SPEAKER_00You're listening to No Nonsense Sales, your weekly dose of straight-talking sales fun where we invite the biggest names in sales to tackle the greatest problems revenue teams face today. And here's the man with the microphone, Tom Boston.
TOM BOSTONWelcome once again to No Nonsense Sales, the podcast that refuses to let revenue teams fail. We take the problems being faced by real revenue pros and we ask the experts, how do you fix them? This week, we're talking about churn. How do we avoid churn? How do we outpace churn? How do we prepare for the inevitability of churn? If there's one constant in sales, it's probably churn. I've invited Eddie Reynolds onto the show to discuss if the answer lies in data. He's the CEO of Union Square Consulting, RevOps Extraordinaire. And after a hugely successful sales career, Eddie now helps companies deliver a data-driven strategy and process, helping RevOps teams to drive more revenue at less cost, more reliably and predictably. So the first thing I asked Eddie was, how do you turn leads into closed revenue?
TOM BOSTONSo Eddie Reynolds, would I be right to call you a legend in the RevOps world? Have you heard that before?
EDDIE REYNOLDSNo, I definitely have not. I don't think that's accurate, but I'll take the compliment nonetheless.
TOM BOSTONWell, certainly, I think everything that you've done with your company over the last eight years and the great content that we see on LinkedIn, I was so eager to get you on the show. So can we kick off with this first question, which is, is there such a thing as an easy
TOM BOSTONway to turn leads into closed revenue?
SPEAKER_12Yes.
TOM BOSTONOkay. Talk me through it.
EDDIE REYNOLDSYeah. Just define your leads as people that actually want to talk to salespeople.
TOM BOSTONSo when we talk about defining those leads, what does that look like for you?
EDDIE REYNOLDSSo what I'm getting at, and there's a lot of people that have talked about this, and I think this is a very hot topic is the definition of the MQL.
EDDIE REYNOLDSIf you take your MQL as we do, and you say, the only MQL that matters is somebody that has actually raised their hand and said, I would like to speak with a salesperson. I'd like a sales meeting, I'd like a demo, et cetera. Then if you handle those leads correctly and assuming that they are part of your ICP and your buyer personas, you're going to have a very high conversion rate on those leads. Unfortunately, that eliminates 99 or 99.9% of all of the other things that we would traditionally call an MQL, your white paper downloads, your webinar attendees, et cetera, et cetera. This now puts the onus on marketing to nurture those leads and to warm them up until they are ready to raise their hand and request a meeting with sales. And for me, if we think about inbound, that is the golden ticket to focus on nurturing those leads until they are ready and they request to meet with sales. But then that leaves us with this entire team of SDRs, BDRs, and AEs, and I include AEs here intentionally because I think AEs should be prospecting. And we have this group of people that need to make calls to develop pipeline. And so now we've got this 99.9% of MQLs over here that do not expressly want to meet with sales right now. And meanwhile, we've got all of the other people that are in our total addressable market and our ICP and our buyer personas, et cetera. Well, what if we simply combine all of this data into one single place and look at this on an account by account basis, instead of a lead by lead basis, and just simply decide which accounts are best for our entire sales team to call? If we route our high intent inbound leads to the best sales reps that can handle that inbound lead and then take everything else and treat it as outbound, we are by definition going to be calling the best accounts with the best messaging instead of saying, well, just because somebody downloaded a white paper, let's have our SDRs call them 15 times.
TOM BOSTONAnd as someone who's done that, it's great to hear a different take on it because I've
TOM BOSTONdefinitely had an MQL placed on my desk in the past in other roles. Tom, give these people a call, right? Maybe like you said, they've downloaded a white paper. So my next question, and this ties in quite nicely then, is about a data-driven go-to-market strategy. Is that what a data-driven market strategy looks like to you then, this idea of the account level?
