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

by Aaron Ross

Step 1. Get Clear On Your Ideal Customer Profile The simple most important thing you can do to make this program effective is to spend time getting clear on who your ideal customers are — both the kinds of accounts and the types of contacts in them. This is where most companies fall short from the start, by targeting the wrong prospects, at the wrong levels, going after too many kinds of companies, or not speaking in‘their language’. Step 2. Build Your List How can you build a database of the above kinds of prospects? Do you already have a list in-house? Can you buy one? Or do you need to build one from scratch…? Most companies approach and sell too low. Do you have decision-makers (or their bosses) as well as lower level people? How targeted is your list? Is it cluttered with non-relevant companies or people? Resist any temptation to throw in lists of random prospects just because you have them—there is an opportunity cost to marketing to poor-fit prospects. Responses from people who don’t fit your customer criteria will just end up wasting your time and cluttering your database. Step 3. Run Outbound Email Campaigns Don't make this mistake: companies are too dep...

voicemails to prospects that fit your Ideal Customer Profile. These emails should look as if they are a single email that came from a salesperson. They should be text-based, not fancy HTML (though you can use HTML templates that look like text). 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 than that per day 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 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 t...

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 education of the client before they would even understand the value

of your service.)

Ideal Contacts You should also apply this exercise to the kinds of buyers and influencers you ...

Their Core Challenges As a final exercise in getting clear on your ideal customer profile, what are the core challenges of the company and of the individuals involved in the buying process? You can learn these easily, just by asking! Whether by phone or by an online survey like SurveyMonkey, ask prospects and clients questions such as: What are your greatest challenges? What keeps you up at night? What are your main frustrations? What are you afraid of? What’s most important to you? What do you spend money on? What do you really, really, REALLY want? Refresh Regularly Finally, you can have more than one kind of "ideal customer" and you also might have "ideal partners." Limit yourself to 1-5 types of profiles. If you think you need more than that, your marketing strategy needs focusing.

What If We Are Selling To A Unique Market? Do the above services not meet your needs? It’s amazing what kinds of lists and data overseas firms can build for you , although you will have to accept that the quality may not be great. Elance. com is an excellent resource to post projects and receive multiple bids from overseas vendors.

Step 3: Run Outbound Email Campaigns The primary tool used by your outbound prospectors to get in front of new prospects is mass emailing. First, use email to generate internal referrals to the right person(s) at the target company. Then follow up on the responses and referrals with phone calls. Ideally the reps are sending these mass emails through either your Sales Force Automation system (like Salesforce.com), or through a marketing automation system that integrates to your Sales Force Automation System. On any given day, the rep should send 50-100 targeted mass emails with a goal of having 5-10 responses per day (assuming about a 10% response rate). “Targeted” mass emails sounds like an oxymoron. Here’s how they’re targeted: filter your list carefully according to the specific kind of account or contact you want to touch. Examples of filters include: Vertical (retail, finance, high tech, etc) Revenue Geography / Territory Employee count Business model (B2B, B2C, agency) Last Contact Activity Date Last Account Activity Date Contact Title (CEO, Director of Marketing, etc.) Virtually anything else you are tracking So even if you have a database of thousands of names, an SDR can segment down their total prospect pool into small groups that can be messaged with highly relevant information. Writing Your Emails

Guidelines For Writing Your Own Emails These are guidelines for writing emails to cold prospects to start a conversation. Once you begin communicating, you can shift towards longer emails 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 blackberry or smartphone. 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.

Sending Your Campaigns Start by sending 150-250 outbound emails per week, over the course of 3-4 days. Again, your goal is to receive an average of 5-10 responses per day, because if you get more than that, they will start dropping through the cracks. One of the biggest mistakes our clients make is sending too many emails per day. Send the messages either before 9am or after 5pm, and avoid Mondays and Fridays. (Sundays are okay.) If you are using emails, expect a 7-9%+ response rate (excluding bounces). This rate includes all responses: positive, negative and neutral. For most newly built or purchased lists, you will get a 20-30% bounce rate, exclude those emails from your response rate calculation. So if you send 150 emails and receive 10 responses and 50 bounces, your response rate is 10% (10 responses / 100 valid emails). Be methodical in how you handle responses! Response handling is critical to make sure no responses fall through the cracks. Log them and keep them organized. I suggest you create some standard email templates you can use for your most common responses.

