June 15, 2025 • 20 mins
In part 2 of our talk with Guy Rubin, founder and CEO of Ebsta, we look at how sales organisations can drive growth by improving consistency across their entire go-to-market function. Guy highlights the widening performance gaps between top sellers and the rest, the shift toward full-cycle selling, and the crucial role of clean data, clear benchmarks, and effective leadership in replicating success at scale.
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Episode Transcript
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Matt Best (00:00):
Thank you for joining us on the Growth Workshop
(00:02):
Podcast. Welcome to part two ofthis discussion with Guy Rubin
from Ebsta.
Jonny Adams (00:06):
So you've given so much great stuff. We've
obviously got the pre saleaspect. So throw us over another
interesting stat from the reportthat we'll talk about pre sale.
Guy Rubin (00:16):
Ok, so the biggest challenge that Chief Revenue
officers have today is that just14% of sellers are now
responsible for 80% of new logorevenue. So it's insane. The
Delta now between top and bottomand average performers in our
sales teams. And so how do weaddress that challenge? More
importantly, if we did addressthat challenge, can you imagine
the impact you can have on onwin rates, on growth, and
(00:38):
ultimately, on valuation of yourbusiness? And so trying to get
under the skin of that challengeis absolutely key and and the
answer to it in a single word,is consistency. It doesn't have
to be hard, but there aren't anyshortcuts. So to address the
challenge, you need acombination of four things. We
need the data that underpinsnow, just because you've got
Salesforce in place for the lastyear and you've worked 1000
(01:00):
opportunities and 120 5% ofthose, that doesn't mean you've
got the data you need. So if youlook back at an opportunity and
it's got one contact and threeemails associated to it, it's
not going to be enough to buildthe benchmarks you need to
actually affect change. So theway we address that is by
solving the data quality issuewith the engine that we talked
about earlier, and what we callrelationship intelligence. Once
(01:21):
you've solved the data qualityissue, we're then in a place to
deliver insights. We can convertthat data into insights, and
then we can use those insightsto build benchmarks for every
different go to market motion.You have different geographies,
different products, differentsize and shape of customers. You
need to understand what goodlooks like, not just
holistically, but at every stageof every sales cycle. We need to
understand which personas needto be involved, or what's the
(01:42):
impact of having certainpersonas engaged earlier versus
later, and is it, and you mightfind that the data will tell you
which personas are important,and most importantly, how much
engagement you need to have withthose personas before you move
on. And the biggest mistakes wesee that the top that the B
players make is they skipthrough those early discovery
stages, and then the leadershipthink they've got a late stage
(02:02):
churn issue, right? They've beenworking the sales process. They
think they're in stage five orsix, but in reality, and then
the deal closes, lost. But thereality was the customer's never
really in a sales process in thefirst place, because we never
qualified them well enough. Sowe recently built an engine that
can plug into things like yourold Gong recordings or your zoom
recordings. We can go backthrough the last year's worth of
calls and the discovery, andthen associate the qualification
(02:25):
to the deals that close won andlost, and suddenly it's like
turning a picture from black andwhite to color. You can suddenly
see, look, this seller isconsistently losing deals at
late stage, but they're reallybad. They might be really good
at the Med, but really bad atthe pick or whatever
qualification you're using,right? So understanding where
your team are falling down inthose early stages and being
much more consistent about whatthey need to achieve to get
(02:46):
through the stages, and usingthe data to set those benchmarks
gives you all the insights youneed to introduce consistency.
And as I said earlier, we'verecently introduced our own
brand guarantees. We guaranteeto get more sellers hit and
quota within six months, orcustomers can walk away, and
we've never lost a customer yet.
Jonny Adams (03:03):
Wow. Just as we look back to that comment and
let's dig into the solutions asof three, what was the stat
again?
Guy Rubin (03:09):
So just 14% of sellers are responsible for 80%
of new logo revenue in 2024.
Matt Best (03:15):
Wow.
Guy Rubin (03:15):
The rest of the sellers are generating the
balance, right? So it's worsethan the 80/20 rule, right? It's
getting even worse. And thereason it's getting worse is
that it's a leadership problem,in my opinion.
Jonny Adams (03:26):
So, that I'm really, I absolutely,
fundamentally agree with you.And I was going to say, what was
your solution, but you justpinched by one.
Guy Rubin (03:34):
If you've only got 14% of sellers generating 80% of
revenue, you haven't gotconsistency in the way you go to
my go to market motion isrunning. Okay, and your
leadership team are the catalystto driving consistency across
that. The sellers need to knowevery every week you should be
doing your pipeline inspectionmeeting with every seller.
Should be having a partnerinspection meeting every single
week. And in that meeting, itdoesn't matter who the manager
(03:56):
is, it doesn't matter who theseller is, the format of that
session should be identical. Weshould be that the seller knows
what questions are going to beasked, because all of the issues
with the opportunity areautomatically populated into the
Salesforce opportunity record.So they know in advance the
questions that they're going tobe addressed with. With this
with the manager, the managerknows what questions to ask and
doesn't get bombarded orbamboozled with they love us.
