Nicholas Ghitti, Head of Growth at Tymeshift took the time to answer our community’s burning questions after his presentation ‘How sales teams can work with other departments to drive growth' at this year’s Future of SaaS festival.
Check out the replay in the OnDemand section of our membership area.
Q: What would you say is the biggest driver of innovative thinking in sales teams?
A: “That's a tricky one. The sales team is processing different data from different sources and understanding how to use that data. We know that the sales teams have access to a lot of different tools to help them get more information about what platforms your prospect is using, and their willingness to purchase our products and services. We get hit with a lot of different information, and we still need to be focused on selling. That's the most important thing, right? But also we need to be thinking about, ‘how we can utilize the information the sales team collects to its full effect’? I feel like shifting that perspective might be one of the most innovative things that we can do in sales today.”
Q: Where do you think sales should stand when it comes to planning and developing new features?
A: “I feel like, yes, the sales team should participate actively in the planning and developing of new features. But up to a certain level. Because obviously, we do have a tendency, even though we're in constant contact with many different areas, to always think of what's better in terms of selling. Will this feature allow me to sell more or increase my average sales ticket, etc?
“What we think about in regards to the roadmap or product development is maybe not the best for the current customers or if we're trying to reach a different addressable market or expand to a different region. I feel like the product team should be the one calling the shots regarding the roadmap and sales should sit at the table, but not lead the conversation.”
Q: Would you recommend delivering a detailed competitor analysis to customers?
A: “It really depends on if you're hitting the right persona. Sometimes if you conduct analysis just by feature, it might seem like you are lagging behind. But competitor analysis changes over the months as the product grows. Always keep in mind, ‘OK, let me build a competitor analysis that, of course, is going to help me sell more, but at the same time, it doesn't have to be a feature by feature analysis because it really depends on what your client is looking for. They might be looking for pricing, implementation, or service level, basically, a tailored approach to finding the right solution for the customer’s needs is definitely the best way.”
Q: How do you handle the balance of direct contact with the customer?
A: It really depends on the size of your current company and the size of the CS and sales team. To give you an example of how we balance it, we have a bigger sales team than we do a customer success team. So we leave all the churn, retention, success, or implementation conversations for the customer success team and everything else that is related to new revenue is up to sales. Customer success takes care of trend retention and implementation.
“We hope to increase the customer success team in the near future to allow them to take care of all their related affairs with the customers and leave the sales team to focus only on new monthly recurring revenue; NMR is the goal.”
