Gabe Villamizar

The #SAAS revolution of ever growth of sales & market cap is not working for most users The impact of unspent licenses and unused tools are becoming an eye sore The use it or lose it philosophy with users are being used for many IT tools by business focussed IT departments I see decommissioning of SAAS tools becoming a trend as many companies see taking out systems that are just protecting old ways of doing work a value driver Those providers that try to arm twist customers into staying may succeed in the very short term, but are well served to remember that SAAS was sold on " pay per drink", rip and replace and their ilk #Salesforce #Microsoft

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To all SDRs or anyone entering B2B sales, read this post to avoid falling into common traps. 1. The most successful AEs I have met were the best SDRs. 2. SDRs who didn’t excel in the role and are now AEs are still struggling to generate their own pipeline. 3. AEs who skipped the SDR role, often due to an MBA or strong interview skills, fear switching jobs and roles without inbound leads. They’ve never faced the grind of building a pipeline from scratch, filled with rejections. 4. AEs who have never been an SDR majorly rely on their SDRs or Inbound leads from marketing to help them build pipeline and if any Quarter they don't get inbound or enough meetings from SDRs they sh** in their pants. 5. When these AEs become managers, they often question their team—"Where are the numbers?" or "Why isn’t there a pipeline?"—instead of guiding them on building it. Lacking experience in pipeline generation, they fail to lead by example and eventually lose the respect of their team. Learn the art and science of being an SDR and excel at this job at any cost, you will never have to look back or depend on anyone for pipeline EVER. Prospecting and Generating Pipelines is fundamental to Sales whether you are an SDR, AE, Sr Manager, or VP if you don't know how to do OUTBOUND you will continuously live a sales life of fear and anxiety. So SDRs ask yourselves do you want to be such AE and Managers in the future who depend on others to determine their performance and faith or would you like to own your job? #sales #prospecting #outbound #pipeline #sdr #ae #b2b #saas

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Is Salesforce losing its grip on sales enablement? Every day, more companies are shifting sales operations to tools like Apollo, Salesloft, and Outreach. But here’s the paradox: Salesforce is still the source of truth, where the top and bottom of the funnel align in one place for reporting and insights. Yet sales teams are adding more tools, creating a sprawling tech stack—and everyone loses with sprawl. Here’s why: 🚩 CFOs don’t want to pay for sprawl. More tools mean more costs, more integrations, and more data silos to manage. 🚩 CEOs don’t care what tools are involved; they want clear insights into what’s driving revenue and closing deals. 🚩 CMOs need visibility into the middle of the funnel to understand what’s working and what isn’t in real time. But with data scattered across multiple platforms, that visibility fades fast. The reality? There are no winners with sprawl. It creates disconnected data, bloats budgets, and makes alignment across teams harder. So why keep adding more tools? Keeping everything in a core CRM is simpler, cost-effective, and keeps your teams aligned around the metrics that matter. Curious—how is your organization handling this growing sprawl? Let’s discuss 👇

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“The Business Model Revolution” Usage collection and measurement is not only the seed of service monetization but also the lifeblood for revenue forecasting. In a pivot like Sauron’s eye, Salesforce and other SaaS leaders have no other choice but focus on how usage data is managed, at scale. Otherwise the sheer volume alone will grind order-to-cash systems to a halt. The hard work certainly does start now folks, but it’ll pay off in the end! #datamediation #usagedatamanagement DigitalRoute

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I agree with my Silicon Valley buddy, Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight on this. ⚙ Why? One of the things I always say is that, "It all starts with sales." 🤔 Without sales, there is no company. The better the sales org operates, the better the company will do. So why not optimize and unify the sales organization by having the CCO report to a CRO (rhetorically asked). 📈 It's a great way to ensure that customers are delighted post-sales and that they keep coming back. 🤝I've seen this configuration foster a cohesive strategy for maximizing customer satisfaction and revenue growth. This alignment ensures that customer-focused initiatives are deeply integrated into the organization's broader revenue strategy, enhancing the effectiveness of both functions. 🙌 It seems to promote a unified approach to identifying and capitalizing on customer insights, ensuring that customer needs are addressed proactively. This reporting structure also facilitates better communication and coordination, leading to more comprehensive customer engagement and streamlined decision-making processes. 💪 I believe this configuration strengthens the organization's ability to enhance customer experiences and drive sustainable revenue growth, contributing to long-term business success. #leadership #management #sales #innovation #venturecapital

