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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Aaron Ross
Read between
February 2 - February 6, 2016
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.)
Are there a common language, and common definitions, for “prospects,” “leads” and “opportunities”? One of the biggest problems is usually mis-communication and misunderstanding of terms and metrics between executives and directors.
Although Salesforce.com’s marketing and PR machines were generating lots of leads, the leads were mostly from small businesses, not enterprises.
Self-Managing Systems: Everything was a system. I didn’t want myself or any single person to be a bottleneck to the success of the team. What if I was hit by a bus? The team had to be self-managing so that it could grow and succeed.
Your sales results are only scalable to the extent the CEO and executives are designed out of the process. Too many companies are dependent on the CEO or VP Sales for selling. How can you make the sales team and results independent of your direct help, except for coaching them?
Sales cycle length: I like to measure the time from (a) when the opportunity was created or qualified to (b) when it closed.
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).
Send the messages either before 9:00 a.m. or after 5:00 p.m., and avoid Mondays and Fridays. (Sundays are okay.)
Example 'Old Opportunities' Campaign A great place both to train new salespeople and generate opportunities is to reach back into old opportunities that have died, and have had no activity for at least six months.
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.
How does your ______ process work today?
What are your challenges now? (After each answer, keep asking, “What else?”)
Have you tried and failed with other solutions? Why?
What would an ideal solution look like to you?
How will your decision-making process work?
“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.
“Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“Would it be a waste of time to discuss _________ to see if we could help?”
Ask one (and only one) question per email… Keep it simple.
Not caring about them Do you really want to help them improve their business, or just sell them stuff? Great salespeople focus on making their prospects successful. How can you help your prospects, even if there’s no direct connection to a sale yet? Are their resources, news, advice, referrals or other things of value you can share with them? When you call, do you authentically care about how their business is going, or are you just focused on finding out if they’re ready to buy yet? Focusing on their success builds trust, which leads to more sales.
“How have you evaluated similar products or services?” “What is the decision-making process?” “Who is involved in making the decision?” “How will the decision be made?”
If the trial is successful, then what? Answer that question before you begin the trial.
If you’re not winning at least 50% of the proposals you’re giving out, you’re too easy.
Studies have shown that less-educated people tend to click on pay-per-click ads, while more-educated people click on organic search results.
If you’re selling to more sophisticated buyers, you’ll be better served with focusing on SEO and blogging as your primary activities, and using PPC in experimental ways as you figure out the best online marketing mix.
Affiliate Marketing / Joint Ventures If you’re at a phase of maturity in your marketing where you know who your ideal prospects are, you can identify publications (i.e. forums, blogs, trade magazines, email lists, vertical search engines) that have relevant audiences of those types of prospects. The best partners are bloggers or companies with large and trusting email audiences, and whose interests and values align with yours. Better than buying lists from them is placing a compelling offer on a targeted site or in their email newsletter. Even more ideal: you can partner with them on a
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Fatal Mistake 2: Thinking Account Executives Should Prospect (Making Account Executives Jacks-Of-All-Trades) Your need your Account Executives (quota-carrying salespeople) to spend most of their time fulfilling deals or calling on customers, and a minimum of time prospecting for brand new accounts. Prospecting doesn’t bring in revenue – closing
Account Executives should prospect for new clients less than 20% of the time and only to a Top 10 Strategic Accounts list, with partners, or to current customers. The bulk of prospecting into new accounts should be owned by a separate, dedicated prospecting role. Even for businesses such as consulting that depend highly on relationships, much of the early work of new account research, development, and qualification can be handled by cost-effective, focused Sales Development Reps.
If You Only Track Five Metrics… Track as many of these as you can in your Sales Force Automation system’s dashboards: New leads created per month (also, from what source). Conversion rate of leads to opportunities. Number of, and pipeline dollar value of, qualified opportunities created per month. This is the most important leading indicator of revenue! Conversion rates of opportunities to closed deals. Booked revenues in three categories: New Business, Add-On Business, Renewal Business.
New leads created per month. Number of qualified sales opportunities created per month. And the total dollar amount of new qualified pipeline generated this month (the best indicator of future revenue). Percentage conversion rate of leads to qualified opportunities. Total bookings or revenue (broken out by “New Business,” “Add- On Business,” or “Renewal Business.”) Win rates. What percentage of new pipeline resulted in won deals?
When your reps, as a group, are spending more than 20% of their time on a secondary function, break out that function into a new role.
if someone whose primary role is to generate outbound leads begins spending more than 20% of their time qualifying inbound leads, it’s time to look at specializing and creating a separate role just for responding to inbound leads.
Combine one part veteran with three parts young, smart and adaptable... and mix in a system that keeps challenging people to learn new things, to stretch, step by step. The best salespeople are the ones who have grown up in your company, and know your products, your customers and your company, inside out.
The Very Best Salespeople... Hire and promote carefully! The best salespeople are more like consultants or business people who can sell. In addition, they are the ones who: Listen much more than they talk. Are problem-solvers. Understand their customers’ industry/business/needs (key to both building trust with customers as well as understanding how to help solve their problems). Believe in their product and company. Demonstrate unquestionable integrity. Can get things done in their own company (via internal networks). Are you hiring these kinds of people? Have you written out an “Ideal
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1 — Choose People Carefully It often makes sense to hire for talent and adaptability rather than for experience. Over time, the best employees are ones who can adapt to changing circumstances and roles. A fast-learning, hungry hire can make up for a reasonable lack of experience in 6-12 months, and then surpass more- experienced peers.
