Sales

Jason Lemkin, Founder, SaaStr

Dakota McKenzie, Director of Sales and GTM, Unusual Ventures

Dakota covers: • What is an ICP? • Keeping Your ICP and Personas Distinct • Cross-Functional Benefits • Defining Your ICP and User and Buyer Personas • Changes Over Time

Megan O'Dowd, Senior Account Based Marketing Manager, GitLab

This article outlines ideal customer profiles for GitLab's sales and marketing teams. An ICP focuses on characteristics of target companies rather than individual users. It defines core criteria like having at least 500 employees and using technologies like GitHub. Companies with over 500 employees and 100+ developers are a primary target segment. Smaller companies with under 500 employees and looking to purchase their first DevOps tool are also outlined. Multiple tables provide descriptions for attributes to consider like industry, company size, and tech stacks. A process for developing ICPs each fiscal year involving sales, strategy, and marketing teams is mentioned. Different profiles are defined based on company size, with the 500+ employee profile requiring the most developers. This document provides useful guidance for identifying ideal prospective customers.

David Cummings, Founder / CEO, Pardot

David provides 5 questions you can leverage to make an ideal customer profile, and provides an example of what the answers looked like at Pardot to make their ICP.

Reshmi Krishna, Senior Manager, Enterprise Solution Architecture, GitLab

Reshmi describes a 5-step process for objection handling alongside an extensive list of objection handling techniques and an exercise for teams to practice these techniques. • Objection Handling Process • Objection Handling Techniques That Can Help • Objection Handling Role Play Exercise • Facilitating Objection Handling Exercise • Best Practices • More resources

Mark Suster, Partner, Upfront Ventures

Mark provides an introduction to common objections from customers, emphasizing the importance of providing sales teams with the tools and preparation to respond effectively.

Seth DeHart, VP Sales, Framer

Seth explains 6 rules that should help make your sales stages easier to set up and manage: 1. Sales Stages should mirror milestones in the sales process. 2. Open Opportunities NEED to have momentum. 3. Each stage should have an expiration timeframe. 4. The best stages are “PENDING” some event. 5. Each stage needs qualification criteria. 6. Sales stages are not a “Trello board of To-Do Tasks.”

John Vrionis, Founder and Managing Partner, Unusual Ventures

John covers: • Startups, challengers, and champions • Outreach sequences • LinkedIn techniques • Email subject lines + bodies

David Cummings, Founder / CEO, Pardot

David identifies sales discovery questions that have worked for him in the past, including: • How do you currently do X? • What tools, system or process do you use to do X? • What works well with X? • What are some challenges with X? • Who else is involved with X? • How much time do you spend on X? • If you could wave a magic wand, how would X work? • What’s your timeline for changing X? • Anything else I need to know about X?

David Hong, Vice President, Field Operations, GitLab

• Qualification • Understand value points, including preparation and how to seek to understand using techniques like TED, five whys, and active listening • Avoid discovery pitfalls, like a lack of preparation, happy ears, not attaching to the biggest problem, and failing to identify the negative consequences of doing nothing