surprise guest on 30MPC 😉 & up-leveling your deal execution

Hey there 👋

Welcome to the last couple days of the month & Q3!

I’m sure most of y’all do the same thing I do when strategizing for EOQ… seek out advice / guidance from others, whether it’s a 1:1 chat, podcast, or LinkedIn posts from peers or “influencers.”

The problem is: there’s a LOT of shallow, vague, high-level advice thrown around in B2B sales. Finding real, actionable tactics is the aberration.

(Obviously we aim to be better than average in this newsletter… if we’re not, please tell me!)

This is exactly why 30 Minutes to President’s Club has been a breakout the past few years.

Nick Cegelski & Armand Farrokh are MASTERS at needle-moving strategies for the top AEs and sales leaders: cutting through the fluff and uncovering advice you can implement right away.

So I was honored (and honestly a bit nervous) to join them on the 30MPC podcast to share some of my own fav sales tactics!!

A few highlights mentioned… (you’ll have to listen to the episode for more 😉)

🔍 Build an Executive Summary on behalf of your buyer.

Do this EARLY in the deal. Don’t wait for them to do the work – it’s your job to keep winning over internal champions.

🌱 Hit that “no ask” exec touch in every deal.

It’s the easiest multi-thread move ever, and it loops in a senior stakeholder who will likely need to give the thumbs up later in the sales cycle.

⚓ Your Mutual Action Plan should anchor to your buyer’s go-live date (not their signature!)

It’s a “Mutual” plan… not a Close plan. No one wants to be closed.

Had a blast with this pod – you can check out the full episode here. 🎧

- Ross

In this newsletter:

• How to up-level your sales team’s discovery game
• 15-minute podcast chat with Docebo’s VP of Sales
• Creating a clear timeline for the buying/onboarding journey

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🔍 Better buyer discovery at EVERY stage of your sales process

Sales processes are rarely linear – but thinking of them in a linear way can lead to lost deals.

Your process might look neat & orderly laid out in the usual stages (discovery, demo, proposal, pilot, commit) but in real life, we all know the buying process is MUCH more dynamic and fluid.

New stakeholder groups added. Timelines extended. Steps skipped to come back to later, completed early, overlapping with each other, etc…

Because of the linear way we’re ingrained to think about sales, reps often tie specific actions to specific stages – leading to a crucial mistake:

Treating buyer discovery as a one-and-done step at the beginning of the process. 🙅

In reality, you should be revisiting discovery in almost EVERY call with your buyers (and definitely whenever a new stakeholder is looped in!)

Things change fast in the B2B world, and you can’t assume that what you heard from your champion on the first call will still be true later – or that everyone at their org feels the same way.

Instead, your team should always:

• Confirm the challenges they heard on the last call (ask if it’s still true)
• Ask new questions to every new stakeholder, based on the value THEY uniquely care about
• Truly listen and respond, instead of just checking off a list of questions

Your sales process isn’t actually linear… so the questions you ask and the actions you take with buyers shouldn’t be either!

We talked to sales leaders at Navattic, Nayya, and Harmonic AI in a masterclass on how to up-level your team’s discovery game.

👉 Check out their discovery & sales execution tactics here!

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🎙 On the Podcast: Chris Bondarenko, VP of Sales at Docebo

Chris Bondarenko has experience at all stages of growth – from small startups to Docebo’s team today of nearly 800. So he has a lot of opinions about how to effectively scale sales teams!

Hiring, coaching & building an A+ team is ALWAYS a challenge – no matter what stage of growth you're in. It just looks a little different at each stage.  

🌱 Early stage: you may not have a proven playbook… so you need to hire folks who are:

• Always curious
• Constantly learning
• Willing to experiment & be flexible

🌳 As your org grows: help your reps develop & refine their skills, so they can move up-market AND so some can move into management roles.

That means sales leaders need to:

• Create an environment that fosters learning & growth
• Set aside time with each rep for coaching & co-selling
• Retain your team’s culture by focusing on promoting internally

Check out the full episode for more sales leadership advice from Chris!

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⏰ Create a clear path to buy with Accord’s Recommended Timelines

After going through dozens of buying processes, I can say that the best ones are when the seller shows me a clear path to success by working together.

If you can’t illustrate how your buyers will achieve their goals by working with you, you'll be out-sold by another solution that’s less risky!

With Accord’s new Recommended Timelines feature, you can build suggested timelines into your sales and onboarding playbooks – go-live date, implementation date, launch date, etc. Here’s why it matters:

✅ Recommend a path forward

Your buyer already has a full time job – and it’s not buying and implementing your solution. Make it easy for them by recommending a path forward and setting expectations of how long each step will take.

🏃 Focus on an outcome & create urgency

Your buyer needs a solution implemented by a certain date, or at least in a general timeframe. Add a milestone date in Accord, and the work backwards plan will automatically be filled in. This focuses the conversation on outcomes and creates a timeline for both parties to stick to.

🔁 Create repeatability to save time

You have a general idea of how long your process will take. Recommended Timelines allows you to create a repeatable and consistent timeline with all of your prospects.

Looking to build repeatable playbooks that drive urgency for your sales or onboarding process? Grab time to get a free Accord workspace!

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Thanks for reading From Vendorship → Partnership 👋  How are you liking this newsletter? Any changes you’d like to see? Hit reply to let me know!

Ross Rich (CEO and Co-founder)

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