SPEAKER_14In some ways, yes. So when we think about a data-driven strategy, data-driven go-to-market, the issue that I have
EDDIE REYNOLDSwith this is everybody wants data and everybody wants to analyze data. But nine times out of 10, at least the companies that we see, the companies that do not have mature RevOps in place already, don't have reliable and accurate data. So when we go and run reports on whatever it is we're looking at, we don't have any sense of what's going on. And the reason for that is because there's a lack of definition and a lack of process. I just talked about MQLs. If we don't have a tight definition of what an MQL is, and I can't tell you how many companies I've talked to where an MQL is literally anybody that provides an email address on the website, well, then our conversion rate on MQLs becomes meaningless. The same thing would go for a sales qualified lead or sales qualified opportunity. If we don't have a very clear definition of what that means, then our close rate on our pipeline doesn't mean anything because we're just talking to anybody and everybody. And what to you then would be a good defined MQL?
TOM BOSTONWhen we're talking about kind of what bad looks like, right? So maybe they've put their email address in the website. Would it be a certain amount of checkboxes in terms of their intent? We're talking about intent data here. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
EDDIE REYNOLDSSo I think what we want to do, if we want to define an MQL, for example, is we want to reverse engineer the process. What are we trying to do here, right? Like, let's look at this from an investment perspective. If I can hire 100 SDRs and make 15,000 phone calls every month or whatever the number is, and we can profitably turn that into revenue, then let's do it. I have no problem like spamming people, making 700 calls a day, whatever. The problem is it doesn't work and it's not financially sustainable, right? If it was, then I don't think we'd be here on this podcast talking like this would just be purely automated. And so many people have tried to do it and it doesn't work. So if we want to define the MQL, we have to think about what action are we taking? An MQL is a lead that we are handing to salespeople. We are spending hard money to get our salespeople to call those folks. So what is the definition of that MQL such that we can have a reasonable cost of acquisition or LTV to CAC that makes sense for us? And I think that that is different for every business. Now, by and large, I think if we define an MQL as a hand raiser, somebody that has requested a meeting with sales for most companies, at least if it's in ICP, buyer personas, et cetera, that is going to have a very high conversion rate and it's going to be financially sustainable to pay people to work those leads. I did a podcast myself with Channing Ferrer who ran sales ops at HubSpot and he talked about this. They had three buckets of leads. They had what I just described, these hand raisers. Then on the other hand, they had what he was calling MQLs. I didn't dive into this. And then in the middle, they had folks that had hit the pricing page a certain number of times. And because HubSpot has such an enormous content engine, you can imagine they have a lot of MQLs. What they found, at least at the time that he was there running sales ops, is that these MQLs were not worth calling. They'd made no sense to have their salespeople call down on these leads because the conversion rate was so terribly low. The hand raisers, of course, had a high conversion rate. And then in the middle, they had these folks that hit the pricing page and they found that it did make sense to call them. They were able to convert enough of these leads to justify that level of effort and that expense. And this is where I want to have these clear definitions, especially as a consultant that goes from company to company. But I also think it depends. And I think there's an opportunity to slice and dice your data in ways to find out which bucket, for lack of a better term, is actually converting for us, is working for us, and which bucket, and I define bucket as something that is custom to your business and your customer, which bucket is not working.
TOM BOSTONYeah, it's so interesting to hear talk about that because, you know, we think that there's one way of kind of doing things, but I like the idea of, yeah, how do you slice and dice
TOM BOSTONthat data to give you the insights? Because that's what it's all about, right? Data should give us insights, not make things more complicated.
SPEAKER_14And I'm a big believer that RevOps isn't RevOps without insights, but you can't get insights
EDDIE REYNOLDSwithout reliable data, and you can't get reliable data without process and adoption by the team. And so it starts at the very top by defining what's our ICP, what are our buyer personas, what is our step-by-step, you know, sales process, what's our step-by-step process to route leads, what is an MQL, what is an SAL, what is an SQL, SQO, et cetera. And so by defining that and then driving adoption across the team, you start to get accurate and reliable data. And this is not without an immense amount of work, not just on the part of RevOps, but also on the part of management, then that's when you have data that you can start to slice and dice. But it's a never-ending journey because as you slice and dice that data, you find more things that you want to understand better. And as you try to reverse engineer your revenue engine, you realize we need to pivot here. We need to do something different. We maybe need to ask different questions in our sales process. We need to have different fields in Salesforce to collect that information, et cetera, so that we can continue to slice and dice our data in custom ways to figure out what is driving revenue and what is not. What can we do next week, next month, next quarter, next year to improve our revenue production?
