Despite being overladed with tasks, salespeople are making a big effort to spend more time connecting with customers and prospects. In an era of constant connectivity, the biggest gains are in time spent connecting virtually. This shifting dynamic coincides with a general trend toward screen time, in general, among salespeople.

What really defines outstanding Inside Sales leadership? Our conference attendees have the unique opportunity to use the Leadership Summit to springboard their own career advancement. Our panelists will share their personal journeys on how they became true thought leaders and outstanding professionals within our growing community. The audience will have an opportunity ask questions and learn just what it took for them to become successful leaders.

The demands on sales leadership are changing. It was once acceptable to rely on BELIEF of what’s going on in your business: anecdotes from reps, call notes, and CRM metrics. Today, the best sales leaders demand facts. This session is going to tell you why and how.

Today's research on sales development has been primarily Sales-focused — based on sales statistics, how should Sales engage with prospects to optimize their success. But, what does the Buyer think? What do they expect from Sales when they engage with you? Are you negatively impacting your success because you’re not engaging with them as they expect you to? AA-ISP and Vanillasoft partnered with the Telfer Business School to conduct the industry’s first-of-its-kind study that focused on the Buyer. During this session, you will learn the very needs and sales engagement preferences as seen from the Buyer’s point-of-view. Learn the specific actions inside sellers need to take to support its "buyer focused" sales engagement process.

Research from Salesforce shows that sales performance is in decline across the board, with 57% of sales reps expecting to miss their quotas. Additionally, most organizations still believe in sales and marketing delineation: this is where marketing generates leads for sales, sales development reps then qualify these leads, to create opportunities that salespeople hopefully turn into revenue. Unfortunately, this delineation is not helping sales performance. It creates silos across the revenue team, a constant power struggle in organizational alignment, and a fractured experience for the customer.

As a result of this, many organizations are understandably keen to design and implement a sales transformation initiative. Yet, according to the Harvard Business Review, as many as 70% of all change initiatives fail, which is why organizations need to think carefully about the transformation they are attempting, and to set clear objectives. In many cases, a key objective is to focus on and improve digital sales.

This session will feature a Digital Sales Transformation overview including industry insights, best practices and first-hand experiences.

Our Presenters will outline best practices and strategies to help drive change across your organization, develop true alignment and shared objectives between sales and marketing, and sequence process, people and technology for an effective digital sales transformation.

The standard view of creativity is one of constant brainstorming punctuated by sudden flashes of genius - it is not something you can be intentional or methodical about. This talk will disprove this, explain how flashes of genius actually happen and provide ways any creator can increase their odds of having one.

The talk is based on two years of research for Gannett's upcoming book The Creative Curve (June 2018, Penguin Random House). As part of this, he interviewed dozens of the world's leading creatives such as celebrity chefs, multi-platinum musicians, billionaire entrepreneurs, and fine artists. In addition, he talked to the leading scientists and academics who study the field. Based on this, he found four patterns—The Four Laws of Creative Curve—that all creatives engage in. These laws are not only scientifically valid, but can be followed by any aspiring creative. This talk will give a sneak peek into Gannett's research and an early look at how you can leverage it.


Key Takeaways
1. You will learn the neurological and psychological mechanisms behind flashes of genius
2. How you can learn to have more of these so-called aha moments through the mass consumption of content
3. How famous creators engage in a strategy called “the 20% principle” that is accessible for anyone
4. How imitation provides you with the ability to create ideas that have the right mix of familiarity and novelty.

EVERY business problem can be solved with great leadership. Over the past five years, Kyle has interviewed leaders who have created a collective $50b in enterprise value (and likely more in the lives of the people they've led).

In this session, Kyle will share all the tips and tricks (little to big) learned from others (and his own mistakes) along the journey, that have allowed SalesLoft to grow from 4 employees in 2014 to over 370 today while scaling revenue 335% in the last two years.

Leadership starts with three simple principles and expands from there:

1. Attracting incredible talent.
2. Inspiring incredible talent.
3. Developing incredible talent.

The environment you create for your organizations and sales teams is critical to achieving this with scale and consistency.

Join John Healy and Lauren Bailey from Factor 8 as they get hands on and share two things your team can do right now to improve the number and quality of the conversations they have every day. Regardless of what tools you use or methodology you subscribe to, these practical tips will immediately improve results. Listen to actual customer calls (YIKES!) and get the hacks your team needs to build their skills and confidence.

