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Selling Intelligence

You're More Than a Number - with Scott Leese

August 27, 2021 · 35:00
Hosted by Mark Petruzzi and Alan Rudolph on Selling Intelligence, the executive podcast for revenue leaders from Accelerant Growth Solutions.

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Episode notes

Who better to write a book about being a VP Sales in the B2B SaaS industry, than 5x VP Sales and leading LinkedIn sales influencer, Scott Leese.

Scott's primary focus has been to help scale early stage B2B SaaS companies scale from $1M to $20M+.   This experience was the catalyst for writing a book that covers the good, the bad and the ugly of being an early stage VP Sales.

Scott's style is to identify an under represented topic, lean into the subject and write a less than 100 page book that both educates and entertains.   The title, More Than a Number was selected to ensure that every person who has served, wants to serve or is serving in the role remembers they are much more than the quota number that they carry every month, every quarter, every year.  Self worth should not be measured by their productivity as measured by quota achievement.

"Better people, perform better" was a phrase that helped to crystalize that evaluating a VP sales primarily or worse, only by their quota performance highlights the short term, and high risk of approach of allowing one's self to be limited to the number they achieve.

Mental health is a real issue that many sales professionals and leaders face.  Being able to compartmentalize your sales performance from your performance as a friend, a spouse, a parent,  and as a person  is critical to living your life with the "More than a Number" mindset.

You're More Than a Number went beyond the softer side of the message, and provides a framework and playbook for first time VP Sales.  Critical elements of being a successful VP Sales such as hiring,  sales process documentation,  coaching,  script development, culture development, relationship building, goal setting, delegation and motivating your team.

The power of delegation is a key ingredient to scaling a successful sales organization.  An example is the need to develop the ability to "teach by telling" versus "teach by doing". This is especially relevant when  joining a sales call with an AE.  Understanding that being able to scale a sales team requires allowing a sales person to learn by doing versus watching you do it, while also building the confidence is a critical part of the VP Sales job.

In fact, Scott said the ultimate goal for a VP Sales is to make themselves "irrelevant" by having an entire team of sales people who can manage the entire sales process, end to end with no involvement from the VP Sales.

If you are currently a first time VP Sales, have a desire to become a VP Sales or have been a VP Sales multiple times, listening to Scott Leese as he shares his VP Sales playbook in context of "You're more than a number" is a great listen and read!


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Selling Intelligence (formerly Selling the Cloud) is hosted by Mark Petruzzi and Alan Rudolph. KK Anderson joins occasionally as a guest host.

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