00:00 Pim Roelofsen: Today we are talking about how to crush this year. 00:04 Andy Whyte: So Lucy — let's pretend that you're an AE again. You're coming into a brand new year, fresh financial year. What's the first thing you're doing? 00:11 Lucy Williams-Jones: I'm going to buy a new notebook. And I'm going to do a pipeline detox. 00:16 Andy Whyte: What's a pipeline detox? 00:18 Lucy Williams-Jones: So to have an end point, you have a starting point. You need to see where your gap is. Let's say you've obviously had a phenomenal year the year before — your pipeline is probably wiped out because you've closed all your magnificent transactions on time. And you need to figure out what your gap is in order to give yourself a chance of overachieving again. So the best way of doing this is to first figure out which transactions you've got in pipeline that need to go. There's no point holding on to transactions that aren't going to close. Be really honest with yourself — use MEDDIC, go figure it out. And then secondly, look at your conversions from the previous year to see how many discovery and new business meetings you'd need to do to create the pipeline you need to fill back up. Typically with my team, we look at 3x pipeline — because we think that around 2x is probably not going to close. And that should give you a good year. 01:12 Andy Whyte: So Pim, as a sales leader, that sounds like great advice. How are you taking that to your sales team to make sure they follow it? 01:19 Pim Roelofsen: Well — you said to use MEDDIC. And I also think there's something else worth double-clicking on here. You just had a phenomenal year. But this is equally useful to do if you didn't have a phenomenal year — to work backwards from: where am I looking to go, and how do I get there? Have a plan and then execute with it. 01:39 Andy Whyte: I love that. And one of the things we should also talk about here is: you're talking about your new financial year — but it's likely to be your customer's new financial year too. So one thing we can't say for sure is that things are going to be the same in the new year. New budgets, new people. What are your thoughts on that, Lucy? 02:02 Lucy Williams-Jones: I think you probably just have to start again. So if I was an AE again, I would be redoing my account plans for the year. Looking at whether anyone has left, whether I've been moved. I'd be looking at the company reports from last quarter to see what the top priorities are. I'd be trying to understand from my champions what's happened and what's moved. I think at the start of the year, you can write your story. And the work that you put in in that first six weeks is going to basically dictate how good a year you have. 02:36 Andy Whyte: Yeah. I feel like we don't talk about this enough — but the economic buyer in this circumstance is a really great qualifying factor. The idea of looking at your open pipeline and saying: where is the economic buyer on this? If I'm taking an opportunity from last year into a new financial year and the economic buyer is not heavily engaged, then I've got some serious questions to ask about whether I'm even carrying that opportunity forward as live pipeline. Is the economic buyer strongly engaged? Are they favorable? Have we got their buy-in? Those are really strong qualifiers. 03:13 Andy Whyte: Because sure — if the deal has moved over from last financial year and the customer's financial year has also changed, the pain probably still exists. Probably the same champion is in place. But what does change — and what is most likely to change — is at the board or executive level. That strategy may have shifted. And so that's where you really need to get on top of things. Everything else below that can be noise until you've got confirmation that at the executive level, the goals, strategies and initiatives for the year ahead haven't changed. 03:47 Lucy Williams-Jones: What do you guys think about that? 03:48 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah, 100%. The first thing you said is about having real engagement versus just an encounter with an EB. And I think in our industry, many salespeople say: "This is our proposed EB, the champion has even confirmed it, it's triangulated within the business." So yes, they may well be the EB. But having met them once doesn't mean you've got a genuine engagement going on where they're properly involved. And then the other thing you're talking about is the value pyramid — making sure we are strategically aligned — very difficult word for a Dutchman — with the customer we're selling to in this case. And then to your point: if you shift into a new year, things always change. So what has changed? And is it therefore still an opportunity that should sit in pipeline? 04:36 Pim Roelofsen: I think the beginning of a new year is about creating that opportunity. The proactive mindset of preparing for this year and executing on it presents such a good opportunity. So we shouldn't see this as "oh no, now we have to say goodbye to opportunities we'd rather keep in pipeline." No — it's finding the ones that deserve our time and attention, because we only have so much of it. And everyone's back to zero. You had a phenomenal year? Great — well done. Or you had an awful year? You pick yourself up. Everyone's back to zero. And it gives you a chance to make a really good impression. 05:11 Pim Roelofsen: Have you seen people in your teams turn it around like this — people who didn't have such a good year, who did something like this to create a much better result? 