(04:16):
They think we're great. TheyI've really got a great
relationship with this. I don'tcare about any of that. Why
haven't we got an engagement 67with the five? Seven with a
finance persona, right? That'swhat I need to know. Because the
playbook tells us that when wewin, we do at this stage.
Jonny Adams (04:30):
And I think we're currently in a process with one
of the big I'll call the BigFour tech firms that are based
in the US. So everyone'sthinking about those big four.
You can work out one. Andbecause of the market and the
fact that organizations havereally ridden that wave of well,
market has meant that I'm justselling. You know, it's been a
transactional people have justcome for the product. They
(04:52):
approached us a couple of monthsago. Been asking, Well, can you
help us build our weeklypipeline review frameworks? We
love the fact that they've.Approached us to see if we can
help that second, how have yougot that big without having a
deal review and a pipelinereview process in your
organization? It's insane, isn'tit? So is it the fact that they
just haven't needed one, one ofthe big four tech US firms are
(05:13):
talking about, is it becausethey haven't needed one, or is
it the fact that they definitelyneed one now, and it's become
that realization point. What'syour perspectives on that.
Matt Best (05:20):
I wonder if that's where we get the 14% from. It's
luck. It's you've got 14% ofyour business that is succeeding
in delivering 80% of your 80% ofyour revenue. I think it's
that's then become yourforecast, that then becomes your
truth, and you've just beencarrying the rest of the team.
Guy Rubin (05:40):
Could you imagine marketing departments not being
data driven? It's just it wouldbe an insane thing, right? I
mean, all they do all day is ABtest everything, right? And in
sales, we still largely haveinconsistent process. And
depending on who the manager isor what who the seller happens
to be, you'll have a wildlydifferent experience through
your through your your pipelineinspection meetings and the
(06:03):
inefficiencies in sales, youknow, we saw an average win rate
of 19% you know, but we'respending over 80% of our time
with customers that are nevergoing to spend any money with
us. And that's okay, apparently.And people don't seem to be
concerned too much about that,but, but the data will tell us
what we need to know if, if, if,when you win in stage three, you
spend 15 days. Well, once youget past 15 days, we need to be
(06:26):
asking whether this opportunityis real. Yeah, but if you don't
know the average number of daysyou spend in stage when you win
versus when you lose, you don'teven have the data to be able to
make those decisions.
Jonny Adams (06:34):
I seem to always boot certain parts of businesses
on this podcast. You know, Ireally dive into it, and
typically it's SaaSorganizations I seem to have a
problem with. Just on thatpoint, we've found that the 14%
piece, I think there's somethinghappening with the individual
contributors, because of marketchange within those
organizations, or maybe a needfor growth when markets are
(06:56):
turbulent. We're finding thatsellers probably at that 86%
maybe the ones who have riddenthe wave have all of a sudden
gone actually. Selling is quitehard, and we're starting to see
them maybe move out of thesetech firms, but they're wanting
to command six figure salariesanywhere between 203 $100,000
(07:17):
but when we've actuallychallenged, Can They Sell? Guess
what? The answer is no. 86 so isit the fact that they're just
been riding that way for thelast 15 years and absolute
bucket loads of cash by becausethese market forces taking
orders, you know? Is it theleadership that just haven't,
you know? And maybe theleadership are not that
competent in these firms?
Guy Rubin (07:36):
Yeah, I think, I think a couple of things. First
of all, perhaps those numbersare slightly exacerbated by the
fact that there was so muchchange in sales teams last year.
We saw a third of sales teamschurn last year, and then so
then onboarding the new sellers,getting them up to speed, it
might be affecting thosenumbers, but I do believe, of
(07:56):
course, there are bad playersout there. Of course there are
bad sellers. Put people in salesroles that shouldn't be but if
you've got the drive and desireto win and you want to be in
sales, the leadership team youhave around you will dictate how
successful you are. You know,again, I claim to be an expert
in the space, even we're gettingmuch more accurate and much more
focused on what our ICP is todaythan we were before. You know,
(08:19):
we're all learning as we go, butyour if your sales organization,
if your go to market motion, isnot data driven, if you're not
tracking engagement withdifferent stakeholders within
the organization, whether it'sin the sales process or the
customer success process, if youhaven't got benchmarks of what
good looks like at every stageof every sales cycle, and if
those benchmarks aren't evolvingover time through the engine,
(08:39):
you're not going to have thattransformation on the flip side,
the the impact you can have byintroducing that level of
consistency, by understandingwhat those benchmarks are, and
holding everybody to account, istransformational. And we saw
recently a customer, a P backedbusiness. Their growth rate was
single digits. They had aboutjust over 130 sellers, turning
(09:00):
over nearly $200 million reallystruggling to get double digit
growth in a year. They got to27% growth just by being data
driven and just understandingwhat drives the right behaviors.
And introducing that level ofconsistency was transformational
for the business. So it can bedone and it can be done quickly,
but there's no shortcuts.
Jonny Adams (09:19):
Interesting. I love this. This is so I mean, this is
so good with the time. Just tokeep the motion and the momentum
going, Matt, take us to thethird and final point.
