Collaborative Selling Models

I hired a sales coach last month. First session, he asked to observe my discovery call. I was confident: - I had my 27 discovery questions ready - My demo was perfectly polished - My objection-handling guide was open The call started well. But 10 minutes in, the coach passed me a note: "STOP TALKING." I was confused, but I paused. The prospect filled the silence: "Actually, what I'm really struggling with is getting various stakeholders aligned. We keep having the same conversations over and over." This wasn't on my script. After the call, the coach explained: "Your discovery process is all about YOU getting information. Not about helping THEM discover their own problems." This hit me hard. I had been: - Asking questions to fill MY knowledge gaps - Taking notes to build MY sales strategy - Following MY playbook regardless of their responses The next discovery call, I tried something different: Instead of firing questions, I created a collaborative digital space where the prospect could: - Map out their own buying committee - Prioritize their challenges visually - Document their questions in real-time - Outline what success would look like to each stakeholder The call took half the time. The prospect did most of the talking. And they left with clarity they didn't have before. They signed 3 weeks later. What changed? Old discovery: Interrogation disguised as conversation New discovery: Collaborative problem-solving Your prospects don't need your questions. They need clarity. And often, they'll sell themselves if you just create the right space. Agree?

Muddy and misaligned expectations between sales and partnerships is the quickest way to the Partnerships Death Cycle. To create a seamless relationship between sales and partnerships, you need to establish shared goals early even before the first lead even hits the pipeline. It's critical to define roles, responsibilities, and what success looks like together. Here’s how to make it happen: 1. Start by aligning on specific, measurable goals. Ask questions like: • How many partner-sourced leads does the sales team aim to close each quarter? • What role do sales reps play in partner engagement, from initial outreach to co-selling? • How will success be measured—partner deal velocity, win rates, or total revenue? 2. Avoid the “it’s not my job” trap by clearly defining responsibilities. For example: • Partnerships manage the relationships and bring qualified leads to the table. • Sales ensures timely follow-up and integrates partner insights into the customer journey. A joint kickoff meeting is the perfect way to ensure both teams are rowing in the same direction. Use this time to: • Share the partnership strategy and how it supports sales goals. • Walk through the sales process for partner-sourced leads. • Address potential friction points (like lead ownership or attribution) before they arise. 3 .Keep this alignment ongoing. Regular check-ins help adjust goals, track progress, and ensure everyone stays on the same page. When sales and partnerships work in sync, the whole organization benefits.

You may not be forecasting incorrectly, you’re just watching the wrong metric. We dug into thousands of Sales Rooms in trumpet to see a key metric that actually predicts if a deal closes. It wasn’t meetings. Wasn’t replies. Wasn’t even time in stage. It was this: How often your champion shares your trumpet Pod internally. Here’s what the data showed: - Pods shared 1-2 times internally hit roughly a 52% win rate. That’s about 1.8x better than deals that never get shared. - When a Pod is shared 3-7 times, win rates jump to around 72%. Roughly 2.5x uplift. - Combine internal sharing with high stakeholder engagement and close rates pass 75%. Why? Because internal sharing is real multi-threading. Every forward usually means: - Consensus building - Internal advocacy - Decision-makers getting looped in - Blockers surfacing early, when you can still do something about them You can’t force a buyer to share your Pod. But you can make it a no-brainer: - Build it for them, not you. Make sure it has pricing, FAQs, social proof, clear next steps - Pre-empt legal / IT / finance with sections just for them - Stop asking “Can you share this internally?” - Start asking “Would it help if I added something for your [legal/finance/IT] team?” Watch who your champion is and check their intent signals. It's one of the best you have.

Most sellers compete on price or product. I competed on 𝑒𝑛𝑣𝑖𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡—and it changed everything: In 2015, I was a remote Enterprise AE for a late-stage startup. My prospects were based throughout North America. But I was closing 𝑎𝑙𝑙 of my deals in San Francisco. Why? I invited qualified prospects to our HQ for a 1–2 day immersive experience. I called it the 𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐅𝐢𝐞𝐥𝐝 𝐀𝐝𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐲. • They toured our office. • They met the exec team. • They saw the product roadmap up close. • They heard the vision—straight from the source. It did 4 things a Zoom demo never could (nor our competitors): 1. Qualified real buyers. Time investment filtered the tire-kickers. 2. Accelerated deals. No back-and-forth. We got it done live. 3. Built trust. They saw our people, not just a pitch. 4. Gave us the edge. We had a 𝑣𝑖𝑏𝑒 that was infectious. This beat both the big clunky incumbents and the scrappy startups giving away the farm. We were the sweet spot in the middle—enterprise grade + agile. The result? I pushed my win rate to over 60% against some of the best-known competitors in the space. 👉 I break down how I built this experience step-by-step here: https://lnkd.in/efcX47sJ Have you ever brought a buyer onto your turf? Or are you still playing every game on the road? 🐝

