April 14, 2025 • 17 mins
In part 2 with Matt Milligan, co-founder of Uhubs, the discussion delves into the differences between software sales and consulting sales, and the need for a consultative approach in both fields. Matt talks about AI in sales processes and the profile of high-performing salespeople. He explains that AI tools can automate significant portions of sales workflows, leading to increased efficiency and performance. The conversation also touches on the evolving role of Chief Revenue Officers (CROs), who need to be data-literate and have strong revenue operations (RevOps) support. Milligan introduces the RISE framework (Revenue Skills, Impactful Behaviours, Strategic Process Execution, Expert Knowledge) as a structured approach to assessing and improving sales capabilities, ultimately driving revenue growth.
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Episode Transcript
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Matt Best (00:00):
Welcome back to the Growth Workshop Podcast with
(00:02):
myself, Matt Best and JonnyAdams, and part two of our
conversation with Matt Milligan.Talking about the difference
between software sales and andselling consulting. And Jonny,
you described this, and I mightbutcher this slightly, but you
described it as a lot ofconsulting sales is maybe less
tangible. So it's much, it's adifferent, arguably a more
complex, sale than going out andsaying, we've got a platform
(00:25):
that does this. What it does isit encourages more of a
consultative sale, more of anoutcome focused sale. And you
could absolutely see whytechnology businesses selling
large enterprise contracts wouldwant to bring that capability
into their business.
Jonny Adams (00:38):
Totally. As someone that's been in
consulting and also, and I'mgoing to elaborate on your
question, someone's been inconsulting and also works, has
built a product based softwarefirm. My view in the market is
that account executives, SeniorAccount Executives, who get paid
a good amount of money in a SaaSfirm, do not have a strategic
(01:00):
mindset towards selling. That'squite a blunt comment, but I'm
going to stand by that commentyou. I believe that you know,
the consultative approach is isvaluable in both consulting and
also as a senior account managerin a product based sale. Am I
talking rubbish? Is that truefrom your point of view, and
whatever way you go, yes or no,but why do people not have a
(01:23):
consultative mindset whenthey're selling software at that
senior they're getting paid150,000 200,000 pound a year.
Why do they not display thatconsultative approach?
Matt Milligan (01:33):
My instant answer or perspective on that would be,
it's not black and white, andthe reason is that high
performing AES at softwarecompanies, particularly if
they're selling bigger ticketdeals and slightly complex
solution, they have to have thatsolution sales mindset, right?
So the best enterprise sellersare absolutely solution oriented
(01:54):
and can navigate those complexsales cycles. Otherwise they
just wouldn't be in the role orall wouldn't last long. If
they're an organization with aneffective performance management
setup, I do definitelyacknowledge your point that I
think sellers that come fromthat consultative background
have developed a muscle that isactually a difficult muscle to
build, because you're right,like when you're selling
(02:15):
services, it's much lesstangible. It's like you're kind
of creating something out ofnothing. Obviously, you've got
frameworks and tools that you'reusing right and I think that's
partly why we're seeing maybe abit of a shift towards that
profile and that skill set,because we can equip them with
the negotiation skills and a bitmore of a commercial mindset,
but to build that consultativemuscle, that takes time and that
(02:37):
takes experience. You know, Ithink about my own experience,
of how I did it was throughimmersion and watching partners
at EY navigate theserelationships and, you know, put
these really bespoke solutionstogether. And also, the other
thing I'd always hark back to isthe way in which they would take
learnings from one client andthen they'd go down the road to
(02:59):
that client's biggestcompetitor, but, but that is,
that's what you're paying for,right? If you're a CEO, you're
like, well, give me all thethings that didn't work when you
did it with that company, andwe're going to do it 10 times
better.
Jonny Adams (03:10):
I mean, my background was 10 years in B to
C selling, and people are like,Well, what does that mean? It's
effectively high transaction.Did it need much consultation?
Probably not as much as what wewould look at in a B to B world,
yeah, and I was fortunate enoughthen, who's my current Managing
Director, Stuart Lotherington,you talk about immersing
yourself 100% I advocate forthat. But the challenge now is
(03:34):
that in this software as aservice environment people, it's
fact that we see them in actionas a consultancy firm, and they
are not strategic enough in thatconsultative approach. Do you
think there's some type of AI ortechnology, or even maybe Uhubs
can offer that? Is there aplatform out there that would
allow you know someone, maybewith that software based
approach, to actually immersethemselves with an AI bot that
(03:57):
could actually learn throughthat way? Have you ever see any
of that going on at the moment?
