Virtual Sales Talks: How Venatas Uses iSEEit to Enable Clients to Achieve 90% Forecast Accuracy

In this episode of our Virtual Sales Talks, we sit down with Steve Reid, Founder & CEO of Venatas to talk about the importance of having a disciplined approach in order to achieve a cohesive team, and how he uses iSEEit to enable his clients to operationalize MEDDIC on Salesforce in order to  achieve a forecast accuracy of 90%.

Watch the video below and find out why fast-growing need to follow a disciplined approach such as MEDDIC in order to scale, and how iSEEit can empower salespeople to visualize their entire sales process right within Salesforce and call their deals with confidence. A full transcript of this interview is also available.

In today’s episode we cover:

• Introduction to Venatas
• What Are Some Challenges Faced by Fast-Growing Companies?
• What Does Having a Disciplined Approach & Scaled Sales Process Mean?
• How Do You Implement Guidelines and Principles to Achieve a Cohesive Team?
• What Do You Like About MEDDIC?
• How Can Companies Operationalize MEDDIC on Salesforce?
• How Do You Use iSEEit to Establish a Sales Process?
• How Does iSEEit Contribute to the Overall Forecast Accuracy?
• Final Thoughts: How Can Different Companies Benefit from iSEEit?
• Implementing MEDDIC on Salesforce

Introduction to Venatas

Steve Reid: My name is Steve Reid and I’m a 30-year sales veteran and I’m the founder and CEO of Venatas. We like to say we’re a sales performance institute. The goal that we have is to come alongside companies that are looking for ways to improve their sales and revenue results. This could be done through a number of different service that we can provide like operational tuneups, change and enablement, strategies around how to go to market and messaging. The overall goal is that we want to work with clients who are ready to expand their revenue and find that growth engine for their operation.

What Are Some Challenges Faced by Fast-Growing Companies?

Steve Reid: What we often see is the way they’ve approached their selling rhythm that has gotten them there is not the same type of selling rhythm and processes that are going to help them scale. Often, these high-growth companies will receive some investment or funding from a VC or a private equity fund. Along with that money comes higher expectations for a disciplined approach to the way they approach a business across the board and sales is no different. Just like there have to be financial controls in place, there have to be ways that that organization looks to scale their sales processes.

What Does Having a Disciplined Approach & Scaled Sales Process Mean?

Steve Reid: One of the things that makes it difficult to lead a sales team is that you can find very gifted individuals through a structured hiring approach and then turn them loose on the market and let them go out and use their gifts to pursue sales opportunities with your natural customers. But what happens is, you don’t have a team approach.

So it’s really incumbent on the sales leader to determine:

• What is the ideal selling rhythm?
• What approach are we going to use to engage with our customers?
• How do we want to talk about every deal and opportunity?
• What are the element thats make up a good forecast?
• How can we be sure and confident in the numbers that we’re calling?

To do that, you need to have a way where you teach every salesperson to approach their own individual opportunities and then collectively, what you have is a cohesive team that operates under the same set of guidelines, using the same set of principles across every opportunity that you have within your sales pipeline.

How Do You Implement Guidelines and Principles to Achieve a Cohesive Team?

Steve Reid: I had a great sales leader who came from an organization that used MEDDIC and he taught MEDDIC to me and the rest of my sales colleagues when he joined our organization. We saw an immediate difference in the way our organization and sales team as a whole and us as individuals were able to approach our deals, win more and have more confidence around calling an accurate number.

What Do You Like About MEDDIC?

Steve Reid: There’s a couple of things I love about MEDDIC. Firstly, it is absolutely adaptable to different types of selling. Secondly, MEDDIC is very much a value-based selling type of methodology. MEDDIC creates this necessity to certainly use the judgment that you have as a salesperson, but to back that up by a set of activities, facts and data that you need to acquire in order to say “my feeling is correct because the things that I’ve done and the information that I’ve gathered support this feeling that I have”. That’s how you make accurate forecasts and calls, and also know what to do to pull a deal out of the fire into a win category.

How Can Companies Operationalize MEDDIC on Salesforce?

Steve Reid: I found a great tool as I was looking for a way to visualize MEDDIC in iSEEit. It’s purpose-built for tracking your progress along your MEDDIC path throughout every individual sales opportunity. As the tool has matured over the years that I’ve been using it, it is getting better and better at helping to validate where your sales opportunity is and giving you the confidence that you can make the forecasting calls that you’re making.

How Do You Use iSEEit to Establish a Sales Process?

Steve Reid: If you’re using a sales process, the ability to collect data on that process, use that data to inform where you are to make more precise decisions and then to visualize it in a way that is quickly referenceable so that anyone looking at it knows where you stand, that’s powerful.

Steve Reid: And for a sales leader, it’s a quick reference to help them know exactly what yo talk about on a deal. There are many things you can talk about, but let’s talk about the things that are important. Let’s talk about the things that still need to be done and the confidence you need to go and get in order to make this deal healthy and for me to be convinced that you understand where this deal really is and how to solve the problems to get it sold.

How Does iSEEit Contribute to the Overall Forecast Accuracy?

Steve Reid: What we’ve seen in organizations that have really embraced this idea and have done this well, is that they have seen forecast accuracy of more than 90% with maybe only a 5-7% variance between the early call and what winds up being the actual number that is delivered at the end of the quarter.

Final Thoughts: How Can Different Companies Benefit from iSEEit?

Steve Reid: Not every sales pursuit at every company is the same. The stages and requirements for entering and exiting certain stages are going have a different checklists and list of things to do for every orgainziation based on what you’re selling and who you’re selling to. I love that iSEEit is adaptable and configurable to your sales organization. You can create the milestones and checklist of items that are going to add up to turning each individual MEDDIC value green and healthy for that individual sales deal.

Implementing MEDDIC on Salesforce

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