Over the years, I've discovered the truth: Game-changing products won't succeed unless they have a unified vision across sales, marketing, and product teams. When these key functions pull in different directions, it's a death knell for go-to-market execution. Without alignment on positioning and buyer messaging, we fail to communicate value and create disjointed experiences. So, how do I foster collaboration across these functions? 1) Set shared goals and incentivize unity towards that North Star metric, be it revenue, activations, or retention. 2) Encourage team members to work closely together, building empathy rather than skepticism of other groups' intentions and contributions. 3) Regularly conduct cross-functional roadmapping sessions to cascade priorities across departments and highlight dependencies. 4) Create an environment where teams can constructively debate assumptions and strategies without politics or blame. 5) Provide clarity for sales on target personas and value propositions to equip them for deal conversations. 6) Involve all functions early in establishing positioning and messaging frameworks. Co-create when possible. By rallying together around customers’ needs, we block and tackle as one team towards product-market fit. The magic truly happens when teams unite towards a shared mission to delight users!

If I were a revenue leader trying to align marketing, sales and CS to build more quality pipeline, here's the exact play I'd run. Step 1: Kill the "That's Not My Lead" Mentality I have never been a CRO or VP of Sales however I hear this problem a ton. Who gets the credit? Marketing celebrates the MQLs, sales is hitting the gong and CS is celebrating the renewal cause sales maybe sold the wrong thing. Also did we source the right lead in the first place. Everyone's winning their own game while the buyer experiences chaos. Get the team aligned with one north star so everyone wins. Just like a sports team with one mission to win the game. Alex Olley explains this better than anyone. In my opinion, one of the best sales leaders around. Step 2: Create One Source of Buyer Truth Start creating signals that share one source of truth to run a true ABM approach with sales to break into accounts. In working with a lot of sales organizations, I see the biggest disconnect being that people are not communicating exactly what is going on. ↳ Marketing sees which content drives engagement ↳ Sales sees which features buyers care about ↳ CS sees what was promised vs. what's being used As an SDR manager back in the day, I asked for all of this data so I could prepare my team with the right insights to do outbound the right way. Identify someone who can handle this and lead the charge. Context matters. Step 3: Activate Every Team Around the Same Insights Now that we know the one source of truth we can start to leverage it in our outbound. With Consensus: ↳ Marketing knows which demos convert best ↳ Sales knows which stakeholders are engaged ↳ CS knows what to reinforce post sale Everyone has the same insights and now they can use their expertise to get in front of the right people. Step 4: Measure What Actually Matters The benefit of seeing what's progressing in sales cycles? We can use those insights to fix top of funnel. If this material accelerates deals, it can start them too. ↳ What videos progress buyers through their journey? ↳ Are stakeholders getting aligned faster? ↳ Is time to value shrinking? When the whole team rallies around buyer outcomes instead of departmental KPIs, revenue follows. No more "that's not my team." It's all one team. The buyer's team. #ConsensusPartner

Your comp plan is paying reps to be selfish. You say you want collaboration, team selling, flawless handoffs, and happy customers. But your comp plan tells a different story: - AEs hoarding accounts to squeeze one more renewal. - CS carrying the churn risk from overpromised deals. - SDRs passing junk just to hit demo goals. - SEs dropped from deals because they slow it down. - Partners ignored because they dilute the split. That’s not bad behavior. That’s just math. Sales comp is a system. And systems do exactly what they’re designed to do. If your comp plan only rewards individual heroics, you’ll never get team plays. If it only pays on closed revenue, you’ll never get qualified pipeline. If it ignores post-sale impact, you’ll never get long-term growth. And the worst part? We try to fix this misalignment with culture, not compensation. Cue the all-hands speeches of “We win together and we're all one team!” Buuuttttt then you flash a leaderboard that pits everyone against each other and wonder why nobody collaborates. Incentives don’t need fixing. They need realignment. Here’s how: 1. Add a handoff bonus to every AE/CS transition. Make reps prove they did a real warm intro, mapped the buying committee, and reviewed renewal risk factors. 2. Pay SDRs on qualified pipeline held to AE acceptance criteria. Not on booked meetings. Not on attendance. On quality accepted pipeline. Anything else is activity theater. 3. Carve out a multi-threading bonus inside opp scoring. Reward reps for early ID of finance, legal, and technical stakeholders. If your reps are flying solo, so is your forecast. 4. Protect SE and Partner involvement with minimum revenue share guarantees. Stop shaving 10% off their payout every time someone gets nervous about the split. Real collaboration costs money. 5. Tie CS comp to expansion readiness, not just retention. Involve CS in the expansion forecast. Bonus them on commercial influence — not just support ticket close time. It's not really fair to blame your reps for doing what they’re paid to do. If you want reps to act like owners, you have to pay them like co-owners. That starts with a comp plan that rewards shared wins, not solo ones. Your GTM engine isn’t one superstar away from greatness. It’s just one well-designed incentive model away from finally working as a team.

