Stephanie Ruiz

The "per seat" business model is officially dead for CRMs. For the last 20 years, the logic of SaaS pricing was simple. You build a database, and you charge companies for every human who logs in to update it. The model aligned perfectly with growth. As a company hired more people, Salesforce made more money. But in an AI-first world, this alignment breaks. The promise of AI agents is that they do the work for you. They update the CRM, they qualify the leads, and they manage the pipeline. If the AI works, you should need fewer humans logging into the system, not more. This creates a massive conflict of interest for incumbents. As a result, we are seeing a divergence in business models: - Legacy Incumbents (Salesforce, HubSpot): Incentivized to keep your headcount high so they can charge for access. - AI Challengers (Clarify, etc.): Incentivized to lower your headcount so they can charge for outcomes. The incumbents are trapped. They cannot pivot to outcome-based pricing without cannibalizing their existing revenue base because they are punished for making you efficient. They have to keep selling you "seats" even as the world moves to "agents." This is how I believe startups are going to disrupt legacy monopolies. They will commoditize the core software that incumbents rely on for revenue, and they will monetize the one thing the giants can't. The disappearance of work. P.S. Patrick Thompson breaks down the economics of this shift (and how he is betting against Salesforce) in our latest episode - https://lnkd.in/eTe6bd-3

36

9 Comments

93% of AEs can't sell to the C-Suite and it shows: Only 7% of C-Suite execs rates sales calls as valuable enough to agree to a follow up (Gartner). Good news? It's an easy fix. 4 tips to sell to the C-Suite like the top 7%: 1. Don't make the C-Suite your first meeting. You’ll be tempted to go after the CXO first. Don’t. Unless you already have inside info: Do your homework first. The worst thing you can do? Show up to the C-Suite empty-handed. Do a few “rounds” first. Pay your dues. 2. Start the meeting with a “What I Know” slide. Most CXOs expect sales calls to be a waste. They rarely agree to them. When they do, they do it reluctantly. But. The top 10% of sellers earn instant credibility by starting the meeting like this: “Ok. "I’ve talked to 3 people in your org, read your 10K, and researched your industry. "Let's start with a summary of what I’ve learned.” INSTANT CREDIBILITY. “Wow, the first time a sales call isn’t a waste,” they’ll think. The rest is yours to lose. 3. RESEARCH-BASED Discovery Only This is not the time for typical discovery. You should have done that by now. That doesn’t mean you can’t ask questions. But. They better be informed. They better be targeted. They better share observations. BAD EXAMPLE: “Tell me about your function's biggest challenges.” GOOD EXAMPLE: “When I talked to John, he said the company was struggling to recruit engineers to get new features to market fast enough. "His concern was hitting deadlines, but I have to imagine you have a broader view of why this issue matters. "Assuming this is a top-of-mind issue, how about we start by getting your take on that?” Do that. That's how you get them listening. 4. Lean on your champion for TACTICAL next steps. Don't try to “lock in next steps” with the CXO. They start their day at 7am and end at 7pm. Yes, you want to talk again. But use your champion for 'tactical' next steps. Reserve C-Suite next steps for strategic meetings. Say this: “I think Lisa and I can take next steps from here. "I’ll keep you in the loop. The one meeting I do think we should have next will be in three weeks from now where we debrief the business case. "Between now and then you’re off the hook, but mind if I go through your EA so that you, me, and Lisa can review this a few weeks out?” “This person gets it,” they’ll think. Master these 4 moves and you'll join the top 7% who actually get C-Suite follow-ups. But here's the thing: Selling to the C-Suite is just one part of the equation. You also need the right questions throughout the entire deal cycle. P.S. If you want the exact 50 questions I use to build pain, urgency, and desire in deals, grab the full list here ➡️ https://lnkd.in/g2giY-ab