Matt Best (09:26):
So, Guy, I guess there's this. The next piece is
putting those two thingstogether. And something that you
talk about in the report, andthat we've had some interesting
conversations offline about isthis sort of concept of full
cycle selling. Talk to us alittle bit about that.
Guy Rubin (09:40):
Okay, so we if you've only been in sales for the last
10 or 15 years, you've probablygrown up in a world where
everybody's a single purposevehicle. You've got top of
funnel resources doing nothing,but, but, but outbound outreach.
Then they get qualified andhanded over to a seller, an A
maybe you may even have somebodydedicated and focused on The
Club. Process, and then, thenyou've got onboarding and
(10:03):
activation being run by customersuccess. And so you've got all
of these different siloedindividuals responsible. And
while the theory of it was verygood, you get these specialists
that are really good at theirpiece of the puzzle. In reality,
the buying experience had a hada big negative impact on the
buying experience, because youwere constantly being handed
over from one persona to thenext. And what we saw last year
(10:24):
was companies really leaninginto this idea of full cycle
selling, which frankly, waswhere we started, kind of 25
years ago, right when I wasselling, when I started selling,
I was responsible for generatingmy own leads and and what we see
today is nearly half ofbusinesses have started to
transition into this area offull cycle selling, where the
sellers are responsible forgenerating a proportion of their
(10:46):
own pipeline. They are obviouslyresponsible for running the
sales cycle as well. But if youthink about it, they then, they
then are responsible for holdingon to that account for the next
12 months. And the data tells usthat a number of things. First
of all, again, if the buyer hasbuilt enough trust in the seller
to sign a contract. It seemscrazy to let that relationship
die and then hand them over tosomebody else. We also know that
(11:08):
the vast majority of cross sellup sell opportunities happen in
that initial 12 month period, soallowing the seller to continue
to hold on to the account doestwo things. First of all, it
maximizes your chance of winningthose cross sell up sell
opportunities. But also it meansthat the seller doesn't feel
under pressure to get the wholedeal done in the initial
signature, because that's theonly thing they're going to get
paid on. So we've seen a realpush towards giving that
(11:30):
customer experience, that singlepoint of contacts, that main
right until the point where thecustomer's kind of normalized,
which could be six, 912, even 18months. And my gut feel is that
by this time next year, when welook at the data again, I think
it more than half of businesseswill be in that phase.
Jonny Adams (11:46):
It's just fascinating. We should
definitely unpack what will thatmean to organizations shifting
away from that, that thatapproach of having those
individual disciplines into thatfor cycle selling, I feel quite
so it's cocky, because that'swhat we do, right? Yeah, so it
should be fine. The other thingis just a bit of voice to
customer. We were delivering alarge project this year for a
(12:08):
large bank, and we asked, youknow, quite rightly, seen, what
was the reason for selecting usand and their their top criteria
for selecting us as anorganization was making sure
that the people that were in thesales process. Post selling was
going to be part of the deliveryprocess because they wanted to
buy the people. They didn't wantto buy expose the brand, because
(12:28):
they didn't know how good thequality was, I suppose, until
you start using it right. Andactually the businesses, there
was four others in the process.One organization sent a pitch
team in, and they said they'llbring in this other team to
deliver no and then this otherorganization was neck on neck
with us, because the, you know,they really like the person. So
I think that's interesting.
Matt Best (12:48):
I'm curious to unpack your view here, guy on the
capabilities, though, because,you know, some I was talking to
another client about this, aboutthis, just the other day, and
they were having challenges withretaining people in that kind of
environment, just purely becausethere's a lot more to that role
you've got to it's verymultifaceted. So what's from
your experience talking to yourcustomers and others in the
(13:08):
market? And we did a lot of workhere, talked a bit about change
and how we can kind of drivethat through. We've had guests
on the podcast talking about theimportance of understanding,
recognizing competencies and howto develop those and of course,
we do that on a kind of day today basis, but yeah, what are
you hearing in the market whenit comes to how organizations
are managing to find thosepeople that can cover all of
(13:29):
those aspects?