TOM BOSTONYeah, it's great to hear you talk about everyone being on board, right? Even from the kind of sales rep level. I did a podcast with Rosalyn Santaralina, and it was all about aligning sales and marketing,
TOM BOSTONand she said exactly the same thing. If you want to have a successful operations team, it needs to have the buy-in of everybody.
SPEAKER_16Talked about MQLs, keen to get your thoughts on SQLs.
TOM BOSTONWhat do you think about this sentence? Just keep prospecting.
TOM BOSTONSales is a numbers game. More leads equals more revenue. What do you think of that?
SPEAKER_14There's some truth to that, and there's some things that are really wrong with that statement.
EDDIE REYNOLDSSo I recently did a podcast with Tony Redoni, who was my executive vice president when I worked at Salesforce running all S&B sales, and I think he also covered marketing across North America. So pretty senior guy at Salesforce. And I asked him about this, and he said, you know, anecdotally, I know that if as a sales rep, you make more calls, you're probably going to book more meetings, and you're going to create more pipeline and close more deals. But if I give you an activity quota, if I give you a pipeline quota, if I start to drive specific behaviors that are not in line with the ultimate goal of driving revenue, then I create bad behaviors. You're now calling bad prospects. You're now logging calls that are not top quality. You're now putting bad deals in your pipeline to hit your pipeline goal. If you tell me you need that, I need three times pipeline coverage. I'm going to have three times pipeline coverage because my definition of qualified pipeline as a rep or as an organization is going to change to fit that quota. And I think that doesn't help us achieve our revenue goal. The unfortunate reality is, is that there is art and science in go to market. And the science is that we want to hit this revenue goal. And we probably need three times pipeline coverage or four times pipeline coverage, X amount of meetings, X amount of calls. But the art is these have to be high quality. And sometimes it makes sense to put extra time into that call, that meeting, that deal to make it the best it can be to maximize our conversion rate versus just trying to just bang out more activity. And when I worked at Salesforce, what I saw is the top reps that I worked with. I was an AE at Salesforce for three years. The top reps were the ones that were doing the big strategic deals. They were the ones that were spending less time making calls, but they were connecting with the executives. They were engaging at the executive level. They were running really good discovery processes. And then the folks that were struggling the most were the ones that were just banging out 30, 40 calls a day, generic calls, not adding any value. Calling at low levels because they were afraid to call executives and doing small transactional deals. And so if you've got one person that's closing $50,000 deals in S&B, you know, on a frequent basis, and the next person that's trying to get to their quota at $5,000 a pop, it's pretty easy to understand who's going to win that race and who's not.
TOM BOSTONYeah, it's great. And for me, it's all about research. The word that kind of sprung to mind when you were talking then was like the research,
TOM BOSTONthe amount of time that you're going to put in to the prep for your outreach. I think that's so important as well because there's nothing worse than being underprepared,
TOM BOSTONright? When you do find yourself on the phone to a C-level exec.
EDDIE REYNOLDSWell, and let me add one thing here. Here's the thing that really frustrated me. I couldn't understand how these top performers on my team would make so few calls. But I'd look over at their desk and I'd realize they're making so few calls because everybody's answering the phone because they've built these relationships in these accounts and they've earned trust. And they're like, buyer actually wanted to talk to them. And so they didn't have to put as much effort in to get the meeting, to get the deal. And especially if this is a big strategic deal, they don't have to close as many deals either to hit quota.
TOM BOSTONAnd personal brand springs to mind as well. You know, when we're talking about kind of this idea of reaching out to these big accounts,
TOM BOSTONyou know, what are you doing on social to make sure that you're complementing your process? Something I'm a huge advocate of and I know that you are as well.
