How vFairs Increased ACV by 60% with a Reimagined Sales Playbook (Interview with Chief Revenue Officer Michael Burns)

Introduction: Michael Burns and vFairs

Michael Burns

00:00Kind of interesting to have a really, really deep tactical sales conversation on the finance stage. But hopefully, people will find this a little bit entertaining and maybe a bit useful. So my name is Michael Burns. I'm Chief Revenue Officer at a company called vfairs.

00:17A little bit about, if I could get the clicker to go. Yes, no. Yes, no. Okay. I'll talk about myself and then we'll go into the next slide. So So I've been in go to market leadership positions for years, about twenty years. I started early in my career as an individual contributor in sales and then did a startup in 2006 with a couple of colleagues, business information and business services startup, which was great and very relevant

00:46to today's topic because we grew super fast from 2006 to 2008 and then super not fast for the next couple of years. And that was a great lesson in my career of how to pivot and deploy a playbook. Over the intervening years from my exit in that startup back in 2015 till today, I've really focused more on scale ups than startups. So I was with Martech ad tech company that we took from 50,000,000 to $80,000,000 in

Burns's Background in Go-to-Market Leadership

Michael Burns

01:19a year, an event technology company that I took from 20,000,000 to about 100,000,000 in two years,

01:26litigation services company that we doubled revenue within a quarter. So my bag as it were is kind of coming in, rolling out a playbook that's very practical and gets to repeatable revenue fast. So what I'm going to talk about today is some fairly tactical stuff, right? We're not going to really talk about the total strategy of the playbook and all the different dashboards that you need to use and the different acronyms that I'll roll out. But

Diagnosing Gaps in the Sales Playbook

Michael Burns

01:56I wanted to focus on a few actionable things that I think are relevant to what's happening right now in the economy. Again, is a lot of lessons from 02/2009. So what we'll talk about is how to diagnose the gaps in your playbook if it exists, right? And we'll talk a little bit about the data that I like to look at. I'll look at one thing in particular, strategy gaps around messaging and then process gaps from a

02:23selling process standpoint. And then we'll talk a little bit about implementation. Just a couple of quick hits on things that I would prioritize from an implementation standpoint. And then we'll talk about optimization, right, and really not boiling the ocean. So I'm at a company called vfairs. Vfairs is an end to end event management platform. So we provide technology for events like this.

vFairs: From Pandemic Darling to Post-Pandemic Correction

Michael Burns

02:50And we really grew very, very quickly during the pandemic. So and there are a lot of parallels to what happened with the vfairs business from 2019 through 2022 and what's happening to a lot of tech businesses today, right? A lot of high growth and then maybe a little bit of a correction. And again, similar to what many of us experienced back in the 2008, February. So just a little bit about vfairs over the years. So the

03:20company was originally a product of our parent company called bait.com, which is the largest job board in The Middle We were a virtual event sorry, a virtual job fair product that was being sold that people realized my Founder, Mohammed Unisys spoke earlier today, realized this is really a company, not a product. So it spun out and they put the pieces into place to start growing, right, relatively modest growth and then the pandemic hit and it was

03:48right place, right time for vfairs. People were running events like this. They couldn't do it in person anymore. Their hair is on fire and they had to go somewhere and vfairs had the and this is not just my opinion, SG2 had the best virtual platform in the planet. So the inbound just went off the charts, which is fantastic until it's not fantastic anymore, right. And things kind of come back to normal, right. And I think a

04:14lot of us are experiencing this across a lot of different businesses. Anybody in technology right now, things are a little harder than they maybe used to be. So what I'm going to talk about is the elements of a playbook that are important to get back on track, right, and produce sustainable and repeatable revenue. So we'll dig into the first section here and I'll talk about the data first. So the first thing that I look at if

Joining vFairs and the Growth Mandate

Michael Burns

04:41I'm reimagining a playbook and I came into vfairs in November and my remit, my marching orders are, we need to grow, right. And if you saw the little bump there in Q1, right, we're starting to see some of the impact and I'll show some results early results now sorry, at the end of the presentation that we're seeing now. But the first thing I said is, well, what am I dealing with, right. What data do I have?

