Robb Young

Here's a problem every CRO has... their AEs going back and forth between (i) I need more meetings & (ii) I need better quality meetings. It's a constant battle and usually not the true cause of missing targets.... It's a symptom that targets will be missed. To find the issue you need to dig much deeper. Context: SDRs will always blame "the leads", "the connect rate", or "The tools" as for the reasons they don't hit quota... in reality, it's often their behaviors (how many voicemails they leave, the hours they call, how they rotate numbers, their Linkedin Activity, etc.) AEs, same thing. They'll blame "lack of meetings" and "quality of meetings" but it's often their EXECUTION that is the issue... You'll never find that out by ASKING "what's holding you back"... You can solve this in a few interesting ways: 1. Inspect the hell out of their work. 2. Change the comp plan. Example of #1: We have an AI agent that watches EVERY call an AE takes and scores them. We used to do those scores manually so we have high confidence the scores are correlated with success AND we have validated the AI scores as accurate as humans do. We also review "speed to follow up" as well as "follow up persistence" and "follow up quality"... those 4 metrics combined tell you who will be top of the leaderboard and who will be bottom. It's the execution, not the leads. Example of #2: The reason the AEs want more leads is because asking for that costs them nothing and defers blame... We all want unlimited "at bats" when they're free. Even if we know we will close 1/30, I want "MOAR!"... Imagine you increase the commission from 10% of closed won, to 20% of closed won, but add a claw-back.... You get 20% of all Self-Sourced Deals... if Marketing or SDRs generate leads for you, you "pay" $500 per meeting set by that team. No, no money out of pocket... they just accumulate "commission debt"... look at it this way. AE took 30 meetings to close 3 deals for $200K in revenue this quarter.... Commission is 20%, so $40K! 30 meetings at $500 each, is $15,000... So the commission on the rep is $40K - $15K = $25K.... This simply adds a ton of leverage for the Sales Team. - The most effective reps make a lot more money. - The AEs never show up unprepared because it's costing them money - The AEs never forget to follow up because they rather not "buy" more meetings Now, you can dismiss this idea and go back to the old ways... they'll keep painting you a picture that. they're perfect and blame "lack of meetings" and "quality of meetings"... but how's that working for you?

28

8 Comments

Executives won't open cold emails, but they will open a package. This is my best advice for breaking into Tier 1 accounts... When we were trying to break into big enterprise accounts at Levelset, there was one approach that consistently worked. We sent our top prospects a gift in the mail. Most teams never try this. They send another cold email, another LinkedIn message, or another voicemail. Then they sit around wondering why nothing converts. When you’re going after companies that can change your trajectory, you have to operate differently. Start with the person you are trying to connect with. Before you buy anything, spend time learning about the prospect. Look at what they post. Notice what they care about. Listen for the problems they’re trying to solve. You’d be surprised how often people leave clues out in the open. AI is really helpful at pulling this together for you. It's important to understand what would actually matter to them. Pick a gift that shows you pay attention. It takes more effort to pick something thoughtful than it does to spray a thousand people with the same sequence. But you’re not going after a thousand people. You’re going after the handful who can meaningfully move your business forward. It doesn’t need to be expensive. It needs to be personal. Somewhere in the $25–75 range is enough to show you cared without feeling transactional. Include a handwritten card. Keep it simple. Three or four sentences. Tell them why you chose the gift. Tell them what it made you think about in their business. Then make a clear, easy ask. When everything else in their stack is automated, a handwritten note stands out. Send it in a bubble mailer. Nothing fancy. USPS works fine. A bubble mailer gets opened. People are curious. Just make sure the address is right. We double checked every single one. Full up after it arrives. Don’t assume they saw it. Don’t assume they connected the dots. Send a short email. “Just shipped you something. Should arrive this week.” Then follow up again after it lands. The follow up is where the meetings get booked. Did this work? At Levelset, this was our most reliable way to break into large accounts. The response rates were dramatically higher than anything we did through email or phone alone. And it wasn’t because we were clever. It was because we were willing to put in more effort than everyone else. Most reps won’t spend thirty minutes researching a prospect or writing a card. That’s fine. The ones who do will win the meetings with the best prospects. The Reality This work doesn’t scale. It’s not supposed to. You don’t run this play for your entire TAM. You run it for the hundred companies that would meaningfully impact your business if you earned their trust. For those accounts, a thoughtful gift is a small investment compared to the upside. And if you’re willing to do the work, you’ll end up in conversations your competitors never even get close to.