EDDIE REYNOLDSI am because I have extremely limited time to prospect, but I still do prospect.
EDDIE REYNOLDSAnd when I run the numbers, you know, sometimes I'm converting, you know, 20% of my cold outreach into a meeting. I recently saw stats through 30 Minutes of President's Club that I believe came from a larger company that showed a 7.45% conversion rate from cold outreach to meeting held. Mine was like 20%. And I think title matters a lot. So I don't want to take credit away from that. I think getting a meeting as an SDR is a lot harder than getting a meeting with a CEO founder title. But also because I have this LinkedIn presence, a lot of times I'm reaching out to folks and they're like, oh, hey, I already know you. I like your content. And that really does make a difference.
TOM BOSTONSo inspiring for anyone who's maybe at the start of their, of their journey, you know, it is worth, it does compliment your sales process. I can't, I can't stress that enough.
TOM BOSTONLet's fly through these. The first one on the, on the card. What's the best thing about your job?
EDDIE REYNOLDSThe best thing about my job is that I get a chance to geek out on the thing that I've spent all my time, my career on, and the thing that I love. I absolutely love go to market, every aspect of it from marketing to sales to retaining and growing customers. And this is where I've spent my entire career from, I paid my way through college in sales. And I also am a math nerd. And so when I get to combine sort of the art of go to market with the science, and I get to geek out every day, and I have my own podcast where I talk to really incredibly intelligent people that I learn from every day. When I work with my team of SVPs, of RevOps that are so much more experienced than me that I learn so much from every day. And we get to like, not only geek out on this, but to refine it. What I love about being a consultant is because we're working across different companies, we get to try to create this repeatable playbook, which is custom to every company, but we see these recurring themes again and again, and we get to rinse and repeat and try to sort of like work in the lab to like tweak how we help our customers approach go to market. And for me, I don't know, it's something I'm very passionate about, and I really enjoy
SPEAKER_23doing.
TOM BOSTONYour passion comes across, and there's nothing better than doing something that you love. You talk about kind of geeking out there. I'm sure there's a lot of people listening who are like, oh yeah, I do the same thing. I'm so inspired by my area that I focus on. I do get to nerd out and geek out on it. So that's great to hear. On the flip side, what's the worst thing about what you do?
SPEAKER_14I think the worst thing about consulting in RevOps is just simply talking to people that I want
EDDIE REYNOLDSto say either don't get it or don't want to get it, that still buy into some of the ideas that you're talking about, that more calls equals more revenue, that more MQLs equals more revenue. I think where it's hardest is in larger organizations where they're completely disconnected. And I'll give you an example. I had a call with a woman on Monday, and she's a director of RevOps. And it was disheartening because she wanted to fix things, but she's multiple levels below the person that actually controls marketing and sales and CS. And it's like, okay, the only way for me to solve this problem with MQLs and sales and marketing misalignment is to get to your boss's boss's boss. And while I'm willing to climb that uphill battle, it's disheartening to see that you've got an organization that's so broken that even the person sitting in the role that wants to fix this can't because it's so disconnected.
TOM BOSTONI love that brutal honesty with the kind of the person who heads up the RevOps, like your true disheartenment for where they're at.
TOM BOSTONBut I think that just shows how much you want to help people, right? You want them to succeed. So yeah, thanks for sharing that. I think it's something for us all to think about, right? Are we across the organization getting it right?
TOM BOSTONAre we all on the same page?
SPEAKER_05Ooh, the hot take.
TOM BOSTONSo this is a bit spicy. Again, it might kind of relate to what we've just talked about, this old school way of thinking. There's too much data and most of it is useless. What do you think about this? A lot of companies feel overwhelmed by data. Don't know what to do with it. Too much data and most of it's useless.
EDDIE REYNOLDSThat's absolutely the case. The reason most of it's useless is because most of it's inaccurate or it's at such a high level.