100

8 Comments

The BDR/SDR-AE split is quietly disappearing. For years, the model was simple: BDRs or SDRs source, AEs close. Two roles, two skill sets, a clean handoff in between. That model is breaking down and for good reason. Here it goes from my learning from talking with sales leaders and owners everyday: → Buyers don't experience a handoff. They experience one conversation with your company. When a prospect gets a generic response or qualification call with no context and then a completely different tone from the AE, it feels disjointed and it costs trust before the deal even starts. → Full-cycle reps are becoming the norm at AI native startups, smaller and mid-market companies. The new model: One person sources, qualifies, runs the deal, and closes. Hire another person to add value to the internal team to close more deals. It's more accountability, but also more control, no dropped context, no "that's not a deal yet" gaps. → Even where the roles still exist, the lines are blurring. AEs are expected to self-source a growing share of pipeline. BDRs and SDRs are getting pulled into discovery calls earlier. The rigid lane-staying of "that's not my job" doesn't survive in a team that's actually hitting number. → AI is accelerating this shift. A lot of what used to require a dedicated BDR or SDR: research, list-building, personalized first-touch outreach All of this can now be done in a fraction of the time. That frees up headcount and shifts the question from "who owns this stage" to "who can move this deal forward fastest." Accountability matters. So when sourcing and closing are treated as two different jobs with two different owners, pipeline responsibility gets diffused. When it's one team or one person owning the full arc, nothing falls through the cracks. The best sales orgs aren't asking "whose lead is this?" anymore. They're asking "how do we move this forward, together?" Tomorrow: the specific AI tools and workflows GTM teams are using to actually pull this off, meaning from sourcing to close. The BDR/SDR-AE split made sense for a while. It's making a lot less sense now. Tomorrow I'll get specific on the tools making this shift possible. 👇 #SalesStrategy #SalesTeams #RevOps #B2BSales #SalesLeadership

4

1 Comment

"What does your product do?" "It's an AI workflow for prospecting that saves reps 10-15 hours/month" ^^this is exactly what's killing your sales process today I could write a dissertation on how rarely it seems a company understands their value prop, their true "so what?", or what matters to their buyer, but instead, here's how I, as a buyer, react to that statement: "Okay sure but what does it do?" "What does this displace that we're doing wrong now?" "Can you give me an example of what a rep does today, why that's broken, and what this solves for?" "Why does a rep NEED this? Teach me a few things that this product does that then moves the needle" "Can you create a little fear/uncertainty/doubt for me that what I'm doing isn't right/modern, and then teach me how this solves that?" And all the while? I'm frustrated as all get out. And so are our buyers. There's a lack of trust that getting on a call will get them answers they can't better get through AI. Two solves here: 1. Every cadence you send will build or erode your brand. If you say what you do, not what you solve, and if you think the "10-15 hours" is the solve, we're in trouble. These emails should educate with specificity and demonstrate Show Me You Know Me via understanding the "so what" in a buyer-persona specific ways. But here's the biggest rub: if we get it wrong in a few emails, our buyers become numb to our outreach, so each email does more damage and our brand now becomes solidified in the wrong way, making it harder and harder each week to book meetings. 2. Your sellers need to know why you matter for each persona. Say you sell an electric car: Feature: It's electric Benefit: no gas! save the planet! So What: <--this is where you accelerate (get it...get it?) your process. If you assume the buyer knows, you lose. If you instead educate them on 2-3 "so what's", you win. Winning in the years ahead always comes back down the foundations, and this is one of those that many miss, and the elite sellers and companies nail. #samsales #SMYKM

