Kunal Laroia

Most initiatives fail to even get off the ground because the systems we use don't align to how people think or how people operate. Your underutilized enablement tech stack and exhausted enablement playbooks both have one thing in common – they're 1:many, assuming everybody is on the same flight path... they're not. I get it, there's not enough resources in the world to effectively coach in the way that reps need to improve outcomes. Even if everybody used the tech and every manager coached, it still wouldn't work. That's what we explore in this video. The solution is what we're calling Performance Coaching. It's where we coach on individual deals and real time need, by using the macro playbooks we want reps to adopt. It's about going to them, to their motivation and need, not pulling them away from what they care about and trying to force them into your world.

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Most sellers struggle at capturing metrics M123 They’ll note the challenge, they’ll pitch the solution, but they might not capture the result. Or worse, they fill SFDC with results that sound like marketing copy instead of customer- spoken language. This is where your coaching comes in. CSR (Challenge, Solution, Result) is a nimble storytelling framework suited for coaching metrics When a seller is forced to quantify results with metrics, it help them to ask better questions • C What was broken? • S What did we fix? • R By how much? If you don’t coach your team here, you end up with fluffy “we helped them save time” answers that nobody can use in a business case, let alone a board-level case study. An APAC SaaS leader I am working with has intriguingly flipped this around. He has pushed down and stopped forecasting deals that don’t include key metrics. He wants his teams capturing hard data: 37% reduction in man processing $1.2M in avoided costs 18% faster onboarding 9 weeks TTV 3% increase in NPS Such metrics later power CS case studies, executive-win stories, and ultimately, stronger pipeline credibility. The lesson is simple. If your sellers don’t know how to use CSR with metrics in their deal conversations, you’re robbing yourself of the raw material you’ll need to prove impact later. Coach your team to capture metrics now, tomorrow, the next meet while the customer’s memory is fresh. Otherwise, by the time you want a case study, you’ll be left with nothing but ‘anecdotes’. Here’s where your coaching makes the difference Challenge • What was the customer’s problem in their own words? • How were they measuring that problem before we showed up? • What was the cost of leaving it unsolved? Solution • What exactly did we deliver ..not the product “, but the business fix? • How does the customer describe the solution’s impact? • Who inside their org said, “this changes things by x” Result • Which metrics prove the fix worked? • Who owns those numbers inside the customer’s business? • How do those numbers ladder up to something the Economic Buyer cares about? • If you had to put one result on a slide for a board meeting, which metric would you choose? (Love this one) Final acid test: • Could we take your answers today, strip out the company name, and drop them into a case study tomorrow? If your sellers can’t answer these questions crisply, they aren’t capturing metrics. That’s an important gap you need to coach them out of .. = / = / = / = / = / = Metrics: Day 5 of 7 tomorrow 🗓️ ... off climbing 🧗‍♀️ TGIF !! Follow me for a daily teaching moment on MEDDPICC, deal reviews, and sales coaching - Mark ☘️ 😎

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The best leadership training I ever got came from a role where I had zero authority. RevOps. In RevOps, if you want anything to change, like how pipeline stages are defined, how handoffs work, or how the forecast gets built, you have to convince people who don’t report to you. Often people who are more senior than you. There’s no title to lean on and no org chart to hide behind. It’s a pretty effective forcing function. Three things it taught me that still shape how I lead today: 1. Lead with data, not opinion. A well-constructed model cuts through a lot of debate. It shifts the conversation away from opinions and toward what the numbers actually show. 2. Influence compounds through trust. You build it slowly by being right, being consistent, and following through. You lose it quickly by overpromising or making things political. 3. Start with their problem. If you want someone to care about a process change, show them how it helps them hit their number. Start there, not with what you need. Today I’m a VP of Sales, so technically I have the authority I didn’t have before. But I’ve found I use it far less than I expected. The best outcomes I’ve seen still come from the same playbook: show the data, build trust, and connect the change to what the other person cares about. Authority helps you make decisions but influence is what actually moves people. RevOps taught me that distinction earlier than most get the chance to learn it.