Every day your sales team entrusts important and valuable messages to a form of communication that doesn’t build trust, doesn’t differentiate you, and doesn’t improve results. Learn why, how, and when to replace your plain, typed-out text with simple, personal videos. See examples from a salesperson who’s sent 12,000 videos. Learn the cadence and terminology you should use in your videos to get more conversions. Also, get a simple three-part framework that instantly builds trust with your prospects and more!

Innovation moves in cycles. While the era of automated sales outreach brought a surge in efficiency, ultimately it hasn't provided authentic customer value. Face-to-face selling provides customers with that value, but it lacks speed and efficiency. The only way to solve for these two challenges and drive high-quality sales is by creating and leveraging scaled relationships. Don’t get left behind. Join this session with LinkedIn to hear where the next era of innovation in sales is headed.

What if your sales team could have an instant advantage over all your competition? What if you could quadruple appointments, shorten sales cycles, and skyrocket profits, all through the application of one powerful technique? If your sales team needs this kind of edge, “Build Your Story Playbook” provides the breakthrough you’ve been looking for. Shift your sales team away from the uncomfortable bulldog tactics of the past, to a new, relaxed, and scientifically proven methodology that consistently multiplies results, guaranteed.

In this Keynote, Matthew presents the science of storytelling as documented by Harvard and Stanford researchers, and explains why story is fundamental to a winning sales process. Attendees will hear about Matthew’s real-life clients – some painfully introverted, some needing to get hyped up on coffee to make the day bearable, some with sales in their DNA and thinking they were already doing everything right. All of them not only lowered their stress around selling and learned to love the process, but also increased closure rates as much as 400 – 1,000%. All it takes is a simple, proven process that Matthew has perfected over the last decade.

1) Learn the exceptional power of story, its use in gaining trust and credibility, and its effectiveness at sidestepping objections.
2) Uncover the secret to crafting laser-sharp true stories that make prospects say, “I want that!”
3) Discover the secret to creating your sales department’s story playbook, rapidly reducing sales cycles, increasing closure rates, creating a sales culture of teamwork and excitement, and instantly making both your new and seasoned salespeople more effective.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Discover a step-by-step process for creating true client stories that will 4-10x your sales team’s results
- Learn how to implement your new strategy with new-hire induction to drastically reduce the cost of training and onboarding, getting your team more productive, faster
- Develop a culture that attracts and retains the best and brightest
- Say goodbye to the high-pressure, high-stress environment, and hello to easier closes and a lot more money

Last year, Lori and Joel presented on the main stage the results of their first Women in Sales Leadership study. Join us now for the second part where they will show their latest research in working with top corporations on diversity and inclusive leadership that make a difference. This can help you understand how effective inclusive competency models can grow ROI. Time will be dedicated to small-group discussions and Q&A.

Who Should Attend:
Men and women sales leaders and company leaders
Women in sales roles

During this session, Shabri will talk through the importance and best practice of a structured onboarding program. This session will help you reduce onboarding time by implementing your own bootcamp structure for effectiveness.

Compensation, incentives and setting accurate sales goals and quotas are an extremely important part of a Sales Leader's role. This Idea Exchange will provide different ideas, best practices and solutions which have proven successful in motivating sales teams to achieve success. Walk away with new insights into compensation design along with sharing your own ideas during the session.

Continuing the conversation from Matthew's main-stage keynote Presentation: Build Your Story Playbook - the catalyst to explosive sales growth.

In this 1-hour Breakout Workshop, attendees will continue to hear about Matthew’s real-life clients: some painfully introverted, some needing to get hyped up on coffee to make the day bearable, some with sales in their DNA and thinking they were already doing everything right. All of them not only lowered their stress around selling and learned to love the process, but also increased closure rates as much as 400 – 1,000%. All it takes is a simple, proven process that Matthew has perfected over the last decade.

1) Dive into the exceptional power of story, its use in gaining trust and credibility, and its effectiveness at sidestepping objections.
2) Uncover the secret to crafting laser-sharp true stories that make prospects say, “I want that!”
3) Discover the secret to creating your sales department’s story playbook, rapidly reducing sales cycles, increasing closure rates, creating a sales culture of teamwork and excitement, and instantly making both your new and seasoned salespeople more effective.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Continue to develop a step-by-step process
- Learn steps for how to implement your new strategy
- Further develop a culture that attracts and retains the best and brightest

In every negotiation, there’s always a buyer and seller. To be a competitive sales negotiator, you need to first be prepared, skilled and strategic. This session will provide actionable advice to sales professionals who want to know how to tactfully play the game of negotiation. Having price conversations with your buyers will seem less daunting after you learn how to get a bigger slice of the proverbial pie as well as countertactics to protect the slices you already have.

