Sales Automation

Shownotes

In this episode, James Stone talks about investing in future growth and implementing meaningful automation, especially in your sales processes. James breaks down why investing in future growth is important, how automation in sales helps drive future growth, his framework for driving future growth in sales, and how to define key success metrics (KPIs) in your sales processes. He also shares valuable resources, like books and podcasts, so you can learn more about sales and growing your business’s revenue.

About the Guest

James Stone is Director of North American MidMarket Sales at HubSpot. During his tenure at HubSpot, James both founded and led the HubSpot for startups program, and helped the company grow from about 150 employees and $30 Million ARR to over 5000 employees and over $1 Billion ARR.

Connect with James Stone

Key takeaways

• Investing in future growth will help you mitigate risk and put you in a position 12-36 months down the road to keep your business growing at the rate that you want.

• Automation helps you increase your sales reps’ productivity and your sales team’s efficiency.
• To drive future growth in sales, identify the key metrics (KPIs) that really drive your success, see where you can improve, then figure out how you can compensate and incentivize your sales team to accomplish those goals.
• In sales teams, it’s important to track engagement and activity metrics, such as close percentage and lifetime value of customers.

Quote

“The problems you have six months from now are going to be much different than the problems you have two years from now and finding that balance, I think, is very, very important.”

Highlights from the episode

Why is investing in future growth important, especially in sales?

There are short-term priorities and long-term priorities in any business. A challenge anyone in business will face is how to invest in long-term growth. When thinking about investing in future growth, it’s about taking resources you currently have and the revenue you’re receiving and putting a plan together to accomplish short-term goals, mitigate risk and put yourself in a position 12-36 months down the road to keep growing at the rate that you want.

How does automation in sales help drive future growth?

Automation helps you increase your team’s efficiency in completing tasks. There are two ways to increase your revenue, grow your human capital and increase efficiency and productivity per sales representative. Automation can help improve a rep’s productivity.

Do you have a framework or strategy for implementing automation and driving future growth in sales?

The first step is to identify your key metrics (KPIs) that really drive your success and your growth goals, then see where you can grow. Then, figure out how you can compensate and incentivize your sales team to accomplish those goals. What key processes and functions could be tweaked to work faster with automation?

How do you define key success metrics?

In sales teams, engagement and activity metrics are super important, so I encourage you to start thinking about the typical activities of your sales processes. How many of those activities end up yielding discovery, connection calls, deals, or opportunities? Then, when thinking about the sales account manager, how many of those calls end up closing? That informs you that your sales team is doing a great job. Close percentage, average sale price, and types of products sold are also key metrics to keep an eye on.

Also, look at the clients you bring on board. What’s their lifetime value? How often do they upsell? What’s their dollar retention?

Do you have any resources you recommend to the audience?

The book that first impressed me was How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie because one of the hardest parts of my role right now is hiring and onboarding individuals remotely, especially in a society where many people haven’t exceeded expectations remotely in their last role. I also love the Make It Happen Mondays podcast by John Barrows, Simon Sinek’s books, and Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin.

Shout-outs

Ryan Neu – Founder & CEO of Vendr

Ryan Meadows – VP of Sales at Klaviyo

John Sherer – VP of Sales at Lattice