05:20 Lucy Williams-Jones: Yeah, I think so. Because not every year is equal — you might have some people with transactions happening on a longer-term cycle. Two years in the making, maybe doing zero in the last 12 months. Which can have an impact on them. But that doesn't necessarily mean they haven't done a good job — they just may not have generated any revenue. Starting off every quarter at zero on the board is hard. But what you actually see is that they've started to know that something is coming in the following cycle, and they're gearing up for that. It depends — in a more enterprise team where you've got consistent pipeline and you're expected to close every single month and quarter, it's very different to a majors capacity with longer cycles. But yeah, absolutely — I've seen sellers come through where they've had an awful three or four quarters and then something's snapped and they've been able to come out of it. 06:12 Andy Whyte: I think one of the things as well — you're talking about the scores resetting, everyone's back to zero. But a great tactic that isn't talked about enough is a Moneyball approach. You're a salesperson — maybe you've just come into a brand new organization, you've got no context. Or maybe you didn't have a great year last year. Or maybe someone just had a better year than you. What you should do is look at that person's activity the year before and reverse-engineer it. What did they do? Look at the top five performers in your team. What were they doing all last year? What were they doing this time last year that secured them a great year? Because we know — in our industry, the average sales cycle is anything from two months to sometimes over a year. So if you haven't got the pipeline already, you're already on the back foot. 07:00 Andy Whyte: Look at what those people were doing to drive pipeline. Were they running events? Attending events? Hammering the phones? Were they the person spending time with the SDR team, really investing there? Or maybe that didn't work. What were the things that led to their success? What types of accounts did they go after? Were they the glorious logos or the slightly less attractive ones — the ones that tend to have a shorter sales cycle or more proximity to making moves? So I think the thing I just don't hear people talk about enough is this idea of actually reverse-engineering how other people have had success. Have you ever seen that work out well for people? 07:40 Lucy Williams-Jones: Yeah, yeah — it goes back to pattern recognition. And it reminded me of what you said a little while ago about pipeline coverage. You can say universally that we need 3x pipeline — but what is the data actually telling us? Is that universally true for all the reps we have on the team? And if someone is doing it with 2x — what are they doing differently? Because then their win rate must be much higher. And it probably comes back to them being much more successful at engaging an economic buyer, and therefore their win rate goes up and their time to close goes down. So finding what best practice looks like for those people is something a leader can very easily surface — and then turn it into common practice for the team. And as an individual, you can identify: this is what I need to work on, and from what we've seen work with other people, this is what I can do about it. So EB engagement is a very likely example that would come up in that context. 08:43 Andy Whyte: I agree. And also I think from discovery through to new business meeting — I have people on my team that go 5 to 1, and people that go 2 to 1. 08:51 Lucy Williams-Jones: What do you mean by five? 08:55 Andy Whyte: Five discovery calls to one new business meeting. Or some people can do two discovery calls to one new business meeting. Which one do you think gives better results? 09:07 Pim Roelofsen: My guess is — well, I think you're led to believe that five discovery calls to one new business meeting would be the best approach because you've gathered the most context. But I'm guessing you're going to tell me the person that's done 2 to 1 has a better outcome. 09:27 Andy Whyte: Yes. Why? 09:28 Lucy Williams-Jones: Because they're more structured in their approach to the discovery. They've planned, they've got their questions — and time kills deals. You go and try to do five discovery calls across all different facets — and there's nothing wrong with that, by the way, if you've got a really complex solution and you need to go to various people to understand the pains each line of business is facing. But I'd rather people not rush to a new business meeting — because if you do a great, solid new business meeting, the chances of converting are really, really high. And if you're planning and prepping your discovery calls as you should be, ahead of even starting them, you're going to get a really nice conversion that becomes solid pipeline. 10:12 Lucy Williams-Jones: And from the EB standpoint — I'm a real fan of EB access, even if it slows the deal down by three or four weeks. Because you can't get to that EB, I'd rather slow things down, get the EB access, and have them involved from the POV onwards — than just ask at the end for the signature. 10:29 Pim Roelofsen: Yeah, for sure. And I think getting to the EB with a POV can be very powerful. Something I noticed a seller on my team did the other day — before asking for time with the EB, and still early in the cycle, they went and interviewed a number of stakeholders at the user level and one layer up. So that they had this triangulated point of view that they could then engage the EB with — making it worthwhile for the EB to spend time with them in the first place. And I can talk about how that's important all day long, but if I don't put in the groundwork, what's the merit for asking for that time? I thought that was quite a powerful thing. They shared it in a team meeting — and now everybody's following that same tactic. 11:19 Pim Roelofsen: And it goes back to what Andy was talking about with Moneyball for sales. The pillars of the sales velocity equation are exactly what we're talking about: the ability to generate pipeline, preparation — slowing down the 2 to 1 discovery ratio, putting in the work that pays off in the long run. Higher win rates, shorter time to close, and typically executing on a lower volume of opportunities. 11:49 Lucy Williams-Jones: Love it. Well, let's summarize then. For those starting a new year, what are the bullet points from what you guys have said today? 11:57 Andy Whyte: Starting point. Yeah — so the first thing: it's a good thing either way — bad year, great year — a fresh start. Planning for it is preparing for success. And I think if you've had a bad year, think about what made it a bad year, what changes you can make to ensure it doesn't get repeated. And then the pipeline detox — don't hold on to opportunities that have no hope of closing. Be honest with it. Be truthful. Because if you can then go and build more pipeline and spend your time in places where you know you've got a good opportunity to close — nobody regrets qualifying out. 12:37 Lucy Williams-Jones: No they don't. Cheers to that! 12:38 Pim Roelofsen: Cheers! 12:39 Andy Whyte: Cheers!
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