Notes on The Sales Acceleration Formula by Mark Roberge

A fellow founder recommended I read The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million by Mark Roberge, and I recently completed it and loved it. He also has an excellent video with many of the main points. I really liked his "engineering" approach to sales and his ideas about running experiments. I also loved all the example playbooks and reports in the book!

Below are my main notes and takeaways.

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​Intro
Engineering approach to sales
Predictable revenue growth
4 components
Hire the same successful salesperson every time (sales hiring formula)
Train every salesperson the same way (sales training formula)
Hold our salespeople accountable to the same process (sales management formula)
Provide salespeople same quantity and quality of leads every month (demand generation formula)
Repeatable process and metrics for each of these

Part 1: sales hiring formula

1 uncovering the characteristics of a successful sales person 
Ideal is different for each company
Process
Establish a theory of the ideal sales person
Document clear definition for each characteristics
Define what a 1, a 5, and a 10 looks like for each characteristic 
Score candidates on each characteristic and put scores on scorecard
Define evaluation strategy for each characteristic 
Exercises
Role play
Behavioral questions
Reference checks
Score candidate on each characteristic
Learn and iterate on the process by tracking how well new hires do and trace back to their scores
What characteristics do the top performers have and increase their weight
Which characteristics do not seem to matter
Which characteristics predict success
What missing and need to add to scorecard
Can run full regression analysis once have a few hires to compare
Rerun every 6-12 months
Discovered that salespeople who are intelligent and helpful perform better than those who are aggressive or handle objections better

2 five traits great salespeople have and how to interview for them
Top traits for Hubspot: coachability, curiosity, prior success, intelligence, work ethic
Coachability
Ability to absorb and apply coaching
How to evaluate 
Set up a role play for your context. Explain who each person is and the scenario like an opening call with a prospect who downloaded your ebook 
Evaluate the candidate’s ability to self-assess after the role play. How do you think you did?
Build on and summarize their diagnosis and ask how could’ve improved in a specific section 
Role play that section again
Evaluate their ability to improve
Give some proactive coaching. In every interview, I provide one area of positive feedback and one area for improvement. Provide praise then teach how to do better specifically. 
Ask candidate to redo role play and apppy what learned
Curiosity 
Ability to understand a customer’s context through effective questioning and listening 
Thought provoking and educational questions 
Start interview with just hello and see if candidate asks questions and shares what they learned from their research 
Role play to see how they ask questions 
Lead with great questions and dig deep. Don’t show up and throw up. 
Prior success
History of top performance or remarkable achievement
Evaluation
How many AEs were at your last company?
What was your rank?
What metric was that rank based on? Bookings, quota attainment, or?
And over what time period (last quarter or year or?)?
And your references can verify your performance?
Looking for top 10%
If didn’t come from sales org, look for prior success (class ranking, standardized test score results, captain of sports team, etc.)
Intelligence
Ability to learn complex concepts quickly and communicate them in a clear manner
Send training materials on relevant concepts after phone screen and ask them to learn it before next interview then question them on it
Role play: “I noticed you offer SEO services. Can you tell me how those work?”
How well do they understand the concepts
How well do they communicate the concepts
Keep asking follow up questions until you stump them. The longer it takes, the better they are. 
Work ethic
Proactively pursuing mission with high degree of energy and daily activity
Observations during interview process
How quickly return calls and emails
Did she push the process or did we
Reference checks
Here are 5 characteristics (ones above). Could rank those for the candidate and explain why you chose that ranking. 
Behavioral questions
Tell me about your work day and week. What are your must do activities?

3 finding top performing sales people
Build a recruiting agency within your company
Top people don’t apply for jobs or look at job boards. They are passive. 
Top people always have multiple job offers and old employers trying  to recruit them
Recruiting agencies not great. Always have multiple going in parallel but usually not good results. 
Evaluate recruiting efforts like sales efforts with similar metrics and variable comp
Find quality passive sales candidates on LinkedIn
Advanced search filters by title
Look at former employees of certain companies and email head of sales asking for which ones on the list are good
Screen profiles for excellence, quota attainment, longevity (3+ years), sales process, buyer context, school and major, quality of LinkedIn profiles
Ask for intros from connections or guess corporate email and email them
Sample outreach email
Subject: Yahoo/Boston college (if candidate is alum from there and works at yahoo)
Body: John, congrats on all your success! I run the sales team here at Hubspot. Our current team can’t keep up with all the inbound leads we’re getting so we are expanding our team. Your background is similar to those of our top performers. Are there any folks in your network on the job market with background similar to yours? Best, Mark
Follow up with phone call to prospect next day
Find quality passive candidates sourced through your team: the forced referral
Do it 1-2 months after a new hire is on board
Show up with list of their LinkedIn connections that fit criteria
Ask which are top performers and which they could introduce to
Understand the sales talent pool in your area
Look around at other companies in area with sales teams
How much does the company pay its salespeople
How is the comp plan structured
Structure of team
Type of process (inbound or out, type of transaction, etc.)
Sales training methodology
Any major changes that would cause top performers to start leaving
Who are the top sales people

