Angelo Feltrin

Every sales org has a pipeline: Stage 1. Stage 2. Forecast. Commit. You can recite it in your sleep. But when it comes to renewals? Crickets.... There’s no real-time view of customer risk. No weekly trendline. No forward-looking model that projects retention. Isn't that kinda bonkers? You FORECAST growth, but you DISCOVER churn...usually when it’s too late to fix. The big mistake is presuming retention is a lagging indicator, when it would be more accurate to define it as a neglected one. Think about it...most CS dashboards read like a rearview mirror: - Usage metrics. - Ticket volume. - NPS. Useful? Sure. Predictive? Nah. Because churn doesn’t start when a customer says they’re leaving. It starts months earlier when their exec sponsor stops showing up. If you can spot the risk early, you can unlock more levers: - Re-engage power. - Reset the value narrative. - Escalate to commercial. - Offer roadmap visibility. - Re-map success metrics post-reorg. But none of that works if your team can’t see it coming, which is why you need a churn forecast...just like you do for revenue. Build a churn pipeline. Treat it like sales. Some things to build into this: 1. Define churn stages. Just like deals, risk evolves: - Stage 1 (Early): No exec alignment, lagging adoption, stakeholder turnover. - Stage 2 (Mid): Value not realized, weak champion, limited engagement. - Stage 3 (Late): Renewal live, buyer pushing back, pricing/legal blockers. Assign clear criteria. Surface it in Gainsight, CZ, or Salesforce. Manage it like opportunity stages. 2. Assign prevention plays. Each stage should trigger a play: - Stage 1 = exec outreach + roadmap session. - Stage 2 = commercial review + value plan. - Stage 3 = C-level call + tailored retention offer. Codify this. Don’t let reps improvise. 3. Forecast it weekly. Revenue leaders inspect pipeline weekly. CS should do the same with churn. Ask: - How many accounts moved stages? - What’s projected retention by segment? - What % of at-risk logos have exec visibility? Also, share your churn forecast with the CFO. If the CFO sees new logo pipeline every Monday, but doesn’t see churn risk until Q4? That's no bueno. Start sending a weekly churn report with: - Total ARR at risk. - ARR by churn stage. - Stage progression. - Active recovery plays. - Forecasted retention (with confidence levels). This reduces surprises while also forcing accountability. Why? Because churn is rarely a CS failure, but it's often a product gap, pricing mismatch, or sales promise that aged poorly. When churn is forecasted, it becomes EVERYONE'S problem. Which it is. tl;dr = you don’t “discover” churn. You forecast it. You stage it. You act on it. Just like sales.

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I’ve reviewed 100s of discovery calls. The #1 difference between AEs converting 40% and AEs converting 70%+ of first calls is the number of problems discussed. And the top reps discuss fewer. Reps that don’t convert go wide, trying to find anything and everything to tie their product to. They think: “The more problems I find, the better chance I have of solving some of them.” Reps that convert go deep into the most important problems uncovered. They think: “I need to attach to a problem worth solving.” I built a discovery capture sheet that will help “guide” your conversations to go deep, instead of wide. You can get it here in this blog post (ungated and no cost - just make a copy): https://lnkd.in/gCaUJ4ZD

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How to turn your AEs into a winning team: - product positioning - Discovery training - Command of the message - Great CRM setup - Nice Sales deck - listen to Calls in Gong ^^ tasks split across marketing, RevOps, AE leader, enablement. How to turn your SDRs into a winning team: - map the TAM - learn a variety of decision maker titles - cold calling training - set up email infrastructure - buy and set up multiple data tools - learn copywriting for exec communication - learn about SMTP, DMARC, DKIM - run complex math to determine how many leads are needed - collaborate with marketing for MQL handoff - optimize sequence settings to prevent bottlenecks - validate CRM data to prevent bounce leads - learn LinkedIn strategy for messaging prospects - learn to leave proper voicemails - run discovery on inbound leads - build a variety of sequences - run the math on A/B testing messaging - pass proper notes to the AE - follow up with leads that ghosted the AE - handle phone objections different than email ones - test a variety of tools, and fight for budget contstantly - help SDRs career plan and understand comp plan ^^ worst of all, the SDR manager has to do 90% of this in their own! Then SDRs and SDR leaders are paid less than their AE counterparts. Then when things aren’t working the SDR team is cut while the AE team is trained. How does this make sense? Been saying it for years #SDRsMatter

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10 years in tech sales taught me everything I know about winning (and losing). I've been everything from BDR → VP → CEO And most of what I learned over the years came from screwing up, getting back up, and asking better questions. Let me share with you my Top 3: 1. Whatever you choose to do, be the BEST at it. I'm annoyingly competitive. Like, "I will master cold calling until prospects actually look forward to my calls" competitive. I know I don't get every call perfect, but boy, I REFUSE to phone it in. When I was at Recharge, I wanted to build a team so good that 90% of my reps got promoted. 2. Be grounded in your identity. This is something I learned the hard way. I'm a mother, daughter, friend, Christian, founder, leader... ... the list goes on. When I bombed a presentation or lost a huge deal, that was just one slice of who I am as a human. I am more than my quota attainment. 3. Be intentional about asking. For 6 years at Adobe, I ate lunch with someone new every single day. Not because I was lonely (okay, maybe a little), but because I was intentionally asking people to share their time and knowledge with me. Those lunches opened doors that other people didn't even know existed. Promotions, partnerships, mentorships, all because I dared to ask. So, don't wait for opportunities to find you. Ask for the meeting. Ask for feedback. Ask for the introduction. The worst they can say is no, and trust me, you'll survive it. ____________________________________________ These lessons made me better at sales, but also, they made me better at building teams, running a company, and showing up as the kind of leader I actually want to work for. What's some lesson nuggets you got? Share it with us!