05:05And I personally like to have a sensitivity analysis built where I could look at every single conversion rate from top of the funnel, Tofu, lead acquisition, branding all the way down to churn, renewal expansion. And I get pretty micro on that. And I actually do that, which we'll talk about a bit on a rep by rep basis. So I know what every single reps conversion rate is across my organization. Not because I care how many calls

05:29they make, right? I'm not about the micro KPIs, but I want them to know what a brute force approach would look like if they needed to take it in terms of conversions. And I also need to be able to diagnose where in my process things are not completely optimized, right. And the best way to understand that is when you see breaks or aberrations in conversion rate. So the first question I asked was can I measure conversion

05:52at every single point? The second thing that I asked is, do we have in this new environment, do we have product market fit, right? Are we strategically doing the right things to the right people, the right number of times, right? So by that, I mean, do we have the right messaging, right? Are we articulating our value proposition the right way for today? Are we really clear about our ICP, right? Have we looked at our data? Have

06:21we looked at our churn data? Do we understand how we're performing from a marketing standpoint in different segments? And are we leaning into that? And then finally, are our repetitions enough, right? Are we creating enough opportunities, right? Is there enough activity and positive behavior that's leading to the outcomes that we want to drive to? So that for me, there's data in there, but that for me is strategy, right? Do we have the right setup? Have we

06:44built the right motion? And then finally process, which for me is really about in this context is about the selling process, right? Do we have the right deal stages? And yes, I'm getting very tactical and specific on this, but did the deal stages represent the reality of what's happening in the field? And I'll give you a real life example. So the deal stages at vfairs when I came in were things like demo highly interested. And I

Implementing a Practical Sales Methodology

Michael Burns

07:12said, okay, where's the empirical data that could tell us that are we doing conversational intelligence or are we measuring sentiment? It's like, no, no, they really seemed interested. And it's like, okay, so we're saying that we closed 40% of people that you think are interested. That's and people were typically right. There was a lot of unconscious competency there where people were pretty good at this, but they couldn't really measure it and understand why and certainly couldn't

07:36repeat it. So that doesn't adequately capture risk, right? So we need to really understand and be able to describe the selling process as it stands and then look for opportunities to optimize. So the main thing though that I looked at was close rate sorry, close loss reasons, because this is kind of a two birds with one stone type of process, right? So I'm understanding what our close rate is, I layer on top of here, sales cycle

Understanding Loss Reasons and Strategy Gaps

Michael Burns

08:09and the ICP and so on and so forth. But I'm getting good qualitative data here. And the most important piece of qualitative data that I have is that most of the time we don't know why we're losing. That no value I had many a night in the late days of Q4 scratching my head saying, what is the no value? Why is it? Are we saying the wrong things? Is it bad messaging? Are we just not capturing

08:34it? Is there no adherence to the process? Is this more of an adoption problem? So you're kind of on the right track if those sort of second and third order questions start coming up around the data. Right? So this for me was huge, right? I really dug into this. And the first, I think practical piece of advice for anyone that maybe had some boom time and maybe it's not as important to measure all your conversions and

09:00your loss reasons because things are going really well and you're hitting your revenue targets, start looking at this, like really, really dive into it and there's no substitute for having conversations, right? So the CRM is not going to tell you the skinny, right? The CRM is going to tell you what the salesperson bothered to put in or in some cases, luckily not at vfairs, but I've run into places where salespeople will blame the product. Bad product

09:25fit, too expensive, bad lead. But when you dig into it, you realize that there are actually some other reasons that are driving to loss. So I needed to correct this, right? But it was also a pretty good indicator that we had some strategy issues, right? That our messaging maybe wasn't landing as well as it could be. So that again for me was the key, right? So what I've done now is I've looked at the data. I've

09:51said, okay, our data is kind of all over the place, right? That big data point, right, of loss reason is a little bit opaque, right? I don't really understand what's driving most of the loss.

10:04I need to really go in and do the work to understand at a deeper level what's happening, right? I'm listening to calls now, listening to Gong recordings.

