Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into A Sales Machine With The $100 Million Best Practices Of Salesforce.com

by Aaron Ross

Predictable Lead Generation, the most important thing for creating predictable revenue. A Sales Development Team that bridges the chasm between marketing and sales. Consistent Sales Systems, because without consistency you have no predictability.

In high – productivity sales organizations, salespeople do not cause customer acquisition growth they fulfill it.

Do your executive team and board know how much new (qualified) pipeline the company needs to generate per month? (This is the second most important metric to track, right after closed business.)

The tipping point of the Cold Calling 2.0 process was born: sending mass emails to high-level executives to ask for referrals to the best person in their organization for a first conversation.

Making the field salespeople do cold calls means having your highest-cost (per hour) sales resource perform the lowest-value (per hour) activity.

Develop respected experts: The Sales Development role is often treated within a sales organization as a low-level job. If you treat it that way, you’ll get low-level results. It’s a challenging and often thankless role. Treat the team as, and expect them to be, experts. Don’t skimp on training, equipping or developing them. Set high expectations of their ongoing skills development. Qualify accounts and contacts before calling: Cold Calling 1.0 involves calling or emailing into unfiltered industry-based lists of targets. Prospecting into accounts of marginal potential is the most common waste of time by Sales Development Reps and companies. Spend serious time on identifying and clarifying your Ideal Customer Profile. Define what companies are the most similar to the top 5-10% of your customers, defined as the ones likeliest to purchase for the most revenue, and develop focused target lists based on these tight criteria. Research rather than sell: When reps do call into cold accounts, instead of making cold calls, make “research calls.” The intention is different: rather than trying to get the decision-maker on the phone, a rep simply learns about the company and whether there is even a potential fit or not. Mobile optimized emails: Avoid sending long sales emails that no one reads. Send emails that are very short (readable on a mobile phone). Be honest and to the point – what are you looking for? Go beyond basic SFA: Leverage your sales force automation (SFA) systems in eve...

2.0

A rule of thumb is that for every 400 leads per month that require human attention, a company needs one Market Response Representative.

Rather than sending hundreds of mass emails at a time in big bursts, the idea here is to send a regular, smaller number (50-100) of emails per salesperson each day, a few days a week, as a rolling campaign. The main goal of this stage is to generate just 5-10 new responses per day. Reps can’t handle more responses per day than that without dropping balls.

Step 4. Sell the Dream Do this: Work your responses and referrals to make contact with the right executives, and then “Sell The Dream” by helping them paint a vision of what kinds of solutions will solve their problems. Then connect your solution to their key business issue(s) and their dream. Don’t treat your front-line sales reps as appointment-setting machines setting up all kinds of meetings to which prospects don’t show up. Do you have outbound reps that are only trained to push product, read from scripts or push demos? Or can they create a vision with a prospect and start building trust, credibility and rapport?

Red Flags And Deal Breakers What signals or signs can you look for, as early in the sales process as possible, to warn you (and the client) that working together is a waste of time? Here are some examples of red flags: They just installed a________kind of system. They already have an agency/service provider in place, or a full-time in-house person dedicated to ________. They churn-and-burn the consultants or agencies they hire to do________. Know-it-alls / “We know what we’re doing.” Geography. Their monthly budget for ________is only________. These industries never seem to work:________, ________, ________. This area of work is totally new to them, and they don’t understand it yet. (That is, you would have to do a lot of work just to educate the client before they would even understand the value of your service.)

with more content, but in the beginning: These emails should look as if they are a single email that came from a salesperson. They should be text-based, not fancy HTML. State simply and clearly why you are reaching out. Make the email easy to read and respond to on a mobile phone. Offer credibility (e.g., examples of customers). Ask just one simple-to-answer question (such as for a referral). And BE HONEST in all your communications, whether by phone or email.

Send the messages either before 9:00 a.m. or after 5:00 p.m., and avoid Mondays and Fridays. (Sundays are okay.)

The goal of every mass email should be to establish and close a prospect on a next step. That next step should be either one of two things—but NOT both: Who is the best point of contact for …?” (to get a referral); Or... When is the best day/time for a quick discussion around…?” (to set up a conversation with the prospect).

“Selling The Dream” is NOT to “sell.” It is, rather, (1) to help the prospect create a vision of a dream solution that will solve their problems; and then (2) to connect your product to their key business issue(s) and their dream solution.

Sales Development Rep must find opportunities which: Have at least a potential of 20+ users (to ensure the sales reps were looking for large enough opportunities); Have no fundamental “red flags” or deal-breakers; The Sales Development Rep clearly generated (no poaching from “inbound” leads or other SDRs).

