Orlando Avalos

If you answer YES to this question you're doing outbound wrong. Do you still have "connected" as a call disposition in your SEP/Dialer? Item #23 on our outbound sales maturity checklist is "Custom call dispositions and contact stages" The default call dispositions in CRM and SEP are worthless. "Connected" "Left Voicemail" "No Answer" etc More granular call dispositions means better segmented lists for recycling / re--engagement. If you want outbound performance to compound over time you have to get this stuff right. Problem is, fundamentals are boring. This change isn't going to get you 15 meeting requests this week. But it's a piece of the puzzle of a sustainable outbound engine. There are more pieces to the puzzle. I've listed them in our outbound sales maturity checklist. I'll send it to you if you'd like. Let me know. 

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Most sales leaders focus on their top performers. But your best reps will crush quota whether you help them or not. Here's the uncomfortable truth about scaling revenue... Your top 10% will succeed despite you. They'll figure out how to sell your product and close deals even if you give them zero support, no collateral, and an undefined ICP. But you can't build a scalable revenue engine on top 10% talent alone. It's just math. Even with a rigorous interview process and strong recruiting brand, our 12-month retention rate at Levelset was around 55%. And that was GOOD. The key to scaling isn't finding more unicorns. It's raising the floor for everyone else. That means writing down exactly what success looks like. Not just hoping good people will "figure it out." I learned this the hard way. For the first 4 years (or so), we closed deals almost in spite of ourselves. No real sales playbook. No defined process. Just talented people working hard. When we finally documented our exact process - from first touch to close - our ramp time plummeted and consistency shot up. The uncomfortable truth? Most founders spend way more time recruiting than preparing to train and support their hires. Your playbook doesn't need to be fancy. Start with one document: "How to Run a Demo." Make it painfully detailed. Your top reps will hate it. Your new reps will love you for it.

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One of the most expensive mistake B2B companies make isn’t bad hiring or poor product decisions. It’s what happens when they try to run multiple GTM motions at the same time. Let's take a SaaS company at $30M ARR: + ABM targeting Fortune 500. + Skilled sales team running MEDDIC. + Sophisticated buying center mapping. Then came the inevitable exec decision: we need to add PLG next Q! On paper, it made perfect sense. Self-serve funnels could capture the long tail and expand their market. But within months, their GTM is not so straightforward and "well-oiled": - Enterprise reps competed with inbound leads. - Marketing was torn between ABM and SEO. - Customer data lived in silos. - Tools multiplied as product and growth teams now involved closely. And this wasn’t an execution problem. Every new GTM motion doesn’t just add complexity, it multiplies it. Moving from one motion to two doesn’t mean 2x complexity - it means managing every interconnection between every components of both motions. So if by $100M ARR company has a dozen of GTM motions? That’s not 12x harder - it’s 144x (12²) Each motion brings its own tools, metrics, and processes. And most importantly - its own human behaviors. And politics, influences, etc. This is the hidden growth tax no one talks about. Companies hit this wall and their growth slows. Not because the market disappeared or the product got worse, but because GTM complexity outpaces their ability to manage it. The solution isn’t to avoid complexity. In 2024 avoiding multiple motions is competitive suicide. Instead, it’s about building for interoperability from the start: 1. Systems that connect motions. 2. Tools that unify customer data across channels. 3. Teams aligned on shared goals, not competing KPIs. 4. Leaders that are able to talk with other departments and understand those languages. The companies that win in the next decade won’t be the ones with the best individual motions. They’ll be the ones who make their motions work together. So what I would differently today when launching multiple GTM motions for the product line: 1. Understand how each motion affects the others (e.g., enterprise sales vs. self-serve) -> map those interconnections. 2. Ensure data flows seamlessly between teams, avoiding silos -> unify customer journeys across channels. 3. Create KPIs that reward collaboration across motions, not competition -> align the incentives.