Matt Milligan (04:02):
Perhaps not exactly what you're describing,
but I think just on the AIpoint, there's something really
important here, becauseeverything we've just spoken
about in terms of the profile ofa high performance salesperson
AI rips up all of that, likeliterally everything that we
know as a best practice today isin the process of getting
rewritten right now. And I thinkabout that in two key, key
(04:24):
buckets, if you like. I thinkabout it as one is process. So
the sales process and how youactually run a sales workflow
from point A to point B iscompletely like the playbooks.
The old playbooks gone.
Jonny Adams (04:37):
But explain why, because you've got feeling. I'm
hearing you, but I think we needa bit of context around it.
Matt Milligan (04:43):
So I'll deep dive, double click into that in
a sec, process being one ofthem, I think the second one is,
is the profile of capabilitiescompletely being reimagined as
well, right? So let's take thefirst one of that process. We've
seen instances in our customersright now where CROs are turning
around to us and the same I walkso. Had a specific customer
three weeks ago, four weeks ago,he said to me, I was walking
(05:04):
through the office, and I walkedpast one of my reps, and I
caught the glimpse of hisscreen, and I said, what was
that? And this rep was reallysecretive about it, and he tried
to sort of close the minimizethe window, whatever. And he
said, Okay, fine. He got him toopen it up. He said, Talk me
through like, what was that?Looked awesome, and the guy had
used AI this rep who was alsotheir highest performing rep, he
(05:26):
had automated his entire selfbuilt he had spent time to
upskill himself on promptengineering and AI tools in the
market. And he'd used two orthree different AI tools to
completely automate his account,research and prospect building
workflow. The CRO happened tojust walk past it and catch a
glimpse of it and be like,what's that? And then he said,
Well, have you told yourcolleagues about this? He goes,
(05:47):
No, no, because obviously thishigh perform rep was like, This
is unbelievable. Like, I've justautomated 25% of my job. I'm
therefore able to do 25% more.Keeps them myself. And he's
smashing it. So the CROs thatI'm hearing are like, how is AI
being used? And how do we getthat replicated across more
reps? Because we're getting someamazing outcomes in pockets with
these early adopter reps. Sothat's just a small example to
(06:10):
help you understand process andhow the whole process is being
redefined right now. And there'ssome really hungry self starter
reps in the market that aregoing home at night or getting
up early in the morning orweekends and thinking, Hang on.
Let me think about this. I'mjust going to play around, and
I'm going to test thesedifferent tools, and I'm going
to connect them together, andI'm going to write my own
prompts, I'm going to train myown models, and that's what you
(06:32):
know this this rep had done. Sothe process is getting
completely redefined. So there'sbig question mark there around
how that changes the dynamicbetween high performers and low
performers. It doesn't meanthere's gonna be even a bigger
gap, because the high performersare the ones that are gonna self
start and train themselves. Soprocess is one bucket, the other
one is capability and profile ofthe actual sellers. And this
flips it. And this thinks aboutthe mass disruption that's
(06:54):
happening through AI right now.What about the buyers? So if
you're an experienced salesperson with 2025, years
experience, and you sell mostlyon relationships. If you think
about those experiencedenterprise sellers who have got
this Rolodex, they go into a newrole, and they basically tap up
this network of trustedrelationships that they've been
selling to buyers for a verylong time. What happens if those
(07:16):
buyers are gone? What happens ifthose roles are in the next five
to 10 years, and this ishappening quickly, right? So, so
then you start to think about,well, what does that mean for
the profile of successful, highperforming salespeople in the
future? Because does that meanthat the relationship based
Rolodex type seller is going andtherefore it's a risk for us as
(07:37):
a business, if we continue torely on that, are we moving much
more into a world of intentbased signals and AI automation?
Automate the hell out of yourworkflow and just be super
efficient?
