Sales Process Optimization

When I was CRO of a $200M SaaS, doing POCs almost destroyed us—months wasted, team exhausted, buyers constantly delaying. Until my VP Sales said, “Kill the POC. We’ll validate value clearly in 3 hours flat”. Here's exactly how we rebuilt our sales process and cut our sales cycle by 50%: BACKGROUND: We were selling 100% enterprise. POCs were the automatic default: Heavy, technical validation lasting 1-3 months. It was painful… - Sales Engineers were overloaded - Buyers kept delaying due to resource issues - Buyers kept wanting more “just one more test” Initially, I thought: It’s Enterprise, that’s the game right? Until our VP Sales, Idan Arealy, joined. Two weeks in, he tells me: “No offense—but these POCs are total overkill.” “Buyers don’t need these endless tests.” “They’re not doubting the tech.” “They’re doubting the value.” “And we don’t need this complexity to prove value.” So he suggested a simpler, smarter alternative: The 'Use Case Workshop'—and it changed everything. Here’s the step-by-step: —— 1. Kickoff (45 min) - AE positions the workshop immediately post-demo: “Here’s what we typically do next to help validate real-world scenarios in just hours—no heavy lift needed. Shall we set it up?" - SE runs deeper disco into problem root causes in a kickoff call - AE sets clear Mutual Action Plan (MAP) 2. Internal Alignment (60 min) - SE & AE clearly define and build initial use-case solutions - Output: Slides outlining impactful solutions & open questions 3. Use Case Co-Design (45 min) - Live session with buyers walking through scenarios - Collaboratively refine solutions LIVE (e.g. Miro, slides): “Walk me through this problem in more detail—we’ll map exactly how solving it looks." 4. Prioritization & Wrap Up (30 min) - Jointly prioritize top 3 impactful use cases clearly: "Which scenarios, solved, would immediately solve [Problem]?" - Lock down committed next steps ↳ Result? - 3 focused hours (instead of months) - Clear, confident buyers ready to champion - 100% faster sales cycles & higher win rates —— POCs are NOT mandatory. Buyers don't want endless tests. Don’t default to what most buyers ask. Design what will solve what they need— With as little friction as possible. That's: Sales Process Design 101. P.S. We built Aligned to help manage the chaos of Complex Sales. 100% FREE Deal Room used by 40K AEs to run POCs, MAPs, etc. Try it https://lnkd.in/d_49kHZE

Pre-sales is dead. Post-sales is dead too. Whether you talk about an infinity loop, bowtie, Mobius strip or other geometric shape, what’s universally true is that companies are moving away from dated models that fracture between before and after contract signature. To this point, Jean-Charles Renoux, Ori Entis and I brought together several respected Revenue Operations leaders to talk about changes in teams, processes and technology to support a more integrated customer journey. We discussed org structures and it’s fascinating that there are multiple models, each with pros and cons: 1. Some put sales ops under a CRO and CS/CX ops under a CCO. This allows for strong functional alignment and autonomy. 2. Others have an integrated RevOps org under a COO with sub-leaders for sales ops and CS ops. This drives better integration across the customer journey. 3. Some put this integrated function under a CRO. Inevitably, since it’s 2025, we talked about how AI is being used in RevOps teams: * Creating simulations for sales reps to test their pitches in a “safe environment.” * Automating RFP responses. * Competitive research. * Route planning for their field agents. * 100% automated voice prospecting. I asked what was the biggest challenge they had in terms of aligning pre and post sales. Universally, the answer was the one that’s always been the challenge - “the handoff.” Some of the solutions were uber-creative: * Required Salesforce fields to capture the client’s goals before an opportunity is closed-won. * Automatically creating slack channels per region when a new deal closes - with the CSM, AE and TAM as members. * Assigning a CSM at the “commit” stage to allow for the handoff to be done well and giving the CSM the key to validate that the client is ready for a handoff. * Creating a deal room with a “mutual action plan” between the vendor and the client and then handing that artifact off to the CSM. * Inferring client objects from sales recorded calls. * Almost all of them automated pushing these objectives into Gainsight. One attendee shared that they found that deals that had goals filled out had a 2X higher customer satisfaction rate than those that didn’t! It’s so exciting that we’re moving beyond the silo-ed world of “pre-“ and “post-“ sales. And AI will help us get there! Thanks to Mandarachalam Aruchamy Franklin Fredrik Bayley Fesler Heidi Thompson Sonam Dabholkar Adam Josephson Shaun Martin Melissa Allen Beth Anne Altamura Justin Miller Patrick Sweny for adding so much to the dialog! What do you do to streamline the handoff between your Sales and #CustomerSuccess teams?