You’ll get insights on:

- Planning and preparation for negotiation
- What steps you must take before talking numbers
- How to determine whether you should be offering up discounts
- A hands-on negotiation simulation with a personalized critique from Tony, an expert buyer and seller of some of the world’s largest closeouts

These days, it seems like every sales publication has *at least* one article about “culture”, but what does “building a culture” actually mean? Better yet, how does a busy, stretched-thin sales manager in a high-pressure environment intend to create and shift culture while making sure everyone hits the big numbers?

Successful, modern sales leaders have figured out that “building a culture” really means measurable coaching programs, team-wide visibility, strategic competitions and celebrating wins are a highly valued centerpiece of their organizations. Not-so-coincidentally, these managers are leading the pack when it comes to building healthy pipeline, consistently hitting numbers and reducing employee churn while also increasing quota attainment.

Join this session to learn how to use real-time data to make lasting, incremental management decisions that will move the needle and motivate your reps like never before.

There’s a vital relationship between company strategy and sales messaging that’s crucial to filling your pipeline with high-potential opportunities. The first words spoken to your ideal prospects are the key to building a strong pipeline; yet the choice of these words is usually left up to either junior sales reps or a marketing committee. Your strategy deserves a carefully crafted sales script that leads directly to a steady flow of meetings with qualified prospects.

In this workshop, you’ll develop this all-important core-message, condensed to one succinct “breakthrough” sentence, embedded in a scripting structure designed for the toughest conversations: cold calls. And you’ll learn how to apply this breakthrough script to achieve immediate and sustainable success by avoiding the four potential failure points of every first sales conversation.

The goal of this workshop is simple: to arm you with a sales weapon that works in every targeted conversation to turn strategic intent into predictable results.

Salesforce has a streamlined Inside Sales organization, with hundreds of reps across their global offices. Together, they form a well-trained, well-run, well-oiled selling machine that’s key for company growth. Learn how they set up their teams for success and how they’re building solutions to contribute to that success.

This session is for senior sales leaders. One year ago, IBM started a three-phase study, to identify, evaluate, and overcome the biggest obstacles to outbound selling success.

The first phase of the study identified the top five obstacles to effective outbound selling. Evaluating and thoroughly understanding the obstacles was the second phase. Evaluation proved more challenging than expected given the variety of initiatives underway, including new sales acceleration tools, evolving selling strategies, and training. Sometimes the impact of an initiative was simultaneously positive to one part of the sales and marketing process and negative to another part of the process. Finally, in phase three, a formula was developed to evaluate the net impact of the initiatives and a plan took form to overcome the identified obstacles to success.

Learn the top five obstacles to effective prospecting and a case study of IBM’s learnings to-date on how to overcome the obstacles (much of which was unexpected).

Are you looking to learn how to use sales narratives to skyrocket your close rates? Join this session and you'll learn how to tell stories that make your buyers uncontrollably listen to every word you say. You'll learn how to bring your buyer 'past the point of no return', so that the only logical thing for them to do is to buy your solution.

Channel, distribution, and the entire supply chain continues to grow with respect to Inside Sales driving customer engagement and sales. Selling indirectly has its own challenges which can vary somewhat from a traditional direct-selling model. Our panelists will explore both the challenges and also proven best practices around implementing and executing an effective indirect Inside Sales model.

The skills needed to succeed in sales are rapidly changing. In this session, you will learn how sales teams are driving more revenue and future-proofing their jobs by transforming the way they use data and leverage digital tools to connect better with customers.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- How to transition away from offline sales materials
- How to transform your CRM into a CMS
- How to leverage analytics for an optimized sales process

In this session, you will hear about three critical areas where sales leaders can improve reps’ performance - motivating prospecting activity, engaging individual reps, and mentoring/coaching reps around fundamental behaviors. For each topic, we will share examples and some best practices in a “good-better-best” fashion, so that organizations of any level of expertise can take action immediately to improve their game.

We’re going to pretend that everyone in this session has no following online, no brand recognition, and doesn’t have a double-digit response rate from their prospects. Ryan will go into how he generates over 50+ meetings a month combining social selling, individual branding, content, cold calling, and cold emailing. Whether you run a sales team, or are a prospector, bring your notebooks. Your path to world domination starts here.