83

35 Comments

Really enjoyed my conversation with James Hounslow from Indigo GTM and I'm excited to share our perspectives with the Indigo GTM, Summit Quest Partners, and LinkedIn communities this week on Rev-n-u Unplugged! From creating a #WinningCulture to the Art and Science of Negotiating to #SelectingWinners, we covered some key topics that stand at the very foundation of what it takes to build a #HighPerformingTeam. Elevating every person on your team to reach their #PeakPotential - at scale - is what separates good companies from truly remarkable ones and in this episode we explore some of the successes - and some of the growth opportunities - acquired along the way!

18

Last week our GTM team flew to Scottsdale for a three-day offsite. We went in with one big question: What does our go-to-market motion actually look like in an agent-first world? Here’s what kept coming up. The issue isn’t that reps need more tools. It’s that most of their day still isn’t spent selling. They’re: – Manually researching accounts – Jumping between 5+ platforms to piece together context – Stitching together call prep from fragmented info – Logging and updating CRM after every interaction That’s not leverage. That’s busy work. Adding another tool doesn’t fix it. It just adds another tab. What we’re really talking about is removing the manual layer altogether — building systems of agents (and sub-agents) that handle research, personalization, and sequencing on their own. If that works, a few things change: – Capacity isn’t tied to headcount in the same way – Reps spend their time in conversations, not admin – Pipeline gets better because every touchpoint actually has context We spent three days pressure-testing this from every angle. Next week, we’ll share what we’ve been building at Warmly,. I genuinely think this is the biggest shift in sales since remote selling became the norm.

22

1 Comment

Revenue teams don't have a data problem. They have a fragmentation problem. The CRM knows the opportunity. The call recorder knows what the buyer said. Intent knows who's researching. But none of them know the whole customer. So reps become the connective tissue, manually assembling a picture that should already exist. Simply throwing AI at each silo doesn't fix the underlying problem. That's the gap Common Room is closing. As the context layer of a true end-to-end revenue OS, Common Room brings buyer intelligence, conversation data, and CRM together so AI is built natively into the system. From identifying the right accounts, coaching during the call, to closing the deal; intelligence learns from every stage. But it also informs and acts on every stage automagically. It handles admin and anticipates coaching needs. It provides context on demand. And a whole lot more. When AI actively closes these gaps, reps sell. Leaders trust the forecast. Every closed deal makes the next one sharper. I joined as CRO because this is where a category gets created, not managed. Twenty-plus years in go-to-market taught me the difference. And I've never been more excited to show up for work. It also mattered that Common Room was built by Linda Lian. I've started women's ERGs at nearly every company I've worked at. Representation in who builds the category shapes what the category becomes. I'm at Dreamforce today. Different badge than my Salesforce days, very different pitch. It's good to be back. Find me if you want to talk about what it looks like when your revenue stack finally knows the whole customer. Know the buyer. Act on that intelligence. Learn from every deal. That's revenue OS. And we're just getting started. 🚀

157

25 Comments

Over the last few posts I have written about repeatable revenue growth: ICP, product-market fit, GTM fit, revenue quality, PE board visibility, Customer Success, renewals and partner-led growth. The thread running through all of them is simple: growth only becomes repeatable when the business is clear on who it is serving, what problem it is solving, how that value is proven, and how the customer is grown over time. This is where commercial operating rhythm matters. I have seen sales cycles slow down when the product vision gets ahead of the customer problem. What starts as a clear solution to one issue becomes a much bigger platform conversation. More stakeholders enter the room. More questions are raised. More conceptual features need explaining. The opportunity looks bigger, but it becomes harder to buy. That is the danger. The discipline is to diagnose properly with the client. Are they the right fit? Is the problem real? Is it urgent? Does the solution solve the issue they actually need fixing now? That should show up in the commercial rhythm. The best pipeline reviews do not just ask, “when will this close?” They also ask, “is this the right customer, with the right problem, at the right time?” If the answer is yes, focus there. Land the use case. Prove the value. Build trust. The wider product vision still matters, but timing matters more. In many cases, deeper and broader product engagement should come after the customer is contracted, live and seeing value. That is where Customer Success can create expansion from a position of evidence rather than promise. Do it too early and the proposition will lose clarity. Messaging becomes confused. Campaigns lose focus. Sales conversations stall. Customers struggle to understand what the product is, who it is for and why it matters now. That is not a marketing problem. It is an operating rhythm problem. Product, Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, Finance and Operations all see different parts of the growth engine. The value comes when those views are connected, not competing. For me, commercial operating rhythm is where strategy becomes execution. It is where ICP, PMF, GTM fit, revenue quality, renewals and partner growth stop being separate topics and become one connected growth system. That is how repeatability is built. What operating rhythm do you think creates the most value in a growth business? #saas #digital #valuecreation #productdevelopment #marketing #customersuccess #sales #icp #pmf