Jonny Adams (07:48):
Well Matt, I kind of listen to people talk about
AI. I'm going, Yes, Matt, Iunderstand. I'm like, show me an
I believe it approach. I thinkwith AI, it's just a it's going
to be a fascinating journey whenwe're going on that we're all
going on. And to your pointabout the buyers changing, I can
only think about that ourselvesas the buyer profile, the buyer
persona, is going to change, butit might be. It might have taken
(08:09):
three years for that to evolve.Now it might be six months for
that as the workforce andtransitions, you've spoken a lot
about CROs or Chief Revenueofficers. Now, there's a lot of
research out there. It's areally interesting environment.
We work with a lot of ChiefRevenue officers as an
organization as well. So weoften get asked to work with P
backed organizations where theinvestment manager is asking us
(08:31):
to help the CRO. Now a CRO islife time within their
particular role is about 14 to16 months on average. Now, when
we ask an investment managerwhat the challenges are around
the CROs that they've got intheir port codes, they're
typically saying that they'renot good enough at data numbers
in general, so their numeracy isnot very strong, and on average,
(08:52):
they're not very good atselling. And what they do is
they're trying to elevatethemselves to be on the
business, rather than in thebusiness, doing the deal
reviews, doing the pipelinereviews, and actually really
sort of winning some of thosedeals. That's their words, not
mine. But how do you help CROs,you know? Because if that's the
problem statement by theiremployees, how are you helping
them become more proficient?
Matt Milligan (09:12):
It's a great question, yeah, and that's
really interesting insight thosetwo areas. I had this
conversation with the CRO theother day, who was talking about
the future, the future proof.CRO is actually less the kind of
relationship, sales career kindof guy or girl. It's actually
much more about being reallydata literate and having a
really strong rev ops functionaround you. Hence why the you
(09:35):
know the importance of of thatearly rev ops Higher One of the
things we talk a lot to CROsabout is just helping them de
risk that journey. As youmentioned, 14 months is really,
I mean, it's less than fourquarters. Yeah, job, you don't
have long. You got to really getsome quick wins under your belt
and get moving in the rightdirection. So just help them de
risk that process. And onecomponent, as we spoke about, of
(09:59):
that journey. Only use yourtalent, so therefore, how can we
just help you de risk thattalent, make sure you've got the
right players on the pitch, inthe right positions. To your
point, around data, what weoften find CROs really crave, at
a macro level, those insightsthat you can't necessarily get
from your CRM. So you know,it's, it's that kind of softer
stuff that's a little bit harderto measure, but you can't rely
(10:23):
necessarily on your salesmanagers, because there's biases
there, right? I was with acustomer yesterday, and she was
saying she's CRO of a researchorganization. She said, Yeah, I
got this feedback given to oneof my reps that it was a
terrible call. So I said to themanager, send me the call. And I
reviewed the call and Icompletely disagreed with the
manager. Said I could seecertain improvement areas that
(10:45):
the manager had picked out ofthe call. But actually I thought
there was so much potential onthat call. I actually thought
stylistically, it was a greatcall. The CRO She then went on
to say that the rep was was awoman, the manager was a man.
And she said, I've experiencedthis map throughout my career as
a female in a very maledominated sales culture, which
most organizations often ask.Unfortunately, that's a huge
(11:08):
bias, because there's thismasculine expectation of what a
effective sales execution shouldlook like. And if you're relying
on one manager's opinion,there's inherent bias there. So
the CEOs are craving these moreobjective insights and objective
views of where their capabilityactually is, rather than relying
on one person's opinion, whichis likely to be inherently
(11:29):
biased.
Jonny Adams (11:30):
And Uhubs provides that insight between capability
and the profile. And can itdirect something about the CRO
here, if you knew whatcapability to shift, are you
able to pinpoint the revenuegrowth? So actually, a CRO is
able to go in a board meetingactually forecasting three
months ahead. If we're able toshift capability by x, we can
(11:51):
improve revenue by y. Are youable to get to that data point?
Matt Milligan (11:54):
That's exactly it. And we spoke earlier about
benchmarking and whybenchmarking is so important to
get that gauge. But wherebenchmarking so that's become
really interesting as well, isthat by monitoring 1000s of
sellers every quarter, you canstart to get an understanding as
to which capabilities areinfluencing revenue the most. So
if we see an uplift innegotiation capabilities, and
alongside that, we see a massiveimprovement in late stage
(12:17):
conversion in those AES deals,that's a benchmark. We can now
apply that uplift, and we canstart to replicate that for our
customers. And we can say, Well,based on your average deal size
and based on your sales cyclelength, we've identified,
there's a gap in this capabilityarea, and our latest benchmark
data shows, or indicates that ifyou can improve that capability
by this much, this is how muchof an uplift you're going to
(12:38):
see.
