The Sales Acceleration Formula - Mark Roberge  ## Metadata - Author: **Mark Roberge** - Full Title: The Sales Acceleration Formula - Category: #books ## Highlights - “World-class sales hiring is the most important driver of sales success.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0vm44ebgw7zvbrne8ayxk5)) - When the unique strengths of the salesperson align with the company's sales context, it is a beautiful thing. When they do not, it becomes an uphill battle. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0vqpm2rydyygxmxwwwr9rq)) - [Sam Salesperson] “Hi, Pete, this is Sam from HubSpot. I noticed you requested more information on our website. What questions did you have?” [Prospect Pete] “I did? Sorry, I do not remember that. What is HubSpot?” [Sam Salesperson] “We are an inbound marketing software company.” [Prospect Pete] “What is inbound marketing?” [Sam Salesperson] “Inbound marketing allows you to attract visitors to your website and turn those visitors into qualified sales leads for your company.” [Prospect Pete] “Hmmm. How does that work?” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0vvc5c3n0v68kchwaj5zp2)) - *The ideal sales hiring formula is different for every company*…*but the process to engineer the formula is the same*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0vx1a451zb4sxt3kskp2jt)) - Step 1: Establish a Theory of the Ideal Sales Characteristics ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0vzne17g17c2021143eyx6)) - Step 2: Define an Evaluation Strategy for Each Characteristic ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0vzqst2vd1ke847ws7fhna)) - “The ideal sales hiring formula is different for every company…but the process to engineer the formula is the same.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0vzcvb79jqn2bx708mjv7r)) - Step 3: Score Candidates against the Ideal Sales Characteristics ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0vzstns5kxgkf9hrt4spe6)) - Step 4: Learn and Iterate on the Model while Engineering the Sales Hiring Formula ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0w0kjwc8jbexr64t8tbav4)) -  ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0w19w3kggbcg628xqjnn63)) - “Statistics suggest salespeople who are intelligent and helpful, rather than aggressive and high-pressure, are most successful with today's empowered buyer.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0w31r5hvtzc8tak2ym9kw1)) - *Statistics suggest salespeople who are intelligent and helpful, rather than aggressive and high-pressure, are most successful with today's empowered buyer*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0w3xsete8271x6vt43dmdt)) - To Recap • World-class sales hiring is the biggest driver of sales success. • The ideal sales hiring formula is different for every company, but the process to engineer the formula is the same. • Statistics suggest salespeople who are intelligent and helpful, rather than aggressive and high-pressure, are most successful with today's empowered buyer. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0w47522zd8aab94xrf5722)) -  [**Figure 2.1**](#_backF1) HubSpot Sales Candidate Assessment ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0w4z62c4hphfhn29pe3vxv)) - Coachability: the ability to absorb and apply coaching. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wc2h57p3463dtrjr6186c)) - Step 1: Set Up a Role-Playing Exercise That Models Your Buyer Context ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wafz4nrmytvre63raj170)) - Step 2: Evaluate the Candidate's Ability to Self-Diagnose ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wakad8c4vff9jwxn54hrr)) - Step 3: Evaluate the Candidate's Ability to Absorb and Apply Coaching ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wapv7k242v9p55b4qwe4w)) - Prior success: a history of top performance or remarkable achievement. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wbw2dgqdqfy3ksm08e3wy)) - Intelligence: the ability to learn complex concepts quickly and communicate those concepts in an easy-to-understand manner. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wbjr8gmr0jq2pcy394pef)) - Work ethic: proactively pursuing the company mission with a high degree of energy and daily activity. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wc7xkmd4styvccxxbskhj)) - Great salespeople never have to apply for a job ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wd41kn63q6stjzn7skjex)) - Build a Recruiting Agency within Your Company ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0we42yhh1hj415h7zhk9z5)) - Don't hire a recruiting agency. Don't build a corporate recruiting team. Build a recruiting agency within your corporation. