The TruVoice platform was created to help capture and present customer insights and coaching intervention analytics in role-based dashboards to help managers monitor, measure and modify strategies and interventions on specific accounts. Specifically, the solution was designed to:

• Pinpoint areas of weakness or opportunity in customer relationships;
• Trigger an alert to the account team that outlines an account’s areas of concern and/or interest; and
• Serve up relevant coaching content.

“With this automated customer feedback and customer success coaching system, each individual account team member will be shown areas for improvement based on what their customers are saying,” said Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy Officer at Corporate Visions, in a statement. “It’s like a fitness tracker for customer success: Just like a fitness tracker monitors your physical activities, helps you identify areas for improvement and provides personalized recommendations, this system tracks customer experience, uncovers gaps based on customer feedback and offers tailored training to optimize results.”

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The Challenge

Perceptyx’s focus on customer success and innovation has led to rapid growth. Over the past two years, the company made three strategic acquisitions to deepen its continuous listening capabilities, expand market share and cement its leadership in enterprise-class employee experience. Those acquisitions include:

• Waggl, an employee feedback solution that crowdsources comments/ideas in real-time;
• CultureIQ, a research-backed solution for assessing current culture and closing culture gaps; and
• Cultivate, an AI-enabled platform that provides text and sentiment analysis, coaching, nudges and proactive feedback.

While these acquisitions presented growth opportunities, they also brought a challenge: How could Perceptyx align disparate sales cultures while maintaining the momentum demanded by a growing organization?

The Solution

The company decided to align its GTM function around one principle: The value it brings to customers. Leadership needed a reliable way to drive sales effectiveness and productivity at scale, sell higher and expand customer relationships. Most importantly, leaders needed to transition from a transactional mindset to value-based selling.

“We wanted to grow the business profitability by consistently and effectively demonstrating the value we can bring to customers to help them solve unique business issues,” said Jason Hahn, Chief Revenue Officer of Perceptyx. “We chose ValueSelling Associates because they gave us a very simple, yet very powerful, methodology to work from.”

Hahn — alongside the company’s SVP of Enterpise Sales, VP of Customer Sales, VP of RevOps and Growth Enablement Manager — launched a sales transformation to enable sellers to uncover and share the unique value Perceptyx could provide customers. The transformation included four components:

1. A ValueSelling Framework, which included ValueSelling workshops to align the revenue engine across internal teams, tailored resources to apply the methodology and implementation of the eValuePrompter (eVP) tool in Salesforce with eVP user trainings;
2. A sales training program, featuring a bi-weekly sales training program for the entire revenue team, monthly individual team trainings, instructor-led ValueSelling workshops and multiple live onboarding trainings per new hire;
3. Marketing collateral in the form of customer-facing materials aligned to the ValueSelling Framework to ensure consistent messaging and build brand trust; and
4. Sales assets to drive adoption of ValueSelling, including revenue playbooks, sales proposals and a growth enablement charter.

“Two things really stood out for us around ValueSelling,” said Sarah Stites, Growth Enablement Manager of Perceptyx. “The first was the customization of the program. The content was highly focused on our buyer personas and their unique business issues. Second, the ValueSelling sales methodology supports multiple customer-facing teams. Having a marketing workshop and a revenue leader workshop in advance of the sellers was key to aligning teams and fundamental to our success.”

The Results

Within a year of implementing its value-based sales approach, Perceptyx realized:

• A 56% increase in ACV; and
• A 30% increase in multi-year contracts.

Additionally, the new approach helped Perceptyx close the largest deal in the company’s history and secure two of the most valuable logos in their marketplace.

By training everyone from marketing to revenue leadership on the ValueSelling Framework, Perceptyx created an ecosystem to drive adoption. Specifically:

• Marketing created standardized, customer-facing collateral aligned to the methodology;
• Sales gained the skills to have more impactful business conversations at the CHRO level, transform their qualification process and sell on value;
• Revenue leadership gained more accurate data and was equipped to have more productive coaching sessions; and
• The company implemented a mentorship program that provided veteran sellers with a framework for replicating best practices and communicating that information to new hires.

