Join us as we revisit this impactful episode with Joseph Fung and recognize how much has changed in B2B sales since its original airing – with the shifts introduced by COVID-19 still shaping the industry today.

Joseph is a multi-time founder of B2B SaaS companies, and his experience, frustration and challenge with scaling the sales organization was the catalyst to founding a company, Uvaro, purpose built to train the modern B2B sales professional.

As a trained engineer, Joseph wants to see the data that measures the variables that lead to the highest performing sales organization and sales professional. The patterns Joseph was able to identify within the top performing sales organizations, was easy to capture and the better news, not that hard to replicate.

One of the key challenges Joseph sees is that corporations cannot continuously train new sales hires. Thus the average ramp time can be 6, 8 even 12 months. The impact, quota delivery is dramatically decreased in the first year of employment. The resultant goal - how to train sales professionals not only continuously throughout the year, but even before they are hired in early career roles.

Uvaro teaches and trains students with little to no B2B tech sales experience. Uvaro's median student have a median income of $28,000 coming into training (21st percentile) and exit the training program with on target earnings of $70K and greater (46th quartile).

Less than 2% of colleges have a sales curriculum or a sales major. Joseph highlights "prestige" as a factor in the lack of adoption and introduction of sales majors in college. However, as the Cloud industry marches towards total revenue of $800B+, the industry will need 360,000 additional sales professionals to achieve that level.

CEOs, whose success depends on finding and hiring sales professionals, should be motivated to encourage their local colleges and alma maters to introduce sales curriculum, even a sales major to produce more early career sales professionals.

What are the skills required for the modern B2B sales professional of the future? One significant factor impacting these skills is the evolution of Product-Led Growth as a customer acquisition motion. Joseph views this as a re-allocation of investments from marketing to product, and will not materially affect the need for sales professionals, In fact, the average B2B SaaS companies has twice an many sales professionals as they do engineers, and this trend is not changing.

In a PLG company, sales professionals will need to become an expert in the industry and the business process of their customers, with an increased focus on the business value your product enables.

One additional aspect of the modern sales professional will be the ability to expand and retain existing customers in a recurring revenue model. The core skill required for this - the ability to build and maintain trust based relationships with their customers.

Lastly, Joseph shared that grit and understanding how to leverage a system to your advantage are two key reasons why even classically trained engineers and other technical roles can be leveraged to build a successful sales career.

Joseph is a great listen for anyone considering or just wants to learn about a career in B2B Technology sales.

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Who better to write a book about being a VP Sales in the B2B SaaS industry, than 5x VP Sales and leading LinkedIn sales influencer, Scott Leese. Join us as we revisit this episode to dive back into Scott’s journey, insights, and strategies for navigating the complex role of a VP Sales in the fast-paced world of B2B SaaS.

Scott's primary focus has been to help scale early stage B2B SaaS companies scale from $1M to $20M+. This experience was the catalyst for writing a book that covers the good, the bad and the ugly of being an early stage VP Sales.

Scott's style is to identify an under represented topic, lean into the subject and write a less than 100 page book that both educates and entertains. The title, More Than a Number was selected to ensure that every person who has served, wants to serve or is serving in the role remembers they are much more than the quota number that they carry every month, every quarter, every year. Self worth should not be measured by their productivity as measured by quota achievement.

"Better people, perform better" was a phrase that helped to crystalize that evaluating a VP sales primarily or worse, only by their quota performance highlights the short term, and high risk of approach of allowing one's self to be limited to the number they achieve.

Mental health is a real issue that many sales professionals and leaders face. Being able to compartmentalize your sales performance from your performance as a friend, a spouse, a parent, and as a person is critical to living your life with the "More than a Number" mindset.

You're More Than a Number went beyond the softer side of the message, and provides a framework and playbook for first time VP Sales. Critical elements of being a successful VP Sales such as hiring, sales process documentation, coaching, script development, culture development, relationship building, goal setting, delegation and motivating your team.

The power of delegation is a key ingredient to scaling a successful sales organization. An example is the need to develop the ability to "teach by telling" versus "teach by doing". This is especially relevant when joining a sales call with an AE. Understanding that being able to scale a sales team requires allowing a sales person to learn by doing versus watching you do it, while also building the confidence is a critical part of the VP Sales job.

In fact, Scott said the ultimate goal for a VP Sales is to make themselves "irrelevant" by having an entire team of sales people who can manage the entire sales process, end to end with no involvement from the VP Sales.

If you are currently a first time VP Sales, have a desire to become a VP Sales or have been a VP Sales multiple times, listening to Scott Leese as he shares his VP Sales playbook in context of "You're more than a number" is a great listen and read!

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Join us in our re-release of our episode featuring Eileen Voynick and her deep insights into the evolution of Customer Success in the enterprise software industry, from SAP to the modern Cloud era.

Eileen Voynick has held senior operating roles and board leadership roles at companies including SAP, Oracle, Siebel Systems, All Scripts, Sparta Systems, and Chair of the Board at Jefferson Health.

In this episode, Eileen shares the evolution of Customer Success, both as a function and as a focus in the enterprise software industry.

Eileen's initial foray into Customer Success was formed in part by the large SAP partner ecosystem. At SAP, Customer Success was focused on the business value that a customer can derive from the use of their software. A consistent theme across every software deployment model is that business value and satisfaction have to be understood from the C-Suite all the way down to the individual user.

Customer Experience has always been important in the software industry and has an elevated role in the "Cloud". Eileen highlight that if you look at the switching costs of Cloud deployed versus on-premise are very similar in highly regulated fields such as health care and financial services. "Customer Experience" may have a higher focus today however, that is not primarily due to the deployment model, but rather the evolution of software becoming more common across industries, functions, and processes.

Creating a "Customer Journey Map" which includes every touch from initial touchpoint to full implementation and deployment is a critical task to complete for every Cloud company. This includes ensuring that customer touchpoints are also included post successful deployment to ensure that customer engagement is maintained across every customer stakeholder beyond one to two months before a renewal discussion.

We asked Eileen, "what's next?" in the world of Customer Experience, Product Management becoming more focused on customer experience versus feature/function will become table stakes. Eilleen's example of how a vendor wowed doctors after watching how they performed specific tasks and then came back with a prototype that was met with astonishment by the potential customer.

At the end of the day, customer experience boils down to the "business value" that a software provider delivers to each customer.

When the question "who owns an account after it's closed?" was asked, co-host Ray Rike responded with some benchmarks including, CS now consumes 11% of revenue at the median in B2B Cloud companies. Ray shared that Customer Success should own customer value-based upon user engagement, the value received from using the software but CS should NOT own up-sells, and cross-sells, it should be a "team" approach to ensure customer satisfaction and thus customer retention + growth.

Eileen views the CSM as a great facilitator that orchestrates priorities across their company to ensure customer success. In the "land and expand" model, she shared that having an account management team that works closely with Customer Success to identify, nurture and close up-sells and cross-sells is a preferred model. A caveat is that based upon the maturity of the company, this approach will vary.

The CRO needs to take leadership in establishing a sales-oriented, customer value culture that centers around the customer as job 1. This will go a long way towards building cross-functional alignment.

Lastly, we covered the role of the board of directors in helping companies make the Digital Transformation? Eileen shared that over the last 10 years, her primary role as a board member has centered around product and Go-To-Market strategy which are both core to a successful digital transformation journey. Eileen shared that as a board member, understanding the investor thesis and the company objectives to ensure they are aligned is one of her key responsibilities.

Finally, Eileen shared that being a lifelong learner with strong active listening skills are critical for early career profess.

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