David Rudnitsky’s success is worth revisiting (and learning from). He’s worked for industry giants including Oracle and Netscape, but he became a phenomenon at Salesforce, where CEO Mark Benioff devoted an entire chapter of his book, Behind the Cloud, to Rudnitsky’s sales techniques.
As 6sense CMO Latané Conant puts it, he literally wrote the playbook on enterprise selling, so who better to join TalkingSense during the Sales Season?
3 Steps to Sales Success
Rudnitsky and Conant didn’t waste time. Right away, Rudnitsky laid out three keys to sales success:
- Build the right team by refusing to compromise on talent
- Create a playbook by learning from success and failure
- Think big and be confident
“When you think big, that’s attitude, it’s absolutely not arrogance. It’s confidence. And confidence breeds success,” Rudnitsky said.
How Sales Has Changed
When Conant asked how the selling world has changed due to technology, tools, and hybrid and remote work, Rudnitsky took a wide view in his answer:
“I’ve always had this idea behind it that a playbook has to evolve,” he explained. “It’s got to be adaptable to what’s going on. It’s a framework, but it’s a framework for a point in time. You could insert a sales methodology to enforce actions, but a playbook is showing you what greatness looks like.”
That means figuring out how to make those plays work, how to achieve greatness no matter how many layers of complexity have been added.
For instance, “I will tell you the best sellers have figured out a way in this hybrid world to walk the halls in person where they can,” Rudnitsky said. “But to also walk the halls virtually. You want them talking about you.”
Marketing and Sales — Unite, or Divide and Conquer?
The eternal question: How should marketing and sales work together?
“They’re all supporting the franchise,” Conant said.
Rudnitsky agreed. “It’s really hard on our business not to work with your marketing team.”
Both Conant and Rudnitsky stated that there’s no benefit to finger-pointing over leads and follow-up. What matters is working together to find holes in the pipeline, to plan Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy, and to find a way to make the sale.
There’s more to learn from Conant and Rudnitsky about the best attitude and process for successful sales teams, and we’ve got the full conversation for you right here.
