The best email subject line I've seen in my career came through my Inbox this week. Brad G, one of our inside sales reps shared an email he had received from a prospect praising his persistence in prospecting him. We call it "polite persistence" here at AG and I was very proud that the prospect not only responded to Brad, but took the time to compliment his approach and work ethic. Love to see that. As I was closing out the email I glanced at the subject line that Brad had sent to the prospect.
It read "Attention: Jim - Final Follow up"
I'm a big believer in subject lines driving the success of your emails. Your content means NOTHING if you don't first get the prospect to open the email. One of my old school favorites was "follow up: Pete from AG Salesworks". That one always seemed to at least peak people's interest in terms of "what is this guy following up on"? or "do I know Pete"? Either way, they opened it more often than not. Hopefully my content was up the task and they became opportunities for us, but that is a blog for another day.
Brad really kicked my older subject line up a notch by adding some very subtle yet effective verbiage. First, he uses "Attention" to start the subject. I don't know about you, but when I read the word attention I typically pay attention and read the next couple of words. Brad's got the ball rolling nicely here. Next he uses Jim's name. Personalizes it a bit...he's got Jim's attention (by saying "attention") and now Jim is a little more interested because Brad knows his name. Now its time for the grand finale'...Brad closes out the subject line with "Final Follow up". Brilliant!! He's gotten Jim's "Attention", Jim is somewhat comfortable reading because Brad used his name, and he tops it all off by leveraging the greatest fear every true blooded American has...missing out on something. By stating that this is the "Final Follow up", Brad has placed immediate importance on having his email opened and addressed by Jim.
It may seem like an over analysis to you, but hey, it's what we do here. The words matter, the choice of words, their placement, and their intended effect should be well thought out prior to being used. Nowhere is this more important than in the subject line of an email.
Brad nailed it here, and to prove it I figured I'd include the actual response he received from the prospect:
Brad,
You get extra points for being persistent. I do have an interest in seeing a demo of your application and its reports, but I have been quite busy. How about scheduling something on 8/13? That day is completely open on my calendar.
Jim
Jim was later qualified and passed by Brad and the discovery call has been set for our client's sales rep on 8/13. The devil truly is in the details.
It's a little past mid month. Time to give each one of your inside sales reps a mid month diagnostic check up. There are many different keys that make up a successful month's prospecting and it's important that you check in with your people mid month to see how they are doing with each.
When Laney and I evaluate and review our inside sales reps mid-month, we look at their performance in three separate areas. We don't just look how they've done, but we all look at whether or not they have what they need to finish strong for the last 2 weeks of the month.
1. List: I'm not talking about the quality of the list. I assume that if you read my blog you may also read that of our resident list expert Craig Ferrara. If you are a disciple of Craig, then your list is fine from a quality standpoint. What we focus on mid month is whether or not the inside sales rep in question actually has enough people to call. How big is the list of suspects? In order for a teleprospector to be optimal and meet the metrics of his\her call plan they need a minimum of 500 companies in play at all times. If you are short of that number mid month....then you better find some more or your inside sales rep may not hit their goal.
2. Lead Quality: When you are managing people making outbound dials you've got to find a delicate balance between volume of calls and quality of the opportunities passed to sales. Take some time mid-month to review the quality (assuming you have a closed loop feedback process in place) of the leads passed by each inside sales rep and make sure they aren't playing too much of the volume game. If you see their quality score is low, have a sit down and review each lead with them. Gently reinforce that quality is just as important as quantity. You'll see immediate refocus.
3. Moral: When your occupation involves as much daily rejection as teleprospecting, you can get a little down. Don't ever forget that your guys and gals on the phones take a lot of heat over the course of a day and may need a little pep talk now and again. Run your Leads Passed List by inside sales rep and start at the bottom. The folks having the slowest month are most likely to need a little reenergizing. Take them out to lunch, review the good things they've done, sing them a song...it doesn't matter, just make sure you let them know you understand their job is tough and that you are there to help them get back to a high level of performance.
These are just a few nice and simple ways to reconnect with your team and make sure you are all on the path to a solid month. Good Luck!!