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How we drove $2.5+ mil in pipe for a 50+ BDR org: Look at a list of key contacts who left their previous company Enrich in Clay with current company, company size Cross reference with Salesforce to see account owners, ROE Check previous, current accounts with Gong AMA to build out an account brief Push into Evabot AI for Sales Outbound 2.0 to build a 100% custom AI sequence BDRs execute Super admins start a new deal cycle $2.8 mil and counting in pipe generated (Granted... 1 mil came from Coca Cola... but if we helped start an opp at Coca Cola, I'll take it)

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Easy deliverability win for your sales team: Don't use your SEP's (SalesLoft, Outreach, etc.) default link tracking. Set up custom link tracking & use your domain. Link tracking works like this. Click link ➡️ Sends you to a tracking page ➡️ Redirects to real page If that tracking page has a mismatched domain... straight to spam Why? Spam filters think you're phishing. A spam filter doesn't know where you're redirecting towards. + If a bunch of cruddy emailers are using the same link, you're going to be viewed in that same company. TL;DR... USE THE FEATURE!!!

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I did an informal poll on CSM vs Sales commission splits. I was pleasantly shocked to see that over 95% of companies do not have Sales take a commission on renewals unless it’s a particularly challenging one; the AE is there to help with it as a “bounty renewal”. in this case, the AE gets a % but is not taken from the CSM. Other interesting data points: "Commission on upsells and renewal made up 30% of the total compensation package. However, the exact commission % was determined by dividing the 30% by $$$ into the total ARR managed by the CSM." What metrics should this be based on? Most followed this model to Typically, companies that are earlier in their CS maturity will base this off a few leading indicators (adoption milestones, EBRs, etc.), and then move to comping on lagging indicators (retention, expansion, NRR, etc.) once their leading indicator activities have been proven. The following are examples of metrics you can use, not an exhaustive list: Leading: QBRs and/or EBRs (attained vs scheduled) Product adoption milestones (product dependent) Lagging: Net Revenue Retention (NRR) - this is likely the most common Retention Expansion Advocacy (hard to make this scale across large teams and mixed portfolios - this is better as a SPIFF or annual metric to Bonus on) From there, you can determine the weight of each metric on the bonus. I'll give an example using a bonus that is achieved by a renewal retention goal and an NRR goal. Criteria for 100% Bonus Attainment: 90% Renewal Retention (50% weight) 125% Net Revenue Retention (50% weight) "This keeps it pretty simple with two priorities. Retain and Expand Revenue. The Retention goal being assessed separately ensures CSMs don't have significant churn masked by massive upsells. In this example, if a CSM had 85% Retention and 115% NRR, they'd end up at 93.22% to goal for their overall commission/variable comp."

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I did an informal poll on CSM vs Sales commission splits. I was pleasantly shocked to see that over 95% of companies do not have Sales take a commission on renewals unless it’s a particularly challenging one; the AE is there to help with it as a “bounty renewal”. in this case, the AE gets a % but is not taken from the CSM. Other interesting data points: "Commission on upsells and renewal made up 30% of the total compensation package. However, the exact commission % was determined by dividing the 30% by $$$ into the total ARR managed by the CSM." What metrics should this be based on? Most followed this model to Typically, companies that are earlier in their CS maturity will base this off a few leading indicators (adoption milestones, EBRs, etc.), and then move to comping on lagging indicators (retention, expansion, NRR, etc.) once their leading indicator activities have been proven. The following are examples of metrics you can use, not an exhaustive list: Leading: QBRs and/or EBRs (attained vs scheduled) Product adoption milestones (product dependent) Lagging: Net Revenue Retention (NRR) - this is likely the most common Retention Expansion Advocacy (hard to make this scale across large teams and mixed portfolios - this is better as a SPIFF or annual metric to Bonus on) From there, you can determine the weight of each metric on the bonus. I'll give an example using a bonus that is achieved by a renewal retention goal and an NRR goal. Criteria for 100% Bonus Attainment: 90% Renewal Retention (50% weight) 125% Net Revenue Retention (50% weight) "This keeps it pretty simple with two priorities. Retain and Expand Revenue. The Retention goal being assessed separately ensures CSMs don't have significant churn masked by massive upsells. In this example, if a CSM had 85% Retention and 115% NRR, they'd end up at 93.22% to goal for their overall commission/variable comp."

