Aaron Norris’ Post

Enterprise sales is one of the most lucrative roles in tech. Navigate it successfully and become a multi-millionaire. BUT BEWARE – if you hop from gig to gig: By chasing the next shiny object, you might be leaving hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars on the table. There are 5 levels in the career of an individual contributor seller. Each builds its own skills, offers and opportunities. And each comes with significant trade offs. But knowing how to play the long term game in B2B sales can make the difference between getting by and retiring early. I break down The Career Trajectory of a Seller here: https://buff.ly/3TQpJwQ #sales #enterprisesales

Avoid This Common Sales Hire Mistake I've seen this scenario play out too many times: a startup founder excitedly announces they've hired an ex-executive from a major target customer, like #Amazon #AWS, believing this will open doors and drive sales. While it sounds like a brilliant strategy on paper, it's often a recipe for disappointment. Here’s why: 1.    Lack of Sales Skills: Knowing the right people is one thing; convincing them to buy your solution is another. If he hasn't sold before, he likely doesn't have the skills to close deals. 2.    Experience Mismatch: Even if he did have sales experience at AWS, what was he selling? If his expertise is in selling hardware, those skills might not translate well to selling your SaaS solution. The methodologies, customer objections, and sales cycles are vastly different. Selling SaaS requires a deep understanding of the software's value proposition and how to convey that to potential customers. 3.    The Hustle Factor: Your first few sales will require relentless hustle. It's about grinding, begging, nagging—doing whatever it takes to get that first deal. An ex-executive from AWS might be hesitant to nag his former colleagues; he has a reputation to maintain. 4.    Favor-Based Deals: Let's say, by some miracle, his connections at AWS agree to buy. Often, this is seen as a favor. They might ask for a significant discount or an extended trial period, framing the purchase as doing him a favor rather than seeing the intrinsic value of your product. This doesn’t establish a strong, value-based relationship and is unsustainable. So, what's the right approach? Instead of hiring someone who worked at AWS, hire someone who successfully sold to AWS. This applies not just to your sales team but also to resellers or partners who work on commission. Look for professionals with a proven track record of selling similar solutions to similar customers. They understand the grind, know how to navigate the sales process, and aren't afraid to push for the close. #SalesStrategy #StartupTips #BusinessDevelopment #SalesHires #SaaS #SalesExpertise

Dog and Baby. You know what that means - we’re looking for our next hire. We’ve done just under $3M in revenue since we launched the company 22 months ago. We muscled through the tech downturn that came just a few months after we started a tech sales training and recruiting company. Now we have big changes coming or already underway : - capital raise - move to subscription model - increasing sales industry choices - monetizing our supply side (organizations) I’m learning a lot as a first time CEO, and self awareness has always been my biggest strength as a human. I’m really good at driving revenue, getting people excited, and getting a team on the same page. What I’m not good at is internal and external operational workflow optimization, financial planning, and translating my vision and business/data requirements clearly to our development team. So we’re looking to hire our first business and revenue operations hire. Alignment with our core value is table stakes: Accountability, Coachability, and Authenticity. Passion for our mission is Non-Negotiable: to help as many athletes and veterans transition to careers they love and empowering them to be successful, all while helping companies perfect the process of hiring sales people. Couple other requirements: - former college athletes or military veterans only - 2-3 years in operations (ideally some experience in RevOps, Product, Finance but an analytical and process oriented mindset can fill gaps) - No “Strategy Only” people. You’re gonna be in the weeds, building reports, executing changes with our team. - we have fractional help with Finance/RevOps/Development already - I need someone to take over these relationships and maximize what we are paying for Right or wrong, I was raised to believe that the point of a business is to make money. Raising capital isn’t going to change that tenant for me as a CEO. We have and always will be a profitable company. But if we are going to continue to scale the way we are, and do it efficiently, I need someone who sees the operational side of our business in a better way than I do. If you’re interested please send me a connection with a note that explains why you match the above description. If you know someone that should be in the mix, tag them or send them this post. If we get far down the road with a candidate, I will give you a couple references of operational specialists that have worked with to me in past sales leadership roles so you can hear directly from them on how I fit our core values. I expect the same for you. #AllGasNoBrakes #DialedIn

The end of Q2 is a scary time in sales. Teams should be at 60% of annual quota. Most will be around 20%. Companies will decide whether to fire AE’s. Or to lower their quota. Firing only works if you can hire better. But the industry attainment is 40% annually. So you can’t plan to hire better reps. That would be dreaming of getting lucky. Reality is you can hire what’s in the market. The market is AE’s hitting 40% attainment. The reason is quotas are usually too high. Instead of firing and re-hiring (expensive). Consider reducing quota (free). Invest in developing your current team. Aim for improving YoY. Slow and steady wins this race. Not the rollercoaster of hiring and firing.

