Hi there,
I'm writing this month's newsletter still in the RKO afterglow. People.ai had ours a few weeks back in San Francisco and it fired up the team for a great year ahead. I hope you're coming off your kickoffs with that same feeling.
Kickoff is my favorite time of the year as a sales leader. For many of us in sales organizations, the grind of closing out the year is exhausting. Kickoffs help us take a moment to pause and celebrate the success and hard work of the team, and then reset on strategy and goals for the upcoming year.
Here are my top takeaways from our RKO and what sales leaders should be thinking about:
💃 Sell with swagger
Confidence is contagious. Go into every conversation with swagger. Understand the unique value you bring to each conversation and let that certainty shine through.
- Showcasing confidence in your product will inspire others' confidence.
- The products we sell are something we stand behind, not just because it's our job, but because we are its most enthusiastic users.
- Every call, every demo, every negotiation – it’s your platform, your stage. Own it.
🎯 The art of the “aha!”
Efficiency is the new eloquence, folks. Time is precious. Ensure that insights hit home quickly in every interaction.
- Customer conversations need to hit the mark – faster.
- When are prospects having the "lightbulb moment?"
- Identify it, refine it, and lead with it.
- Make sure you are talking across your teams. Is this lightbulb moment the same across the board?
- Show, not tell. Demo > deck.
🧵 Multithreading, multithreading, multithreading
If you're not multithreading in your deals by now, you're playing a solo when you could be rocking a symphony.
- Single-threading puts deals and customers at risk and contributes to churn. NEVER lose a deal or customer because of single-threading.
- Multithreading is a must; it's how we ensure we’re several steps ahead, creating a web of relationship-driven solutions that catch every opportunity and increase deal velocity.
- Build multiple champions in every deal to win new logos and drive deep adoption of your product.
Here is a challenge for you. This week when you meet with your sales and customer success leadership and go through your top 10 deals and renewals, dig in and make sure you are multithreaded. If you’re not, make a plan to get multiple champions in each deal. You’ll be glad you did.
I use a People.ai dashboard that shows me not just activity data but who we are meeting with and if we are meeting with multiple stakeholders. It tells me where we’re weak and I can be proactive in addressing it.
🚀 People.ai product innovations
Of course, at RKO we dove into our product roadmap. As both sellers and power users of People.ai, the innovations coming from our product team are momentous!
Here are a few things on the horizon to get excited about:
- We are ingesting even more data sources into our platform. More data = better insights!
- Automated Opportunity Scorecards are coming. AI will complete the scorecard for your rep. They become the copilot and AI is the driver. This is going to save your team hours and hours. This only works because of the 8 years of innovation we put into our data foundation product. If you don’t have good data, your AI will quickly highlight that.
- Automated Executive Insights brings deal summaries to executives where they already work (e.g. your inbox). SalesAI will highlight issues in deals in real-time.
With our new CPO, Microsoft veteran Linda Simovic, leading the charge on product development, People.ai is paving the way for GTM AI. Our sales team can't wait to collaborate with the most forward-thinking GTM teams on these innovations.
Remember, sell with swagger, master the “lightbulb” moment, and multithread, multithread, multithread.
Be bold. Sell smart.
Laura
Laura Palmer
Chief Revenue Officer | People.ai
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