What makes a sales job fulfilling?
Is it a clear pathway for career growth? What about opportunities for learning and advancement? Or maybe it’s a team environment that ensures you’re never going it alone?
When you consider the fact that the average sales rep tenure is 18 months long — half the length it was a decade ago — it’s clear that sales teams need to create an environment that provides more than just a worthwhile commission check.
At local companies Immersive Labs and Panorama Education, for example, sales leaders are proud of the sales environments they’re a part of, which have created reason enough for them to stay and contribute to the culture.
“Whether you are an SDR or a VP, everyone feels confident that their voices are both heard and valued when there is a more effective or efficient way of doing things,” Chris Doney, senior director of revenue operations at Immersive Labs, said.
“We’re a group of many former educators and folks who are passionate about holistically supporting students across the country,” Jony Maciel, sales development team lead at Panorama Education, said. “To me, Panorama is unique because I am able to grow as a young professional and stay young at heart.”
Doney and Maciel aren’t the only salespeople in the Boston area who are proud of their company’s sales teams. Below, leaders from Panalgo, Reveneer and Quickbase also share what makes their sales team unique, what they’ve learned in their tenure, and what technology they’re leveraging to make their sales teams more effective.
What they do: Panalgo, formerly BHE, provides software that streamlines healthcare data analytics by removing complex programming from the equation.
What’s something unique about your team from other sales orgs you’ve been part of?
At Panalgo, the sales team works cross-functionally with more teams across the company than any other organization I’ve been a part of — most notably, the technical team. In many company structures, there is a disconnect between the product technical team and sales teams. But at Panalgo, the two groups work hand in hand to engage clients from the first demo all the way through onboarding and renewals. Not only does this synergy help make our customers’ experiences more successful, but it also makes my working experience more enjoyable because I get to work with many different colleagues. It’s been really nice getting to know people across the company and has ultimately helped me develop professionally.
What’s the most valuable sales lesson you’ve learned in the time you’ve been with Panalgo?
At Panalgo I’ve had the opportunity to learn about the Real-World Evidence (RWE) space and how crucial RWE is for life sciences companies to stay competitive. Seeing how companies leverage our Instant Health Data (IHD) analytics platform to accelerate the time to insights and turn data into RWE has helped me better understand customer needs and pain points. The greatest lesson I’ve learned so far is that as a salesperson, you need to really understand your customers’ industry — even better than the customers themselves. By staying engrained in the industry, you can better predict customer needs and ultimately transform and deepen your business development strategy.
At Panalgo, the sales team works cross-functionally with more teams across the company than any other organization I’ve been a part of.”
Beyond the standard sales softwares, are there any new or emerging technologies or tools your team is leveraging in their work? What impact has it had on your sales process?
The actual tools that we use are less important than how we use them. Over the past few months, our sales and marketing teams have worked together to improve our operations and processes not only by implementing new technologies but by improving how we use existing technologies. By creating best practices and reorganizing workflows, we have improved productivity, and more importantly, increased the opportunity for team collaboration on deals throughout the sales funnel.
What they do: Quickbase’s no-code operational agility platform enables organizations to improve operations through real-time insights and automation across complex processes and disparate systems.
What’s something unique about your team from other sales orgs you’ve been part of?
The culture at Quickbase is truly team-oriented and collaborative, with an underlying foundation of shared purpose and values. When I joined several months ago, I was greeted by marketing and lead generation teams eager to work side by side with sales to build our enterprise new business. We have very healthy discussions about what’s working and not, what we need to reinforce and accelerate, and when to pivot. They are fully supportive and engaged with my sales team in building prospecting campaigns together. Our teams really embrace our values — “we win together,” “we take ownership,” and “we improve every day” — each and every day.
What’s the most valuable sales lesson you’ve learned in the time you’ve been with Quickbase?
In sales, it’s critically important to listen and understand your customers’ pain points. Too often sellers want to pitch their product and its capabilities, way before they understand a customer’s business problems. That approach may result in a bumpy start to a relationship and elongate the sell cycle. When you engage with curiosity and start doing activities like whiteboarding with the customer, meetings can be more conversational, ideas start flowing, and discussing the value of your solution becomes more natural.
The culture at Quickbase is truly team-oriented and collaborative, with an underlying foundation of shared purpose and values.”
Beyond the standard sales softwares, are there any new or emerging technologies or tools your team is leveraging in their work?
We use Outreach to support our prospecting initiatives and Gong to capture our meeting conversations. Gong can be used both to hone our craft as sellers and also to capture key details in a meeting that would otherwise be missed. We also use Bambu to stay apprised of our media activity and share on our own social media channels. And, we leverage our own platform, Quickbase, to help us work efficiently and effectively as we scale.
What they do: Reveneer designs, builds and maintains inside sales operations.
What’s something unique about your team from other sales orgs you’ve been part of?
The training I received here was unprecedented. Reveneer provided me with a ton of resources and support, which allowed me to make a seamless transition and set me up for success. I learned so much from other sales reps and team leads who all went the extra mile to help me get up to speed.