54

30 Comments

CROs don’t need more activity. They need better signal. After leading Revenue Enablement inside a fast-moving, transactional revenue org, I learned this the hard way: when multiple teams dabble in surfacing signals, no one really owns it, and the ball gets dropped. Everyone thinks it’s their lane. RevOps. Product. Sales leadership. Enablement. Because ownership isn’t clear, leaders are left stitching together partial views that still don’t tell them what to do next. That’s where High-Signal Revenue Enablement earns its seat at the table. Here’s what it actually owns. - Decision systems, not dashboards. Systems designed to surface what matters early: behavioral shifts, deal patterns, emerging risk, momentum changes leaders can act on. - Manager signal, not rep noise. The goal isn't inspecting every call or heroic deal. It's equipping managers with patterned insight so coaching scales beyond anecdotes. - Foresight, not post-mortems. Deal reviews become tools for prediction. Pipeline reviews are leading indicators. Coaching happens before outcomes are locked in. - Signal interpretation and next-best action. RevOps owns data and reporting. Product owns usage tracking. Revenue Enablement translates these inputs into signals leaders can prioritize, coach against, and act on consistently. And just as important, here’s what it does not own: - Training volume. More courses without behavior change = activity theater. - Reporting for reporting's sake. If a dashboard can't answer "what do we do now," it's not an Enablement artifact. - It does not replace RevOps, Product, or Sales leadership. It partners deeply, but does not absorb ownership that belongs elsewhere. - Optimization for comfort. Surfacing the right signals often challenges intuition, legacy processes, and long-held beliefs. That's the real work. For CROs scaling complexity, clarity of ownership is just as vital as signal quality. The question isn't whether you have enough data. It's whether anyone owns turning that data into signals leaders can act on, before outcomes are locked in.

13

Rev Ops in Space: A few weeks back I covered SS3 Discovery, where your offer either gets shaped with precision or quietly loses its edge before the client ever sees it. This week we move to the stage where commercial discipline either protects your margin or gives it away before the negotiation even begins. SS4 — Pricing and Proposal (50%) Your quote is in their hands. You have made the cut. But being at the midpoint means you still have just as much to lose as you have to win. A few things that matter here that most sellers get wrong. Your pricing should be consistent with your deal forecast. If your forecast shows a $500K deal and your proposal comes in at $300K, something is wrong, either your forecast was wrong or your proposal undersells the value. Alignment between forecast and proposal is not a formality. It is a signal of commercial discipline. Your deal structure must protect your margin goals before the proposal goes out, not after the client pushes back. Once a number is on paper it becomes the anchor for everything that follows. Here is the insight that most sales teams miss entirely: negotiate your terms and conditions in the same motion as your pricing, discounts, and margin targets. Pricing and terms have an inverse relationship. The more concessions you give on price, the less flexibility you should have on terms, and vice versa. If you give away both, you have nothing left to protect your margin or your revenue recognition timeline. And that revenue recognition piece matters more than most sellers realize. Your terms and conditions, specifically your acceptance clause allowances, directly affect when you can book revenue. A deal that closes in Q3 but has acceptance terms that push revenue recognition to Q4 is not a Q3 win. Structure your terms to align with your quarterly revenue projections and annual growth targets before the proposal leaves your desk. Exit Criteria: A competitive proposal out to the client with pricing, margin targets, and terms and conditions all aligned. Next week we move into SS5 Negotiation, where deal governance earns its keep and where separating from your competition requires more than just the right price. The rockets are ready. The commercial engine is still being built. #RevOpsInSpace #SpaceEconomy #SalesStages #RevenueOperations #DealGovernance #Forecasting

1

🤖 If ChatGPT, Salesforce & Gong had a baby, it would be Ergo (YC W25) 🎯 The AI Revenue Copilot That Actually Understands Sales Conversations Meet Ergo (YC W25) An AI-powered revenue automation platform built for modern sales teams. Ergo turns calls, emails, meetings, and messages into clean, structured data you can trust. No manual CRM updates. No guessing why deals stall. No sales admin chaos. 🧩 How Ergo Works Ergo sits quietly across your sales stack and listens to real conversations. Then it does the heavy lifting automatically: • Captures pain points, objections, and deal risks from sales calls • Converts conversations into structured CRM data • Keeps CRM fields updated without manual entry • Drafts personalized follow-up emails after every call • Scans the pipeline daily to find and revive stale deals • Surfaces weekly insights tied directly to outcomes Everything is based on what was actually said. 💡 Why This Is Powerful • CRM finally reflects reality, not rep memory • Up to 25% shorter sales cycles • Around 20% revenue recovered from missed opportunities • 10+ hours saved per rep every week • Forecasts become predictable and reliable Decisions move from intuition to evidence. ⚙️ Think of Ergo Like This A revenue teammate that knows how to: 👉 listen to sales calls 👉 understand objections and intent 👉 update CRM automatically 👉 suggest the next best action 👉 send smart follow-ups All without being told. 🚀 Why It Matters Most important sales data never reaches the CRM. That’s where deals silently die. Ergo fixes the missing layer Salesforce never shipped. The intelligence layer between conversations and outcomes. What used to take hours of admin work now happens automatically, every day. 👏 Big congrats to the Ergo (YC W25) on building real revenue infrastructure for fast-growing teams. YC W25 looks promising. Ishan Sheth Yash Dulla 🧠 Follow Zaki Akhtar for weekly breakdowns of the best new AI tools shaping sales, marketing, and distribution.

