Closed Won: Capture & Engage Buying Groups

Alright. Hello, everyone. Thank you all so much for joining us today for our closed one webinar. Today, we're gonna be talking about capturing and aging buyer groups.

Now before I kick us off, I'm gonna, or I just wanna let you know my name is Mimi Noto. I am the product education specialist here at SalesLoft, and I'm a part of our customer education team. Now I brought on two, two experts in this subject with me. But before I kick it over to them, I wanna just talk through what exactly we're gonna be learning today as well as how you can communicate with us with any questions that you have.

Because we're gonna be talking about, you know, a lot of interesting and important topics. And although this is a webinar style training session, we still want you guys to leave with no questions unanswered. And so there are a couple of different ways that you can chat with myself and Taylor and Keith, who are, hosting today's session with me. One of those ways is the q and a, section on the right side of your screen.

So on the right side, you're gonna see a couple of different navigation options. The q and a is like a private way to send a question.

That is a really great way to send your questions when, you know, it's not the q and a time at the end. So we're gonna have a designated time at the end.

You can also chat with us through the chat functionality, which is gonna be that top icon on the side. We do not have a preference of which one to use. Use whichever one you feel more comfortable with.

And then on the next screen, Taylor, if you don't mind moving it over.

Alright.

So in lieu of an agenda, we like to instead focus on the learning objectives of the session. And so we're gonna be talking about buying groups, which I think is pretty obvious from the title. But there's a lot that kinda goes into the concept of buying groups and what does that mean when I'm using SalesLoft.

So after this session, you should be able to, first, recognize how buyer group engagement supports sales and marketing alignment. You're gonna see it really connects a lot of different departments in making sure that all those processes are aligned.

Also going to, have a better understanding of how to design your go to market strategy around a buying group, not just an individual buyer.

Next, you should be able to understand how to leverage SalesLoft functionality to streamline the process of buyer group identification and finally, evaluate different tactics that we discussed for navigating the complex buying groups.

And, now I'm gonna kick it over to our hosts. And so we have two awesome hosts. They are both of my sales ops colleagues.

First, we have Taylor who, has led a session for us before in the past. And so I'm gonna let her, introduce herself and then kick it over to Keith, and then I will see you all again at the end when we get to the q and a.

Awesome. Thank you, Mimi. Hi, everyone. My name is Taylor Myers. I'm a revenue consultant or a strategic consultant with SalesLoft.

And my role with when working with our customers is just to maximize the impact and effectiveness of their marketing and sales efforts as part of their revenue generation engine. Obviously, that includes SalesLoft and the tech stack, but we really like to think above and beyond just what reps are doing with SalesLoft and how we can make sure that, we're making the most of the tools that we have to make the most revenue possible. I'll kick it over to Keith to introduce himself next.

Thanks, Taylor. Hey, everyone. My name is Keith Cordero. I lead our global new business commercial unit here at SalesLoft, where I have the incredible opportunity not only to work with some of the best sellers, on the planet, in my opinion. I'm I'm maybe biased.

As well as talk with other revenue leaders daily about goals and challenges in the market.

One thing that has become abundantly clear, I'd say, in the last few years is that decisions are totally made in committees now. Right? Which means it's even more important today to have a bulletproof sales process and the necessary tech and partners to help your teams engage with every layer of a buying group. So really, really excited to spend the next hour with everybody to discuss ways that we've helped our teams and our customers do just that.

Alright. So let's kick things off by defining what we mean by buying groups or buyer groups.

In the most simple terms, buying groups are just made up of individuals involved in an organization's decision making process. Right? They're made up of multiple departments, roles, personas.

And while an individual's department and persona is typically fairly static, right, their role on the buying committee may change depending on the product or service under consideration.

They can consist of subject matter experts, contributors from relevant departments, other stakeholders from departments like finance and IT. But before we explore kind of the DNA of buyer groups more deeply, I do wanna anchor ourselves in the why. Right? Why are buying groups so important today?

I think for starters, right, we've we've we've we've shared a recent Forrester RevOps survey. You can, I think, grab this from our website, but it shows that ninety four percent of respondents of this particular survey states that they sell to groups of three or more individuals? And that's just like that's that's that's the the floor. Right?

There there's really never any less than three, but about thirty eight percent, so almost half are selling to groups of ten or more. What's more interesting I think to that is if you look at this third bullet point, there's usually at least twenty seven different types of engagements with seller related content, both known and anonymous. So that's either pieces of content that a a seller is sending out to people in a buying group. It could be pieces of content that they are downloading from your website, potentially going to g two, you know, etcetera.

But there's twenty seven different types of engagements with seller related content across a buyer's group. So I think it's incredibly important for us to really kind of focus on this idea of selling to the group, not just to a particular individual.

But let's let's let's let's let's dig in a little bit and kind of look at what are some of the examples of members that are in a buying group.

And Mimi, awesome, has dropped the, the Forrester report, so you all can check my math and make sure that I'm not lying to you.

