🎯 The most important lever to hit scaling revenue targets

Hey there 👋

This quarter was my first time as a CEO/Founder with a full GTM org (Sales, Success, Marketing) and a real focus on quarterly revenue goals.

And wow, what a learning experience it has been.

My biggest takeaway: the most important lever to hit scaling revenue goals is your existing customers.

You need to be obsessed with building strong relationships and doing everything in your power to ensure your customers are successful. That’s how you get referrals, expansions, and the best product feedback – and your next 10, 50, 100 customers.

This mindset starts long before you close the deal. Collaboration begins at the start of your partnership: during the sales process.

The reason I love sales so much is because it’s a balance of art (relationship building) and science (process building).

We already covered the importance of relationships. Building a scalable process is how you ensure you drive that same experience from your first customer to your 100th, and beyond.

A repeatable, collaborative, buyer-first process is how you successfully scale.

I’m planning to double down on this and spend even more time with our users to ensure they’re successful – because they’re the reason for OUR success.

Are you going to do the same thing as last Q and hope for the best?

Or invest deeply in your playbooks and customers so you can make the changes NOW to exceed your revenue goals next quarter?

- Ross

In this newsletter:

• 3-step process for building your playbook, from top Spekit sales leader
• How to build your onboarding & success playbook
• Other newsletter recs from our team!

‍

🎙 Advice from 17 Years in B2B Sales with Andrew Bothwell, Sales Leader at Spekit

That winning sales playbook you're so proud of from your last startup?

Most likely NOT going to cut it at your next gig.

Maybe parts of it will, but you can’t go in with the assumption that you can copy/paste your old process into a new market, product, price, buyer persona… you get the point.

Andrew Bothwell, SVP of Sales and Success at Spekit, breaks it down for us based on his 17 years growing sales orgs at TalkDesk, WalkMe, and more.

Here’s his 3-step process for building a new sales playbook in any org:

1. Meet with leaders across the organization to understand their current processes – figure out what’s working and where there are gaps in the buying journey
   
   
2. Get into the deals – call recordings are great, but they’re not the same as hearing buyers’ questions and problems live on a call, where you can ask follow-ups
   
   
3. Use data to figure out where deals are getting stuck – then find one thing that you think will make an impact, and continue to measure and iterate

Andrew shared this plus more helpful advice for startup sales leaders on the From Vendorship → Partnership podcast, kicking off Season 2: Seller’s Journey! If you’re interested, check out the episode and takeaways from our conversation.

🎧 Stay tuned for more: each Wednesday, we’ll bring you insights from the best B2B sales leaders in the game, in bite-sized episodes.

(PS – if you prefer reading and want a summary of each episode in your inbox, subscribe to our Podcast emails!)

‍

🤩 Inspo

Spreading the love to a few of our other favorite newsletters (meta...)

• StrictlyVC – daily newsletter about the VC scene in Silicon Valley and beyond (plus some fun extras like a “Retail Therapy” section)
• Why We Buy from Customer Camp – dive into your customers’ minds with this weekly newsletter that delivers customer psychology tips
• JB Sales newsletter – weekly email from John Barrows’ sales training & consulting company, with the latest sales topics, trends, and events
• Copywriting Examples from Harry Dry – our marketing team loves this one, but it’s helpful for anyone looking to simplify their message & make it stand out!

Which newsletter do you always look forward to? (Besides this one 😉)

‍

🏆 3 Tips for Building Your Customer Success Playbook

The secret to creating a seamless, repeatable onboarding experience and getting customers to value quickly: playbooks.

An onboarding & success playbook helps your team:

• Document what’s working & what’s not so you can iterate quickly
• Drive consistency across your customer experience
• Build trust and eliminate friction

Here are 3 tips for building a customer-centric onboarding & success playbook, from top CS leaders Tyler Chapman (TruePlan) and Brandon Ramsey (OnSiteIQ).

1. Start documenting your process now!

The sooner you can start driving consistency through playbooks, the more it will help you in the long run – it’s never too early to start.

2. Let the people closest to customer conversations drive playbook creation

Your CSMs, or those on your team who talk to customers the most and hear their feedback, should be the biggest drivers of process changes. When leadership or others who are too removed from customer conversations build the playbooks, it can create a disconnect.

3. Set clear expectations for customer engagement and accountability

At the beginning of the onboarding process, agree on the timeline and what needs to happen for the customer to go live. Outline all the next steps together, and be clear on what both sides are accountable for during the process.

🔥 Get more customer success tips, including early-stage metrics to track.

‍

Thanks for reading From Vendorship → Partnership! What do you want to see in our next edition? Reply to this email & let me know 🤠

Ross Rich (CEO and Co-founder)

P.S. If you like this newsletter and want to support it, you can:
1. Tell a colleague about Accord
2. Simply forward this email to a friend with an invitation to subscribe