Maximize Your Meeting Times With a Strong GTM Cadence

Ad hoc meetings and missed opportunities to adjust are causing a drag on your business. Taking a thoughtful approach to rotating topics keeps the pulse of the entire GTM engine while also focusing on the short-term need of CQ forecasts. The Forecast Cadence framework provides a baseline to customize to your organization’s needs.

Forecast Cadence

Roll-ups

Every week, your sales teams should have their roll-up meetings on a regular basis so the CRO review with direct reports is as accurate as possible. The meetings typically go from AE>FLM (Front Line Manager)>2LM (2nd Line Manager if applicable)>+ (any other layers in your org)>CRO. In smaller orgs, that may be AE>CEO. Those meetings should be held on the same day every week with the expectation that sellers have their pipelines scrubbed in advance and applicable fields completed.

Don’t forget to prepare your sellers and managers for the types of questions they need to be able to answer. These should follow your qualification method or sales methodology (Value Selling, MEDDPIC, SPICED, Challenger, etc.).

You may have your Rep:Manager 1:1s on Tuesdays, Manager rollups on Wednesdays and VP>CRO calls on Thursday so the CRO can provide an update to the ELT on Friday.

Rotating Topics

Weekly focus areas based on the week of the quarter ensure key data is reviewed regularly and you get ahead of any issues. Here is a sample of types of topics that should be covered on a regular basis. Feel free to adjust and include others that are important to your business.

• Pushed deals review - When the quarter flips, be sure to look at expected deals that didn’t close on time and learn from them. What did we miss in our process? How can we improve next time? Also focus on the required steps to bring them to get a head start on the new quarter. List managing the top deals will make sure they never fall off the radar.

• CQ pipe review and key renewals - Review the current state of bookings and open pipeline. Identify any risks in the forecasts and any issues on a churn basis as early as possible. Be sure to take away any actions required on key deals (such as bringing to a Win Room for a deal deep dive or pulling in executive support). A weekly review of pipeline created also ensures we aren’t setting ourselves up for feast/famine scenarios. The CQ pipe review and key renewals meeting is the most common topic so be sure to have your dashboards locked in and reps/managers trained to be able to understand them deeply.

• CQ top deals - In some businesses, Pareto’s law exists and the quarter will hinge on just a handful of deals. Spending time reviewing them on a regular basis helps leadership maintain a pulse and provide additional resources where needed.

• NQ pipe / top deals - Always keep an eye on the future and how NQ is shaping up. Understand what your walk-in pipeline target is (amount of pipeline you need on Day 1 of the quarter) and how you are pacing to get there. Be sure to understand what the big deals are for next quarter including your key renewals. Get ahead of any issues and plan for what needs to happen to win those opportunities.

• NQ Commit - Near the end of the current quarter, get an initial soft commit from your team about their forecast for next quarter. It will firm up in the early weeks when the quarter begins but this ensures they always stay ahead. Review NQ coverage against their plan and consider how create/close pipeline will impact that ratio.

• Daily standups - As the quarter closes, have a daily standup to list manage the remaining deals to close and provide real time updates to prevent deals from pushing out. This gives sellers the opportunity to get quick decisions on deal strategy, contract language and any concessions required to bring deals across the line.

Other GTM Meetings

Beyond just forecasting, regular reviews outside of the forecasting process is key to look beyond the current quarter. This allows the Forecast Calls to be focused on the forecast and not short-change the amount of time needed for some of these key areas.

• Performance update (PQ email) - As soon as the books close from a sales standpoint, get preliminary numbers out to the team. This is also the opportunity to let the team know early numbers and targets for the new quarter.

• CRO All Hands - Following up on the performance update email, the All Hands is a chance to celebrate key wins/successes and highlight team members. CROs can use this opportunity to review the CQ targets and coverage and any risks identified. If there are SPIFs to be rolled out, this is always a great place to do so (unless they are team specific). Update the teams on key themes for the quarter and any larger news that is focused on GTM that wouldn’t be covered in a company All Hands.

• Pipeline Council - An aligned GTM team needs a Pipeline Council to review actuals vs targets, any competitive intel that would shape positioning, short term needs and looks beyond the CQ. There needs to be a lot of analysis going into these calls to understand what’s working and what’s not and to have a discussion to get feedback directly from the field. This is a great place to make teams aware of any additional needs such as driving attendance to conferences or developing competitive displacement campaigns.

• Quarterly Enablement Session - Be sure to continually up-level the skills of your sellers. They should have offline work to do (such as submitting calls for review or record objection handling language to determine winners) and each quarter have a live session to focus on specific areas. These are great ways to continue to reinforce trainings that have been rolled out (such as sales methodologies) or focus on strategies to get deals in during the holidays (a great Q4 session).

• Win Room - This may be a weekly or ad hoc meeting where reps bring key deals for deal strategy and discount/language approval. Be sure to include Product, Legal, Finance and Sales Leadership so everyone is aligned on approaches to get key deals in while also protecting the business and setting the customer up for success and future expansion.

Our Approach

Being thoughtful about the meetings you schedule and the goals coming out of each them will make your meetings more productive and increase sales. This schedule may differ from how you schedule it out at your company, but staying ahead of next quarter and continually reviewing pipeline and enabling your sellers will keep your GTM organization humming.