So here's here's a few of the members, right, that that we typically see in buying groups, both internally for ourselves when we're selling as well as with our buyers and our customers.

Number one, decision maker. Right? I think we all know what a decision maker is. They typically have the authority to say yes or no to the purchase. Right? Often a senior executive, c level suite, etcetera.

Then we have our champion. Right? A lot of times we get caught up in thinking that someone like a coach is a champion, a champion is coach. That's another webinar. But at the most basic level, a champion is an advocate for the purchase, right, who not only has skin in the game, but also, most importantly, has influence internally that they can then use to push a decision forward and rally support among other stakeholders in the buying group. Right? We've got a economic buyers typically approves the financial aspect of the purchase.

It also includes somebody who has the ability to allocate budget. Right? Usually, this is a CFO, etcetera. This is usually the person that's actually putting the pen, to to the paper.

Then we've got legal and procurement. Obviously, they're the ones handling the procurement process, the purchasing process, probably negotiating terms, managing contracts, compliance, etcetera. And then we have somebody like an executive sponsor, which is maybe a layer above a champion. There are also other members like gatekeepers and end users and influencers and even what we call internally anti champions, right, or somebody that has the the the power, and the influence to stop a deal.

But every market is different. Right? And, these may not be relevant to you and your org. And if that's the case, it may be helpful to think about categorizing buying groups in, the two following buckets.

If we'll check the next slide. There we go. So the way I think that is most important to think about this at the highest level is two buckets. One is the group that is feeling the pain and is impacted by the pain.

Right? That's group number one. Group number two is typically a group who is always involved in any processing process. Right?

So once you've kind of identified who's involved, then you can begin to detail how to align this group with your specific sales process. Right? Things like, number one having a sales process. Right.

Having particular stages throughout your sales process. Right that lead to a closed one.

Things like exit criteria for each stage, right, budget being confirmed, right, or even having, you know, specific fields, or or or or or boxes to be checked up. Have we engaged with the champion. Right? Have we identified a champion?

Have they introduced us to the other stakeholders? Right? Who are they? And kind of list those out with contact fields, which maybe we'll jump in or sorry, Taylor will jump into later.

But just really making sure that you've got an exit criteria, you know, along the pathway of of of your buyer's journey to ensure that you're introducing stakeholders into the right areas of your sales process.

So it's always important to do the prep work first. Right? I always tell my team, like, cut the vegetables before you start cooking. You don't wanna jump into, each deal and and and and start to think about asking the buyer the questions around who should be involved, who said we see a lot of AEs do that.

Well, what I find is when you really show up as being the expert, right, like, I always tell my team, you sell software way more than these buyers buy software. And it's important to kind of recognize that and show up with a plan. Right? And, hey, I typically, these are the people that need to be involved at these various stages.

Things like a mutual action plan or success plan, are really, really, really helpful to do that. But this is kind of, you know, having these various pieces along will make sure that your team not only is prepared when they show up to have these conversations, but it provides you this, this scalable process that you can then implement across your entire team. So let's look at the ideal state, and then I'll pass over to Taylor to to to pop open the hood here. So ideal state, right, is sales rep has, you know, a conversation, whether it be outbound or inbound.

Hopefully, they're identifying the champion.

Although sometimes, you know, the per first person that you talk to isn't always the champion. Right? So don't get caught thinking that that first point of contact is going to be the champion. But it's important to understand who the champion is, who has, again, skin in the game, who's impacted by the pain, but who also has a fairly high level of influence that they can start kind of rallying the troops on your side. Right?

But, you know, working with the champion, working your way throughout the sales process, you're advising your teams, advising the champion on who needs to be involved at at at at certain points throughout each stage. All contacts are then assigned to the opportunity internally, right, to ensure that, you know, your team is running through the right place, that you're able to forecast, right, these, these deals appropriately because they're at the appropriate stages, etcetera.

Because visibility at the end of the day, I think for us leaders is the most important piece to this because we know that, without that, without those insights and analytics, it makes it really, really difficult for us to, number one, strategize. And number two, truly understand, you know, where the forecast is, where the potential gap is, and where we need to strategize our way forward.

I think I'll pass it over to Taylor to pop over the hood, right, and get get into the the dirty details.

Of course. Happy to, Keith. So, obviously, what we've talked through here just shows the complexity of what introducing buying groups can look like. It would be really great if we could sell to one person.

They could make the decision. They have the budget. They'll be on their way. But that's not how it works in the real world.

So, what we at SalesLoft are constantly asking ourselves in in various scenarios is how can we make this process and, specifically, our sales reps' lives easier and more efficient?

So there are a few ways that I'll highlight today. Obviously, there's, quite a bit more that, we can introduce, but a few, key, pieces of SalesLoft that I think if you're not using them today or you're not thinking about how you might use them in this fashion, can be really helpful for planning out engaging your buying groups. So the first is this auto capture of buying groups. So we can automatically associate contacts with relevant opportunities and deals based on their engagement, with other people in that buying group, based on including them in specific meetings, based on, you know, sending, emails to multiple people, based on their, their email domain. There's a lot of clues that we can pick up on to auto capture and kind of suggest a buying group for a specific account and opportunity.