Nowhere is the overall management of an inside sales teleprospecting team more difficult than the process of trying to gain efficiencies without losing effectiveness. We all want our reps to make the most activities possible while also passing the most qualified opportunities they can. CRM suites like Salesforce.com and Netsuite.com have revolutionized the industry from a efficiency standpoint. Teleprospectors today have all the tools at their disposal to maximize their outbound activity with minimal administrative effort. It all sounds so great…but BEWARE!! While efficiency gains through the use of technology can be incredibly valuable, they mean very little if the quality of your product (the qualified lead) suffers.
Before we get into one of the great effectiveness killers, Email Templates, it is important for you to understand how we define both efficiency and effectiveness in Teleprospecting. Please keep in mind that these are our organizational definitions. I’m well aware that any solid MBA or Basic business course would define these differently.
Efficiency: The amount of output (outbound activities) a single inside sales rep can produce in one 8 hour work day.
Effectiveness: The number of fully qualified sale opportunities created by that same outbound activity in one 8 hour day.
The two go hand in hand; too much focus on one will invariably decrease the other. For example, several years ago we made a shift in management and required a 20% increase in daily activity from our inside sales reps. We did the simple math and figured the increased efficiency\output would yield a great increase in effectiveness\Leads. It didn’t pan out that way. Our inside sales reps became more robotic in their approach in a quest to get more activity and thus became less focused on the amount of information they were gathering on each live conversation. The live conversation became something that got in the way of more activity. Not a good problem to have in our business.
One of the most popular features amongst our team in our salesforce.com is the ability to set up email templates. We’ve all used this feature I’m sure and at face value it seems like a no brainer in terms of being able to touch more prospects with your message faster. Instead of taking time to write individual emails to a prospect you can simply click a couple of buttons and fire out a standard pitch template. Great time saver, huge efficiency gain for your team and I HATE IT.
Email templates have a purpose, but it doesn’t reside in the day to day prospecting activity of an inside sales rep. If you strive to pass your sales team FULLY qualified leads, you should strongly consider not allowing your inside sales reps to use this functionality. The use of email is essential in building the proper rapport needed to fully qualify a prospect. Cutting corners in their content and delivery will only serve to turn that prospect off. You can tell when someone has sent you and email template as opposed to taking 3 minutes to write you a unique one. Unique in that it is personalized. Perhaps reflecting that you’ve been to their site, or spoken with a colleague, etc… I understand the allure of using email templates as they truly can and do increase efficiency\output, but I stand firm in my belief that they disrespect the prospect and have no place in the process of fully qualifying a lead.
To be aggressive or not be aggressive. That is the question. You've just had a wildly successful Webinar. It was a packed digital house full of your hottest prospects and you are certain you'll get some new forecast from it.
The first instinct of every inside sales organization is to begin their follow up calls in earnest with a dedicated and regimented calls plan the day after the event. I applaud your energy and excitement as well as the fact that you've got a call plan, but I will caution you on one thing. Following up too aggressively and too quickly with your sales pitch after a webinar can be a great turn off to your prospects.
I'm not saying you don't want to reach out to them right away, but you want to be very careful about how you reach out to them in the immediate time following the event. We have found that the best way to turn webinar attendees into gold is to hold off on our politely persistent teleprospecting plan until at least a week after the event.
Instead of immediately turning the leads over to your team, set up to send them two emails over the course of the first week following the event. It is most important to have the presenter (s) of the event be the people that send the intitial email. This email should be nothing more than a "thank you" for your attendance and a link to the presentation that was given.
At the end of the week, the second email should be sent by the presenter(s) again and be very quick and to the point. It should thank them again for attending and then let them know that one of you your colleagues will be following up with them via phone next week to determine whether or not your organization can be of more help....and example of that email could be...
John,
Thanks again for attending our recent webinar "Building a Reliable Sales Pipeline in 30 Days". I wanted to let you know that one of my colleagues here at AG Salesworks will be following up with you next week via the phone. It will be their goal to discuss, in more detail, how we may be of assistance to your company.
Regards,
Pete
Once you’ve sent your two emails, the gloves come off and your inside sales reps should begin following their call plan with your prospects. I know that this may sound counterintuitive to what you've typically read or thought, but much of our techniques are derived from how we like to be dealt with. There is nothing I dislike more than getting a call the day after an event. Give me some time to digest what I've seen.