The tech stack at Reveneer has made a huge impact on my sales success. Having access to ZoomInfo, Salesforce, SalesLoft, etc., beyond just LinkedIn, has helped me tremendously. I am able to work efficiently and make the most of my day. I can’t imagine prospecting without a robust tech stack like the one we have here.
I can’t imagine prospecting without a robust tech stack like the one we have here.”
What’s the most valuable sales lesson you’ve learned in the time you’ve been with Reveneer?
Embrace your personality and don’t be afraid to be yourself. When I first started out in sales, I would read off a script when making calls. My training at Reveneer taught me how to ditch the script and apply the fundamentals of how to make a sales call: through call opening, objection handling and closing. I’m now prepared for whatever a prospect throws my way without a script or sounding like a robot. I try my best to be comfortable and conversational on my calls.
On top of that, organization and persistence are key. Most deals don’t close on the first call. That can be hard sometimes because you have to be patient, but staying organized and persistent will help you get that win.
What they do: Panorama Education works with schools, districts, and governments across the country to collect and analyze data about students, parents, teachers and staff.
What’s something unique about your team from other sales orgs you’ve been part of?
This might sound silly but at Panorama many of us here use our old elementary or middle school pictures as our Slack picture or profile picture. I think this says a lot about who we are as a team, our culture and what makes us so unique. We’re a group of many former educators and folks who are passionate about holistically supporting students across the country. To me, these pictures remind us of not only our dedication to positive student impact but also to remain youthful and fun. It reminds us that even though we may be experts in our field, there is still plenty of room for growth. This goes beyond just our profile pictures.
It’s seen in the ways we collaborate with each other, the professional development sessions, the “fun hang Fridays.” Like being in a classroom, being a part of Panorama is both work and play. We hold hackathons where, like students, we break up into groups and present ways we can improve our product, culture and work environment. We have an annual “decathlon,” which is essentially an adult workplace field day. To me, Panorama is unique because I am able to grow as a young professional and stay young at heart.
What’s the most valuable sales lesson you’ve learned in the time you’ve been with Panorama?
During my interview two years ago, I was asked to share a time when I went above and beyond to support a customer or prospect. I was told that Panorama strives for six-star services and that’s something that always stuck with me. Do better than what is expected of you to help those who need it. When we make prospecting calls, hold discovery calls or demos, how can we make this a positive experience for our prospects?
In fact, one of our company values is “care about people.” It’s exactly what we do. We’re a sales team that cares about people and student impact. We are not here to push extra tools onto districts but rather to help districts overcome their challenges. We listen to the needs of our districts and we often adapt and improve to fit those needs. In the last nine years, many of the new tools we have developed has been a direct response to challenges we saw our partners facing. We’ve put on statewide meetups and professional development sessions because we’ve had districts jokingly say it would be helpful. Panorama has reminded me that we and our partners are both better off when we actively listen to each other and go the extra step to make sure we all succeed.
We are not here to push extra tools onto districts but rather to help districts overcome their challenges.”
Beyond the standard sales software, are there any new or emerging technologies or tools your team is leveraging in their work?
Most sales reps are familiar with Salesforce, Hubspot, Outreach, etc. One really exciting tool we’ve started using is Chorus. With Chorus, our meetings are both recorded and analyzed so team members have access to additional professional development and coaching opportunities. SDRs and closing reps no longer have to type every word down and can fully be present during calls with prospects. Panorama can now take snippets of conversations and include them in onboarding and trainings. It has enabled us to share word-for-word insight from prospects, identify trends in conversations, and most importantly, allowed us to build team morale because we can now highlight and celebrate folks on our team who have had amazing meetings with schools across the country.
As an SDR, it is exciting and terrifying to look through the conversation metrics on your recorded calls, mostly because if you’re anything like myself (a big talker), you already know your longest monologue will be over the suggested cut-point. With that being said, having Chorus as a tool has given me so much insight into my own style and has really allowed Panorama to better train our team and understand our prospects’ needs.
What they do: Immersive Labs’ platform teaches cybersecurity skills to corporate employees at all levels.
What’s something unique about your team from other sales orgs you’ve been part of?
The entire sales and wider GTM organization truly embody our core values of drive, inclusivity and agility. Everyone sincerely works towards a common goal while ensuring that he/she is not only successful but, more importantly, that his/her teammates are as equally as successful. As we have experienced rapid scale, our existing team members ensure that new hires feel welcome and valued. We take pride in ensuring that we uphold our culture, which, in turn, has had a tremendous impact on our scale and growth.
Everyone embraces new ways of thinking and doing business. Whether you are an SDR or a VP, everyone feels confident that their voices are both heard and valued when there is a more effective or efficient way of doing things. We have to continue to be agile as we scale, and our successes and breakthroughs have come from all areas of the organization.
What’s the most valuable sales lesson you’ve learned in the time you’ve been with Immersive Labs?
That is OK to make mistakes. We work at a very fast pace, and not every decision or process that we put in place is scalable. The important part is to recognize and course-correct at the same speed.