Another is the auto attribution activity sync. So we can actually capture more than one stakeholder if we're sending or we're lofting an email to multiple contacts. So if the first person in your, in your two, section is a someone that you've already connected with and you've, lofted an email to. Anyone else after that, will also be tracking that activity.

So you can keep up with more than one stakeholder's activity. So even if, as Keith mentioned, the first person that you talk to isn't the ultimate decision maker and you wanna make sure that you're keeping up with all the other activity that happens as you kinda learn who those players are, you're not gonna lose that history because you just you know, we're trying to focus on that one person. Everyone that you're sending to is gonna track that activity back. You'll always be able to reference that in their sales off, person page, and we can sync that to multiple contacts.

Obviously, anything in SalesLoft, if you have that activity syncing back to your CRM, that's also gonna sync all the way back.

Another, key thing here is conversation key moments. This is actually, something that was a a new release within conversations, Specifically, if you are meeting with someone, and you want a quick recap, there is, a few there are a few really great ways to quickly summarize some key and identify some key decision makers, and key moments within that conversation. So it'll highlight those for you and kinda say, hey. You know, some someone mentioned that, you know, the CRO has to sign the paperwork for us to move forward here.

Let's make sure that, again, that should queue up that, you know, reminder to you to make sure that they are included in your activities going forward, that you at least have a touch point with them or you kinda figure out what the game plan is to get them involved. So that's a really quick way to review conversations and and past discussions that you've had and then make sure that you're including the right people based on just, again, pulling out those key moments and highlighting those specific parts of the decision making process.

And then lastly, Rhythm has, you know, introduced quite a lot of opportunity in our platform and making it more of, like, a revenue orchestration platform, and really expanding our our opportunities here because we can integrate the intent signals. So we're bringing in, a bunch of different signals outside integrations that tell us not only is the person that we're talking to interested in, you know, what we're selling here, but we could be engaging multiple people on that account through capturing those intent signals and making sure that not only do do we know, who's looking at our our product in in various ways and we're engaging them. Maybe they're, you know, chatting with the Drift bot on, on our website or maybe they're engaging in a different way, reading some papers or white papers that we sent out to them.

But, you know, we're sales and marketing is able to collaborate on those intent signals. So marketing knows what's going on. They can see that there are multiple people on the account engaging. Sales can also see that we've got a few different players here. Maybe it's, you know, for multiple opportunities. Maybe it's for the same opportunity. But at the very least, we all have the same picture of what's going on, and we can act accordingly and strategize accordingly.

So, Keith mentioned I'm gonna pop up in the hood, so I will I promise I will do that. But I just wanted to give you a preview of some of the things that, you could be leveraging in order to make sure you're making the most of engaging your buying groups. And so we're gonna hop into deals next.

I will give the caveat that this is, this is a promise.

Keith's team would never have this many deal gaps on their dashboard.

He's got he's got things locked down, so I will say we're we're doing that on purpose. But, I do wanna highlight a few examples here, and this is, again, a dashboard that I have saved, based on some filters. So I'm looking at my opportunities this quarter, the close date being this calendar quarter owned by me. So I can see a few different, things here on this dashboard, and what I wanna pop up really quickly is or highlight, is that we have a few things that should tell us right away whether or not we're engaging regularly.

The first and probably most visual is this last thirty day activity chart. So we can see, just on a a rolling visual, how many times in the last thirty days we've contacted someone. We'll give you a hint. A lot of white space is bad.

A lot of bars is good. And even worse, not enough activity on the deal gets you a sad error message. So you wanna see lots of color here, making sure that you're consistently engaging, with people. And this will include anyone that you're talking to on the deal.

So it's not just the one person, it's anyone that you're you're speaking to. Another thing we have here is the deal engagement score, and this is, calculated, based on the engagement and activity. Are we kind of disproportionately reaching out to them and not getting enough, conversation back? Have we actually moved the deal the close date around, multiple times?

Has it pushed? Has it been open for a long time? All of those things are factored into this deal engagement score. It'll kind of, you know, give you some hints as to what's happened over the last few days in terms of, you know, if that's changed.

We're getting closer to the end, if we're, getting better or if we're losing points here. This is, you know, all relative. You can kind of, you know, use these in in whatever fashion you you use, you know, all of this different information to identify, how this deal is performing.

But I do wanna call attention to here as well. You can manage the columns. So, I have not all of them showing, here, but there's obviously a lot that of information that you can be taking in to, understand the health of a deal.

We we don't want we like to be informed, but we don't like to be overwhelmed. Right? So I only have a few things here, selected, and one of them is my number of stakeholders. So I can see here really quickly how many people I have associated to the deal.

