The Net New Logo Reboot — 60-Min Training

SECTION 1 — Why Net New Logos Matter More Than You Think (5 min)

Trainer script (verbatim): *"Expansion revenue is easier and safer. It's also a slow death. If you're not adding net-new logos every quarter, your TAM is shrinking and your next pricing increase will trigger churn you can't replace. We are here because we have become farmers in a hunter's market."*

• Expansion has a ceiling. Net new is the only uncapped lever.
• Logo count drives valuation. Public SaaS investors price on logo growth + NRR, not ARR alone.
• Mike Weinberg in *New Sales. Simplified.*: "Most sales organizations have become farms — the hunting muscle has atrophied."

Open with a stat the team can't argue with: pull last 4 quarters of net-new logo count. If the line is flat while ARR is up, you are an expansion-dependent business.

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SECTION 2 — Hunter vs. Farmer: Redesign the Roles (15 min)

This is the longest block on purpose. Hybrid "do-everything" AEs are why net-new is dying.

Whiteboard the role split:

1. Hunter (New Logo AE) — pipeline target: 2-3x quota, comp weighted toward new-logo bookings, no installed-base accounts, weekly prospecting block enforced.
2. Farmer (Account Manager / CSM) — owns retention + expansion, comp weighted toward NRR and seat growth, does not chase new logos.
3. SDR — feeds the hunter exclusively. Compensated on meetings booked into ICP, not generic activity.

Trainer script: *"You cannot ask the same human to spend Monday morning saving a churning account and Monday afternoon cold-calling a Fortune 500 stranger. The context-switch kills production. Trish Bertuzzi calls this 'role specialization' in *The Sales Development Playbook* — specialized teams outperform generalists by 30% on new-logo attainment."*

• Aaron Ross's Predictable Revenue model institutionalized the split — SDR hunts cold, AE closes, CSM farms.
• Comp plan rewrite is non-negotiable. New-logo accelerators should be 1.5-2x the expansion rate, or hunters will quietly work expansion.
• Hybrid stragglers. Reps who insist they "can do both" almost never hunt. Reassign or release.

Exercise (5 min): every AE writes down what % of last quarter's bookings came from net-new vs. expansion. Anyone under 40% net-new is a farmer, regardless of title.

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SECTION 3 — Named-Account List Construction (10 min)

Trainer script: *"A territory is not a list. A list is 50 named companies, ranked, researched, with a named champion and a named economic buyer per account, and you can recite them from memory. If you can't, you don't have a list — you have a wish."*

Anthony Iannarino's *The Lost Art of Closing* is dogmatic: every hunter carries a "Dream 100" of high-fit named accounts they are accountable to break into within 12 months.

The construction process — do this live on screen:

• ICP filter. Industry, headcount, revenue band, tech stack, geography. Outside ICP gets cut. No exceptions.
• Tier the list. Tier 1 = top 25 dream logos (multi-stakeholder siege). Tier 2 = 75 high-fit. Tier 3 = the rest.
• Annotate each account. Trigger events, recent hires, funding, current vendor, two named contacts minimum. If you don't have two humans, it's a logo, not a researched account.
• Lock the list quarterly. No mid-quarter add/drop without manager approval.

Drill: ask each AE to name their top 5 dream accounts and the economic buyer at each. If they hesitate on more than one, the list isn't real.

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SECTION 4 — The 5-Touch Minimum Cadence (10 min)

Trainer script: *"One email is not prospecting. Five touches across three channels over ten business days is the minimum acceptable effort to claim you've worked an account."*

Jeb Blount in *Fanatical Prospecting* documents the math — most prospects need 5-12 touches before they respond. Reps who quit at touch two do 40% of the work of reps who push through.

The mandatory cadence (post it on the wall):

• Touch 1 — Day 0 — Personalized email referencing a trigger event. Not a templated pitch.
• Touch 2 — Day 2 — Cold call. Voicemail counts only if followed by a same-day email.
• Touch 3 — Day 4 — LinkedIn connection request with a one-sentence reason.
• Touch 4 — Day 7 — Second cold call + value-add email (industry insight, peer reference, not a pitch).
• Touch 5 — Day 10 — "Breaking up" email or a hand-written note for Tier 1 accounts.

Enforcement: pull cadence-completion reports weekly from your sequencer (Outreach, Salesloft, Apollo). Accounts marked "worked" with fewer than 5 touches get sent back.

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SECTION 5 — The Logo Discount Debate + Logo Velocity KPI (15 min)

This is the spine of the training. Two questions every leadership team must answer in writing.

Question 1 — Will you give up margin to win the logo?

Trainer script: *"Camp A says never discount — the logo isn't worth eroding price discipline. Camp B says strategic logos justify a 15-30% discount because brand halo, reference value, and future expansion pay it back. Both are defensible. What is NOT defensible is making this decision in a Friday-afternoon panic."*

Write the policy live, on the board:

• Tier 1 dream logos — up to 25%, VP Sales approval, written reference + case-study commitment required.
• Tier 2 / Tier 3 — ceiling 10-15%, AE authority.
• No verbal commitments to discount before procurement enters the room.
• Track post-close expansion. If logo-discount Tier 1 accounts don't expand 2x within 18 months, kill the policy.

Question 2 — How will you measure new-logo health?

Introduce Logo Velocity as the new board metric:

• Logo velocity = net-new logos / hunter / quarter. At $25K-$500K ACV, a healthy hunter closes 2-4 per quarter.
• Logo win rate = closed / dream-100 worked. Healthy = 10-15% annually.
• Report logo velocity on the same board slide as ARR or leadership will keep optimizing for the wrong number.

