10 learnings on High Velocity Sales to SMB Romain Lapeyre, Co-founder & CEO @ Gorgias Aasif Osmany, VP of Sales & Partnerships @ Gorgias

1. 10 Learnings on High Velocity Sales

2. 10 Learnings on High Velocity Sales

3. 10 Learnings on High
Velocity Sales
Aasif Osmany, Romain Lapeyre
VP of Sales & Partnerships,
Founder & CEO, Gorgias
1. Focus!
2. Hiring
3. Superheroes
4. Deal Stages
5. Make it simple!
6. Listen to your Sales Leader
7. Track Everything
8. Close Rate
9. Keep Experimenting
10. Know your Levers

4. Focus!
Know what problem you are solving and who you are solving it for. Keep refining it
● Pain
○ Lack of centralized customer support channels. Poor integrations.
● Industry
○ E-commerce, Customer Service
● Platform
○ Shopify
● Persona
○ Customer Service Manager, Director of e-commerce

5. Hire the right AEs
● Things you should look for in a first AE
○ Values: Customer First, Extreme ownership, Maximize Impact, Strive for excellence
○ Profile: Hungry/Motivated, Scrappy, Smart, Entrepreneurial, Team player, Passionate, Inquisitive
○ Skills: Self starter, Data driven, Tech savvy, Strong sales skills, Critical thinker, Problem solver,
fast learner
○ SaaS Experience: Not required

6. Use Tech Stack to make AEs Superheroes
● Automate Early - Invest in Growth Ops
○ Deal Creation
○ Templatized Follow Up
○ Outbound
○ Enrichment
○ Demo Flows
○ Pre meeting emails
○ Deal stage movements
○ Deal Influence - Slack

7. Objective Deal Stages
● Demo Booked
○ meeting_booked = true, Meeting held = false
● Internal Review
○ meeting_held = true, account_created = false
● Account Created
○ account_created = true
● Closed Won
○ paid_date is known
● Closed Lost
○ Manual

8. Make it Simple!
● Payment should be easy
○ Allow monthly subscription
○ Allow pay by credit card
● Comp Plans
○ AEs should be able to easily calculate how much they will make
○ $X for hitting quota
○ X% accelerator for every dollar closed over
● Reduce fields and intake forms
○ Ask for as little information as possible, gather info in the demo
○ Use tools to track dropoff

9. Listen to your Sales Leader
● Needs to be strong trust between founder and Sales leader
○ Communicate often: weekly 1-1s at a min
○ Listen to their feedback, especially if you are still trying to find PMF
○ Sales can help with positioning and messaging to the market
● Enable your Sales Leader to build
○ Configure CRM
○ Modify sales cycles and pitches
○ Outbounding motions
● Challenge your Sales Leader
○ Push them to try new experiments
○ Increase close rate
○ Increase ACV

10. Track Everything using Playbooks
● Use Playbooks and track disco, closed lost, closed won, and contact later info
○ Need: Why is someone showing up for the meeting?
○ Company Size:
○ Persona:
○ Title:
○ Expected close date:
○ Closed lost reasons:
● Use this info to optimize your machine and double down where it is working
○ Close rate is 30% higher on companies with 25-50 people - Focus TOFU here
○ Close rate is down on 200+ people companies - dig in more
■ Close rate doubles when there are 4 stakeholders on the call

11. Calculating the right metrics
● Close Rate: The count of deals closed won / by the count of deals created for a given date
range

12. Know your Levers
● Deals X Close Rate X ACV = ARR
○ 1800 deals x 41% close rate x 3200 acv = $1.05m
● Drop in deals
○ Channel performance
○ Conversion & inputs
● Drop in close rate
○ Qualification rate
○ Attendance rate
○ Stage progression
● Drop in ACV
○ Not closing big deals?
○ Not sourcing big deals?
○ Spike in small deals?

13. Know your Levers Example
Pacing for a miss: ARR has been flat ACV is falling

14. Know your Levers Example
Appears to be driven by fewer advance and enterprise customers. Also appears to
be a bit less pro customers

15. Know your Levers Example
Deal creation from advanced and enterprise seems to be picking up across most
channels

16. Know your Levers Example
Where are these deals going? Seems most go to AEs. Small lift going to Self
Service.

17. Know your Levers Example
Of the advance and enterprise going to AEs, we have a drop in attendance rate.
Qual rate is flat.

18. Know your Levers Example
Close rate has fallen from 43% to 33% in March and the trend continues.

19. Know your Levers Example
Sales cycle is getting longer. Only 66% of deals created in April have reached a
completed deal stage.

20. Know your Levers Example
Of the advance and enterprise deals lost, 70% is to sales and ~30% to product

21. Actionable Outcome
● Example OKR: Increase close rate and reduce time to close on advanced and
enterprise plans to generate $xm in ARR
○ Implement mutual success plans on 80% of adv + deals in Q3
○ Host 3 enablement sessions on (Enablement to validate)
■ Price positioning
■ Quantify business impact and ROI
■ Negotiation and contract buyouts
○ Have 3+ stakeholders involved in 80% of deals