EDDIE REYNOLDSLike we talk about marketing data that it just doesn't tell us enough about what's really going on with our customer. And this comes back to process. But I think what it really comes back to is having really clear goals and objectives. So my company and many of the customers we work with use the OKRs framework or objectives and key results. And if anybody listening is not familiar with this, to dumb it down, it's just a way to like strategize a company. Very famous with Google, Intel, etc. And all you're doing is you're saying, let's set some very clear objectives or smart goals. We want to, you know, let's say grow revenue. It's kind of a bad example. We want to improve the ROI on marketing. We want to generate this amount of revenue in marketing or we want to generate this much qualified pipeline in marketing. Well, how do we reverse engineer that? We have to think about the step-by-step process to get there. And then we need to make sure that the data that we have is accurate and actually tells us whether or not we are tracking towards that goal or not. Allows us to slice and dice that data and understand what's working and what's not. So let me go with that example. And let's say, for example, I had Megan Bowen from Refine Labs on my podcast a few weeks ago. And she talked about how important it is to track, you know, lead sources and conversion to revenue across different channels and not just inbound, right? So if you want to know whether or not your podcast is paying off, you need to track how many people actually came in off of your podcast. And Refine Labs is a really big proponent of self-reported attribution, meaning asking in a form on the website, how did you hear about us? Because the marketing software so oftentimes doesn't give us accurate information. So if what we're trying to do is say, hey, we want to generate X amount of revenue or pipeline off of our podcast, we have to have accurate information in order to track towards that. And that requires oftentimes somebody in RevOps or MarketingOps or SalesOps to sit down and define that process, define those gates, figure out where we're tracking that data, figure out how to get accurate data. As is the case with self-reported attribution, this is oftentimes going to give you more accurate data than your software will give you. And you have to do all of that work in order to have reliable data to answer the simple question of, are we getting an ROI on our podcast or not?
TOM BOSTONBut it's worth the work, right? It might take a month, two months. But actually, if you think about kind of future state, six months down the line, you'll be glad that you put the work in.
TOM BOSTONAnd I'm sure that's the conversation that you have with the amazing clients that you work with.
EDDIE REYNOLDSSometimes it takes quarters of years. I mean, especially in an enterprise sales cycle, if you're trying to track to revenue, it can take a really long time, especially if we now need to adopt a new process, create a new process that needs to be adopted by salespeople throughout a long sales cycle. It can take an incredibly long time to actually get this in place. And this is why we encourage our customers to try to tackle this as soon as humanly possible, even early stage companies, because you might be in a situation where you are now trying to look back at data a year or two years to understand what's working and what's not working in your business. And then you discover, I don't have this data. We can't actually measure this. So I have to continue to go on gut feel. And now it can take me six months, 12 months, 24 months before I can get that data to reliably answer this question.
SPEAKER_14And I have to operate on gut feel in the meantime. And then it's out of date, right? So you've got that problem where you're kind of working backwards.
TOM BOSTONThank you so much for your insights, Eddie, today. I've been blown away by all of the amazing insights, and I'm sure our listeners have as well. We are going to wrap up the show by showcasing your music taste. So do you want to talk us through your pump up song that you've brought in to end the show?
EDDIE REYNOLDSSure. I mean, in reality, I'm the guy that just turns on Spotify and hits play. I'd love to tell you that I geek out on music, but I don't. But yeah, if there's one song that I really like to listen to while I'm just trying to get a lot of work done, it would probably be Avicii Levels or really anything like that.
TOM BOSTONFantastic. Well, Avicii sounds like a good way to end the show.
TOM BOSTONThanks so much, Eddie. Thanks for having me. OK, let's hear some Avicii.
SPEAKER_30Wowza. I get a feeling that I've never, never, never had before.
SPEAKER_34Oh, no, I get a feeling.
SPEAKER_01And we are done with the Avicii.
TOM BOSTONThank you for listening to this podcast. If you'd like to hear that song sang well, head over to Spotify right now. We've just added it to the No Nonsense Sales playlist. And if you would like to send this podcast to a friend and say, Hey, this is great. We would appreciate that so much. We'll see you next week for more No Nonsense Selling on No Nonsense Sales.