It's October and the leaves aren't the only thing changing! This month the Pocus Community relaunched as the 10x GTM Community. Our goal is to help 10x sellers, marketers, and GTM leaders stay ahead of the curve as we move from the PLS era to the AI x GTM era. We’re dedicating our community to demystifying the new playbooks, tools, and tactics that will win this next decade.
If you're not a community member yet, what are you waiting for? Apply today for our next cohort!
In case you missed it:
👉 October was a busy month for our AMA series! We talked with 5 different GTM experts about a variety of topics, from nailing your LinkedIn presence to hiring best practices in the age of AI. Catch the replays below:
- Kyle Poyar (Founder, Growth Unhinged)
- Tessa Whittaker (VP of RevOps, ZoomInfo)
- Sam McKenna (LinkedIn Top Voice & Founder, #samsales Consulting)
- Kieran Flanagan (SVP of Marketing, HubSpot)
- Amanda Kahlow (Founder & CEO, 1mind)
🔮 Hope you create some magic this week,
Sandy
🤖 AI Tool Corner: Toolflow
Each month we'll be sharing helpful tech that members of our community are using and loving. As part of our commitment to actionable advice without the hype, these product recommendations are always organic - no sponsored ads!
This month we're featuring Toolflow.
Toolflow allows you to build customized AI workflows that take you from idea to finished product in just a few clicks. Some of our favorite uses are:
- Generating LinkedIn post ideas
- Turning customer interviews into case studies
- Identifying the best moments in a podcast to turn into video clips for social media
Toolflow was founded by community member Alfie Marsh and is currently in Beta. Sign up here.
🧵 Interesting Community Threads
🙋♀️The Topic
We're currently evaluating how to structure our Enterprise BDR team with relation to both Comp and R&R. What should be Spiff vs Quota? We currently spiff things like driving attendees for marketing events, but as this takes up a more significant amount of time every year, is there a model that pegs things to higher quality MQLs or some other higher funnel metric?
📣 Community response
via Lydia Winn:
1. Quotas: I focus quota components on metrics that directly impact revenue and are within the BDRs control (not deal value, close rate etc)/ I know are achievable as we bake these into contracts. Example:
- Sales Accepted Opportunities (SAOs): Where the AE has validated that the opportunity meets criteria.
2. SPIFFs: I use SPIFFs for behaviors that support strategic goals but are less directly tied to bookings and change month to month. Examples include:
- Driving Webinar Attendance: This can be a SPIFF if the focus is on short-term boosts in engagement.
- Tiered SPIFFs for Lower-Quality MQL conversion: I tier SPIFF payouts based on the quality of MQLs, where we pay more for converting lower-quality MQLs
via Miriam O'Donnell: Naturally this varies by org, but you asked for ideas! I'll share a few from previous orgs. Hope it's useful!The SDRs were comped on the factors below:
- Enterprise SAOs (1000+ emp): Comped with quota/commission on SAOs/month: an opp validated by their manager/the AE, with qualified persona (VP+), and progressed to Stage 3.
- This applied for strategic expansion: net new department or cross-sell.
- Enterprise Closed Won Revenue:
- If a certain amount of an SDRs opportunities were Closed Won they received additional kickers (bonus payout), and
- If their Closed Won total hit a certain dollar amount--it expedited their ticket to play to apply for SMB AE promotion.
- Closed Won expansion opps qualified towards this dollar total.
- MM SAOs (250+ emp): Typical, quota for SAOs/month (SAOs in MM were defined as opps that made it to Stage 3 with a qualified persona--VP+--engaged in the deal)
- Events: If the SDR got a qualified buyer to an event and that ended up as an SAO (using the logic above--it counted to their comp/quota!) To your point, in-person is increasingly valuable.
SPIFFs reserved for webinar attendance that covert to meetings booked, first 3 to quota and 3 with the most SAOs quarterly (fast start SPIFF), etc
👉 Continue the conversation here.
🙋♀️The Topic
We’re an early-stage startup trying to figure out our CRM process. For a startup like ours, who typically manages CRM, what’s their usual role or designation, and what qualities or skills are essential for effectively handling it in such a dynamic environment? How does CRM management usually unfold at this stage?
📣 Community response
via Aaron Geller: It depends how early. If you are ready to scale sales/ CS etc. Than hiring for revenue operations can be key. If you have any sales leadership or even founders that can manage Hubspot lightweight, a lot of folks go that direction as they aren't ready for something more robust such as Salesforce.
via Morgan Krey: Hot take - doesn't matter, pick some stages and be consistent for two quarters.
I would also recommend moving to Salesforce as soon as you can manage it, if you have conviction in PMF - you're going to have to do it someday, and the earlier you do the easier the migration.
via Wensheen Tong: The right data architecture is key. If you're using Hubspot, you have a few tools out of the box depending on your tier:
- Deal Stages: Ideally these map to your buyer journey, not your internal selling process. They don't need to be super complex, just enough to give you an accurate sense of how your sales cycles are moving /evolving. If you don't have a firm sense of what normal looks like yet, don't spend a ton of time here until you have higher conviction.
- Stage gates: Should be able to configure these if you go to Objects > Deals > Pipelines - then click on each stage to determine which fields should be required vs optional at each stage. In general, I'd highly recommend structured fields (picklist/dropdown) where possible vs free text.
You can get by for a while without needing to invest fully in SFDC - you can do way more with it, but it's much more expensive and complicated to set up / maintain. Usually the impetus for moving over is if you have sophisticated automation or complex integrations.
👉 Continue the conversation here.
👋 Open Roles
- Elly.ai is looking for a Founding CSM in NYC
- Loris.ai is hiring a CX Manager and an Enterprise AE in NYC
- Hyperproof is looking for a Growth Marketing Manager
- Blink Ops is hiring a Customer Success Engineer
- Metronome is looking for Customer Growth and an AE in the Bay Area
- Pocus is hiring a Customer Success Manager and a Customer Engineer
- Optimist is looking for a Content Strategy Advisor (Business Development)
🔗 Helpful links and #Good-Reads
- Building pipeline through experimentation via Pocus
- AI Growing Faster than Saas via Notorious PLG
- The Importance of Business Models to Building Great Products via Focused Chaos
- 40 + ICP Marketing Plays via Growth Unhinged
- Becoming more strategic, navigating difficult colleagues, harnessing founder mode, and more via Lenny’s Podcast
- Your Guide to Feature Detox: Winning Through Simplifying via The Product Compass