In this episode, we're shaking things up a bit as Erin Hartje, Head of Brand at Avoma, steps into the hosting seat. We are diving deep into the world of coaching with none other than Aditya Kothadiya, CEO of Avoma. As we step into 2024 with aspirations for growth and improvement, coaching takes center stage in our discussion. Aditya shares invaluable insights into why coaching should be a top priority for leaders across various teams, not just in sales but also in customer success, marketing, and beyond. Drawing from Avoma's expertise, we explore practical ways to implement effective coaching practices. From setting up regular, proactive coaching sessions to utilizing AI for personalized feedback, we talk about actionable steps leaders can take to elevate team performance. But it's not all just about the processes—it's about the culture. We delve into the importance of embedding a coaching culture within organizations, right from the hiring process. How to find the right fit for your team, someone who embraces feedback and values continuous improvement. Tune in and get ready to elevate your coaching game!

Get ready for a power-packed episode as we sit down with the incredible Sujan Patel, Founder and CEO of Mailshake, to unravel the secrets to standing out and winning in a competitive market. Today, competition is popping up all around us, vying for the attention of the very few buyers ready to buy. Sellers need to up their game. Join us for a casual chat where Sujan shares insights on standing out to modern buyers, crafting a killer pitch and what Sales leaders must know and do in order to win. Whether you're a seasoned SaaS leader or just starting out, this episode is your fast track to success in the hustle of the competitive market. Let's dive in and start winning together!

Are you delighting or frustrating buyers? Are you keeping pace with the latest trends buyers expect when they land on your website? Are you staying top of mind? 🤔 Aditya and Natalie Marcotullio, Head of Growth and Operations at Navattic, kick back to chat about the best practices for creating modern buying experiences that actually convert. Discover strategies to turn visitors into customers, beginning with your website's explainer video and how you present (or hide) pricing. Make sure you're effectively showcasing the true value of your product, making it a no-brainer for potential buyers. Aditya and Natalie also dive into some additional tips for PLG companies when choosing the right channels for your audience, how to build nurture campaigns and starting your own influencer program to keep your brand top of mind.

In this episode of The Modern SaaS Podcast, Lloyed Lobo, the founder of Boast.ai and Traction, joins us to discuss how to go about building a community. Lloyed is also the author of the book "From Grassroots to Greatness" which gives you 13 rules to build an iconic brand with the help of comunity. Through this episode, he shares with us the insights he's gathered from years of experience in building startups, communities, events, and conferences, and distills community building into a framework called CAMPER. 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗣𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗦 00:00 - Intro 01:53 -The problem discovery for Boast.ai 04:42 - Startups are built in phases 07:11 - The two major gaps that startup community solves 08:25 - How to identify which problem to tackle 12:40 - How the Traction conference came into being 16:13 - Building social proof 25:15 - Budgeting and ROI planning when building a community 28:00 - Overcoming setbacks 30:25 - Need to communicate value regularly 32:10 - Lloyed's inspiring story 39:00 - The CAMPER framework for community building 39:48 - How concepts become a cult 41:21 - 6 core values 53:30 - Where should you start? 55:00 - Types of communities you can build 1:00:00 - Enabling customers to run your community 1:07:37 - Why host the cool parties 1:12:57 - Closing notes

In this episode of The Modern SaaS Podcast, Aman Singh, founder of The Curious Consultant explains how problem defining and problem solving are two different facets of sales and customer success. 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗣𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗦 00:00 - Intro 01:16 - The story behind 'The Curious Consultant' 04:10 - The taboo behind talking about failures 07:27 - The hypothesis of inefficient meetings 08:40 - Failing your way to success 11:33 - The need to be vulnerable 16:10 - 80% of your sales is won and lost in discovery calls 16:26 - Lead with fear 18:42 - Why extreme ownership is important for sales 19:17 - Problem defining 25:23 - Problem defining vs problem solving 29:34 - How to know you've moved from symptoms to disease 32:04 - Understanding introversion vs extroversion 38:58 - Gender biases in sales 44:30 - Selling to different geos 49:04 - Do not use presentations, have conversations 52:35 - Closing notes

