Eamon Foley

At the Gainsight conference last week, I had several folks ask me some version of "everyone used to talk about adoption....now everyone says that it's just about outcomes and ROI. What's your take?" It is and has always been about both. Can you get ROI without adoption? No. Is adoption by itself sufficient to guarantee value realization? Also no. You have to have adoption of the right capabilities that tie to customer business priorities with attached measurable outcomes. That is and has always been the formula. This is easy to say, really hard to implement and manage at scale. Which is why very few companies do it.

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Marc Benioff can I introduce you to new way to accelerate growth? Seven revenue solution implemented in a day. How many business would move to salesforce. In my view all of them in time. Lets talk simple math: 250,000 customers x $100,000 (the cost of one employee) which is 45 licenses equals $25B/year. Best part everyone can self-implement. Gokul Rajaram would you like to see what I am talking about?

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Salesforce had its worst day in 20 years. First time since 2006, its stock dropped by 21%. The reason: Salesforce’s first-quarter earnings missed Wall Street’s expectations, reflecting concerns about the overall health of the software sector. While the Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) had a profound impact on the world but is now leading to different kinds of problems. What can be done and how the market will get corrected? Expanding into APAC: While EMEA and the USA are becoming highly saturated, APAC is getting stronger. Even for Salesforce, APAC was the stand-out region, achieving 21% revenue growth, while overall growth was 11%. Pay as you go: SaaS companies charged monthly subscriptions for the longest period, but now it's changing. Four months back, Zapier (a $5B company) started charging "pay-per-task" instead of only monthly subscriptions. Profitability overgrowth: Thanks to ZIRP, the cost of capital was almost free. Companies were spending on tools they did not need, but now, with high interest rates, Salesforce customers are beginning to question all large spends. Optimizing for market conditions: Salesforce is experiencing what companies like Amazon and Microsoft faced for a while. Earlier, Salesforce required 2x pipeline coverage to start the quarter, but now they need closer to 3x pipeline coverage. Companies that will survive must rethink how to provide better value at lower prices. #saas #salesforce

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A commonly overlooked cause of missing sales targets: Failing to account for AE ramp and turnover in sales capacity planning. I see this happen at companies at every growth stage—from Series A to Enterprise. To illustrate how AE ramp and turnover impact sales capacity, let's look at this math example based on a generic Enterprise sales team of 10 AEs. To keep it simple, we're only looking at AE sales capacity here; we're ignoring quota capacity and sales productivity for now. Assumptions: - 8 existing AE roles; 2 newly created AE roles - 2 months AE recruiting/hiring timeframe - 6 months AE ramp to 100% capacity - 25% AE turnover during the year Individual AE roles: AE1: Tenured rep at 100% capacity AE2: Leaves in April; backfill joins in July AE3: Tenured rep at 100% capacity AE4: Leaves in January; backfill joins in April AE5: Tenured rep at 100% capacity AE6: Left in the prior year; backfill joins in February AE7: Leaves in June; backfill joins in September AE8: Tenured rep at 100% capacity AE9: Newly created position, joins in March AE10: Newly created position, delayed start in July Three things that jump out: - The entire AE team is at 70% average sales capacity for the year (see bottom right corner of the chart) - An AE departure cuts the role's annual sales capacity nearly in half (from 100% to 54%) - This AE team is under 100% capacity during every month of the year (bottom row in the chart) Does your company track sales capacity? How do you account for AE ramp and turnover on your sales team? Do you analyze ramp and turnover overall or by segment? What data do you use? How is the data gathered? Who gathers it? How often do you refresh it? Do you account for changes in GTM strategy, sales cycles, deal sizes, sales processes, etc.? #CFO #CRO #CMO #CCO #RevOps #RevenueOperations #SalesOps #GTM #Finance #RevenuePlanning #RevenueForecasting #Marketing #CustomerSuccess #SalesQuotas #SalesTerritories #SalesProcess #CapacityPlanning #ResourceAllocation #VentureCapital #PrivateEquity #StrategicFinance #FPandA

