Category: ON AIR: With Owen

Introducing our 58th episode of ON AIR: With Owen – our latest interview video series with honest conversation about scaling revenue, hosted by our Founder & CEO, Owen Richards.

Our 58th guest is Tim Hughes, CEO and Co Founder at DLA Ignite. Owen and Tim discuss social selling and digital transformation in sales.

Including:
– Tim’s take on digital transformation in sales
– What is “life content” and why you should be posting it on LinkedIn
– The biggest social selling trends in 2022
– Why being yourself is the most important thing when it comes to social selling successfully
– What’s more important when social selling – quality vs quantity

Introducing our 57th episode of ON AIR: With Owen – our latest interview video series with honest conversation about scaling revenue, hosted by our Founder & CEO, Owen Richards.

Our 57th guest is Anup Khera, VP & GM International at Attentive. Owen and Anup discuss the dos and don’ts of scaling an organisation internationally.

Including:
– The importance of spending time getting to know the team and understanding the business
– The importance of hiring when building a go-to-market strategy
– The things Anup would definitely replicate and the mistakes he would avoid making again
– The ‘thinking like a CEO’ mindset and why it’s important
– How to maintain culture and collaboration with your team, wherever they are in the world
– The benefits of being on the front line as a leader and being involved in deals
– Avoiding the temptation of hiring the wrong candidates, too quickly

Introducing our 56th episode of ON AIR: With Owen – our latest interview video series with honest conversation about scaling revenue, hosted by our Founder & CEO, Owen Richards.

 Our 56th guest is Tom Bianchi, VP of Marketing for EMEA at Acquia.

Owen and Tom discuss the difference between creating demand and capturing demand.

Including:
– At what stage in your business journey would you use each of these strategies?
– Does every organisation go through the same process and journey?
– What types of things should a company be doing in the early stages i.e. ‘creating demand’
– The types of things you should be doing in the ‘capturing demand’ phase
– How quality and quality come into play at each phase
– How to measure success in each phase
– The journey in switching from one mode to the other, and how messaging & process need to change
– The common mistake of applying the same strategy to all markets and why good self-awareness is important
– Moving faster than is comfortable – getting from ‘create’ to ‘capture’ much quicker
– Improving how you score your leads
– Why brand awareness is important at the ‘creating demand’ stage
– What metrics are important to Acquia right now and the tactics changed along the way
– The internal challenges within sales & marketing teams when switching modes

Introducing our 55th episode of ON AIR: With Owen – our latest interview video series with honest conversation about scaling revenue, hosted by our Founder & CEO, Owen Richards.

Our 55th guest is James Isilay, CEO of Cognism.

Owen and James have an inspiring conversation around Cognism’s start-up journey, since being founded in 2015, to becoming one of the fastest growing SaaS companies in the world.

Including:
– Lessons learned from Cognism’s start-up journey, since being founded in 2015
– How having an experienced mentor from the get-go can keep your start-up alive
– Cognism’s outbound strategy and how it has played a key role in their growth
– How a strategy evolves over time with bringing key people into a business
– Go-to-market strategy: the best strategies and channels for scaling a business
– At which stage should you have certainty and start to rely on outbound metrics?
– Why James believes the phone is the most effective tool you can use in outbound sales
– What motivates James to keep going 6 years into the journey

Introducing our 54th episode of ON AIR: With Owen – our latest interview video series with honest conversation about scaling revenue, hosted by our Founder & CEO, Owen Richards.

Our 54th guest is Tom Lavery, Founder & CEO at Jiminny.

Owen and Tom discuss the learnings that come from the first five years of a start-up business.

Including:
– What does it feel like to be a founder in the early days of a start-up?
– Why do so many startups fail?
– What Jiminny got right and what Tom would do differently if he were starting out again
– Is there a snowball effect once you get past £1-2m revenue?
– Is there a bigger margin for error, the bigger a company gets?
– Product development; sales or people – at what stages should you invest in these elements?
– Operational, tactical or strategic – is there a right balance for a Founder?
– When is the right time to let go of certain responsibilities as a Founder?

Introducing our 53rd episode of ON AIR: With Owen – our latest interview video series with honest conversation about scaling revenue, hosted by our Founder & CEO, Owen Richards.

Our 53rd guest is Mike Hann, EVP of Revenue at fabric.

Owen and Mike discuss the notion of sales leaders adapting to business expansion, by moving away from first line management, towards a more strategic approach, in pursuit of revenue growth.

