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January 10, 2022
5 min read
Welcome back to The Weekly Pitch! Today, we rank-order five popular sales communities to consider joining. Although we picked a winner, each group offers a unique value prop.
In our Feature Story, we break down the pros and cons of each sales community, the different aspects that make it worth joining, and what to expect.
First, our Weekly Chart is about RFPs. On average, RFPs deliver 35% of a sales team's revenue, but ugh, which salesperson looks forward to them?
Is it time to finally invest in an RFP team or a proposal writer?
According to Loopio's 2021 RFP Benchmarking Report, proposal writers spend roughly seven more hours writing responses than those in other departments.
"Since more writing time is associated with better win rates, companies with sales or other teams owning the process should reevaluate how much time they invest in proposal writing."
By: Korrin Bishop
Several online sales communities exist for sales professionals to skillshare, find new opportunities, and connect with supportive ears. Below, we’ll introduce five – ranked in order – that may be the extra cheerleader we need in our sales role!
Sales Hacker is an online community of B2B sales professionals, with all of its content created by sales professionals themselves. The community has a low barrier to entry and is an easy way to connect with others in the field quickly.
Some of the community’s key highlights include:
Pricing: Free to join.
Pros: The targeted content and podcast are some of the best around.
Cons: It feels more like a content machine than a community.
RevGenius is a community of 17,000+ sales, marketing, rev-ops, and customer success professionals. The platform is helpful for anyone involved – directly or indirectly – with revenue. For Sales Development Reps and Account Executives, the community’s paid version boasts that it can help increase your prospecting by a minimum of 25%.
Some of the community’s key features include:
Pricing: Free option provides access to community events, email newsletter, magazine access, and Slack access. RevLeague option is available for $499/year and also includes a private Slack, contests, weekly roundtables, and more.
Pros: A free option is always good, and its job board offers a volume of opportunities.
Cons: Including customer success, marketing, and revenue operations makes calling this group a "sales" community a stretch.
Modern Sales Pros has a vision of “a world where all professionals have access to a high-quality peer learning community that reflects the diversity of the world we live in.” Membership is restricted to revenue leaders in sales management, marketing management, sales/revenue operations, and related supporting disciplines; this excludes AEs and individual contributor sellers.
Some of the community’s key highlights include:
Pricing: Free to join.
Pros: One of the first sales communities and recognizable to many non-sales executives, daily activity reinforces member interaction.
Cons: Some group email threads annoyingly blow up your inbox, forcing members to turn off notifications altogether.
Bravado is a B2B sales community of 130,000+ sales professionals. The community helps sales professionals level up their careers with a strong focus on peer-to-peer interaction.
The community includes three main features:
Pricing: Free to join.
Pros: The only group offering a mobile app, real-time insights delivered in a Twitter-esque feed trump other communities' Slack channels or email communication.
Cons: The overall vibe comes off – at times – as an unfiltered and less professional version of LinkedIn.
While many sales communities focus on networking, results, and other productivity measures, Pavilion does so while prioritizing care for its members as real people in need of support. The brand focuses on generosity, peer-to-peer learning, and acknowledging that the sales field can be lonely without meaningful connections.
Pricing: Ranges from $25 to $275 a month depending on the membership you apply to – Analyst, Associate, or Executive.
Pros: Best-in-breed with virtual networking and connection, learning courses are an extra cost but taught by proven practitioners.
Cons: "Quit, and you can never come back" is a turnoff; the price is high if you pay out of pocket.
Pavilion is the clear winner if we are further along in our sales career and looking for genuine networking and learning opportunities. Bravado, however, is an excellent runner-up based on its "War Room" feature and being free.
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Korrin Bishop is a freelance writer and editor with publications in The Motley Fool, Sierra Magazine, Shelterforce Magazine, and Fodor's Travel, among others. You can learn more about her work and contact her at: www.korrinbishop.com.
OpenView dropped an article last week outlining a few options to price our product or service.
Before making our selection, it's essential to consider other variables like the sales methodology we ascribe to, the length of our sales cycle, average deal size, and market competition.
The Weekly Pitch picks "Skim" as our favorite. As the best closers do, drive value in each customer interaction, lead with retail price, and only discount in exchange for something in return (e.g., faster signature, customer case study, etc.)
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