In this episode of The Modern SaaS Podcast, Srikrishnan Ganesan, the CEO of Rocketlane, joins us to discuss how customer onboarding shapes churn and expansions. He shares with us the insights he's gathered from years of experience, and explains how onboarding can help your company avoid costly churn and help you build the base for account expansions. 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗣𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗦 00:00 - Intro 00:56 -True churn happens in onboarding 03:22 - The story behind Rocketlane 06:32 - The customer shareability gap 09:48 - Purpose built software vs. all-in-one solutions 15:19 - Need for customer status update 18:13 - Common mistake: Not sharing implementation timelines with customer 22:42 - Have a pre-kick off call 27:43 - Shifting responsibilities in the product-led sales world 31:06 - Role of community in shaping the product 34:30 - How building a community helps 38:06 - Where does community fit in the org chart 40:04 - What's a great buyer journey 43:53 - Focus on brand from early 44:46 - Closing notes

In this episode of The Modern SaaS Podcast, Mor Assouline, the founder of FDTC, shares with us some his insights on what it takes in the current economic conditions to have a better deal close rate and how to create successful customer journeys. He shares actionable tips on how to do forecasting better, set the right expectations, and what high quality sales discovery and demo looks like. 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗣𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗦 00:00 - Intro 01:40 - Is it a market issue or sales issue? 06:42 - How to arrive at sales quota 10:27 - Setting expectations upfront 11:29 - The need for sales coaching for the current environment 11:14 - Why sales needs so much coaching? 15:16 - Building a buyer scenario matrix 18:10 - How much should reps know about their product 24:30 - The frustrations in buying experience 29:30 - Qualifying the demos booked 32:16 - Optimizing the demo to close experience 33:31 - Things not to miss when you give a demo 36:48 - Case example: How to do a disco+demo 39:45 - The narrative is more important than the feature 41:28 - Building a culture of learning 46:52 - Habits to get the most value of meeting insights 52:00 - Build familiarity before your do your outreach 52:34 - Closing notes

Mona Akmal, CEO of Falkon AI, joins Aditya Kothadiya on the Modern SaaS Podcast to talk about the game-changing shift in SaaS sales. In this episode, Mona discusses the shocking truth about how SaaS sales works in today's world. If you're looking to improve the buyer experience and sales conversion, then this episode is for you. 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗣𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗦 00:00 - Intro 01:17 - The Falkon journey 03:36 - Sales and pivots based on feedback 05:44 - Why sales win rates go down upon transition from founder-led? 07:10 - Founders should never hire sales until... 11:14 - Why sales needs so much coaching? 16:20 - Sales acumen is key 18:24 - The sales decision tree 19:45 - Executing the sales decision tree 22:22 - Bad sales advice vs good advice 27:54 - Sales now is different from last 5 years 33:00 - Improve sales efficiency 34:28 - Don't bring your sales engineer on your first demo 39:50 - Don't offer this kind of experience 40:46 - The mistake while we sell 47:06 - How is Falkon different 52:17 - Stop chasing product market fit

In this episode, Kris Rudeegraap (Co-founder & CEO, Sendoso) and Aditya Kothadiya (Co-founder & CEO, Avoma) discuss modern prospecting with creative gifting strategies -- i.e., how you can prospect creatively where your creativity can supersede the budget constraints. ➡️ Key Points⁣ covered 00:00 - Intro 03:20 - Prospecting approach during the economic downturn 05:10 - Good and bad cold outreach experiences 09:30 - The need to be informative than being overly salesy 12:15 - Use sales engagement tools sensibly else it becomes spammy 15:22 - The modern trends in prospecting 20:00 - It's about getting the tools & strategy combination right 24:05 - The role of gifting while prospecting 26:07 - Personalize your gifting with meaningful notes 31:49 - Gifting is about impact, not the $$ spent 35:40 - Humanize the outreach and relationship 39:25 - How to think about gifting based on ROI 41:08 - Key takeaway ➡️ The Modern SaaS Podcast Take a look at our other podcast episodes - https://www.avoma.com/podcast

In this episode, Collin Cadmus (Revenue Growth Coach, Collin Cadmus, LLC) and Aditya Kothadiya (Co-founder & CEO, Avoma) discuss modern prospecting -- i.e., how to prospect in the modern SaaS era. ➡️ Key Points⁣ covered 00:00 - Intro 01:31 - What Collin Cadmus is upto, these days 04:05 - Make human sales more valuable than AI 07:52 - Recent bad experience when prospecting wasn't done well 15:58 - Why you don't recall great outreach experiences 18:56 - The mindset due to which prospecting fails 24:13 - How to get started with social selling on LinkedIn 27:07 - Start doing before selling it 32:00 - How building authority with authenticity works 39:33 - Converting the thought leadership into booking meetings 43:00 - Why it takes long for best practices to change 46:05 - Transition from dollars to value 54:02 - What does a forward looking SDR compensation model look like? 1:01:02 - Key highlights & takeaways