The shift to value-based selling has transformed Perceptyx’s sales culture. It’s equipped the sales team with a common language to more effectively communicate deal strategy and provided selling tools that reveal why they win, why they lose and how to differentiate from the competition based on a client organization’s unique business challenges. Enabled with a consistent, proven way to approach opportunities and the supporting collateral to integrate ValueSelling into their daily routines, seller confidence is at an all-time high. This sales culture of collaboration and consistency has also enabled Perceptyx to significantly decrease new seller ramp time. 

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The addition of the CS Operating Model aims to provide CS teams with reliable and proven frameworks in a complete system to align teams. It includes new CS blueprints, turn-by-turn directions for CS teams and how to apply them across Onboarding, Adoption and Expansion. The new model can also be directly embedded into a rep’s workflow, via launch partners such as Aircover.

WbD Revenue Academy’s courses seek to allow teams to increase revenue without adding employees by improving productivity per rep and employee lifetime value. Its courses include:

• Skills Coaching: These ongoing coaching sessions can be used to improve specific skills and drive revenue by helping reps practice and truly master new skills with hands-on use and active coaching on real customer scenarios;
• Selling into Enterprise Accounts:This course addresses the unique skills needed for senior sales leaders selling into Enterprise accounts;
• Account Management for Growth:This streamlined course is crafted to equip Account Managers (AMs), Customer Success Managers (CSMs) and any other roles responsible for customer renewals, expansion and growth with a framework for how to drive growth from existing customer accounts; and
• Prospecting for Impact: This course teaches the fundamental skills needed for successfully targeted prospecting.

“The new and improved curriculum delivers effective strategies to ensure that GTM teams are operating with the latest methodologies and frameworks to drive recurring impact for clients and, ultimately, recurring revenue,” said Dominique Levin, CEO at Winning by Design, in a statement. “Existing sales playbooks and the popular sales funnel or other sales process representations ignore 90% of your customer journey. Instead, The Bow Tie Model and associated Recurring Revenue Operating Model provide step-by-step blueprints for sales and customer success teams in SaaS and other B2B recurring revenue organizations.”

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“Throughout our research, we saw a clear spike and change in the way people thought about better ways to GTM when Covid-19 hit,” said Brown, in an exclusive interview with Demand Gen Report. “The factors that led to that spike were companies trying to figure out how to better lead their teams, help their people be more productive while working from home and figure out a new way to drive and create demand in a remote environment. Companies had to push themselves to market in a different way — we saw marketing spend shift from events to communities, point of view content and thought leadership. Our research shows leaderships teams are trying to find solutions to all these changes, and they look to technology and analysts for that information.”

With that in mind, GTM partners seeks to provide vendors and members with access to services such as unlimited analyst/briefing calls, GTM assessments, clarity and alignment workshops, GTM training, advisory on GTM motions and plays, GTM research reports, thought leadership content the re-launch of the MOVE Podcast and more.

Already released is the analyst firm’s Data-Driven Comprehensive Guide To Go-To-Market, which details:

• The current state and challenges of GTM;
• The evolution of marketing and sales functions and their role in GTM;
• A unifying definition for GTM and the roles and responsibilities of marketing, sales, customer success, product and leadership teams;
• An eight-pillar GTM Operating System that helps companies approach GTM more holistically;
• A use-case-based GTM Technology Cloud that helps organizations identify the right tech to support their GTM process; and
• Key buyer trends that are driving the GTM technology landscape, in partnership with G2.

“GTM has increasingly become more complex over the past two decades,” explained Vajre, in an exclusive interview with DGR. “The metrics have changed, and companies need to evolve their GTM. For the longest time, GTM was only either inbound or outbound, so traditional funnels made sense: But PLG, community and eco-system/channel as new GTM motions exist outside the traditional waterfall and demand gen funnels. This is a unique time in GTM history — the metrics have changed and become more complex, so we want to help solve that.”