Of course you need some stats to feel better about what I'm saying. Here is the only one that matters. The Lead rate (% of conversations that turn into leads passed) increases by 2% when employing this non-invasive follow up approach. That is a huge difference.
How do you follow up on your webinar attendees?
There is no greater point of anxiety for all of us then that moment in time where we question whether or not we hired the right guy\gal as a inside sales rep. Teleprospecting is not an easy gig. At most companies the burnout rate is far higher for teleprospecting in comparison to other job functions. You are right in having some healthy anxiety about your new hire. Will he\she cut it on the phones? Do they have the work ethic that is required to be a great teleprospector? Will they fit into your culture? Most importantly…will they hit their number?
We’ve all got great hiring processes in place I’m sure. We ask the right questions, run personality profiles, put potential hires through role plays, and do our best to select the best person for the job. However, there is only so much you can do on the interviewing side of the equation. Inevitably you are going to have a bad one slip into the ranks. I have some things you can look for during the first few days of a new rep being on the phone that should give you a good indication as whether or not you’ve hired a keeper.
- The activity test: If you’ve hired well, you have placed a person in the seat that understands that mistakes will be made. You can only prepare a new hire for some of the things they will face on the phone. They are, after all, calling humans, and humans have a way of reacting in new and interesting ways all the time. That being said, you do your best to prep your new rep for all the things they will hear on the phone and see via email. Sadly, mistakes will be made. It’s a part of life. You’ve got to hope you’ve hired someone that “get’s it”. Someone that understands that mistakes will happen, but the key is not just to learn from them - the key is to make as many as early as possible so that you are up to altitude faster. I know a rep has a high likelihood of being great when they simply make more calls than the comp plan calls for. They understand that more activity up front accomplishes many positive things for them. It leads to more conversations faster so that they can get their hiccups out of the way earlier. They know that more conversations\calls at the start is necessary because they must do that in order to hit their lead goals due to the fact that they aren’t a seasoned vet yet. This also tells you that they aren’t afraid to tell the boss “yeah, I’m not afraid to make more calls than you asked me to”. Finally, it is a great indication of overall quality work ethic. People that put their best effort forward right out of the gates are most likely bringing the right work ethic to your team. All good things.
- The quality test: After your new rep has spent two days on the phone, run your “quality conversation” (QC) report from your Salesforce.com. Look for three things on this report. Total QC’s, Titles of the contacts associated with each QC, and the detail surrounding the conversations. The total QC activity for a “Great” new hire should be at least 10% higher than that of your average rep. The titles of the contacts should vary wildly as they try and get a feel for their target audience. Varied contact titles also indicates that they are using “0#” techniques to find something…anything of value out about the target organization. The detail or notes for each conversation should be well written and clear. This is self explanatory, decent writing skills are critical in this job. If the notes are sloppy or make no sense, you may have a problem on your hands.
- The cultural test: This one is tough for some people to swallow. When I discuss this with people they often criticize me for placing too much emphasis on how my employees feel about one another. We always agree to disagree on this point. For AG, the culture is everything. We’ve tried to create a place where people want to work. A place they miss when they move on. We’ve been successful in both areas so it is important that your new hire is exposed to that. Make a point to see how they are introducing themselves to your team. Do they gravitate towards your happiest and best performing employees...your “A” players? Or do you see them not interacting much at all with anyone? Either one of these is acceptable…however, be alarmed if you see your new hire gravitating towards your B and C employees. This can be a harbinger of potentially not so great things to come.
There is no exact science to alleviating the anxiety around a new hire, but these are some things I’ve come to look for that have always proved to be great indicators as to the quality of my hire. How do you put your mind at ease about your new hires?
There is no better time during the year then right now to utter the phrase "call blitz" to your teleprospecting\inside sales teams. It is a phrase that causes groans across any team. Despite the general hatred of the "call blitz", I am a fan, and a firm believer that it is still a viable way to build pipeline quickly. While you'd be hard pressed (at AG anyways) to find a rep that "LOVES" a good old fashioned call blitz, none of them will argue that they aren't a healthy exercise to make your team go through. Here are my guidelines for running a one day teleprospecting blitz...
