PDFs are the go-to format for the majority of companies all over the globe, which begs the question: Why is a three-decade-old format still relevant in the age of automation, machine learning, and AI? For sales contracts, in particular, PDFs tend to come with a plethora of problems. We’ve listed the most important ones here. Let us know what you think in the comments. #pdf #contractmanagement

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One thing I wish I knew before starting sales. I've been in sales my entire life. All sales roles I've had was all to get my dream job as a speaker for Tony Robbins. Even after landing my dream role I still felt like it wasn't enough. Then I found Tech Sales here at Drata and I'm not looking back. If you're in sales, start with tech! #techsales

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It’s a new field. There are no rules. But on LinkedIn there are 250k roles in the US for this job. So how do you actually become a product manager?

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Tip of the week: According to a study done by Lucidpress, brands that are consistent with their messaging could expect to have a 33% increase in overall growth. This means that taking the extra time now to make your social media channels, website, sales pages, and email marketing messaging consistent might just pay off in the long run. What are some things you can do this week to make sure you're staying consistent?

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Dear Leaders, Today, I want to reflect on a topic that I believe all leaders struggle with at some point in our careers: work/life balance. I’m a CEO, but I’m also a mom, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a yoga practitioner, and an avid reader. So if you’ve ever felt like there aren’t enough hours in a day to grow both personally and professionally, you aren’t alone. It’s tempting to push ourselves to juggle every aspect of our careers, families, and passions flawlessly. But that isn’t sustainable. I often see leaders burnout trying to ‘do it all’. And, while we can’t magically create more hours in a day, we can choose to take a different approach to balance our work and life. We can change our perspective, and that’s powerful. With that, I want to share three reflections that have helped me navigate this throughout my career. 1. Think about presence not balance. The word ‘balance’ inherently suggests tension, a push and pull, a difficult tightrope walk. But we shouldn’t need to compromise life for work, or sacrifice our career aspirations to succeed personally. That’s why instead of trying to find work/life balance, we should focus on work/life presence. I realized this many years ago when my son was in elementary school and I joined his class for a field trip. I was proud of myself for taking the day off work to spend time with him, but it was the end of the quarter, so I ended up being on my phone a lot throughout the day. Later on, I asked my son if he enjoyed the field trip and he said no, it was terrible because I was on my phone the whole time. I learned that day that it’s not about balance, it’s about presence. It’s about the quality of time I spend with my family, not the quantity of time. 2. Don't let guilt overrun you. If you are on parental leave or taking the afternoon off to do something that brings you joy, don’t feel guilty for not working. Just be present. Similarly, if you are at work, be present instead of letting guilt creep in for not being at home. As a busy leader, guilt won’t serve you. So be intentional about your time so that you can be in the moment, guilt-free. 3. Create a vision for yourself and prioritize. It is easy to get overwhelmed with the long list of things you can be doing every day. And, when you are overwhelmed you lose perspective and purpose. So, start with intentionality and create a vision for where you want to be at the end of this year and at the end of the next 5 years - write it down. Then hold yourself accountable to prioritizing actions that will help you accomplish that vision. Say no to everything else, so you are not overwhelmed. If spending time with your kids is a priority, set aside that time and make it happen. If you want to pursue a hobby or a passion, schedule time on your calendar and do not cancel. It is about intentional prioritization. How have you learned to navigate work/life presence? #leadership #worklifebalance

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Tip of the week: Are you starting to develop your brand mission statement? Do a little research on brands in similar fields, as well as companies you encounter on a regular basis. Whose values do you align with? What resonates? Start there and see what blossoms.

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5 quick tips to increase your positive reply rates with prospects 1️⃣ Have a reason for outreach in your opener 💡Did they just hire new sales reps? Did they just launch a new product? Is there a relevant trigger that makes you confident they are a good fit for your product? 2️⃣ Talk about pain 💡What is the pain that your product solves and how can you help your prospect? 3️⃣ Use social proof 💡Who are companies similar to your prospect’s company that you can mention? Look at factors like maturity of company, industry, etc… 4️⃣ Show not tell 💡Use actual results. Have you helped increase revenue by x% or reduced new employee onboarding time from months to days? 5️⃣ Don’t share pricing in a first email 💡 Use a soft CTA to see if there is enough interest for a call. For actual examples and improvements click the link in comments about 5 common pitfalls of cold outreach. What would you add as another best practice? #sales #salestips

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The most effective strategy (in my view) to make your product better is to sign up as a new user, and go through all the flows every few weeks. So underrated!

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2021 was as nuts as we are about sales 🐿 Check out a few quotes from our #NutsAboutSales series that we absolutely loved. #salestips #saassales #b2bsales #salesenablement Michael Harness Lou Wolf Naomi Rozenfeld Matthew Green Rachel Shekhtman

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Most prospects at canny do a 14-day trail before purchasing. It occurred to me that something I can do during trials is create a shared slack channel. Implemented this & feel like it: ♥️Makes sure my prospect is successful with their trial ♥️An easy way for prospects to get answers ♥️Builds trust Do you do this at your company? Why or why not? #sales #salestips

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How to grow your customer base: 💰 Never forget your first deal 🏆 Make customer success a strategy cornerstone 👂 Listen to your customers 👑 Expand with your current customers as well as your new ones

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I made a HUGE mistake early on in my career. I thought being the most knowledgeable and not sharing that knowledge with my colleagues would give me an advantage and enable me to move up the corporate latter faster. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I am ashamed I didn’t realize this earlier and apologize to my colleagues. When I got smart, I started sharing knowledge …with colleagues …with customers …with peers in the compliance space …with my LinkedIn network The irony was that by sharing my knowledge, others were so much more willing to share their’s with me, and we all found better solutions as a result. It also lead to new opportunitie when I wasn’t looking for them. In fact, Drata’s CEO found me on LinkedIn by searching for content about compliance. I fortunately responded to the message and the rest is history. My current role was a direct result of sharing my knowledge on LinkedIn. But always remember: share your knowledge for the right reasons. …Share altruistically …Share so we all can get better …Share so others will learn …Share so that your arguments and assumptions can be challenged and improved I realize this is obvious to some, but it wasn’t obvious to me early on in my career. Don’t make the same mistake I did.

