Episode 26, Part 2 - Fullcast & SBR: Win-Loss Truths and Why ICP Discipline Matters

Hello and welcome to the Growth Workshop Podcast. In this podcast, we'll be sharing insights and hearing from other industry leaders to get their thoughts and perspectives on what growth looks like in modern business. Jonny Adams: Quick fire question for each of you then. So if you think about we need to hit a goal, hit a target, we are isolating the sales velocity metrics as such.

How long does it take to start changing those metrics within an organization? Guy Rubin: We've got a number of case studies that showed transformation within three quarters. You start to see those changes really quickly. There's some real low hanging fruit, right?

Once we absolutely turn the television from black and white to color, you can't go back. So when you start to uncover where the low hanging fruit is, where the option, where the obvious issues are. A lot of the time, again, depending on who the sales leader is and how open the organization is and whether they've got a change agent there to execute is absolutely everything. As you rightly said, Jonny, the number of times I've gone in three months later and nothing has changed in the data now once they hear it a second time they start to realize actually, if we spent a little bit of money actually focused on this, the exponential results on the backend.

Apart from cash, just the valuation, the impact on your business, if you can get growth from in the teens up to 25, 30, 40%, you can have a massive impact on valuations as well. So once the penny drops with the leadership team that actually this stuff is real and it can be affected they start to, to run at pace. And we, and consistently, we find after three quarters that sales efficiency number really starts to skyrocket. That's brilliant.

Alan Morton: Yeah. The question just the question just takes me right back to a story from a couple of years ago now with global IT services business that we were working with like many in that space, it actually had an incredible journey in terms of, from founding through to, unicorn and beyond. And long ago we realized that size doesn't necessarily equal maturity. Lots of organizations do a great job of positioning themselves in the right place at the right time and capitalize, and frankly, they're brilliant at being bought from and then clearly as the tailwinds sometimes drop, they need to learn how to sell.

So we went in and looked at, and I wish we'd had Fullcast at that point because I think it would've surfaced a lot quicker. But very quickly what we were able to see is that there was a drop off in conversion rate over a certain deal size and I think all of us as revenue leaders will recognize that there's often a point where the complexity or the size of a deal, that there's a bit of a noticeable drop in terms of our conversion rates. As we dug into that, what we saw behaviorally is that where the conversion rate was standing up, it was down to some very simple behaviors.

Proposals were being presented. They weren't being sent at as simplistic as that seems. So just identifying that as a lever. We worked with the team to make sure that over a certain size there was the scrutiny, the accuracy, and that proposals were being presented and not sent.

And in that situation. In the quarter, they saw an uptick in their conversion rate just from that very simple behavior, which seems very obvious because I just pity these poor little orphan proposals that were being sent out into the world. And to your point, Dannii, some of the tooling rounds. Oh yeah, we can track where people are looking, it's like, why are you tracking where people are looking?

You should be having a conversation and answering questions and surfacing objections and dealing with the objections in real time. So, actually. How quickly can some of those levers be impacted? That's a specific example of where an organization in quarter was able to make a significant difference to their conversion rate, just because they were able to isolate a behavior that made the difference.

As I say, I wish we'd had Fullcast at the time, we'd have got there a lot quicker in terms of isolating that behavior, but it's those types of things. There's so much low hanging fruit out there we find in a lot of these organizations. Jonny Adams: Dannii. Dannii Mathers: Yeah and actually even when you were given that story, Alan, I was just thinking it's, and even down to the simple things of measuring that change.

Okay. Typically we were we were sending them so how many were we sending and then how many of those were we converting? Just even tracking those data points creates such a more of a momentum across the organization because then people see, oh, we've gone from this to this. But I, and I dunno why, but organizations, and maybe it's because there's always so much pressure and we've gotta do more, we've gotta do more that we're not taking that moment to step back and, okay, what moving the needle look at the levers.

Where can we get more like low hanging fruits and where's that kind of line in the sand we're measuring from now till that moment in time. I dunno why these figures don't get recorded, but it's just they change your behavior without that data proof to create more evidence, to create more adoption throughout an organization. Alan Morton: Yeah, completely. It's, it just time after time we'll see organizations that, there's the simplest measures and actually when we talk about win-loss win rates but actually just thinking about the simple conversion metrics, upper basic funnel.

Often there isn't that visibility in place for multiple reasons. Some of them are valid, but over the years, I guess the con, the consistent, conviction I've developed is sometimes it's just because of lack of focus. And actually often sales teams not recognizing how valuable it is for them to have that data so that they're disciplined enough to be tracking, but to your point, with the technology that's out there at the moment, we shouldn't have to rely on people manually inputting data.

We should have those numbers to hand at the moment. So that's, I think a great use case for technology is surfacing the data so that we can have the insights and then we can take the corrective action. Jonny Adams: So, chapter two, win-loss analysis. So what we're gonna do on this one, we are gonna keep this.

