What Makes a ConTech Sales Team Truly Successful?
Common Pitfalls to Avoid When Building a High-Performing Construction Tech Sales Teams
This article is written by Mark Facciani. He is the founder of PATH and his mission is helping construction tech companies design, hire, train, and elevate sales development teams, putting them on the path to sustainable revenue growth. Prior to PATH, he was the VP of Sales Development and Customer Success at Tenna where he helped the company achieve massive growth, making them the 162nd fastest growing private company in the U.S. on the Inc. 5000 list.
This post is part of a biweekly guest article series that explores the challenges and problem statements facing the industry, aiming to drive the adoption of new solutions in construction.
In construction, the sales cycle runs in contrast to conventional software as a service. The reason why is that most construction professionals are skeptical of new technology, having been burned by promise after promise from early stage employees. It makes the sales cycle lengthy as most firms operate in a ‘show me’ fashion, waiting to validate the promises of the sales staff before committing to a purchase.
This is both a blessing and curse for startups. On one side they need to fund and survive a lengthy courting process. On the other hand, sales are incredibly sticky and once the solution is validated, startups have the ability to rapidly scale their solution inside a company to increase revenue potential.
As you can see in the graphic, most firms operate on a proof of concept model, committing to a small initial sale, overseeing onboarding and initial usage to verify the claims of the startup. Once a solution is proven as valuable, it can be scaled internally in an organization.
Additionally, as the pricing is generally service or usage based (e.g per project, per user etc), it offers increased revenue growth without commensurate cost growth. It can be more lucrative for a startup to increase adoption of their solution within one company (i.e. sell to another internal project) than attempting to sell to a new company.
This sales model does however have a critical moment of failure: the proof of concept test.
At this stage the sale is transferred from the Account Executive to the Customer Success team. The latter must work to ensure smooth implementation by proactively addressing the customers’ concerns and addressing the pain points identified by the Account Executive.
What this means is that Customer Success is a vital function for construction startups, offering not only revenue retention but revenue growth through multi-project adoption. It’s integral they are set up for success through close communication between them and the other parts of the sales team.
After all, as construction is a ‘show me’ business, it is not uncommon for a startup to close a 3 year deal only for the company to simply stop paying for the software after year one as the perception, fairly or unfairly, was that the solution didn’t live up to its promise.
Having spent the last 6 plus years building and leading construction tech teams, here are the common mistakes to avoid. But before we dive in, let’s first understand how a construction tech sales team is structured.
Contents
How to structure a construction tech sales team
Common Mistakes
Mistake 1: Poor documentation
Mistake 2: Unstructured Training
Mistake 3: Silos
How to structure a construction tech sales team
There are three main roles in a high functioning sales function. These are:
Sales Development Representative
Account Executive
Customer Success Manager ( / Relationship Manager post pilot)
Let’s dive into each one in more detail.
Sales Development Representative (SDR)
The first step in the sales funnel is the outbound sales team. They are the dedicated arm of your sales team which is focused on filling the top of the funnel with potential deals.
They’ll identify sales targets, contact them, identify the right point of contact and undertake preliminary investigation on user fit. Their goal is to book high quality meetings with the right stakeholders and deliver a hand off to the next link in the chain.
Account Executives
The Account Executive will receive the lead from the SDR and is tasked with closing the sale. The SDR will provide the Account Executive with documentation from the initial prospecting process to ensure a smooth handover of details and provide a strong baseline for initial qualification allowing the Account Executive to undertake further discovery.
This process includes mapping out the company's workflow processes and their customer personas. The Account Executive needs to deeply understand the problem faced by the company which helps them to understand if it is:
A true problem which needs solving
If and how their technology is capable of solving it
This stage is valuable as a great account executive ensures buy-in from the company and their executives, building internal advocacy for the solution so that it is not a ‘one off’ sale that falls flat when it comes time for adoption.
By the time the sale is made the vision should be clear. All stakeholders should understand what to expect and how they will be impacted from the deployment of the solution. This information is passed to the Customer Success Manager who will lead the implementation process.
Customer Success Manager
The Customer Success Manager’s role is to ensure that the solution is actually used. They will take the information from the Account Executive and use it to ensure the solution has strong internal adoption, and ultimately, advocacy and use across the company.
This is essential, as construction businesses operate on a proof of concept model. Very often, a company makes a modest or conservative initial purchase as they are skeptical of the technology and its promises.
This skepticism exists because many users have been burned by their experiences when adopting solutions, specifically in the before and after treatment. Perhaps it is a delay in response time after a sale or a disconnect in what was promised and what was actually delivered. Firms want to validate the claims of the startup before rolling it out to their employees as they want to ensure that their internal stakeholders trust the quality and value of solutions they propose. Otherwise, the poor product becomes a reflection of them.
If your solution does prove its worth during the initial implementation period, the contract size could easily expand to be 2x, 3x or even 5x in subsequent months and years. This is valuable as pricing is very often service based (i.e per project, per square foot, per device, or per user) and the software cost base doesn’t scale linearly based on users.
Therefore, depending on your pricing model, increasing adoption of a solution from 5% in a business to 20% of a company’s users can have a larger impact on your bottom line than closing the next 3 customers. This is why it is so important that you set up your sales function effectively and ensure a smooth transition to the Customer Success Team. They aren’t a support function; they’re a revenue generation function.
So now that you understand how ConTech sales teams are structured, here are the 3 most common mistakes I’ve noticed that startups should avoid:
Mistake 1: Poor documentation
Sales Development Representative
When a person says no to the SDR, the contact or company is usually out of sight and out of mind. There is often little to no documentation on why the prospect passed or if there was a particular solution they were looking for. SDRs are typically paid for booking meetings, so speed wins. The primary goal is to “hit the numbers” - so an unintended by-product can be a sloppy CRM.