Guy Rubin (13:30):
Certainly a challenge, and I acknowledge
that. I think there's a coupleof things there. First of all,
I'm not suggesting that theseller is solely responsible for
their own type of funnelactivity, right? They will, if
they can generate a third oftheir opportunities themselves,
that that's kind of best, bestin market. That's what you're
looking for. I think with allchange, it's not just this
piece. I think with all change,when you get pushback, and
(13:52):
sellers generally will push backon any change, the way to
address that in an organizationis more about is to pick a pick
a group, pick a forward thinkinggroup that want to be special,
and make them special and helpthem be successful, and then
show the rest of the businesshow they're performing. Okay,
because ultimately the sellerswant to win, because they want
(14:12):
to earn money and they want tobe successful. When you show
them the path as to how they cando that, suddenly it becomes
their idea. Now they want nowthey want that now it was that
they were already bought in inthe first place. Okay? And so
find a small group that aregoing to go along with whatever
the changes that you're bringingin, and it will lean into it,
make them feel special, helpthem be successful, and then
(14:32):
make the others jealous thatthey aren't part of it, right,
that that way is the quickestroute to move forward. And I
think it's our job as leaders togive people that vision of why
they should go through thisexercise. Change is painful, so
there needs to be a really goodjustification as to why to do
it, rather than just because Itold you so. The early adopters
splendid with scarcity. I waswatching a Simon Sinek video
just the other day that he wastalking about exactly that. I
(14:54):
forget the exact number, but Ithink it's a sort of the first
11% is what you'll get. Andyou'll get kind of good
engagement with as the earlyadopter group, which is probably
smaller than lots of peoplewould think. But once you get
those on board, then the rest ofthe across the the average,
average distribution, you'vegot, then that middle group that
starts to go, hang on a minute,and that's interesting. And we
(15:15):
sort of drive change that way. Ithink there's two types of
people in the market, and bothare valid, right? So you've got
those that really enjoy turningzeros into ones. We're breaking
new ground. We're going to workout how this thing works, and
we're going to refine it and getbetter at it, and those, those
your early adopters. And thenyou've got those that really
enjoy rinse and repeat. Youknow, I know what I've been told
to do. I understand thestructure. It's been really
(15:36):
clear to me, and I'm going tofollow that playbook. And
they're really powerful too, butwe need to give them the
structure and and the mistake wemake as leaders is we put is we
mix the groups. And when you askpeople that are really good at
turning zeros into ones tocontinue to rinse and repeat the
same process, they get bored.And when you ask those that are
really good at following processto start getting creative and
(15:57):
work out how we solve a newproblem or change something,
they get very uncomfortableabout it. So again, it's our job
as leaders to find the rightpeople work with them as almost
a almost a black ops team,right? Let's work out how we fix
this challenge. How do weimprove our win rates? How do we
how do we go for sales cycle,and is it worth it, right?
Let's, let's see. Let's, let'stry and experiment. The results
will tell us, and it'll all bein the data. So really, work out
(16:19):
where your team sit. There's nogood or bad as leaders, our job
is to understand where people'sstrengths are and lean into them
and stop getting frustratedabout square pegs that don't fit
in what round holes.
Matt Best (16:29):
So Guy, you've shared some fantastic data points, some
insights from your ownexperience with us today, on the
on the podcast, which is whichis brilliant. We thank you for
that. Could you just help us,just by maybe sort of
summarizing what are those kindof four key things that business
leaders listening to this shouldbe thinking about that's going
to help them win?
Guy Rubin (16:47):
Okay? So look, we all want growth. Okay? We all want
to scale our businesses fasterthan they are at the moment. So
how do we achieve that? We'vegot to introduce consistency in
our front office, in our wholego to market motion. As I said
earlier, it's not difficult, butthere are no shortcuts. Okay, so
the four things you need tothink about if you want to
introduce want to introduce thatlevel of consistency and get
that growth in and get more ofyour sellers hitting quota, step
(17:08):
one, you have to start bysolving the data quality issue.
And you need that historically.You need to be able to go back a
year or two through this,through the data, fix the data
in a consistent format. We'renot the only players in the
park, but we have a plug andplay solution that can connect
to your mail servers, yourcalendars, your phone systems.
We can go back and fix all ofthe historical data in
Salesforce and give you anengine that keeps it up today
(17:28):
over time. Once we've got anengine that once we've got the
data consistent in the system,and by consistent if you're
still relying on any humans,then you will not have the level
of consistency you need to buildyour benchmarks. So once you fix
the data you want to you, thenneed to convert that data into
insights. What does good looklike at every stage of every
type of sales process we run?What are the warning signs we
need to look out for at eachstage? Once we understand what
(17:49):
the benchmarks are, we're thenin a good place to be able to
introduce that level ofconsistency to our sales cycle.
We can then introduce sometechnology where we can do
pipeline inspection andforecasting tools, and obviously
ours is delivered insideSalesforce, but ultimately, the
final piece of the puzzle is keyhere, and that's a change agent.
Now, a lot of organizationsthink their change agent might
be the VP of sales or their revops function, and that may be
(18:13):
the case, but more often thannot, we find that those internal
revolts functions are reallymore sales admins than they are
strategic thinkers, and you needa strategic thinker helping you
with that change. Age as achange agent. Don't
underestimate that final pieceof the puzzle. Have someone
responsible for that change. Wetalked earlier about how you can
kind of almost gamify it byhaving a pre a team that are
(18:33):
getting access, early access tothis information and that so we
can show the rest of thebusiness. Look what happens when
we get more consistent. We getbetter outcomes, and then
everybody else wants to jump onthat. So. So in summary, fix
your data, turn it intoinsights. Have a consistent
platform you can use, or sometechnology that gives you a
consistent way, an easy way ofrunning your pipeline,
inspection and forecastingprocess, and then have a change
(18:55):
agent you can lean into. Andevery quarter, you should be
seeing incremental improvementson things like time to close a
level of coverage each rep needsto hit quota conversion rates at
each stage of the sales cycleand then ultimately, win rate.
Matt Best (19:08):
There it is. Loved it. Guy, thank you so much for
coming in and talking to ustoday. It's been absolutely
wonderful. Love the insight asever. Thank you, Johnny also,
and we look forward to seeingyou again soon.