To the point, straight up and then we're gonna go to chapter three. So Guy gonna come to you to start off with chapter two, win-loss analysis. Just start with a definition just so we've got clarity across what is a win-loss analysis. And then if you could match it up with what would the report help us understand?

And again, Alan, Dannii gonna come straight to you for like, how we how we use some of that insights in the business. Guy Rubin: The challenge most organizations have in doing proper win-loss analysis is once again they just rely on what happens to be in Salesforce. Okay the reason we can deliver the depth of insights that we're able to is because our engine is able to connect to all these disparate sources and we can look at the data at source. For example I built Ebsta on the principle of of the relationships drive revenue.

And one of the cornerstone data points that we lean into a lot is our engagement score. So when we look back historically at the deals that have closed won and the deals that have closed lost, because we're connected to mailboxes and calendars and call recordings, we can actually score the engagement you had with every stakeholder involved in every sales process that took place over the last 12 months. So when you start to put that on a graph and you compare that to the deals that closed one and closed last, guess what?

The deals that were more engaged and were more multi-threaded and other ones that are winning more. But by how much and when does it matter and which personas matter at which stage of the sales cycle? So these are all signals that we can then surface and help the sellers and the leadership team understand what they need to set up as their gates and triggers as they progress through the sales cycle. Other data points that we touch on when we talk about win-loss analysis we're interested in in, for example, the attribution.

So what source is delivering the best outcome? And at the moment we're seeing anything that's got relationships related to it. Part emotions, community motions are working really well where you're building relationships, you're building credibility. The sales velocity on deals that are coming from those sources are really growing and going higher.

Funnily, interestingly enough, the AEs as well we're seeing are getting a really efficient outcome with the deals that they're self sourcing, 'cause they know what a good deal looks like and they're able to sniff it out as they go. On the other side of things, we're seeing the sales efficiency from things like BDRs and generic kind of marketing activities like events. Not all events, but the kind of the big events. In person dinner's great, right?

Turning up at a trade show, very expensive, not getting a great return on the leads that are coming through. And the biggest concern there isn't necessarily the the quality of the leads, although the win rates are usually in single digits from those sources. The biggest issue is the volume that they're able to get through. So with AI powering our BDRs, we can see 30, 40, 50% of the volume of leads now that are coming into the business are really low quality and being generated through this kind of AI supported, outbound function.

And it's, and what it's doing is only the very best sellers are keeping diligent and are being disciplined about only focusing on the real deals. While everybody else is, you know, I've just been ramped. I'm a new seller. I've been given a bunch of leads, I'm gonna start working my way through them without really understanding that actually not all leads are equal.

Jonny Adams: I, always just enjoy when you talk Guy. 'cause I'm always like, oh yeah, that thing. And the great thing is I don't have to answer the insights these two do. So, um, just thinking, Dannii, you're a, you're a Chief Revenue Officer, Okay.

And an organization of your choice, you, you've got that amazing insight like, one thing that you do with that insight to, to power your business forward, which bit would you cling onto? Dannii Mathers: I'd almost feel like, wanna, what he was saying, what guy was saying, I want to pick it up and then drop, mic drop 'cause so much of that information is just it really has, again, with the, with AI tools as well helping, helping shape, helping shape in a way that it's preventative.

So I think when you have access to all these, of this raw intelligence, it really helps with the prevention. So things like if I was a revenue revenue leader, understanding more about being more targeted with ICP because you immediately see those trends that information is widely available, which gives sellers more focus because they can see it in, in the data. As a, even as a leader you, you get to see flags far easier. So rather than waiting till you get to deal reviews and then you've got sellers telling you, this is why this isn't happening.

You almost don't need that at that point in time because you, these risks have been flagged far earlier on due to the data intelligence. So I just think now that the risks that appear in pipeline, they almost shouldn't be there because these preventative tools help us become much more effective, much more efficient, whether that's with stakeholder management, whether that's with ensuring you've got the right ICP, doing things in the, in, in the right timely order. I just think you've, yeah, you've got insight to help drive.

So yeah if I was a CRO, I'd be so excited to see that because you're not just looking at one point in time, you're looking at this holistic view of. What Shouldn't be entering your pipeline in the first place. And going back to your point where we're seeing this flood of real messy leads coming in, and this is where I think that really great, real great sellers are gonna have that advantage because they're still using these robust processes and some of the traditional methods that we know work when it comes to doing outreach, as opposed to, I've just got a hold of this tool for the first time.

Everyone tells me I should use it, and it's expecting a big result and getting very little returns and wonder, wondering why we've just got to be better with the data. Alan Morton: I've literally just come off the back of a conversation with a management team, a referral that came in to us from a partner and we're probably not the right fit at the moment. But I said to them. very clearly off the back of a very brief conversation that you know, the challenge that it sounds like they're having is they've fallen into the BDR trap and actually, this is an organization I'm sure will be very successful.

