In part 2 of our talk with Guy Rubin, founder and CEO of Ebsta, we look at how sales organisations can drive growth by improving consistency across their entire go-to-market function. Guy highlights the widening performance gaps between top sellers and the rest, the shift toward full-cycle selling, and the crucial role of clean data, clear benchmarks, and effective leadership in replicating success at scale.

Thank you for joining us on the Growth Workshop

Podcast. Welcome to part two of this discussion with Guy Rubin

from Ebsta.

So you've given so much great stuff. We've

obviously got the pre sale aspect. So throw us over another

interesting stat from the report that we'll talk about pre sale.

Ok, so the biggest challenge that Chief Revenue

officers have today is that just 14% of sellers are now

responsible for 80% of new logo revenue. So it's insane. The

Delta now between top and bottom and average performers in our

sales teams. And so how do we address that challenge? More

importantly, if we did address that challenge, can you imagine

the impact you can have on on win rates, on growth, and

ultimately, on valuation of your business? And so trying to get

under the skin of that challenge is absolutely key and and the

answer to it in a single word, is consistency. It doesn't have

to be hard, but there aren't any shortcuts. So to address the

challenge, you need a combination of four things. We

need the data that underpins now, just because you've got

Salesforce in place for the last year and you've worked 1000

opportunities and 120 5% of those, that doesn't mean you've

got the data you need. So if you look back at an opportunity and

it's got one contact and three emails associated to it, it's

not going to be enough to build the benchmarks you need to

actually affect change. So the way we address that is by

solving the data quality issue with the engine that we talked

about earlier, and what we call relationship intelligence. Once

you've solved the data quality issue, we're then in a place to

deliver insights. We can convert that data into insights, and

then we can use those insights to build benchmarks for every

different go to market motion. You have different geographies,

different products, different size and shape of customers. You

need to understand what good looks like, not just

holistically, but at every stage of every sales cycle. We need to

understand which personas need to be involved, or what's the

impact of having certain personas engaged earlier versus

later, and is it, and you might find that the data will tell you

which personas are important, and most importantly, how much

engagement you need to have with those personas before you move

on. And the biggest mistakes we see that the top that the B

players make is they skip through those early discovery

stages, and then the leadership think they've got a late stage

churn issue, right? They've been working the sales process. They

think they're in stage five or six, but in reality, and then

the deal closes, lost. But the reality was the customer's never

really in a sales process in the first place, because we never

qualified them well enough. So we recently built an engine that

can plug into things like your old Gong recordings or your zoom

recordings. We can go back through the last year's worth of

calls and the discovery, and then associate the qualification

to the deals that close won and lost, and suddenly it's like

turning a picture from black and white to color. You can suddenly

see, look, this seller is consistently losing deals at

late stage, but they're really bad. They might be really good

at the Med, but really bad at the pick or whatever

qualification you're using, right? So understanding where

your team are falling down in those early stages and being

much more consistent about what they need to achieve to get

through the stages, and using the data to set those benchmarks

gives you all the insights you need to introduce consistency.

And as I said earlier, we've recently introduced our own

brand guarantees. We guarantee to get more sellers hit and

quota within six months, or customers can walk away, and

we've never lost a customer yet.

Wow. Just as we look back to that comment and

let's dig into the solutions as of three, what was the stat

again?

So just 14% of sellers are responsible for 80%

of new logo revenue in 2024.

Wow.

The rest of the sellers are generating the

balance, right? So it's worse than the 80/20 rule, right? It's

getting even worse. And the reason it's getting worse is

that it's a leadership problem, in my opinion.

So, that I'm really, I absolutely,

fundamentally agree with you. And I was going to say, what was

your solution, but you just pinched by one.

If you've only got 14% of sellers generating 80% of

revenue, you haven't got consistency in the way you go to

my go to market motion is running. Okay, and your

leadership team are the catalyst to driving consistency across

that. The sellers need to know every every week you should be

doing your pipeline inspection meeting with every seller.

Should be having a partner inspection meeting every single

week. And in that meeting, it doesn't matter who the manager

is, it doesn't matter who the seller is, the format of that

session should be identical. We should be that the seller knows

what questions are going to be asked, because all of the issues

with the opportunity are automatically populated into the

Salesforce opportunity record. So they know in advance the

questions that they're going to be addressed with. With this

with the manager, the manager knows what questions to ask and

doesn't get bombarded or bamboozled with they love us.

They think we're great. They I've really got a great

relationship with this. I don't care about any of that. Why

haven't we got an engagement 67 with the five? Seven with a

finance persona, right? That's what I need to know. Because the

playbook tells us that when we win, we do at this stage.

