It’s Here – The New Era of Sales! with Mary Shea, Global Innovation Evangelist at Outreach

It’s Here – The New Era of Sales! with Mary Shea, Global Innovation Evangelist at Outreach

Mary Shea, Global Innovation Evangelist at Outreach

In this episode, Rachael is joined by Mary Shea, Global Innovation Evangelist at Outreach, the first and only sales execution platform that helps revenue teams bring intelligence to workflows, unlock full visibility across the entire revenue cycle, and commit forecasts with confidence. Previously she was a Principal Analyst at Forrester, where she led research and authored the inaugural Forrester Wave for the Sales Engagement category.

Now with Outreach, Mary conducts thought-provoking research on the sales technology landscape, the future of buying and selling, and the criticality of having a diverse, equitable, and inclusive B2B sales organization. She is also the co-host of the Revenue Innovators podcast.

She joins us today to share insights on the new era of sales and why leaders are focused on new strategies, technology, training, diversity, equity, and inclusion to set their organizations up for success.

Key Highlights:

5:06 – 8:58 – The Emergence of the Sales Engagement Category – As an analyst at Forrester, Mary followed the sales engagement space closely and sensed that it would become a transformational space. During her time in that category, Outreach stood out to her for their leadership, commitment to innovation, and company culture. Last year she decided she wanted to experience that from the inside and joined them.
8:59 – 12:13 – Diversity Drives Sales Success – Mary references a recent report commissioned by LinkedIn that finds that sales teams with leading DEI practices have higher conversion rates, sales attainment, and customer satisfaction scores. She believes companies that are committed to DEI will also win the best talent as we continue “the great resignation”.
12:13 – 16:58 – A New Era Of Sales – Mary partnered with Forrester to conduct research to understand how B2B sales leaders were thinking about talent, skills, and technology as an enabling force for selling and buying, and how they’ve adapted to the pandemic over the last two years. Was this shift creating more urgency for digital transformation, even in legacy companies who didn’t see a need before? Read the full report and findings here.
16:59 – 23:04 – Today’s Required Skills for Sellers and Sales Managers – Sales leaders across all types of companies understand that their role has changed, and so have the roles of sellers. Today’s sellers need to be technologically adept, and managers must be able to understand data. Companies are now investing greatly in skillset development.
23:05 – 28:00 – Revenue Operations is a Great Place To Be – Organizations that embrace a data-driven approach will have a competitive differentiation from others. The most important role a new CRO should hire for is the Head of Revenue Operations. This will be the number one person to support CROs, CFOs, CCOs, and to break down silos across the different revenue teams to get everyone operating and making decisions based on the same data. Mary could see revenue operations having a C-level title in the future based on the importance of the role.
28:00 – 34:35 – Sales Tech Mayhem – We’re seeing a lot of consolidation in the sales tech industry, and sales leaders are often looking to consolidate their tech stack. They no longer want multiple point solutions, it’s a race for the platform. Mary believes that the role of the CRM will evolve into more of a backend single source of truth, rather than the system that revenue team members operate in every day.
34:36 – 37:21 – How to Better Value Women in Sales – First look at how diverse your board is and your executive team. Job seekers want to see that representation. Then look at your interview and promotion process. Do you use inclusive language in job descriptions and take a position on pay equity? There’s a lot more work to do!
37:21 – 38:49 – Advice for Someone Just Getting into Operations – First, continue learning – take courses, listen to podcasts. Second, hone in on your soft skills, it’s not enough to analyze data. You’ve then got to be able to tell stories with data and influence a wide range of constituents.

Episode Resources

Talk to the Host

You can send any other podcast recommendations, questions to ask, episode feedback, guest requests, or general pleasantries to Rachael’s email or tweet
@ Rachael!

Rate & Review OpsStars Podcast

“Organizations that have a diverse leadership team, board, and workforce are consistently outperforming those that don’t”

Mary Shea, Global Innovation Evangelist at Outreach

“The lead story for me was when I asked them, “What are the most important attributes for a seller?” Number one, and this was quite a bit above the other ones, was that they were technology-adept and had digital capabilities. That came in front of relationship-builder, creative problem-solver, industry expertise, and value-based approach.”

Mary Shea, Global Innovation Evangelist at Outreach

“The most important hire for a new CRO or a CRO that’s taking on a big role is that VP, Head of Revenue Operations who can make sense of all the data, who can break down silos between customer success, sales, marketing, get the organization operating off of a single set of robust data, and then creating the analytics and dashboards to allow for real-time, great decision making. I think the Ops person right now is in the catbird seat because they are going to be the number one person to support the Chief Revenue Officer, the CFO, the COO and they’re going to be breaking down silos.”

Mary Shea, Global Innovation Evangelist at Outreach