Created by Jim Breton, Empowering Founders to Conquer Go-to-Market Challenges, Ignite Lead Generation, and Onboard-Train Sales Teams

As a Sales Leader with over a decade of experience, my expertise lies in Go-to-market strategies, lead generation, and optimizing sales cycles.

Throughout my career, I have worked on both EMEA and NA markets, generated $4M+ in revenue, and hired and coached 30+ sales talents.

One of my core principles is to document and share sales best practices.

In this Notion document, I have curated a collection of inspiring and insightful LinkedIn posts that encapsulate valuable sales insights and strategies.

These posts serve as a resource to empower sales professionals, both seasoned and aspiring, with the knowledge and inspiration they need to excel.

Explore the posts below for a wealth of information and wisdom that can elevate your sales game and contribute to your professional growth.

Sales from A to Z / Sales is a game… with rules

📍 Michael Hanson, Founder & CEO at Growth Genie, and the Sales Playbook principles

Growth Genie Sales Playbook Q1 23.pdf

✅ Ideal customer profile segments

✅ Buyer persona's material goals and challenges

✅ Buyer persona's human/spiritual goals and challenges

✅ Triggers (compelling events which make companies a good fit)

✅ Probing questions (what or how questions that open up buyers about their challenges)

✅ "Power stats" around problems and industry trends

✅ Customer stories

✅ Outreach guidelines for different types of customers

✅ Questions to help understand VS overcome objections

❌ Too Product Focused

✅ Customer focused

📍 Chris Orlob, CEO at pclub.io, about the 15 sales tips learned while helping grow Gong from $200k to $200,000,000 ARR in 5.5 years

  1. WHO matters more than anything in sales. If you're talking to the RIGHT person at the RIGHT account, you can win even with sloppy technique.

  2. There are two winners in every deal. The seller that won. And the seller that ejected first before wasting a bunch of time on something she wasn't going to win.

  3. Selling is more about pain than benefits. Money follows pain everywhere it goes. Money only follows positive benefits every once in a while.

  4. The 'blend' of people you put together in a deal dictate your success. Be incredibly intentional about how you 'craft' the buying committee.

  5. Understand the “need behind the need.” Keep peeling back the onion until you get to its core. The first few things customers share are always surface-level.

  6. Building a business case is more powerful when you measure the cost of the status quo than when you measure the positive ROI of your product.

  7. Agonize over how you phrase questions. “What are the ripple effects of X challenge on your business?” is far more powerful (and less salesy) than “how does that impact you?”

  8. Gain access to power by asking “who else is impacted by this challenge?” When your buyer answers, request that they be involved. This has a high hit-rate.

  9. Test your champions. Do they get things done? If not, they’re not a champion. Give them “homework.”

  10. Things are always changing. If you don’t stay on top of them, you’ll lose the deal. Start every call with “what’s changed since we last spoke?”

  11. Social proof is so much more powerful when the customers you’re showing off are part of your buyer’s “tribe.” Make sure your social proof 'looks' the buyer you're selling to at the moment.

  12. You can’t treat discovery calls with inbound deals and outbound deals the same. You have to “earn the right” to discovery with outbound deals. Start outbound deals with a short narrative of the market pain you solve. Then transition: "Enough about the problems we TEND to solve, help me understand your challenges."

  13. Sell the hell out of next steps. Don’t assume your buyer will show up just because they showed up to the first call. Sell the WHAT, the WHO, and the WHY of the next step.

  14. If you’re having trouble quantifying a problem, ask “what metric would solving this most improve?” Bingo.

  15. The best questions you’ll ever ask aren’t pre-planned. They’re based on whatever the buyer just said. LISTEN.

📍 Jim Breton, Founder & Sales Sparring Partner at Advantage Sales Consulting, and how to get great at sales (when joining a new company)

  1. Summing up the Why? How? What? Get the company's purpose, the methods, and the product basics in three simple sentences.
  2. Studying the industry, the customers, and the lost deals. Figure out why some said 'Yes' and learn from the 'No'.
  3. Investing time with the Customer Success Team. Understand the trajectories from the theoretical use case to the reality of the implementation, and at the end, what makes happy customers.
  4. Practicing with your network, the current clients, and the lost ones. Learn, adapt, and get better. Every talk is practice.
  5. Differentiating yourself from the competition - When to use you? VS. When to use them? Be smart and gain trust.
  6. Mastering the customers' problems and how to connect the dots with your solution. Be the problem solver they need.
  7. Breaking objectives into reachable monthly-weekly-daily goals. Big goals are small steps. Focus on one step at a time.
  8. Identifying trigger events that create natural and logical emergencies. Be there when they need support, either knowledge or your solution.
  9. Learning more about your buyer's journey and how to sell with them. Get better at creating the perfect use cases, for the right people internally.
  10. Knowing all the variables of the Contract gives control to your buyers. Clear agreements build trust. Most of the time, you are not even in the room.

Sales Cycle / Best Practices

Cold Emailing

📍 Jim Breton, Founder & Sales Sparring Partner at Advantage Sales Consulting, and the Problem vs. Solution paradox

📍 Jan Benedikt Mundorf, Account Executive at Pleo, and what do you need to answer in your cold outreach