The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 38 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Goldberg: Traditional Customer Success teams act as support, not strategic drivers
“They're really, a lot of customer success organizations are really a first line for support because they're hanging out with the people. Remember I told you about, they're hanging out with the people that they sold the first product to, and they're just answer…”
Goldberg: RevOps is probably the most valuable role in a company
“I think revenue office is probably the most valuable role in a company.”
Goldberg: Reps misuse MEDDPICC frameworks as simple checkbox exercises
“When you talk about med pick and you talk about medic, a lot of people check boxes there. You can't let them check boxes. You've got to be able to ask the questions like we're talking about right now to ensure that that person really, truly is a champion of ch…”
Goldberg: A champion leaving is not a valid excuse for losing a deal
“No, it's not a good excuse because there's never just like one champion. There's multiple people as part of the process.”
Goldberg: Most tech sales reps from past decade aren't ready for performance focus
“I don't think they are. I think there's a set of people that are. I think there's a broader set of people that are not.”
Goldberg: Performance-Driven Cultures Inevitably Prompt Negative Glassdoor Reviews
“You've gotta be a performance-driven culture, and you're gonna get some challenging Glassdoor reviews out there. You're gonna get people saying some negative things, but you gotta commit to it.”
Goldberg: CEOs should sell vision, not act as deal-closing sales reps
“Well, one, CEOs should never be RVPs. They should never be the ones that are actually closing deals. That, that's my job. What they, CEOs should give the customer the confidence about our vision and what we are doing as a company.”
Goldberg: Salesloft reached $50M revenue before creating formal sales processes
“We were about, you know, fifty million in revenue, and, you know, we got there early on by just being so passionate about what we do. And, but we didn't have a process. We were really great about talking about our product and our functionality, and we were a p…”
Goldberg: CFOs are now the primary buyer for every software renewal
“The CFO is the buyer now for every renewal. If you don't, if you're not showing them insights around business value, then you're not going to be renewed.”
Goldberg: AI will eventually replace transactional and inbound sales roles
“I think there'll be parts of the market that it does replace, like maybe more some of the transactional business maybe some of kind of inbound capabilities, but I think we're a bit away from that.”
Goldberg: B2B tech sales market shifted to performance-driven in late 2023
“The market has changed from a nurturing market to a performance-driven market, and that's happened probably over the last six to nine months.”
Goldberg: Enterprise buyers operate as politicians; SMB buyers as operators
“Now, if you sell to an enterprise company, like a large enterprise company, they're politicians. You sell to a smaller SMB commercial company, they're operators. And two very different ways to sell to them.”
Goldberg: Enterprise contacts claiming to be the buyer usually aren't
“If they tell you they're the buyer, people will usually tell you they're the buyer. They typically aren't.”
Goldberg: Target enterprise champions on their way up, not out
“Politicians in very large companies are always trying to find their next way up. So you've got to find people that are on their way up, not on their way out.”
Goldberg: Big enterprise deals always require an internal change agent
“If most people out there, they look at the deals they've done, the big deals they've done, they've always had a change agent in there that's driving through the process, that's navigating through their own process.”
Goldberg: Enterprise change agents are often mid-level leaders seeking promotion
“The economic buyer could be the CFO, but the change agent could be a senior director of revenue operations who wants to be a vice president or a senior vice president who wants to make a mark on something because they believe it so much that they're going to d…”
Steve Goldberg: First-line managers must own sales deal reviews
“So, so one, it's really that the first line manager needs to own the deal reviews. They need to own the process. My job is to design and architect the whole raw system that people work within.”
Steve Goldberg: Sales teams need buyer mutual plans locked by mid-quarter
“You look at order charts, but by the middle of the quarter, at some point, what I usually lock in on by the middle of the quarter, we have to have agreed upon mutual plans in place and alignment on how we actually get to the end of the quarter. And then we hav…”
Steve Goldberg: First-line sales managers are the most vital part of sales execution
“The first line manager is the most important kind of aspect of any process, because they're the ones that have to be having the one-on-ones weekly and daily.”
Goldberg: Repeated Sales Misses Are a First-Line Manager Accountability Problem
“If it happens once, ok, if it happens twice, now you start to get some consistency in the same people that are missing it multiple times. Then you got to start looking at the first line managers like, well, how are you missing this?”
Salesloft conducts two- to three-hour topgrading interviews for every job candidate
“And what we do in our interview process, one of the most valuable things, is we do top grades with everybody, and in a top grade, we'll spend two to three hours with you, and we'll have you walk us through your life,”
Companies Buy Solutions for Major Problems Outside Standard Budget Cycles
“When you have problems, And there's change going on. People solve big, big problem, and they will solve it outside of their budget cycle.”
Salesloft replaced its hunter-farmer sales structure with a hunter-hunter model
“So we shifted to a hunter-hunter model. And we shifted our process, and we basically told our account managers, essentially, that everyone's, we had to change the profile of a salesperson, of an AM, to a hunter. And everybody had an interview for their role, a…”
Goldberg: Integrate Customer Success into pre-sales to build buyer confidence
“You have to bring the CS team into the selling process.”
Goldberg: Churn happens when software vendors lose access to key executive buyers
“He probably believes, and I believe this as well, that a lot of times when things aren't, when you're losing customers is you lose access to the buyer. If you lose access to the people of power, because you do a deal, you're up here.”
Goldberg: RevOps leaders will increasingly evolve into CRO roles
“And you're going to start to see the evolution of RevOps be moving into the CRO world. When you start bringing data and science together.”
Salesloft replaced usage metrics with pipeline outcomes to drive renewals
“We've changed our whole adoption strategy to outcomes versus adoption, because nobody cares if I come to you and say, here's how many logins you have, here's how many activities you had.”
Steve Goldberg: Founders in crowded SaaS markets must focus on 'how', not 'what'
“You got to focus on the how. And you got to stay maniacally focused on the how. And you got to talk about what, how you are delivering for your customers. A lot of companies focus on the what.”
Steve Goldberg: Contract structure matters more than total price in SaaS deals
“So no, this should never be a flat no, but I care more about what's in the contract than how much they're paying us.”
Goldberg: Salesloft rarely relies on a single salesperson for deal accounts
“What's really important is that you're not single thread in an account, and you've got your managers and all the different people. I call it selling as a team sport. Our organization, I've never been in an environment where it's, here's, here's your territory.…”
Goldberg: Top relationship sales reps fail to close without tough conversations
“Like I've had some of the best sellers in the world when I was a first line manager, they were the best relationship people, the best, but they couldn't close because they couldn't have the tough conversation.”
Goldberg: Old-School Relationship Selling Tactics Like Golfing and Corporate Lunches Are Dead
“The adage of let's go golfing and let's go and hang out on the weekends and go and all those things are just like, not as I think people look at their time. And I think that that's changing a bit in terms of like all the different lunches and, you know, the go…”
Goldberg: Creative deal closing requires mutual financial skin in the game
“So creativity could be around how you know, financially structure something that shows that it's a win-win for both of us, where you may have to put, both have to put some skin in the game to come together on how you're going to work together to solve the prob…”
Goldberg: Sales professionals rush promotions before mastering their current roles
“Don't move until you're ready to move. Some people move too quick, because if I did that too quick, I couldn't give the advice I give to people, because I've lived their roles, I lived in those roles, and I think it's really important that people try to move o…”
Steve Goldberg: Marc Benioff cultivated a culture of perfection at Salesforce
“He cultivated such a culture of, like, perfection, that people wanted to win for him, and he cultivated so many incredible leaders, And that company just had such an incredible sales process.”