Designing a Buyer-Centric Seller Experience with TJ Macke, SVP of Strategy at Sapper Consulting

Designing a Buyer-Centric Seller Experience with TJ Macke, SVP of Strategy at Sapper Consulting

TJ Macke, SVP of Strategy at Sapper Consulting

TJ Macke is the SVP of Strategy at Sapper Consulting, where he oversees go-to-market efforts, focusing on developing new products and partnerships. He is also the Operating Partner of SalesSource, a sales process optimization consulting firm that leverages sales processes, SaaS CRM, and cloud technologies to help companies structure their existing sales organizations to scale.

TJ started his career by founding multiple businesses, then worked in retail management, and has been in the world of operations for the past six years. TJ’s expertise and focus have been on optimizing sales, performance, and processes to help organizations accelerate their revenue growth.

In this episode, TJ talks about the evolving role of sales and what it takes to optimize a team in today’s digital-first and buyer-centric world.

Key Highlights:

5:20 – 11:24 – What Makes a Great Seller? – Great sellers follow an audience and know a group of buyers intimately well. No matter what solution they are selling, they are committed to that buyer. Often sellers are focused on their own products, but consistent and dynamic growth with teams and products happens when sellers focus on helping the customer solve a problem. That allows them to be consultative, guide the buying experience and earn trust.
11:24 – 14:21 – How Do We Design a Seller Experience to Be More Buyer-Centric? – A great RevOps team works like a Product Manager, advocating for the customer but in direct service of the sales reps. The best teams have an accessible and clearly documented process for prioritization and segmentation. A slight nuance in the way that the best teams are operating – rather than short term initiative focused, even if aligned with company metrics, the best teams operate with the mindset of how can I help my selling team forget the process so they can simply be focused on showing up for their buyers and helping them buy?
17:00 – 23:00 – Get Started – Start by interviewing your sales team and sellers, and document the actual process today. Then, reconcile that against what you’ve documented to find the breakdown between reality and what might be aspirational. Then you can align your priorities with where you want to drive improvements or change.
28:16 – 32:30 – An Evolutionary Inflection Point – Changes in Sales are being driven by rapid digitization and changes in buying preferences. Success requires an investment in a new approach and thoughtful operational discipline. Without a focus on Operational excellence, companies will disappear.

Who Would TJ Like to Take For Lunch?
Travis Henry, Sales Ops & Enablement at Snowflake

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Rate & Review OpsStars Podcast

“Great outbound is actually inspiring folks that there’s a better way to solve the problems that maybe they don’t even know they have. The best teams are able to do that and they’re equipped with a fantastic revenue operations discipline.”

TJ Macke, SVP of Strategy at Sapper Consulting

“A really powerful sales motion is equipped by the fact that the sales people don’t have to think about the motion, it’s invisible to them. It’s just something they participate in, like a fish in water.”

TJ Macke, SVP of Strategy at Sapper Consulting

“It’s an evolutionary inflection point for selling teams. They will either adopt this new focus on operational excellence and the intertwining of selling and buying, or in some period of time, maybe it’ll be a long time, 20 years, maybe a short time of 5 years, but these companies are going to go extinct if they aren’t able to adopt this discipline.”

TJ Macke, SVP of Strategy at Sapper Consulting

“Being able to consult, being able to guide the buying experience, and help people buy rather than selling, that’s what makes a great sales team.”

TJ Macke, SVP of Strategy at Sapper Consulting