Sales Management · Sales Hiring

Doug Landis on scaling your sales team

Phil Freo · October 18, 2013
Doug Landis on scaling your sales team

Close is at today’s Sales Hacker Conference in San Francisco and we’ll be taking notes and sharing the best talks of the conference with you. List of all talks.

DOUG LANDIS, SVP of Sales Productivity, Box

DOUG LANDIS, SVP of Sales Productivity, Box

When he was 5 years old, he was convinced he was going to be an actor. Then, he thought sports. Then, politics. Then, law. Finally, sales!

Background: Salesforce, Oracle, Google, started his own company. Now trying to help Box succeed and grow.

Through sales you can prevent startups from failing.

How do you make your company succeed like the big guys?

His goal, or what he wants us to do: Think, feel, and do something differently.

"I want you to talk less about Dropbox and more about Box."

Think differently: Think differently about your role and the impact you have on your organization.

You need to do three things differently.

1. Track everything!!!

Test and track:

  1. Messages that resonate: “dropbox for business” vs. “cloud collaboration”
  2. Roles that respond
  3. Times to call: e.g., 6am vs 5pm
  4. Competitors that win
  5. Prices that close
  6. Presentations that work
  7. Demos that define
  8. Markets that are ripe

Be sure to measure the impact.

  1. What’s the right price
  2. What’s your sales cycle
  3. What causes deals to stall
  4. Who are you losing to
  5. Number of calls that convert
  6. Emails that get a response

Leverage the dashboards to see how you’re doing.

2. Enable others to be successful

  1. Onboard new hires quickly
  2. Guide reps to low hanging fruit
  3. Deliver actionable insight
  4. Suggest top targets
  5. Facilitate quarterly

Dashboards can also be enablement tools. Dashboards don’t have to be “management tools” but rather can help enable individual sales people.

3. Share what you learn

  • Every insight and exchange matters
  • The more you share the more you learn
  • Your partners need to know the truth

Sharing is collaborating.

Leverage your team

Get introductions from anyone you know that can help. Think about your CEO, engineers, board, etc.

Next steps

  1. Check out notes from other talks from Sales Hacker Conference.
  2. Try out Close to track your sales communication automatically.