The Adapter’s Advantage: Ken and Nick Valla on Driving Sales Effectiveness
Welcome to The Adapter’s Advantage: Breakthrough Moments that Lead to Success. In this episode, sales strategists Ken and Nick Valla, co-founders of The Valla Group, discuss driving sales effectiveness and how their firm helps B2B sellers maximize performance. Learn why organizations must transform their training approach in a hybrid work environment, what sales leaders should do differently, and the key skills sellers need today.
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If you’re going to take a data-driven approach to selling, you must have salespeople who are able to find that data and interpret it. … then you need to build a plan around that. Salespeople need to look at their territories, accounts, and opportunities and do some planning, leveraging data and building out strategies. – Ken Valla
Ken and Nick Valla are co-founders of The Valla Group, a sales effectiveness firm recognized as a modern sales training company.
Ken is president of the firm and has 30 years of experience in sales, sales management, and sales strategy consulting. He specializes in B2B selling to help companies transform and maximize the results of their sales organization. Ken has sold and implemented over $80 million in sales effectiveness solutions and worked with more than 50 Fortune 500 companies.
Nick is vice president of strategic sales at the firm. With over 10 years of experience in sales, Nick has been a high-performing producer at every organization he has worked for. Prior to starting The Valla Group, he sold for Citrix Systems, Wilson Learning, and Allego, where he helped grow the company’s mid-market presence from startup to sales enablement leader.
Listen as Ken and Nick discuss the role technology plays in sales, the importance of building sales plans based on data, the power of having personalized conversations with customers, and the most important skill sellers need today.
Episode 53: Driving Sales Effectiveness | Ken and Nick Valla
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From This Episode
Host Mark Magnacca: “You’ve mentioned the notion of a customized learning path and a conversation strategizer. What is that and why is it important?”
Nick Valla: “Sales today is all about having productive conversations. And it’s not just one conversation, but your ability to string together a series of productive conversations that are outcome driven. So, a conversation strategizer is a one-pager that we use with our customers [to identify] the different types of conversations [their] sellers are having.
“For example, technology … is impacting every company and every industry. That means salespeople today need to talk with different folks across the business. They need to be able to work up and down an organization across each of the different functions of a business—sales, marketing, HR, finance—about how they are operating, what they are trying to do with their business and function strategy, and how that contributes to the organization strategy.
“And salespeople are struggling with that. They’re struggling with having business conversations that aren’t about their products and services. So, we help our customers create one-page conversation strategizers that guide them on how to effectively manage and run conversations with new stakeholders and different personas. Then sellers can take them off the shelf and customize them for the customers they’re speaking with.”
About The Adapter’s Advantage
Our podcast features leaders from sales, training, and industry who share their personal journeys of transformation and how they are adapting to an ever-changing environment. As your host, I’ll introduce you to some of the most interesting and inspiring people I’ve met over the last 20 years.
The conversations dive into the ups and downs of their journey. Our guests focus on inflection points—the aha moments that, in retrospect, had a critical impact on their success. These interviews will leave you with practical, real-world advice that you can apply to your life.
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