Guy Rubin (19:17):
Thank you very much.
Jonny Adams (19:18):
Cheers, Guy, cheers, Matt.
Thank you for joining us on the Growth Workshop
(00:02):
Podcast. Welcome to part two ofthis discussion with Guy Rubin
from Ebsta.
Jonny Adams (00:06):
So you've given so much great stuff. We've
obviously got the pre saleaspect. So throw us over another
interesting stat from the reportthat we'll talk about pre sale.
Guy Rubin (00:16):
Ok, so the biggest challenge that Chief Revenue
officers have today is that just14% of sellers are now
responsible for 80% of new logorevenue. So it's insane. The
Delta now between top and bottomand average performers in our
sales teams. And so how do weaddress that challenge? More
importantly, if we did addressthat challenge, can you imagine
the impact you can have on onwin rates, on growth, and
(00:38):
ultimately, on valuation of yourbusiness? And so trying to get
under the skin of that challengeis absolutely key and and the
answer to it in a single word,is consistency. It doesn't have
to be hard, but there aren't anyshortcuts. So to address the
challenge, you need acombination of four things. We
need the data that underpinsnow, just because you've got
Salesforce in place for the lastyear and you've worked 1000
(01:00):
opportunities and 120 5% ofthose, that doesn't mean you've
got the data you need. So if youlook back at an opportunity and
it's got one contact and threeemails associated to it, it's
not going to be enough to buildthe benchmarks you need to
actually affect change. So theway we address that is by
solving the data quality issuewith the engine that we talked
about earlier, and what we callrelationship intelligence. Once
(01:21):
you've solved the data qualityissue, we're then in a place to
deliver insights. We can convertthat data into insights, and
then we can use those insightsto build benchmarks for every
different go to market motion.You have different geographies,
different products, differentsize and shape of customers. You
need to understand what goodlooks like, not just
holistically, but at every stageof every sales cycle. We need to
understand which personas needto be involved, or what's the
(01:42):
impact of having certainpersonas engaged earlier versus
later, and is it, and you mightfind that the data will tell you
which personas are important,and most importantly, how much
engagement you need to have withthose personas before you move
on. And the biggest mistakes wesee that the top that the B
players make is they skipthrough those early discovery
stages, and then the leadershipthink they've got a late stage
(02:02):
churn issue, right? They've beenworking the sales process. They
think they're in stage five orsix, but in reality, and then
the deal closes, lost. But thereality was the customer's never
really in a sales process in thefirst place, because we never
qualified them well enough. Sowe recently built an engine that
can plug into things like yourold Gong recordings or your zoom
recordings. We can go backthrough the last year's worth of
calls and the discovery, andthen associate the qualification
(02:25):
to the deals that close won andlost, and suddenly it's like
turning a picture from black andwhite to color. You can suddenly
see, look, this seller isconsistently losing deals at
late stage, but they're reallybad. They might be really good
at the Med, but really bad atthe pick or whatever
qualification you're using,right? So understanding where
your team are falling down inthose early stages and being
much more consistent about whatthey need to achieve to get
(02:46):
through the stages, and usingthe data to set those benchmarks
gives you all the insights youneed to introduce consistency.
And as I said earlier, we'verecently introduced our own
brand guarantees. We guaranteeto get more sellers hit and
quota within six months, orcustomers can walk away, and
we've never lost a customer yet.
Jonny Adams (03:03):
Wow. Just as we look back to that comment and
let's dig into the solutions asof three, what was the stat
again?
Guy Rubin (03:09):
So just 14% of sellers are responsible for 80%
of new logo revenue in 2024.
Matt Best (03:15):
Wow.
Guy Rubin (03:15):
The rest of the sellers are generating the
balance, right? So it's worsethan the 80/20 rule, right? It's
getting even worse. And thereason it's getting worse is
that it's a leadership problem,in my opinion.
Jonny Adams (03:26):
So, that I'm really, I absolutely,
fundamentally agree with you.And I was going to say, what was
your solution, but you justpinched by one.
Guy Rubin (03:34):
If you've only got 14% of sellers generating 80% of
revenue, you haven't gotconsistency in the way you go to
my go to market motion isrunning. Okay, and your
leadership team are the catalystto driving consistency across
that. The sellers need to knowevery every week you should be
doing your pipeline inspectionmeeting with every seller.
Should be having a partnerinspection meeting every single
week. And in that meeting, itdoesn't matter who the manager
(03:56):
is, it doesn't matter who theseller is, the format of that
session should be identical. Weshould be that the seller knows
what questions are going to beasked, because all of the issues
with the opportunity areautomatically populated into the
Salesforce opportunity record.So they know in advance the
questions that they're going tobe addressed with. With this
with the manager, the managerknows what questions to ask and
doesn't get bombarded orbamboozled with they love us.
(04:16):
They think we're great. TheyI've really got a great
relationship with this. I don'tcare about any of that. Why
haven't we got an engagement 67with the five? Seven with a
finance persona, right? That'swhat I need to know. Because the
playbook tells us that when wewin, we do at this stage.