How to Pass an Opportunity Smoothly Best: Hot-transfer the lead to the salesperson. Okay: Schedule a time on the calendars of your sales rep and the new lead for a discovery call. Last option: Make an email introduction, c.c.’ing both the sales rep and the new lead, with each other’s contact information in the email.

New opportunities are not upgraded to “qualified” until after the Account Executive speaks with and re-qualifies them in their own phone call. Do not let the Sales Development Rep get credit until this happens; this is so critical to quality control!

Below is a typical “flow” for a qualification call: Opening (“Did I catch you at a bad time?”) and Introduction Discuss prospect’s current business situation (authentic curiosity) Probe for prospect’s needs (and confirm understanding of the needs) Position solution to meet those specific needs Handle objections Next steps You don’t need fancy scripts

Commission Structure The commission is paid monthly. It is made up of two parts: 50% depends on a goal for the number of qualified opportunities generated this month. 50% is paid based on deals that close, such as a percentage of revenue. This structure balances short- and long-term goals.It incents Sales Development Reps to generate many opportunities now, while also encouraging them to focus on the size of deals and likelihood of closing.

Example Simplified Training Plan for a New SDR Assumption: The first 2-4 weeks of the new SDR’s job are focused on general company training, product training, services, etc., before they focus on SDR training. Week 3 Every day: 3 Goals (see examples below) Daily training Configure Salesforce.com, explore Salesforce.com Sit with an SDR and salesperson every day Add an account and contacts from your source of data Learn how to de-duplicate accounts (how to thoroughly check new leads to ensure they are not already in the system) Send a mass outbound email to 20-50 contacts Transition the prior SDR’s territory Weeks 4 and 5 Every day: 3 Goals (see examples on the next page) Send 100 outbound emails before Friday Practice logging and responding to emails correctly Work up to five “call conversations” per day by Friday Have a veteran SDR sit with you every day Draft a personal dashboard Discuss a new section of the training materials with the team Sample Daily Goals – Beginner Pick a new online Salesforce.com training module to study Call five old (not cold) leads in the system, to practice discussing their needs in a business conversation “Ideal Customer Profile” discussion with teammate Learn about the “Account Status” stages Add five new accounts and their contacts into Salesforce.com Send a mass email Meet with a mentor Meet someone from another team Listen to a sales call Listen to a prospecting call Draft your “Day in the Life” Sample Daily Goals – Intermediate Configure S...

Top Six Prospecting Mistakes Reps Make 1. Expecting instant results When targeting companies that have multiple people involved in decisions (often a couple hundred employees and up), it can take 2-4 weeks, or longer, just to develop a new qualified opportunity. 2. Writing long emails Long emails can be hard to process – especially when so many people read them on mobile phones. Can someone read and respond easily to your email on a cell phone? Make it easy for them by asking a single simple question. Also in email (or by phone), state simply why you are reaching out – and be honest! You really don’t need to be tricky. The truth is the most persuasive form of marketing. 3. Going wide, not deep Hitting 100 accounts once instead of 10 accounts 10 times each. 4. Giving up too quickly at ideal targets Don’t give up on working to understand if there is a fit or not until you get a “no” from the real decision-maker. Be “pleasantly persistent.” 5. Not giving up quickly enough at non-ideal targets Persistence is valuable, but it’s a double-edged sword. Being persistent with prospects that aren’t a good fit is a waste of time. 6. Depending on activity metrics rather than a proven process “Dials per day” isn’t nearly as useful as tracking “call conversations per day” or “appointments per week”. What’s your step-by-step process and waterfall? Measure results that are proven to lead to revenue instead of throwing lots of activity at a goal.

For a Sales Team I encourage clients to generally set up their dashboards in a three-column format, including: Left: Current month activity (amount of stuff going on). Center: current month results/deals. Right: Long-term results (year-to-date). Example screenshot, blurred for privacy: Example Sales Development Rep Dashboard Every sales rep should set up their own personal dashboard, so they can see the state of their own business at a glance (and make it easier for their manager to coach/help them). Below, I have laid out a three-column dashboard with nine example reports, in a 3x3 matrix. Notice how the reports follow the same three-column format I suggested on the prior page. Left: Current month activity (amount of stuff going on). Center: current month results/deals. Right: Long-term results (year-to-date). Every team is different, and while for outbound sales you should use the above key metrics and reports as a foundation, you will have to customize everything to fit your own needs.

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