And as Keith mentioned again, at least three is kind of the the going average, and we see, you know, up to ten, up to twenty potentially in some of these really large enterprise deals. So a stakeholder count of four, I'm I'm pretty good. I could probably get better, but, that's that's not as bad as having one or not any, especially if we're further along, you know, as we say in our stage here. So those are the things that I can look at really quickly at a glance to understand, like, where I'm at in terms of the well roundedness of this deal and this buying group.

I also have deal gaps set up. So, in this demo org, we've got a lot of things that are gonna trigger, a gap, for us to call out and say, hey. We're we're kinda missing some stuff here. So in this top deal here, I've got two deal gaps, which if I hover over, I can see, and I I'm not sure if you're able to see the hover, but I can see here what those deal gaps are. And the first being, you know, maybe my decision criteria is empty or my budget is not confirmed.

One of my, you know, deal gaps that has, you know, more here, like, this one has ten. I've got a whole lot of things that I need to figure out before I think this can close, and that's maybe okay because it's in qualification.

But I only, you know, I only have until the end of September according to my close date, so, obviously, need to get my butt moving. But, you know, you can see really clearly what we've got yet to fill out, and that kind of gives us an opportunity here to, again, highlight the things that we feel like are most critical to us moving this forward and be able to identify those really quickly for us, you know, especially managers to intervene and say, hey. I think we really need to figure out, like, what the deal is with this, you know, decision making process or their buying committee. Like, we need to get them to put this on paper and figure it out so we know who we need to talk to.

Or I see we only have sales involved. We need to do a demo for marketing as well. Let's talk about that. Or we don't have budget, you know, confirmed.

We need to make sure that that's ready before we go to the next stage. All of those normal conversations that you're having, you know, those are those are gonna come up here. And and just a a quick look, again, as to what how deal gaps are set up, they're all if then statements. So they're super easy to configure, and you can, you know, decide what a deal gap means for your organization, set those up, and then have those surfaced here, on your dashboard.

So just a a really quick peek there. So I'm gonna maybe show you first, what a bad example might look like, in a, in a buying group, panel here. So this is Altube. We're we're looking at the new market expansion opportunity.

It says it's in proposal stage, but we've only got one sad lonely person in our buying group, and it's a CSM, which tells me that we've got no probably no one at a decision making level. We our economic buyer, is we've gotten noted that it's the VP of sales, but we don't have the VP of sales in our buying group. So that's that's a miss for sure.

We also don't know what the decision making process is because it so this could actually open up, our buying group to be a lot bigger than what we may think it is, maybe two, three, four, five more people.

We definitely need to make sure we talk with Jocelyn to understand who else might be involved.

We also don't really have a champion involved. So, obviously, these are all, you know, more more med pick focus, but whatever those questions might be, making sure that we're translating this opportunity information to okay. Let's game plan. What do we need to do to figure this out?

And and, clearly, we're not really in proposal stage. We can't be if, if we only have one, one person in our buying group, and we've got all of these unanswered questions. Or it's just a, you know, data problem. I'll just go in here and, you know, fill in my my selling notes.

But, at the same time, again, we we wanna make sure that we're engaging this buying group. So I can still, make sure that I'm reaching out to Jocelyn and send her an email, right from right from this deals panel just to make sure that, hey. I you know, if there's anyone else that should be included in our next meeting, let's talk about that. Or, you know, I'm curious if you had a chance to look at, you know, some of the, examples that I sent over in in our last conversation So I can still, you know, pop open that.

And like I said, you know, anyone that I put, in that two window, we're gonna be able to track as well.

And I can type up, an email to Jocelyn right here, or I can just give her a call. All of those activities, I can do from this panel.

I can also see that, even if I only have one person, she's been added as a opportunity contact role. So that's happening in Salesforce. So that's syncing to that opportunity, and it's making sure that that tie is being made, between Jocelyn's record, as a contact and as well as the the opportunity, again, in Salesforce. So a lot of different things, I can do here. If I'm not gonna one off email her, I can also add her to a cadence. I can obviously call or message if, we have those capabilities set up. But, obviously, I got a lot of work to do here.

Before before you leave, on page, one thing, especially for sales leaders, right, where not having this information, whether it be in SalesLoft or or CRM, etcetera.

Right? I think this is one of the reasons why SalesLoft exists is to help kind of, to to help us get to that strategy point a little bit quicker. Because what happens here is, let's say, we're having a a deal review session. Most of the deal review is gonna be spent on gathering the surface level details.

Who's involved? Who's your champion? Who's the economic buyer? Right? Like, what, is your compelling event?

Like, all of these kind of various pieces where, when this isn't here, it it moves away from being more strategic, really thinking about what plays we need to run to get to a closed one, and it just starts to become like a, a a a surface level info gathering session. And by the time we get all the information that honestly should just be living here once we pull it up, then we don't even have time to strategize. Right? And and and we're having to go on to the next one.