Jonny Adams (12:39):
That the whole process sounds great. And to
some that have not heard ofUhubs, they might be going,
Okay, well, that's good, butoutcomes are the most important
factor, right? That keepsbusinesses going, and if they
were to use Uhubs or use otherplatforms that they're going to
have to see some demonstrablereturns for their investment.
Can you just describe, like abit of an example of what
(12:59):
happens? I think you assess thecapabilities. Can you then use
data points as you reference tobenchmark what the uplift might
be moving forward? Could youjust give us an example?
Matt Milligan (13:08):
Yeah, so a recent example that springs to mind. We
baselined Q beginning at q4September, October, last year,
based on account executiveorganization, we pinpointed two
capability areas that wereholding back that team. One of
them was product acumen. Theother was objection handling.
And we then used the cool datato go deep on what the specific
(13:29):
objections holding back thatteam were. So we diagnosed that
gap. We saw that there was anopportunity. There were about
25% below the industry baselinefor those two capability areas,
we identified a significantrevenue opportunity off the back
of that, off the back of thatinsight that the product
delivered, their enablement teamwent away into two things. They
took the cohort of AES that havebeen identified, they put them
(13:49):
through a weekly objectionhandling boot camp. The
enablement team then also did arefresh of their product
university that they hadinternally to refresh all of the
product, knowledge, we readbaseline. 90 days later, we've
been able to see an over 20%improvement in both capability
areas and an increase in winrates of 12% across those areas.
Jonny Adams (14:12):
And as a revenue, can you share that? Because we
don't know the client, I'm sureyou give us a little bit of a
baseline about how much thatmight...
Matt Milligan (14:17):
It was a 1.2 million uplift.
Jonny Adams (14:19):
Wow, and who doesn't want that?
Matt Best (14:20):
Who doesn't want that? And just as we sort of
think about, you know thatyou've talked a lot, Matt about,
like, some of the detail behindthat, but what we like to do on
the podcast is for ourlisteners, just to get those
kind of really punchyframeworks, what is it that they
can think about? What shouldthose leaders out there be
thinking about, obviously, apartfrom giving you a call, but
that's going to help them ontheir journey with some of these
(14:44):
challenges that we've talkedabout today.
Matt Milligan (14:45):
Yeah, so I'll talk about a framework called
RISE that we're big advocatesof, and you can find out more
information on our website. Whenyou're thinking about all the
different capabilities that makeup high performance, it can be
quite overwhelming. There's along list of capabilities that
make up success. So rise is areally simple, four part
framework. It's an acronym thatI'll walk you through, and it's
(15:05):
a way to structure your thinkingabout the different types of
capability that make highperformance. So R first up
stands for revenue skills. Sothese are those core revenue
skills that sellers need to beeffective, negotiation,
Objection, handling. I standsfor impactful behaviors. So
these are the behaviors that wewant to see demonstrated. So
(15:25):
this could be everything fromhow are individuals managing
their time, time blocking oftheir schedules, etc. It could
also be to what extent are theydemonstrating resilience or a
growth mindset, which is reallyimportant for overcoming
objections. So you got R, yougot I S, then stands for
strategic process execution. Soif you have a sales methodology
or a set process in place, asmany organizations do or should
(15:49):
have, to what extent is thatbeing adhered to? And then
finally, E stands for expertknowledge. So what is the level
of product understanding andwhat is the level of industry
knowledge. So we think aboutthose four key ingredients as as
the the kind of combo that makesup a high performing
(16:09):
salesperson, and thecapabilities that sit underneath
those four vary role to role,but that that's a useful
framework and a start point, youknow, and even I'd encourage
anyone listening who's going onthis journey of trying to
structure and answer thatquestion of what good looks
like, just start off with thosefour categories. Start in a
spreadsheet and think about whatare the capabilities under
(16:30):
revenue, skills, impactfulbehaviors, strategic process
execution and expert knowledge.What are those capabilities you
want to see in your reps? Andthen have a go at starting to
think about benchmarking themagainst those.
