Page 157 - The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million - PDFDrive.com

As time progressed, we measured his VAR channel just like the rest of the
business. For you SaaS experts out there, we measured LTV/CAC, payback
period, salesperson productivity, customer retention, and a few other metrics.
The results were phenomenal.

Six years later, Pete oversaw a VAR-focused team of 100 cross-functional
employees and was responsible for a significant amount of HubSpot's monthly
new revenue generation.

Imagine if we had never given Pete that shot. The VAR experiment is an
amazing example of a simple, contained, and relatively cheap bet with the
potential for enormous gains. Fortunately, in our case, those gains were realized.

GPCT

As I mentioned in Chapter 5, the first qualifying matrix we used at HubSpot was
BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing). As we reviewed sales opportunity
after sales opportunity, it became apparent that, in our context, the “N” in BANT
(“Need”) had become the most important component of the discovery process.
HubSpot salespeople who established a strong “Need” with their prospective
buyers had very high lead-to-customer conversion rates.

A well-developed “Need” sounded like this: “The buyer is adding two
salespeople in Q4 and needs to increase lead flow by 20 percent by the start of
the quarter in order to support the sales expansion. If they do not increase lead
flow, the new salespeople will need to resort to cold calling, which has been
unsuccessful for the team in the past. The expanded sales team will likely fail at
accelerating customer acquisition if the company does not increase lead flow
proportionately.”

Some of our salespeople did not develop “Need” well. These salespeople had
much lower lead-to-customer conversion rates. They failed to understand their
prospects' needs beyond the surface level. When I would ask these salespeople
about the needs they had uncovered, they responded generically, “The buyer
needs more leads, just like everyone else.” No kidding! Why? How many? How
did they come up with that number? What happens if they do not generate more
leads? Where does increasing lead flow fit on their overall priority list? If our
salespeople didn't have these answers, it was a bad sign.

A few years into the business, we were struggling to develop effective “Need”
discovery with some of our salespeople. A different approach was necessary. As