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Who should be the first GTM hire in a PLG company?  (Lessons learned from HubSpot) David Barron joined Hubspot 10 years ago  as the first GTM hire for "Sales Hub",  HubSpot's first-ever PLG product. He would go on to scale Sales Hub's revenue  from <$1M to $25M ARR in only 2.5 years  – a remarkable growth trajectory for any software company. Dave then replicated this success as GTM and Product Leader for: 1) HubSpot Service Hub, from 0 to over $35M ARR, 2) Operations Hub, the fastest-growing product line in HubSpot's portfolio. Kyle Poyar sat down with Dave to uncover the behind-the-scenes details of his early days at HubSpot. Read the full story here: OpenView: https://lnkd.in/gctdn3iC ​​ Here's the TL;DR: Ground ZERO - Goal: Early-stage product discovery GTM Strategy: Freemium model HubSpot offered free versions of their products. Dave's initial goal was to engage early users to gather insights, which he relayed to the development team. This process involved creating mockups, which were then refined based on continuous user feedback He dedicating around 40% of his time to this iterative process in the early days. This "early-stage product discovery" phase lasted 9 to 12 months. Later, Dave would reduce that to 5-6 months. PMF - Goal: Customer segmentation & scaling GTM Strategy: Data analysis, inbound (popping up in-chat, warm calling) Once the product had been refined using customer insights, He set out to build a team to capture opportunity. By analyzing the retention data of their paying customer base, the team identified key customer segments—primarily those with 6 to 25 employees—as their focus for scaling efforts. An inbound team was established to engage with users of the free product, helping to generate a sales pipeline through chat interactions and targeted phone calls. In response to the initial question:  𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐆𝐓𝐌 𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐭 𝐚 𝐏𝐋𝐆 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲? Drawing from HubSpot's example,  I recommend hiring a sales lead first  if you are introducing new products to the market. But not just any sales lead... This person needs to be the link between customer feedback and the product development team. And, expectations need to be clear. If Dave was spending 40% of his time gathering and dissecting customer feedback then how can he be expected to be judged on revenue alone? In the early days, expect a large portion of their role to be product focused - comp accordingly. P.S. Need help hiring GTM talent for Data, AI/ML, Compute, and Cloud Infra? DM me. We've assisted successful early-stage startups (backed by Zoom, Norwest, and Two Sigma Ventures) in finding A+ hires. #GTMstrategy #GTMteam #recruitment #strategy

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Founders ask me all the time about using third party SDR agencies. I'd be cautious here, especially if you're early in your company journey pre-PMF. Jason Bay outlines a great framework here for how to think about this.

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There are two ways to solve gaps in signal-based selling. Only one is guaranteed to work at scale. 1) Revenue Enablement Provide continuous training for (a) every new hire who joins a team and (b) every 6 months to refresh reps on essential information, workflows, and processes. Many factors can impact the effectiveness of enablement activities (from the comprehensiveness of training materials to the trainer’s institutional knowledge, to how closely the individual reps were paying attention that day). Enablement only becomes harder as more people and processes are added to the mix because there are so many moving parts. 2) Revenue Operations Through automation, RevOps can reduce gaps — especially from human error — that cause friction or inaction among reps. Specifically, end-to-end automation. Most common “automations” in signal-based selling usually don’t go far enough. Therefore teams are overly reliant on enablement touchpoints to stay aligned. Ex: A champion moves to a new role and this is automatically updated in Salesforce This automation gets the process from point A to point B, but still relies on multiple human touches from B to Z. End-to-end automation ensures that essential tasks throughout an entire workflow are set up to keep the process moving toward an end goal. It anticipates gaps and opportunities for human error from point A to point Z (meeting booked). Ex: A champion moves to a new role, the CRM record is updated, a rep is notified, and a multi-step persona-specific email sequence is triggered. Would every rep follow this process if it was entirely manual (even with enablement training)? Probably not. That’s why every signal play should be accompanied by clear workflows enabled with end-to-end automation. The play can scale with your team. Signals without action are just noise for reps. Automation guarantees signals get actioned.

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How do you define an MQL? And how does this compare to what other companies do? 🤔 Someone asked this question in the ROC Slack group recently, here's how the RevOps Co-op responded 👇 1️⃣ 2 out of 4 BANT criteria met Consensus here was BANT is the responsibility of the sales team, not the marketing team, so shouldn't be used. 2️⃣ Exceeds lead score threshold based on demographic and behavior data This was a popular choice. Lots of folks said an MQL should be a hand-raiser that meets some sort of grade / score threshold. 3️⃣ Based on account and title fit with ICP This can be the basis of a lead score or grade mentioned in number 2 above. ☝️ 4️⃣ Based on Minimum Viable Customer Profile (MVCP) This is basically a twist on number 2 and 3 above, but I thought it was intriguing. It's basically a more broad version of your ICP using secondary criteria. For example, if your ICP is a Fortune 500 account, your MVCP may be any company with > $50M revenue. Or if your ICP is HQ in the US, your MVCP could be HQ in the US, Canada, UK and Australia. What do you think - anything missing here for different ways to define an MQL? PS - thanks to Malorie Packard, Colby Ricker, Colin Illar, Jeff Ignacio, Jacqueline Freedman 🦋, Rex Biberston, and others for participating in this 🧵 #revenueoperations #revops #marketingops #marketingoperations #mops #GTMOps #alltheops #MQL