Wondering if you’re ready to scale your sales team? Check out this advice from someone who scaled his company and hired 100+ sales people.

Scaling a sales team is like solving a riddle. Hire too fast? You are over your skis. Hire too slow? Not enough revenue growth. This one metric can help you solve the riddle: Productivity per Rep (PPR) The math is easy. Total amount of bookings in the month divided by total number of reps carrying a quota in the month. PPR is the leading metric for revenue performance. It tells you where to looking for issues. When your PPR is at least 80% of your fully-ramped quota for two months straight, it’s time to hire more reps. When it’s below 80%, don’t hire. Work with your existing reps to make them better. Get better leads. Do whatever you need to, but don’t distract yourself with hiring. I’ve hired 100+ salespeople in the last 10 years, and I’ve written down the exact process we used to find the best talent. You can steal it from me here: https://lnkd.in/gK_79ijQ

In the earliest days of our company, Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas described what we were building as an 'enterprise social' product. It's stuck with me, and I think is an accurate representation of what we're building. We have strong conviction that incident response is a human communication and coordination problem: not a technical problem. As a result, the value of our product scales with organizational complexity. This means that the largest enterprises in the world should find our product extremely valuable, and I'm happy to say that they do! Enterprise makes up 75% of our business by revenue, and I can see that only increasing over time. "Well Stephen, that's all very interesting — but get to the point.." I hear you say. Sure. The one sticking point here is that we've got an Enterprise team, but they currently have no manager. That seems suboptimal, to say the least. I'm trying to fix that by hiring an Enterprise Sales Manager. A few things we're looking for: 🇺🇸 Based in the US 🧘🏼 Has experience, and thrives in early-stage ambiguity 💰 $300K+ ACV deals are your bread and butter 👑 3+ years experience of leadership experience And, as with every role here, we pay a $10K referral bonus, so send us your best people! I've added more information in the comments.

Are you costing yourself $$$ by wasting time in a mature or declining sales role? Your current sales role falls into one of three stages: -> Early Growth Stage – Startups & New Businesses -> Maturity Stage – Stagnation or Steady Growth -> Decline/Renewal Stage of Business Growth If your role = company in mature stage, you may see: -> A flat base salary -> Shrinking commission plans through higher quotas -> Selling into base accounts only -> Less big wins If your role = company in decline stage, you may see: -> Layoffs for tenured (high salary) employees -> Hiring for less experience = Lower pay -> Base accounts which shrinks every day If you are an elite talent, stop costing yourself $$$. 👉 Inquire about our “Early Growth Stage” sales role:  -> Highly competitive salary -> Uncapped commissions -> Yearly stock options -> 12 company paid holidays -> 19 days of earned PTO in Year 1 -> World class training programs 👉 I am HIRING for Enterprise Sales in San Antonio. Apply NOW or RECOMMEND this role to a friend via the link in the comments! #leadership #salesleadership #b2bsales  

With our most recent sales hire at Elevar our #1 priority was hiring for segment fit. There were 800+ applications for the role and we turned away a ton of incredible candidates. We gave immediate no's to reps that had years of Enterprise SaaS sales experience at recognizable orgs. Why? SMB sales is very different from Mid-Market and Enterprise sales. Closing a deal in 1-2 calls and needing to close 15-20 deals per month to hit your quota requires a unique skillset. You need to be an expert at buying signals, driving urgency/immediacy, and asking for close. Reps that have been selling to Enterprise for years often lose this skillset. They've been focused on multi-threading, org mapping, etc. because it's necessary to be successful in their segment. One skillset is not better than the other, they're just different. The rep we hired (shoutout Blair Gignac) had significant SMB sales experience and proved our assumptions about hiring fit right. Closed his first deal in 7 days, 90% to quota in his first month, and has been 100% to quota since. #smbsales #saas

I recently spoke to a room of executives as a part of my advisory role with The Scalable Company. I said something that every single CEO wrote down, so maybe you might find it helpful too. "Once a quarter, have your #sales leader present to you 2-3 candidates that are currently working, have completed your #hiring and screening process, and would love an opportunity to join your sales team." Why? two reasons... 1) Best-in-class sales teams are always hiring 2) Your top reps will leave--probably at a highly inconvenient time