Join this session to learn how to build a sales cadence that delivers real results.

You'll walk away with:

- The four laws to build a successful sales cadence
- Tips and tricks on building cadences for different sales situations
- What 1,456 different sales cadences tell us about conversation rates

Do your members or channel partners feel they are on an endless hamster wheel, just trying to keep their business going? They provide an amazing product or service, but despite all their efforts and good intentions, their day-to-day is a constant struggle to find interested people, set themselves apart, and make the sale – all while competing against established industry players and dealing with customers who seem to care about only one thing... PRICE. In this game-changing breakout, participants will walk away with a complete understanding of where they have been going wrong, and they’ll know the three instantly-implementable strategies to turn it all around.

Attendees will leave this session feeling a renewed excitement for their business – but most important, with a reliable plan for success based on three simple steps:

1) Differentiation and Message Unification.
Participants will discover exactly how to set themselves apart from their competition, put an end to competing on price, and learn the secret to exciting prospects to
want to know more.

2) Niche Marketing.
Participants’ experiences, education, upbringing, and talents perfectly qualify them to serve one specific niche of customers. In this session, they’ll learn exactly how to identify who those customers are, how to be seen as the only logical choice, and how to get paid what they’re worth.

3) Sales Systemization.
Sales is seen by most as a skill set you either have or you don’t. But in truth, it’s a system like any other, one that can be learned and mastered. Participants will walk out of this session knowing that they can create an individualized sales process that brings repeatable, reliable results.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Finally differentiate yourself and put an end to competing on price
- Understand why you can’t (and shouldn’t be) everything to everyone
- Discover your niche market of motivated, excited-to-buy customers
- Achieve a new outlook on sales

During this session, Amber will share ways to effectively engage your remote team members, and how that engagement improves your bottom line.

Sometimes the best person for the job doesn’t have the best resume. Learn how to spot those diamonds in the rough using predictive insights that signal potential. This session will help you expand your candidate pool by identifying the top talent that could be hiding right under your nose.

This session will help sales leaders:

- Maximize current applicant pools
- Learn how to identify the key signs of potential in candidates
- Spot transferable skills that pay off in sales
- Design onboarding and training programs that transform inexperienced salespeople into seasoned pros

In a recent AA-ISP survey, 46% of association members report the use of gamification. In this session, Alice will discuss what gamification is and why it is important. She will also share her own as well as the audience's experiences on how gamification has helped to motivate teams and individuals in achieving their sales goals.

Technology questions dominate sales teams' growth plans, and planning for the future can be daunting. But, Inside Sales is growing 15X faster than "traditional," outside sales organizations. It's the fastest, most-effective sales strategy for growing your company's business. Join us to hear about successful inside sales strategies and the tools Salesforce is building to help you succeed in this space.

Sales and marketing alone are no longer enough to drive sustainable growth. The fastest-growing companies are adopting customer success as the third growth engine in their company. But much like the challenges involved with marketing handing off leads to sales, challenges arise when sales hands off new customers to the customer success team.

In this talk, Kyle will present the internal challenges his company faced, and how his sales and success teams have pushed through obstacles, from client onboarding, to activation, renewals, and upsells. You’ll learn how sales reps can avoid creating bottlenecks for CS reps when closing new deals, ensuring happier clients, less clawbacks, and a more harmonious work environment.

Sales planning is tricky business. Set quotas too high or slice patches too thin and you risk attrition and demotivating the team. Too low or too fat, and you’ll incur unnecessary expense and leave opportunities on the table. Learn how sales operations teams at high-growth companies are using modern technologies to build staffing plans, set quotas, and balance territories.

Every inside sales leader is looking at increased sales targets in 2019. Achieving those goals needs to go beyond just implementing the latest technology. In addition to that, positioning and coaching your inside sales reps for increasedsuccess has to be a priority. 75% of inside sales teams are hiring and just as many are ramping up training, yet despite this investment sales leaders are feeling increased pressure to achieve aggressive growth goals. What’s missing?

You’ve seen this many times – you hire two sales reps, one goes on to become a solid performer and the other never gets out of second gear. Same for front-line managers. Why do so many people with similar skill sets, experience and training perform at such different levels? What actually causes this fluctuation – and what can you do about it?

This highly interactive session will get to the real root of the problem. It will save you and your sales enablement teams countless hours frustratingly trying to solve the puzzle of sales team performance.

