As I've mentioned in previous blogs, list quality plays an enormous factor in our ability to drive leads to sales and build forecast (Are You Giving Your Inside Sales Reps A Good Quality List?) Ideally the time should be taken to weed out the inaccurate contact info, current customers and the independent consultants or students who download a whitepaper for "educational" purposes. What's the point of putting our inside sales reps at an automatic disadvantage before they even pick up the phone?
We often debate if we would prefer to target the individual that raised their hand or a clean list of high level contacts at your top 200 accounts. My two cents is that we would rather start from scratch with a list of companies and target contacts that have never been touched. The primary reason behind that is that I have complete control over the title and the organizations that I want to talk to. Don't get me wrong, a mixture of scrubbed leads with the low hanging fruit combined with clean target lists is the ideal scenario, with the obvious caveat that I don't have to deal with the time sink of scrubbing off the bunk data.
So let's assume you are working with this scenario. What titles would you typically target? Most of us are trained to call high into every company on every list, right?
Well, I'm not sure if I entirely buy into that on every list you're calling on. With your cold lists it's pretty typical to only have a VP or C-Level contact to call, but if you can, try to find multiple contacts since you're unlikely to get a response the higher you call. Tracking down those director and manager level titles make sense for a couple of reasons- 1) Working multiple angles gets you to an evaluator/decision maker much quicker to gauge interest 2)Most of the time the Director/Manager titles are the people you generally end up getting forwarded to anyway.
A majority of the leads resulting in closed business for our clients began with a conversation with those director level contacts or below. It's pretty rare for us to see inbound lead from a CIO who downloaded white paper....as most of us know he/she tasks others to do the preliminary research before they get involved.
We've struggled with a few of our clients who use lead scoring through their automated marketing platform to rate their leads, with a large percentage of scoring weighted heavily on the quality of the title. Unfortunately there were very few leads that scored high enough because most of the leads were directors, managers and analysts downloading the info. We've also learned (the hard way) that just because a lead receives a high score out of your marketing platform doesn't always mean they're the right person.
Eventually what we recognized with the inbound marketing lists was that it would be best to follow up based on the company vs. the title. Rather than just calling into a VP downloading info, we took the time to also contact the business analysts as well. Generally what we discovered was the analyst actually picked up their phone and more often than not, played an integral role in the decision making process. At the very least they could provide us the intelligence we needed to have a very healthy conversation when we DID get the big boss live.
The point is - don't neglect the little guys. Just because a lead didn't receive a 100% from your fancy marketing automation tool doesn't mean it should be ignored.
Happy Friday!
Well, it’s the “unofficial” last weekend of summer…but not the end to some great blogs from our team.
I found a great blog this week that really mirrors what we try and keep in mind every day here at AG. In Barb Giamanco’s blog titled: The Great Sales Lead Generation Debate. She talks about the constant discussion on Quality vs. Quantity, and the importance of having a healthy balance. It’s a great read as it puts both sides into perspective.
Monday, August 30th
Does your inside sales team have the tools to succeed? – Ilona Jazdowska discusses in her blog the tools she’s found to be a most useful when it comes to performing successfully in inside sales.
“I have had the opportunity to work for a variety of clients. Some coming right out of the gates with little to no name recognition (some with products still in Beta!), companies with cutting edge technology, others part of the Fortune 500. From my experience, I know what I need to be successful. I am going to share with you some of the preliminary homework that you need to do in order to make your time and investment as successful as possible…”
Tuesday, August 31st
Do Your Inside & Outside Sales Communicate Well? – Craig Ferrara offers some great insight into his past work experiences and how communication is key in sales success.
“It seemed so foreign to me to not be allowed to communicate directly with the outside sales reps. at the hotel we would simply call or walk down to the department we needed answers from. Even if it wasn't the most pleasant conversation, we eventually found some common ground which allowed the team to work more seamlessly from that point forward.”