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wet0p8237z6pvhvy08c16)) - Find Quality Passive Sales Candidates on LinkedIn ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wezwjd9w79f2qm9bb3915)) - Step 1: Leverage the Search Capability within LinkedIn to Source a List of Qualified Candidates ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wf2bn22721nmhc75pxrsy)) - Find Quality Passive Sales Candidates through Your Team: The “Forced Referral” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wf8w5b4abjr8yt6s0cyb7)) - • *Candidate 1: The SVP of Sales* • This candidate used to be the SVP of Global Sales for the Fortune 1000 company you hope to disrupt. He has 25 years of sales experience. In his SVP role at the Fortune 1000 competitor, he ran the entire 500-person sales team and oversaw $2 billion in annual revenue. • *Candidate 2: The #1 Salesperson* • This candidate worked under the SVP of Sales. He is currently the top salesperson on the 500-person sales team at the Fortune 1000 competitor you're looking to disrupt. He has three years of experience in frontline sales. • *Candidate 3: The Entrepreneur* • Until recently, this candidate was CEO of her two-year-old start-up, which just ran out of capital. Prior to running her own start-up, she was a salesperson at a large company. The company is known for breeding salespeople with excellent fundamentals, but she has very little sales experience with your target buyer context. • *Candidate 4: The Sales Manager* • This candidate works at a large company with a large sales team. She was promoted to sales manager six months ago. She earned the promotion because she was a top sales rep and demonstrated exceptional leadership potential to build and develop her own team. She doesn't have much experience selling to your target buyer. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wken67cb83wrta9s8d5qv)) - **The entrepreneur (candidate 3) is my most desirable candidate.** Here are the pros of the entrepreneur: • *Entrepreneurial instinct.* Of all the candidates on the table, the entrepreneur is most likely to accelerate the company toward the right product/market fit. In fact, this aspect of her role will probably be the element about which she is most passionate. Given how important that piece is, her skills here are tremendously valuable. She will dig in with prospective customers to learn about their challenges, opportunities, perspectives, and priorities. She likely has the entrepreneurial instinct to step back from these conversations and help the CEO and the product team to identify the patterns and understand where to pivot. • *Sales fundamentals.* I also love that she has received formal sales training and gained experience at a large organization. These fundamentals should enable her to engineer the appropriate sales methodology and structure it for scale. • *Leadership potential.* Her entrepreneurial experience has likely equipped her with the experience and ability to lead. Here are the cons of the entrepreneur: • *Sales management fundamentals.* She has probably never hired or managed a salesperson before. Despite this weakness, I would still bet on her ability to get me through the product/market fit phase of the business. Once that's established, I can monitor her reasonably closely as she begins to hire and develop salespeople. • *Industry knowledge.* Like the sales manager, she does not have experience with your target buyer and will need to scale the learning curve. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wk2qzeb5w6k74ms8980qb)) - Train Your Salespeople to Experience the Day-to-Day Job of Potential Customers ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wmdfgfdv7w7zfpbc0nb21)) - Motivation through Sales Compensation Plans and Contests ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wn6cz019f7kpazahsf3rm)) - Developing Sales Leaders—Advantages of a “Promote from Within” Culture ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wp4vnxjfbkjntg2xw5kbv)) - The Most Common Mistake: Don't Pass All the Leads to Sales ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0ws7ayxhmvs5fs72hrdzjx)) -  ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wss6n8g92ke4dpxebxzqg)) - Outbound sales is represented by the graphic on the left. Outbound sales campaigns start with a list of leads that are presumably a good “fit” for the business. If the company targets the Fortune 5000 telecom industry, the company purchases a list of CEOs from the Fortune 5000 telecom industry. Then, Sales and Marketing go to work on that list as aggressively as possible with direct mail, email spam, targeted advertising, and cold calls hoping that 1 percent of the purchased leads respond to these forms of interruptive, outbound selling. The leads that indeed respond probably have some form of “pain”, which triggers the response. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wtaxemf59ce3z5xcdm4a4)) - Inbound selling is represented by the graphic on the right. The inbound graphic is an inverse representation of the outbound graphic. Most of the leads generated from inbound marketing have a “pain” that needs to be solved. Why else would they have conducted the Google search, read the blog article, or downloaded the ebook? Unfortunately, not all of the inbound leads are a good “fit.” Some of the leads are perfect prospects, because they are executives from the Fortune 5000 telecom industry. These are beautiful leads. They represent the right person at the right company, and they have a pain that your product can solve. However, some of the leads are not a good fit. Some of the leads are PhD students from Asia, simply doing research for their dissertations. These leads will probably never be buyers of your product. