In this introductory video, Aaron Ross, CEO of PebbleStorm.com and co‑founder of Predictable Revenue, Inc., explains the purpose and core concepts of his book Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business into a Sales Machine with the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com. He shares his personal backstory—how a failed startup taught him he didn’t understand sales, leading him to join Salesforce.com where he built a sales process that added $100 million in recurring revenue. Ross argues that many existing sales books and tactics are outdated, and he presents a modern, systematic approach that can grow companies 200‑300 % in a predictable way. Key ideas include: (1) specializing sales roles (prospecting, inbound qualification, closing) rather than using a single “generalist” salesperson; (2) the “seeds, nets, and spears” framework for categorizing lead sources and tailoring tactics; (3) rejecting cold‑calling and aggressive selling in favor of qualified, non‑threatening lead generation; and (4) the necessity for CEOs and sales leaders to understand sales fundamentals themselves. He cites successful implementations at Salesforce, Responsys, HyperQuality, and WPromote, and invites viewers to purchase the book for step‑by‑step guidance.
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Hey, it's Aaron Ross, CEO of PebbleStorm.com and co-founder, managing partner of Predictable Revenue, Inc. And I'm really excited to share with you, with you on this beautiful day in Santa Monica, we've got kids playing in the fountains in the background. And where better to introduce a book like this than in a beautiful place outside, but a book called Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business into a Sales Machine with the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com. A book really meant to help you create those predictable results and money where you can relax a little bit with your business, where you're not stressed month to month wondering, are you going to hit your quota? Are you going to bring in enough money to pay the bills? How can you grow 200% rather than 20%? The reason I wrote this book is because I used to be a CEO. I started a company, and one of the reasons why it failed— you know, we lost $5 million of venture capital— was because as CEO, I didn't know the business. I didn't know how to sell. I didn't know how to build to a sales organization, a professional one. I went to a little company called Salesforce.com where I figured where better to learn sales than Salesforce.com? Because before I start another company, I know I need to know sales, professional sales. And the challenge that I found at Salesforce.com was Salesforce had a lot of leads coming in through word of mouth, but they didn't have a way to go out and proactively generate leads at big, at medium and big companies. How, they didn't have a way to proactively grow as fast as they wanted to. In a predictable way. I created a sales process and team there that in a very predictable way helped add $100 million in recurring revenue to Salesforce.com in its first few years. And what I realized, again going back to why I wrote this book, was the answers to how to create an amazing predictable sales system and team and results aren't complicated. It's just people don't know the answers, how to do it. And having been in that place of being a CEO CEO and not knowing how to drive growth, or how am I even going to, first of all, make the company successful and cash flow positive, and after that, how am I going to drive growth in a predictable way? I had no idea, but this book is for that CEO. It's really for— the only book I've known for CEOs, for heads of sales and salespeople, and how to create a sales system. There's lots of books out there around how to close deals. On how to prospect. And I remember being while at Salesforce.com and really sitting down trying to figure out how do we create an outbound sales process that can create pipeline, that can create leads in our own way, have some control over our destiny. And reading all kinds of books, I read every kind of sales book, solution selling and veto this and complex sales that, and I read Tipping Point and Blink and And there's a whole bunch of stuff out there, and none of it either was old from the 1980s, or, you know, stuff like Blink and Red Ocean, Blue Ocean, I don't know, cool stuff, really interesting, but it didn't give me anything useful that I could go back and actually use to help drive sales. It's like, great, interesting concepts, but what do I do with it? So when I sat down and created this team and process at Salesforce, and now, after consulting with other companies, I've seen that you can double or triple or more your rate of growth. You can grow your business by 300%. You can, and you can do it in a very predictable way. And this book has the systems and answers to do it, not just— there's both ideas and high-level how to do it and very, very specific tips and what to do. Step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4. This book really is my attempt to help all those entrepreneurs and sales executives and salespeople who are so frustrated with sales. Sales, selling can be really fun, you can really enjoy it, but not if you're struggling month after month, not if you're not sure what to do next, if you're even going to hit your quota, or after you've missed your numbers for 12 months in a row, which a lot of companies do. And this is really meant to help rescue you from that frustration, to give you a plan and some steps to help your business go from— I've had clients who went from going out of business, losing money every month, to cash flow positive. Who'd gone from, you know, low growth, 10%, 20%, to doubling or tripling their growth. Salesforce.com was the original one. You know, a company called Responsys, which is the number one marketing software as a service company. HyperQuality is another. WPromote is another. It's a top Inc. 500 search company. You know, this works. It's really, again, for any kind of CEO, sales executive, or salesperson who wants to grow more predictably. And it wasn't sure what to do next. And there's a reason why all these tactics you're trying aren't working. Most of the books out there, or even practices from very so-called expert executives, are from the 1980s and '90s. You know, stuff just doesn't work. Very aggressive selling, pushy selling, making lots of calls— that's not the point. That doesn't work. There's a way to sell and to create highly qualified leads which can be friendly, non-threatening, and predictable. So I'll share a couple samples of actually what's in here, some important teachings. The first one, the most important one, is the fact that you need, need, need to specialize your salespeople. Now again, I'm speaking to a company if you have more than one salesperson. I know lots of you who are watching this could be a single entrepreneur. So at the point you get 2 people, you need to start specializing your sales roles. You have one person who's prospecting, and if they're prospecting, that's all they do. That'd be separate than if you have someone who's qualifying inbound leads, right, responding to leads coming through a website, for example. And those 2 roles are separate from the person who's closing deals, who's actually signing customers. They all need to be separate, and this is The most common mistake, the most common fatal mistake that companies make is generalizing your salespeople where you have one person doing everything. They're prospecting, they're responding to inbound leads, and they're closing deals. That is one of the 7 fatal mistakes I cover here in the book. Another really important concept or idea is I call it seeds, nets, and spears. It's learning how to differentiate the kinds of leads you want to create, and understanding that seeds, nets, and spears, these 3 types, are all different with different results, you need to treat them differently. So very, very generally, seeds are seeds you would plant, such as through PR or community. You're planting a bunch of seeds, you're not sure how many of these seeds are going to grow or when. Nets are marketing programs, usually. So email marketing, it could be events, you're casting, or SEO, you're casting a wide net, you know you're going to get a bunch of leads back, but you're not sure about the and spears are the most targeted form of generating leads. So that usually involves a person who's actually calling or emailing, being very targeted, doing some targeted prospecting. That could be a special strategic accounts executive, it could be someone who's on prospecting, an individual, but it's a very small number of select accounts you're going after. By the way, without cold calling. That's one thing in this book I'm totally against is if you're making cold calls, you're failing, you're not following the process. So this idea of specializing your salespeople and the idea of seeds, nets, and spears, I go into a lot more detail here. Two incredibly important ideas and you have to understand those and implement them with your business in order to be successful. You have to. So How you can buy the book, Amazon.com, they have it in Kindle and paperback. Right here on the page, there'll be a link. I'd love for you to get it, to refer it to friends, anyone you know who's struggling with sales, especially CEOs. CEOs, you have to read this book because if you don't understand sales, how are you going to hire the right people, implement the right programs, or make the right decisions with the with budgeting or programs if you don't know what works and what doesn't. That is another fatal mistake, is when the CEO delegates— delegate your understanding of sales to a sales VP or sales marketing. You have to know it yourself. Thank you very much. I really hope this changes your business and your life, and enjoy the journey to find a way to create predictable revenue for yourself. Thank you.
