Over the course of our careers, we’ve had the privilege of working with dozens of sales managers. In many ways, managers hold the key to the success of their sales reps. They know each and every rep well, understand the customer and prospect mix each rep has, the market that reps are operating in, the relative difficulty of making the quota, etc. They capture and impart this knowledge during their one-on-one discussions with reps. Such tribal knowledge is often not institutionalized throughout the sales organization. The result is lack of repeatability, consistency and scalability of results – which means they are starting over with each new rep, team and division that they move into management. Certainly factors like compensation, incentives, coaching and product training play a role in this success too. But we see distinct traits in the sales managers that are attracted to work with us – they use numbers, statistics, data and models to get the best performance from their sales teams. Here are a few traits that we’ve seen, some challenges that they’ve faced and why they’ve chosen to work with us: TRAIT: They desire to “do something different this time.” As ideas like call blocks, teaming and …Read More
Inside sales: Playing by the numbers
One thread that ran through the sessions at AA-ISP’s inside sales conference in Chicago last week was: 1384137682395. That’s right. 1384137682395. Dollars. Percentages. Rates. Ratios. “Batting averages,” even. Numbers. The language of numbers, thinking analytically and driving decisions based on numbers was a shared language throughout the conference. And numbers don’t have to be complicated; many lessons were simple but still powerful for sales productivity. Here are a few we heard: People need to receive an average of 6-7 lead nurturing contacts by marketing before they are sales ready. The close ratio of “buying signal leads” versus “tire kicker leads” is 8:1. Buying signal leads request pricing, demos and trials. Tire kicker leads download white papers and attend webinars. LinkedIn messages can return a response rate 3x more than email; LinkedIn InMail messages can return a response rate 30x more than email. Email stretches out sales communications and sales cycles from what could have been 5 minutes to 5 days or 5 weeks or more. Don’t hide behind email. Have conversations. Test different strategies for cold calls and initial conversations. One strategy may deliver 130 product demos while another strategy may deliver 390 product demos. Implementing tests and processes that …Read More
Buying prospect data: Why it may cost you 125% more than you think
Sourcing new outbound leads is a never-ending endeavor for sales and marketing. Prophesies of cold calling being dead have not come true if only for the simple reason that prospecting through all channels must be on the table to fuel the engine of sales growth. Companies typically procure lead data from four main types of leads: Internally-generated leads: Referrals, word of mouth, events, etc. Intelligence-based leads: Newsfeeds, industry alerts, personnel changes, etc. InsideView is one good example of this, but we believe LinkedIn also fits this mold (the evolution of this is exciting) Special or vertical lists: Trade associations, commerce groups, organizations operating with a geographic charter Compiled lists: The likes of D&B and InfoGroup, including credit files But as any sales or marketing manager knows, simply dumping more records on a sales rep is a thing of the past. Lead nurturing and scoring are the norm, wherein prospects are nurtured until they raise their hands as hot leads, and are then forwarded to sales. In addition, predictive modeling that identifies the most likely prospects based on the “ideal customer” profile must be part of the mix. It’s clear that the prospects at the top of the funnel – the ones you might pay for – are not sales ready. Further criteria and …Read More
Try this one weird trick to boost SFA adoption
That which is scarce is precious. That which is abundant has little value. More or less, these are the lessons of life. Sales organizations go through the CRM selection process with great diligence. They spend even more resources redesigning existing processes, integrating the technology and people, training and rolling out the shiny new thing with great fanfare. Making sure every sales person is empowered. Yet adoption remains at an abysmal level by measures beyond logins, “clicking on plays” and “call blocks.” Why? Here are three most cited reasons aggregated from numerous research: It is delivered primarily as a technical tool, relegating the human element. It is perceived as management pushing something from above. It is not believed to generate more value: sales, profits, targets. In other words, it is not adding value to the life of the sales person. One sales leader I know used to say, “if you don’t know the value of what you’re doing, then stop doing it. You will find out.” Yes, we are asking you to consider the opposite of what every expert says, everything you have heard, and even what we’ve said on these pages – stop doing SFA – if you are not sure of …Read More
The Evolution of Sales Force Automation
It’s no secret that sales force automation (SFA) was dreaded not too long back, but has now become an indispensable friend to the sales person. There are many who may still be leery of it, but that number is certainly dwindling. Lauren Carlson’s blog at Software Advice reflects on this sales force automation evolution over the past 15 years, and identifies four factors that explain the change. While we agree with those, here’s our take on where this is headed. The central theme as we see it (of course being a SaaS company ourselves) is 1) the deployment of SFA on SaaS platforms and 2) SFA is more inter-operable in a sales environment. And that is a great fit to how the best sales people think and act: sales is seen in the larger context of client and business needs. So while software engineering has taken great leaps forward with usability, content and inter-operability, it has made it easier rather than harder for sales reps to use these tools. Let us now envision what the future holds in terms of increasing adoption and further making SFA an indispensable tool for the reps of today and tomorrow. SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY: Thanks to Amazon, Google, Apple and iPhones, and other innovators, we now live …Read More