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Thinking of going upmarket? Few know how to rebuild their ops to support it ZoomInfo did. From 50/50 Enterprise/SMB to roughly 70/30. 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗼𝗻 𝗿𝗲-𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗚𝗧𝗠 - Enterprise was under-resourced - Outbound was set up for SMB - ICP needed to be redefined - Pipeline needed re-composition - Reps needed different kinds of support 𝗝𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗥𝗼𝘁𝗵 𝘄𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝘂𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝗶𝘁 - James is the CRO at ZoomInfo - He joined us on the GTM Science podcast - And held nothing back 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗱𝗶𝗱 𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗜, 𝗯𝘂𝗱𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗿𝗲-𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻, 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 - Fully enriched accounts - Signal-prioritized lists - Signal-validated targeting - Stronger ICP customer base - AI talk tracks per vertical - Enterprise fully resourced 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁? 𝟮𝟱 𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝘁 The graphic below is the summary. Tomorrow's newsletter is the full breakdown. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘄𝘀𝗹𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 - How they validated which signals actually matter - 3 fixes that led to a 25-point conversion lift - Why they did all of this without a bigger budget If you're thinking about going upmarket, or you've started and the machine isn't keeping up, this one's for you. Subscribe to get it here: https://bit.ly/49RCm0h Or listen on the podcast "How ZoomInfo Re-Engineered GTM to Shift Upmarket" Spotify 👉 https://bit.ly/4b28Nwn Apple 👉 https://apple.co/3y8lch6 ✌️

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🚀 How Rev Ops Teams Nail Strategic and Tactical Success 💡 I was really surprised by how so many Rev Ops pros are still wrestling with showing their impact while juggling strategic and tactical work. If you’re feeling randomized or struggling to prove your team’s value, you’re not alone! Here’s the no-fluff, no-gate approach I use to keep my team aligned and driving results every quarter. (And yes, it works for teams of 5 or 500!) 👇 1️⃣ Set the North Star: Share quarterly leadership (xLT) goals with the team. Clear direction = focused effort. 2️⃣ Ideate with Purpose: Ask everyone to write a 1-pager on what they believe will move the needle most. No need for Pulitzer-worthy writing here - use the voice to text to get your idea out and edit —just clear ideas on why it’s worth our time. 3️⃣ Collaborate, Don’t Compete: We review everyone’s ideas together. No “gotcha” moments—just open feedback and spotting opportunities to amplify impact through adjacencies. 4️⃣ Prioritize Ruthlessly: Collectively decide on the highest-impact initiatives. Then, we go do it. No further approvals needed. If we find out it’s wrong, stop. Move onto the next thing. Don’t throw good time effort and energy after that. 5️⃣ Stay Transparent: Bi-weekly “Ship/No Ship” emails keep stakeholders in the loop. Key updates are above the fold for quick reads, with details for those who want to dig in. It’s not about bragging—it’s about clarity: what worked, what didn’t, and what we’re learning. 6️⃣ Balance the Ad-Hoc: We reserve a % of time for ops, BI, tooling, and KTLO (keep-the-lights-on) work. If KTLO creeps too high, anyone on the team has my backing to challenge it with a lightweight business case. Can’t agree? Escalate to leadership with a zero-pressure process. 7️⃣ Share the Journey: Wins, losses, lessons, funny playlists, Batman jokes, Sabrina carpenter songs you get stuck in your head even though you don’t actually listen to Sabrina Carpenter…lay it all bare. How else do we grow? 💡 Pro Tip: This framework scales! For larger teams, tweak meeting cadences, but the core stays the same. What’s your take? What’s missing from this approach, or what do you do differently to keep your Rev Ops team firing on all cylinders? Drop your thoughts below—I’m all ears! 👇 #RevOps #BusinessImpact #Leadership #Teamwork #StrategyMeetsExecution

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Do you know how many categories of sales operations software exist today? A few? Five? Try ten... and each one solves a different problem for sales teams. I just published a full guide covering everything from CRM and forecasting tools to automation, enablement, and more. If you ever wondered "What tools should a modern sales ops team actually use?" - this one is for you. I also explain how to choose the right setup depending on your sales ops maturity, CRM limitations, and forecasting needs. Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/dS_W8zC3

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Mindset isn’t a one-time shift. It’s a daily discipline. Top sales teams and leaders aren’t just skilled. They’re mentally conditioned. They don’t wait for confidence. They build it through habits, self-awareness, and coaching. Because in high-pressure moments, it’s not just your skills that matter. It’s your perspective. This is where sales enablement and coaching make the difference. 
Not just in what people do, but in how they think and respond under pressure: ✅ Teams with this mindset thrive in change
✅ They sustain performance, not just hit quota
✅ They show up and level up consistently Mindset is a performance multiplier. 
And when it becomes part of the culture, the impact scales across teams and the business. It’s time we stop treating mindset work as optional and start recognizing it as a core driver of high performance.