And I think we're currently in a process with one

of the big I'll call the Big Four tech firms that are based

in the US. So everyone's thinking about those big four.

You can work out one. And because of the market and the

fact that organizations have really ridden that wave of well,

market has meant that I'm just selling. You know, it's been a

transactional people have just come for the product. They

approached us a couple of months ago. Been asking, Well, can you

help us build our weekly pipeline review frameworks? We

love the fact that they've. Approached us to see if we can

help that second, how have you got that big without having a

deal review and a pipeline review process in your

organization? It's insane, isn't it? So is it the fact that they

just haven't needed one, one of the big four tech US firms are

talking about, is it because they haven't needed one, or is

it the fact that they definitely need one now, and it's become

that realization point. What's your perspectives on that.

I wonder if that's where we get the 14% from. It's

luck. It's you've got 14% of your business that is succeeding

in delivering 80% of your 80% of your revenue. I think it's

that's then become your forecast, that then becomes your

truth, and you've just been carrying the rest of the team.

Could you imagine marketing departments not being

data driven? It's just it would be an insane thing, right? I

mean, all they do all day is AB test everything, right? And in

sales, we still largely have inconsistent process. And

depending on who the manager is or what who the seller happens

to be, you'll have a wildly different experience through

your through your your pipeline inspection meetings and the

inefficiencies in sales, you know, we saw an average win rate

of 19% you know, but we're spending over 80% of our time

with customers that are never going to spend any money with

us. And that's okay, apparently. And people don't seem to be

concerned too much about that, but, but the data will tell us

what we need to know if, if, if, when you win in stage three, you

spend 15 days. Well, once you get past 15 days, we need to be

asking whether this opportunity is real. Yeah, but if you don't

know the average number of days you spend in stage when you win

versus when you lose, you don't even have the data to be able to

make those decisions.

I seem to always boot certain parts of businesses

on this podcast. You know, I really dive into it, and

typically it's SaaS organizations I seem to have a

problem with. Just on that point, we've found that the 14%

piece, I think there's something happening with the individual

contributors, because of market change within those

organizations, or maybe a need for growth when markets are

turbulent. We're finding that sellers probably at that 86%

maybe the ones who have ridden the wave have all of a sudden

gone actually. Selling is quite hard, and we're starting to see

them maybe move out of these tech firms, but they're wanting

to command six figure salaries anywhere between 203 $100,000

but when we've actually challenged, Can They Sell? Guess

what? The answer is no. 86 so is it the fact that they're just

been riding that way for the last 15 years and absolute

bucket loads of cash by because these market forces taking

orders, you know? Is it the leadership that just haven't,

you know? And maybe the leadership are not that

competent in these firms?

Yeah, I think, I think a couple of things. First

of all, perhaps those numbers are slightly exacerbated by the

fact that there was so much change in sales teams last year.

We saw a third of sales teams churn last year, and then so

then onboarding the new sellers, getting them up to speed, it

might be affecting those numbers, but I do believe, of

course, there are bad players out there. Of course there are

bad sellers. Put people in sales roles that shouldn't be but if

you've got the drive and desire to win and you want to be in

sales, the leadership team you have around you will dictate how

successful you are. You know, again, I claim to be an expert

in the space, even we're getting much more accurate and much more

focused on what our ICP is today than we were before. You know,

we're all learning as we go, but your if your sales organization,

if your go to market motion, is not data driven, if you're not

tracking engagement with different stakeholders within

the organization, whether it's in the sales process or the

customer success process, if you haven't got benchmarks of what

good looks like at every stage of every sales cycle, and if

those benchmarks aren't evolving over time through the engine,

you're not going to have that transformation on the flip side,

the the impact you can have by introducing that level of

consistency, by understanding what those benchmarks are, and

holding everybody to account, is transformational. And we saw

recently a customer, a P backed business. Their growth rate was

single digits. They had about just over 130 sellers, turning

over nearly $200 million really struggling to get double digit

growth in a year. They got to 27% growth just by being data

driven and just understanding what drives the right behaviors.

And introducing that level of consistency was transformational

for the business. So it can be done and it can be done quickly,

but there's no shortcuts.

Interesting. I love this. This is so I mean, this is

so good with the time. Just to keep the motion and the momentum

going, Matt, take us to the third and final point.

So, Guy, I guess there's this. The next piece is

putting those two things together. And something that you

talk about in the report, and that we've had some interesting

conversations offline about is this sort of concept of full

cycle selling. Talk to us a little bit about that.