Attendees will learn:

The 5 critical and overlooked dimensions of sales success.The 3 critical conversations that your sales team must be having regularly if you are to reach your sales goals this year.What research says about the gap in performance between organizations who approach their sales team and manager development differently – 20% revenue gap.Three takeaways that you can put into practice when you return from this conference.

Today's sales professionals are eager for continual development with an eye on moving their careers forward. Our panelists will share their experiences around best practices in career pathing along with ideas on how to help reps prepare for the next step in their careers.

Do you know what the missing piece is to grow and sustain peak sales performance among your sales team? Most Sales Leaders spend the majority of their team-development time focusing on teaching or improving sales skills BUT 80% of sales success is based on mindset and ONLY 20% of sales success is based sales skills set. If only 20% of the success quotient is based on skill set, why are we solely focused in that area? We must learn what we can do as Sales Leaders to build a peak-performance-mindset sales organization, so we can achieve maximum sales results!

This session will address this critical topic, and after attending, Sales Leaders will be equipped to:

- Change the trajectory of the success of their sales team by at least 38%
- Maximize each sales team member to their full potential
- Teach their team to engage in a growth mindset which will propel sales results
- Learn the key qualities to evaluate to hire team members with a peak performance mindset
- Elevate performance and grow revenue

Learn the top 10 secrets to generating $100M in sales pipeline and $10M in sales from a serial salesperson selling for IBM, Google and Seamless.ai.

Get all the insider playbooks, tips and secrets to maximize predictable Inside Sales growth with actionable strategies spanning leads, script content, activity and people.

Many of these Inside Sales secrets are being used by the world’s fastest growing companies like Amazon, Facebook, Salesforce, Google, Oracle, Slack and many others.

Attend this session and apply these secrets to immediately increase sales today.

To scale sales success, organizations need to consider not only the sales organization, but also how sales collaborates with marketing and how both teams are supported with enablement and technology. This session outlines a step-by-step approach to modernize sales by leveraging investments in operational systems and incrementally improving customer-facing experiences, organizational priorities and investments, collaboration between sales and marketing, and sales enablement.

Selling is a specialized profession which requires more than years on paper to be successful. Know what behaviors are the right fit for your company. AI/Machine Learning when combined with Behavioral Science and Sales Performance Data formulate a role-specific model to develop, define and grow top-performing Sales Teams.

In this session, we will talk about:

- the effects of BIAS in the workplace and the outcome it has on growing a successful team
- how to improve diversity when unconscious biases are removed
- how AI/Machine learning can out ‘process’ the human brain
- aligning sales-rep strengths with the right sales role
- how training is having little effect on quota attainment and what can be done to change that

Join this breakout for a session detailing:

- How automation helps lean sales teams
- How automation helps you learn to scale your team
- The importance of data for automation
- How to build automation without sacrificing personalization

What is Cultural Fit?

In this session, we will break down a few different meanings of culture and whose responsibility it is to ensure or maintain the culture of a company or team. How do you get the most from your sales teams? We will discuss four areas to create a sustainable culture from the interview process to accountability and autonomy. Come prepared for some hands-on activities and an open discussion about organizational culture or a preferred working environment.

At OnDeck, the Enablement team are key stakeholders across all of the teams that impact the customer experience. This session will focus on one approach to build and scale the enablement function at your company. Chad will examine the structure blueprint of Enablement Technology, Analytics, and Effectiveness and their impact on the revenue team (and beyond).

We’ve taken the concept of sales “Roleplay” and turned it inside out in order to build muscle memory and massive advancement for your reps. We’ll show you exactly how to make roleplay training stick and keep reps practicing and building new habits instead of burning hot prospects. This session features a fun interactive live roleplay for audience members to hone their skills.

Aron and Chris will host this interactive session to show you how to integrate a roleplay system to provide consistent high-quality feedback that reps will use on their calls. Consistent roleplays lead to faster ramp, more meetings, and robust deal reviews to increase pipeline conversions and shorten sales cycles.

Whoever said, “It’s lonely at the top” must have been a woman. Women currently make up only 19% of sales leadership positions and the reality is it's not just loneliness, it's the "only-ness".This session is about helping us tackle the “only-ness” by growing our network, pulling more women into sales, sharing important stories, and helping more women earn promotions into sales leadership. Learn actionable steps you can take immediately while connecting with other badass women in sales.