Matt Best (16:41):
Matt, thank you so much for joining us on the
Growth Workshop Podcast. It'sbeen amazing to have you, and we
look forward to a growing,ongoing relationship between
Uhubs and SBR going forward. Sothank you.
Matt Milligan (16:50):
Thanks guys. Really enjoyed it. Yeah, it was
good fun.
Jonny Adams (16:52):
Cheers, Matt.
Matt Best (16:53):
Brilliant.
Welcome back to the Growth Workshop Podcast with
(00:02):
myself, Matt Best and JonnyAdams, and part two of our
conversation with Matt Milligan.Talking about the difference
between software sales and andselling consulting. And Jonny,
you described this, and I mightbutcher this slightly, but you
described it as a lot ofconsulting sales is maybe less
tangible. So it's much, it's adifferent, arguably a more
complex, sale than going out andsaying, we've got a platform
(00:25):
that does this. What it does isit encourages more of a
consultative sale, more of anoutcome focused sale. And you
could absolutely see whytechnology businesses selling
large enterprise contracts wouldwant to bring that capability
into their business.
Jonny Adams (00:38):
Totally. As someone that's been in
consulting and also, and I'mgoing to elaborate on your
question, someone's been inconsulting and also works, has
built a product based softwarefirm. My view in the market is
that account executives, SeniorAccount Executives, who get paid
a good amount of money in a SaaSfirm, do not have a strategic
(01:00):
mindset towards selling. That'squite a blunt comment, but I'm
going to stand by that commentyou. I believe that you know,
the consultative approach is isvaluable in both consulting and
also as a senior account managerin a product based sale. Am I
talking rubbish? Is that truefrom your point of view, and
whatever way you go, yes or no,but why do people not have a
(01:23):
consultative mindset whenthey're selling software at that
senior they're getting paid150,000 200,000 pound a year.
Why do they not display thatconsultative approach?
Matt Milligan (01:33):
My instant answer or perspective on that would be,
it's not black and white, andthe reason is that high
performing AES at softwarecompanies, particularly if
they're selling bigger ticketdeals and slightly complex
solution, they have to have thatsolution sales mindset, right?
So the best enterprise sellersare absolutely solution oriented
(01:54):
and can navigate those complexsales cycles. Otherwise they
just wouldn't be in the role orall wouldn't last long. If
they're an organization with aneffective performance management
setup, I do definitelyacknowledge your point that I
think sellers that come fromthat consultative background
have developed a muscle that isactually a difficult muscle to
build, because you're right,like when you're selling
(02:15):
services, it's much lesstangible. It's like you're kind
of creating something out ofnothing. Obviously, you've got
frameworks and tools that you'reusing right and I think that's
partly why we're seeing maybe abit of a shift towards that
profile and that skill set,because we can equip them with
the negotiation skills and a bitmore of a commercial mindset,
but to build that consultativemuscle, that takes time and that
(02:37):
takes experience. You know, Ithink about my own experience,
of how I did it was throughimmersion and watching partners
at EY navigate theserelationships and, you know, put
these really bespoke solutionstogether. And also, the other
thing I'd always hark back to isthe way in which they would take
learnings from one client andthen they'd go down the road to
(02:59):
that client's biggestcompetitor, but, but that is,
that's what you're paying for,right? If you're a CEO, you're
like, well, give me all thethings that didn't work when you
did it with that company, andwe're going to do it 10 times
better.
Jonny Adams (03:10):
I mean, my background was 10 years in B to
C selling, and people are like,Well, what does that mean? It's
effectively high transaction.Did it need much consultation?
Probably not as much as what wewould look at in a B to B world,
yeah, and I was fortunate enoughthen, who's my current Managing
Director, Stuart Lotherington,you talk about immersing
yourself 100% I advocate forthat. But the challenge now is
(03:34):
that in this software as aservice environment people, it's
fact that we see them in actionas a consultancy firm, and they
are not strategic enough in thatconsultative approach. Do you
think there's some type of AI ortechnology, or even maybe Uhubs
can offer that? Is there aplatform out there that would
allow you know someone, maybewith that software based
approach, to actually immersethemselves with an AI bot that
(03:57):
could actually learn throughthat way? Have you ever see any
of that going on at the moment?