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Your biggest customer just announced a merger. Your renewal is in 90 days. Time to start planning your replacement revenue because that renewal is fucked. M&A kills more renewals than feature gaps or pricing ever will. Of course, it ain't because customers hate you, but because their org chart just exploded and you're about to find out your champion now reports to someone who brought their own vendors. Budgets consolidate. Procurement standardizes on whatever the bigger company already uses. And you're not competing on value anymore. You're competing with inertia, politics, and systems integration costs that make switching look like a nightmare even if your product is better. This came up in a Sales Assembly CS Peer Group last month when a CS leader shared they'd lost three major renewals in the same quarter. All M&A related. All preventable if they'd seen it coming. Another leader chimed in with a system they've built to help mitigate this stuff, and I thought it was brilliant: 1. First, they track it. Every quarter, they're updating a simple list: which customers are involved in M&A activity, when does their renewal hit relative to the deal close, what's happening with their decision makers, and does the other entity use a competitor. If you're not tracking this, you're gonna get blindsided when that Q4 number falls apart. 2. Second, they build early warning systems. Google Alerts on every major customer for "acquisition" and "merger." LinkedIn monitoring for executive changes. Because a new CRO or CFO means they're renegotiating every vendor relationship. And if you find out about the merger from a press release the same day your champion does, you're already behind. 3. Third, they move fast based on risk level. If the renewal is six-plus months post-M&A close, you've got time. Executive outreach within 48 hours. Offer transition support. Document value. Map the new org chart. But if that renewal lands before or during the M&A close? You're in the shit. Get your C-level talking to their C-level. Offer early renewal with multi-year lock-in. Build contract flexibility for the chaos that's coming. Waiting around to "see how the integration shakes out" is how you lose accounts you spent years building. That CS leaders team tracked 18 customers through M&A situations over two years. Without this framework, historical retention was 31%. With it, they kept 67%. Same customers, same M&A bonkersness. Different outcome because they controlled the narrative before procurement did. Now, you might think this is a bit of overkill. But with all the M&A in the space, you might just wanna build this specific type of churn into your model like any other risk factor. Keep in mind that your board doesn't want to hear "we didn't see the merger coming." They want to hear "we retained 67% of M&A-impacted accounts because we had the right relationships in place."

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Unpopular truth: 90% of your GTM pain isn’t the tech. It’s selling to the wrong human inside the partner org. You close the “Head of Partnerships” → they can’t get it past Product. You close the CTO → Eng treats it like a side quest. The only person who matters is the one whose OKRs live or die by shipping your integration. Find that person first. Everything else is noise.