So we might have an hour of deal reviews. And if they all look something similar to this, and we're not really reviewing or strategizing on anything, we're really just, gathering kind of the surface level information, which, you know, tailored now is is gonna show how we can auto capture that and really get to kind of, like, the the strategic brainstorming side of of things, which is, I think, really where the magic is as sales leaders.

Absolutely. And everyone's been on those discovery calls where it's like, you know, this could have been an email or, you know, you're asking, like, all the things you could have figured out before you get there. So let's not do that to ourselves and our leaders.

Let's make sure that we got it filled out, before we get here because, yeah, it turns the conversation from, what could be a really awesome strategic, let's see how we can move this account forward to okay. You know, let's let's just fill in a bunch of data here that you we probably already know.

So flipping to an example that's got a a little bit more action here, Aurelius dot ai is a new deal is in qualification stage, And we've got a lot more information here. We've, picked up a lot from our initial conversation.

We kind of understand what their their need is, what metrics are important to them. We understand who their economic buyers are. So Marcus and Aurelie, I have them in my buying groups. That's a great first step.

And I can also, you know, see that, again, a lot more of this information is filled out. So I at least have had a couple conversations with them trying to understand what their need is. Marcus is also, my champion and is a decision maker here. He is, an SDR manager, but, he's he was added from email activity. So I was emailing him and, you know, it it auto captured, Marcus's information, added him to this deal. And we've got quite a bit of activity here that I can see. We've had a couple calls, emails sent, more more meetings, booked.

I'm not text messaging him yet, but, hopefully, we'll we might get to that point by the end of this deal.

But I can see that the last activity was back in July. So I should probably, again, add Marcus to, Cadence here and make sure that, we're, you know, we're adding him to Hannah's Cadence because I know his is pretty awesome.

And then, we'll, you know, make sure that we've got meeting point, talking points, with James and Aurelie, and, we're engaging them, as evaluators and and economic decision makers.

I also see that so Laura's been added here, from email activity. So she's a director of digital marketing. I I've emailed her, because, you know, Marcus maybe asked for some information to be shared, but I don't have a role for her. I don't really know how she fits into, this overall buying group.

But, I can actually, see that she's also not yet added as a comp as an opportunity contact role in Salesforce either. So I can do that right from this screen, to make sure that she's added. And what I understand maybe, through talking with Marcus is, she is an evaluator from, you know, from the marketing standpoint. She's, you know, wanting to be involved, in the conversation.

She's ultimately not the economic decision maker, but, she definitely is evaluating this tool and how it fits in with, the rest of the resources that they have at Aurelius.

Evelyn here is my, executive sponsor, but I don't have any activity for Evelyn. So that's, you know, gonna key up some, some things for me that I know I need to probably, either add Evelyn to a cadence if if I've got, you know, an executive level cadence ready for her, or at least, you know, send her a a message just to let her know that, you know, I'm gonna she if she lives in Philadelphia, I'm gonna be in Philadelphia next week. We would love to get, you know, cocktails or something with her and and just talk about, you know, what what's on the table here. So I can, email straight, from there. What's interesting too, and, again, we can see all of the kind of basic level activity of the opportunity, you know, conversations and and what the the meetings were over the last month.

I can also see open click reply rate just straight from the buying group hoppers, which is really nice. You don't even have to click in. But if I do, I can see with Marcus.

For example, he's my contact that's got the the longest history of back and forth, with me.

I can see all of the different, individual activities on his people page. And and if I really wanna kinda dig back to to see, I can go all the way back to, you know, my discovery meeting with Marcus, and I can actually play, you know, the the conversations that, were had before, you know, either either review for myself or I can send this to other people on my team, maybe my solution engineer who's preparing a demo because, they wanna know exactly, you know, what to present. They wanna hear it directly from Marcus, you know, what they want to see, so I can share this as well, with anyone else that is working this opportunity with me.

One interesting thing, and I'll I'll show you kind of what it looks like, in terms of, getting to those decision making key moments. Here's another call where, we've pulled out those decision making key moments, and specifically because of the authority that, that AI picked up on. So, I'm able to see those key moments just in the below the actual transcript and see directly, you know, exactly when that came up, what was being discussed, and, you know, what the what the specific, you know, moment was that that triggered this. You know, for example, in this, in this recording, Felicity is saying, I'd be able to sign for under fifty thousand dollars. So we've got, you know, confirmation that Felicity is the right person to have in our buying group under a certain budget amount.

We have that confirmed here in the recording, and it's, again, really easy reconfirmation that, you know, as we're going through and checking all the boxes, making sure that we have that, that buying group filled out, we can actually go back and pull those key moments really quickly instead of having to listen to, you know, the entire recording all over again, which no one has time for. So we can pull those up really, really quickly.

Keith, anything else that, you wanna kinda call out as as that are helpful for you in in reviewing, with your team or anything else from the deals panel before I jump back?

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I think it's really important, you know, to kind of take a few steps back and and and as we think about, like, how is this important to the different layers of our business. Right?