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The latest courses in the WbD Revenue Academy focus on augmenting management skills, prioritizing customer success and mastering the recurring revenue operating model. The launch includes two new courses followed by one expanded course:

• “Managing for Leadership,” which focuses on how to apply key metrics, skills development, coaching cadences and call scorecards to empower teams and drive performance improvements;
• “Revenue Architecture,” a five-session course that explains the principles and core models of recurring revenue and how revenue leaders from any company can apply them to their business; and
• “Customer Success for Impact,” which teaches customer success marketers how to go from managing accounts to driving real impact for their customers to increase expansion and renewal opportunities. 

The New Hire Onboarding program is designed to help companies quickly train sales and customer success teams. Powered by the courses from the WbD Revenue Academy, companies can tailor the program and courses based on their own GTM processes. The programs enables leaders to enroll new hires into monthly, live open courses across sales, customer success and revenue leadership.

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You might be thinking: “Yes, we know sales and marketing must be aligned” — but in reality, it goes much deeper than opening lines of communication between two departments.

Forrester’s latest report, “Why An Adaptable, Ever- Developing B2B Sales Force Should Be A Universal Organizational Goal,” suggests that every department — from customer success and human resources to IT and portfolio marketing — should work together to make sales reps’ jobs easier.

But that’s a bold claim that, when taken at face-value, seems to negate the successes and contributions of other departments and instead elevate sales onto a pedestal.

Instead of throwing more fuel onto the competitive interdepartmental fire, the Demand Gen Report team sat down with Peter Ostrow, VP, Research Director at Forrester, to clarify and reframe the narrative. As we dove deeper into the report, Ostrow shed some light on how to promote organization-wide sales support without fanning the flames of competition — and ensuring each department feels valued.

Demand Gen Report: Let’s address the “controversial” claim first: What does it actually mean to align all departments around sales? How can companies promote that ideology without alienating other departments?

Peter Ostrow: Everyone’s involved with sales, directly or indirectly. For example, I don’t work in sales anymore, but you could argue that as an analyst, I work for the sales organization because if they don’t succeed, I don’t get a paycheck; hence I’m totally motivated to help them win. So, it depends on whether a company’s DNA is focused on the revenue engine: are all departments viewing their remit through a revenue-driving lens, or are they more concerned with org charts and defending their territory?

It’s also an error for other functions to think of the sales team as the golden child that secures better pay and perks; it’s just that the sales function happens to have the highest visibility and it’s more of a risk-reward position. To ameliorate any potential tension, sales support should be framed through the revenue engine lens. The salespeople are the ones who happen to be physically in front of the customers, and therefore we need to empower them just as much as we need to energize customer success and field marketing professionals, channel partners and everyone else who interacts with prospects and clients.

DGR: Why is it more important than ever to have an adaptable sales force?

Ostrow: Nothing is static in B2B sales, and the Covid-19 pandemic taught everybody that the way we’ve always done things can’t be the way we expect to do them in the future. Adaptability is crucial for a bunch of reasons, as companies inevitably alter what they’re selling, refine their target audiences and how they message against ever-changing competitors. As we all learned, there are outside events that require us to adapt our sales motions — and we found that a lot of companies were quite flat-footed when it comes to being prepared for change, whether it’s big or small.

DGR: Once organizations have full buy-in for sales enablement, how will that impact the customer experience?

Ostrow: A significant trend in B2B right now is revenue enablement, which essentially is organizations pivoting from just sales enablement to, “Let’s not worry so much about who works in what department and instead focus on all the possible interactions that will take place between our company and a buyer to create a consistent experience.” The focus should be about making sure the buyer’s journey seamless, from prospect to lead to customer to advocate to renewal, and on enabling all customer-facing roles in a consistent fashion so that the customer experience is optimized.

DGR: In your opinion, what are the biggest takeaways from the report?