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PE investors / operators: have "hire additional sales capacity" on your VCP or annual plan? HIRING new reps is only half the battle. For the ROI math to math, gotta then make 'em productive. As quickly as possible. But when it comes to making reps productive quickly, B2B companies face two big challenges: →The average tenure of a B2B sales rep is less than two years, YET... → Reps hit their peak performance two to three years in. Translation: Most reps leave before they’ve reached max productivity. Eek. In many cases, weak sales onboarding is to blame. But taking a more intentional approach to sales onboarding has a bevy of obvious benefits: • Reducing sales turnover • Shortening time-to-revenue • Higher odds of achieving your rev targets Hit on this in the book in Winning Move #32, but check out the vid below for a deeper dive on the P's and Q's of sales onboarding ▶️ * * * * * Found this helpful? Plenty more where that came from. Check out the Winning Moves Platform: the ambitious PE leader's toolkit for accelerating value creation. ↳ A digital arsenal of resources, how-to's, and tools to help private equity leaders make value-generating Winning Moves with confidence. Link in the comments below. ⤵️

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When RevOps is really just SalesOps (And the CRO is really just the VP of Sales) 𝗦𝗔𝗟𝗘𝗦 𝗘𝗡𝗚𝗜𝗡𝗘 - Closing deals should work - Clear pipeline management process - Forecasting is as accurate as possible - But everything before & after is an issue 𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗞𝗘𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚 - Has different goals - Maybe the target is MQLs - Has their definition of MQLs - And their definition of SALs, SQOs - Has systems with different metrics - Their reports don't match sales' reports - Leads routed from one system to the next - With lots of things falling through the cracks - Classic case of marketing/sales misalignment 𝗢𝗨𝗧𝗕𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 - Do SDRs report to marketing? - If so, we're misaligned there too - The goal may be meetings booked - So AEs have lots of leads and meetings - But maybe not the ones they really need - The ones that convert to pipeline/revenue - We have more misalignment & finger pointing - Do SDRs report to sales? - What content do they have? - What events and assets do they share? - What visibility do they have into engagement? - How does marketing align with their outreach? 𝗢𝗡𝗕𝗢𝗔𝗥𝗗𝗜𝗡𝗚 - Sales is paid to close deals - How do they hand off customers? - What is the onboarding process? - Who builds/maintains that process? - What is done if sales drops the ball? - What is done if sales overpromises? - How are incentives and comp aligned? 𝗥𝗘𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 & 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗔𝗡𝗦𝗜𝗢𝗡 - Which customers are easiest to retain? - Which customers are most likely to churn? - Which customers are the easiest to expand? - How is this data used to improve sales targeting? - How do we maximize NRR if sales is in their own silo? For me RevOps drives value by getting into the weeds and finding ways to generate more revenue with the resources available. That includes SalesOps and optimizing the sales process to close more deals. However, if we stop there we end up with an expensive and inefficient revenue engine with high CAC, high Churn and low LTV. We end up with different departments chasing different goals in different systems with different reports and different definitions of success. What would you add to this? Anything I missed? ✌️

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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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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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More focused sales targeting = faster growth. Most companies stall out around $5MM in revenue and never get beyond $10MM. I learned this the hard way. Let me tell you a story. When we hit ~$1MM in revenue, we were getting buying signals from across the market. We were signing up new SMB customers every day. We had enterprise customers coming inbound. It felt like we had the tiger by the tail. But something happened around $5MM. Churn ticked up. New revenue from new customers slowed down. Growing 100% each year felt impossible. Then we learned that our SMB customers and our Enterprise customers had different pain points and different buying processes. Each part of the market required its own go-to-market approach. So we separated the teams. We separated the messaging. We separated the sales process. And we FOCUSED on our core customer, the SMB customer. It was especially hard to stop pursuing big enterprise customers. But we focused our efforts on a very specific customer profile, and our revenue accelerated. That's what lifted us past $10MM. And the enterprise revenue eventually came. It always does. So focus on your ICP if you want to grow to $10MM faster.