In this episode, Mark Stagi (VP of Customer Success, Avoma) and Yaag discuss how to drive the right curiosity behavior with data for CSMs. Mark shares his experience on the do's and don'ts in QBRs and check-in meetings, how to make it valuable and relevant to the customer, and a lot more. ➡️ Key Points⁣ covered 00:00 - Intro 01:31 - Curiosity - a super power in tech 03:05 - Assessing curiosity of CSMs during interviews 04:36 - How curiosity helps in objection handling 07:03 - Leveraging curiosity in QBRs and check-in meetings 11:03 - Adding real value to your success conversations 12:56 - Preparation going into QBR meetings 16:13 - Keeping a tab on relevance and stickiness 21:05 - Not all questions are created equal 26:07 - What is the right amount of curiosity? 29:20 - Key takeaways

In this episode, Stephen Cann (Director of Enterprise Sales, Avoma) and Yaag discuss how and when to challenge your prospect during a deal? Stephen shares his experience on how to challenge the prospect across stages such as prospecting, discovery, indecisive moments, and more. ➡️ Key Points⁣ covered 00:00 - Intro 01:37 - Challenging the prospects all the time 03:05 - Challenging at the prospect stage 04:15 - The key is to understand the problem 04:35 - Qualify and turn down meetings 06:10 - What to look for in the discovery stage 07:59 - Challenging during prospecting vs discovery 08:30 - Need to identify the perceptions of the prospect 10:20 - Helping to surface the problems 11:37 - Digging into the problem 2-3 levels deep 14:40 - Go beyond symptoms to understand the pain 15:40 - Don't be a Labrador rep :) 16:18 - Getting something in return for specific requests 19:48 - What to do when you sense indecision? 22:56 - What gives you the authority to challenge? 26:34 - Key takeaways

In this episode, Nathan Hymas (VP Sales, Avoma) and Yaag discuss how to win competitive deals by truly understanding the rules of the game. Nate shares some brilliant perspectives on how the discovery works differently in a competitive deal, the evaluation process and roles, success metrics and a lot more. ➡️ Key Points⁣ covered 00:00 - Intro 01:06 - How is discovery done differently in a competitive deal 03:01 - Controlling the narrative 05:19 - Understanding the rules of the competitive deal 07:55 - Agreeing on the evaluation process 9:39 - What moves the needle? 11:30 - Identifying the success metrics 17:39 - Humanizing the conversation to win trust 20:25 - Key takeaways

In this episode, Naquiyah Cash (Gainsight Admin and CS Ops Consultant, Zywave) and Mark Stagi (VP of Customer Success, Avoma) discuss who is best positioned to own CS Ops. ➡️ Key Points⁣ covered 00:52 - It's not just about implementation, but about the process, enablement and strategy 02:16 - Should CS Ops sit within CS or RevOps or overall Ops? 05:10 - The key takeaway from Gainsight Pulse ➡️ The Modern SaaS Podcast Take a look at our other podcast episodes - https://www.avoma.com/podcast ➡️ Related resource https://www.avoma.com/blog/should-you-charge-a-fee-for-customer-success

In this episode, Shrenik Mhatre (Senior Manager, Customer Success Architects, VMware) and Mark Stagi (VP of Customer Success, Avoma) discuss the shift in the customer success approach to drive customer outcomes. ➡️ Key Points⁣ covered 00:00 - Intro 00:48 - The change in Customer Success focus in the last couple of years 01:05 - The shift from reactive and feature focused CS to customer's outcomes 02:28 - The struggle in making the shift ➡️ The Modern SaaS Podcast Take a look at our other podcast episodes - https://www.avoma.com/podcast ➡️ Related resource https://www.avoma.com/blog/should-you-charge-a-fee-for-customer-success