Ostrow: If a B2B sales leader wants buy-in, alignment and support from other departments, then it’s incumbent upon them to find the unique quick wins for each and what’s in it for them. That’s why throughout the report, we said, “Here are some things that function A will benefit from if they support ongoing sales readiness and agility; for department B, C and D, here are the different things that those parts of the organization will find value in.”

So, the overall goal of this report was to help folks understand that every other part of the company has a stake in helping the sales organization be more nimble and adaptable. The overlay of this report is that you can focus on ongoing sales readiness and hire and onboard salespeople, but they’re not going to sell the same thing to the same people in the same motion year after year after year. So, this report argues that there’s something in it for all these other departments if they work together to support sales as every function’s needs evolve along with the inevitable changes in the revenue engine itself.

For more insights into the importance of creating an adaptable, ever-developing sales force, download the full report here.

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ON24

Ryan joins the company with more than 20 years of experience leading digital innovation and marketing initiatives for SaaS startups and brands such as American Express, Land Rover and Unilever. Most recently, Ryan served as VP of Customer Success in EMEA at Khoros and Spredfast, leading enablement, account management, strategic services, training, certification and customer support.

“Leo has led companies through several major waves of digital transformation, from the web to mobile and social media,” said Tim Collin, VP and Managing Director of EMEA at ON24, in a statement. “B2B customers expect consumer-like digital experiences and more of interactions with suppliers to be in digital channels. Leo’s digital and consumer expertise will help our growing EMEA customer base advance their digital-first strategies and create the best experiences for their audiences.”

On the back end, ON24 is facilitating those better customer experiences through enhancements to its Webcast Elite platform, which enables audiences to watch webinars directly in the ON24 Engagement Hub, and the creation of Hybrid Mode, a tool designed to deliver integrated in-person and virtual event experiences simultaneously.

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Darcy has 13 years of leadership experience at Salesforce, previously serving as the SVP of Sales and Partner Enablement. He was also the head of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s Customer Visions team, where he championed the voice of Salesforce customers and took center stage at Dreamforce. Darcy will use this experience to help enterprise B2B brands create value in their marketing efforts for greater marketing success.

“I’m incredibly excited to join the Qualified team in leading a transformation in the way B2B companies meet with their buyers,” said Dan Darcy, Chief Customer Officer at Qualified, in a statement. “The world has gone digital, and the corporate website is no longer just for marketing. It’s now the place for inside sales teams to meet with target buyers at the exact moment that they’re ready to engage in a sales conversation. This is the future of B2B selling.”

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The partnership combines Usermind’s XO platform with MarketStar’s strategy, design and technology to enable users to improve their customer experiences by providing support resources that teams can use to align their internal processes and technology. The goal is to help businesses create seamless onboarding, support resolution and renewal experiences that drive more revenue, with Usermind’s XO Platform monitoring these customer experiences in real-time for modification and necessary intervention.

“As all companies become subscription companies, the need to grow and retain existing customers is more critical than ever,” said Michel Feaster, CEO and Co-Founder of Usermind, in a statement. “Central to this is a heightened focus on delivering customer journeys that are good for the customer and for the business. The combination of Usermind’s XO Platform and MarketStar’s deep expertise in engaging with customers in a growth-oriented way that provides a truly transformative customer success solution for SaaS companies.”

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Triblio

Waller will work closely with Andrew Mahr, Triblio’s Chief Customer Officer, to help expand Triblio’s ABM Success methodologies, identify new training and educational opportunities for customers and translate customer feedback into the product planning cycle, according to the company.

Prior to joining Triblio, Waller was VP of Professional Services at Fishbowl Inc., a marketing and advertising company, where she helped increase services revenue by nearly 25%.

“I’ve never seen a company more focused on the success of its customers than Triblio,” said Waller in a statement. “We want to help solve all of the challenges that keep marketers up at night. As the demand for ABM continues to increase, I’m excited to be part of an innovative company that’s committed to making an impact that matters for the industry and its customers.”

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