Three dashboards. Three different answers. One company. We were in a board prep meeting for a $12M ARR SaaS business. Marketing said pipeline was up 42%. Sales said deals were “strong.” Finance said cash was tighter than expected. All technically true. And completely disconnected. The CEO looked at me and said, “Why does it feel like we’re growing… but not winning?” That’s when we pulled the thread. Marketing was optimizing for MQL volume. Sales was comped on closed-won revenue. CS incentivized on renewals, not expansion. Finance was modeling burn on bookings, not cash collected. Everyone was hitting their number. The company wasn’t. That’s not a sales problem. That’s not a marketing problem. That’s a RevOps problem. And RevOps isn’t CRM hygiene or a better dashboard. It’s economic alignment. We rebuilt the system in three moves: ① Defined a single source of truth for pipeline stages tied to revenue recognition rather than lead status. ② Shifted marketing compensation to pipeline quality (stage progression + win rate), not just top-of-funnel. ③ Modeled CAC payback and expansion revenue by cohort so every growth experiment tied back to enterprise value. Nothing flashy. No new headcount. No AI wizardry. Just alignment. Six months later: Win rate improved 11%. Sales cycle shortened by 18 days. NRR climbed from 101% to 123%. Burn multiple dropped below 1.2. Same team. Same product. Different system. Here’s the thing most founders miss: Growth is not a volume game. It’s a coordination game. If Marketing, Sales, CS, and Finance are optimizing different outcomes, you don’t have a growth engine. You have four very busy teams. The best RevOps leaders I know don’t obsess over dashboards. They obsess over incentives. Because incentives drive behavior. Behavior drives metrics. Metrics drive valuation. If your board meeting feels confusing, it’s probably not because your growth is unclear. It’s because your economics are. End stop.

⏱️ 30 minutes. That’s how long it used to take our reps to build a single quote! Multiply that by ∼ 500 quotes a year = 250 hours of lost selling time. We run a $3M+ outbound engine and every minute matters. So, to fix this, we had to rebuild our quoting from scratch. Here’s how it works now 👇 1️⃣ Discovery: Reps capture ICP fit, blockers, and budget directly in the CRM during the call. 2️⃣ Auto-draft: PandaDoc pulls those fields into a branded proposal template. 3️⃣ Smart pricing: CPQ logic applies bundles, discounts, and approval thresholds automatically. 4️⃣ Routing: Legal tweaks, Big discounts, whatever it is gets instant routing for approval. 5️⃣ Signals: Reps track doc opens + where buyers spend time. 6️⃣ Close: Buyer signs + pays in-doc, CRM flips to Closed-Won, Done. Here are the results we had so far 👇 ✔️ 30+ minutes saved per deal ✔️ Proposals go out the same day, with real buyer context ✔️ Approval cycles went from days to hours ✔️ Sales cycles move faster, so revenue is generated sooner Don't think of the way you handle quotes as admin work. It’s part of the buyer experience, and it can win or lose the deal.  👉 Want to see how this looks in action? Check out PandaDoc: http://bit.ly/3IKLOuf #pandadocpartner #salesops #revops #outbound

𝗠𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗔𝗜 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗳𝗮𝗶𝗹 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼��𝗲𝗹 𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗽𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗲𝗱. The team starts with the model. Then tries to wrap a workflow around it. That order is the problem. A real production AI system is a workflow first. The model is one layer inside it. Here is the architecture I keep coming back to. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝟳 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 → Input — what starts the workflow? → Context — what information does the AI need? → Decision — what should the AI classify, summarize, or generate? → Tool or Action — what system does it touch? → Validation — how is the result checked? → Human approval — where is judgment required? → Output — what does success look like? If you can't answer these in plain language, the model will not save you. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝟴 𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗮 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗳𝗹𝗼𝘄 A. Trigger Layer — how work begins. User query, email, ticket, uploaded file, meeting note. B. Context Assembly Layer — gather the right inputs. Docs, policies, CRM, database, past history, vector search, examples. C. AI / Decision Layer — interpret, reason, generate. Classify, summarize, route, draft, extract. D. Tool Orchestration Layer — take action through systems. GitHub, Slack, Postgres, API, email, calendar, ticketing. E. Validation and Guardrails — check before action. Schema check, policy check, confidence threshold, source and citation check, test and verification. F. Human-in-the-Loop — approval where risk is high. Legal, finance, external send, security, customer-impacting action. G. Output and Action — what the workflow produces. Draft email, updated ticket, report, alert, code change, dashboard update. H. Feedback and Improvement — close the loop. Logs, user feedback, evaluations, prompt updates, memory updates. Each layer has a job. Skip one and the system breaks in production. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆 → Clear inputs — define the trigger and required data. → Reliable context — the right docs, history, and business rules. → Action boundaries — limit what tools and systems AI can touch. → Validation — verify structure, accuracy, and policy compliance. → Human oversight — approvals where business risk exists. → Continuous improvement — learn from logs, evaluations, and feedback. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗲 AI should operate inside a workflow, not outside it. Every action needs context, validation, and accountability. Production AI = reasoning + tools + controls + review. Don't start with the model. Start with the workflow. Where do most teams get stuck first — context assembly, validation, or human approval?

