Welcome to Season 3 of 10/10 GTM: The Podcast for Revenue Leaders!
Our guest for Episode 42 is Chris Calkin, VP of Revenue at Census. Chris brings more than a decade of sales and revenue leadership to the conversation.
In this episode, Ross and Chris discuss the importance of every team member providing both inputs and outputs, the necessity of confirming the desired outcome before each call, and the critical role of setting a go-live date while holding everyone accountable.
Listen to the episode here, and get the key takeaways from our conversation below.
Make sure every team member provides inputs & outputs
Being successful at sales, especially at a high-growth startup, is about both the inputs and outputs. The idea here is that when something goes well, your reps bring this to the team and the entire team learns from it and improves. And when something is broken or not working, reps offer their insights and suggestions for improvement based on their experiences.
“I encourage every team member to contribute inputs, not just outputs,” says Chris. “I assign projects to support this practice. For example, if someone suggests, ‘Why don’t we focus more on lost opportunities?’ I respond, ‘You can take the lead on this, develop a process, document it, and share it with the team so it becomes a consistent process.’”
A culture built around inputs and outputs encourages every team member to put their best foot forward, approach their roles with innovation and creativity, and actively contribute to individual and organizational growth and success.
Always confirm your outcome before calls
Without any sales structure, reps tend to be reactive. Rather than approaching the call with a prepared outcome, they respond to whatever questions arise or overload the prospect with too much information at once, overwhelming them. This approach lacks a real plan for what happens next.
To avoid this scenario, Chris’s team begins with an agenda. “Before my team starts a call, we answer two questions:
- What is the outcome we want to achieve from this call?
- What is the outcome the prospect probably wants to achieve from this call?
An outcome is not simply completing a demo or discussing pricing. For us, an outcome might be that the prospect is ready to involve technical stakeholders and we have secured a demo to determine if a proof of concept (POC) is needed. For the buyer, an outcome might be gaining information to decide whether the solution is worth further investigation or locking in a price to move forward.”
Once the above questions are answered, Chris’s reps will validate their assumptions about what the buyer wants with what the buyer actually expects from the call. “We walk them through the agenda and say, ‘This is what we think you want us to cover on the call, but can you confirm this is what you’re expecting? What else are you looking for us to cover?’ Then we make sure to cover those aspects and map out the next steps together.”
Set a go-live date & hold everyone accountable
Reps often focus on their quota and quarter close. But this is self-serving and overlooks the fact that prospects aren’t buying to help reps meet their targets — they’re buying to resolve a pain point.
“When you partner with your buyer, the first step is to figure out how to solve that pain point together,” says Chris. “Once you achieve this, you can mutually establish a go-live date, hold everyone accountable, and determine pricing and scope. If something gets pushed back, you can say, ‘We’re going to miss this date, and here’s what will happen if we miss it.’ But keep in mind, it can’t just matter to your quota; it has to matter to the client and be attached to their specific goals. Otherwise, they won’t care.”
Reps should always work to establish why it’s important for a prospect to buy now and when they can expect to see a return on their investment. Once that’s clear, there must be consistent mutual accountability to make it happen by the agreed-upon date. This creates a sense of urgency and commitment that drives the sales process forward and keeps both the rep and the prospect working toward a common goal.
About Chris
Chris is a seasoned sales professional with more than a decade of experience. Before joining Census as the VP of Revenue, he held leadership positions at Moon Financial, CircleCI, and TUNE.
