Podcast episode
Show The Product on The First Call: The GENIUS High Velocity Sales Blueprint | Mallika Sahay
30 Minutes to President's Club19 Jun 202535 min
Description
High velocity sales isn’t about rushing… it’s about precision, urgency, and clarity. In this episode, Mallika Sahay breaks down how to build a lightning-fast sales motion without sacrificing quality, trust, or control. 🎙 ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS: Use a product story early — Instead of saving the demo, introduce a product story on the first call to create momentum and shorten deal cycles. Track funnel-stage metrics — In high-velocity sales, monitor top, middle, and bottom funnel metrics closely to iterate quickly and stay on course. Rethink your sales motion — Don’t copy-paste your current process. Start from first principles and align every step with the buyer’s decision journey. Simplify pipeline reviews — Use just two key questions to assess deals: is there a real problem solver, and is there a clear path to closing? MALLIKA’S PATH TO PRESIDENTS CLUB: Sales Development Lead & Founder of SMB Sales @ Segment Head of Sales @ Census Startup Sales Lead @ Apollo Chief of Staff & Product Manager RESOURCES DISCUSSED: Sales Process Join our weekly newsletter Things you can steal Save $50 on any 30MPC course with code “PODCAST” Free Sales Templates, Scripts and Guides 30MPC Training: 30mpc.com/training
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out. So usually those organizations have a very heavy partnership with marketing, and they're actually going to generate a lot of that inbound demand coming in. So you would expect every day you need to have at least one or two new qualification calls coming in. And every week you are really building up qualified pipeline. “From a prospecting end, that's where, like, I would think about outbound into a target” account list. So let's just say for this month or for my quarter, there's these strategic logos. It could be still small deals or larger deals, but these are the ones we really want to put everything behind. And we don't want to do a big marketing campaign for them. We want AEs to really prospect into them. So in addition to running my qualification calls that are coming from inbound leads,
account list. So let's just say for this month or for my quarter, there's these strategic logos. It could be still small deals or larger deals, but these are the ones we really want to put everything behind. And we don't want to do a big marketing campaign for them. We want AEs to really prospect into them. So in addition to running my qualification calls that are coming from inbound leads, “I'm also doing a bit of prospecting into a very specific set of accounts.” I think in high velocity sales, you need to watch the metrics across the entire sales cycle so closely. I think often as AEs, we look at how many discovery calls do I have? How many trials do I have? What's my ACV? What's my rain weight? And often we ignore how many new meetings do I have coming up this week? What's my qualification rate?
So it could be, we know going from discovery, getting into the trials historically, we've had a ton of issues because people don't have enough urgency to solve the problem or things like that. So again, always try to find one top of the funnel, which for me is number of sales qualified opportunities. Also a great way to build a very strong partnership between SDR organizations and AE organizations “since that is a shared goal, marketing included.” And then I would do a mid funnel metric. And the one other thought I will say on the metrics pieces, high velocity sales allows us in sales to actually bring the blend of art and science. Often I see that non-sales teams are focusing on this. Marketing has so much experimentation, product management, experimentation, engineering does.
pitch. And so that's where, depending on the complexity of the platform and how many use cases, if there is kind of one main capability, then I can use that to show parts of the product. For example, often like on the navigation bar in the product, it may have tabs that we're not going to touch on. But even the fact that someone can see that may start to bring up questions or “curiosities around it. If a product does have multiple use cases, then depending on the persona” I'm talking to, I'm going to ideally have one use case story that end-to-end shows them like, what would this look like for them in their role? And then ideally where it makes natural sense, try to also touch on, are there tangential use cases that could be relevant for them or for additional teams at their company? One time I had a demo expert come in
if there is kind of one main capability, then I can use that to show parts of the product. For example, often like on the navigation bar in the product, it may have tabs that we're not going to touch on. But even the fact that someone can see that may start to bring up questions or curiosities around it. If a product does have multiple use cases, then depending on the persona “I'm talking to, I'm going to ideally have one use case story that end-to-end shows them like,” what would this look like for them in their role? And then ideally where it makes natural sense, try to also touch on, are there tangential use cases that could be relevant for them or for additional teams at their company? One time I had a demo expert come in at Outreach and train my team on experts. His name was Peter Cohen. Peter Cohen's number one