After 11 years at Dropbox & Asana, I’ve seen one pattern crush more PLG companies than anything else: premature sales hiring. Companies see a few hand-raisers and then rapidly build an enterprise sales team. Six months later: weak pipeline, frustrated reps, and a compromised PLG motion. Instead, here’s how to scale Product-Led Sales (PLS) without killing your growth engine: ✋ Step 0: Wait for Hand-Raisers Resourcing: 1/10 (mainly patience!) - Respond to organic demand: users asking to “buy more” or “buy for my team” - Add “Contact Sales” CTAs (pricing, billing, nav), close deals at your “sales floor” (~$10K+, around credit card limits) - Graduate when you have enough inbound for one FTE 💡 No hand-raisers? Don’t hire sales. Improve your PLG motion first. Once you have enough hand raisers, you can layer on three different PLS mechanisms: 🌱 Land & Expand with Product-Qualified Leads (PQLs) Resourcing: 3/10 (ops + inbound sales) - Score users on buying intent via firmographics + product usage, route top leads to sales - Encourage work emails, enrich domains, layer usage signals (activation, $10K+ spend trajectory), iterate scoring over 12-18 months - Most successful when users are also buyers (devs, designers, analysts), fails when users lack buying influence 💡 Lowest resource investment, highest success rate when persona fit is right 🐸 Leapfrog: Turn PLG Traffic into Sales Leads Resourcing: 5/10 (web, CRO, PMM, Sales Enablement, Sales) - Create parallel enterprise paths without disrupting self-serve - Add dual CTAs (“Start free” + “Talk to sales”), optimize sales forms for lead quality not volume, build buyer content (demos, ROI calculators, security pages…) - Most successful with high web traffic, fails when you over-pivot to enterprise and erode PLG funnel 💡 Scales enterprise pipeline faster than organic PQLs but requires new value props and enablement 💬 Leverage Brand & Product for Executive Access Resourcing: 10/10 (outbound marketing & sales) - Use product & company rep to independently engage senior buyers - Host conferences with executive tracks, leverage champions for leadership intros, launch exec demand gen campaigns… - Most successful with dual personas (junior users + senior buyers), strong brand halo & senior exec value prop, fails when you hire sales leaders without PLS experience or create PLG vs Sales attribution wars 💡 Highest investment & biggest deals, but requires right leadership and org structure Bottom line: don’t just ask “when should we hire sales?” Ask “what assets does my PLG motion give me to work with?” The answer is your roadmap.

Most sales VPs I talk to are frustrated. Their teams hit numbers sporadically. Deals slip. Reps plateau. They feel like they're babysitting adults instead of leading high performers. (Is this you?) Here's what I learned scaling teams to multiple 9 figures while hitting President's Club every single year: → High performance isn't about talent. It's about systems. The same 3 pillar system I used as a frontline leader (and now teach to sales VPs at 8 and 9-figure companies) can transform your team from reactive to proactive. PILLAR 1: Systematic Weekly 1-on-1s Not check ins. Performance drivers. 🔹Have THEM verbalize their numbers 🔹Review specific action items from last week 🔹Set crystal clear next actions (so specific a 2nd grader could understand) 🔹Use a pre-meeting form to drive self-awareness PILLAR 2: Weekly Scoreboards Visibility drives behavior. Period. 🔹Stack rank by your most important KPI 🔹Send every Monday morning 🔹Everyone sees where they stand 🔹Celebrate top performers publicly PILLAR 3: Strategic Call Shadowing This is where transformation happens. 🔹Plan monthly in advance 🔹Require agenda with minimum 3 calls 🔹Coach in real-time, not a week later 🔹Start with what they did well, then max 3 improvements If your AE can't prepare a solid half day for their sales leader, what are they doing when you're not watching? The result of this system: → Reps know exactly where they stand and what to do next → Problems surface early, not at quarter-end → Your team CRAVES feedback because they know it drives results → You hit bigger numbers without needing heroics every quarter Bottom line: Stop managing by hope. Start leading with systems. Your team (and your numbers) will thank you. — Ready to systemize your sales leadership? Book a call to see how we can implement this in your organization: https://lnkd.in/ghh8VCaf