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🏠📈 Exciting Update on the San Francisco Real Estate Market - March 2024! Coming here to share this month's market insights: The housing market is showing remarkable resilience! According to the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR), existing-home sales have seen a significant increase for the second consecutive month. In March, sales jumped 9.5% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.38 million units—surpassing expectations and marking the most substantial monthly gain in a year. 👉 Key Highlights: New Listings: Increased by 2.9% for single-family homes, though Condo/TIC/Coop properties saw a slight decrease of 0.6%. Pending Sales: Skyrocketed by 29.8% for single-family homes and 11.9% for Condo/TIC/Coop properties. Median Sales Price: Rose by 3.1% to $1,747,500 for single-family homes and a sharp 8.5% to $1,150,000 for Condo/TIC/Coop properties. Inventory Shifts: The total inventory grew by 5.9% month-over-month, with a notable year-over-year increase of 10.3% to 1.07 million units. This surge in sales is likely driven by a dip in mortgage rates last December and an overall increase in housing supply. The robust buyer demand coupled with limited inventory continues to push median prices upwards, now at $384,500—an 5.7% increase from last year. For those of us in real estate, these numbers are not just statistics—they are opportunities. Whether you're looking to buy, sell, or simply stay informed, understanding these trends is crucial. 🔗 Dive deeper into the specifics and what this means for the San Francisco Bay Area market in my latest blog post: San Francisco Market Update - March 2024 https://lnkd.in/gPQUd6P4 Let's connect and discuss how these changes can impact your real estate goals. Your next opportunity might just be around the corner! #RealEstate #HousingMarket #SanFranciscoRealEstate #NAR #MarketUpdate #BayAreaRealEstate

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If you are responsible for enablement at your company, your #1 job beyond all others is to get a strong executive sponsor. It might be the CRO, it might be the COO, it might be the CEO, maybe by some miracle it is the CFO. Maybe it's a strong SVP. Title doesn't matter - organizational respect and resource gathering does. Trying to do ANYTHING in enablement without a strong exec sponsor to: 1. Get resources (people, money, attention) 2. Align teams (sales, success, marketing, product....not necessarily in that order) 3. Create priority (over the zillion other things that a company could do) Is a huge waste of time and energy. If you don't have it, create it. If you can't create it, find somewhere you can or accept that your results will be greatly diminished and your work will be generally uninteresting/frustrating.

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Enterprise sales reps, hear me out -- you've got to stop thinking that "Proficient with Microsoft Word" is a differentiated selling skill. What I mean: Ten years ago, you could build a really unique account plan by doing google+social sleuthing because it was (a) relatively hard work that (b) not everyone would do even if they could. Today, I'm still seeing Enterprise sellers stand out from the pack by doing hard work that their peers won't — specifically, by going hard after primary sources instead of using the web. In other words, they're not settling for "Proficient with Microsoft Word." 3 approaches I've heard in the last month of discussing this with leaders of enterprise sales teams: 1. Sales rep using their 1st+2nd degree network to contact and interview literally anyone with recent work experience at the target company. Doesn't matter if they have to start below the line in the wrong department — they turn one referral into another and eventually have account insights that no competitor does. For penetrating a huge org this is invaluable. 2. Having the sales rep and SDR pair up on calling into the Sales organization of the target company, and just nicely ask for insights "sales rep to sales rep". The advantages of calling the sales org, despite not being your actual persona, are that (a) they pick up the phone more than other depts and (b) as sales reps they know how to be helpful if they want to be. I didn't personally expect this to work that well and was surprised how well it did when we tried it. 3. Hiring former employees of the target company as consultants for building account plans and/or designing RFP responses. This is harder work than sending out AirPods, champagne bottles, or gift cards in exchange for meeting — but you get a willing coach, maybe even a former executive, helping you sell. That's huge. (Obviously I'm biased toward using Emissary.io to simplify this.) There are no shortcuts in sales but there is always "doing what others won't." Would love to hear other under-utilized, hard-to-do tactics!

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Maybe the most important skill for enterprise sales and CS is the ability to quickly connect the dots. The very best can hear or read disparate pieces of information and construct them into a coherent value narrative then make this relevant to different stakeholders. Often on the fly.