But they're outside of our ICP at the moment. So actually, qualify out it, it has to be the mantra still for all of us and it's the hardest thing for sellers to do because we are optimists and we love to see hope and we love to see that there's potential but actually their situation was when you very quickly look at the average deal size that they have, and then when you look at the deal volumes that they're gonna be doing. A BDR motion is not the right one, where the least skilled least experienced, least commercial individuals calling up high into an organization to get the time and the attention of some of the most time poor, challenging stakeholders that you're gonna need to engage with.

We see that all the time. And again, thinking about that structure so that people aren't being blindsided by the inbound, which isn't the right fit, and that you have the right people focused on the outbound and the self gen, which is more likely to convert. I think again, it goes back to having that visibility that is actually the track that you're most successful AEs are on. Where they're seeing anything that comes into them as the cherry on the cake.

They're not seeing it as the cake. And I can't tell you the number of, over the last 15, 18, however many years that I've been doing this, that the key thing that sits underneath it is shifting to a proactive culture and capability set within a sales organization where people aren't reliant and being distracted by the noise that's landing on them is the key thing. And unfortunately, to your point at the moment, and to your point Guy, we've got that problem's being exacerbated by a lot of that messy creation of leads at the top of the funnel, which is distracting people when they really should be focusing on what works as opposed to the noise that isn't gonna get one where they need to get to.

Jonny Adams: I think it's a, a great debate, when loss analysis. I'm gonna have to chime in just once in this conversation. We're working with one of the largest financial service organizations at the moment. And they used a fantastic partner to do an experiential environment to effectively take their sellers through the journey of what it feels like to win and what it feels to lose.

So I think not only can we take the data and insights from the win-loss analysis, but how does it make you feel? I think back, approximately 23 years ago, I remember it fondly when England won the the Rugby World Cup. Sir Clive Woodward, who was the manager at the time, talks a lot about how they did loss analysis, but they never did win analysis. And he brought that to the team and look what they did.

They won it. The Rugby World Cup. So I think there's a lot to take away about breaking belief barriers and enabling a team to feel and not just look at the data, try and solve, but how do you feel if you lose, how do you feel if you win? Alan Morton: I love that story by the way, but I just want to remind you, I am Scottish so if we could talk as little as possible about the England rugby team winning the World Cup that would be appreciated.

Jonny Adams: I was looking at your eyes, if you're listening to something audio, I was definitely looking at Alan. This has been awesome so far. Next topic of this amazing report. So seller coaching, what does it mean and what do we get to see?

Guy Rubin: What we're really trying to do is highlight what good looks like at every stage of every sales cycle. Okay? So we talked earlier about ICP, we surveyed just over 200 CROs and we found that two thirds of them are reviewing their ICP once a year or less. And I think it it's an area that needs a lot more attention than it's getting at the moment.

Really understanding the types of deals that are working and the signals that we're able to access now versus in the past. Now we talk about, in the past we might talk about an industry matching ICP or a size of business or their tech stack. We can now go much further and look at where is the company in their cycle. Have they just done a raise?

Yeah. You know who have they just employed? Have they made a change at the board? And all of these things can allow an opportunity to fall into or out of ICP.

And so we do a lot of, we try and look back at the historical data through the win-loss analysis and try and understand the efficiency of in certain ICP attributes. And then once we've done that, when we're looking at the seller coaching, we can start to see what proportion of the pipeline that they're working on actually matches that ICP. Alan Morton: Love that. Guy Rubin: Then we jump into then we're really interested in looking at their qualification methodology and their approach.

Okay. And you won't be surprised to hear that the sellers that are qualifying out more are the ones that are winning more. Okay. And we see this magic happen every time, every organization we go into, you build the leaderboards of the sellers and you see what proportion of the deals are progressing from one stage to the next.

And where they're seeing, where they're seeing slippage in the sales cycle. And the sellers that have got the discipline to invest the time and energy and see slippage in those very early stages 'cause they won't allow the deal to leave those early stages until they got the right buy-in from the right stakeholders, they've asked the right questions, they know about the critical events, the budgets, and so on. We see this magic happen late stage where very little slippage, very little attrition and the deals flow through the later stages.

While the less experienced sellers are spending far too much of their time, late stage, trying to push these deals through, when in fact they should never have qualified them through in the first place. And they're under pressure from managers to hold onto deals because maybe they haven't got enough coverage to hit their quota. And that it's not serving them down, down the road. So when we're talking about player coaching or seller coaching we're really building leaderboards and understanding where everyone's strengths and weaknesses are.

Because there's a, there's almost a Chinese menu of issues that sellers are gonna have, right? And every single one of 'em has got slightly different issues. Maybe you're really good at the MEDD, but very bad at the PICC, right? Or perhaps you are very good at at multithreading, but not with the right stakeholders.

All of these things come out as you start doing the analysis, and you can start building leaderboards of where they need attention. Now again, we don't do the change, but when we hand that information over to SBR, they're able to actually build programs of work that, that actually affect change and is much more bespoke to the individual sellers.