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The transition from founder led sales -> a repeatable GTM motion is hard... Extremely hard. There are so many things to consider to mitigate risk and get as many repetitions on closed loop feedback as quickly as possible. -> what profile of a rep should I hire -> how to assess the right talent -> SDR or AE or growth hacker type or both -> what channels should we be testing -> what does good look like? What does great look like? -> how do I know if we’re making progress? And so much more… We’re discussing all this live next Tuesday at Kiln. If you’re in Utah, come check it out: https://lnkd.in/eQ9dyJK4

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This x10000 I recently bought new bedsheets from a brand I won’t mention. 3 days after I made the purchase, feeling good with my 25% discount on my purchase, I got a text message offer for 50% off. I came away from that experience feeling duped, because had I known that I would have gotten an offer for 50% off, I would have just waited. Will I buy from them again? I don’t know, depends on how good the sheets are. But I definitely won’t be making another purchase from them for at least another 90 days. It’s so important to be thoughtful in how you talk to your customers right after they purchase. If they purchased, they’re probably really excited about that purchase and are happy to engage and learn more (particularly if it’s high AoV like high end apparel, bedding, or a wellness product) It does NOT mean that the 5-7 day period post purchase is a great time to hit them with another discount - they will feel similar to how I did.

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Do you have sellers that struggle with asking for large dollar amounts? Here's a super easy fix: 1. Find a friend who works in finance at your company (if reasonably sized) or an equivalent size company that you sell to. 2. Get them to share an example budget with you 3. Walk through it together line by line You will quickly realize that most companies waste 30x what your solution costs on things with low ROI. Now, work on a narrative to move money from those things to your solution. Then, practice it. Then use it on prospects and customers. Then watch your deal size go up. Try it, it works.

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"Should we outsource SDRs?" No, with rare exceptions. There's a reason why customer churn is high at most of the outsourced SDR shops. Outbound isn't as easy as paying $3-5k / month for a part-time SDR. And then expecting to see high-quality opportunities in 30-60 days. I've NEVER worked with a client that was happy with their SDR agency. - Poor show rates to meetings - Terrible expectation setting with handoff - Low-quality meetings with non-decision makers - Few, if any, closed/won deals But to be fair—it isn't always the SDR agency's fault. Many of their clients expect them to be miracle workers. An outbound-led sales motion is very different from an inbound-led sales motion. If your AEs are used to meeting with inbound leads, they must be taught how to close outbound leads. Prospects will likely not be problem-aware, there isn't a budget in place, and they probably won't have brand awareness. Do not hire an SDR agency if: ⛔️ You've never done outbound before as an org. ⛔️ You sell enterprise ⛔️ You're breaking into new industries ⛔️ You haven't figured out your messaging or value drivers ⛔️ Your AEs aren't self-sourcing and doing their own outbound No outsider will ever understand your customers as well as you do. And it's only a bandaid to build a sales culture that doesn't understand how to excel at outbound. It might make sense to work with an agency if: ✅ You know outbound works, but need help scaling it ✅ You've mastered messaging and value drivers ✅ Your AEs know how to close outbound deals ~~~ Agree or disagree? #sales

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$1.03M in Sales Pipeline within 90 days from one outbound program. This ABM/ Outbound program cost us $9,000 to put together, and it generated: ✅ 11 Sales Qualified Opps ✅ $1.03M in Sales Pipeline ✅ $93k Average Deal Size ✅ 33.5% Closed Won Rate 💪🏽 How did we do it? 1. We led Outbound with the ABM team. 2. We invited the participation and collaboration of our SDR and AE team. 3. We invited our Buyers to participate in the event and bring on a +1 to the event. 4. We included the SDR team in the building process - to get them excited while we are experimenting with new programs. 🚫 What did we NOT do? 1. We did not send thousands of emails to buyers and users. (aka we did not SPAM our buyers!) 2. We did not assume who were the best companies and people. 3. We did not build the program in a vacuum. 🧭 Imagine having a step-by-step blueprint that guides you through building creative programs, partnering up with Sales, pairing programs with outbound emails, and having tons of fun and success along the way! Check out the full post on my substack - Link in the comment below. As always, I appreciate your support and DM me with any questions. 🤙🏽 To your Outbound Success #outbound #abm #pipeline #startup #sdr #marketing #sales

