SalesTechStar Interview with George Mogannam, Chief Revenue Officer at SnapLogic

What does it take to build a customer-centric sales culture that ensures productivity and increased ROI? George Mogannam, Chief Revenue Officer at SnapLogic shares some thoughts in this Q&A:

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Hi George, we’d love to hear about your journey in sales through the years…how are you seeing the role of the typical salesperson and Chief Revenue Officer in this market change today…?

 The selling environment has changed dramatically. Over the past year, there’s been no face-to-face gatherings, no in-person meetings or connections. Sales representatives have had to get more creative about how they go about building a pipeline. There are more virtual events, and more email campaigns – but at the same time, traditional phone outreach still remains just as important as before.

As a CRO, it’s important to remember that COVID cannot be an excuse for not doing what’s needed to generate sales and results. The variables may have changed, but they did for everyone. Everyone in sales has simply had to find new ways to be successful.

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Take us through some of your biggest sales learnings from your time in tech: a few biggest moments that drove key sales learnings during the pandemic as well?

 In my career, I became known as the person that did whatever it took to be successful. Took on the tough clients, the troubled regions, etc. I have always had that drive to do whatever was needed to win business and it helped move my career forward tremendously.

When I moved to management, however, I thought my job was to teach other sales reps how to repeat my successes. I soon came to understand that I didn’t really know much about sales management after all. Understanding that there’s a difference between selling, trying out the latest trends and creating an actual program to drive sales is an important step for those moving from sales to management to understand.

And some highlights on some proven sales methodologies that have always derived sales success through the years?

Always identify the business pain. Why is the customer doing what they’re doing? Quantify the problem, then figure out what the positive business outcome would be and show them how you can solve it. Don’t sell technology, sell solutions to business pain.

In addition, always drive a common language within your sales department, whereby when a sales rep says something or you say something it means the same thing. This is most critical around deal qualification and forecasting. A common language eliminates confusion and aligns expectations throughout the organization.

How do you feel today’s sales leaders need to revisit their sales processes and choice of salestech to empower their teams more effectively while being remote?

Remote or not, you’re still accountable for doing your job. You’re still expected to generate pipeline, deals, and revenue. The only different thing is how you go about the process.

There are several new technologies to help sales reps do their jobs more successfully and efficiently. Tools that help reps research new companies, and the buyer personas within those companies, are very valuable. However, if you allow tech to drive how you run sales, you will ultimately fail. As an organization, you need to prioritize and invest in the enablement of sales people and hone their sales skills. You can then layer supporting tech on top of this baseline foundation.

Can you talk about some of the top sales solutions over the years that have helped you drive better business outcomes?

 Some of the most important sales technologies created have been around research tools – the ability to give sales reps the power to quickly and easily research companies and prospects. Tools like Zoom.info, Discover.org and LinkedIn have proved to be invaluable.

In addition, the best of these tech solutions are embedding AI capabilities, enabling machine learning in the background to help surface new intelligence that would otherwise require laborious, time-intensive manual work.

How, according to you, will the future of revenue operations and sales engagement in a digital buying world evolve?

As an enterprise company, there are marketplaces in which you should participate, such as Amazon Marketplace, where your customers can get access to your technology quickly and easily. You have to go to where and how people are buying and accessing products. Even in a B2B play, you need to be present in these current and future marketplaces.

A few thoughts on what you feel today’s sales and revenue leaders need to do to motivate, train and uplift their teams to optimize business and sales performance, and the sales technologies you feel sales teams should have more of?

There are things you must have in place in a sales organization. What type of person do you need for the stage your company is in? Are you late-stage, early-stage, mature or something else? You need to hire the right profile of sales rep to fit your needs.

Next, you need to enable them. Not teach them how to sell – because you hire quality, experienced people – but teach them how to sell your solution. Help them learn to identify what the ideal customer profile is, what their pain-point is, how your technology addresses it, and what processes can be repeated (what messaging works best for that particular pain point, for example). It’s all about enabling the sales organization to be effective, productive, and not waste time.

Sales culture – and how you create and drive it – is very important. For me, it’s being highly accountable with no excuses. Don’t allow excuses to come into play. If a rep, for example, says that we lost a deal because our technology doesn’t have a specific feature – I typically reply with the idea that they’ve simply been outsold. You didn’t play up our strengths enough, while the competitor played up theirs, and made the fight about the feature we didn’t have. You need to frame the sales conversation for the customer and lead the witness, so to speak, while not allowing a competitor to do the same. This approach lets sales reps quickly know that they’re not getting an easy pass for any missed sales.

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