ICYMI: A recap of Q3 2022 at The Revenue Architect

Top posts from the past 3 months

It’s been another exciting quarter at The Revenue Architect, packed with solutions to the common sales, marketing and leadership issues that hold back startups from growing faster. From podcast interviews with revenue leaders, to how-to guides for individual contributors, to how-to guides for managers, there’s a good chance you missed something that will improve your work.

Below is a roundup of the top posts from the past 3 months and a huge thank you to all my subscribers for reading, sharing with colleagues and sending me your feedback. You make writing for you an incredibly rewarding experience! Please continue to share the posts that you find useful and encourage your friends to subscribe.

Podcast interviews with revenue leaders

This is a new series I started in Q3, in which we hear from revenue leaders about their journeys to the top, the lessons they’ve learned and the specific tactics they’ve used to find success in their roles. All podcasts are available both here on Substack and on Apple. If you want to suggest someone for a future podcast, please DM me on LinkedIn or reply to this email if you are a subscriber.

1. Founder-led sales done right, with Abeed Mohammed, Chief Customer Officer of Birdie.

2. Shifting a business from outbound to inbound, with Justin Schweisberger, Chief Revenue Officer of Pramata.

3. How to be the first sales leader at a tech startup, with Kit Wetzler, VP Sales at Bigeye.

How-to guides for individual contributors

1. How to land your first management role and develop the skills to succeed — its a catch-22 that the #1 reason people get rejected for management roles is a lack of management experience. Here’s how to overcome that and develop the new skills needed to succeed.

2. How to sell to uber-successful people — I’ve sold to some wildly successful people over the years, from Philip Green to Rupert Murdoch to Kris Jenner. I’ve found the keys to success with characters like these are to get to the point quickly, use competition to drive urgency and use data to overcome the force of their personalities.

How-to guides for revenue leaders

1. How to build a renewal playbook — with the slowdown in economic growth and new logo sales, retaining customers is paramount. Yet many companies forget that retention is a function of demonstrating recurring impact and find themselves scrambling to hold onto business at the last minute. One of keys to fixing this is by setting up a renewal process.

2. The 3 meetings you need to run a successful sales team — nobody loves internal meetings, least of all salespeople. However, well-organized 1:1s, pipeline meetings and sales team meetings can set your team up for success and leave them energized. This post gives some ideas on how to structure each.

3. How to train your salespeople to give better demos — a great demo gets a buyer eager to go to bat for you with their boss. Unfortunately, most demos do the complete opposite, overwhelming buyers with goo much information that leaves them confused and disengaged. The key to fixing this is to break up the seller monologues that plague so many demos.

If you haven’t done so already, please consider subscribing. I write weekly about the common sales, marketing and leadership issues that hold back startups from growing faster. Thank you!