Your biggest revenue leak isn’t lack of leads — it’s the silent war between Sales and Marketing. When two teams share the same target but operate in isolation, growth stalls. Marketing produces campaigns. Sales handles customers. But without shared intelligence, both sides miss the mark. Where things break down • Marketing builds personas based on assumptions • Sales uncovers real objections and buying triggers • Marketing crafts messaging from theory • Sales hears the unfiltered truth daily • Insights stay locked within teams • Collaboration becomes optional • Growth becomes accidental The real issue Marketing plans content and strategy using reports and trends. Sales gets live feedback straight from the people who buy. Yet the most important insights rarely make their way back into the marketing engine. It’s like watching a climber scale a wall: one person creates the base, the other uses it to rise. That’s exactly how Sales and Marketing should function — one unified system. The alignment model 1. Shared Reality • Weekly joint reviews • Marketing participates in sales calls • Sales audits messaging and content • Customer language captured and shared 2. Common Targets • Pipeline, not vanity metrics • Revenue, not activities • Quality over volume • Customer success as a shared outcome 3. Continuous Feedback Loop • Sales validates personas • Marketing refines messaging based on real objections • Results reviewed together • Adjustments made consistently Your alignment action plan 1. Set a weekly Sales–Marketing sync 2. Build one shared “Voice of Customer” document 3. Bring Marketing into live sales calls 4. Create a unified performance dashboard Because just like the wall climbers — one can’t reach the top without the other. Aligned teams don’t just grow… they scale. #SalesAndMarketing #RevenueGrowth #GoToMarket #CustomerInsights #B2BMarketing #SalesStrategy #MarketingLeadership #BusinessAlignment #GrowthStrategy

3 years ago, we started running every deal with a digital sales room, and it changed everything about how buyers engaged, decided, and ultimately bought. At first, it felt like a tactical experiment. Today, it feels like the only way to compete. Because here’s the reality: • 85% of buyers already have a shortlist before they speak to sales • Buying groups now involve 10+ stakeholders, and in many cases the CFO or CEO hold final approval • 73% expect a tailored, consumer-grade experience from the first touch • 71% of buyers are Millennials and Gen Z, and most would rather self-serve than jump on another call • 80% of buying decisions stall, not because of product, but because the process is too complex That’s why “more calls” doesn’t solve the problem. In fact, it makes it worse. When we shifted to digital sales rooms, everything changed: • Buyers engaged on their own terms, at their own pace • Champions finally had the tools to sell internally with confidence • Our team could see signals of internal traction we had never spotted before The difference was not small. Trumpet’s data shows deals that include mutual action plans inside DSRs can reach up to a 92% win rate. For us, it’s no longer optional. Every deal, no matter the size, gets a digital sales room. Not to make us better sellers, but to make it easier for buyers to buy. I’ll share trumpet 🎺's  Definitive Guide to Buyer Enablement in the comments for anyone who wants to go deeper. What is your take on digital sales rooms?

Forrester found companies that operationalize Buying Groups see 2x higher win rates and faster deal cycles. And now, AI makes it possible to do this at scale. Here’s what you need to know: The era of chasing individual leads is over. Real deals don’t come from single MQLs — they come from engaging the entire buying group. This isn’t just another marketing fad. It’s a fundamental shift in how revenue teams build pipeline in a world where the average B2B purchase involves 6–10+ stakeholders, across functions, each with different priorities. THE EVOLUTION - MQL Era: Easy to measure, but ignored that B2B buying is a team sport. - ABM Era: Focused on accounts, but treated whole organizations as monoliths — a problem when companies buy multiple products across different groups. - Buying Group Era: Precision targeting of the actual group of people making a decision, while maintaining ABM’s strategic account lens. WHY BUYING GROUPS WORK - Consensus → Win Rates: Engaging full buying groups builds alignment earlier and lifts conversion. Palo Alto Networks saw a 17% increase in closed-won rate. - Stakeholders → Velocity: Deals move faster when the right people are at the table from the start. - Strategic Conversations → Deal Size: Palo Alto also saw a 2.3x increase in deal size by engaging buying groups earlier. - Signal → Conversion: Engaging buying groups yielded a 17x improvement in opportunity conversion rates. WHY NOW - Technology finally enables it: CRMs and platforms make it easy to associate multiple stakeholders with opportunities at scale. And now AI accelerates this shift by surfacing the right stakeholders, recognizing buying signals across channels, and orchestrating engagement with the full group. - The market is unforgiving: Sales cycles are longer, deal sizes are under pressure, and boards demand precision. Forecasting pipeline off one contact is a recipe for missed targets. - Competitors are already there: Forrester’s research shows companies that adopt buying groups are already pulling ahead with 2x higher win rates. If you’re not moving, you’re falling behind. BOTTOM LINE: If your CRM opportunities still only have one contact attached, you’re running on incomplete data. Your competitors are still chasing MQLs while you’re building consensus with buying groups. That’s not just a tactical advantage — it’s a strategic moat that compounds over time. For more on moving from MQLs to Buy Groups see full blog post: https://lnkd.in/ggux_8Wk