Thursday, September 2nd
5 Questions To Ask Before Sending Out That Sales Proposal– Chris Lang discusses 5 important questions that you should be asking yourself before you send out the sales proposal.
“Sometimes sales reps act like used car salesmen. “What’s it gonna take to get you into this storage solution?” “Look at this encryption right here…it’s just beautiful and I’m willing to give it to you for half the price!” The pitch is feature and not value focused and then a proposal is given to the prospect, often times without even hearing what the prospect’s full set of needs are. Not shockingly, close rates are usually low when the sales process is less complex than that of the ice cream man selling to a toddler. (He always got me with the Choco Taco) Here are a couple of questions to ask, pre-proposal, that will ensure your prospect is ready to move forward...”
That sums it up! We hope Earl doesn’t ruin your weekend! Be safe and we’ll see you Tuesday!
My first real job out of college was as a supervisor at the front desk of a business hotel just outside of Boston. It was not the most glamorous position but it did teach me the importance of open communication from department to department, as this particular hotel was quite chaotic.
When I “stepped up” into my first Jr. Inside Sales role I thought things would be different, but within a week I was struck by the lack of communication I had with the sales team. My cube was placed smack dab in the middle of the marketing department with 5 other Jr. Inside Sales reps that were lacking as much direction as I was. We were tasked with following up on web hits, attendees to webinars and any other cold lists of target companies that marketing felt fit the profile of company we should be calling on. Anything that needed to be communicated to sales from the inside sales reps usually went through our sales operations manager or through marketing. Since our salaries were funded through marketing budgets, and we were perceived as "telemarketers", we were only allowed communication with marketing. Another challenge was that the sales team didn't have time to do any hand holding since they were too busy traveling and attempting to close business.
It seemed so foreign to me to not be allowed to communicate directly with the outside sales reps. At the hotel we would simply call or walk down to the department we needed answers from. Even if it wasn't the most pleasant conversation, we eventually found some common ground which allowed the team to work more seamlessly from that point forward.
Over the next few months we were able to pull down meetings with some of the low hanging fruit, but we struggled mightily to navigate through the target accounts. Having no direct access to the outside sales team, we were not provided with the subtle tips and compelling statements that could have increased our chances of uncovering a pain. The marketing material was always very helpful to send when we actually got a prospect live, but if we didn't define the pain we usually never sent the appropriate collateral to get them interested.
After a few quarters of banging ours heads against the wall, we were eventually able to convince management that we needed full access to the outside reps. We aligned 1 inside reps with 3 reps in the field and had regular weekly check-ins to review questions and progress made on our target list. This helped to accomplish a few goals for us:
1) Allowed the inside reps a much better sense of how to navigate through an organization
2) What to actually say when you do get a prospect live
3) The best collateral to be sending out post conversation
4) Outside reps developed more confidence in the opportunities the inside team uncovered
5) Allowed us to be more forward thinking about how to attack the territory quarter after quarter
Running an inside team I've found that I have become relatively adept at playing the role of peacemaker. It could have much to do with trying to corral the wide range of colorful personalities that I worked with in the hotel industry. While I know marketing and sales may not always have the best relationship, they need to put their egos aside and recognize that we are all working together toward a collective goal. Let us put down those egos, find some common ground and make the company a boatload of money working as a unit.
How about in your organization - do your Inside and Outside Sales teams communicate well? Would be interested to hear how others have helped bring these teams together.
So, you have set your next years goals. You know what revenue numbers you need to hit and you have established the campaigns and marketing events that are going to get you there. Now you need to execute and follow up on your leads. Whether you are planning on outsourcing your teleprospecting team or not, put yourself in the shoes of the sales team and make sure that you are providing the components needed for your efforts, and theirs, to be successful. I have had the opportunity to work for a variety of clients. Some coming right out of the gates with little to no name recognition (some with products still in Beta!), companies with cutting edge technology, others part of the Fortune 500. From my experience, I know what I need to be successful. I am going to share with you some of the preliminary homework that you need to do in order to make your time and investment as successful as possible.
