Jim Steele and David Rudnitsky Explain Moneyball for Sales

You might be familiar with the popular Hollywood film Moneyball.IMG_6401

Moneyball was inspired by the 2002 Oakland A’s baseball team, which, despite a smaller budget, was able to outperform much wealthier teams.

Using sabermetrics, A’s leader Billy Beane broke from traditional recruiting to find undervalued players.

This example framed the topic for Jim Steele and David Rudnitsky’s session at Dreamforce 2015.

Jim and David revealed how companies can use data science and statistical analysis to improve the way they sell and gain a competitive advantage.

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Jim is currently the president of worldwide sales and chief customer officer for XANT. David is XANT’s senior vice president of enterprise sales.

Together they have more than 70 years of sales experience.

Jim started the session by explaining how dramatically sales has changed over the years.

Companies like Amazon and Google have altered B2C sales, and now customers are expecting the same simplified experience in a B2B environment.

To meet these expectations, companies must adopt a sales approach backed by data science and predictive analytics.

Doing so will allow organizations to:

  1. Predict consumer behavior
  2. Prescribe sales actions
  3. Improve sales performance

Just like the Oakland A’s, not every company can afford to hire super star talent. Instead, you need to get creative and use data science to make your sales teams more effective.

In 2009, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff wrote “Behind the Cloud.”

In his book, Marc dedicates a whole chapter to “The Sales Playbook” — using what he calls the “David Rudnitsky Sales Playbook” as inspiration.

During the session, David expanded on his playbook, offering a Version 2.0 for a modern sales environment.

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He offered these seven plays every sales rep should follow:

  1. Enterprise sales is a team sport.
  2. Never cold call.
  3. Walk the halls.
  4. Know your customer better than they know themselves.
  5. Always take the deal off the table.
  6. Never compromise talent.
  7. The importance of intensity and speed.

There are a number of products aimed directly at helping sales reps run each of these plays, and they’re all fueled by data and predictive analytics.

To wrap things up, Jim summarized everything with a familiar phrase from XANT.

“We believe science holds the key to unlocking human potential and improving the performance of sales.”

To hear the full presentation, watch it on Periscope: here. Hurry, though, because it will only remain live for 24 hours.

What did you learn at Dreamforce today? Join the conversation by using the hashtag  #DF15Top10.

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