TLDR: I interviewed 100+ GTM professionals to discuss their daily challenges and emerging trends. Ten key themes came up, including the need for repeatable sales processes, the shift from inbound to outbound, and the increased importance of value assessments and realization.
I had the privilege of chatting with 100+ professionals from go-to-market functions like sales leadership, value consulting, and revenue operations. My goal was to understand the most pressing problems that they and their teams deal with on a daily basis, as well as the recent trends they’ve observed. I started the conversations with the following questions:
To summarize and share what I learned, and as a thank you to those who talked with me, here are my top 10 takeaways:
1. Breaking the Founder Dependency: The Role of Sales Leaders
Founders can be your best salesperson–they live and breathe the product–but a founder’s time is finite and they can’t step in to close every deal. That’s where sales leaders come in. There’s a misconception that the most important part of being a sales leader is being good at selling, but the reality is that one of the most important skills is being able to create a repeatable and predictable system.
Cultivating a repeatable sales system involves more than just tools. Successful sales leaders focus on establishing a clear process that includes defining key questions, providing guidance for discovery calls, and documenting the buying journey–from the SDR making a cold call, to the first discovery meeting, to the value consultant completing a BVA. With a well-defined process in place, anyone can become an effective salesperson. This level of process maturity is typically achieved around the Series B or $25 million ARR mark.
2. Shifting from Inbound to Outbound Motions
90% of those I spoke to agreed that the market for software is brutal right now. Sales teams are finding the current atmosphere more challenging because the years before 2023 were a tech boom with numerous inbound leads and flexible budgets. Today, every purchase is being intensely scrutinized. For any budget to be allocated to a new product, the cost savings and ROI need to be clearly quantified. Finance teams are asking champions more specific questions than before, and your sales team needs to be ready to support their champions with the answers.
3. Show All Three Scenarios
When your champion requests a budget, the budget holder will ask them if they have considered three scenarios before deciding to purchase your product. It's important for you to think about these scenarios and empower your champion to present all three when you're not in the room:
1. Cost of the Status Quo. Your champion needs to demonstrate the cost of inefficiencies, lost productivity, or missed opportunities with the current state. Many companies don’t have the data to consider this, so providing a structure to think about and quantify the current pain is a must to paint the picture. The cost is usually much higher than people realize.
2. Cost of Building. Your champion should also be able to show that while it may seem like a cost-saving measure to build a solution in-house, the long-term costs and risks associated with this approach could be significant. One benefit of going with a vendor is they have a broader view of the market and can see the problems your team may face in the future.
3. Cost of Purchasing your Product. Finally, your champion can highlight the value proposition of your offering and show how it saves time, money, and effort in the long run. Building an internal solution puts a bandaid on the problem, while purchasing your product is a full treatment to keep the problem in check.
Clearly quantifying and tying numbers to each of these 3 scenarios makes the decision-making process much simpler.
4. Timing and the Beta-Region Paradox
Many of the sales professionals I spoke with talked about the importance of timing when to approach a prospect. Their comments reminded me of a concept in psychology called the beta-region paradox. Essentially, it means that people can tolerate minor issues, but when things go really wrong–like losing a big deal or missing a quarterly target by a significant amount–it's the best time to make a move. This makes continuous discovery important so you can stay informed and know when to push with your offering.
5. Aligning Stakeholders Around a Single ROI
Budgets are tighter, which means that more approvals and stakeholders are involved before a deal is finalized. Sales professionals are relying heavily on their business value teams to help them navigate this complex landscape, and value teams are uniquely skilled at shifting the focus from product features to the direct business impact that a solution can deliver. By constructing a narrative that is easily understood by both technical and non-technical stakeholders, value teams can build a solid business case that clearly communicates the current state and how the proposed solution will improve key metrics.
One of the key benefits of this approach is that it brings everyone involved in the decision-making process around a single ROI number. This is especially important given the increased scrutiny on budgets and the need to justify every dollar spent. Ultimately, a well-executed business value assessment is becoming the key to securing the buy-in.
6. Value Realization and Renewals
Value realization was another recurring theme in my conversations, especially with respect to renewals. Budgets today are tighter, auto-renewals are off the table, and sales leaders have to think more about where their team–particularly their business value consultants–spends their time. Most of the value consultants I spoke with spend 80% of their time on presales activities and 20% of their time on post sales activities. The new target is to move that split to closer to 50/50 to ensure that existing customers know the value they’re getting and the potential loss if they were to churn.
The caveat here is for products with a Product-led Growth motion, like Dropbox and DataDog. For these types of products, value realization has always been–and still is–the main focus, while forward-looking business value assessments are secondary.
7. RevOps at the Center Stage
Sweep, Gong, Clari. Recent years have seen a heap of new sales tools that make all parts of the go-to-market engine more effective. With so many stellar tools available, it’s challenging to compete unless the entire customer journey–from first touch to renewals–is a well-oiled machine. Everyone I spoke with seemed to agree on one thing: RevOps teams are taking center stage and evolved from its traditional role as an operational function to become a proactive strategic partner.
The average prospect’s tolerance for ambiguity has decreased, and RevOps is now closer to the field than before to help close deals. RevOps teams ensure that the proper systems are in place to enable the customer journey and that the necessary collateral is ready and available at a minute's notice.
8. Scheduling is Still a Challenge
Nearly every individual I spoke with (SEs, VE, and Sales Reps) said that scheduling is still one of the most challenging parts of the job. Tools like Calendly and Doodle certainly help, but there’s still much work to be done.
Not the most interesting finding, but some things never change :)
9. Customization is Key
To build a compelling business case, it’s no longer sufficient to rely solely on assumptions and industry benchmarks. Finance and procurement teams now require company-specific data. This underscores the significance of value selling during the discovery process, where asking the right questions can yield the necessary data points for a compelling business case. Sales leaders are finding that the reps who focus on value selling and engage business value teams are more successful than those who use other methods.
10. Know Your Champion
The department that your champion works in can have a big impact on the sales process. A champion in the sales department can often move faster than a champion on the engineering team.
Sales champions are familiar with navigating a company’s purchasing process and quicker to evangelize the impact a product can have on the business's bottom line. With their knowledge of the narrative and what economic buyers are looking for to release the budget, it's no surprise that sales champions are experts in going from qualification to deal closure. After all, they spend their entire day selling!
On the other hand, technical champions often face difficulties when it comes to selling and communicating the value of a product. Their focus tends to be on technical specifications rather than the business impact. To help overcome this challenge, providing a structured framework for communicating value and supporting content is key. Value selling becomes particularly important in this case as it allows technical champions to translate the technical benefits into tangible metrics that can be understood by economic buyers.
In a nutshell...
Sales is really, really hard. Kudos to all the sales folk out there - it’s a tough job and someone has to do it!
My team and I are working on a tool to help sales teams, and discovery is a never-ending process. If you’d be willing to spend 15-minutes chatting with me, I’d love to connect :)
Blog posts expanding on each of these topics are in the works - if there's a specific topic you want to hear about first, let us know!