Don’t ignore bounces—clean bad emails out of your database as they come in. Over time they’ll just clutter and fog up everything you do. Learn to love “out of office” replies—those emails have the names and contact information for more people to target, such as executive assistants who job it is to help route you to the right person in the company!

Mass Email—So You Got A Response First of all LOG EVERY RESPONSE into Salesforce.com (or your Sales Force Automation System), and update the contact as necessary. Once you begin doing high-volume prospecting, sending hundreds of emails per month, it’s very easy to let great responses fall through the cracks. 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). For goal #1, getting a referral, the objective is to confirm the best point of contact for a first conversation and get referred to them. Then, you can email the new contact (to whom you are referred) directly while mentioning (or Cc’ing) the indi...

For goal #2, setting up a call, the objective is to set up a quick time to see if there’s a high level fit between your company and the prospect’s company. This call should be focused entirely on their business—not your business. You should lead the conversation and ask open que...

You are allowed to send “unsolicited” emails to businesses. Here are the three core guidelines: The subject and header must not be misleading. You must have a valid physical address in your email. You must include a way to opt-out from future communications.

the goal of “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 dream solution.

Ask open-ended questions about their business first—how it’s organized, for example—before moving on to ask about challenges.

Here are a series of sample questions you can customize and use in a Discovery Call. Realistically, in a first conversation a prospector might just ask 3-4 of these questions. They are roughly in order, starting with more general business questions and leading to more specific qualification questions: How are your ___ teams/functions organized? How does your ___ process work today? What system(s) do these teams use for sales and lead management? How long has the system been in place? What are your challenges now? (After each answer, keep asking, “What else?”) Have you been looking at alternatives yet? Have you tried and failed with other solutions? Why? Where does _____ fall on your priority list? What is higher?

What would an ideal solution look like to you? How will your decision-making process work? Why did you buy the old system? Who made the decision to purchase it? What is the probability a project will occur this year [in the...

More Tips For A First Call Main objective: get them talking about their business and then listen!! Call low before a C-level conversation: Find out how their business works and current challenges by calling a relevant employee at the company (at Salesforce.com, we’d call individual sales...

talked, and if their pain isn’t obvious, ask straight out if there is any pain: “Where do you have pain today? What’s not working as well is it should?” Keep asking questions until you’ve exhausted the hunt for pain—their challenges. Keep digging until there’s nothing left to uncover. Ask for referrals: Who else should you talk to at other divisions / teams? Scheduling v...

Building Champions If the prospect is interested but isn’t ready, or they need to convince more people on the team, then turn your focus to developing your contact into a Champion, who can do the selling for you at the account. It’s simpler than you think: focus on what will make that person successful (not what will make you successful), and ask them how you can support them. Give them what they need—including time. Check in with them, but don’t bug them. Build trust, be respectful, and be persistent. You’re planting seeds here, and it can take time for the seed to sprout and bloom. Keep “adding water” (giving them love and attention) and practicing patience with them!

After lots of experimentation, these simple guidelines worked the best for our outbound generated opportunities….

The Basics Apart from the qualification criteria, in order to be compensated for a new opportunity, the 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).

An all too common mistake is letting the pressure of “Just get leads in!” stop reps from disqualifying small deals that are not profitable enough. There is an opportunity cost to small deals—they waste time and resources that could be spent looking for or working on larger ones.

When An SDR Should Pass An Opportunity To An AE Fundamentally, when the Sales Development Rep feels it is worth the Account Executive’s time, that the Account Executive would want to engage this deal, they pass the opportunity over. There were three guidelines for this:

Does the company fit our ideal client profile? Are we speaking with someone with influence or power? Is there a clear interest in a next step, usually in the form of a scopi...