11

1 Comment

Your calendar tells me everything about how you lead. I can look at a sales leader's week and know within 30 seconds if they're proactive or reactive. Here's the tell: Reactive leaders have calendars full of "reviews." Call review. Pipeline review. Activity review. Forecast review. All backward-looking. All after the fact. You're reviewing calls that already happened. You're reviewing deals that already stalled. You're reviewing a week that's already over. You can't change any of it. Proactive leaders flip every single one of those. Call review → Call prep Pipeline review → Pipeline planning Activity review → Activity planning Forecast review → Forecast building Same time investment. Completely different outcomes. Here's what this looks like in practice: 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝟭:𝟭: "How did that deal go?" "Why didn't you hit activity?" "What happened last week?" 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝟭:𝟭: "What's the plan this week?" "What do you need to win that deal?" "How are we going to hit activity?" One is an autopsy. The other is architecture. Think about it — you spend 30 minutes reviewing a call that already happened. What if those same 30 minutes went into prepping for the next one? Role playing. Practicing objections. Planning the flow. Which one actually moves the number? Here's my challenge to you: Open your calendar right now. Find every meeting with "review" in the title. Now ask yourself: Can this become a prep meeting instead? Proactive leaders don't just inspect what happened. They architect what's going to happen. That's the difference between leading and managing the aftermath. PS - there is a full 60 min training just on 1x1s and templates along with 14 other modules and templates in the Sales Leadership Accelerator https://lnkd.in/ejPDhZw4

251

59 Comments

I built a complete Claude Meeting System for Sales Team Most sales teams think they have a prospecting volume problem. But they have a prospecting quality problem.. We built Claude into the research and acquisition layer of our Team sales operation to fix it. To be clear: Claude can't do this alone. You have to plugged one tool into it, and that combo replaced the whole outbound stack. Less time of research, more time to manage the sales and revenue cycle. And here's what happens once it's connected: → finds accounts → detects buying and social signals → checks whether they actually fit → scores each prospect against their ideal customer profile → prioritizes the ones most likely to convert → researches the account → finds the right person → checks the company and contact context → figures out why they might care → builds the outreach angle → personalizes the message → prepares the outreach for the rep to review → coordinates the next actions across email and social No 10,000-contact database. No hours spent building lists. Just prospects with an actual reason to reach out. Sales teams don't always need more prospecting capacity. They need better prospecting. No workflow builder. No 14 step automation. We just talk to it in Claude chat, that's the whole interface. Want the tool?

11

30 Comments

I wish more sales leaders thought this way... Most don't realize that your company's network is bigger than any one person. Here's what I mean: I keep hearing "we need to hire that person because they have a huge rolodex." Here's the reality - no single person has more connections than your entire company. Stop thinking about relationships individually. Start thinking collectively. Your company's inner circle includes: - Most importantly: your champions (current customers) - the scale factor - Investor and advisor networks - Executive team relationships - Channel sales connections - Go-to-market partners This is where most revenue leaders miss the mark. They ask: "Who does the CEO know?" or "What about our investors?" But they forget the collective power. The bigger you are, the more customers you have, the more this compounds. Use this across your entire customer journey: - Net new prospects - Dormant deal revival - Active pipeline deals - Relationship maintenance Relationships are living things - they ebb and flow with the tide. Which is why you need to be systematically tracking them. My challenge for other sales leaders out there: think bigger than one person's rolodex. P.S. I had a blast talking with Chris Bussing on his most recent pod. Check it out! Links in the comments.

54

11 Comments