Amy Volas calls herself “an enterprise sales fanatic and startup junkie.” She’s also Founder and CEO of Avenue Talent Partners, an executive search team specializing in hiring sales and customer success leaders for SaaS startups.
TalkingSense host and 6sense CMO Latané Conant brought Volas on to talk about how to create and motivate an amazing sales team. They covered creativity, sales responsibilities, low-cost training, and much more.
You can watch the episode here or check out a few highlights below the video.
On Stifling Your Sales Team’s Creativity
Volas got promoted, as many people do, because she was good at her job.
“I think it happens to a lot of people: ‘You’re really good as an individual contributor, so you should be a leader.’ That is not great advice. That is not a great idea … and there are many things to quantify and qualify before you do that.”
Because she was promoted to leadership too early and for the wrong reasons, Volas found she was stifling other people’s creativity by insisting her way was the only way to achieve success.
Spoiler alert: Volas found a better way.
Who’s Prospecting? AEs, SDRs, or BDRs?
Whose responsibility is to prospect?
Volas argues that it’s an Account Executive’s (AE) job, that they should be part of the entire sales process, even if it takes longer and requires hiring more AEs.
Conant says prospecting belongs primarily to BDRs, with the caveat that it’s an “up-and-out” role, with BDRs moving on to more advanced roles within 15 months.
But they both agree that companies need to prospect intelligently by
- Using intent data instead of random cold calls, and
- In full cycle teams — with marketing, sales, and customer success as extensions of the same process.
Sales Training Doesn’t Have to Be Expensive
Leaders know training is key to employee success, but “training doesn’t have to be this big expense of external resources,” Volas says. Conant agrees.
Some of their ideas for leveling up your team’s business savvy on the cheap:
- MasterClass (Volas recommends George Stephanopoulos on purposeful communication)
- A presentation from your own executive team on making buying decisions
- Storytelling skills training
Conclusion
With years of experience and millions of dollars in sales behind them, Volas and Conant know their stuff regarding revenue generation.
Catch the full conversation here and get started guiding your sales team to success today.
