How Ebsta CEO Guy Rubin grew to $4.2M revenue and 8K customers in 2025.

uh what was even scarier is that nearly 20 of reps actually don't even have a quota okay so there's a lot of uh there's a lot of people out there that really aren't running their business with you know particularly data driven uh we also saw a lot of headwinds so less than 15 of uh or win rates dropped by 15 um average deal values uh went down by a third and sales Cycles were continued to increase uh to to buy an extra 30 percent so um when we look at the data in a bit more detail rather than focusing on the ones that didn't achieve what I wanted to do is bring to the table today some of the insights of what the the high performing sales teams were actually doing um the the probably one of the key the key trends we're seeing is that those uh certainly in B2B relationships Drive Revenue so understanding what relationships you have and and really double Downing and making sure that those relationships are strong is vital not just in winning new business but also retaining an upselling to existing customers uh we also saw that you can double uh uh your win rates with a better sales methodologies so introducing a med pick or a medic or a band type process to do your qualification and really making sure it's being used correctly it's not just a box ticking exercise you're really working out whether you should continue to invest in the sales process to move forward or not um rather than just you know ticking a set of boxes um so these are the seven steps we set out to uh that we we saw in the data in the information that we were processing uh to build this high-performing sales team um uh it starts I'm going to take you through all seven so uh the first one is uh probably the least sexy but one of the most important is this idea of building uh data uh having good quality uh consistent data in your CRM okay so um you if you're if in 2023 you're still relying on humans to log their activity create contacts or keep them up to date it's time to rethink um we can see that the CRM itself is missing all sorts of interesting data so we have been doing this now for a decade and we've never found a company with more than 70 of their active relationships in CRM and usually it's less than 50 and so we need to stop relying on humans logging their logging their activity and creating contacts and by doing by taking that responsibility away from them the CRM becomes a much more uh um complete and accurate place to spend time so automating the logging of activity creating contacts doing all that on their behalf making sure that it becomes a system of record that includes all the data that you need is key um and for what it's worth we have an engine that can you can turn on and it'll solve all that in seven days um we also know that it's that uh of the records we see a lot of companies still talking about the value of having a large database but then when we analyze the data we can see that there really is no relationship with 98 of the contacts they're registered in the CRM so there is no relationship there they shouldn't be in the CRM you shouldn't be focusing on on how big the database is but about maintaining the relationships you have and then we see the um the we we can take away all this busy work um all these distractions for the sales team by giving taking away all that admin burden away from them and solving the data issues so once we've got a process in place that's managing the data on their behalf the next big challenge is about the understanding what relation what the impact of relationships are on revenue and this is one of the single biggest things you can do is drive activity and relationship strength so because we uh the nature of what we do is we score every relationship a business has out of a hundred and it's not unusual to end a sales process with an engagement score of between 60 and 80 a good level of Engagement okay what we can see here is that you can 3x your win rates by increasing the engagement from good to grades okay it's uh and so when you've got late stage multi-threaded deals that's getting the sales team engaging you know put leaning in and if the c-suite can help you can have a big impact on the win rates uh so engagement is um so we take a feed of your call records your email traffic your calendar events your CRM and we and and things like um inbound is worth a lot more than outbound the velocity of Engagement so the the number of activities going back and forth um and um and and the strength and momentum of Engagement so um uh we yeah so we're able to tell you and what we do is when we onboard a customer we'll go back over the last four quarters and find all the momentum that you had on deals that you closed in the past to really understand how much engagement you had so that you can start to build a benchmark we can also say it has a big impact on set on sales cycle as well it reduces sales cycle if you've got good high levels of Engagement you can reduce the time it takes to close the deal we also know that engaging with the right people at the right time is Key so this historical analysis we do when we onboard a customer will show you what the optimal sales cycle actually looks like because it's not always about engaging with the economic buyer in stage one of the sales process more often than not there's there's a lot of value in getting momentum with a key stakeholder a key influencer to get those deals Over The Line um so really understanding that the impact of having getting the right engagement with the right stakeholders at the right time um you can really boost uh the speed in which deal is closed by you know 170 percent then it's all about helping reps with this with with a much more um uh a much more structured and data-driven approach to the way that they review their pipeline so what we're looking at here is is um is a dashboard we use we have within the product it's actually inside in this case inside Salesforce or inside HubSpot and what we can see instantly is um the impact of using a qualification metric on revenue is is 3x okay so we want to see them using this qualification metric we bring it up here as part of the review process um but the if they're not filling that information in then they're not uh then then then we're not going to be able to capture it and we can't report on it we can also see that um it's the um well I'll move on to the next slide and we can see what else we've got here so we can also see that the there are um you need to identify the factors that are helping you close more deals and that again you've got the data it all sits within your business it's just in the wrong place okay so it might be sitting in the mailboxes the calendars the CRM but what we need to do is bring it together and make it visual right so how many stakeholders should you be engaging with in the different types of sales cycles that you're running okay and and knowing that means that when the salesperson tells you how great they're doing and leave me alone the deal will definitely happen you're able to say them well I'm I'm pleased you're doing well but look if we have one more stakeholder involved we could double our win rates or if the engagement with the CFO has gone from 27 to 53 we could reduce the sales cycle by 30 days so knowing the data so you can use it to drive the activities that you want is absolutely vital but there are other data points you should be considering as well different businesses work in different ways but understanding the impact of intent impact of product usage for example on renewals or even if you've got a free trial is really key so trying to understand the signals that drive revenue is is vital so as part of the quarterly Insight reports we deliver our customers we also give them a breakdown of of every rep within the business we'll we'll give you a kind of a traffic light signal on how they're pacing so understanding how much how much coverage every rep needs to hit quota and is that pacing upwards or downwards quarter on quarter understanding the DNA of the deals really really gives you the data you need to be able to have proper reviews of which reps should you be keeping promoting and which ones aren't working out if