As I meet more people, especially budding tech founders, a recurring question is about leveraging partnerships as a revenue channel. One key aspect that often stands out in these discussions is identifying the right partner. The right partnership can provide up to 80% leverage in your ROI by aligning perfectly with your goals and capabilities. Consider the example of a health tech startup partnering with a large hospital chain. By integrating their cutting-edge telemedicine platform with the hospital's extensive network, the startup was able to provide virtual health services to a vast number of patients. This partnership enabled the startup to scale rapidly and gain credibility in the healthcare market, while the hospital chain could offer innovative services to their patients without developing the technology in-house. To help identify the right partner, I recommend using a simple framework like the "PARTNER" scoring model: - 'P'urpose Alignment: Do your missions and goals align? - 'A'ccess to Market: Can they help you reach new or larger markets? - 'R'esource Complementarity: Do they offer resources you lack and vice versa? - 'T'rust and Reliability: Can you trust them to deliver consistently? - 'N'etwork Synergy: Do their connections and networks benefit you? - 'E'conomic Benefit: Is the partnership financially advantageous? - 'R'eputation: Does partnering with them enhance your brand image? By scoring potential partners on these criteria, you can identify the one that offers the best strategic fit and highest potential for ROI. #B2BPartnerships #TechFounders #BusinessGrowth #StrategicAlliances image - courtesy to Freepik

"Stop sending follow-up emails" That's what I told a struggling VP of Sales last month His team was sending 8,000+ emails weekly Converting almost none of them He thought I was insane Until we implemented a "no follow-up" policy and their pipeline exploded → Here's what most sales leaders miss: Your prospects aren't ignoring you because you haven't followed up enough They're ignoring you because you haven't said anything worth responding to After auditing 50+ B2B sales processes, I've found the same pattern: - 8+ follow-up emails to the same prospect - Each one more desperate than the last - Generic templates with fake personalization - Zero actual value added All while sales managers chant "persistence pays off!" The brutal truth? It doesn't One client was sending 14-touch sequences to every lead Their final response rate? A pathetic 0.7% We completely redesigned their approach: - Cut all automated follow-ups - Created industry-specific research for each target account - Developed 3 unique insights for every prospect - Built a "no pitch" first conversation model The results : - Response rate jumped to 20% - Meetings-to-opportunity conversion: Up 200% - Sales cycle: Reduced from 107 days to 70 - Team morale: Transformed overnight The most expensive myth in modern sales is that quantity of touches matters more than quality of insight Your prospects don't need another "just checking in" email They need someone who fundamentally understands their business challenges What if you deleted all your follow-up templates today and replaced them with actual business insights? That's not just a sales strategy That's a competitive advantage P.S. If you need help with your sales, send me a message

**Maximizing B2B Marketing Success: The Power of Including Channel Partners in Your Strategy** In today’s competitive B2B landscape, a robust marketing strategy is essential. However, one critical element often overlooked is the inclusion of channel partners. Integrating these partners into your marketing plan can significantly amplify your reach, enhance brand credibility, and drive sales growth. Here’s why and how you should include channel partners in your B2B marketing strategy: **1. Amplified Reach and Visibility** Channel partners have established networks and customer bases that you can leverage. By collaborating with them, you can extend your brand’s reach far beyond your direct efforts. Co-branded marketing initiatives, joint webinars, and shared content can introduce your products or services to new, highly relevant audiences. **2. Enhanced Credibility and Trust** Trust is a cornerstone of B2B relationships. Channel partners often have long-standing relationships with their clients, who trust their recommendations. **3. Optimized Resource Utilization** Channel partners can provide additional resources for your marketing efforts. They can contribute to content creation, share insights on customer preferences, and participate in events or campaigns. This not only saves time and costs but also enriches your marketing initiatives with diverse perspectives and expertise. **4. Improved Customer Engagement** Channel partners often have deep insights into their customers’ needs and pain points. Collaborating with them allows you to tailor your marketing messages more effectively, ensuring they resonate with the target audience. **5. Increased Sales and Revenue** Ultimately, the goal of any marketing strategy is to drive sales and revenue. Channel partners can play a pivotal role in this by actively promoting your products or services. Their involvement can accelerate the sales cycle and open up new opportunities, leading to increased revenue growth. **How to Effectively Include Channel Partners in Your Marketing Strategy:** - **Develop a Collaborative Plan:** Work closely with your channel partners to create a joint marketing plan. Align your goals, define roles, and set clear expectations to ensure everyone is on the same page. - **Leverage Joint Marketing Initiatives:** Engage in co-marketing activities such as webinars, whitepapers, and case studies. These initiatives can showcase the combined expertise of both parties and provide valuable content to your audience. - **Provide Marketing Support:** Equip your channel partners with the necessary tools and resources. Offer training, marketing collateral, and access to your marketing platforms to enable them to effectively promote your products. - **Measure and Optimize:** Track the performance of your joint marketing efforts. Analyze the results, gather feedback, and make data-driven adjustments to continuously improve the effectiveness of your strategy.