I think for starters, for AEs and individual contributors, number one, this really helps provide that, a visualization of the process and kind of pathway that you all of leaders have laid out for your team to follow. Right? It's one thing to kind of sit in a backroom and strategize and create the sales process and then go, hey. Go go ahead and run it.

But without really having some type of vehicle to to to really kind of anchor it into to ensure that they are they are following the process, it makes it really challenging. We really don't know, right, without some, like, these kinds of technology. So I think number one for AEs, it just really helps them understand, number one, like, what are the things that I need to do? Right, based off, like, the the things that historically have led to close won or even close loss.

Right? Because, you know, we're gonna lose some deals too. And I think when we can identify what those deals that we're probably going to lose look like sooner, it allows our team to, like, refocus their time and energy in the right places. And so something like deals and all the various pieces, of this specifically anchored in the buying group, auto capture is so critically important.

Before we had the auto capture, we we we actually had to have VAEs add their own people into the buying group, which I'm sure they love that.

A lot of the AEs that they they they typically don't, like, aren't the first in line to kind of, like, add the, the various pieces into whatever program, software, CRM, sales engagement, etcetera, that that that they're using.

And what that was what what what the gap that that was actually providing, or that we were experiencing was things like activity and various plays and deal gaps and, like, all of the other things that we look at, right, holistically to understand the health of, any given opportunity in the pipeline, we weren't able to do that. And so by just like by by just releasing a feature like this, like, I'm not a huge kinda like, let's talk about the features and functionality of things, but this really was a game changer for our team internally and for our buyers because, again, it just allows the AEs to understand what the health of their pipeline is. It allows them to plan their next steps to ensure that they're gauging the right person at the right time with the right messaging.

As Taylor walked you all through, it makes it really easy to kind of, like, pop into the other various aspects. Like, for us, we have active opportunity cadences. Right? We wanna make sure that a buyer is in a cadence at every step in their journey, whether it be as a prospect, if they're in an open opportunity, as a customer, etcetera.

And so this makes it really easy. We go, oh, I've realized that this person is not in in a in a in in a cadence right now. I haven't talked to them in in two weeks. I'm gonna go ahead and add them to my active opportunity cadence and just make sure that I'm sharing valuable content that I know based back to that twenty seven engagements, right, in the in the deal cycle that I know is gonna be really relevant for them.

For a sales manager or frontline leaders, this becomes incredibly powerful, not only just from, like, a deal by deal strategy review session, perspective, but also when we think about coaching our teams. How can we help develop our team? Right? This is a really fantastic way because then you could say, hey.

Well, rep a is doing really, really well, and rep b isn't doing so well. And it's really hard, like, just knowing based off of bookings. Right? Like, where are the areas that I need to coach?

Something like this, we could pull it up and go, hey. I noticed that rep b is only engaging on average three stakeholders. And rep a, who is a consistent quota hitter, is engaging an average of six.

Okay. Great. Now I know where to coach to. Now I know now I can start going to conversations and and and and and and mapping those various points in the conversation that the AE should be kind of asking to engage or maybe they're not being proactive enough.

Right? They're not kind of they're they're not acting as the Sherpa up the mountain. Right? They're they're they're they're being a little bit too reactive with asking them who should be involved as opposed to saying, hey.

Here are the people that need to be involved. So not only does this offer the ability to ensure that the team is following the sales process, but also opens up these really, really fun, like, moments to coach to help the team improve. And then at at the c level, right, and the second line leadership level, etcetera, now you have confidence that the numbers that are being rolled up from the team, from your sales directors, and from your VPs of sales are accurate. Right?

Because you've got that sales process. You've got those stages. You know what your exit criteria is. You can visually see the health of any given, deal at any given point.

And so the number that you're rolling up to the board, etcetera, you have confidence in, and you also know kind of, like, what that gap is between the current state and the future state and how to strategize towards that. And then, obviously, you know, for the sales ops leaders of the world and, you've got you know, you know that the team is adopting to the software. Right? Because they're they're they're they need it to be successful.

You know that the the the data that you have is high quality.

And then, you know, you've got increased productivity because a lot of these manual things that best case scenario AEs were wasting time doing.

Worst case scenario, they weren't doing at all. Now it's all just, like, automatically being done for you, which gives sales reps more time to do what they do really, really well, which is, like, build relationships, start conversations, and close deals. So I think, like like, framing it in that way, it's not just like a it's important to this side of the business or that side of the business. Like, this is really integral of, like, strengthening the connective tissue between each segment of the business.

I love that. And for those following along, Keith Keith just dropped a bunch of knowledge bombs on us. I promise we'll circle back around and do a little recap before we close the day today. So, don't worry. We'll we'll make sure that, we we give you the the spark notes version. So, just to to revisit again over the auto capture for your buying group. So, again, we're able to take all of that activity, and people that you're emailing regularly associate those two opportunities.