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, Cc’ing both the sales rep and the new lead, with each other's contact information in the email.

The SDR Gets Credit After The Account Executive Re-qualifies

Use An Audit Process It requires some extra time, but it is totally worth having a manager or the company owner review every single outbound opportunity to ensure high quality and integrity of the results. As soon as an opportunity is upgraded, check it to ensure all of the following: Was this truly an incremental outbound opportunity? Not an inbound lead from your website? Was it re-qualified by the Account Executive by phone? (Sometimes an Account Executive would “do a favor” for their Sales Development Rep and upgrade opportunities before they re-qualified—a big no-no). Did the Sales Development Rep and Account Executive enter notes into your sales automation system appropriately? If it doesn’t exist in your systems, it doesn’t exist, and reps can’t be compensated for

AAA Call Planning Even if a salesperson takes just five minutes, they can quickly generate a list of objectives for their call: What Answers do you want to learn in the call? What Attitudes do you wish the prospect to feel? What Actions should occur after the call?

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

Example 1: “Hi John, this is Aaron Ross from Salesforce.com. My number is 555-555-5555. John, I sent you an email a couple of days ago and hadn’t heard back, and I was hoping you could give me a quick courtesy response. I’ll resend it here in a minute. Again, Aaron Ross, 555-555-5555. Thank you and have a great day.” Example 2: “Hi John, this is Aaron Ross from Salesforce.com. My number is 555-555-5555. John, I’m calling to follow up on the email I sent you, I’d love to hear either way if you can please help me out or not. Again, Aaron Ross, 555-555-5555. Thank you and have a great day.” Example 3: (the mysterious version): “Hi John, this is Aaron Ross following up. My number is 555-555-5555. I’m free after 3pm today. Again, Aaron Ross, from Salesforce.com, 555-555-5555. Thanks and have a great day.”

Voicemail can be effective in combination with email. When people do call you back directly, they’ll often say things like, “I wasn’t going to call you back at first, but you were so persistent...” or, “Thanks for the reminder, I’ve been meaning to call you back.…” Voicemail can be effective in combination with email.

Voicemail also lets them hear your voice and helps establish that you’re a real human, which is why it’s important not to get too mechanical with scripts and lose the humanity in your voice.

Move Prospects Through “Account Status” Assem...

Just as you use stages in your sales process to track movement and progress through it, you need similar stages in your prospecting process.

called “Account Status.” These stages are separate and complementary to your sales process stages, because they precede the creation of a new sales opportunity. Below are the assembly line stages you should use to track how you're moving prospects through your prospecting process (customize as you see fit):

is essential for reps (especially Sales Development Reps who are prospecting for new business) to be able to organize their accounts in this manner so that reps can focus on the right accounts with the right messages at the right time, and minimize wasted efforts.

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.

“Nurture” Bin: 3. Active Opportunity When a rep generates a new sales opportunity and that opportunity is still alive, use this status to remove that account from the assembly line. For Sales Development Reps, it makes it easy to check on the accounts and opportunities they've passed to their sales rep partners, to make sure no batons got dropped (which happens more than you'd like).

“Nurture” Bin: 4. Check Back Quarterly I like status names that speak for themselves :) There's no current opportunity ...

“Nurture” Bin: 5. Dead Opportunity Accounts with a dead sales opportunity are special, and deserve their own category, because they are highly l...

“Avoid” Bin: 6. Current Client Small companies may not “get” this, but trust me: As your customer base gets bigger, and the data in your SFA/CRM system gets messier, it's almost impossible to keep your Sales Development Reps from calling on current customers. You want to make sure the team prospecting int...

“Avoid” Bin: 7. Bad Fit No business fit, or perhaps they're out of business. It's a waste of time ...

“Avoid” Bin: 8. Duplicate Account Sometimes you don't want to delete an account or lead. By marking it duplicate, you can ma...

SDR Compe...