Growing Revenue & Repeatability: Sales Efficiency Model with GTM
The rise of go-to-market automation is colliding with the vast applications of generative AI. Lucky for those of us who are in sales, this is the superpower we’ve been waiting for. We can now research faster than ever with brief AI prompts, create meaningful content in seconds, and deploy proper sales automation of best-in-class sales orgs.
I recently presented to a room full of CROs and Sales Leaders in Vegas about expectations of a sales efficiency model. Some of these are new products going to market but most were established sales organizations needing to reimagine their approach. We talked tactically. We talked numbers. We talked about finding the “DNA of the sales pipeline”. This blog combines that presentation, the discussions that followed, and ultimately a case study of one of my favorite teams’ decisions to modernize how they go to market.
Why GTM Plays
The rhythmic touches from sales and marketing campaigns with the intent to generate pipeline do three incredible things for sales organizations:
Ultimately, this generates robust pipelines with better conversion rates. After all, we hire sales reps to have conversations and build relationships - not datamine for prospects or admin the CRM.
We can not sleep on this.
The bottom line is that the best reps are looking for companies with stellar sales enablement programs. Most will prioritize this over their salary base when selecting their opportunities. Here’s how to be this kind of sales organization:
Do you have a solid handle on the essentials of GTM Plays?
3 GTM Components
Marketing:
The marketing touches are strategically oriented around targeted content with the intent to generate awareness. These campaigns can and should target the entire addressable market, as well as all persons of your customer base (users, influences, decision-makers, signers). These strategies are typically 1:Many messaging in a GTM Program and always automated. Think ads, newsletters, webinars, social media, etc.
Sales:
The sales touches are strategically oriented on accounts with personalized messaging with the intent to generate opportunities. This is when the reps themselves isolate key accounts worthy of manual intervention. Most typically consider these target accounts or Tier 1 opportunities. This strategy is deserving of 1:1 personalized messaging and is indicative of the rep’s hustle, as little automation supports the deployment of these activities.
Lead Gen:
This is where sales and marketing strategies blend in support of the pipeline. These
rhythmic touches from both sales and marketing campaigns deploy with automation with the intent to generate meetings. This strategy leverages a 1:Few messaging structure based on relevance like tight firmographics, technographics, qualification logic, heavy segmentation, etc. This is highly automated but the best sales orgs will encourage their reps to lean into this strategy with strategies like High Engager Power Hours or Account-Based Call & Social Blitz.
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Data + Marketing + Sales = GTM Plays
Here’s a cool gif!
We do this because we care for our reps and want to enable them — not encroach on them. Even better, this creates a rep-less experience for our prospects until they’re genuinely ready.
If that gif didn't sell you on it – how about the math?
An enterprise sales plan typically calls for roughly 80% of the revenue to come from about 20% of the known accounts in our database. This means we need our manpower behind the 20% of the database of our best and largest accounts… but we should not neglect the mid-market that makes up the other 80% of the database. After all, we may need to pull in more if we fall behind goal or we may identify some quick closes or high profitability accounts. So we need to facilitate a clean segmentation of our database to support both.
Another great visual above - an annual model for 9 closers and a database of 50K contacts. Tier 2 meetings and deals are still assigned to those 9 closers, but that funnel is the responsibility of the demand gen/marketing team – not the rep.
Identifying the DNA of your pipeline (so much more than sales metrics)
When we have a well-oiled Rep Enablement Program utilizing GTM Plays, we know the following:
The agility in GTM Plays can save your quarter.
We need to get our sales organizations to pragmatic execution - if we’re behind on a goal with only 40 days left in the quarter, what plays should we throw?
Real story - I was running point on lead gen and we were $100K behind goal with only two Enterprise deals in Commit. Both were whales and we were not confident they’d close in the quarter. So I ran two plays - one for existing pipeline and one for new.
Do it yourself (like now/soonish/tomorrow/asap)!
These recommendations often sound cumbersome and the truth is it requires a lot of collaboration and a continuous improvement mindset. But if you have a sales leader, a head of marketing, and a sales operations admin, you can get this off the ground in 3 weeks. Perhaps use the holiday slow-down time to realign and relaunch your efforts for the new year!
Use this chart below as an internal discussion guide for your sales and marketing team leads. How do you stack up? Which areas do you need to modernize? Do you have the people on staff to do this – quickly?
I obsess over sales because we’re solving problems, connecting people and building a program that requires teamwork. This is what we do every day at AK Operations, and while we can do it very quickly and efficiently, most companies can master these simple principles if they’re given the priority and time it takes to define, decide and deploy. After all, the best people deserve the best organizations!
VP Sales @ Upland Software | Business Development
1ythis may be one of the most useful and practical posts out there. I love it. Really good stuff!