Hey, Toni from Growblocks here! Welcome to another Revenue Letter!
This weekly email is my way to share knowledge and build a community of people who love to learn more about growing revenue in a data-driven and scientific way.
Anything in particular you want to hear my thoughts on? Drop me an email, and I might use it in my next article.
If you run Sales teams in tech, you’ve more than likely been hit with one of these:
"My outbound opps are bad”
"Inbound leads are bad"
"We don’t have the right features"
“I closed out my pipeline last Q, that’s why I’m short now”
The thing is, all of these have some merit.
At least that’s to say your reps aren’t completely wrong.
But there’s a cure for each of them if you dig deep enough.
1. "Outbound Opportunities are bad"
Sure, if you compare these opps to your inbounds they’re always going to be worse.
But the actual problem here is enablement.
Instead of just dismissing these opps, your reps have to realize that outbound requires a different approach than inbound.
The sales process for these Opps requires a different playbook. The people showing up for demos are not there because they have a big need (yet). They are in many cases almost doing you or the SDR a favor.
If you start the call with “why are you here today?” - they will tell you because your SDR booked them.
Instead of giving up here, you need to change your playbook. Outbound works. But won't work if you treat it like Inbound.
2. "Inbound Leads are terrible"
When I hear this excuse, it’s usually when Marketing is being pushed to grow the marketing revenue piece.
So what do they do?
They add channels and initiatives on top of channels that are currently working.
For example, you might be running successful LinkedIn ads and email marketing.
So now you add TikTok ads and affiliate marketing to the mix.
You may be getting more leads on paper, but more often than not, these additional channels may not perform as efficiently (yet).
My approach here is to simply go to the reps that complain and tell them: “Sure, we can also send these Leads to other/hungrier reps, should we do that?”
Unless marketing is really only delivering terrible stuff, you will see these reps change their minds quickly.
3. "We Don't Have the Right Features."
Imagine this - a prospect mentions, "You lack features X, Y, and Z.”
“For some magical reason that seems important to me…”
And that “magical reason”? Your competitor's rep.
This excuse boils down to your rep not doing their homework and not knowing what your competitor is good at.
And more importantly, where you’re better than your competitor.
So they miss a golden opportunity to steer that conversation proactively.
4. "Sorry I closed out all my pipeline last quarter, that's why I'm coming up short now.”
This might be my favorite excuse out of all of them.
I usually hear this from someone who was successful last quarter but is completely falling flat now.
The truth is, that person didn’t only close out all their pipe last quarter.
They probably burned all the ones available for this quarter too.
And on top of that, they probably didn’t do a good job in building pipe in the last quarter.
In other words, they kind of didn’t do their job.
But since they just (likely) blew out the last quarter, you obviously can’t fire them or put them on a PIP.
What you do need to do is to not accept this excuse. You need to push back at least verbally that this is not a “Uh, I was so successful which is the reason why I am not successful now”.
Are there any favorite BS excuses I missed? Let me know.
P.S. If you’re worried about predicting revenue beyond just the newbiz your reps are bringing in, we’ve built a platform that helps you forecast your entire GTM. Check it out and request a demo on Growblocks.com or feel free to send me an email to learn more.
Yes. I think this is ultimately where this post should be steered towards. The “excuse” word just made this post a whole lot more accessible;)
It is truly fascinating to encounter a very competent GTM executive who doesn't understand that pipe generation, pipeline development, closing deals, and prospecting for the next wave all need to be continuous processes...
Happens to me every day.
Great read, subscribed!