We can see how they were added and any past activity, and we've got a menu to take action. So adding adding them to a cadence or specifically even an opportunity cadence or persona or buyer persona, based cadence. We can just straight up email, call, message, book a meeting. We can add them to the opportunity contact role in Salesforce all from that, that menu right here.

In conversation key moments, we can drop down into that decision making category and see, hey. You know, was there anything that came up in my last conversation that was recorded with them that, I should really be paying attention to or adding back to, my my deal information or my opportunity information in deals? Making sure I've got all of those key people that were mentioned, as part of those conversations.

Just another, visual here for the auto attribution. So in that to field, not just, Laura's getting captured here, but my activity is also tracking to Marcus and James. So I'm keeping them, and all of their activity synced, throughout the process so I can show again that I'm threading, that group all the way through to, you know, the the later sales stages.

So the just making sure as long as that person the first person in your to field is the sales off person record, that will track, and that's available in Gmail and Outlook as well.

We I mentioned buying signals, and, again, this is gonna look a little bit different based on what integrations you have set up in, in SalesLoft as part of Rytm.

But thinking about, you know, how all of these different pieces of seismic of g two, of of Vidyard, of, you know, all of those things that are, you know, potentially just in digital body language of showing interest, that all be people considered part of your buying group. So, again, marketing's paying attention to this. Sales should be paying attention to this, and bringing those into SalesLoft as part of creating a a play around that activity. So you can see that in rhythm again, based on the integrations that you have in SalesLoft set up, that is all going to be able to kinda trigger those, those moments to reach out based on showing that activity.

And, again, we've got, you know, a few different, integrations available. We're always building on this list. So if any of these logos look familiar to you, you know, that's a a great nudge to just see if it would make sense to set up those, those signal plays to make sure that, you're getting the most out of SalesLoft as that fully integrated picture of what's going on, not just from a a direct one to one conversation perspective. You're really building out that buying group based on everyone who's poking around in your website or reading your content or attending your webinar. So, make sure that you're kinda thinking big picture with that too.

And I mentioned, Keith's truth bomb. So this is, kind of categorizing why this matters, at a c level, sales manager level, an individual contributor level, and sales ops level. Like you said, this is really, like, thinking these buying groups can really integrate and pull together, the the confidence in, you know, the c suite having, that accurate forecast where we know, like, hey. We we are, you know, low in our deal gaps.

We are really confident in, the number of people we have in our buying groups. All of our late stage opportunities are required to have, you know, this specific criteria. We're we're really sound in that and that gives the c suite, a lot more confidence in that process. It's also giving opportunities for executive alignment.

So if we have an executive sponsor that we've identified as part of the buying, maybe we do pull in an executive sponsor from a c suite level depending on, you know, the importance of that deal. That gives that opportunity for them to have alignment and make sure that, those strategic conversations are happening in addition to maybe the tactical, deal closer closure conversations.

And then we're also getting those impact insights shared, across departments between marketing, between sales, ops, all of those different departments talking, to each other and and leveraging SalesLoft to do so. At a manager and and a director level, I think Keith gave the the rundown of, you know, what your one on one should look like, what those, you know, conversations, could be. Let's keep them strategic. Let's keep, you know, talking about what should happen based on, who we know to be a part of those buying groups, how to engage them differently, and really understanding where to set your sights and put your focus, over the next weeks, months to make sure that that deal comes to a close.

As an individual contributor, you're looking for you know, look at those historical deals to understand what does a good buying group look like. How big does my group need to be, and what does the typical process look like for the ICP that I'm going after?

Use that to kinda tell you what you need to look for, for deals that have closed versus deals that have not closed. And and Keith gave you that example as well. But, you know, definitely use that to as a starting point as kind of a measure of, what does good look like. And also plan those steps around engaging that diverse group. You might not be talking to everybody in every meeting, but, you know, kind of figure out ways to engage separately, maybe have separate cadences based on those unique personas.

But make sure that everyone is involved because at the end of the day, they're gonna have an impact on whether or not your deal is closing. We like to see well rounded and engaged stakeholders. That's gonna include, increase the likelihood of us going close one. And that, you know, ultimately, it is, you know, data collection or it feels like it sometimes, but, hopefully, SalesLoft is making that easier because it really truly is worth the effort for you to understand what's going on in your deals, for you to track that historically, to, again, know what good looks like, and be able to plan and strategize around that.

Ops loves it because it's, you know, great for, adoption. They are looking for, opportunity contact roles that that data syncing between the CRM and SalesLoft.

They they would, you know, they they definitely have been probably bugging you or on your back for, for not putting that in information in. So why not, let let SalesLoft do it for you? We've got that data integrity that everyone's, you know, you know, looking for. We wanna make sure that we've got the right contacts on, our opportunities.

And and, overall, everyone wins we when we can increase productivity. So, again, showing the full picture of of how this can impact all of these different roles. It's not just an individual seller trying to make their deal look good for the next conversation with their manager. It's really much bigger than that.

Alright. I think we're ready to wrap it up, toss it over to you, Mimi, and talk about what we've got for resources.