In this episode, Jane Chowaniec (VP of Customer Success, ISI) and Mark Stagi (VP of Customer Success, Avoma) discuss how businesses may sometimes not make the best use of Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) and how to adapt it in the best interest of the customer. ➡️ Key Points⁣ covered 00:30 - The pain point around how QBRs are run 01:40 - How to make QBRs valuable 02:02 - Monthly value emails 03:15 - Should a QBR be a meeting? 03:43 - EBR instead of QBRs 05:13 - The real value in QBRs ➡️ The Modern SaaS Podcast Take a look at our other podcast episodes - https://www.avoma.com/podcast ➡️ Related resource https://www.avoma.com/blog/using-qbrs-to-add-value

In this episode, Aditya and Yaag discuss how despite the plethora of SaaS tools available today, customers still end up having broken experiences. They discuss what it means to really solve for the customer, with an all-in-one approach. ➡️ Key Points⁣ covered 01:14 - The philosophy behind 'why we take an all-in-one approach" 02:20 - The unconventional wisdom that truly helps startups in their early stages 03:15 - Learning from customer workflows 04:00 - Why solving for workflows is important for SMB and mid-market 04:50 - All-in-one doesn't mean several problems randomly 06:24 - All-in-one isn't solving for different customers, but adjacent problems of your core customers 10:10 - Example 1: Solving for meeting workflows 15:10 - Visionary, evolutionary and expansionary approaches to solving customer workflows 19:38 - The scope of best-in-breed solutions 21:58 - Key takeaways 22:40 - The art is in identifying the 20% pains that impact 80% of the outcome 26:20 - The philosophy goes beyond software platforms ➡️ The Modern SaaS Podcast Take a look at our other podcast episodes - https://www.avoma.com/podcast ➡️ Related resource https://www.avoma.com/playbooks-category/sales-playbook

In this episode, Carl Ferreira (VP Sales, Refine Labs) and Yaag discuss how businesses buy software, how sales reps and the entire buying experience needs to adapt according to buyers in different maturity stages, and a lot more. ➡️ Key Points⁣ covered 00:00 - Intro 01:35 - Questions to ask yourself before you are ready to invest on a SaaS tool 03:57 - What makes or breaks the buying experience 06:30 - The need to understand the buyer's maturity stage 08:05 - How to design a relevant inbound buying experience 12:18 - What makes someone shortlist a software among the choices available 15:06 - Little annoyances build up and compound as a bad buying experience 19:30 - Why it makes a lot of sense to give a glimpse of the product during discovery 21:20 - The stage that a seller thinks a buyer is in, and what the buyer thinks is usually different 25:24 - How you sell is how you win 28:30 - Tackling competitive positioning with proof 30:49 - Key pillars of a buyer experience ➡️ The Modern SaaS Podcast Take a look at our other podcast episodes - https://www.avoma.com/podcast ➡️ Related resource https://www.avoma.com/playbooks-category/sales-playbook

In this episode, Nathan Hymas (VP Sales, Avoma) and Yaag discuss how to run pipeline reviews effectively by truly understanding what matters. Nate shares some brilliant perspectives on how pipeline reviews aren't just about metrics, how inputs matter more than outcomes, and a lot more. ➡️ Key Points⁣ covered 00:00 - Intro 01:30 - The modern way of running a pipeline review 03:10 - Pipeline reviews are not just about metrics 05:10 - The need to prioritize inputs over outcomes 07:11 - Encouraging the right habits contributing to buyer experience 10:40 - The difference between transactional and enterprise deals 11:51 - Create. Advance. Close Model 17:23 - Controlling the overall narrative 24:55 - Key takeaways

In this episode, Aditya and Yaag discuss how to improve the sales discovery and demo experience for your prospects by truly understanding their buyer journey and pain points. Aditya throws light into 4 key aspects of a sales discovery and demo conversation including: small talk, questions to ask during discovery, how to personalize and make the demo valuable to the prospect, agreeing upon the next steps, and a lot more. ➡️ Key Points⁣ covered 00:00 - Intro 00:50 - The components of a sales discovery and demo conversation 01:58 - How to do small talk without being lazy about it 07:45 - Doing discovery -- who should do it & how to do it meaningfully 09:35 - Need to have discovery and demo in the same meeting 11:45 - The concept of SPIN Selling 15:11 - The true purpose of a demo 21:23 - Handling objections by truly understanding the customer 28:40 - Agreeing on the next steps after discovery & demo 34:25 - Establishing the key differentiation & value proposition 35:50 - Need to sum up the key takeaways from the conversation 41: 12 - Key takeaways