4 the ideal first sales hire
Don’t want SVP Sales or someone who hasn’t sold directly to customers in a while
Rolodex and size of network overrated
Top employee from big sales org not great because had a lot of structure around them
Recently promoted sales manager could be good because can be hands on and also eventually build team
Entrepreneur most desirable candidate because will help find PMF

Part 2 sales training formula

5 setting up sales training formula
Defining the three elements of the sales training methodology
Each seller can have a superpower like rapport building or activity
Don’t just shadow one seller but teach best practices in each area
Buyer journey, sales process, qualification matrix
BANT
Create a training curriculum around the sales methodology
Empower top sales people to teach one class each
Head of sales approves the content
Sample agenda and course curriculum
Week 1
Mon: Product overview, buyer personas
Tue: blogging, buyer journey
Wed: seo, sales process
Thu: social media, qualifying matrix
Fri: landing pages, prospecting
Week 2
Monday: calls to action, connect calls
Tue: email marketing, discovery calls
Wed: lead nurturing, presentations
Thu: analytics, negotiations 
Fri: exams, certifications
Adding predictability to the sales training formula
Exam and certifications to ensure training working
100 question exam after training
Trainees fired for low performance on exam
Certifications for each stage of the process to graduate and start doing that stage 
Role play a discovery call with sales trainer
Trainer would fill out evaluation after which would look for specific behaviors
Start convo
Dig deeper
Ask questions
Ask qualifying matrix
Rubric would say what quality of behaviors got what numerical scores
Share rubric to trainees ahead of time
Evaluator would be different from hiring manager to avoid conflict of interest 
Ensured hiring managers picked people who would do well in the training as this reflected on them
Constant iteration on the sales process 
6 month feedback forms to new hires
Rank the training sessions from most to least valuable
Which subjects missing from training curriculum
Correlate training success to sales success
Did scores on training predict sales performance?
Did certifications predict success?
Sales training scores correlate better with success than sales hiring scores
Behavior change of sales team as market and product evolved

6 manufacturing helpful sales people your buyers trust
Train your salespeople to experience the day to day of your potential customers
Can actually advise and help the buyer and add value
First weeks on sales job at Hubspot spent being a marketer (their target buyer): making a website, blog, social media
Try out newest features on their websites
Have sales people be perceived as thought leaders and trusted advisors. Like doctor/patient relationship. 
Find people on Twitter your prospects follow
Retweet their posts, send DMs, offer phone call, ask how you can help them
Next time you publish an article, ask if they can help promote it if relevant to their audience 
Find LinkedIn groups in which prospects active
Answer questions in the group
Include links to relevant content from your company 
If groups don’t exist, start one
Find blogs your prospects read
Read them daily
Retweet one article per day and post on LinkedIn 
Comment on the blog and link back to your company or LinkedIn profile
Build relationship with blogger, offer guest blog piece
Participate in company’s blog
Check email sent items folder for frequently asked questions or pain points

Part 3 the sales management formula

7 metrics-driven sales coaching
Implementing a coaching culture throughout the org
Don’t give a million tips at once. Just focus on one improvement at a time and give it time to sink in before going to the next area. 
Daily and weekly meetings with various levels of directors to review metrics, individual coaching plans for people under them
What skill will you work on this month with that person
How did you decide on that skill
What customized coaching plan will you use to develop that skill
Creating the coaching plan together with the sales person
First day of new month come up together with new plan
How do you think you did last month
What do you think you did well and what can you improve on
Let’s review the numbers. Here are the call activity metrics for the entire team. What are your observations about your performance in this chart?
Same question about connect rates
Why do you think your performance was so strong or weak compared to peers on this part of the funnel?
Based on all that, what skill can you work on this month, and how can I help you work on that skill?
Example actions: book calls to review specific call recordings together
Examples of metrics-driven skill diagnosis and coaching plans
Example reports in book showing each stage of funnel broken down by rep to compare best and worst and also report per rep of their progress in one metric across months
Drill into any deviations and ask why and offer advice. Set up daily progress updates to check progress. 
Peeling back the onion
Keep finding more metrics to deepen diagnosis
Split up metrics into underlying ones
Measure the coaching success
Compare a metric of a rep over time

