ICYMI: A recap of Q3 at The Revenue Architect
Top posts and fractional CRO highlights from Q3 2024
I’ve had very exciting last 3 months! Aside from trips to Mexico and Australia, I have:
Published extensive how-to guides for giving a product demo, running a POV, and shortening your sales cycle.
Answered your top questions about pricing discussions, intro calls with prospects and getting started as a fractional executive.
Released video lessons on tuning up your ideal customer profile and finding early adopter customers.
Coached 10 early-stage startups to close more deals, generate more leads and upsell more customers.
New how-to guides
How to run a successful product demo. A great demo is less about knowing your product inside out and more about the questions you ask during the demo to keep your buyer engaged, surface and address their concerns and maintain momentum. This guide lays out exactly which questions to ask, when to ask them and what the answers you hear tell you about your likelihood of closing a deal.
How to run a trial or POV in your sales process. Trials and Proofs of Value (POVs) often appear to go well only for your prospect to fail to turn into a paying customer. This guide lays out how to structure a trial, how to get your buyer aligned, how to ensure it is successful and how to get a contract signed once the trial is complete.
How to shorten your sales cycle. Shortening your sales cycle can have a significant impact on revenue growth and profitability as spending less time on each lead enables you to handle more leads without increasing resources. This guide lays out how to measure your sales cycle, how to shorten the time between meetings, the time to build consensus and accelerate things when buyers say they are “just looking”.
Answering reader questions
Answering your questions about pricing discussions. This issue answers your top questions about pricing discussions including how to structure your pricing, when and how to bring it up on a call, how to present it, how to handle pricing objections, when to use discounts and when to add a pricing page.
Answering your questions about doing intro calls with prospects. This issue answers your top questions about intro calls including should you use slides, should you discuss pricing, what research should you do, what should you do if the decision maker isn’t on the call and how should you end the call.
Answering your questions about becoming a fractional executive. Every week I hear from people looking for advice on how to get started as a fractional exec. Having been through the same journey to become a fractional CRO, I share what’s worked for me including how do you get into being a fractional exec, what experience do you need, how do you structure and price your offering, how do you get your first 3 clients and how do you find clients on an ongoing basis.
New video lessons
How to tune up your ideal customer profile [Video]. Early-stage ICPs are usually way too broad, which creates a host of problems in your GTM. Much of the blame for this can be traced back to using the generic company attributes in business databases like Zoominfo. This lesson lays out 4 deeper attributes that increase the likelihood of finding prospects who need your product, and what they tell you about the problems faced by leaders in the company.
How to find early adopter customers [Video]. Early adopters are the lifeblood of an early-stage startup because they are the bridge from your initial design partners to your mainstream market. This lesson lays out the common mistakes in identifying early adopters and walks through 3 ways to find early adopters.
Fractional CRO highlights
I coached 10 wonderful startup clients last quarter. Here are some of the highlights from our work together:
Helped the CEO of a public-sector consulting firm build a prospecting motion to generate $200k in new business. The key to our success has been turning prospecting into a habit for both the CEO in going after new clients and the team leaders in upselling their existing clients. We did this by defining target account lists, arming people with research steps, messaging templates and discovery questions, setting goals and coaching each team member individually for 3 months until they’d seen enough success to turn it into a habit.
Helped the founder of a multi-product SaaS business stand up an account management function and reduce churn by 30%. The key to our success has been defining the customer accounts to focus on, identifying and tracking first impact milestones for each product, creating a playbook to book and prepare for customer meetings, role-playing customer conversations and giving feedback on customer calls.
Helped the founders of an early-stage cybersecurity company convert 3 POVs into 3 paying customers and book $200k in ARR. The key to our success has been coaching the founders on how to identify all the stakeholders early in the POV process, proactively surface future roadblocks and build a collaborative project plan with their champion to navigate procurement.
Helped the sales team at an early-stage dev tools startup refresh their discovery call skills ahead of a new product launch. I ran a private cohort of my Maven class for their sales team, tailored to their new product. We diagnosed one of their active deals using the SPICED framework, developed research steps to prepare for disco calls, wrote open-ended discovery questions to surface the pain points their new product solve and practiced handling objections.
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