- Product Knowledge: I know this seems obvious, and it is. Of course we need to know what you have in order to sell it. Yet keep in mind that [our] goal is not to “sell the product” but to uncover the pains and establish the needs in support of your solution. Therefore, what helps the calling efforts is a clear understanding of which capabilities resonate with whom within the company.
- Competitors/Differentiators – The number one reason that a company is not interested in your solution is because they are using something or someone else. It is extremely important to have as much information on your competitors as there is on your solution and what differentiates you in the market. This knowledge provides us with the ability to speak specific to inefficiencies of your competitors and extract pain points that the prospect may not have been aware of in the past.
- List – Whether you outsource, or have an Inside Sales Team, there is nothing better than being provided a targeted list of contacts that are involved, someway or another with what your product addresses. It becomes extremely time consuming when Inside Sales folks are provided lists with no contact names, email addresses and/or phone numbers. That’s not to say they can’t find that information but it significantly impacts the number of dials that they are able to make.
- Marketing – Sadly, the phrase “can’t judge a book by its cover” does not always apply. It is important to make sure that your first impression counts. Is your website up to date? Do you have case studies? What is your marketing material? Very often an Inside Sales Rep is asked to send additional information and there are times that I am reluctant to send something, because I feel that it demeans the quality of my clients’ product. Prospects want to see comparisons, specifics, and testimonials (i.e. case studies). Have PDFs that speak specific to the top 3 or 5 highlights of your solution, and make sure these are marketed towards the CEO, CIO and Director level contact.
These are a few of the key areas that I find to be most useful when building a successful teleprospecting campaign. When all of these areas are addressed, I can go into my calling efforts with the confidence of knowing what the value proposition is and the value that we can provide. That leaves only the hardest part left, catching the prospect live….but we have tricks for that too :D
How did everyone’s week go? We had some great blogs this week by Laney Pilpel, Craig Ferrara, Peter Gracey and Chris Lang.
As always I would like to point out a particular article I found this week that’s worth noting. Paul Castain wrote a blog titled: The 7.5 Deadly Sins Of Prospecting!. It listed 7 (and a half) things that you should not be doing while prospecting. It’s a great way to see if you are indeed guilty of these “deadly sins” and how to keep from committing them!
Monday August 23rd
Polite Persistence Pays Off For Inside Sales – Laney Pilpel offers some great pointers as to how and why being polite but yet persistent can pay off.
“The theme here boils down to this: Persistence, or what we like to call at AG, “Polite Persistence.” I think that sales people tend to get a bad reputation for being too forward, which is why we train our reps to be persistent in the nicest way possible. We accomplish this in many ways, from our tone and messaging to the amount of times we contact prospects throughout our call plan. There are two examples that really stand out in my mind and exemplify how we really go above and beyond to get the most meaningful conversations and quality opportunities possible without giving up.”
Tuesday August 24th
A Call Plan Can Help To Fix The Gap Between Sales and Marketing – Craig Ferrara touches on an article that he read this past week that discussed how to best deliver “sales ready leads”. He went on to explain how building an effective lead nurturing process was important.
“The last thing we want is that gap between your sales and marketing team to become a place where sales leads go to die. To prevent this from happening I suggest start by putting a call plan in front of your inside sales team. Step one should involve following up on any inquiry (assuming it's been scrubbed in some way) within 48 hours. As we all know, the longer a lead ages it becomes less and less likely the lead will convert to an opportunity for your sales team.”
Wednesday August 25h
0#, The Oldest And Still Most Effective Move An Inside Sales Rep Can Use – Peter Gracey discusses the oldest trick in the book, hitting 0# and how important it can be when getting key pieces of information in your calls.
”By requiring that you speak to someone live on every call you end up casting a wider net within your target organization and most importantly you get yourself a sales ready lead faster than your competition.”
