Philip Jansen

Love the message here! I’ve had the privilege to work with some truly world class teams in my career, and most, if not all, had this same problem. My favourite line here and one that cannot be be overstated enough : “Because when your best CSM leaves, they don't just take their title. They take the relationships that keep your biggest accounts from picking up a competitor's call.”

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This is where outbound really works! Navan just reported in their S-1 that the majority of their pipe and revenue comes from outbound prospecting. Say what!? They are disrupting a category where the incumbents are stale and hard to use. (Sound familiar Rentvine fans?!?!) That approach to outbound messaging is clear and will resonate. Its still a balance to not trash your competitors in your sales pitch, but done elegantly, is powerful. I wrote about The Office episode yesterday where Jim and Dwight use a customer support advantage in displacing the 800 pound gorilla player. Yes its a comedy, but that method works in outbound to drive a wedge in a buyers mind. Take for example the image below. When a competitor's support booking tool is 7-8 days out to get a question answered. When Rentvine's support queue is under an hour, that's an outbound message that creates a neck-breaking double-take. Outbound still works. *and kudos to Kyle Poyar on his new podcast "Mostly Growth" where they talked through the Navan IPO. #sales #outbound #prospecting #PropTech

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9 Comments

AI has fundamentally changed how cyberattacks are executed—and most organizations haven’t caught up yet. Tomorrow. Noon ET. Blue Mantis CISO Jay Martin is spending 45 minutes on what AI-powered attacks actually look like right now and what organizations are doing about it. No vendor pitch. No recycled best practices. Just field intelligence from someone whose team uses AI to break into systems every single day. If you are still on the fence, this is your last chance. Register here: https://okt.to/duo2lY

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A good BDR doesn't fear rejection. They learn from it. Every "no" is a piece of feedback. It’s an opportunity to refine your messaging, improve your targeting, or simply build resilience. Don't let rejection get you down. Let it make you better. #BDR #SalesMotivation #Resilience

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How many deals have slowed down because a prospect asked for a SOC 2 report and the answer was "we don't have one"? 🤔 SOC compliance can feel like one of those topics that lives somewhere between "important" and "I'll get to it later." The reality? More customers are treating it as a baseline requirement before they'll even have a serious conversation. In this N-able blog it does a great job of breaking down: ✅ What SOC compliance actually is ✅ The difference between SOC 1, SOC 2, and SOC 3 ✅ Why MSPs should care ✅ Common pitfalls that can derail an audit ✅ How building the right controls can improve both security and trust The best part? SOC 2 isn't just about passing an audit. The same controls that help with compliance also help reduce risk, improve operational discipline, and make life harder for bad actors. Worth a read if you're looking to strengthen your security posture, prepare for larger opportunities, or simply get a better handle on the compliance landscape. 📖 Check out the blog in the comments below. #MSP #CyberSecurity #SOC2 #Compliance #SecurityOperations #RiskManagement #Nable #HeadNerds #BusinessResilience Because nobody has ever said, "I wish we'd spent less time preparing for security and compliance." 😄

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Most sellers don't know anything about their company's cybersecurity compliance or infosec programs. They don't care and maybe they don't need to. At best maybe they know whether they have a certain certification, report or attestation. But I am convinced that great sellers and great sales orgs know about their programs, the reports and attestations they have and most importantly, why they have them. Last year I heard about a prominent software sales org that not only received ISO42001 for AI Governance, but also enabled their entire sales org on why they did it, why it matters and how to explain it to their prospects and customers. The result? A sales org that can speak to the governance and assurance of their product and use it as a competitive advantage in their sales pursuits. Compliance as a strategic sales enabler. That is how great GTM orgs use compliance to drive the business. The difference between compliance as a growth lever and revenue driver and outdated check box compliance is stark. And the gap will only continue to widen. What side is your org on? #karpediem

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3:30 PM Monday: I was drowning in "Tools Fatigue." I had a massive list of prospects. I used one tool to build the list, another to find contacts, and a third to set up the sequence. I thought I was being efficient, until I realized the data was a mess. I was looking at 5+ hours of manual labor: Jumping between multiple platforms. Cross-referencing leads one by one. Scrubbing out the "bad fits" that slipped through the cracks. I thought, Instead of logging into three different sites to fix the mess, I can just use Alysio. It reached out to those platforms, identified the leads that didn’t fit my criteria, and did the heavy lifting for me. What should have been an afternoon/night of "copy-paste-check " for 5+ hours turned into a 5-minute automated sweep. If your tools aren't talking to each other, you're the one doing the hard work.

