Kent Venook's guest appearances

Kent Venook

The Brandon Bornancin Show

Hey Salespeople

Mario Martinez Jr

Matt Amundson

Aaron Ross

Jim Dickie

Richard Harris

Chris Orlob

Tom Whalen

Jon Miller

Tim Riesterer

Dan Gottlieb

David Dulany

Ralph Barsi

Rob Jeppsen

Anthony Iannarino

Steve Benson

OwlTail

Remote

By now, video calls and virtual team meetings are the new normal. And while transitioning from in-office work to WFH required making more adjustments than simply using Zoom, Kent Venook was ready. As Vice President of Global Sales Development at Talkdesk, Kent had already developed effective methods of remotely hiring and onboarding new SDRs -- the pandemic just made him get a little more creative with how he applied what he already knew to his SDR team. In this episode, Kent shares tactics he has found successful, such as promoting video-call power-hours and creating engaging check-ins. Visit SalesLoft.com for show notes and insights from this episode. 

By now, video calls and virtual team meetings are the new normal. And while transitioning from in-office work to WFH required making more adjustments than simply using Zoom, Kent Venook was ready. As Vice President of Global Sales Development at Talkdesk, Kent had already developed effective methods of remotely hiring and onboarding new SDRs -- the pandemic just made him get a little more creative with how he applied what he already knew to his SDR team. In this episode, Kent shares tactics he has found successful, such as promoting video-call power-hours and creating engaging check-ins. Visit <a href="http://SalesLoft.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">SalesLoft.com</a> for show notes and insights from this episode.

Transitioning Global SDR Teams to Remote with Kent Venook	

The Sales Acceleration Show Follow @GabeLarsen and @SteveEror on Twitter and LinkedIn: Steve Eror  - Gabe Larsen Apttus provides quote to cash solutions on the Apttus intelligence cloud. Since it's inception in 2006 Apttus has experienced rapid growth and was valued in 2016 at over one-billion dollars. Bootstrapping in the early days the company started with one and grew to 100 sales development reps in 18 months. Kent Venook, Director of Global Sales Development discusses his six lessons learned from accomplishing this amazing task. 1) Standardization of process In the early days, reps were each doing their own thing. It was more of a cowboy town than a well-oiled machine. Visualizing the process on a white-board and looking for areas of optimization, the team was able to move to a scalable process that each rep followed. 2) Key KPIs After a lot of debate, the team standardized on sales accepted opportunities as the primary metric to have sales development reps focus on. Although, Apttus runs an account-based model where sales development reps are closely tied to account executives, Kent decided not to listen to outside sources and pay his reps on ACV or revenue. Kent believes reps should be paid for things they can control and what they can be coached to improve. 3) Continued Training Kent set up a two-month onboarding program called the Sales Academy. Apttus is a robust product and Kent found he could train his people for a few days and let them try and figure it out for the next six months or train them for two months and them fully ramped by month three. 4) Management Team When Kent began he hired 60 reps so quickly that everybody reported to him. Looking for key characteristics and top performers, Kent quickly put in a management team that increased engagement and overall productivity for the team. 5) Don't be Afraid to Fail Testing is the name of the game. Try different things to increase productivity results and have fun with it. 6) Investment Great people and great teams don't get where they are alone. Realize that to get to an optimized state you will need a powerful sales stack.

<a href="http://www.insidesales.com/resources/podcast/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Sales Acceleration Show</a> Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/GabeLarsen" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@GabeLarsen</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/SteveEror" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@SteveEror</a> on Twitter and LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenerorjr" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Steve Eror</a> - <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabelarsen" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Gabe Larsen</a> <a href="http://www.apttus.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Apttus</a> provides quote to cash solutions on the Apttus intelligence cloud. Since it's inception in 2006 Apttus has experienced rapid growth and was valued in 2016 at over one-billion dollars. Bootstrapping in the early days the company started with one and grew to 100 sales development reps in 18 months. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kvenook" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Kent Venook</a>, Director of Global Sales Development discusses his six lessons learned from accomplishing this amazing task. 1) Standardization of process In the early days, reps were each doing their own thing. It was more of a cowboy town than a well-oiled machine. Visualizing the process on a white-board and looking for areas of optimization, the team was able to move to a scalable process that each rep followed. 2) Key KPIs After a lot of debate, the team standardized on sales accepted opportunities as the primary metric to have sales development reps focus on. Although, Apttus runs an account-based model where sales development reps are closely tied to account executives, Kent decided not to listen to outside sources and pay his reps on ACV or revenue. Kent believes reps should be paid for things they can control and what they can be coached to improve. 3) Continued Training Kent set up a two-month onboarding program called the Sales Academy. Apttus is a robust product and Kent found he could train his people for a few days and let them try and figure it out for the next six months or train them for two months and them fully ramped by month three. 4) Management Team When Kent began he hired 60 reps so quickly that everybody reported to him. Looking for key characteristics and top performers, Kent quickly put in a management team that increased engagement and overall productivity for the team. 5) Don't be Afraid to Fail Testing is the name of the game. Try different things to increase productivity results and have fun with it. 6) Investment Great people and great teams don't get where they are alone. Realize that to get to an optimized state you will need a powerful sales stack.

Lessons Learned from Scaling a 100 Person Sales Development Team at Apttus w/ Kent Venook