Thursday August 26th
3 Ways To Shorten Sales Cycle – Chris Lang offers some great points on how to shorten the sales cycle.
“I certainly encourage all sales and marketing executives to find new ways to increase their forecast. However, you should not turn your back on the proven methods that work just because they are “old school” and in many cases tougher to do. Roll up your sleeves, do the dirty work and close some deals.”
That covers it! We hope you all have a great weekend! See you Monday!
You pick up the phone, dial the number, get their voicemail....and hang up. Log the call and move onto the next activity right? NO!!! Rewind and think for a second. Get yourself in the right mindset. An outbound dial that doesn't result in a conversation with someone at your target company is a failure to some degree. If you think about it, our job is to speak to people live. It doesn't always have to be the most appropriate contact in the organization. Almost anyone you catch live can give you some valuable information to help you progress that target company through your qualification process.
My message to you and your reps is simple. Don't hang up until you've spoken to someone live. At the end of the target contacts voicemail message, hit 0# and get sent back to the operator. Depending on the current status of the account in question (where they are in your qualification process) will determine what you do next when the operator answers the phone. I've had some lively debate on this concept as many on my team feel that once you find the most appropriate person to speak with you should only contact that person. My response to that is simple, if they are truly the best person to speak to about your technology and it's benefits to the their company then why don't they pick up your call. Go lower or higher, it doesn't matter. Even if you end up at the admin level you can ask that person if they know of a better time to reach your contact live?
This isn't about being pushy, nor is it about carpet bombing a target company by phone. The process of generating a fully qualified lead requires a great deal of information gathering. All of that critical information doesn't just reside within the mind of one individual. For that very reason, it is logical to speak to as many people as possible within each company as you paint the picture of a fully qualified opp. By requiring that you speak to someone live on every call you end up casting a wider net within your target organization and most importantly you get yourself a sales ready lead faster than your competition.
I just finished reading a great article from Josh Stailey with The Pursuit Group regarding how to best deliver “sales- ready- leads”.
http://www.imakenews.com/thepursuitgroup/e_article001828768.cfm?x=bhcrTyc,b26bn4tC
He touches on the misaligned expectations that exist between marketing and sales (my favorite topic) and how it results in limited attention being paid to those early-stage opps. As a result, most of them run the risk of falling through the cracks. Josh makes some excellent suggestions to prevent this from happening such as leveraging technology, launching an effective inbound marketing program, along with the use of metrics to link marketing leads/programs to revenue growth. But the most important suggestion he made (in my mind anyway) was building an effective lead nurturing process and I wanted to expand a bit on this..
Josh points out that nurture process can last for months, so both marketing and sales need to have an action plan in place to stay on that prospect's radar. At AG it's simply "the call plan". While I’m a firm believer in leveraging every tool at your disposal, we’ve learned the hard way that no matter how creative you get in reaching out to your prospects, nothing beats a good ol' fashioned phone call.
The last thing we want is that gap between your sales and marketing team to become a place where sales leads go to die. To prevent this from happening I suggest start by putting a call plan in front of your inside sales team. Step one should involve following up on any inquiry (assuming it's been scrubbed in some way) within 48 hours. As we all know, the longer a lead ages it becomes less and less likely the lead will convert to an opportunity for your sales team.
Most inside sales teams recognize the importance of continual follow-up with our prospects, but what we learned over the years is that you cannot rely solely on email or solely on the phone. It requires an effective combination of the two to quickly determine if an interest exists now or down the road. The problem with using email alone is that it tends to be less personal and the prospect may feel less inclined or compelled to contact you when they are starting to evaluate. When you rely only on the phone, you'll recognize, as many do in teleprospectng, that people rarely call you back. As a result you might find yourself out of the loop on the details when let's say they are actually getting close to potentially putting out an RFI/RFP.
The theory behind our call plan is that you can't assume that your prospect will ever respond to you. A consistent and deliberate approach combining both phone and email will greatly increase the chances that you will hear back. Hey- it may not be the response you are looking for, and you may get some folks that aren't all that fond of your persistence...but at the very least it will allow you to determine if the prospect is worth pursuing further and how much nurturing may be required.
