEA for Eaton Industries where he manages 2,400 sales people.  Cyrille shares his thoughts on how to lead a large, geographically distributed sales team. Topics include: *How to structure and lead a sales team with a complex matrix of 50 product lines with subsidiaries around the world *How to drive efficiency by focusing on both the individual level and company level by investing massively in enablement, technology, and targeting *How to balance inside vs. field sales, direct vs. channel sales *Why running a time and motion survey is critical to improving efficiency by removing element of waste *How to ensure that your sales people are pre-qualifying deals and equip sales people with skills to represent the value to customers *How modern buyers are calling the shots on the timing of a deal and what the implications to modern selling *Why the shift to digital is difficult for channel partners, and what to do about it *What the attributes of the modern sales leader are and why incorporating continuous improvement practices matters for success *Why digitization and the new subscription revenue model is driving the need for one role that oversees both sales and marketing *Why sales people need to create value out of data created by devices is critical *Why the most important lessons for sales leaders are 1) never stop learning and 2) build intimacy with product and marketing  

In this episode of "Ask A Sales Leader", Phil interviews Steve Capezza, Zillow's VP Premier Agent Sales, where he leads 550 inside sales reps and is accountable for 75% of the Media, Internet and Technology revenue for Zillow Group. In this episode, Steve shares his thoughts on: *What it takes to succeed as a VP of Sales leading a high velocity sales motion pursuing the SMB segment *How to generate order velocity and how to make it "rinse and repeat" at scale *The importance of culture and tips on how get everyone aligned around a purpose and vision for your sales organization *How to understand the cadence of your sales team *What it takes to be a great sales leader-including what NOT to do  *What it means to "control the weather" or the mindset of your team and why it matters for sales leaders *The importance of knowing your numbers-so that you're "a meaningful specific" and not "a wandering generality" *How to instill organizational discipline-since the most valuable asset of a sales leader is their time *Tips on recruiting great sales people by creating a compelling all around experience *Tips on retaining reps by focusing on coaching and career development  

In this episode "Ask A Sales Leader", Phil interviews Mark Roberge, who was the Chief Revenue Officer of HubSpot for 7 years and led revenue growth from $0M to $100M.  Topics include: *How to build a high performance inside sales team *How to generate predictable and scalable revenue growth *How to use data to hire, train, coach and provide demand generation to reps *How future of sales driven by three big trends-today's buyer has changed, everything become data driven, subscription economy *What it means to be a modern sales leadership-appreciate context *How sales leaders can make the transition from early stage sales leader to sales leader at a bigger company *Why every sales leader should have a mentor, therapist and peer advisor group        

In this episode of "Ask A Sales Leader", Phil interviews Paula Shannon, who was the Chief Sales Officer of Lionbridge Technologies for 18 years, managed 150 reps and helped grow revenues from $38M to $600M.  Topics include: *Why sales leaders need to think more like GMs *Why it is critical for sales leaders to implement tight operational controls to manage their business and be data driven *The keys to running a complex, enterprise sales motion *Why CAC and LTV are essential metrics for sales leaders to utilize *How to implement multi-channel strategies to pursue different market segments *How to build and run multi-generational sales teams *What it takes to be a successful VP of Sales *How to lead sales teams during times of crisis

In this episode of "Ask A Sales Leader", Phil interviews Todd Abbott, EVP of Sales and Services Mitel, a $1.3B provider of unified communications solutions for businesses.  Todd leads a 1,700 employee sales organization and shares his expertise on the following topics: *How to drive transformations and why first line sales managers are the key to success *How to set up a high velocity sales motion to target the SMB segment *Why there are strong similarities between the SMB sales process and manufacturing in factories *Marketing's role in supplying the sales factory with raw materials in the form of leads  *How to leverage high velocity sales processes to execute with speed and penetrate enterprises. *How to change cultures to support a new strategy, for example moving from on-premise solutions to as-a-service solutions *How to ensure that outside sales people's time is maximized so that they can be productive *How to build and manage customer success in a as-a-service model *Why the sales management system drives behaviors in the sales organization.   

In this episode of "Ask A Sales Leader", Phil is joined by Judi Hand, CRO TTEC, a $400M provider of a business process outsourcing.  Judi shares her views on how to align sales and marketing around pipeline and bookings, the differences of selling to SMB vs. enterprises and how to improve sales productivity.  Topics include: *How chief revenue officers should balance sales and marketing aspects of their jobs *How to increase sales productivity *The different sales roles required for a complex, team sell *How to be a successful sales leader *Why more women are not senior sales leaders and what can be done to change it  

In this episode of "Ask A Sales Leader", Phil interviews Norm Happ, SVP Sales, Customer Success and Partnerships at Evernote, a provider of the app that keeps consumers and businesses organized.  Norm shares his experience building and leading inside sales teams as large as 450 employees and $350M in revenue. Topics include: *How to drive B2B sales within a B2C company. *How to lead and manage high velocity sales motion based on Norm's experience at Intuit and Evernote. *How he established a testing and learning organization that used customer insights to drive $75M in revenue growth. *How to drive alignment with marketing and product by focusing on customer centricity. *The importance of getting customer to value and how to set up and run customer success function. *The keys to being a successful VP Sales.  

In this episode of "Ask A Sales Leader", Phil interviews start up veteran Bill Clifford, CRO SessionM, a SaaS start up provider of customer engagement solutions.  Bill shares his insights into how to acquire initial customers, what to look for in hiring start up sales reps and how to scale from early stage to $50M+.

In this episode of "Ask a Sales Leader", Phil is joined by Bryan Hauptman, SVP of Global Sales of Datto, the world's leading provider of MSP-delivered IT solutions.  Learn how Bryan has scaled his sales organization from 50 to 500 sales reps and driven hyper growth by utilizing role specialization and establishing a strong, team first culture. 

In this episode of "Ask A Sales Leader", Phil is joined by JD Daunt, Chief Commercial Officer of Liquidity Services, a $300M provider of e-commerce solutions to manage, value, and sell inventory and equipment for business and government clients. JD who offers his best practices on sales leadership, answers questions about how to move to a hunter farmer model, offers tips on compensation design and shares how to turn colleagues into force multipliers for the sales team.