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The #SAAS revolution of ever growth of sales & market cap is not working for most users The impact of unspent licenses and unused tools are becoming an eye sore The use it or lose it philosophy with users are being used for many IT tools by business focussed IT departments I see decommissioning of SAAS tools becoming a trend as many companies see taking out systems that are just protecting old ways of doing work a value driver Those providers that try to arm twist customers into staying may succeed in the very short term, but are well served to remember that SAAS was sold on " pay per drink", rip and replace and their ilk #Salesforce #Microsoft

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According to a new study by RentCafe, Gen Z renters living in the Bay Area are on track to spend up to $300,000 in rent by the time they reach age 30, roughly double what the average Gen Z renter nationwide will spend. Most notably, San Jose and San Francisco are the most expensive markets, the only ones in the nation where Gen Zers will spend a total of more than $250,000 on rent by age 30. Thankfully, data suggests that Gen Z is also earning more on average, which might offset the issue. #GenZ #BayArea #RealEstate

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Converting your AEs to start sourcing a majority of their own pipeline might not be such a good idea and here’s why: Typically this transition fails for three main reasons: 1) The pipe gen goal that’s assigned is completely made up and is based on the financial model and not relevant sales data 2) You don’t have the right resources in place including an airtight ICP, deep understanding of your persona, the right messaging or tech stack  3) Typically exec or senior level leaders are disconnected from the realities of how difficult cold outreach really is and don’t give the campaign enough time to be successful Here’s what you can do to give yourself a better chance at success: 1) Pick a few key data points to track (such as number of accounts worked, positive contacts, opportunities created, pipeline generated, closed won $$$s) and benchmark these over a period of time that makes sense for your sales cycle. Use this data set to understand what is or isn’t working and make adjustments from there. 2) Start with a small campaign to select accounts within your ICP using targeted messaging and an intriguing offer 3) Cold outreach is a team sport, get your execs and senior leaders involved by having them look through your target account list and see if there are any doors they can open from their network 4) Have some fun while doing it, celebrate the wins along the way! What do you think?

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The way most SaaS companies structure sales leadership compensation creates inter-team competition in a *NEGATIVE WAY* that costs millions of $’s in revenue and 100’s of hours of headaches a year. Here’s why (and a simple change you can make to fix it): Typically sales managers are compensated on the performance of their direct reports. For example, if their 8 Account Executives crush their targets, the manager's compensation reflects this. This sounds reasonable, right? But what about the rest of the sellers? What about the other 25 Account Executives who need to succeed for your company to hit its growth goals? Sales Managers have different strengths and need to be incentivized to help the ENTIRE sales organization, not just THEIR team. That’s why every time I started a new sales leader role here’s what I did…. I switched the manager comp plan so 20% of their variable earnings were based on the total sales orgs performance, not just their direct reports. I often got pushback, but this simple change always led to stronger collaboration, teamwork, and unity. And helped us avoid account controversy, resentment and entitlement. Sales leaders aren't coin-operated, but they are human and humans respond to incentives. Make sure you're incentivizing the right behavior. And create one team.

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PE investors / operators: have "hire additional sales capacity" on your VCP or annual plan? HIRING new reps is only half the battle. For the ROI math to math, gotta then make 'em productive. As quickly as possible. But when it comes to making reps productive quickly, B2B companies face two big challenges: →The average tenure of a B2B sales rep is less than two years, YET... → Reps hit their peak performance two to three years in. Translation: Most reps leave before they’ve reached max productivity. Eek. In many cases, weak sales onboarding is to blame. But taking a more intentional approach to sales onboarding has a bevy of obvious benefits: • Reducing sales turnover • Shortening time-to-revenue • Higher odds of achieving your rev targets Hit on this in the book in Winning Move #32, but check out the vid below for a deeper dive on the P's and Q's of sales onboarding ▶️ * * * * * Found this helpful? Plenty more where that came from. Check out the Winning Moves Platform: the ambitious PE leader's toolkit for accelerating value creation. ↳ A digital arsenal of resources, how-to's, and tools to help private equity leaders make value-generating Winning Moves with confidence. Link in the comments below. ⤵️

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