Matt Milligan (04:02):
Perhaps not exactly what you're describing,
but I think just on the AIpoint, there's something really
important here, becauseeverything we've just spoken
about in terms of the profile ofa high performance salesperson
AI rips up all of that, likeliterally everything that we
know as a best practice today isin the process of getting
rewritten right now. And I thinkabout that in two key, key
(04:24):
buckets, if you like. I thinkabout it as one is process. So
the sales process and how youactually run a sales workflow
from point A to point B iscompletely like the playbooks.
The old playbooks gone.
Jonny Adams (04:37):
But explain why, because you've got feeling. I'm
hearing you, but I think we needa bit of context around it.
Matt Milligan (04:43):
So I'll deep dive, double click into that in
a sec, process being one ofthem, I think the second one is,
is the profile of capabilitiescompletely being reimagined as
well, right? So let's take thefirst one of that process. We've
seen instances in our customersright now where CROs are turning
around to us and the same I walkso. Had a specific customer
three weeks ago, four weeks ago,he said to me, I was walking
(05:04):
through the office, and I walkedpast one of my reps, and I
caught the glimpse of hisscreen, and I said, what was
that? And this rep was reallysecretive about it, and he tried
to sort of close the minimizethe window, whatever. And he
said, Okay, fine. He got him toopen it up. He said, Talk me
through like, what was that?Looked awesome, and the guy had
used AI this rep who was alsotheir highest performing rep, he
(05:26):
had automated his entire selfbuilt he had spent time to
upskill himself on promptengineering and AI tools in the
market. And he'd used two orthree different AI tools to
completely automate his account,research and prospect building
workflow. The CRO happened tojust walk past it and catch a
glimpse of it and be like,what's that? And then he said,
Well, have you told yourcolleagues about this? He goes,
(05:47):
No, no, because obviously thishigh perform rep was like, This
is unbelievable. Like, I've justautomated 25% of my job. I'm
therefore able to do 25% more.Keeps them myself. And he's
smashing it. So the CROs thatI'm hearing are like, how is AI
being used? And how do we getthat replicated across more
reps? Because we're getting someamazing outcomes in pockets with
these early adopter reps. Sothat's just a small example to
(06:10):
help you understand process andhow the whole process is being
redefined right now. And there'ssome really hungry self starter
reps in the market that aregoing home at night or getting
up early in the morning orweekends and thinking, Hang on.
Let me think about this. I'mjust going to play around, and
I'm going to test thesedifferent tools, and I'm going
to connect them together, andI'm going to write my own
prompts, I'm going to train myown models, and that's what you
(06:32):
know this this rep had done. Sothe process is getting
completely redefined. So there'sbig question mark there around
how that changes the dynamicbetween high performers and low
performers. It doesn't meanthere's gonna be even a bigger
gap, because the high performersare the ones that are gonna self
start and train themselves. Soprocess is one bucket, the other
one is capability and profile ofthe actual sellers. And this
flips it. And this thinks aboutthe mass disruption that's
(06:54):
happening through AI right now.What about the buyers? So if
you're an experienced salesperson with 2025, years
experience, and you sell mostlyon relationships. If you think
about those experiencedenterprise sellers who have got
this Rolodex, they go into a newrole, and they basically tap up
this network of trustedrelationships that they've been
selling to buyers for a verylong time. What happens if those
(07:16):
buyers are gone? What happens ifthose roles are in the next five
to 10 years, and this ishappening quickly, right? So, so
then you start to think about,well, what does that mean for
the profile of successful, highperforming salespeople in the
future? Because does that meanthat the relationship based
Rolodex type seller is going andtherefore it's a risk for us as
(07:37):
a business, if we continue torely on that, are we moving much
more into a world of intentbased signals and AI automation?
Automate the hell out of yourworkflow and just be super
efficient?
Jonny Adams (07:48):
Well Matt, I kind of listen to people talk about
AI. I'm going, Yes, Matt, Iunderstand. I'm like, show me an
I believe it approach. I thinkwith AI, it's just a it's going
to be a fascinating journey whenwe're going on that we're all
going on. And to your pointabout the buyers changing, I can
only think about that ourselvesas the buyer profile, the buyer
persona, is going to change, butit might be. It might have taken
(08:09):
three years for that to evolve.Now it might be six months for
that as the workforce andtransitions, you've spoken a lot
about CROs or Chief Revenueofficers. Now, there's a lot of
research out there. It's areally interesting environment.