without the data it's all gut feel and a good example of that is here so what you can see is two different deals that are um that look identical on the outside okay but when we start to dive into the deals we find they're not identical at all what we find is that actually one deal has only had one activity in the last seven days while the others had six one deal has the the opportunity amounts decrease to one's increased so understanding the granular detail behind every deal and having it in a simple easy to use dashboard in the CRM means that you're able to see very quickly the deals at risk because from the analysis we've done only 30 of the opportunities opened close one and the deals are closed last spend twice as long in pipe as deals that close one now how expensive is that how much inefficiency is that in the sales process so if we can reduce the time spent on deals that aren't going to close we can have a material impact on the productivity of the sales team so when you get your pipeline reviews these are the seven questions you should be asking and you should be able to do this from a single dashboard inside your CRM okay and if you're not using something like this and you're relying on spreadsheets it's time to step up to this type of platform um really getting everything in one place having a consistent way to digest everything consistency is key if you want to run experiments and start to make improvements because small incremental improvements lead to exponential results happy to share the deck afterwards if anyone wants to connect with me and then finally aligning the teams to this data-driven forecasting approach okay what we want to do is have make it super easy for the individual contributors to update their forecast in real time anytime not once a week as a you know as a task they have to do before they leave leave for work on a Friday afternoon and we want it to be consistent and easy for them to digest and it should be visual you can see here for example a summary of what's happened this week where were we at the beginning of the week what positive things happen What negative things happened all of that's easy to digest and it makes it super easy for the team to to submit their own forecast and the data will tell you what we think the forecast will be and then we can see how they deviate from that number but once the rep's done it we make it easy for the managers to also submit they make the changes and submit their forecast up to the board and then it goes to the Senior Management so that's it those are the seven steps that I think you should be thinking about when you're trying to build this data-driven sales team um thank you very much for all of your time thank you thank you yeah happy to answer questions uh you've got my email address there if you want to or connect with me on LinkedIn I'm happy to share the uh the deck we've also got a presentation that uh you can download the the report itself on the front page of our website which is ebsta.com any questions thank you very much everyone wants to win so the sales guys um the sales guys want to will always be defensive in their one-to-ones right and you end up with this combative experience where the sales guys are telling you how great they're doing and the managers are telling you that they don't think the deals are good enough to complete what we need to do is move away from that into a much more coaching experience okay where you're showing them graphically okay frankly the sales guys and most of the sales managers aren't particularly strategic in their thinking so what we need to do is make it simple give them graphics and and pictures to understand the influence of the of different uh of different outcomes so if we want them to engage with more stakeholders rather than just having this debate of oh they all love me I've spoken to everyone I need to leave me alone you know that's great but look if you have one more stakeholder involved we can double our win rates understanding the impact of momentum and engagements that the if the rep's telling you how great they're doing but no one's actually spoken to anyone at the c-suite or hasn't actually engaged with a customer in the last 14 days you know that that's not real but you need to have the data at your fingertips to be able to have that collaborative conversation and ultimately the history that you've got in your business will give us the data we need to Benchmark what good looks like so now go on the really good question so um the complex the more complex the deal the the more um the more stakeholders involved the more momentum you need where this doesn't work is transaction-based businesses okay so if you're if you're a consumer company or you're you know you're selling sneakers you you don't you don't need to maintain relationships over time okay anything that's B2B your the DNA of the of the SMB team is going to be different to the DNA of the Enterprise team but the data behind it still is going to be just as valid okay and so the the you may have different go to market strategies so the the course of insight reports we deliver as well as the the platform is will give you the DNA all the way down not just individual teams or products but down to the individual contributors so you can see how they're all pacing over time are they moving in the right direction or has something gone wrong where they're training in the wrong direction do you have a question of course I get I think it's down to the qualification metrics so are you qualifying the customer well enough are you asking which stakeholders need to be involved in different stages of the sales cycle are you being descriptive about what the journey to buy looks like and and so that they're able to give you visibility of who that needs to be involved in their business from their side but also so one problem I know look we're we're talking about businesses that are still in horse and car and and you know we can talk about getting to a Formula One car but what if we can get you from a horse and kind to a family Saloon first right and and actually the the the the the impact you can have by being data driven is is huge and these small incremental improvements as you go have exponential results I'm not saying that what you're doing isn't very useful for the some classic where it's going to backfire sure well I think I think there's different the different things about multi-threading so multi-threading top of the funnel has a different impact but again what I'd be interested to understand is that you know how many close one deals have you done in the last year or two for example okay all right so right and before that maybe another maybe another 30 or 40 deals last year okay so let's say we can we can analyze 50 deals that have closed one there's probably another 150 that close lost okay well that's good right and you know closing the second best outcome right yes yes understood well um the the DNA the understanding how multi-threaded you need to be at different stages is key here okay understanding at the top of the funnel is one thing but you know and knowing which entry point is giving you the best outcome is is important so let's do the analysis on the 50 deals that have closed one and last and 100 that have lost as well so um and if there are the data will tell us whether being too multi-threaded at the early stages is having a negative effect but we can also have a look at the the positive impact of being multi-threaded at stage two or three or four when should the CFO get involved um you know is it at what stage gives you the optimal outcome and how much engagement do you need with the CFO and who within your business should be engaging with the CFO at that stage which is having the best outcome and the data you've got within your business the analysis that we can do on not what they've chosen to log in CRM but the the actual activity that took place that the emails that took place the calls that took place the meetings that took place by analyzing that data we can show you what good looked like for different types of deals and you can start to use that as a Playbook can and evolve it as you go very good then it was a worthwhile presentation right thank you very much