Shifting from Pain Points to Objectives

Michael Burns

10:13So what I need to do here is start to implement, right? And say, okay, what are the areas that I could change? So for me, again, in this economy, right, and with our the reality of our selling, I picked a couple of things that I thought would really move the needle, right. The first is a full conversion analysis for each rep, right. So I prioritize that. So I changed the sales stages, made them a little bit

10:38more aligned to what was happening in the field, started getting really tight on the measurement and the adoption across the CRM, plugged in obviously all of our other systems to understand what our email conversion rates were and our call conversions, very old school I know. But what that allowed me to do is go back to my reps and say, look, you're facing adversity in the market, right? People are going back to in person events. We were

11:03virtual, right? We need to remessage and reposition. But until we figure that out, here's the way to brute force it, right? So you could hit your target and you could feed your family, right? So I was able to show them, it's a lot more calls than we used to make, but here's what the conversions are, right? So that the first benefit of that is it bought a lot of credibility for us as a management team with

11:23the reps, right. The reps are saying, okay, they have her back, they understand that it's difficult out there and they're giving me a roadmap. I have a plan, right. It's not a great plan, right. I'd rather be able to close it 40% clip, but at least now I know what I need to do in order to hit my numbers. And then I rolled out a sales methodology. I see Guy in the back. I'm going to steal

11:43one of the lines from his presentation, is it doesn't matter what your sales methodology is just roll one out, right? Which is absolutely true. And I'll show you mine. But if it's I'm not a huge fan of Bant, I think it's a little bit simplistic, but use Bant. It's better than nothing, right? Use MEDDIC, MEDDPIC, whatever it is, but you need a sales methodology because you need a common framework and a common language to be able

12:07to talk about deal risk with your reps, right? If you don't have that, then you're really relying on a lot of

12:15subjectivity. And then validation is important, right? And I think this is probably the overarching tactic that I'll recommend is, there's no substitute for getting in there, right? You can't drive performance through spreadsheets. You need to get in there and stress test the deals. So I spent a lot of time with my line managers, teaching them how to do stress testing against the sales methodology and then sat in on a lot of pipeline meetings, right? So it

12:44became really a change management process that was super, super hands on. A lot of hearts and minds conversations, but there's no substitute in this economy, right, to really get in there and move the needle with your reps and show them by example and be a little bit prescriptive to be candid. So some examples here. So what you see here is basically a reimagining of MedPic called Co Impact. This is not genius. This is nothing different than

13:16MEDDPIC or MEDDPIC or anything like that. The reason that I roll this out is because it's a different acronym and it forces people to learn different words and therefore engages their critical thinking skills, right? If they use MedPick at their old company and the adoption was poor, they're going be like, yeah, yeah, know it. I know it. Or they use BANT. Yeah, I've been doing BANT for twenty years. That's fine. No, this is new. This is

13:36new. What's new about it? Well, letters are new, but we're going to position this a little bit differently, right? So just the act of teaching something new does drive the behaviors home. And I'll talk a little bit about the important things here. So there's some things here that I really, really care about right now and some things that I care less about. The most important thing for me right now is identifying needs. And I'll stop and

14:00dive into this for a second. How many people have taught sales teams to sell the pain points? Identify the pain points and sell the pain points. All right, how many people here have asked for a new piece of software recently or had somebody ask them for a new piece of software? And we said no, deal with the pain because it's not the time to be spending. I have for sure. So, yes, the guy has. So pain

14:24points are nice to solve, right? And when things are going well, you look for solving pain, right? And overcoming pain. But in tough times, you tell people to get tough, right? Buck up, deal with it, right? I'm sorry it hurts. Work a little more, right? Not that I'm that blunt with my team, but you get the concept. So in the identifying needs part of co impact, what I'm really getting my team to do is identify objectives

14:53and saying, look, no one's going to care about pain points right now, but everybody needs to hit goals, right? And if we can identify their objectives and sell to objectives as opposed to pain, certainly not features, right? Because that doesn't matter. People are going to trade features for objectives all day long, right, right now. But if we can understand their objectives, right, not just company objectives or vanity metrics, but what's going to get that guy a

15:14bonus, then we could create a business case, right. So that's what we're focused on is get to the objectives and understand what it is that we could sell to. And that's this bit up here, the strategy tactics gaps, right. The way I describe this to my team is the frog in boiling water concept, right. If you're asking about pain or what's going wrong, do we know the frog in boiling water, right? If you have a pot

15:38of boiling water, take a frog and throw it in, it's going to jump out. It's hot. This is gross, but sorry. But if you take a frog and you put the frog into a pot of tepid water, it's nice and comfortable. You turn the heat on a little bit and it gets boiled before it knows it. And not that I'm saying that we should manipulate our prospects and customers, but from a conversational standpoint, what we want