Okay, so we if you've only been in sales for the last

10 or 15 years, you've probably grown up in a world where

everybody's a single purpose vehicle. You've got top of

funnel resources doing nothing, but, but, but outbound outreach.

Then they get qualified and handed over to a seller, an A

maybe you may even have somebody dedicated and focused on The

Club. Process, and then, then you've got onboarding and

activation being run by customer success. And so you've got all

of these different siloed individuals responsible. And

while the theory of it was very good, you get these specialists

that are really good at their piece of the puzzle. In reality,

the buying experience had a had a big negative impact on the

buying experience, because you were constantly being handed

over from one persona to the next. And what we saw last year

was companies really leaning into this idea of full cycle

selling, which frankly, was where we started, kind of 25

years ago, right when I was selling, when I started selling,

I was responsible for generating my own leads and and what we see

today is nearly half of businesses have started to

transition into this area of full cycle selling, where the

sellers are responsible for generating a proportion of their

own pipeline. They are obviously responsible for running the

sales cycle as well. But if you think about it, they then, they

then are responsible for holding on to that account for the next

12 months. And the data tells us that a number of things. First

of all, again, if the buyer has built enough trust in the seller

to sign a contract. It seems crazy to let that relationship

die and then hand them over to somebody else. We also know that

the vast majority of cross sell up sell opportunities happen in

that initial 12 month period, so allowing the seller to continue

to hold on to the account does two things. First of all, it

maximizes your chance of winning those cross sell up sell

opportunities. But also it means that the seller doesn't feel

under pressure to get the whole deal done in the initial

signature, because that's the only thing they're going to get

paid on. So we've seen a real push towards giving that

customer experience, that single point of contacts, that main

right until the point where the customer's kind of normalized,

which could be six, 912, even 18 months. And my gut feel is that

by this time next year, when we look at the data again, I think

it more than half of businesses will be in that phase.

It's just fascinating. We should

definitely unpack what will that mean to organizations shifting

away from that, that that approach of having those

individual disciplines into that for cycle selling, I feel quite

so it's cocky, because that's what we do, right? Yeah, so it

should be fine. The other thing is just a bit of voice to

customer. We were delivering a large project this year for a

large bank, and we asked, you know, quite rightly, seen, what

was the reason for selecting us and and their their top criteria

for selecting us as an organization was making sure

that the people that were in the sales process. Post selling was

going to be part of the delivery process because they wanted to

buy the people. They didn't want to buy expose the brand, because

they didn't know how good the quality was, I suppose, until

you start using it right. And actually the businesses, there

was four others in the process. One organization sent a pitch

team in, and they said they'll bring in this other team to

deliver no and then this other organization was neck on neck

with us, because the, you know, they really like the person. So

I think that's interesting.

I'm curious to unpack your view here, guy on the

capabilities, though, because, you know, some I was talking to

another client about this, about this, just the other day, and

they were having challenges with retaining people in that kind of

environment, just purely because there's a lot more to that role

you've got to it's very multifaceted. So what's from

your experience talking to your customers and others in the

market? And we did a lot of work here, talked a bit about change

and how we can kind of drive that through. We've had guests

on the podcast talking about the importance of understanding,

recognizing competencies and how to develop those and of course,

we do that on a kind of day to day basis, but yeah, what are

you hearing in the market when it comes to how organizations

are managing to find those people that can cover all of

those aspects?