8 motivation through sales compensation plans and contests
Criteria to evaluate a new commission plan
Hunting comp plan
$2 up front for every $1 in monthly recurring revenue 
Clawback of full commission in case of churn in first 4 months
Deducted from next month of earned commissions 
Customer success plan
Analyze churn rates by CS rep and by sales person
Separated sales team by quartile of churn and increased commission of best quartiles by 2x for top and 1.5x for second quartile and no change for third and halving it for 4th plus extra training 
Customer commitment plan
Commission paid out at time customer paid so annual payment paid to rep immediately versus waiting a year to get paid out
Lenses to evaluate a plan
Simple
Aligned
Immediate
Involve the sales team in compensation plan design
Communicate plan goals and reasons to change and invite input
Promotion tiers
Objective numerical criteria to get to next level
Tenure doesn’t matter
Using sales contests to motivate the team
Run a contest monthly
Align contest with short term behavior change for team
Make contests team based not individual by splitting into a few small teams
Make the prize team based (sailing day, golf outing, etc.)
Send out nightly contest standings
Choose time frame wisely: monthly ideal
Run one contest at a time

9 developing sales leaders: advantages of a promote from within culture
Prerequisites for leadership consideration
Performance
Exceed sales targets for 6 months in a row
Sales skills
Well roundedness
More advanced certifications for each area
Leadership potential 
Contributions to team
Don’t promote your best sales people to sales management
Run a sales management course
Coaching
Negative feedback delivery
Team motivation
Conflict management
Curriculum
Defining and developing leadership style
Providing positive and negative feedback to subordinates
Successful mentoring and coaching
Managing conflict
Managing through change
Building and developing your team
Active listening
Preparation for each session, then reading assignment of scenario, role play with trainer
From classroom to real world
Newly trained manager given opportunity to hire own sales person and mentor and manage them
Team lead role where still carrying quota but responsible for managing small team
Common potholes for new sales management
Spending too much time per sales person
Giving up on a sales person too early
Need to see daily changes from coaching

Part 4 the demand generation formula

10 flip the demand gen formula: get buyers to find you
How can your business rank at the top of google?
Customers like inbound marketing more than outbound
Create quality content (blogs, ebooks, webinars) on a frequent basis
Participate in social media discussions in which your prospects are already conversing
Create a content production process
Delegate the work because you get busy
Develop journalistic capability
Hire intern from journalism school
Freelance writer
Form thought leadership committee to give stream of domain knowledge
Use canned emails and frequent responses as blog articles
Define content production process
Every tue one member of thought leadership committee sits down for one hour interview with writer. Interview about a trend in the industry or question that comes up early in buyer journey, not about your product. Future weeks other members of thought leadership committee cycle in. 
From the one hour interview, the journalist can generate a 3-5 page ebook, multiple blog posts, multiple social posts of quotes. Content created within a day or two. Scheduled for release over a month. 
Social posts link to blog article. Blog has call to action to download ebook. Ebook download page has contact form gating the download. 
Social media participation
Leaving comments on blogs buyers read with company name in signature
Form tight relationship with blogger. Invite them to guest blog on yours and ask for same on theirs. 
Find people on Twitter your buyers follow. Follow them. Retweet their posts. Reach out to them by email and form tight relationship. Next time you publish content, ask for them to promote it. 
Find LinkedIn groups in which prospects congregate. Reply to their questions. One third of your content should be about your company and two thirds about other people or issues. 
Long tail theory
Long tail of topics and keywords more valuable in aggregate 