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The path to $10MM ARR is about finding your repeatable, scalable sales motion. The formula is simple, but not easy. It looks like this: Effort + Enthusiasm + Messaging + Lead Quality = Results When you are scaling a sales team, your job is to manage the inputs. Those are the things on the left side of this equation. If you can reduce the variability of the inputs, you will have more consistent results. Put another way. Consistent inputs leads to consistent outputs. Let's break it down... 1. Effort is the driver for your sales performance. You cannot scale without consistent effort. Effort includes the velocity of sales activity (phone calls, emails, meetings, etc.). Effort also includes the way that you execute your sales activity. This is your sales process and sales playbook. You can improve the quality of your effort with learning and development. 2. Enthusiasm is an amplifier for your effort. You have to act like you want to earn the business. A little enthusiasm goes a long way in closing more business. I've found that you can't teach enthusiasm. You must hire for it. 3. Messaging is how you get prospects to believe what you believe. Your messaging is your value prop. It's how you approach your ICP. It's the way that you convince customers that their current version of the world is no longer acceptable and they must make a chance. The best messaging illustrates the consequences of inaction. 4. Lead quality drives your conversion rate You have to stay focused on your ICP. The more variable your lead quality, the more inconsistent your sales results. The best effort, enthusiasm, and messaging are helpless if you are focused on the wrong accounts. This is the formula for predictable, repeatable, scalable sales. Manage the consistency of your inputs and you will have consistent outputs. What about you? What's your formula for repeatable results?

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Why the SDR model is wrecked... First we have to start with SDRs aren't wrecked, leadership of outbound teams is wrecked. There is a vicious combination in the market right now: 1 // Inflated cost of SDR 2 // Bloated Tech Stack = $$$$$ (for what?) 3 // Decreased deliverability (email/phone/social) 4 // Saying they are investing in rep efficiency when all they are invested in is headcount 5 // Data eating machine. Lower deliverability requires more volume. More volume breeds more data consumption. More data consumption eats through your TAM and your wallet 6 // AEs are little to no help. "Feed me meetings, build my lists, do follow up on a no-show for me" So to put it simply... costs going up & production going down = wrecked ROI You can't reduce headcount without optimizing reps to produce more or else you're guaranteeing to miss target. You can't out-hire the problem. AI isn't going to solve your problems. So what do you do? - Focus your time on one objective: optimize the hell out of a rep to get the most possible output from them. Take list building off their plate and centralize or push on AE, take email off their plate, get them out of bullsh*t meetings, invest in deliverability (TitanX (formerly Phone Ready Leads®)), remove 70% of their stack, automate data entry outside of call dispositions. - Don't stop doing that until pipeline coverage is 7-8x (no not 3-5x) - Cut the bottom 30-50% once the top 50-70% produce at or above former 100% - Force AEs to self-source with the above SDR optimization plan. If they don't hit self-source target, remove SDR privileges, or terminate. - Cut management/leadership who isn't bought into this. That means training and coaching daily, onboard with sorting the wheat from the chaff, hitting pipeline coverage and/or (even better) revenue targets. - Stop listening to VCs unless they get onboard with the above and stay out of your way unless its to write you a check to do the above more and better. They are out of touch with outbound today to take their opinion. Addition through subtraction. Try it.