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The AEs and SDRs from 5 years ago are the CROs and VPs today. This may sound somewhat self-serving, but here it goes. It’s been cool to see the goodwill I created with those AEs and SDRs over the years turn into meaningful opportunities, pipeline, and revenue for Copy.ai. This has never been the primary intent of my presence or content here. But I will say, it’s a nice benefit. Build trust, provide value, be kind, build your network. It’s worth it for many reasons. #sales #sdr #gtmai

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Renewals are the lifeblood of every SaaS company. However, we don’t talk enough about what makes a great AM/CSM who handles renewals. Since there are so many lists on what makes a great AE, I thought I’d take a stab at what makes a great AM/CSM who handles renewals: 1/ They prioritize the renewals that move the needle Renewal rate comes down to simple math. What renewals are going to move the needle for them? Great AMs/CSMs spend their time where they’ll get the most bang for their buck. 2/ They prepare 6 months in advance Average AMs/CSMs prep 3 months in advance. Great ones plan 6 months in advance. This includes asking hard questions well ahead of time during a mid-year QBR, so they know where to spend their time. 3/ They can re-sell the product Stakeholders change. Priorities change. Competitors try to break in. Great AMs/CSMs can sell the product as well as their AEs and know how to position their value props and handle objections. 4/ They know how to negotiate I don’t know any procurement person in the post-ZIRP era who doesn’t try to negotiate their contracts. A great AM/CSM knows how to turn negotiations into win-wins. 5/ They know the difference between procurement and decision-makers Similar to point four, they know how to negotiate and with whom. Negotiating with procurement is much different than negotiating with a key stakeholder. Each party wants something different, and it’s important to recognize what that is. 6/ They know how to rope in their AEs or extended teams Just like the best AEs know how to “quarterback” deals, a great AM/CSM knows how to rally resources to help with renewals. AEs, Execs, SEs, and Professional Services can all be brought in to help show the customer extra love. 7/ They develop a renewal champion We always talk about champions in the presales process, but not enough about champions during renewals. A great AM/CSM knows how to develop champions to help push renewals through. An AM/CSM who knows how to do these things is worth their weight in gold. Keep them happy as long as you can!

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B2B GTM teams usually have one of three pressing challenges to growing revenue. 1️⃣ Pipeline Affinity Not being able to repeatedly drive new opportunities to your sales pipeline. This usually stems from either not knowing your ICP or not nailing your first demand channel. The early signs of this show when messaging and content are NOT resonating with your ICP top-of-funnel. - No paid, organic, or dark social engagement from your ICP - Inbound demo velocity is low You fix this by optimizing your content and distribution strategy to empower B2B buyers with the information they'd find online or from peers anyway, price/product transparency, and any other value-added information that would be an objection during the sales process. 2️⃣ Pipeline Activation Getting initial traction, but not being able to convert and activate opportunities through the sales process. Two huge issues we’ve seen that cause this: -Not reaching out to leads quickly -Treating all leads from all sources the same There’s a window of opportunity when your prospect has piqued interest, and it's critical to get a demo scheduled ASAP. Secondly, if you don't have your sales pipeline mapped out by source to see which sources drive the most closed won deals, you'll treat low-intent leads and declared-intent leads the exact same. A recipe for disaster! 3️⃣ Retention The focus for many B2B companies is new acquisition, new acquisition, new acquisition, but do not place that same degree of intensity and emphasis on customer retention. There’s a compounding effect of recurring customers who stay with you long enough to break even and become profitable. If more B2B companies put more emphasis on customer marketing, they’d uncover a treasure trove of untapped revenue. TL;DR: Three biggest challenges for B2B GTM teams trying to grow revenue: 1. Not enough people interested (no traction to drive demo requests or free trials) 2. Not enough engagement from the current pipeline 3. Too many customers churning

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People don’t realize what “closing skills” are in sales, and they’re not “is persuasive.” Reps with closing skills CONSISTENTLY know, can choreograph and advise on how the deal gets signed and returned. And their forecast accuracy reflects those skills.

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New sales ops hires have no idea what they are getting into with Salesforce. Here's why: Imagine you’re building a deck. And you are given the keys to a Home Depot. You have access to unlimited equipment and supplies. But you get no instructions on what deck you are building or how to build it. This is what situation most sales ops roles are in with Salesforce. Without training in its full capabilities, admins will be stuck and overwhelmed. This is why I created the Salesforce Accidental Admin Accelerator for sales admins. I recently did a webinar on YouTube that talks about how we are helping SalesOps and sales administrators with Salesforce. You can view it here: https://lnkd.in/g297XegA

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