Including:
– Introduction to Mike and the story of fabric
– What effecting revenue looks like in the early days of a start-up, and how that adapts and changes over time
– How aspiring sales leaders can benefit from the experience of being in more deals for longer
– How being a remote leader can add to the challenge of effecting revenue
– Which strategies to adopt to successfully expand operations into new territories
– Ways to shape new, less-experienced SDRs to adopt the culture of the business
– The challenges of hiring fresh talent remotely, in a fast-growing business
– Why revenue leaders are choosing to do smaller off-sites, more often

Introducing our 52nd episode of ON AIR: With Owen – our latest interview video series with honest conversation about scaling revenue, hosted by our Founder & CEO, Owen Richards.

Our 52nd guest is Lauren Wright, VP of Revenue at Demodesk.

Owen and Lauren discuss remote, hybrid and in-office working, and whether there is a ‘right’ blend for a sales organization.

Including:
– The longevity of remote working – will it last forever?
– How we treat in-office time in 2022 vs. how we treated it prior to the pandemic
– Why leaders have a responsibility to be present, just as much as SDRs
– How to manage push-back from your sales team about returning to the office
– Did employers react to the pandemic and switch to remote working too quickly?
– How remote recruiting increased the talent pool during the pandemic
– Tools we can use utilize to keep transparency around remote team performance
– The euphoria of stepping onto a sales floor, and how Demodesk have re-created the experience in a virtual world

Introducing our 51st episode of ON AIR: With Owen – our latest interview video series with honest conversation about scaling revenue, hosted by our Founder & CEO, Owen Richards.

Our 51st guest is Andy Champion, GM for EMEA at Highspot.

Owen and Andy discuss how creating a culture of coaching puts a deliberate focus on helping people to thrive at what they do.

Including:
– The main benefits of creating a culture of coaching
– The impact good coaching can have on talent retention rates
– Types of activities that fall under the category of coaching
– When to invest in coaching & how to measure it over a short period of time
– How to increase & measure the level of engagement with SDRs
– The optimum percentage of an SDR’s time that should be spent learning
– The basic tenets of coaching: what good and bad looks like
– How to mentor your team effectively & develop your own style of leadership
– Stimulating organic peer-to-peer coaching
– Individual contributor’s responsibility to self-coach & how leaders can encourage this.

Introducing our 50th episode of ON AIR: With Owen – our latest interview video series with honest conversation about scaling revenue, hosted by our Founder & CEO, Owen Richards.

Our 50th guest is Morgan Ingram, Director of Sales Execution & Evolution at JB Sales Training. He explains how, in order to break through the noise, you have to be different to the noise, and provides his tips on how to achieve this.

Morgan and Owen also discuss:
• The best channel for outreach (in Morgan’s opinion)
• Cold calling: The negative feelings towards it vs. the data which validates it still works
• The things you could be doing to break through the noise and set yourself apart from the rest
• How to encourage SDRs to take responsibility for their own learning journey
• Pros & cons of quick sales hacks vs. playing the long game
• The benefits of time blocking and what to focus on
• The components & framework of a successful cold call
• How pauses during a cold call allow you to navigate the call better
• Cold call intro’s that answer the two most important questions: Who are you and what do you want?

Introducing our 49th episode of ON AIR: With Owen – our latest interview video series with honest conversation about scaling revenue, hosted by our Founder & CEO, Owen Richards.

Our 49th guest is Sunil Kumar, Co-Founder & CEO of the successful start-up Trainyo – an SDR bootcamp offering a training and placement programme for people from all backgrounds to start their career in tech sales.

Sunil gives us insight into how the business has seen so much success in such a short period of time, what they have prioritized, and what he considers the most important element to focus on, in the next 6-12 months, to maintain that success.

Including:
– An introduction to Sunil, Trainyo and the services they offer
– Trainyo’s journey so far and the learnings we can all take from it
– What the planning phase of a start-up looks like; the things you need to consider and executing the plan
– The emotions and feelings commonly felt as a Founder or CEO of a start-up in the early stages
– How to build a brand in the community when you are a small company with very few voices
– Tips for producing good content and communication techniques Trainyo use internally to ensure their content is consistently fresh and creative
– The challenges of hiring and onboarding for a start-up, and what to prepare for
– What to look for in people when recruiting for new roles, and the common threads that Sunil has identified as important in his team