1. Set a high, but realistic activity expectation. Take your average daily outbound activity requirement and add 30% to it. That is more than reasonable unless you run a true sweat shop already. Don't go too high on your required number or you'll just end up with a bunch of meaningless activity from people just trying to hit an astronomical goal.
2. Break it down by hour. As you introduce your call blitz parameters, make sure you break it down hourly for your reps. Do the math for them so that they know what they have to do per hour as opposed to focusing on a large goal that may seem too overwhelming at the very start of the day.
3. Buy some lunch. Control the lunch hour by being a stand up guy\gal and buying the crew food. Pizza is my meal of choice, but I'm pretty unhealthy. Salads, tofu, whatever, just buy them lunch. This is a great way to say thanks for the extra effort and it also allows you to keep folks in the building so as to not lose any dialing time.
4. Send updates. Make sure you or a member of your staff is sending periodic updates on activity to the entire team throughout the day so people know where they stand and aren't wasting time checking the system for themselves.
5. Reward the "winners". Take the rep with the most calls and give him\her a small, but useful prize. Then do the same for the rep that had the most quality conversations over the course of the day.
Those are the basic parameters that we operate our call blitzes under.
The best time to run blitzes is the last two weeks of June. You are nearing the halfway point of your calendar year as well as entering what we have found to be the slowest two weeks of the year (July 1st - July 15th). Running one or several call blitzes during the last half of June accomplishes some very strategic objectives for your organization.
1. Increased activity in June makes up for the drop in activity that July will bring. July is one of the most popular vacations months of the year. The July 4th holiday when we celebrate this great nations independence can be a real bloodbath for business that rely on outbound teleprospecting to drive their pipeline development. Blitzing before and after those two weeks helps keep the overall activity at a level that offsets both the internal vacation that you probably will have as well as the external vacation time taken by your prospects. Your reps maintain an overall acceptable 30 day (June 15th - July 15th) call volume number thanks to the blitzes. They also focus more of their activity during times when prospects are more likely to be in the office.
2. Running several call blitzes at the end of June helps to clean out the pipeline and give some healthy cleansing to your database. You've spent half a year working your lists and have probably started spinning your wheels a little bit on many accounts. The extra activity means more conversations and more conversations lead to faster dispositioning of accounts. When you disposition an account it makes room for the new lists that you are inevitably going to be entering into the system in July for the second half of the year. A couple of well timed blitzes will accelerate some much needed purging of bad data and not interested accounts.
3. It's a good thing for your team. Whether or not people choose to admit it, competition and a challenge brings out the best in sales minded professionals. The call blitz is a great way to bring out the best competitive juices from your employees and helps to build even better moral through some healthy competition.
So, get your lists in order AG team...we are having a blitz tomorrow!
One of the most common questions we get from prospective clients is "our product is very technical, how will your reps understand it"? It's a fair and good question but it truly isn't something that one of our clients should be concerned with.
It makes sense at one level. They are prospecting and qualifying leads for your technology, they should be experts on it. However, if you really look at what you want a teleprospector to do (qualify opportunities) it isn't to describe the bells and whistles of your solution. You don't want them talking about what systems you integrate with. Their task is far more complex than that. You want them having business discussions. Detailed conversations surrounding the pains and needs experienced by that prospect as a result of NOT having your technology at their disposal. Don't have your reps tell your prospects how great your solution is, make sure they are asking how great the prospect feels about the solution they currently have. Get the prospect talking...they have little to no interest in hearing what your rep has to say.
We all have a tendency to want to be liked on the phone. Our instinct says "oh man, I feel bad for this person, they don't want to be on the phone with me right now... I should tell them how great our solution is". WRONG, they don't care, all they care about is how painful their day has been because they don't have your product and it is your teleprospectors job to get them talking about it. The most unsuccessful teleprospectors we have ever had at AG have always been the ones you hear talking all the time. The job is about asking questions and listening to answers..then asking more questions. When you've finally asked enough questions to paint a pretty picture of a sales opportunity then it is time to pass it on to the technical experts and a sales professional to show them exactly how they can help.
