This guide will serve as a resource to help direct your discussion about executive positioning. This guide is in place to provide structure and guidance only. There is no expectation for you to review everything on this list at any set time; please use at your convenience.
Feel free to click on the links below to jump to the relevant section. Have a great conversation!
Discussion Questions
The following topics and questions are meant to provide a conversation guide for the Sales Rep to introduce their product and its features to the Emissary. Please don’t feel like you have to cover every question in detail (or at all). The goal is to provide sufficient background for the Emissary to help as much as they can.
- Name / job title / what I know about them / my understanding of org chart
- Describe who you have spoken with at your target account.
- Describe any business cases you have identified for your product.
- Describe any RFP or proposals that have been sent out.
- Describe the current stage of the deal.
- Describe how you think the deal is going.
- Do you feel like you’re speaking to the right stakeholders?
- Do you have a champion?
- Does your champion have the influence necessary for the deal to progress?
- Who is the decision maker for this vendor?
- For each of the major decision makers:
- Where are their organizations located?
- How technically adept or engaged are they?
- How do you they make decisions (e.g. is this individual more technical or relationship oriented)?
- How did they rise to the seniority they’re at now?
- Where did they come from before the target company?
- Who are their counterparts in other orgs?
- Who do they work with regularly? Who do they like working with? Who do they not like working with?
- How are new ideas brought into the organization?
- How did the last big vendor get brought in?
- Which employees do the decision makers speak with regularly? Who has influence over the decision makers?
- How are responsibilities delegated among their direct reports?
- Is there someone that they trust more than others in their organization?
- Who do they report into? What is that relationship like?
- For each of the people the client is speaking to at the target account,
- What is their credibility in the organization? How was this credibility generated?
- Are they seen as an innovator?
- How risk-averse are they with vendors?
- What was the last big project they delivered?
- What was the last vendor that they brought into the organization?
- How responsive are they to email?
- How can I manage to get the answers and information that I need to make a sale?
- What will make them comfortable with a decision?
- How much do they need to be pushed and managed? How much will they want to control the situation?
- Are there any risks associated with initiating conversations with someone a level above the current contact(s)?
- Are there politics around advancing the discussion to a more senior member of the organization?
- What is the relationship between the current contact and the decision maker(s)?
- Who is the set of people that the client should be reaching out to?
- How should the client reach out (email, phone, text, direct mail)?
- How often should the client follow up?
- What messaging will catch the attention of the person?
- How likely is it that each person will respond?
- Should the client reach out through admins?
- Are there any hot button topics that will cut through the noise?
- Are there any hot button topics that will result in negative reaction?
- What timeline should the outreach have?
- How can the client demonstrate that they are interested in the target company and can be a helpful problem solver?
- Are there any “hacks” to getting the attention of certain people?
- Are there any upcoming events that would be useful to connect with?
- What is plan B for if those people don’t respond?
- Are there any weeks or days of the week that are definite “no send” times?
- Are there any times or days of the week that will increase the likelihood of a response?
- Are there politics around advancing the discussion from the client’s current contact(s) to a more senior member of the organization?
- What is the relationship between the client’s current contact(s) and the decision maker(s)?
- Review draft of outreach text / messaging and edit
- Check that tone of language matches that of intended recipient
- Check that length will be read by intended recipient
- Check that problem or case study is relevant and will grab attention
- Review talking points for a phone call
- Confirm ROI numbers are sufficient for interest
- Are there any gift or event policies at the target company?
- How do you think the decision-makers would react to a gift from a potential vendor?
- Are there any events that would be particularly appealing to the decision makers?
- Are there any creative ways that vendors have gotten their foot in the door that have worked in the past?
- Are there any creative ways for the client to get their product in front of the target company?
- Are there any topics that the intended recipients are looking to learn about that the client could enlighten them about?
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Tony Jaros
Chief Executive Officer
A product-focused, customer obsessed leader with a long track record of bringing new ideas to complex markets while building high performing and collaborative teams, Tony most recently served as CEO at Legacy Data Access, a healthcare software company. Other notable roles include CEO of CultureIQ, an employee engagement company sold to Perceptyx in 2021, and President and Chief Product Officer of SiriusDecisions, which he joined as a startup almost 20 years ago and helped build the organization into the worldwide leader in B2B sales, marketing and product management research, benchmarking and advisory services. Early in his career, Tony held product and consulting roles at Peppers & Rogers Group and Simba Information. He holds an MBA from New York University and a BSJ in Journalism from Northwestern University.
Erin Provey
VP Products
Erin has 20 years of experience in B2B product and service innovation and leadership roles, with a consistent focus on growth through customer-centricity. Most notably, Erin spent nearly a decade at SiriusDecisions (now part of Forrester Research) in a range of research and advisory product leadership roles, responsible for the entire innovation lifecycle: discovery, design, development, sales enablement, launch, implementation, and research/voice-of-the-customer-based iteration and enhancement. As part of this work, she was one of the most prolific commercially-viable content creators and public speakers, authoring and presenting hundreds of commercially-viable research briefs, models, frameworks, templates, tools, and one patented methodology – building world-class delivery teams and working closely with hundreds of the world’s leading B2B marketing leaders to operationalize these best practices in pursuit of revenue objectives.
Adam Rice
VP Engineering
Dynamic, results-driven agile technology leader with over 12 years of leadership experience and 10 years of hands-on software development experience. Adam has significant expertise in designing, building, and running highly available software as a service. He loves being part of a team where he can be instrumental in building and running a world-class team of software practitioners based on shared cultural values including collective ownership, pragmatic mastery, and continuous improvement.
Diana Kudajarova
VP of Operations
Diana has extensive experience in senior operational roles at technology startups. Before becoming VP of Operations, she was Emissary’s Chief of Staff and Head of Revenue Operations. Prior to joining Emissary, she was Director of Sales Operations for Burning Glass (a Boston-based job market analytics company). Diana has a PhD in History from Harvard University and was, in another life, a consultant for Monitor Consulting and professor of management at Moscow School of Management. Diana was also a co-founder and operator of four critically acclaimed restaurants in Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts,
Morgan Costello
Director, Advisor Operations
Morgan oversees advisor operations at Emissary. Prior to joining Emissary, Morgan spent the last 9 years building and optimizing high performing operations teams from the ground up. Morgan previously ran operations at the home services network, Handy, scaling the professional platform by over 10x before being acquired by ANGI Homeservices. Having worked in professional services and consumer services, Morgan is an expert in how to scale and grow operations.
Seleste Lunsford
Chief Research and Strategy Officer
Seleste has been a leader and consultant in the sales effectiveness space for over 20 years, running professional services, product and marketing organizations. She is a regular contributor to industry publications, a conference speaker and has written two books and countless papers on B2B revenue strategies.
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