Happy Friday Everyone!
We had some great topics discussed this week by Nicole Puddester, Craig Ferrara and Chris Lang.
I’d like to highlight a great blog that I found last week by Kendra Lee, President of KLA Group. She offers some great tips on how to Create Opportunities in our tough Economy.
Monday, August 16thth
Organized Tasking for High Outbound Inside Sales Activity – Nicole offers some great tips on how to streamline your daily tasks to get the most efficiency out of your outbound activities.
“I’m sure you are all familiar with Salesforce. If you are not, reps using this tool have this great homepage everyday that has all the tasks for the day pulled up. After completing them, you can go ahead and create a new task for the following days. This is a refreshing way for inside sales reps to keep their day organized. That being said, with the number of outbound activity and quality conversations we have, it is important for our BDRs to further organize their day and keep it as efficient as possible.”
Tuesday August 17th
Do You Know How Many Calls Your Inside Sales Team Should Be Making? – Craig offers a great food for thought, when it comes to knowing and understanding what your inside sales team does, needs to do and ultimately, can do.
“One of the bigger points of contention that existed between each team was the amount of daily activity they felt was required in order to attain the campaign lead goals. The numbers seemed to vary wildly.”
Thursday August 26th
Are Your Prospects Qualified For A Face To Face Sales Meeting? – Chris Lang discusses the importance of qualifying the appointments, and how in the end that’s always the key to closed business.
“I still love to have face to face meetings. But in my experience there is no way that you can form a predictable sales forecast when meeting with unqualified prospects. That stays the same whether they are in the same room as you or on a phone thousands of miles away.”
That’s it for this week! Have a great weekend everyone, see you Monday!
The best managers I’ve ever worked with generally spoke from their personal experience and not necessarily from the sales 101 instruction manual. It was always encouraging knowing that my boss at one point walked in my shoes and understood what it took to do the job. While this can be applied to nearly any job, I’ve found that it is particularly important when you are making cold calls. From what I've seen, if you’ve never made a cold call in your life your opinion more often than not doesn't carry much weight with your inside sales reps.
I equate cold calling to going through basic training. It can be difficult but it helps to develop your character, and provides the core fundamentals to succeed in sales. I can't imagine a private having much respect for a superior if they haven't spent time in the trenches (pun intended).
A common problem I've grown accustomed to, especially at a few of my old sales gigs, was the love affair that existed between the sales team and marketing. Neither group was afraid of offering their 2 cents on how to best execute our calling efforts. Very rarely did they actually agree on much, so the daily balancing act attempting to keep both units happy could best be described as exhausting for the inside sales team. When all was said and done, with all of the back and forth, we found the results to be comparable to previous campaigns and at times slightly lower.
One of the bigger points of contention that existed between each team was the amount of daily activity they felt was required in order to attain the campaign lead goals. The numbers seemed to vary wildly.
Marketing thought banging 50 calls an hour was an achievable number. Their thoughts were that it was just a numbers game. Make the call and just move onto the next name on the list. What they weren't taking into account was the time it takes to do a little research on the company, if we've spoken to them in the past... not to mention logging post call notes. What if we get the prospect live for a 20 minute discussion?
When it came to the outside sales team we found they had more realistic expectations in terms of a call goal. Some of them actually made some cold dials back in their early sales career, so they understood the value of being able to do some research before picking up the phone. The problem we ran into with them was that they felt we needed to do more research than necessary. They wanted us to read through the prospect web-site in detail, read-up on all press releases, check out the company bio on our target prospect and look up their profile on Linkedin. While I'm a firm believer in pre-call planning, there has to come a point when you need to just pick up the phone. It was almost as if they wanted us prepped like they typically would be before a big presentation. The problem was it was impossible for us to hit a reasonable call number or get remotely close to our monthly lead goal if we were expected to do a half hour of research before we called into each prospect.