We work with a lot of ChiefRevenue officers as an
organization as well. So weoften get asked to work with P
backed organizations where theinvestment manager is asking us
(08:31):
to help the CRO. Now a CRO islife time within their
particular role is about 14 to16 months on average. Now, when
we ask an investment managerwhat the challenges are around
the CROs that they've got intheir port codes, they're
typically saying that they'renot good enough at data numbers
in general, so their numeracy isnot very strong, and on average,
(08:52):
they're not very good atselling. And what they do is
they're trying to elevatethemselves to be on the
business, rather than in thebusiness, doing the deal
reviews, doing the pipelinereviews, and actually really
sort of winning some of thosedeals. That's their words, not
mine. But how do you help CROs,you know? Because if that's the
problem statement by theiremployees, how are you helping
them become more proficient?
Matt Milligan (09:12):
It's a great question, yeah, and that's
really interesting insight thosetwo areas. I had this
conversation with the CRO theother day, who was talking about
the future, the future proof.CRO is actually less the kind of
relationship, sales career kindof guy or girl. It's actually
much more about being reallydata literate and having a
really strong rev ops functionaround you. Hence why the you
(09:35):
know the importance of of thatearly rev ops Higher One of the
things we talk a lot to CROsabout is just helping them de
risk that journey. As youmentioned, 14 months is really,
I mean, it's less than fourquarters. Yeah, job, you don't
have long. You got to really getsome quick wins under your belt
and get moving in the rightdirection. So just help them de
risk that process. And onecomponent, as we spoke about, of
(09:59):
that journey. Only use yourtalent, so therefore, how can we
just help you de risk thattalent, make sure you've got the
right players on the pitch, inthe right positions. To your
point, around data, what weoften find CROs really crave, at
a macro level, those insightsthat you can't necessarily get
from your CRM. So you know,it's, it's that kind of softer
stuff that's a little bit harderto measure, but you can't rely
(10:23):
necessarily on your salesmanagers, because there's biases
there, right? I was with acustomer yesterday, and she was
saying she's CRO of a researchorganization. She said, Yeah, I
got this feedback given to oneof my reps that it was a
terrible call. So I said to themanager, send me the call. And I
reviewed the call and Icompletely disagreed with the
manager. Said I could seecertain improvement areas that
(10:45):
the manager had picked out ofthe call. But actually I thought
there was so much potential onthat call. I actually thought
stylistically, it was a greatcall. The CRO She then went on
to say that the rep was was awoman, the manager was a man.
And she said, I've experiencedthis map throughout my career as
a female in a very maledominated sales culture, which
most organizations often ask.Unfortunately, that's a huge
(11:08):
bias, because there's thismasculine expectation of what a
effective sales execution shouldlook like. And if you're relying
on one manager's opinion,there's inherent bias there. So
the CEOs are craving these moreobjective insights and objective
views of where their capabilityactually is, rather than relying
on one person's opinion, whichis likely to be inherently
(11:29):
biased.
Jonny Adams (11:30):
And Uhubs provides that insight between capability
and the profile. And can itdirect something about the CRO
here, if you knew whatcapability to shift, are you
able to pinpoint the revenuegrowth? So actually, a CRO is
able to go in a board meetingactually forecasting three
months ahead. If we're able toshift capability by x, we can
(11:51):
improve revenue by y. Are youable to get to that data point?
Matt Milligan (11:54):
That's exactly it. And we spoke earlier about
benchmarking and whybenchmarking is so important to
get that gauge. But wherebenchmarking so that's become
really interesting as well, isthat by monitoring 1000s of
sellers every quarter, you canstart to get an understanding as
to which capabilities areinfluencing revenue the most. So
if we see an uplift innegotiation capabilities, and
alongside that, we see a massiveimprovement in late stage
(12:17):
conversion in those AES deals,that's a benchmark. We can now
apply that uplift, and we canstart to replicate that for our
customers. And we can say, Well,based on your average deal size
and based on your sales cyclelength, we've identified,
there's a gap in this capabilityarea, and our latest benchmark
data shows, or indicates that ifyou can improve that capability
by this much, this is how muchof an uplift you're going to
(12:38):
see.
