Predictable Revenue

Three Keys To Predictable Revenue Building a Sales Machine that creates ongoing, predictable revenue takes: (Location 205)

Three Keys To Predictable Revenue Building a Sales Machine that creates ongoing, predictable revenue takes: 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. (Location 205)

I've found time and again that the biggest impact on predictable revenue, the lowest hanging fruit, is made by creating an outbound sales development team that focuses 100% on prospecting (that means no closing deals and no working inbound leads!) You (Location 210)

Here's the scenario I personally see playing out for too many companies in the next 12 months as they plan next year’s operational goals and plan: (Location 260)

Here's why: (Location 270)

What works to generate flows of new leads: (Location 289)

Instead, the team had a single mission: to generate (but not by cold calling; see Chapter 2) new qualified sales opportunities from cold companies (ones at which we had no activity or interest) and passing these qualified opportunities to quota-carrying salespeople to close. (Location 351)

The team only contacted cold new business accounts at which we didn’t have a relationship or current interest, and past accounts which had gone cold for at least six months. (Location 353)

For example, I knew that if we hired someone costing $100,000 per year (including all their overhead), that person would generate per year as much as $3,000,000 in total contracts. (Location 361)

But when we began building the outbound sales team and targeting the “Fortune 5000” in 2003, very few large companies outside of California had heard of Salesforce.com. (Location 384)

I had an interesting design challenge: to create an outbound sales process that would succeed without any money or marketing support and at a company that was pretty much unknown in the Fortune 2000 market we were growing into at the time. (Location 386)

What We Did Have: (Location 394)

learned this through hard work—cold calling, cold emailing, plugging away. I realized I spent most of my time hunting for the right person—not trying to sell or qualify them. (Location 422)

Out of 200 emails I sent, the next morning when I checked email, I had 10 responses sitting in my inbox! Again, these were from C-level and VP-level executives at large companies—just the people with whom I wanted to talk. (Location 432)

Response rate for the “short and sweet” email: 10%! (10 responses out of the 100 short and sweet emails.) (Location 434)

Mass emailing C-level Fortune 5000 executives, with specific kinds of emails, can generate 9%+ response rates. (Location 436)

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. (Location 440)

Three key principles to developing a team successfully include: (Location 473)

For example, use simple emails to generate referrals to the right people, (Location 476)

A focus on results, not activities! That means that dials and calls per day, or even appointments set, are much less interesting or even important. Rather, track metrics such as qualification calls per dayor week, and qualified opportunities per month. (Location 477)

Making the field salespeople do cold calls means having your highest-cost (per hour) sales resource perform the lowest-value (per hour) activity. (Location 492)

Spend serious time on identifying and clarifying your Ideal Customer Profile. Define what companies are the most similar to your 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. (Location 526)

Within four months they increased the pipeline generated per Sales Development person by 300% (Location 541)

Professional services companies tend to have developed their business based more on relationships and brand than on specific benefits. Services companies have to spend extra time honing in on their Ideal Customer Profiles and their challenges, to make this worthwhile. (Location 543)

Where And When Account Executives Should Prospect (Location 553)

Under Bob’s leadership and commitment to the change, his sales teams completely embraced this “new” way of prospecting, including: (Location 579)

Each week, the first topic discussed on the company-wide sales agenda was the new outbound sales process, reviewing metrics such as: (Location 585)

To begin implementing the Cold Calling 2.0 system, you should have: (Location 604)

start by letting your Account Executives (the sales reps closing business) focus on what they do best: work active sales cycles and close. Let a different role, Sales Development Reps, focus on generating new qualified opportunities for your Account Executives. (Location 618)

Implement a Sales Development function to prospect for new clients to ensure a predictable, sustainable supply of qualified leads for the field and/ or telesales teams, and a Market Response function to qualify the leads that come into your website, through the telephone or other “inbound” channels. (Location 622)

Sales Development Reps prospect into cold or inactive companies who aren’t engaging with you already, to source new, incremental sales opportunities and pass them to quota-carrying salespeople. (Location 625)

Organize Sales Development Reps by territories that match the field and telesales reps, because it’s vital for them to build relationships with their sales teammates. (Location 627)

A rule of thumb is that for every 400 leads per month that require human attention, a company needs one Market Response Representative. (Location 636)

The roles are very different (inbound reps receive leads to work to qualify, while outbound reps initiate calls and emails), (Location 641)

Here is the source your PREDICTABLE REVENUE comes from: predictable lead generation. (Location 662)

