In this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast we are joined by Paul Melchiorre and Mark Petruzzi - authors of Selling the Cloud.

Paul has over 30 years of experience in enterprise sales leadership, at leading companies including Anaplan, Ariba, SAP, and now in Private Equity. Mark brings over 30 years of experience in strategic consulting firms including Deloitte, N3, Accenture and operating roles at Oracle, and Ultimate Software.

GRIT was the first topic we covered as a required attribute for every enterprise sales professional. Paul shared some of his best tips to identify grit during the interview process. Mark added the importance of passion as a critical component of the "WHY" behind grit.

We also discuss "process versus playbook", and why flexibility differentiates good versus great in the SaaS industry. Paul shares why he believes that no one sales methodology is that much better than another and that the primary benefit is the standardization of language while also maintaining the flexibility to embrace the reality of each company.

Playbooks that work at a large, established entity like Salesforce is most likely at a < $10M company without the same brand name recognition....flexibility is key.

My favorite topic was discussing why "Discovery" is the most important phase of the sales process. Being able to ask meaningful questions, listen to the answers, and learning everything possible about why the buyer will really buy by putting yourself in their shoes...and it's not about your product's feature/function.

Next, we discuss "3 Level Listening", which includes gathering data, identifying what is meaningful to the buyer, as an individual first before their company, and then applying it to your efforts. Mark shared how Charlie Green and his trusted advisor approach highlights the need to control your own ego, be present in listening, and focusing on truly understanding what the buyer is saying - active listening + thinking aloud.

Paul then shares why "balance" of performance across the entire sales organization is so critical to building a high-performance organization. Balance was defined as having at least 70%+ of sales reps hitting quota.

Finally, Mark shares the lessons he learned from Hollywood and why storytelling is so important to being a top-performing enterprise sales professional - especially customer stories!