Summary:
In this episode, David welcomes Olivier L’abbe to the show. Olivier is the Vice President of Sales in G2 Crowd, a peer-to-peer, business solutions review platform headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Listen as Olivier shares a multitude of his experiences and gold nuggets in sales — from how he started out to what he does to expand his skills now that he’s climbing up the ranks. He also shares about G2 Crowd’s Buyer Intent and how that can help make more sales appointments.
3 Key Points:
- Hire people who are hungry to succeed.
- Account executives should all be prospecting all the time.
- If you’re in sales, you have to believe in the product you’re selling.
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 00:01 – Accelerate your growth at The Sales Development Conference on August 31, 2018
- 00:52 – Subscribe to our show on YouTube and review us on iTunes
- 01:28 – David introduces Olivier L’abbe to the show
- 02:32 – Olivier talks about his sales background
- 04:47 – He currently works in G2 Crowd
- 05:30 – Meeting the team in G2 Crowd via a recruiter
- 06:32 – G2 Crowd helps people make better buying decisions
- The site is FREE for everyone
- G2 Crowd offers REAL REVIEWS from actual software users
- Helping buyings to essentially cut the fluff
- 08:42 – G2 Crowd shows both the pros and cons of each software listed
- Bring transparency to the decision making process
- 09:37 – Olivier shares why people would want to leave a review
- 1 – An outreach team that engages people online, sometimes giving free gift cards
- 2 – Vendors become partners and they bring in their customers to make reviews
- 3 – Organic reviews from people
- 12:51 – G2 Crowd has over 40,000 different products and 5,000 different categories
- G2 Crowd’s BDR team’s role in B2B Services
- David’s work on GlassDoor influenced Olivier with BDR teams
- G2 Crowd currently has a team of 20 BDRs and a total of 70 people in sales
- 15:43 – “I want my account executives selling”
- 16:16 – Olivier believes in hiring young people who want to succeed
- He checks in with their individual employees to get feedback
- Account executives should also train BDRs on who to target
- 19:02 – Accelerate your growth at The Sales Development Conference on August 31, 2018
- 20:18 – Olivier talks about self-generating meetings
- 21:37 – Climbing up the ranks means Olivier must be people-oriented
- 22:25 – Olivier’s reminder to people who want to be AEs, “You will always be prospecting”
- 23:40 – How Olivier expands his skills as he move up
- Having an open communication line
- Learning through watching, reading, listening, etc.
- 24:54 – Having good leaders is what Olivier looks for in a company
- 26:59 – “If you’re in sales, you really got to believe in what you’re selling”
- 29:28 – Find something you’re passionate about
- 30:12 – G2 Crowd’s Buyer Intent
- They track buyer behavior and vendor behavior
- Feeding information in SalesForce
- 32:47 – A sales cycle with Cisco – Olivier shares how BDRs can use G2 Crowd to get info on the product they’re selling
- 34:27 – G2 Crowd’s premium offering includes giving leads and snippets of information that can be used to close deals
- 36:37 – Using personalized videos to convert sales through emails
- 38:55 – Subscribe to our show on YouTube and review us on iTunes
- 39:02 – Contact us to discuss your sales development needs
Resources Mentioned:
- G2 Crowd – Where Olivier serves as a VP of Sales
- GlassDoor – Where Olivier and David worked together
- SalesForce – Platform the G2 Crowd uses to feed Buyer Intent data
- Cisco – A company where they had a sales cycle with