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When I start hiring SDRs, I won’t be hiring traditional SDRs. Here’s what I’m planning… 150k OTE. 50/25/25 comp structure. - 50% base - 25% variable on Enterprise opps created - 25% variable on SMB revenue closed 📈 Let’s start with Opportunities created. These are qualified opportunities you set up for the enterprise sales team. Every month, we’ll align on the 100 accounts you should prioritize with your outreach. The marketing team will focus on the same 100 accounts with its account-based marketing efforts. You’ll use Copy.ai to build account plans, research prospects, and develop outreach strategies for each account. You’ll use Copy.ai to create custom landing pages, ads, and hyper-relevant outreach. You’ll be the quarterback, ensuring the right buying group is engaged, and doing the high-touch, white glove outreach to key contacts. I’m thinking 30 opps generated per month as a quota. The marketing team will share that quota and be incentivized to generate opps. You’re the quarterback. We won’t fight over “who gets credit” because we’re completely aligned on the accounts, budget, and strategies. Having sticker shock at that 30/month number? We have insane momentum right now and are only gaining steam. We’ll set you up for success. 💰 Now, about that SMB revenue. These are SMB deals that are too small for our enterprise sellers to focus on. Call it, under $25k ARR. 100% inbound. You’ll be full cycle here, from qualification through close. Again, you’ll have support from the marketing team to ensure you have what you need to fully engage the buying group, allow buyers to self-serve much of their education, and move deals through the funnel quickly. You’ll have managerial support, of course. But you’ll also have Copy.ai doing deal coaching, giving feedback, suggesting deal strategies, and keeping you focused on real deals. I’m thinking 6-8 deals / quarter = $400k annual quota. Logo velocity is the name of the game. We’ll figure out the accelerator balance so you get rewarded for over-performance, as long as you’re performing against BOTH elements of your variable. You’ll get exposure to the whole GTM engine. You’ll get real, complete sales training. You’re the talent bench for the enterprise accounts team. 👀 Title? I’m thinking Inside Account Director. Two questions: 1. Interested? Let me know. We’re not hiring for this yet (need to hash out plans internally), but we’ll start keeping a warm list so we can hire fast. Fill out this li'l form to join the wait list: https://lnkd.in/esbA4ZVp 2. What am I missing? Any suggestions for what to change? We’re building in public here, and architecting a different approach to all things GTM. Open to feedback. #gtmai #sales #gtm

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The skills to be an effective SaaS CRO have changed. That's not my opinion, but that's basically the crux of what bona fide CROs, and those that hire them, are telling me. Just a few years ago these were 5 desired skills when hiring a CRO. --Proven "scaler", which often meant doing more with MORE (people) --Willing to take calculated risks to and set ambitious goals --Ability to thrive in unpredictable environments with frequent changes (sadly lots of change was caused by literal CRO changes) --Laser focus on achieving revenue targets no matter the cost  --Inspire and motivate large sales teams These are 5 desired skills when hiring a CRO today: --Analytical with the ability to interpret data and identify trends to make decisions --Deep understanding of sales methodology, customer segmentation, and pricing strategies  --Financial acumen to understand unit economics --Customer focused to build long term relationships and loyalty  --Cross-functional relationship builder That said, in MY opinion, the skills needed few years ago are still necessary, but the trick is finding people, or becoming, the person, who straddles both profiles. Those people are also known as The GOATS of Growth, or at least well on their way.

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After thousands of sales calls, one lesson stands out: the most powerful sales tool isn’t your CRM or your phone, it’s your ability to listen. 👂🏽 The more I listen, the more I understand. The less I talk, the more I connect. And that connection? It leads to real wins.

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Hard truths- 1) Getting to 3X or 4X pipeline doesn't mean you will make your number. 2) Getting to 5X or 6X pipeline won't get you there either. I was in the cohort that helped create the 3-4X metric more than 20 years ago. It was wrong then and we just didn't know it. It is very wrong today. It didn't solve the most fundamental problem which is how we sell. If you are using BANT, ANUM or MEDDIC to qualify a deal, stop. Now. None of these tell if you the deal is qualified. They will create waste and poorly forecasted deals. If you are not training and scripting on discovery and then doing it as a distinct step in your sales process, AFTER you qualify your opportunity, you should start that now. Imagine sales as a manufacturing process. If we presume the need for 3-4X revenue in our pipeline, we are accepting 67%-80% waste of the raw material ( leads ). If we move to 5X, our waste is now 80%. That is unacceptable. AI won't fix this. Spending thousands on your tech stack won't fix this. Human leaders have to fix it. We have to examine every step and stage of your process. Optimize every action and interaction to reduce or remove waste and to maximize the yield of the raw material to get better finished goods with less. It can be done. My teams have done it. We exceeded our delivered pipeline consistently. Want to know how? You can DM me for a meeting or just schedule it via the link in my profile at no cost. ( Hint: if you have been following my posts, it starts with the ICP vs IOP and the "4 W's" ) Good selling!

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