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.
When setting up a new task that will appear on your homepage, we have found that there are 3 important labels to help streamline your teleprospecting campaign. It is important to label the prospect status, next task, and time zone. Meaning, before opening a new task you should be able to identify it with these labels. The prospect status will identify the urgency of the task and help the rep to prioritize. A prospect can still be in prospect (P), contact identified (CI), or even interested (I) mode. The next task will prepare you for your next activity with the prospect and this might be a voicemail 2 (VM 2) or no contact (NC). Labeling the time zone (ET, CT, MT PT) will help to map your day out and will ensure you won’t waste unnecessary time opening west coast contacts at 9:30am in Boston!
Labeling tasks also helps from a management perspective. I would much prefer to have “contact identified” on my home page rather than a majority of tasks still in “prospecting” mode. By glancing at your homepage, it is easy to identify if more work needs to be done to uncover the best person to speak with in your rep’s accounts. The same holds true for labeling the next task. If I see a magnitude of tasks in voicemail 4, 5, or 6 it is clear that there needs to be attention focused around the messaging for that particular campaign. If majority of prospects are not responding at the beginning of the call plan, some additional work around scripting and emailing is most likely necessary.
This is just a small sample of how we help keep our days organized and efficient with such high outbound activity. Do you have any ways to keep your day busy days more structured?
I’m sure it’s happened to everyone at some point in time. It can be easy to think that if you don’t acknowledge a problem, it doesn’t actually exist. I have done it many times on many occasions. For example, I get into my car and the flashing service engine light comes on. I think, well my car is driving fine so there is no problem here. One week later my car doesn’t start when I am already running late to a meeting – now it’s an even bigger problem. Or that time I went on a ski trip even though I had a sore throat and came back with a 102 fever for quarter end – not smart. These are all “red flags.” While not setting an appointment for my car or going on that ski trip may have had its short term benefits, the later consequences overshadowed these benefits.
The same holds true for a teleprospecting campaign. To ensure the success of a project, everyone has an important job to do. Communication can be so important to get this job done. If you are picking up on one of these “red flags,” it is important to address this immediately.
Here are a few important things that should not be ignored:
List Status:
It is crucial that an inside sales rep communicates their list status. It can take quite some time to pull new data and lists. Waiting until a list is finished can slow down activity and be detrimental to a project. That being said, it is also important to address the quality of the list before it becomes a problem. The worst thing an inside sales rep can do is blame low performance on list quality when this could have been addressed much sooner in the game.
Low response rate:
Avoid spinning your wheels with emails and voicemails that don’t work. If you are getting to the end of your call plan too often with no response, make sure to revamp your emails and voicemails. Don’t wait for your performance to suffer before strategizing on new messaging that will make you more successful. Pete Gracey had some great tips in his recent post 2 Rules to Email By for Successful Sales Prospecting.
Qualified out prospects:
If the majority of your conversations are turning out to be qualified out, communicate this with your sales team. Strategize on better verticals, organization sizes, or geographic regions to call into.
These are all examples of road blocks that may seem minimal or inevitable at the time. However, to deliver the highest form of success it is crucial to never wait until these “red flags” affect your performance. Stay ahead of the game and your competition by proactively ensuring your project is in the best position to succeed.
With a 12% connect rate, a typical inside rep’s job consists of 88% “non-live” communication. That being said, it is very exciting to get your identified contact live on the phone. This moment can be so overly anticipated, that it is easy to get caught up and forget to ask that one last very important bit of information. The goal is always to qualify an account, extract pains, and create interest. Your objective is always to get to the end result, which is to qualify in or out. Just because someone expresses no immediate pain or interest, your job is not done. To make the most of every conversation you need to understand why there is no immediate need. Thus it is important to have the appropriate follow up questions ready for the various reasons that could be presented:
- They do not qualify (qualify out) - why is their environment not conducive to your product/service?
- They have a competitor in place (satisfied) – What competitor?
- No funding in the immediate future – When do they anticipate the ability to evaluate in the future?
- Project not a priority in the immediate future – When will this be more of a priority?
This information is very important to capture for many reasons. If there is no immediate need/interest, make sure that you know when to reach out in the future. Things change, just because there is no opportunity now, doesn’t mean that this will be true in 3 months. Don’t settle for, “I have no interest.” This phrase can be a very popular email response. I always make sure that our BDRs are sending follow-up emails asking how they are solving the problem today and when to reach out in the future. This information can also be very useful to our clients to help bridge the gap between marketing and sales by helping marketing to segment their audience and sales understand their competitive landscape. Of course we always ask for inside referrals. Depending on the conversation, you can even try asking for a referral to an outside colleague/friend at another organization that may benefit.
How do you help your inside sales reps make the most of every conversation?