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Today is the last Friday of the month and 90% of technical sellers are just now messaging procurement for the 1st time. A highly popular ritual as sellers try to relive their term paper days. Cue the monthly scramble. Deals that looked like a "sure thing" are now "stuck." Procurement is asking for documents you never heard about. Then legal calls. New stakeholders appear. You see a Teams DM from your sales manager. You nervously type out "haven't heard back, I'm following up" Yet deals you thought "closed" slip into next month like clockwork. What if I told you that this ritual is not inevitable? This isn't "bad luck". It's a pattern that most of us fall into without realizing it. → Because most sellers treat procurement like a "check-box" "I convinced the end user! The PO will come on its own." Not so fast. Procurement teams are not machines. They are people. With goals, deadlines and stress just like you. They care about risk, compliance, and cost. Ignore them, and watch that PO get delayed again. Here's what top sellers do instead of begging on day 29: → Ask for a procurement contact early, once decision makers are onboard → Discover procurement's needs: ask about process, timeline and steps → Figure out how long things will actually take to find the real close date. → Advocate for your champion to keep things on track → Provide every common doc upfront and verify The irony: the sellers who complain most about procurement are the ones who invested the least time understanding them. You can keep submitting that term paper at the last minute. Or you can break the pattern and close on your own terms. Which approach will you choose for next month?

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SDR managers talk a lot about activity and efficiency. But most teams aren't tracking the metric that matters: held demos per 100 calls. Most SDRs sit between 0.5–1.2 demos held per 100 calls. Good teams find ways to push that to 2–3. Here’s how we help clients do it: • Tighten your call market , go deeper on fewer personas • Ditch the full pitch , sell the conversation, not the whole platform • Measure show rate weekly , optimize scripts and CTAs accordingly • Get fast attribution on held demos , what list, what persona, what trigger More calls is not the answer. 100 smart calls will always beat 500 lazy ones.

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Sales reps have an average tenure of just 18–24 months, with turnover rates 3× higher than the average for other functions like product or customer success. That stat explains why sales still carry such a bad reputation. We’ve built a system where reps are rewarded for closing the deal, then encouraged to move on as fast as possible. And then we act surprised when customers describe sales as transactional, coin-operated, or “win at all costs.” The system is doing exactly what we designed it to do. Quotas, commissions, and recognition are all tied to getting the deal signed. The moment the deal closes, sales is effectively out of the picture. This creates two problems at once: (1) Customer trust erodes as buyers experience a clear gap between what was promised during the sales cycle and what actually happens in onboarding and early adoption. (2) Reps are blinded to their own effectiveness and can’t improve their craft. Without visibility into the first 30–60 days, they never get to see how well they sold. Which is why it’s crucial to hold sales accountable beyond the close and reward them on customer value realization instead of bookings alone… …because without that, neither behavior nor the perception of sales will change.

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SDR leaders, watch for this pattern. New SDR starts. Uses your call framework. Asks simple questions. Pipeline starts flowing. Fast forward 6 months… They know the product inside and out. And oddly enough… their calls get worse. This is called The Curse of Knowledge. A cognitive bias where experts assume everyone else understands what they understand. Suddenly calls sound like this: Feature explanations Product jargon Mini demos on a cold call Instead of: Simple questions Curiosity Conversations about the problem Ironically, knowing too much can hurt discovery. The best SDR coaching moment isn’t teaching reps more about the product. It’s helping them forget it for a minute. And get back to the basics.

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Unpopular opinion: SaaS operators can’t afford to look like over-caffeinated cheerleaders. Three truths most people avoid: Optimism doesn’t fix bad pipeline math. Energy isn’t a substitute for operational discipline. Culture dies faster from fake positivity than from tough news. I’ve seen teams rally around a hard truth far faster than a soft lie. Operators win by being accurate, not loud. The job is simple: Set direction. Expose reality. Support execution. Not run a motivational roadshow. Real leadership is quiet confidence, not nonstop applause. #noCheerleadingRequired

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