Jonny Adams (04:30):
And I think we're currently in a process with one
of the big I'll call the BigFour tech firms that are based
in the US. So everyone'sthinking about those big four.
You can work out one. Andbecause of the market and the
fact that organizations havereally ridden that wave of well,
market has meant that I'm justselling. You know, it's been a
transactional people have justcome for the product. They
(04:52):
approached us a couple of monthsago. Been asking, Well, can you
help us build our weeklypipeline review frameworks? We
love the fact that they've.Approached us to see if we can
help that second, how have yougot that big without having a
deal review and a pipelinereview process in your
organization? It's insane, isn'tit? So is it the fact that they
just haven't needed one, one ofthe big four tech US firms are
(05:13):
talking about, is it becausethey haven't needed one, or is
it the fact that they definitelyneed one now, and it's become
that realization point. What'syour perspectives on that.
Matt Best (05:20):
I wonder if that's where we get the 14% from. It's
luck. It's you've got 14% ofyour business that is succeeding
in delivering 80% of your 80% ofyour revenue. I think it's
that's then become yourforecast, that then becomes your
truth, and you've just beencarrying the rest of the team.
Guy Rubin (05:40):
Could you imagine marketing departments not being
data driven? It's just it wouldbe an insane thing, right? I
mean, all they do all day is ABtest everything, right? And in
sales, we still largely haveinconsistent process. And
depending on who the manager isor what who the seller happens
to be, you'll have a wildlydifferent experience through
your through your your pipelineinspection meetings and the
(06:03):
inefficiencies in sales, youknow, we saw an average win rate
of 19% you know, but we'respending over 80% of our time
with customers that are nevergoing to spend any money with
us. And that's okay, apparently.And people don't seem to be
concerned too much about that,but, but the data will tell us
what we need to know if, if, if,when you win in stage three, you
spend 15 days. Well, once youget past 15 days, we need to be
(06:26):
asking whether this opportunityis real. Yeah, but if you don't
know the average number of daysyou spend in stage when you win
versus when you lose, you don'teven have the data to be able to
make those decisions.
Jonny Adams (06:34):
I seem to always boot certain parts of businesses
on this podcast. You know, Ireally dive into it, and
typically it's SaaSorganizations I seem to have a
problem with. Just on thatpoint, we've found that the 14%
piece, I think there's somethinghappening with the individual
contributors, because of marketchange within those
organizations, or maybe a needfor growth when markets are
(06:56):
turbulent. We're finding thatsellers probably at that 86%
maybe the ones who have riddenthe wave have all of a sudden
gone actually. Selling is quitehard, and we're starting to see
them maybe move out of thesetech firms, but they're wanting
to command six figure salariesanywhere between 203 $100,000
(07:17):
but when we've actuallychallenged, Can They Sell? Guess
what? The answer is no. 86 so isit the fact that they're just
been riding that way for thelast 15 years and absolute
bucket loads of cash by becausethese market forces taking
orders, you know? Is it theleadership that just haven't,
you know? And maybe theleadership are not that
competent in these firms?
Guy Rubin (07:36):
Yeah, I think, I think a couple of things. First
of all, perhaps those numbersare slightly exacerbated by the
fact that there was so muchchange in sales teams last year.
We saw a third of sales teamschurn last year, and then so
then onboarding the new sellers,getting them up to speed, it
might be affecting thosenumbers, but I do believe, of
(07:56):
course, there are bad playersout there. Of course there are
bad sellers. Put people in salesroles that shouldn't be but if
you've got the drive and desireto win and you want to be in
sales, the leadership team youhave around you will dictate how
successful you are. You know,again, I claim to be an expert
in the space, even we're gettingmuch more accurate and much more
focused on what our ICP is todaythan we were before. You know,
(08:19):
we're all learning as we go, butyour if your sales organization,
if your go to market motion, isnot data driven, if you're not
tracking engagement withdifferent stakeholders within
the organization, whether it'sin the sales process or the
customer success process, if youhaven't got benchmarks of what
good looks like at every stageof every sales cycle, and if
those benchmarks aren't evolvingover time through the engine,
(08:39):
you're not going to have thattransformation on the flip side,
the the impact you can have byintroducing that level of
consistency, by understandingwhat those benchmarks are, and
holding everybody to account, istransformational. And we saw
recently a customer, a P backedbusiness. Their growth rate was
single digits. They had aboutjust over 130 sellers, turning
(09:00):
over nearly $200 million reallystruggling to get double digit
growth in a year. They got to27% growth just by being data
driven and just understandingwhat drives the right behaviors.
And introducing that level ofconsistency was transformational
for the business. So it can bedone and it can be done quickly,
but there's no shortcuts.
Jonny Adams (09:19):
Interesting. I love this. This is so I mean, this is
so good with the time. Just tokeep the motion and the momentum
going, Matt, take us to thethird and final point.
Matt Best (09:26):
So, Guy, I guess there's this. The next piece is
putting those two thingstogether. And something that you
talk about in the report, andthat we've had some interesting
conversations offline about isthis sort of concept of full
cycle selling. Talk to us alittle bit about that.