We are always focusing so much on the importance of bridging the gap between marketing and sales in a successful teleprospecting campaign. As I stated in a recent webcast, this is comprised of the initial implementation, execution, and closing the loop:
Today, I want to focus on the execution in a successful campaign.
We are always focusing so much on the importance of bridging the gap between marketing and sales in a successful teleprospecting campaign. As I stated in a recent webcast, this is comprised of the initial implementation, execution, and closing the loop. Today, I want to focus on the execution in a successful campaign.
Our BDRs quickly get comfortable with the message and delivery of the value proposition. They are having quality conversations, finding qualified opportunities, and really gauging the marketplace with such an extensive volume of calls every day. The execution does not end here - it's time to take the next step. It is so important to meet on a weekly call with our clients to discuss conversations, pipeline, and most importantly - trends. To bridge the gap between marketing and sales, it is essential to have marketing and sales involved in this weekly recap. Here is why:
One of our current clients has a heavy qualification process, so it's very important that we are focusing our prospecting efforts into the right targeted audience. To achieve their success, our client really wants to focus on and create a marketing campaign into prospects with a particular competitor in place. Through our calling efforts, we also found that these prospects were the most qualified. With all of the market research and competitive data we captured, we were able to formulate a campaign for this targeted audience. From there we were able to ensure this campaign is armed with the right message, call plan, and action step. This campaign was able to accomplish 3 very important things for us:
1) A more personalized message into the audience:
By already having knowledge on one specific targeted audience, we were able to work with the client to formulate messaging and scripting around the pain points we know they are experiencing using that competitor and how we can eliminate those pains.
2) Bridging the gap between marketing and sales:
Working closely with the marketing team and sales team, we formulated the message. We then segmented this audience for the marketing department while executing a more comprehensive campaign carrying it through to the sales team.
3) A higher volume of targeted opportunities:
Since we were able to segment and focus on a niche segment that already "fits the bill," when we executed our personalized message, we were about to get a higher response rate which in turn lead to generating more opportunities.
"Here at XYZ Comp, we offer a solution to automate your process by blah blah blah."
This opener is inevitably going to happen.
I've done it, you've done it, all great sales reps have done it. After going through the whole process of training on a new product with your value proposition, learning all the key benefit points, and differentiators, going back to the importance of keeping the message simple can be the most difficult part. I was reading an article by Michael Pedone, CEO of online sales training company SalesBuzz.com, entitled Bad Phone Sales Script Advice. Michael drives home one particular point - "Don't start selling before you know the situation." I cannot stress enough, how important this is in lead generating efforts.
I had an interesting conversation with my Director of Client Operations. We were trying to uncover why one of our reps is doing so well and another one is falling behind on the same project. Interestingly enough, after listening to a scheduled call, our successful rep did not relay any product information. Our most successful reps are skilled learning about the situation and frankly getting the prospect to do all the work.
After we prepare our reps (until they are blue in the face!) with scripting and product information, they are beyond eager to get started on the phones. When they finally get someone live on the phone, all the scripting is thrown out the window. Let's be honest, using a script isn't the best way to sound unscripted. Let's take a step back and focus on four guidelines that help to keep your intro simple while "uncovering the situation" directing you to your ultimate goal - qualifying the prospect.
- Introduce yourself and your company- you wouldn't call a friend of a friend and start rattling off questions without a quick explanation of who you are - a referral makes this even better!
- Verify they are the best person to speak with - Don't try to sell something to the wrong person! Verifying they are the best person to speak with is also a good ice breaker.
- The purpose of your call - Be honest. Let them know that you are calling to learn more about their environment.
- Transition question - As mentioned in previous blogs, this should be designed to get your prospect talking about challenges within their environment. Once the conversation has started and you have them talking, this will naturally guide the qualification process.
What do you think?
Often we assume that our training team has all the answers. Being a trainer myself, there are days I think (or hope) I have all the answers. Although there is a lot that every trainer brings to the team, sometimes we get the best feedback from fellow reps who are in the day to day trenches. This week, our team did peer to peer "cross training." During cross training week, the training department designates each BDR to partner up with a fellow BDR and listen to an hour of each other's calls. Their call to action is a recap of three "learning points" from their peers approach and messaging.
Here is why this approach to training adds value:
With peer to peer training, you can essentially "kill two birds with one stone." As a trainer, I want to spend individual time with all of my reps. Some weeks permit time for this and some weeks it is virtually impossible without cloning myself. It is a good idea to use the knowledge of fellow BDRs and engage them in the process. There is a whole team of individual skill sets that are important to share with the whole company.