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SECTION 6 — Wrap, Homework, Q&A (5 min)

Homework (assign live):

1. By Friday, every AE submits a Dream 50 named-account list, tiered, with two named contacts per account.
2. By Monday, each hunter enrolls 10 Tier 1 accounts in the 5-touch cadence in Outreach/Salesloft.
3. RevOps publishes the logo-discount policy in writing by next Wednesday. No verbal exceptions.

Trainer close (verbatim): *"Net-new logos are the only thing that proves your company still belongs in the market. Expansion proves you're not dead yet — net-new proves you're still alive. Pick the side of the line you want to stand on, and let's see what your pipeline looks like in 30 days."*

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The Pre-Work That Makes or Breaks the Reboot

A 60-minute training can't fix a broken territory assignment process. Schedule a 45-minute data audit the week before — pull your last 12 months of closed-won logos, map them to the rep who actually sourced them (not the rep who got credit), and calculate true logo velocity by rep. You'll often find that 20% of reps own 80% of net-new logos, while the rest are living on expansion and renewal commissions. Share this data openly during the training — it creates urgency and forces honest self-assessment. Also prepare a clean, deduplicated list of 150–200 target accounts per rep using firmographic fit (revenue band, employee count, industry vertical) and intent signals (job postings, funding news, leadership changes). Without this pre-work, reps will waste the session arguing about why their lists are unfair.

The 5-Touch Cadence Template

During the training, hand every rep a printed or digital 5-touch sequence template that they must customize for their top 10 accounts by end of day. The non-negotiable structure:

• Touch 1 (Day 1): Personalized email referencing a specific trigger event (e.g., "Saw you just hired a VP of Sales — congrats. Here's how we help new leaders hit quota 30% faster.")
• Touch 2 (Day 3): Cold call with a value prop tied to their role (e.g., "I'm calling because most CROs I talk to are struggling to replace churn. We fix that.")
• Touch 3 (Day 7): LinkedIn voice note or video — 60 seconds max, shot on your phone, no script.
• Touch 4 (Day 14): Direct mail — a handwritten note with a relevant book (e.g., *Fanatical Prospecting* by Jeb Blount) or a branded item under $20.
• Touch 5 (Day 21): Final email with a clear "close or release" ask: "Is this a priority for Q2? If not, I'll stop following up."

Enforce that no rep moves to a new account until they complete all 5 touches on their current top 10. This builds discipline and prevents the "spray and pray" pattern that kills logo velocity.

The Logo Discount Policy Script

The most common objection during net-new logo deals is price — and the fastest way to kill margin is an unapproved discount. During the training, role-play this three-step discount script:

1. Pause: "I understand budget is tight. Before I go to my leadership, help me understand — if we could find a way to make this work, what would a successful first 90 days look like for your team?"
2. Frame: "Typically, we offer a 10–15% discount for annual commitments signed within 14 days. That's the maximum I can authorize without my CRO's approval."
3. Close: "If I can get you that 15% off for a one-year commitment, can you sign today?"

Then, enforce a written policy: any discount above 15% requires CRO sign-off, and any discount above 25% requires CEO sign-off. Track discount percentage per logo deal in your CRM and review it monthly. If a rep consistently discounts above 20%, that's a coaching flag — they're not selling value, they're buying deals.

FAQ

What exactly is a "net new logo reboot"? It’s a structured 60-minute training session designed to reset a sales team that has drifted away from hunting new accounts. The reboot forces reps to re-segment into hunters and farmers, rebuild account lists, and enforce a minimum 5-touch cadence, all while tracking logo velocity alongside ARR.

How often should we run this training? Most teams run it once as a targeted intervention when net-new logo bookings flatline, typically on a Tuesday morning. Some leaders repeat it quarterly if the hunting muscle keeps atrophying, but it’s not meant to be a weekly ritual — it’s a reset.

Will this work if our sales team is already overwhelmed? It can, but only if leadership commits to protecting the hunting time. The reboot adds structure, not more busywork — it replaces scattered prospecting with a disciplined cadence. Expect pushback from reps who prefer farming, but the training is designed to surface that resistance early.

Do we need to fire reps who can’t hunt after the reboot? Not necessarily — the training includes reassignment options, not just termination. Reps who genuinely can’t or won’t hunt can be moved to farmer roles with existing accounts. The goal is to match talent to role, not to force everyone into a hunter mold.

What’s the "logo discount" debate, and how does the training settle it? It’s the classic tension between discounting to win new logos versus protecting price integrity. The training provides a written policy — typically a range of 10–20% discount for net-new logos, with approval required beyond that — so reps have clear guardrails instead of guesswork.

How do we measure success after the reboot? Track logo velocity (new logos per rep per quarter) alongside ARR. A healthy range is 2–4 new logos per rep per quarter for enterprise, 5–8 for mid-market. If logo velocity doesn’t improve within two quarters, the reboot likely needs reinforcement or a different approach.

Sources

1. Weinberg, Mike. *New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development.* AMACOM, 2012.
2. Blount, Jeb. *Fanatical Prospecting.* Wiley, 2015.
3. Bertuzzi, Trish. *The Sales Development Playbook.* Moore-Lake, 2016.
4. Iannarino, Anthony. *The Lost Art of Closing.* Portfolio, 2017.
5. Ross, Aaron & Tyler, Marylou. *Predictable Revenue.* PebbleStorm, 2011.
6. Iannarino, Anthony. *Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away from Your Competition.* Portfolio, 2018.
7. SaaStr. "Logo Growth vs. ARR Growth — Which Matters More to Investors?" saastr.com, 2023.
8. Gartner. "The Future of B2B Sales: Role Specialization Returns." Gartner Research, 2024.