Ultimately what we settled on was a call goal that made sense from the "numbers game" perspective, but also allowed us a bit of time to build in some necessary research. This is essentially the philosophy that helped us develop our call plan around here at AG.
It can be difficult to determine a realistic call goal since each department generally seems to have their own expectations. Take the time to understand what your inside sales folks are facing before you commit to a number that makes sense to YOU. After all, they're the ones making the calls each day and should have the best sense of what is realistic. The point is, we all need to come to a collective understanding on a number that won't burn your inside sales team out, and at the same time provides us with the quality and quantity of leads that make everyone happy.
Over the last 5 years or so I’ve interviewed a wide range of candidates for our business development role here at AG. They all have a variety of backgrounds from 10+ years of inside sales experience on down to a recent college graduates anxious to get their feet wet in the sales world. What I’ve discovered is that nothing surprises me anymore.
Now I wouldn't consider myself to be the toughest person to interview for. I usually try to play the role of good cop and allow the other folks I work with make the candidate squirm with the extra tough questions. My goal is to get a true understanding of whether or not the person is interested in working on my team. And are they someone that I can see myself spending 40-50 hrs a week working with. I recognize that I can't expect every solid candidate I interview to be someone that I want to head out and grab a beer with, but at the very least will they add value to AG? Could they challenge me to be better at my job? My president made a good point recently ..."If I'm thinking at any point during an interview that I want to "help" this person, then I probably shouldn't hire them. We’re not offering charity here; we're trying to bring in people that will help to grow the business."
Usually I try to set the scene by being relatively laid back in an attempt to draw out the interviewee's personality. Our culture is extremely important so I want to bring in people that I know can add to our work-place and co-exist peacefully with others. After a little small talk like ... any trouble finding the office? where are you from? ..I'll start with my first softball question to get them comfortable... So what interested in you the Business Development Representative role here at AG? Well apparently that isn't the easiest question for some candidates. A couple of my favorite responses include.. "Well if you worked at my current company then you would probably be looking for a new job too" or another beauty "The summer was over and I figured it was time to look for a job. Your company just happened to be the first company to call me back." Both true stories.
C'mon people since this is a sales job you need do a better job on selling ME on why YOU want to work at my organization.
Here are 6 warning signs to look for when a candidate comes in to interview for your company. Yes they may seem like interviewing 101 to some of us...but I've been unpleasantly surprised.
1) They trash their current or previous employer:
My first thought when people get into this is “ hmmm well golly, what will they say about me if they don’t agree with a decision I make?”
2) No research has been done on the company or the role they’re applying for:
If I’m going to spend a half hour of my time with you …then come PREPARED! I’ve fielded some interesting responses to my question asking them to explain to me what they understand that the job will entail. My favorite was “I’ll be selling office furniture here, right?” Nope sorry buddy…you might be confusing us with your last interview. Another true story.
3) They have little to no questions regarding the role they are applying for or on the company itself:
As with #2 above come prepared, surely there are a few things you would like to know about the role and the company.
4) They make their first or second question about the sales compensation plan or better yet vacation time:
I can respect that people are interested in what their compensation will look like, especially since they are applying for a sales job and all….but at least butter me up with questions about the job and AG Salesworks. And the vacation time question speaks for itself.
5) They never look you in eye:
At this point I’m thinking..”You got something to hide partner?” I understand they may be applying for a teleprospecting job that doesn’t require eye contact, but quite simply I’m not going to hire someone that I feel I can’t trust off the bat.
6) No follow-up email is sent after the interview thanking the company for their time:
Seems to me that this is common courtesy these days, if they want the job badly enough, they should go through the effort of typing up a simple thank you email.
From my experience as a hiring manager this has been a great way to identify a legitimate candidate from the rest of the field. It can at least be a better way of weeding out the folks that you are on the fence with. If they exhibit any of the warning signs above it may be time to remove them from the pool.