Guy Rubin (09:40):
Okay, so we if you've only been in sales for the last
10 or 15 years, you've probablygrown up in a world where
everybody's a single purposevehicle. You've got top of
funnel resources doing nothing,but, but, but outbound outreach.
Then they get qualified andhanded over to a seller, an A
maybe you may even have somebodydedicated and focused on The
Club. Process, and then, thenyou've got onboarding and
(10:03):
activation being run by customersuccess. And so you've got all
of these different siloedindividuals responsible. And
while the theory of it was verygood, you get these specialists
that are really good at theirpiece of the puzzle. In reality,
the buying experience had a hada big negative impact on the
buying experience, because youwere constantly being handed
over from one persona to thenext. And what we saw last year
(10:24):
was companies really leaninginto this idea of full cycle
selling, which frankly, waswhere we started, kind of 25
years ago, right when I wasselling, when I started selling,
I was responsible for generatingmy own leads and and what we see
today is nearly half ofbusinesses have started to
transition into this area offull cycle selling, where the
sellers are responsible forgenerating a proportion of their
(10:46):
own pipeline. They are obviouslyresponsible for running the
sales cycle as well. But if youthink about it, they then, they
then are responsible for holdingon to that account for the next
12 months. And the data tells usthat a number of things. First
of all, again, if the buyer hasbuilt enough trust in the seller
to sign a contract. It seemscrazy to let that relationship
die and then hand them over tosomebody else. We also know that
(11:08):
the vast majority of cross sellup sell opportunities happen in
that initial 12 month period, soallowing the seller to continue
to hold on to the account doestwo things. First of all, it
maximizes your chance of winningthose cross sell up sell
opportunities. But also it meansthat the seller doesn't feel
under pressure to get the wholedeal done in the initial
signature, because that's theonly thing they're going to get
paid on. So we've seen a realpush towards giving that
(11:30):
customer experience, that singlepoint of contacts, that main
right until the point where thecustomer's kind of normalized,
which could be six, 912, even 18months. And my gut feel is that
by this time next year, when welook at the data again, I think
it more than half of businesseswill be in that phase.
Jonny Adams (11:46):
It's just fascinating. We should
definitely unpack what will thatmean to organizations shifting
away from that, that thatapproach of having those
individual disciplines into thatfor cycle selling, I feel quite
so it's cocky, because that'swhat we do, right? Yeah, so it
should be fine. The other thingis just a bit of voice to
customer. We were delivering alarge project this year for a
(12:08):
large bank, and we asked, youknow, quite rightly, seen, what
was the reason for selecting usand and their their top criteria
for selecting us as anorganization was making sure
that the people that were in thesales process. Post selling was
going to be part of the deliveryprocess because they wanted to
buy the people. They didn't wantto buy expose the brand, because
(12:28):
they didn't know how good thequality was, I suppose, until
you start using it right. Andactually the businesses, there
was four others in the process.One organization sent a pitch
team in, and they said they'llbring in this other team to
deliver no and then this otherorganization was neck on neck
with us, because the, you know,they really like the person. So
I think that's interesting.
Matt Best (12:48):
I'm curious to unpack your view here, guy on the
capabilities, though, because,you know, some I was talking to
another client about this, aboutthis, just the other day, and
they were having challenges withretaining people in that kind of
environment, just purely becausethere's a lot more to that role
you've got to it's verymultifaceted. So what's from
your experience talking to yourcustomers and others in the
(13:08):
market? And we did a lot of workhere, talked a bit about change
and how we can kind of drivethat through. We've had guests
on the podcast talking about theimportance of understanding,
recognizing competencies and howto develop those and of course,
we do that on a kind of day today basis, but yeah, what are
you hearing in the market whenit comes to how organizations
are managing to find thosepeople that can cover all of
(13:29):
those aspects?
