Enable Excellent B2B Sales Teams in the AI Era with Tom Murtaugh - Ep 65

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Even with all the newest, shiniest AI tools out there, successful, sustainable B2B sales growth is still built on nailing the basic sales skills.

To provide a refresher on those basic B2B sales skills and more, we’re thrilled to introduce Tom Murtaugh, the Portfolio Operations Director at Nordic Capital, a leading sector-specialist private equity firm. Tom joins co-hosts Craig Rosenberg & Matt Amundson to discuss the importance of maintaining deal control, why revenue leaders need to understand the key activities that drive outcomes, & how to get your sales managers up to speed as they become more valuable with the implementation of AI.

Plus, Tom helps Craig & Matt perform an autopsy on the failure of the sales enablement movement.

Also, Craig once again references TOPO & Matt gets envious of a warm male embrace while also imparting the joys of parenthood.

Critical Takeaways
What are the handful of activities that have a real impact on moving a deal forward for your company? While most organizations cannot empirically state which activities drive revenue, using modern data tools & call analysis, sales leaders can & should run correlation analyses to pinpoint & scale what top performers do.
Sales leaders should be directly involved in late-stage enterprise deals, ensuring there is a clear, actionable joint execution plan for each opportunity. Top-down focus & hands-on deal reviews with sales leaders is critical to exceeding targets, even when the forecast looks grim. This level of engagement cannot be delegated or replaced by process alone.
AI can accelerate analysis & experimentation, but it cannot define your core GTM motions or fix broken processes. If you haven’t figured out what works, AI will only amplify confusion. Go-To-Market leaders must first establish and validate the key behaviors & activities that move the needle before layering on automation or analytics.
Sustainable revenue growth comes from robust GTM infrastructure, such as processes, platforms, & RevOps, that persist beyond any single CRO or sales leader.
Sales enablement programs often fail when led by people without quota-carrying experience, devolving into classroom-style training that sellers reject. Shift to “sales excellence” roles, where former sales leaders who coach reps in the field, ride along on calls, & provide practical, trusted guidance.
The most powerful enablement tools are those that let reps learn directly from top performers, such as reviewing Gong calls or shadowing high achievers. Tom shared that new reps who proactively sought out & emulated top sellers ramped faster & performed better. Make it easy for your team to access & learn from real sales conversations, not just static content.

Chapters
00:00 Episode Preview
03:51 Introducing Tom Murtaugh, Portfolio Operations Director at Nordic Capital
10:09 How Improving Deal Control Turned Around a Terrible Quarter for Collibra
21:02 Understanding the Key Activities that Really Drive Outcomes in B2B Sales
28:21 Why Training First Line Sales Managers Needs to be a Priority for B2B GTM Leaders
42:29 Why the Sales Enablement Movement Ultimately Failed in Improving B2B Sales Orgs
51:21 The Role of RevOps in Building a Sustainable Infrastructure for the Revenue Organization

Epic Quotes
“Any type of conversational analytics tool is the most powerful enablement tool that's out there right now, and people just need to use it.” - Tom Murtaugh
“ Your sales manager is be going to become incredibly, even more important than they are today, because they're going to be the ones that even with a little bit of change, are going to have a lot of leverage over a lot of people.” - Tom Murtaugh

Connect with Tom
LinkedIn:   / tom-murtaugh-1729b09  
Nordic Capital Website: https://www.nordiccapital.com/

Shoutouts
Amanda Murtaugh:   / amandabuck143  
Ralph Barsi:   / ralphbarsi  
Philip Cardi
Neil Harrington:   / neildharrington  
Scott Albro:   / scottalbro  
Jeff Goree:   / jeffgoree  
Andy Byrne:   / byrneandy  
Michael Hargis:   / mhargis  
Pablo Dominguez:   / pabtexas  
Echo Valley on Apple TV+ Starring Sydney Sweeney & Julianne Moore (Only rated a 6.3/10 on IMDb)

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Craig’s LinkedIn:   / craigrosenberg  
Matt’s LinkedIn:   / matt-amundson-91657236  
Sam's LinkedIn:   / sam-guertin  
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