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

by Aaron Ross

think of “Bins” where you put accounts: Bin: 1. Cold This should be pretty self-evident, but it's accounts where you have no activity, and no real insight into whether they're a fit or not. Often this bucket consists of data you've imported from someplace like Jigsaw and unresponsive accounts. Bin: 2. Working This bucket includes all the prospects that a rep is actively touching and researching. A rep has some kind of conversation going on at this account, either by email or phone. They may not be sure if the company is a good prospect yet, if there's interest, or even who the right influencers are. The goal of a rep with an account in the "Working" status is NOT to generate a sales opportunity by any means necessary. The primary goal is to determine the “truth” of whether there is, or is not, an opportunity at this account in the next several weeks or months. If there isn't, it's better to move on than to generate a poor opportunity that will distract sales reps from “real” ones.