Jonny Adams (12:39):
That the whole process sounds great. And to
some that have not heard ofUhubs, they might be going,
Okay, well, that's good, butoutcomes are the most important
factor, right? That keepsbusinesses going, and if they
were to use Uhubs or use otherplatforms that they're going to
have to see some demonstrablereturns for their investment.
Can you just describe, like abit of an example of what
(12:59):
happens? I think you assess thecapabilities. Can you then use
data points as you reference tobenchmark what the uplift might
be moving forward? Could youjust give us an example?
Matt Milligan (13:08):
Yeah, so a recent example that springs to mind. We
baselined Q beginning at q4September, October, last year,
based on account executiveorganization, we pinpointed two
capability areas that wereholding back that team. One of
them was product acumen. Theother was objection handling.
And we then used the cool datato go deep on what the specific
(13:29):
objections holding back thatteam were. So we diagnosed that
gap. We saw that there was anopportunity. There were about
25% below the industry baselinefor those two capability areas,
we identified a significantrevenue opportunity off the back
of that, off the back of thatinsight that the product
delivered, their enablement teamwent away into two things. They
took the cohort of AES that havebeen identified, they put them
(13:49):
through a weekly objectionhandling boot camp. The
enablement team then also did arefresh of their product
university that they hadinternally to refresh all of the
product, knowledge, we readbaseline. 90 days later, we've
been able to see an over 20%improvement in both capability
areas and an increase in winrates of 12% across those areas.
Jonny Adams (14:12):
And as a revenue, can you share that? Because we
don't know the client, I'm sureyou give us a little bit of a
baseline about how much thatmight...
Matt Milligan (14:17):
It was a 1.2 million uplift.
Jonny Adams (14:19):
Wow, and who doesn't want that?
Matt Best (14:20):
Who doesn't want that? And just as we sort of
think about, you know thatyou've talked a lot, Matt about,
like, some of the detail behindthat, but what we like to do on
the podcast is for ourlisteners, just to get those
kind of really punchyframeworks, what is it that they
can think about? What shouldthose leaders out there be
thinking about, obviously, apartfrom giving you a call, but
that's going to help them ontheir journey with some of these
(14:44):
challenges that we've talkedabout today.
Matt Milligan (14:45):
Yeah, so I'll talk about a framework called
RISE that we're big advocatesof, and you can find out more
information on our website. Whenyou're thinking about all the
different capabilities that makeup high performance, it can be
quite overwhelming. There's along list of capabilities that
make up success. So rise is areally simple, four part
framework. It's an acronym thatI'll walk you through, and it's
(15:05):
a way to structure your thinkingabout the different types of
capability that make highperformance. So R first up
stands for revenue skills. Sothese are those core revenue
skills that sellers need to beeffective, negotiation,
Objection, handling. I standsfor impactful behaviors. So
these are the behaviors that wewant to see demonstrated. So
(15:25):
this could be everything fromhow are individuals managing
their time, time blocking oftheir schedules, etc. It could
also be to what extent are theydemonstrating resilience or a
growth mindset, which is reallyimportant for overcoming
objections. So you got R, yougot I S, then stands for
strategic process execution. Soif you have a sales methodology
or a set process in place, asmany organizations do or should
(15:49):
have, to what extent is thatbeing adhered to? And then
finally, E stands for expertknowledge. So what is the level
of product understanding andwhat is the level of industry
knowledge. So we think aboutthose four key ingredients as as
the the kind of combo that makesup a high performing
(16:09):
salesperson, and thecapabilities that sit underneath
those four vary role to role,but that that's a useful
framework and a start point, youknow, and even I'd encourage
anyone listening who's going onthis journey of trying to
structure and answer thatquestion of what good looks
like, just start off with thosefour categories. Start in a
spreadsheet and think about whatare the capabilities under
(16:30):
revenue, skills, impactfulbehaviors, strategic process
execution and expert knowledge.What are those capabilities you
want to see in your reps? Andthen have a go at starting to
think about benchmarking themagainst those.
Matt Best (16:41):
Matt, thank you so much for joining us on the
Growth Workshop Podcast. It'sbeen amazing to have you, and we
look forward to a growing,ongoing relationship between
Uhubs and SBR going forward. Sothank you.
Matt Milligan (16:50):
Thanks guys. Really enjoyed it. Yeah, it was
good fun.
Jonny Adams (16:52):
Cheers, Matt.
Matt Best (16:53):
Brilliant.
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