That doesn’t seem like a big deal at the time. But in 6 months, if that SDR has been promoted or moved roles, the new person is back to square one encountering the same accounts. The new SDR may happen on the account in 12 months and find out that 6 months ago they engaged in a deal cycle and found another solution which you would have been perfectly positioned for.
Now consider that same issue - and multiply it by the number of SDRs you have in your company. The data issue can be magnified 3x, 5x, or 10x. In every business I’ve encountered, leads don’t grow on trees, so properly nurturing and documenting the ones you have is crucial for the long-term health of your sales cycle.
Account Executives
Great note taking is also critical for Account Executive function. The reason why is that the industry generally operates on the ‘Proof of Concept’ model. As the Account Executive has completed deep discovery, understands the critical problem for the company and how their solution solves this, the information must be transferred to the Customer Success Manager.
Companies expect their vendors to understand their context and needs and if they need to re-explain the process or what they are looking for with a new rep, they’ll quickly disengage and add you to their graveyard of tested and failed solutions.
To overcome this, have a handover template which Account Executives fill out to provide Customer Success Managers with the key details on the client. This should include:
Contact details for key stakeholders (e.g innovation manager, project lead, CFO)
Overview of the problem
Top three challenges the customer is looking to solve with our solution
Customer Success Manager
During the onboarding process and the ongoing management of the relationship, it is easy for the Customer Success Manager to stop documenting details. The reason why is they feel like they own the account and they know the specifics.
This is a key risk for the company. If they leave or are let go, it’s difficult for a new Customer Success Manager to start a meaningful dialogue as they are on the defense right from the start. Therefore, ensure that the following information is captured, including:
Feedback / improvements
How your solution is being used
When you last spoke to them
With this information on improvements, you can update your Ideal Customer Persona and prioritize feature development. Additionally, the ‘Top three challenges the customer is looking to solve with our solution’ section should be regularly reviewed by the Sales Development Representatives to update their marketing and prospect qualification process.
Mistake 2: Unstructured Training
Every ConTech startup wants their people to succeed. The truth is there is often a disconnect between the statement and the actions with the overwhelming majority of people in industry having one of the following experiences:
They are thrown in the fire immediately (sink or swim)
Provided a boring and generic training program which doesn’t prepare them for the role.
In both of these cases the employees face a harsh reality. During the sales process they are overwhelmed, learning how the company operates and documents information while also selling to customers.
Some find a way to succeed but many don’t, creating a revolving door of recruitment and onboarding —a massive drain on resources and cost for the company.
To overcome this, structure your training program using the following framework:
Knowledge
By the end of the training, what do we want our sales team to know?This will often include understanding and internalizing aspects of the product or service, the competition and your differentiation, common objections and responses, etc.
Skills
By the end of the training, what do we want our sales team to be able to do?This will be reflective of the key competencies of the job.
For a Sales Development Representative it could include outstanding phone skills (warm intros, effective discovery, actively listening, objection handling) as well as being able to use internal CRM systems.
For an Account Executive it could be how to run a professional demo, executing quotes and effective follow up.
For a Customer Success Manager it could be account setup, running a kickoff meeting and how to run onboarding training.
Feeling
By the end of training how do we want our sales team to feel?This is the most important and often overlooked. How do we want our team to show up each day and what does that look like in practice?
Once these three macro areas are identified for each role, then the micro work of training and determining how to best achieve these outcomes is required.
Mistake 3: Silos
The last common mistake is siloed behaviour within the revenue team.
Specialization is great for a company. But if each of the Sales Development Representatives, Account Executives and Customer Success Managers live within their own sub teams focusing on their narrow objectives, key information will be lost, leading to missed opportunities.
When operating in silos, you create a linear sales function as well as a perceived hierarchy where communication is limited leading to mediocre results.
As seen below, in great organizations there is a constant feedback loop.
In these organizations the customer success team is a resource for the rest of the sales team. They share how they solve customer problems to the SDRs and help to create specific talking points. They also share cases of failed implementation due to misalignment during the sales process with Account Executives so future mistakes can be avoided. As they have a personal relationship with the Account Executive, they receive more information about the sale including the personal stories and why they bought the software which can be difficult to communicate fully in the onboarding document. At the end of the day, it’s about the people behind the solution—not the other way around.
On the other side, SDRs and Account Executives should call each other daily to tag-team key opportunities. For example, an Account Executive on the road might call an SDR to refer a new prospect and the SDR would proactively ask questions to the Account Executive on where to call a dormant opportunity sitting under their name with no action.
Building successful sales teams in construction requires a holistic approach spanning from effective training to clear documentation practices and developing strong interpersonal relationships. This creates a flywheel for your startup helping to develop a strong team culture and enhancing the chances of your solution gaining mass adoption within a company. Having a holistic approach provides the best chance to build the business the way great companies do: by serving with excellence to build lasting relationships with customers!
This article is written by Mark Facciani. He is the Founder of PATH and his mission is helping construction tech companies design, hire, train, and elevate sales development teams, putting them on the path to sustainable revenue growth. Prior to PATH, he was the VP of Sales Development and Customer Success at Tenna where he helped the company achieve massive growth, making them the 162nd fastest growing private company in the U.S. on the Inc. 5000 list.
Before his roles in business, Mark spent fifteen years as a teacher, wrestling coach, and team leader at The Pingry School. His proudest roles are those of husband to his wife Dara, father to his twin daughters Annie and Lily, and caretaker of his golden retriever puppy Gus.