Now I'm not saying you shouldn't train your teleprospectors on your technology, they need to be educated. However, it is your mindset in terms of why you are training them on your technology that will determine how successful they will become. If you train them on your technology because "you need to be able to talk the talk and answer difficult questions" then they will fail. If you train them on your technology because "you need to understand how it works so that you better understand the pains and needs you'll be hearing on the phone", then you are headed in the right direction.
How much technology do you train your reps on before you let them loose on the phone?
I have been taking informal inventory of my inbound email traffic over the last week and I'm quite shocked by what I've found (please keep in mind that I'm not a scientist or statistician..these are approx numbers). Conservatively I receive 300-350 inbound emails per day (new emails, not continuations of existing conversations). I won't get into the details of all the sources (team members, family, friends, viagara spam, etc..) but instead will focus on the 20-30 sales messages I get from various technology and service companies. Of the 20-30, 90-95% are deleted upon receipt. The other 5-10% catch my attention due to a decent subject line. Of those 5-10% that I open perhaps 1 will get me to read through it.
I'm in sales and I run a teleprospecting company so I'm very sympathetic to the people that are trying to reach out to me. I have no doubt that they have good products and they could in fact "Change my business life" as one subject line suggested recently. Unfortunately, they don't know me at all and have never spoken to me so they really have no idea what my business life is all about. How could they possibly know they can change something of which they have so little knowledge? I wasn't offended by that subject line, I just deleted it because it said nothing to me. If you can't tell, the first line of attack for someone trying to get me to read\respond to an email is the subject line. The second line of attack is how you format your email. Here are my two main rules to follow when trying to get a prospect to read your email.
Rule #1: Earn the right to email them.
This doesn't mean you have to get them to request an email, or even have a live conversation with them before you email. You just have to do some homework and put yourself in position to send a more personalized subject line. Call me..Yes, I'll ignore the call most likely, but I'll notice the number and that my phone rang. Leave me a message that I most likely won't listen to (but leave it anyways, I like the effort). Immediately following your voicemail, craft a very brief email and start with the simple subject line "Pete from ABC inc following up on my voicemail". Ok, now you've got my attention I'm thinking "That must have been the guy who's call I just ignored. I wonder what he has to say, it could be important". BAM..I just opened your email!!! Nice work...but if you don't focus on rule #2 you'll waste all this great momentum.
Rule #2: Who you are, why you are emailing, and why they should read it.
Keep it simple guys. I opened the email, start off by letting me know who you are (quickly). Next, tell me why you are calling and please close it out with why I should call you back. If you keep it simple with two or three sentences per area, I'll read it. If what I read resonates I'll email you and ask for more info. If not, I'll still email you because I've devoted some time to reading your email and now I feel obliged to send you quick response as to why it's not a fit.
This may seem like an oversimplification and I'd be happy to share some actual examples of emails that have worked for our team here. Don't overcomplicate your messages or allow your teleprospectors to complicate theirs. Let your outbound marketing efforts saturate the marketplace with your corporate message. When you are the actual touch point between the prospect and your company, you owe it to yourself and that prospect to make it a bit more personal. What do your initial prospecting emails look like?
Virtually every client that we work with measures our overall success by how much net new revenue they close from the fully qualified opportunities that we pass them. I agree that this is the most important overall evaluation point, but it takes some time for sales cycles to happen. Teleprospecting campaigns add value in three main stages. It is imperative that you not only recognize those stages, but that you are consistently evaluating each outbound campaign according to them. We use the stages and criteria below to evaluate the success of our client campaigns at strategic intervals.
Stage 1: Initial Quality Assessment. (This occurs immediately following the first call.)
Our reps fully qualify sales opportunities and send them to our clients salespeople for follow up. As part of the qualification, we book an introductory conference call for the assigned salesperson. The day after the conference call was due to occur, we send a very brief quality survey to the salesperson to give us an indication as to how the call went. The survey consists of three main questions.
- Did the scheduled call occur?
- Was the call a Success?
- Will there be a next step with this prospect (if yes, what)?
