I think we can all agree that “account-based” is a leading contender for 2016’s phrase of the year. If you watched a webinar, read a blog post, or attended a conference and had account-based as your drinking word, you’d have a frequent flyer number at your local ER.

Beneath the buzz, however, this one has some there there.

There are two tides propelling the account-based movement. One, the number and diversity of people involved in purchasing decisions has changed. The “buyer” has become the “buying unit” and is quickly growing into the “buying battalion.” Just about any single sale process seems to require dozens of yeses and risks running aground in the face of a single no.

Two, it is getting harder and harder to scale what worked in the past. Killed it at that BigCon tradeshow last year? Great! But doubling your spend next year won’t net you double the new logos. Same goes for PPC, social advertising, PR, etc.

Death, taxes, and diminishing returns are the immutable laws of our world.

I was working with a client recently charting their $10M to $100M trajectory. (They were kind enough to let me share these numbers with their name removed.) The path that got them to $10M looked like this:

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Account Execs, Inside Sales Reps - whatever you call them, the metrics that drive the AE role are always in demand. Today, I'm excited to launch our latest research focused on Account Executive teams (ISRs, AEs, AMs, etc.).

This is our sixth round of research, since 2007. The key themes we'll explore include:

• Rep profiles: experience, tenure, ramp time, career path
• Compensation: base, OTE, accelerators
• Quotas: average quotas, % attainment
• Technology stack: categories, adoption, impact
   

We worked hard to make this year’s survey easier and it will take roughly 6 minutes to complete. If you lead an Account Executive group, please participate.

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Our featured author today is Manny Alamwala, Business Development Associate at Vision Critical. He joins us for the latest in our Inside Sales Practioner Series.

 
As an SDR, I’ve become more aware of the reality behind the saying “time is money.” Not being time-wise leads to fewer meetings booked, fewer opps generated,  lower income, and (at worst) being moved out of the role.

I've observed that high achievers are disciplined with their time and focus on what's most important at any given moment. They know what they have to do and when they have to do it before they start their days.

Recently, I went to a bookstore to find a journal to help me focus. As I looked at the different types available, I came up with an idea of a role-specific journal to be used for inside sales. At the heart of it, all inside sales professionals are doing the same type of tasks: research, prospecting, calling, emailing, social media, qualifying, etc.

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This morning, I ran a LinkedIn search for open SDR, AE, and Customer Success jobs in greater Boston. I found 1,506 active job posts—with 600+ posted within the last week alone. With every social post, in every recruiter InMail, and on every career page, companies are screaming for sales talent.

There are two problems though. One, the unemployment rate (for the typical candidate profile) is nearing a natural floor.

Two, the era of sloppy growth is coming to an end (see here, here, and here). When times are fat, companies can ignore slack in their hiring process. Heads for headsets, paying signing bonuses, and “hire-fast + fire-fast” mentalities will put butts in seats when growth trumps profitability.

As the pendulum swings toward efficient growth, hiring momentum becomes what matters. And for high-growth companies, it becomes a strategic competitive advantage.

What is hiring momentum?

According to my good friend Google, momentum is the quantity of motion of a moving body, measured as a product of its mass and velocity. In sales, you can increase hiring momentum in three ways:

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