15:57to do is start slow, right? And we want to talk about things that they like, which are themselves and good things. And that's why I ask questions around their strategy, And then I start talking to them about the tactics that they're going to use to achieve their strategic goals. And then I'm going to talk about gaps, right, and ways that we could help to derisk their plan, right, and help them get to their goals either quicker

16:17or again with less risk. And that's going to allow me to really build that trust and build that business case. Super, super tactical, right? Again, this is not about the model. This is about some really, really easy quick things that you could do with the team that's going to drive the or move the needle for you guys. Right. So sell to objectives and then a questioning framework that's going to kind of be that inverted pyramid to

16:41drive down to some of the pain points.

16:44So from a messaging standpoint, right, that's tactics, right, execution on the sales front. When it came to identifying strategic gaps, we were a point solution, right? You looked at that revenue curve, we were the pandemic darling, virtual platform best on the And when I really dug into lost reasons, the real lost reason that we had was we're going back to in person events and you guys have branded yourself so well as a virtual platform that I

Messaging Shift: From Point Solution to Platform

Michael Burns

17:14do not even know that you could do anything but Right? And and here is our messaging. Right? This is why vfairs. Right? And and you know, we talk a lot about, you know, three d environments and features and that was amazing. Right? And that that grossed to 40,000,000 in a heartbeat.

17:29Right? But it made us into a point solution. So one of the other things that we did is we changed our messaging to and it's a busy slide, but kind of on purpose to a platform play, right? We it's not a product change, This not me going to my CTO or my Chief Product Officer and say, we need to build new stuff. Let's say, okay, let me understand how people could use our solution today in a

17:51different environment than they were previously, right? So we took what we are doing and said, okay, let's understand how this relates to a workflow, right? What's our customer's reality right now? How do they use us and how can we package our solution up in a way that makes a lot more sense and allows us to have a proactive conversation with our customers about wider use, right?

Pulling the Right Levers: ACV and Close Rates

Michael Burns

18:19And that'll bring me to another point on levers, right? So once we identified the application of our product given the current environment, the levers that we wanted to pull to grow became pretty clear, right? Which costs more money, platforms or point solutions, right? Which do you do annual contracts with or multi year contracts or embed as an enterprise solution, a platform or a point solution, typically a platform. So what we were selling previously was a discrete

18:51single event license, you will. But people should and are now using us as a platform, right? So we went from discrete more service oriented deals to proper SaaS, annual and multi year deals. So for me, volume is not a lever I'm going to pull. Demand is not what it was. Velocity is not a lever I'm going to pull because the buying cycle is longer.

19:17Size is, right. So I'm going to pull the lever on ACV because now I'm able to sell to an entire enterprise. It's not a discrete deal, right. And I'm selling a workflow solution that has massive cost avoidance and revenue generation opportunities, right? So then I'm leading into those objectives and goals. And close rate is the other area, right? When we're upscaling the team and selling to objectives, we're not just increasing deal size, we're actually driving higher

19:43close rates. Rep road maps, I talked about, right? That was the other optimization piece, right. So you're taking that sensitivity analysis that you built, right. And you're coupling that with a qualitative diagnostic, right. You can't just say, hey, here's how many calls you got to make, right. The promise was, here's how many calls you got to make until we have optimized messaging, right? And now we have good deal stress testing. We have the right description of

Results: 60% ACV Increase and G2 Grid Leadership

Michael Burns

20:10our sales process, so we're able to really understand what the rep roadmap is and then repeatability, right? So what we're doing from a repeatability standpoint is building onboarding. So where do we wind up? That's us there on G2's event management platform, right? We took over the grid, right? That was over the past three months. We weren't on the grid three months ago. We have so far increased ACV by 60%. And this is literally all I rolled

20:38out was a couple of very, very tactical, there's more to it. But the key things that I rolled out were these tactical things.

Nathan Latka

20:46And we built out a 17 page eye chart, which is our internal document to be able to repeat this, right? So conscious competency doesn't mean anything. Being good at something and knowing why you're good at it, you don't actually teach it and scale it, right? So now we have an onboarding process to be able to bring people in and turn them into very, very effective sellers. That's it. Thank you. Alright. Thanks Michael.