Referencing Roberge

As a follow up to a previous piece on Jason Lemkin — I wanted to feature another SaaS sales rockstar in Mark Roberge.

I don’t know what I’m more jealous of — his HAIR or the just-as-covetable success he’s been part of. If there is one person to talk about growth (hair included) it’s probably Mark.

If you’re new to the Roberge References — I’ll let his twitter bio make the introduction:

MD @Stage2Capital, Prof @HarvardHBS. Former CRO@HubSpot (and Co-Founder). Sales scientist. MIT quant. Family man. Author of Best Seller The Sales Acceleration Formula.

Is that it? 😉

Here we go. In this post we’re going to cover a few of Mark’s highlights including:

• The Sales Acceleration Formula (Book Review and Summaries)
• 10 Sales Leadership Lessons from 10 Years at Hubspot
• Restarting Growth During Covid

Plus a ton of great podcast links, articles and insights from THE Professor Roberge…

The Sales Acceleration Formula

One of the books I recommend most in my journey as a Sales Leader in SaaS is Mark Roberge’s The Sales Acceleration Formula. The book consists of 5 Parts — each broken down and explained with a few chapters to prove merit. Specifically:

1. The Sales Hiring Formula
2. The Sales Training Formula
3. The Sales Management Formula
4. The Demand Generation Formula
5. Technology and Experimentation

I’m not going to attempt to summarize the book — in fact — there are several great summaries already including THIS one by Chili Piper as well as THIS one by Jeremey Donovan amongst others. But — HIGHLY RECOMMEND picking up a copy. You can do so below (affiliate link)👇

Get the book HERE

10 Sales Leadership Lessons From 10 Years at Hubspot

1. Develop the buyer journey and THEN the sales process to support it.
2. Most Important Sales Training occurs when salespeople walk in their buyers shoes
3. Missed revenue targets are more often a symptom of bad planning than bad execution
4. There is no universal criteria for top salespeople. The ideal sales hiring criteria is unique to your business and must be engineered prior to scaling
5. Entice prospects with education rather than product demos
6. Sales coaching is the most important lever to drive sales productivity. Practice metrics-driven sales coaching
7. Issues with customer success are often solvable through the sales compensation plan
8. Optimize demand generation requirements around a 40-hour work week rather than a pre-determined quota to drive sales productivity
9. The greatest motivation factor is a formalized career growth plan
10. Minimize friction in customer handoffs by pushing the cross-functional alignment as close to the front-line as possible

Read full article HERE

Restarting Growth During Covid

Pertinent podcast I came across recently. Mark talks with SalesLoft CEO Kyle Porter on what a sales org should be focusing on right now as we restart during Covid. Show notes:

There’s no shortage of talk about uncertainty right now. So what’s a sales org to do? If Mark Roberge, Managing Director of Stage 2 Capital, could make only one recommendation, it would be this: Pivot boldly.

Fortunately, he shares even more recommendations. Mark warns against the danger of late pivots and provides a neat formula for measuring customer retention from short-term data.

Listen to full Podcast HERE.

STRETCH VP POST 👇

Leading the Leaders

In Mark Roberge’s book — The Sales Acceleration Formula — he references one of the key traits he hires for is COACH-ABILITY. I love this. I feel like as leaders — we too, need to have this same mindset. As coaches ourselves, we need be coachable.

WHO and WHERE do we look to for guidance?

History has some great examples of wildly successful leaders being influenced and mentored in how they think and act by others. The greatest leaders had their own leaders and mentors.

Let’s take a look at a few examples…

READ FULL POST HERE

STRETCH SNIPPETS

• 🧐Mark lays out his example interview process for a sales leader candidate.
• 🏄‍♂️Featured earlier, but insightful podcast for VPs of Sales from Surf and Sales (Richard Harris and Scott Leese) on making bolder decisions.
• 👉Mark and John McMahon role play how to coach a salesperson through a deal that is pushing.
• 🗺Roberge gives us his blueprint with 5 Steps to Pivoting Sales for Success in a Down Economy
• 📊Jason Lemkin and Mark Roberge team up to deliver an awesome podcast with a Step by Step guide to revenue growth.
• 🕵️‍♂️Mark teams up with Oliver Jay (O.J) to role play a customer cancellation call and tells us why every customer call is essentially a discovery call.
• 🔑Mandy Cole (Stage 2 Capital) and Mark Roberge offer 4 Tips to improve revenue in current environment (Hint: it’s not more pipeline).
• 🤫The Four Secrets to HubSpot’s scalability (summary from Close and Sales Hacker).
• 💡In an interview with Aaron Ross and Collin Stewart- Mark covers some sales compensation ideas to cut customer churn and increase sales motivation
• 🚨Excellent podcast from SaaStr featuring Mark’s take on Sales Mistakes That Can Kill Your Startup.

Thanks for reading!

My hope is if you find this valuable follow me here on Medium!

— Grant 👋