Guy Rubin (13:30):
Certainly a challenge, and I acknowledge
that. I think there's a coupleof things there. First of all,
I'm not suggesting that theseller is solely responsible for
their own type of funnelactivity, right? They will, if
they can generate a third oftheir opportunities themselves,
that that's kind of best, bestin market. That's what you're
looking for. I think with allchange, it's not just this
piece. I think with all change,when you get pushback, and
(13:52):
sellers generally will push backon any change, the way to
address that in an organizationis more about is to pick a pick
a group, pick a forward thinkinggroup that want to be special,
and make them special and helpthem be successful, and then
show the rest of the businesshow they're performing. Okay,
because ultimately the sellerswant to win, because they want
(14:12):
to earn money and they want tobe successful. When you show
them the path as to how they cando that, suddenly it becomes
their idea. Now they want nowthey want that now it was that
they were already bought in inthe first place. Okay? And so
find a small group that aregoing to go along with whatever
the changes that you're bringingin, and it will lean into it,
make them feel special, helpthem be successful, and then
(14:32):
make the others jealous thatthey aren't part of it, right,
that that way is the quickestroute to move forward. And I
think it's our job as leaders togive people that vision of why
they should go through thisexercise. Change is painful, so
there needs to be a really goodjustification as to why to do
it, rather than just because Itold you so. The early adopters
splendid with scarcity. I waswatching a Simon Sinek video
just the other day that he wastalking about exactly that. I
(14:54):
forget the exact number, but Ithink it's a sort of the first
11% is what you'll get. Andyou'll get kind of good
engagement with as the earlyadopter group, which is probably
smaller than lots of peoplewould think. But once you get
those on board, then the rest ofthe across the the average,
average distribution, you'vegot, then that middle group that
starts to go, hang on a minute,and that's interesting. And we
(15:15):
sort of drive change that way. Ithink there's two types of
people in the market, and bothare valid, right? So you've got
those that really enjoy turningzeros into ones. We're breaking
new ground. We're going to workout how this thing works, and
we're going to refine it and getbetter at it, and those, those
your early adopters. And thenyou've got those that really
enjoy rinse and repeat. Youknow, I know what I've been told
to do. I understand thestructure. It's been really
(15:36):
clear to me, and I'm going tofollow that playbook. And
they're really powerful too, butwe need to give them the
structure and and the mistake wemake as leaders is we put is we
mix the groups. And when you askpeople that are really good at
turning zeros into ones tocontinue to rinse and repeat the
same process, they get bored.And when you ask those that are
really good at following processto start getting creative and
(15:57):
work out how we solve a newproblem or change something,
they get very uncomfortableabout it. So again, it's our job
as leaders to find the rightpeople work with them as almost
a almost a black ops team,right? Let's work out how we fix
this challenge. How do weimprove our win rates? How do we
how do we go for sales cycle,and is it worth it, right?
Let's, let's see. Let's, let'stry and experiment. The results
will tell us, and it'll all bein the data. So really, work out
(16:19):
where your team sit. There's nogood or bad as leaders, our job
is to understand where people'sstrengths are and lean into them
and stop getting frustratedabout square pegs that don't fit
in what round holes.
Matt Best (16:29):
So Guy, you've shared some fantastic data points, some
insights from your ownexperience with us today, on the
on the podcast, which is whichis brilliant. We thank you for
that. Could you just help us,just by maybe sort of
summarizing what are those kindof four key things that business
leaders listening to this shouldbe thinking about that's going
to help them win?
Guy Rubin (16:47):
Okay? So look, we all want growth. Okay? We all want
to scale our businesses fasterthan they are at the moment. So
how do we achieve that? We'vegot to introduce consistency in
our front office, in our wholego to market motion. As I said
earlier, it's not difficult, butthere are no shortcuts. Okay, so
the four things you need tothink about if you want to
introduce want to introduce thatlevel of consistency and get
that growth in and get more ofyour sellers hitting quota, step
(17:08):
one, you have to start bysolving the data quality issue.
And you need that historically.You need to be able to go back a
year or two through this,through the data, fix the data
in a consistent format. We'renot the only players in the
park, but we have a plug andplay solution that can connect
to your mail servers, yourcalendars, your phone systems.
We can go back and fix all ofthe historical data in
Salesforce and give you anengine that keeps it up today
(17:28):
over time. Once we've got anengine that once we've got the
data consistent in the system,and by consistent if you're
still relying on any humans,then you will not have the level
of consistency you need to buildyour benchmarks. So once you fix
the data you want to you, thenneed to convert that data into
insights. What does good looklike at every stage of every
type of sales process we run?What are the warning signs we
need to look out for at eachstage? Once we understand what
(17:49):
the benchmarks are, we're thenin a good place to be able to
introduce that level ofconsistency to our sales cycle.
We can then introduce sometechnology where we can do
pipeline inspection andforecasting tools, and obviously
ours is delivered insideSalesforce, but ultimately, the
final piece of the puzzle is keyhere, and that's a change agent.
Now, a lot of organizationsthink their change agent might
be the VP of sales or their revops function, and that may be
(18:13):
the case, but more often thannot, we find that those internal
revolts functions are reallymore sales admins than they are
strategic thinkers, and you needa strategic thinker helping you
with that change. Age as achange agent. Don't
underestimate that final pieceof the puzzle. Have someone
responsible for that change. Wetalked earlier about how you can
kind of almost gamify it byhaving a pre a team that are
(18:33):
getting access, early access tothis information and that so we
can show the rest of thebusiness. Look what happens when
we get more consistent. We getbetter outcomes, and then
everybody else wants to jump onthat. So. So in summary, fix
your data, turn it intoinsights. Have a consistent
platform you can use, or sometechnology that gives you a
consistent way, an easy way ofrunning your pipeline,
inspection and forecastingprocess, and then have a change
(18:55):
agent you can lean into. Andevery quarter, you should be
seeing incremental improvementson things like time to close a
level of coverage each rep needsto hit quota conversion rates at
each stage of the sales cycleand then ultimately, win rate.
Matt Best (19:08):
There it is. Loved it. Guy, thank you so much for
coming in and talking to ustoday. It's been absolutely
wonderful. Love the insight asever. Thank you, Johnny also,
and we look forward to seeingyou again soon.
Guy Rubin (19:17):
Thank you very much.
Jonny Adams (19:18):
Cheers, Guy, cheers, Matt.
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