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Enterprise sellers: if you are waiting for SDR/BDRs to open doors, you’ve already missed your number this year. The SDR-led outreach model doesn’t work for your mandate. It never did, not even in boom times. It's being dismantled in favor of leaner/better GTM teams. And you can’t outsource it to AI. You can’t automate or delegate getting to the big leagues. This is not taking anything away from SDRs/BDRs. It is an observation after 26 years in and around the field of enterprise sales. Here’s why this is increasingly the case in today’s market: 1. Sequence-based outreach has poisoned the buyer landscape I routinely speak with customer executives who tell me they receive 400 - 500 unsolicited sales emails per week (some per day). Even if they neglected the entire remit of their executive day jobs they couldn’t READ let alone process and respond to every one - good, bad or irrelevant. You can’t, won’t, will never reach executives with traditional email sequences. 2. Decision-making power has risen to senior executives and boards Since Covid, corporate spending has become an executive-only game. I am now hearing more from sales leaders that boards are getting involved in smaller deals. Relying on your SDR to engage a decision-maker is like relying on archers to knock down castle walls. 3. SDRs/BDRs are not trained in outreach tactics that work The vast majority are only given attrition-based plays that annoy over time, “We help companies like you with problems like ____…. Worth a call?... Did you see my email?... Bumping this to the top of your inbox….” (It’s not their fault, it’s all they’ve been trained and armed to do). 4. SDR/BDRs are not compensated in a way that incentivizes deep account research With huge numbers of calls to produce, they are motivated to REACH, not ENGAGE. Nor are they trained on anything past a few minutes of googling, LinkedIn profile scanning and a quick read of the news. They will never craft a point of view that resonates with today’s level of corporate buyer with that model. You, enterprise sellers, (should) have the runway for these activities as they should have a much lower number of accounts so you can go deep in each. 5. Financial fluency matters and NOBODY is trained on this. Without knowing how to frame your solution’s value in the context of your customer’s financial reality any outbound message will be ignored. I haven’t seen a single tech company invest in financial fluency training for SDRs (very few for ENT roles too) so YOU (ENT reps) need to dig in, learn it on your own and leverage it if you want to have a prayer’s chance of starting conversations that will lead to closable business by the end of Q4. - This Thursday, I’m hosting a live Financial Fluency Webinar to show sellers exactly how to turn financial red flags into green lights at the executive table. {EDIT} Register here: https://lnkd.in/dk4Y7A9q

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STOP doing what 99% of salespeople do I've helped scale 2 startups to $10M+ ARR... And trained thousands of sales reps across 500+ enterprises. Here's what I've noticed: Most reps are stuck using outdated techniques from 2010. They pitch features ❌ They chase prospects ❌   They wonder why deals fall through ❌ Meanwhile, the top 1% are using these psychological triggers: 𝟭. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗖𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲 Stop asking "Are you interested?" Start saying "When we move forward..." The brain defaults to agreement when presented with inevitability. 𝟮. 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗰 𝗦𝗶𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 After stating your price, shut up. The first person to speak loses. Silence creates psychological pressure that closes deals. 𝟯. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆 "This might not be right for you..." triggers loss aversion. People want what they can't have. Use scarcity as your secret weapon. 𝟰. 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 Don't just say "other clients love this." Say "3 Fortune 500 CEOs told me this exact solution saved them $2M last quarter." Specificity sells. 𝟱. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗣𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 "Imagine walking into your office 6 months from now, knowing you solved this problem..." Paint the picture. People buy the future, not the present. The brutal truth? The difference between average and elite isn't talent. It's psychology. Which skill will you try first? ⬇️ ♻️ Repost to help your network and follow Gaurav Bhattacharya for more. P.S. If you're building/leading a revenue team & want early access to our agentic AI that triples pipeline, comment "Agentic".

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Even at $8M+ ARR, I'm still running sales directly with my team. It creates an unfair advantage: Our AEs work as hybrid professionals. • More technical than typical sales reps • Less technical than sales engineers • Perfect mix of product knowledge and sales skills The feedback I got at a recent customer dinner confirmed this: "Your AEs understand the product at a depth I rarely see. They're not passing technical questions to SEs." So, we call them "Demo Strategist" and not AE anymore. Here's why this works: → Direct founder involvement means AEs learn the product vision, not just features → They become problem solvers, not just quota carriers → No extra layer means faster decisions and better customer experience Could I hire a VP of Sales? Sure. But they'd likely turn our team into traditional sales reps - focused on quotas over problem-solving. At our stage, I'd rather have strategists who can dive deep into customer problems than pure closers. This might change at $20M ARR. But for now, this model is our competitive edge. LESSON: Don't blindly follow startup playbooks. Do what works for YOUR company.

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