11 converting inbound interest into revenue
Marketing’s role in converting interest into revenue
Don’t pass all the leads to sales
Simply screen the leads manually for the ones that are legit before passing to sales
Avoid lead scoring trap
Does more harm than good if overcomplicaed
Buyer matrix of buyer persona and buyer journey better
Customize experience of customer based on their buyer state
Measure transitions of each cell in matrix
Use buyer matrix to pass some on to sales
If conversion rate too low, wait longer to pass to sales and have marketing nurture longer. If conversion too high, wait less time to pass to sales. 
Can introduce microsegments into matrix to break up by dept or industry
Sales’s role in converting interest into revenue
Scrap the elevator pitch; lead with context
Voicemails
I noticed you downloaded our ebook. I took a look at your website and have a few suggestions for improving it. I’ll email you those now. Give me a call if you want to discuss. 
Great news! I found a customer of ours in your industry who’s had great success with our software. I’m going to send you the case study about them so you can review the strategies they used and results they got. Give me a call if you want to review it together. 
I ran a customer of ours in your industry through our marketing rater tool, and they scored 87, and you scored 54. I’m going to send you those reports now. It turns out there’s a lot more opportunity outside of Facebook and Twitter for you to leverage. Give me a call if you want to find out more.
Last voicemail is going negative one: I’ve left a few voicemails for you on marketing topics and haven’t heard back from you. I’m going to assume Facebook marketing isn’t a priority for you this year but give me a call if it does.  
Educational, personalized
Add new info to each voicemail
Align voicemails to specific interactions prospect has had with you
Suggest free consultation on some topic of interest to them instead of demo of your product 
Send bio of expert on your team and ask if they want a free call with them
If initial contact isn’t a decision maker, need to approach differently
Can ignore the initial contact and go straight to decision maker and say we got a few inbound requests from your team for info on marketing. I’ll send you email with follow up and would love to chat. 
Call low then call high. Call the incoming lead who is frontline worker and then follow up with calling decision maker
Noticed you downloaded an ebook on Facebook marketing. Why?
Give lots of free tips and earn trust
Later can ask questions
Did someone direct you to do it
Who do you report to
What is on your CEO’s mind these days? What did they talk about at last company meeting?
What is CMO’s area of focus?
Lead can serve as coach for sales person and help navigate hierarchy
When calling high to decision maker, can say been working with members of their team and understand their goal is x. Another customer in their industry just did something similar and got a 20% improvement. Would you like to learn more about how they did that?
Sort leads to call per day by engagement (regency of activity or interest level) not alphabetical order
Reps need to know what lead did
Visited website
Opened sales email
Opened marketing email
Downloaded ebook
Mentioned relevant topic on social media
Mentioned us or competition
Followed ceo on Twitter
Specialize sales by inbound vs outbound
Take top performing sales people and rotate the inbound leads between them
Keep closers as generalists and specialize appointment setters by inbound vs outbound
Provide each sales person a set of named accounts in addition to the inbound flow they’re getting

12 aligning sales and marketing: the marketing SLA
Define when a lead would be qualified to pass to sales team
Depends on location in buyer matrix and level of engagement with materials so far
Define optimal quantity of leads per month per sales person
Study funnel conversion rates per person per month to figure out how many closed sales would result to hit goals
Calculate dollar value of each lead based on their engagement to date (collateral download vs free trial)
Establish SLA on aggregate lead dollar value per month
Basically puts marketing on a revenue quota
Sales service level agreement
Call inbound lead within minutes
SLA is within 1 hour
Follow up an appropriate number of times depending on market segment
5 for small biz, 8 for mid market, 12 for enterprise
CRM tells you when to call each lead to do this
Daily dashboard so nothing slips through cracks
Daily report sent to marketing and sales teams showing progress against SLAs
Daily chart showing uniform daily idealized lead value generated by marketing compared to goal
“Do not be on it” dashboard for sales (violations of SLA)
New leads not touched within hour
Free trials called fewer than 3 times
Demo requests 3 days old touched fewer than 2 times
Distribute dashboard daily to team

Part 5 technology and experimentation

13 technology to sell better faster
Accelerate lead sourcing
Sidekick tool
Streamline admin work
Accelerate sales prospecting
Customize outreach based on prospect’s engagement so far
Eliminate admin work
Accelerate lead engagement with technology
Customer goes through your pipeline based on their actions and engagement not based on actions of salesperson
Opp status automatically updates forward or backward based on buyer actions and engagement
Automated suggestion of appropriate collateral for buyer at right stage
Automated reporting with technology
Pipeline health for goals
Forecasts
Ranks of sales reps in various metrics
Salesperson historical comparison 
Lead SLA
Leads slipping through cracks
Marketing tracking
Are leads produced getting through funnel correctly
What types of leads best
What collateral produces best engagement
Which salespeople using collateral most
Sales tracking
Which leads engaging with messaging most
How do my metrics compare to team

14 running successful experiments
Continuous improvement
Generating ideas for experiments from anyone
Internal hackathon
After hours
Frame problem
Pitch solutions
Vote on a few
Form teams to work on them
Devise experiments
Innovation pipeline monitored monthly
Transparency throughout org
Monthly financials published to company
3 career tracks: leadership, functional expert as individual contributor, innovation track
Define clear objective and measurable success criteria
Design smallest experiment
Choose a leader for the experiment
Assign top performers to experiments
Looking for true negative: if top performers can’t even do it, then idea not feasible

15 Hubspot most successful sales experiments
Value added reseller program experiment
Low risk incremental
GPCT (qualifying matrix like BANT)
Goal (quantifiable)
Plan (marketing strategy)
Challenges (challenges with buyer’s plan)
Timeline
Test out in small portion of top performers to look for true negative

16 conclusion