Focusing on the Fundamentals with Paul Ohls
Paul Ohls is the Chief Revenue Officer at Sprinklr. He has had a successful career in sales leadership, working at companies like Aerotech, Ariba, NuScale, Zillent, Lattice Engines, Medallia, Fuse, tenfold, and now Sprinklr. In this conversation with John McMahon, Paul shares his insights on sales leadership and the importance of hiring the right people. He emphasizes the need for intelligent, driven, and coachable individuals who can ask insightful questions and think critically. Paul also discusses the challenges of forecasting and the importance of focusing on the fundamentals. He highlights the value of understanding the customer's pain points and aligning the solution with their objectives. Additionally, Paul emphasizes the need for a strong pipeline and the importance of conversion rates in driving sales success. HERE ARE SOME KEY SECTIONS TO CHECK OUT [00:02:11] - Overview of Sprinkler and its purpose [00:07:16] - Testing for key characteristics in potential hires [00:24:23] - Focus on testing and optimizing fundamentals in the sales process [00:30:06] - Enabling the team to have a realistic view of their forecast [00:35:45] - Considering the stage of new deals and their likelihood of closing [00:38:56] - Diagnosing reasons for consistently high forecasts. [00:40:12] - Implicated pain and alignment with decision criteria indicate a committable deal. [00:42:07] - Differentiating recruiting process through sales manager pipeline generation. [00:44:35] - Using a simulation exercise to assess candidate skills and fit. [00:54:40] - Key KPIs for decision-making: leading indicators and conversion rates. ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Learn more about Paul Ohls: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulohls/overlay/about-this-profile/ Download our Sales Transformation Guide for Leaders: https://forc.mx/3sdtEZJ HIGHLIGHT QUOTES [00:19:38] "If you've done the right things and you truly are connected to a corporate objective, if you think about the concept of a value pyramid, those handful of things that are at the top of that value pyramid, oftentimes the things that the C level CEO has promised Wall Street, has promised investors. We aspire to go from X to Y. We are making acquisitions. We got to monetize those acquisitions, those acquisitions, these, these big things. If you have started there and your solution is you can make a direct correlation between what you are working with your champion on. To the inability of a company to deliver upon those things at the top of the value pyramid, the CFO meeting should be relative, like a relatively easy thing to do." - Paul Ohls [00:55:34] “What we ask our leaders to do is we call it sales manager or sales leader PG. So we're asking pipeline generation. For those that don't know what that means. We ask sellers and other people in the ecosystem to dedicate time. To go build their pipeline on future deals, block out the world, spend your time doing this set of work in a defined period every single week." - Paul Ohls