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𝗖𝗦𝗠𝘀 - 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗞𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗼𝗳𝗳 In SaaS world, SKO is the annual pilgrimage that Sales & CS undertake. I have been to many and I love SKOs. If CSM don't pay attention at Sales kick-off, they usually pay for it at renewal. Most people treat SKO as a paid vacation. Flights to Vegas or Orlando. Big stages. Loud music. Everyone talking about "winning the year." Most people fly home with swag, memories, and perhaps a hangover. Smart CSMs fly home with leverage. Here are some ideas to steal while everyone else is clapping: 𝟭. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 "𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝗖𝘂𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆": On stage, leadership reveals what they really care about. Is the new obsession speed-to-value? Risk reduction? Cost takeout? Pay attention to the math, not the slogans. If you use that same logic in your QBRs, you aren’t "reporting"—you are speaking the company’s language. 𝟮. 𝗔𝘂𝗱𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗼𝗮𝗱𝗺𝗮𝗽 for "Who," not "Wow" New features look exciting on the big screen. Your job is to be pragmatic. While the slide is still up, ask: Which of my customers needs this right now? If you can’t name the account immediately, that roadmap item is noise. Move on. 𝟯. 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 "𝗙𝗶𝘅𝗲𝗿" 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸: SKO is the only time everyone is in one room. Don't waste it gossiping with other CSMs. Go talk to:  • Implementation leaders (who know where projects break).  • Top AEs (who know how to frame value).  • Value Ops (who own the ROI models). These are the allies who will clear obstacles for you in May. 𝟰. 𝗢𝗯𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻  Top reps don’t sell features. They sell contrast. Before vs. After. Chaos vs. Control. Capture their specific anecdotes. These become your best weapons later when a renewal feels "stuck" for no obvious reason. 𝟱. 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗚𝗼𝗮𝗹𝘀:  When the CEO says "We’re going big on Enterprise Expansion," don’t wait for your manager to translate it. Ask yourself: Which two accounts am I grooming for that story right now? That is how strategic CS actually shows up. 𝟲. 𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗝𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗣𝗶𝘁𝗰𝗵 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀. 𝗤𝘂𝗶𝘇𝘇𝗲𝘀. 𝗢𝗻-𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘀. 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗲. A CSM who can articulate value clearly in front of Sales and Leadership stops being seen as "post-sales support" and starts being seen as a revenue partner. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗼𝗺 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗲: Stop treating Sales Kickoff like training. It is where the company rehearses the story CS will be held accountable for all year. Most people fly home with swag. Smart CSMs fly home with leverage. #CustomerSuccess

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RevOps friends. You need this knowledge. 🧠 Every once in a while, someone breaks down the GTM landscape so clearly that it resets how you think about your entire motion. That’s what 🐰 Jen Igartua, CEO of Go Nimbly, did in this session. If you’re in RevOps, sales, marketing, or anywhere near GTM efficiency, this will hit you at the exact right time. Here’s a quick peek at what you’ll take away: 🔥 Golden Age of RevOps Why rising expectations are actually a tailwind. 🔥 Build vs buy clarity Where DIY works and where it becomes a trap. 🔥 AI that matters Real-time savings. 🔥 Data readiness truths Bad data breaks everything. Clean data unlocks everything. 🔥 Role evolution How SDRs, sellers, and operators are shifting in 2025. This replay will make you think differently about your stack, your workflows, and your team. Get the full sesh 👉 https://lnkd.in/eDEriHhj Big shoutout to 🏄🏼‍♂️ Scott Leese and 🤙Neil Weitzman for hosting a 24-hour Sales Marathon! You're insane! #saywhatsales #sellbetter #MidnighttoMillions #RevOps, #sales, #marketing #GTM #efficiency

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If your CSMs think like Account Managers, you’ll retain revenue. If they think like CEOs, you’ll multiply it. Let me explain Most CSMs are trained to serve customers. Few are empowered to lead outcomes. Account Managers ask, “How can I help?” CEO minded CSMs ask, “What is blocking your growth this quarter?” The difference? One reacts to problems. The other shapes strategy. When your team starts thinking like CEOs  • They stop chasing renewals and start owning business impact.  • They connect customer goals to product investments.  • They turn every QBR into a boardroom conversation. That’s when Customer Success shifts from being a cost center to a growth multiplier. I once worked with a CSM who turned a renewal conversation into a co-innovation deal not by upselling but by reframing the value her customer was missing. That single move added $1.2M in expansion ARR. That’s what happens when your CSMs stop managing accounts and start running portfolios. The future belongs to commercially confident, product fluent, growth focused CSMs; the ones who lead with business acumen, not activity reports. If you are building your next gen CS org Are your CSMs being trained to think like operators or like CEOs?

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When agents can talk directly to your apps through an MCP server, everything changes. Instead of a human jumping between Salesforce, Airtable, etc... an agent can do it autonomously: Summarize call transcripts for target accounts from Gong Pass those summaries to Inflection to create custom segments Draft a target account campaign based on these custom segments No brittle integrations. No copy-paste workflows. No “please log in and click this button.” The agent just acts — safely, deterministically, and across systems via multiple MCP servers.

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