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wtcxn0q2r357dyzn1zmmy)) -  [**Figure 11.2**](#_backF2) Buyer Persona/Buyer Journey Matrix ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0wxnq2crmfx6cg4zt5ayzy)) -  [**Figure 11.3**](#_backF3) Analyzing When to Pass Leads to Sales ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0x48yzgcgdyfhnh1jtxs8c)) - Scrap the Elevator Pitch—Lead with Context ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0x7360fx83j5d3bb1eww00)) - Accelerate Lead Sourcing with Technology ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0x9ady7g383r5v1hk36r3y)) - At the surface layer, I hope this book has presented you with some useful tactics around building a sales team in a scalable, predictable way. I hope that my anecdotes provide a blueprint for how you can effectively hire, train, and manage a high-performing sales team. I hope that you appreciate the power of executing an inbound selling model and empowering your organization with a culture of experimentation. I hope, too, that you understand the competitive advantage that can be unleashed for your business with the proper adoption of sales technology, benefiting both your salespeople and your customers. Beneath the surface, I hope this book has inspired you to challenge the norm as you scale sales. I prefaced almost every anecdote with a word of caution that the tactics discussed worked in our context, but may not work in yours. Constantly seek out the latest, best practices; study the sales strategies of the most successful companies. However, appreciate how your buyer context is special. Only apply the strategies that are relevant to your team and product. Challenge the norm in the areas in which you are unique. Innovate. Share your learnings. Contribute to the field of sales. That leads us to the final layer. At its core, I have an aspirational hope and dream that this book contributes to a foundation of new sales philosophies that fundamentally change the sales field. An evolution such as this has not happened in quite some time, and it is much needed. Let me explain. For decades, thought leaders in both academia and the business community have cast doubt on the notion that sales and sales leadership skills can be taught. It is difficult—almost impossible—to find a major in sales. And yet, effective sales execution is arguably one of the most important drivers of company success. Despite the current lack of formal training programs, I am optimistic about the future. In the past year, I have been approached by at least a dozen leaders in the academic and business communities looking to challenge the status quo and assemble a formal curriculum in sales. I hope more influencers embrace these efforts in the years to come. The best and brightest students graduating from top universities have, for many years, pursued rewarding careers as investment bankers, management consultants, engineers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and doctors. Traditionally, they have delegated the sales jobs to their less-accomplished peers. However, I am confident that this will change. In the last few years, I have seen a renewed interest in sales by top students from the world's best universities. These students see that many Fortune 500 CEOs' careers started in sales and appreciate the importance of sales in almost every aspect of entrepreneurial success. They understand the financial rewards of a high-performing career in sales. Over the years, buyers have migrated from reluctantly engaging with salespeople to proactively avoiding them. Salespeople are notoriously regarded as manipulative, deceitful, and borderline unethical. It is these perceptions, and the behaviors that create them, that will lead to the continued degradation of the sales profession. We need to embrace the early incubation of modern sales tactics in order to change this stigma. Salespeople should be thought of as helpful advisors and respected thought leaders. They should be sought after in times of crisis, just as doctors are, and their diagnoses should be taken seriously. As both buyers and sellers, we should all want this evolution for the sales field. We need to accelerate the journey toward this vision; however, I don't know how. This is where I need your help. Somebody out there holds the most important element of the sales acceleration formula: improving the underlying global perception of sales itself. Perhaps it is you. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jg0xahfjjzrx0gs8gf8g196a)) - • “Hire the same successful salesperson every time.” (*The Sales Hiring Formula*) • “Train every salesperson in the same way.” (*The Sales Training Formula*) • “Hold our salespeople accountable to the same sales process.” (*The Sales Management Formula*) • “Provide our salespeople with the same quality and quantity of leads every month.” (*The Demand Generation Formula*) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jfxahrrk1fve6rn0xbqrmq1d))