Yeah. Thanks, guys. That was really awesome. I mean, I learned a lot. So, hopefully, everyone who's joined us learned, at least one new thing today. I think, a lot of good things to think about.

But, you know, the learning never ends with SalesLoft, and, hopefully, you saw some notices about this. But this week or, actually, I guess, last week now, it's flown by. We have officially launched our new centralized location for all the resources that you need, and we call it our champions hub. And so instead of giving you specific places to look, I wanna just direct you to this hub to look for, you know, whatever piques your interest, whatever content you are looking for. We have, you know, synced articles from our help center. So any knowledge base articles, any product release notes.

We have pass two certification. We have admin certification. We also have end user learning for our ICs.

We also just learned, launched new sales manager academy paths. So if you are a sales manager or sales managers report to you, really awesome paths for them to learn really valuable skills.

Also, check out our upcoming events like you joined today. Past events that you missed, you can access, in our resource center and so much more. So tons of really awesome things here, including our own version of our community, which you can see within the discussion section of the hub. So you can learn not only from, you know, my fellow SalesLoft employees, but you can also learn from other customers and our partners. So lots of ton or tons of valuable content here.

Definitely, check it out at champions dot sales loft dot com. And if you're looking for, you know, particular content, we have a search bar that pulls from all of those great sources into one place. So check it out and reach out if you have any questions. There's, lots of opportunities to learn here.

And then I think the only thing left is for us to have a q and a. I think I failed to mention this earlier on, which I apologize for, but we definitely welcomed question throughout the training, but nothing came through. And so, luckily for us, we have about eight minutes that we can have for dedicated q and a time. So, any questions that you have on the content that we covered today, I know Taylor and Keith covered a lot, so you may need time to digest. But if there's anything that is still left unanswered or maybe you were hoping to learn something that we didn't get a chance to touch on, please feel free to pop those questions into the q and a or the chat, whichever you prefer, and we're gonna stick around to answer any of those questions.

Give some time. Gotta play the do do do do. Just kidding.

And, we're gonna send you're gonna get access to this recording. It should deliver to your inbox within two hours of when we wrap up, so definitely take a look out for that recording. If you'd like access to the slide deck, you can reach out. I'm gonna send a direct email that you can reach out to. If so if you have issues receiving this recording after the fact or you want access to the slide deck, please reach out to our training email that I just linked into the chat here.

And while we wait on any questions that may come through, Keith, Taylor, any, like, anything that, you wanna touch on? Have you gotten a chance to check out the new Champions Hub?

I have. I just created a profile. So I I promise because, you know, as a SalesLoft employee, I wanna kinda sit back and let our our champions take, take the center stage there. But, it's really interesting just to see, you know, how people are are already, like, coming in and answering questions, for their peers or giving examples of how they're, setting certain things up, using the tool in different ways. So I'm really excited because it's kind of a it it really gives, you know, kind of the feel of whenever we do live events, we do sales love, and we have, opportunities for customers to meet each other. It kind of has that same feel, where they're able to connect in this way and and really help each other.

Obviously, like I mentioned, there are some SalesLoft employees in there too poking around. So if, questions, are are posted and, we we see something that we can answer, we're happy to to jump in and help out. But, love to see the peer to peer communication and, questions and and sharing there in the hub. It's been really exciting to see that launch.

That's a that's a really great point. I also yeah. Our discussion section is really it's customer first. It's customer led, so we try to be as hands off as possible.

Think a lot of times, customers or just people in general can learn so much from each other, and we learn a lot from our customers too and our partners. So, you know, it's a really great place to check out or ask questions, answer questions.

It's a cool place to be. I'm excited to see how it'll evolve, and this is definitely just the first iteration. I think there's a lot more to come in terms of that peer to peer networking and what opportunities will be available. So it'll be awesome.

But I don't see anything coming through in the, q and a or the chat, which is great. That means that we're in a good place to maybe wrap this up. Keith, anything from you before we wrap up? Did you get a chance to check out the Champions Hub yet?

No. But I appreciate you putting me on the spot.

Oh my god. Stop. No. I, it's you know, Keith's a busy guy. We just wrapped up our end of quarter, so I think it's a really good time for, you know, a lot of people to kinda take a step back and, you know, take in all the new things.

We're we launch a lot at SalesLoft, So it's hard to a lot. It's hard to keep up at times, but, but it's all good stuff. All good stuff. So I wanna say thank you both, Taylor and Keith.

This was really, really awesome stuff. I appreciate you both sharing your knowledge with us. I think, there's a lot to think about. And for those of us for those of you who joined us today, thank you so much for your time and, you know, taking that time out of your day, taking the time to learn something new.

So please don't be a stranger. Join the champions head if you want to network or, you know, you know, take in all those resources.

Join us for, any upcoming events. We have a lot of events slated for sales leaders, so lots of opportunities for you to learn something new. And, thanks again. We will see you all soon. Okay? Thank you, everyone.