At this stage of the game, the best you can hope for is that your qualified opportunities have moved into your sales process (not forecast) and that your rep has gotten him\herself in a position to sell your services\products. This isn't the point in time where something would be forecasted, even the most eager salesperson would agree. You've got to have at least one more discovery call to truly determine whether or not this prospect is forecast worthy. For this reason, it is far too early to judge the success of the lead by whether it's forecasted or closed. Therefore, you must look at the quality of the interaction and the validity of the information passed. These three questions allow us to determine that.
Evaluation Metric: A minimum of 75% of the opportunities that you qualify and pass should receive a "yes" to all three questions.
Value Add: Reps are busier talking to more qualified prospects, thus you maximize the money you are spending on them.
Stage 2: Forecasted within 90 days
As a rule of thumb, an actual opportunity should have reached forecast for our clients (20% or greater chance of closing) within at least 90 days from the date of first conversation with a sales rep. In the best scenarios, we are able to simply ask our clients to run a forecast report of our opportunities for us out of their CRM that we can compare to our list of opportunities delivered. Any opportunity that reached forecast within the first 90 days makes the cut as a successful effort by AG (regardless of outcome). If our client isn't able to pull that data for us, we will re-survey the sales reps that have received opportunities to learn whether or not they have forecasted them, and for what amount.
Evaluation Metric: Of the opportunities that you pass that get a 100% Initial quality assessment, a minimum of 40% should find themselves on your sales forecast.
Value Add: You are able to get a preliminary forecasted MROI on your teleprospecting campaigns. Make appropriate changes, stop all together, or get a nice early pat on the back :-)
Stage 3: Closed Business
As our opportunities age on our clients' forecasts we look to the ‘6 month mark' as the time when we will start to expect a percentage of the opportunities to begin closing (this does vary based on sales cycle by client, but 6 months is a safe time to begin checking). This is the final and most important evaluation point for the measure of the success of your teleprospecting campaigns. Again, in most cases our clients can simply report this information back to us, but if need be we will do the digging for them. From a self preservation standpoint, it is work worth doing :-).
Evaluation Metric: This varies by organization...you know your own close rate.
Value Add: I don't need to explain this one!!
This is how we evaluate the success of our programs. We believe it's got to be done in stages, not just looked at from the closed business angle. How do you evaluate the success of your teleprospecting campaigns?
For many years we evaluated the success of our teleprospecting campaigns solely on the number of fully qualified opportunities that we generated. Over time it became clear that we were doing our clients a disservice by not proactively sharing all of the detail surrounding every prospect we targeted during their teleprospecting campaign.
The fully qualified opportunities are just the cherry on top of your overall campaign. You've got to savor the rest of the Sundae too. There are three main success criterions for any teleprospecting campaign and they are as follows....
1. Qualified Opportunities:
As I mentioned above, this isn't the only measure of success for your program, but it is the most popular one. At the end of the day you need the fully qualified opportunities to drive immediate forecast generated by your campaign. The qualified opportunities allow you to go to senior management and say "you see, we spent x and it delivered y in new forecast for an initial MROI of Z". They also are what gets the sales reps most excited about you and the work your marketing team is doing which is always good. They are your client after all.
2. Not Interested Accounts:
As strange as it sounds, it's almost as important to find out who isn't interested and why as it is to find out who wants to buy now and why. Your "not interested" accounts can tell you many things about your company as well as your competitive landscape. Why don't they think they are interested? Is it your overall message? Cost? Lack of functionality or too much functionality? What competitor is entrenched there and for how long? What do they like/hate about them? All of this information is invaluable as you not only gain greater insight into your target market but you'll be armed with detailed critical intelligence on your targets so that you can fine tune your future campaigns to further maximize MROI.
3. An Actual Magic List of Contacts
While I've had great success pulling lists from our partners such as NetProspex there is no list that compares to the one that is delivered at the end of a comprehensive teleprospecting campaign. Not only do you gather critical intelligence from target companies as part of any campaign, but you also find and\or validate hundreds if not thousands of appropriate contacts in your target. These validated records are almost 100% accurate and will also contain information regarding their specific likes\dislikes pertaining to your technology space. Great for future marketing endeavors.
This is how we justify our existence on a daily basis...how do you evaluate the success of your teleprospecting campaigns?
Photo Credit: *Sundae with a Cherry on Top* on Flickr