Pairing peers up randomly (or thoughtfully) can have a very positive impact on the team. This helps to build team camaraderie and make the day that much more exciting for your reps. While it is always exciting to hear your reps exchange new ideas and tips, it is exciting fun for them to be a trainer for the day. It can be a real confidence booster for your reps to know how much you value their hard work and skill set. I encourage you to try this with your team and let me know how it goes.
How do you utilize peer training?
As a trainer, I understand the importance of keeping my message fresh and keeping our teleprospectors motivated. In order to get the most effective point across to my team while maintaining the appropriate level of respect, I understand the importance of staying involved in process. In order to successfully communicate, motivate, and relate to my team, I make it a point to never remove myself from what I train everyday - how to successfully cold call.
We live in such a fast paced environment with communication and networking constantly changes. A message that worked with a prospect three months ago may be ignored or lost in the shuffle today. Competition is getting tight and new ways to stand out from other competitors is necessary. This may be as simple as changing your transition question, email subject lines, or call plan. A perfect example is words and phrases such as leveraging ROI, optimization, or increased efficiency which may have worked in voicemails a couple years ago. The problem is that every other teleprospector is using these phrases today. It is clear the message needs to be refreshed and constantly updated in order to stand out from the competition. This may consist of personalizing your messaging and focusing on industry trending pains. Navigate around accounts, overcome objections, and uncover industry trends on your own. Compare and contrast these trends with your team.
For every 30 bad calls, comes a successful conversation. Staying motivated can be a challenge. Making cold calls on a daily basis is certainly a humbling experience. When I am ramping up a rep on a new project, I always like to be as involved as I can in the process by getting on the phones alongside them. Keep your team motivated and let them know of the importance of every conversation. Remind them that you are experiencing similar conversations, and this is how you've handled a certain objection and it has worked for you. A constant reminder of success while maintaining a mind frame of "we're all in it together" makes a big difference.
Every project is different, and in order to construct an effective message for your team, I stress getting your hands dirty in the process. There is no better way to ensure effective communication and relating to your reps then to get as involved in the process as possible.
What do you think?
A resourceful BDR is great.
A resourceful BDR who generates success is even better. Today, we are spoiled by a plethora of resources such as Jigsaw, Linked In, Hoovers, Zoom info, etc. While these are great research tools that can offer some assistance, they are not the only way to begin prospecting into a new account. As a trainer, I have admired some of my reps savvy research skills. I have noticed outstanding success rates of those who instinctively choose to pick up the phone and dial into a new account with the first attempt. Online resources are an excellent source for companies that are difficult to navigate, but reps that are accustomed to logging into Jigsaw before making the dial are missing a very important piece of teleprospecting.
When calling into a main line or even a direct dial, chances are you will be passed around from contact to contact before getting the decision maker on the phone. Reps who view this as wasteful time can be mistaken. This process many times gets you to the decision maker faster while providing real time information that can be artfully pulled out from contacts leading up to the decision maker. All of the prior conversations and internal referrals, if used properly, can dramatically increase the decision maker's response to your message.
With all these resources at our fingertips, it's easy to get bogged down in lengthy research. Naturally, our reps that rely heavily on researching contacts have far less volume. If you choose to pick up the phone and make more calls, with great listening skills you may very well get where you need to be faster and with more success. I can't stress enough that using online resources helps, but until you need that help, pick up the phone and dial! As the saying goes, you can't shoot the moose from the lodge and in our case you can't get a qualified lead without picking up the phone.
It's your 20th call of the day. You just left 10 voicemails, you've been screened by 7 admins, and had 2 prospects dismiss your cold call immediately. FINALLY, a prospect picks up the phone, ready to talk to you. After introducing yourself and your business, you have the green light to proceed. The problem is, you have a surplus amount of information as to why your product is better than the rest, but have approximately 30 seconds to peak interest. Where do you go from here?
In previous blogs, I stress the importance of a clear purpose of your call. More importantly, this needs to be followed by a compelling transition question. Peaking interest and getting the prospect to become involved in an interactive business conversation can be the hardest part of a cold call. Too often, the rep will transition straight to product information or product "dumping." The trick to a successful transition is to probe your prospect to start talking about what is causing them a headache on a day to day basis. It is important to stay in control of the conversation while keeping the ball in your court. The goal is to have your prospect tell you about the major issues they face before relaying the right information that will resonate with their needs.
A compelling transition question should simply always reference the most common industry pain that your product/service alleviates.
Another popular, yet crash and burn transition is going straight to, "do you have any projects in place?" This conversation opener still makes me cringe. A successful transition question should be vague, never leaving the opportunity for a no answer. This makes it way to easy for the prospect to push you off the phone. That being said, the objective of a successful transition is to prompt your prospect to engage in a business conversation surrounding their pains. Now learning about how your solution will solve these problems really sounds like a no brainer!