5

𝗔𝗜 𝗶𝘀 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗚𝗧𝗠 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲. And quietly making others worth less. We're releasing the data. After 500+ GTM placements, the comp conversations have fundamentally shifted. Founders are structuring packages differently. Leaders are negotiating differently. The benchmarks from 2 years ago are already obsolete. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗲'𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮: → Some CROs commanding 20-30% comp premiums because of AI fluency → Commission plans being restructured around AI-assisted pipeline → Founders cutting OTE on roles AI is partially replacing → VPs negotiating equity instead of base — and winning 𝗪𝗲'𝗿𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 𝗚𝗧𝗠 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁. OTE benchmarks by role and stage. Equity norms. Commission structures that retain vs ones that backfire. And how AI is reshaping what both sides of the table are willing to accept. Before it drops — one question for both sides of the table. 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀: has AI changed how you think about GTM comp? Are you paying more, less, or just differently? 𝗚𝗧𝗠 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀: are you seeing this shift in your own negotiations with new hires? Drop your take in the comments. ========================================================= 📣 Comment 𝗚𝗧𝗠𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗣 for our first batches of data..... it's interesting to say the least ========================================================= #GTM #SalesLeadership #CRO #VPSales #StartupGrowth #Compensation #SeriesA #SeriesB #SaaS #AIinSales Adam O'Shea

6

1 Comment

I asked a few Salesforce AEs a blunt question last week while visiting the tower: "What partner activations are actually helping you build or mature pipeline right now?" The answer? Not much. The old playbook of World Tours, HH's, and sponsored dinners is losing its impact. They create a lot of activity (and a few hangovers), but they aren't changing account strategy or de-risking deals for the sellers. As Salesforce leans more heavily into GSIs and Venture-backed firms, channel-sourced lead flow for the rest of the ecosystem is becoming harder to come by. We saw the beginning of this shift last year when Salesforce let go of about half of their Alliances team ✋. Many partners pivoted to diversify their lead engine by building deeper ties with ISV partnerships. This year, the shift is accelerating and the next evolution in partner GTM strategy is about building proactive, measurable, direct marketing muscles alongside your channel investments. Partners can no longer rely on channel-led motions as the primary way to hit targets. Speed is everything, and your co-selling strategy is only as fast as the data backing it up. I am learning fast at Operatus when it comes to operations and tools. The questions that matter now are: 🚀 Are we tracking job changes? G4G moves champions fast. Automating CRM updates protects your best leads and saves your sales team hours of manual work. 🎯 Are we enriching CRM data for the ICP? Accurate data allows us to automate nurture sequences and stay top-of-mind without the manual lift. 🧠 Are we helping sellers move deals, or just creating noise? If an activation doesn’t provide a new narrative for the client, it isn’t helping the AE. 📊 Are we tracking our Partner NPS? Knowing which Salesforce teams value your work and which don’t allows you to prioritize investments and stregthen relationships in the right places. The goal is to use automation and cleaner data to try new direct marketing and sales approaches, experiment, fail fast, and evolve. Do it with an operators mindset that I too am learning to flex so you can show up more creatively for the teams you partner with! Where are my alliance veterans and partner marketers at?! How are you innovating your GTM motion this year? What "old playbook" are you finally letting go of? #salesforce #channelstrategy #GTM #partnermarketing #alliances

96

15 Comments