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Bottom-up adoption always wins🏆. I think about my time at Xbox. Our admin set up our org with Sketch+InVision+Abstract. Slowly individuals used Figma on the side for design and prototyping. They shipped so quickly that Abstract had no place in the market anymore. #design #figma

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In today's installment of "Behind My Screen", I share the 5 tools that are most impactful in enabling me to be productive and effective in a distributed work environment (besides mmhmm). I will leave details and links in a comment below if you'd like to try any of them out! #madewithmmhmm #ooo #asynchronous

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Two Americans walk into a Danish marketing team… This past Friday, Kate and I made a couple mistakes sending out our April Product Newsletter to customers. (You don’t have to tell me that mistake #1 was sending a newsletter on a Friday…) I thought I was ahead of the ball having created the newsletter outline back at the beginning of the month. Poor Kate had been at the company for a minute, and was kind enough to help me get it out the door. So for the record, I take full responsibility for this mess. Here’s what we learned: - It’s hard to balance the “80/20 rule" with trying to prevent “too many cooks in the kitchen”. We're likely going to adopt the ole tried and true RACI method for May. - Finalizing things at the last minute doesn’t work when most of your target audience is 6 hours ahead of you. But I think we can assume anyone who engaged with this email on their Saturday morning is raising their hand about *something* — right?? - Sending multiple test emails is very important. Otherwise, it might be too late before someone notices that the photo associated with your name...isn't you 😬 - Do not assume that what might seem like a generic email alias will route replies to the company’s support inbox. Heaven forbid 400+ OOO replies end up pinging your company's COO 🤦‍♀️ - More people at your company read your newsletters than you probably think. If you're ever feeling attention-starved at work, ask to send one out! In all seriousness, it may be surprising that such 'simple' mistakes were made, especially when Kate and I have been in the game as long as we have. But perhaps the biggest takeaway from this is the reminder that we all slip up. And I've learned it doesn't matter if you're entry level or C-Level, male or female (I mean that's for sure), have worked in SaaS for a day or several years, are US-based, in EMEA, or elsewhere...it happens to all of us. But we learn. And we apply. And we learn some more and apply some more. Be kind to yourself. Heck, laugh at yourself. We're just doing the best we can, one day at a time.

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Keys to a fulfilled career: -Focus on what you can control. -Control your emotions when things go wrong. -Don’t make the same mistake twice. -Be authentic. -Lead with integrity. -Help others succeed and rejoice in their success. -Seek to understand, then to be understood. -Admit when you were wrong. -Be human -Don’t measure your success based on how much money you made; measure it based on the impact you had on others.

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We just heard from Jill Ellis - one of the most successful coaches in sports history during our Kickoff! She blew me away with leadership insights on building high performance teams. Top takeaways that resonated with me: 1. To build high performing orgs you need to provide clarity and you need to make sure your team feels valued. 2. Elite performers want to evolve every single day and you need to provide an environment that provides that. 3. To go from great to greatest, improve every single day. There is power in aggregation of marginal gains. 4. Treat failure as feedback - the best kind. 5. Lead with empathy and humanity. #leadership #goodtogreat #hubspot

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If you claim to do research, SHOW IT. I want to know what you found when you say “I spent some time researching your team.” Generally I’ve found that when people say this, they are trying to build trust and show that they’ve spent time, but I’ve never seen actual proof with a statement like this. A few places to actually show you did research and find some nuggets: 1️⃣Company annual report 2️⃣Someone’s posts 3️⃣Their job description Instead of saying “Hi Kayla, I spent some time researching your team” you can say something like “Hi Kayla, noticed …. (and then tie it into the pain you solve) #sales #salestips

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Are you sending emails like this & wondering why you aren't hitting quota!? Here are 4 suggestions to level up your email game. 🤝Address someone by name. When you just say "Hi" you are showing that you put in zero effort. 🤓Instead of saying "Did you get a chance to go through my previous email?" have an actual reason for outreach. ie; "Noticed on LinkedIn you posted about ....." or have a cute/creative GIF that acts as an email bump. 💻Do your research. Do not say something like "Do let me know the Software, Job Titles & Geography you wish to target, so that I can get back with free samples, counts and more details for your review" Instead, understand the target market of your prospect by doing a quick search on their website and social channels. It's especially hard to build trust if you don't understand your prospect/what they care about. 💌Send relevant messaging. If you are mentioning research you did on a prospect tie it into something you commonly hear with that persona and a pain you know they run into. At the end of the day it's all about: ✨Intimately understanding your prospect ✨Artfully tying your research into what they care about Got any other good email tips? Share them with me! #sdr #sales #salestips

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Boosting conversions is more important than your relationships 💰 Oh, it isn't? BRB. Check out these 5 tips to convert more so you can spend more time with your loved ones ❤️‍🩹

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