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The 6 Key Principles of Sales with Joey Gilkey, CEO of Apex Revenue

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In this episode, we focus on doing sales right by removing the chaff and looking at the real drivers of sales outcomes. Joey shares his insights on pivoting from product-market fit to message-market fit; aligning your sales strategy with client needs; turning the 80/20 sales team performance on its head; and why we need visionary leaders to drive sales outcomes. This is just the tip of the iceberg!

Joey Gilkey is a serial founder and entrepreneur with multiple high-value exits behind him. He is the CEO of Apex Revenue which operates as a fractional VP of Sales to ramp sales results at established B2B companies. He is an innovative thought leader because he thinks outside of the box, strips away what’s superfluous, and focuses on the core drivers of sales outcomes. Joey believes that with the evolution of technology and processes, companies have added multiple layers over the core processes hence losing sight of what counts. 

Time Stamps:

  • 00:58 – Joey’s backstory
  • 06:27 – Most sales organizations get the priority stack wrong when prioritizing what’s critical  
  • 09:51 – Unless you’re inventing a new product, it’s all about message market fit 
  • 11:03 – How to achieve a good message market fit
  • 15:13 – Qualifying leads based on purchase intent and eliminating those who will never buy 
  • 18:18 – Advice for the VP of Sales under pressure  to meet targets Q on Q 
  • 22:57 – What does 23% of a sales team deliver 83% of revenue, and how to turn it around
  • 29:55 – What are the critical leading indicators of revenue and how to optimize them
  • 36:33 – Is your B2B outreach messaging targeted at the decision makers?
  • 38:16 – Separating use case and outcomes between data and research tech stacks
  • 42:10 – Joey’s book recommendation, Outwitting the Devil

Highlights:

The 6 Key Principles of Sales

There are more tools at the disposal of the sales force than ever before, but tech should not be the priority. Joey shares that there are six key value principles that are the only formula for getting outbound right in this day and age. The order of priority is: messaging, strategy, process, people, leadership, and finally tech.

Making Messaging a Success

Companies often make assumptions about their messaging, and assume the problem lies with the buyer, rather than with them. Joey says that if the message doesn’t land, that’s on the company. It’s imperative to craft a line of messaging that fits the buyer. To measure the success of your messaging, don’t rely solely on the conversion rates. You need to look at the results of each conversation and whether there was any interest. Everyone has a different buying window. 

Lagging and Leading Indicators

Sales reps are managed to the wrong metrics. Sales leaders are turning to more leading indicators (such as activity, emails sent, calls made etc), and expecting that by putting more in there, they will generate more conversions and results at the other end. However, this is not the case. Relying on those factors does not help to improve revenue, it only puts more strain on overstretched resources.

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