Certainly a challenge, and I acknowledge

that. I think there's a couple of things there. First of all,

I'm not suggesting that the seller is solely responsible for

their own type of funnel activity, right? They will, if

they can generate a third of their opportunities themselves,

that that's kind of best, best in market. That's what you're

looking for. I think with all change, it's not just this

piece. I think with all change, when you get pushback, and

sellers generally will push back on any change, the way to

address that in an organization is more about is to pick a pick

a group, pick a forward thinking group that want to be special,

and make them special and help them be successful, and then

show the rest of the business how they're performing. Okay,

because ultimately the sellers want to win, because they want

to earn money and they want to be successful. When you show

them the path as to how they can do that, suddenly it becomes

their idea. Now they want now they want that now it was that

they were already bought in in the first place. Okay? And so

find a small group that are going to go along with whatever

the changes that you're bringing in, and it will lean into it,

make them feel special, help them be successful, and then

make the others jealous that they aren't part of it, right,

that that way is the quickest route to move forward. And I

think it's our job as leaders to give people that vision of why

they should go through this exercise. Change is painful, so

there needs to be a really good justification as to why to do

it, rather than just because I told you so. The early adopters

splendid with scarcity. I was watching a Simon Sinek video

just the other day that he was talking about exactly that. I

forget the exact number, but I think it's a sort of the first

11% is what you'll get. And you'll get kind of good

engagement with as the early adopter group, which is probably

smaller than lots of people would think. But once you get

those on board, then the rest of the across the the average,

average distribution, you've got, then that middle group that

starts to go, hang on a minute, and that's interesting. And we

sort of drive change that way. I think there's two types of

people in the market, and both are valid, right? So you've got

those that really enjoy turning zeros into ones. We're breaking

new ground. We're going to work out how this thing works, and

we're going to refine it and get better at it, and those, those

your early adopters. And then you've got those that really

enjoy rinse and repeat. You know, I know what I've been told

to do. I understand the structure. It's been really

clear to me, and I'm going to follow that playbook. And

they're really powerful too, but we need to give them the

structure and and the mistake we make as leaders is we put is we

mix the groups. And when you ask people that are really good at

turning zeros into ones to continue to rinse and repeat the

same process, they get bored. And when you ask those that are

really good at following process to start getting creative and

work out how we solve a new problem or change something,

they get very uncomfortable about it. So again, it's our job

as leaders to find the right people work with them as almost

a almost a black ops team, right? Let's work out how we fix

this challenge. How do we improve our win rates? How do we

how do we go for sales cycle, and is it worth it, right?

Let's, let's see. Let's, let's try and experiment. The results

will tell us, and it'll all be in the data. So really, work out

where your team sit. There's no good or bad as leaders, our job

is to understand where people's strengths are and lean into them

and stop getting frustrated about square pegs that don't fit

in what round holes.

So Guy, you've shared some fantastic data points, some

insights from your own experience with us today, on the

on the podcast, which is which is brilliant. We thank you for

that. Could you just help us, just by maybe sort of

summarizing what are those kind of four key things that business

leaders listening to this should be thinking about that's going

to help them win?

Okay? So look, we all want growth. Okay? We all want

to scale our businesses faster than they are at the moment. So

how do we achieve that? We've got to introduce consistency in

our front office, in our whole go to market motion. As I said

earlier, it's not difficult, but there are no shortcuts. Okay, so

the four things you need to think about if you want to

introduce want to introduce that level of consistency and get

that growth in and get more of your sellers hitting quota, step

one, you have to start by solving the data quality issue.

And you need that historically. You need to be able to go back a

year or two through this, through the data, fix the data

in a consistent format. We're not the only players in the

park, but we have a plug and play solution that can connect

to your mail servers, your calendars, your phone systems.

We can go back and fix all of the historical data in

Salesforce and give you an engine that keeps it up today

over time. Once we've got an engine that once we've got the

data consistent in the system, and by consistent if you're

still relying on any humans, then you will not have the level

of consistency you need to build your benchmarks. So once you fix

the data you want to you, then need to convert that data into

insights. What does good look like at every stage of every

type of sales process we run? What are the warning signs we

need to look out for at each stage? Once we understand what

the benchmarks are, we're then in a good place to be able to

introduce that level of consistency to our sales cycle.

We can then introduce some technology where we can do

pipeline inspection and forecasting tools, and obviously

ours is delivered inside Salesforce, but ultimately, the

final piece of the puzzle is key here, and that's a change agent.

Now, a lot of organizations think their change agent might

be the VP of sales or their rev ops function, and that may be

the case, but more often than not, we find that those internal

revolts functions are really more sales admins than they are

strategic thinkers, and you need a strategic thinker helping you

with that change. Age as a change agent. Don't

underestimate that final piece of the puzzle. Have someone

responsible for that change. We talked earlier about how you can

kind of almost gamify it by having a pre a team that are

getting access, early access to this information and that so we

can show the rest of the business. Look what happens when

we get more consistent. We get better outcomes, and then

everybody else wants to jump on that. So. So in summary, fix

your data, turn it into insights. Have a consistent

platform you can use, or some technology that gives you a

consistent way, an easy way of running your pipeline,

inspection and forecasting process, and then have a change

agent you can lean into. And every quarter, you should be

seeing incremental improvements on things like time to close a

level of coverage each rep needs to hit quota conversion rates at

each stage of the sales cycle and then ultimately, win rate.

There it is. Loved it. Guy, thank you so much for

coming in and talking to us today. It's been absolutely

wonderful. Love the insight as ever. Thank you, Johnny also,

and we look forward to seeing you again soon.

Thank you very much.

Cheers, Guy, cheers, Matt.