The world of SaaS is a different place than it was five years ago. As an incoming or current CRO or sales leader, you have a whole lot of variables to account for. At this week’s Workshop Wednesday, held every Wednesday at 10 a.m. PST, Salesloft CRO Mark Niemiec shares a 5-step playbook for how to deal with market conditions and execute on your vision successfully.
Step 1: Research and Discovery
When you join a company as a CRO or sales leader, you want to evaluate the business to understand the organization and how it fits into the broader market landscape. Are you going to stay in that space or broaden outside of it to look for market adjacencies that give you access to more and different market shares?
You should research and understand:
- The company
- Its history
- The products
- How they fit in the market
- What customers and employees think
- Where there are opportunities for change
Ultimately, as leaders, you need to guide and marshall your resources to do what you want them to do. For salespeople, you want them to listen to their customers, understand their problems, and figure out how to help them solve those problems.
You have to get a sense of who the company is based on where it is by doing research and discovery. From there, you can figure out where you want to go.
Step 2: Define Your Vision, Strategy, Execution Plan, and Measurements
Step two is a framework for getting to where you want to go.
The Vision
The vision setting comes first, and it’s super important because it will motivate employees, align internal resources, and, ideally, get the market excited about what you do.
It’s rarely the case that the product you have today is exactly what the customer needs. Your vision will get customers excited and bought in because they can see that your vision aligns with their view of what they need and where they’re going as a company.
A durable company is one where customers are willing to stay with you regardless of certain products or features changing over time. There will always be companies who are a little better at this or that, so you want a strong vision that delivers on what customers are looking for.
Strategy
How are you going to get there? What decisions will you make and not make to figure out how to execute on your vision? Folks often think of strategy as adding more to the bucket. Instead, think about what you will take away.
If you have a finite number of resources and you’re mostly optimized, the math only works one way. If you add more things, you have to take away other things. You have to be willing to walk away from certain beliefs, products, or features that once served you well so you can double and triple down on the things you’re adding from a strategy perspective.
If you believe in your vision and the strategy you’ve put in place, you’ve got to over-index on those things in service of the long-term vision.
Execution
Execution is even more important today than when capital was cheap or free because the bar to entry and success has been raised. When capital was cheap, customers made all kinds of buying decisions they wouldn’t make in an expensive capital environment.
As a result, customers ended up with a ton of potentially conflicting technology to manage. Today, companies are looking for operational excellence and strong execution. A company with a strong vision who can execute will win every time.
Measurement
Where are you on the roadmap? Are you at step 10 or step one? That’s the measurement piece. What will you measure that’s important to you and will show if you’ve achieved the goal you’re chasing? If you’ve realized your vision, you’ll understand that objectively through your measurements.
Pick the right measurements, understand how to report on those measurements, and keep them top of mind so your teams know where they stand relative to the vision.
Step 3: Realign with Leadership
When coming into a new organization, you’re new. You’re there for a reason. Maybe the company:
- Wants to chart a new path.
- Hit a different phase of growth.
- Needs a different approach to leadership.
- Is focused on team motivation or building a new set of products.
Whatever the big thing is, align with the board and CEO on the changes to be made. Then, align with your peer group, the executive leadership team. Everyone needs to get on board with the new vision, and that vision may differ from the past.
To succeed, you must get the whole organization to believe in your vision. Then, you can marshal your resources and get to that new state of reality.
You won’t throw everything away, though. The companies you join will have things they do that are super valuable in the market. You’ll keep those, refine them, and then create a tighter definition around what success looks like.
Before, the company may have focused on growth at all costs. Today, it may look more like growing smart, which means redefining success and ensuring everyone is aligned with that new definition.
Step 4: Communication with the Team
Communicating is critical for success. It’s obvious but not always easy. As a newcomer, you need to share your vision, let people know who you are, and then listen. An essential part of getting people on board with your leadership is having empathy for the changes they’ve gone through.
Always be transparent and direct on where you want to take the company and why you need to get there. You’re charting a new path, so communicating that path in a way that resonates with company values and peoples’ roles will go a long way towards buy-in of the new strategy and plan.
The last thing you want to do is miscommunicate or miss an opportunity and find out later that the team hasn’t bought in. Do roundtables, leadership meetings, skip-levels with team members, and peer-to-peer conversations to get to know people and allow them to get to know you.
Step 5: Execute and Adjust
Have you heard the saying, “Strong beliefs weakly held?” It’s an important concept to understand as a sales leader. You have to have strong beliefs so folks can know what you think. You can use that as a jumping-off point. But you also have to be willing to adjust that perspective over time.
Why? Because it’s rare for one person to devise the right answer. Teamwork, collaboration, and multiple points of view are often what it takes to get to a real solution. So, be firm but flexible in your beliefs.
Bonus Tips for New CROs
- Talk to at least one customer every day, more if you can. You need to hear what the market says, thinks, and feels about your product and messaging.
- Talk to partners regularly. They’re a force multiplier for you and will often be a little more honest than customers are. They can give you a different perspective on competitors or solutions to challenges you’re facing.
- Take care of yourself outside of work. You’re better at your work when you carve out time to exercise or meditate.
Key Takeaways
- As a sales leader, you’ll have to make hard decisions.
- Give and take goes a long way. Come in with strong beliefs and be willing to adjust them.
- Find the people in your company willing to give you honest, straightforward feedback. Treat them like gold.
- Choose benchmarks you can achieve. You’re always aiming for something that’s never been done, so look for those breakthroughs.
- Always push your talent to be better, and let people choose their paths. Some people love sales and stay there forever, while others want to move into leadership or management. Support that.