Here is an overview of the Cold Calling 2.0 process, for a Sales Development Rep that is doing it full-time and passing opportunities to a quotacarrying salesperson. (Location 692)

Simple email templates can get you an 8-12%-plus response rate even from high-level prospects. (Location 705)

Send outbound mass emails or mass 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). (Location 706)

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. (Location 708)

Don't treat your front-line sales reps as appointment-setting machines... (Location 713)

Answer: Get clear on your Ideal Customer Profile, including how to describe them, and what their core challenges are. (Location 723)

You should also apply this exercise to the kinds of buyers and influencers you work with, who buy from you. (Location 743)

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: (Location 748)

Different sources of leads and contacts are appropriate for different businesses. Targeting Fortune 5000? Try out OneSource. (Location 758)

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. (Location 787)

One of the biggest mistakes our clients make is sending too many emails per day. (Location 828)

Send the messages either before 9am or after 5pm, and avoid Mondays and Fridays. (Sundays are okay.) (Location 829)

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. (Location 835)

Learn to love “out of office” replies—those (Location 836)

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: (Location 840)

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 individual who referred you. This shows the new contact that you aren’t making a cold call and you’ve already been engaged with someone from his or her team. (Location 843)

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. (Location 846)

If someone responds with a negative, “Not interested”, find out why. (Location 850)

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. (Location 859)

So one of your prospectors sets up time to have a full, first conversation with a prospect. (Location 871)

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. (Location 872)

Outbound prospectors shouldn’t just throw over lots of crummy opportunities that go nowhere—it is better for them to pass fewer, better opportunities to your Account Executives. (Location 878)

Once a prospector connects by phone with a prospect for a call to find out if there is a mutual fit, the biggest challenge is staying focused on the prospect’s business and not selling yours. (Location 880)

Here are a series of sample questions you can customize and use in a Discovery Call. (Location 882)

More Tips For A First Call (Location 895)

Scheduling via email is a huge time waster. Always work to schedule your next step while you’re on the phone. (Location 902)

A question I get from every client is, “How do you define a qualified opportunity?”, (Location 911)

Apart from the qualification criteria, in order to be compensated for a new opportunity, the Sales Development Rep must find opportunities which: (Location 918)

You must have clear guidelines and rules for reps to follow to help them ensure they are generating quality leads that are worth the company’s time. (Location 922)

When An SDR Should Pass An Opportunity To An AE (Location 925)

How To Pass An Opportunity Smoothly (Location 932)

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, it is so critical to quality control! (Location 938)

As soon as an opportunity is upgraded, check it to ensure all of the following: (Location 945)

We use two simple but much more effective tools to plan and execute calls: AAA Call Planning and Call Flows. (Location 958)

Below is a typical "flow" for a qualification call: (Location 969)

Leave voicemails with the same demeanor you would use with a friend or family member. (Location 979)

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): (Location 1012)

How To Use These Stages Create a new data field in your sales system on the Accounts/Organizations page or tab called “Account Status,” which is a pick list. (Location 1018)

SDR Compensation (Location 1039)

Commission Structure The commission is paid monthly. It is made up of two parts: (Location 1045)

Example Simplified Training Plan For A New SDR (Location 1054)

Here is an example of an “ideal day” in the life of a Sales Development Rep. You (Location 1087)

The Top Six Prospecting Mistakes Reps Make (Location 1100)

My Favorite Prospecting Questions (Location 1113)

Using an open-ended question encourages them to talk about it and get warmed up, to start thinking of challenges. (Location 1123)

7 Quick Prospecting Tricks (Location 1131)

Example Dashboards In Salesforce.com (Location 1170)

Every sales rep should set up their own personal dashboard, so they can see the state of their own business at a glance (and it makes it easier for their manager to coach/help them). (Location 1176)

Two Steps To Help Your Team Sell To Success (Location 1217)

9 Ways You Lengthen Your Sales Cycles (Location 1227)

Now, the “decision making process” is more important than “the decision maker.” (Location 1281)

9 Steps To Create Free Trials That Maximize Conversion Rates (Location 1299)

A 3-Hour-and-15-Minute Sales Process (Location 1328)

In this first call, start setting expectations right away. Lay out your process for the prospect in the best way to mutually figure out the fit, and position it in a way that benefits them. (Location 1341)

Here is a sample of how asking “Why?” or, “Why is that important?” or, “So what?” can lead you to the true business problem: (Location 1364)

If you’re not winning at least 50% of the proposals you’re giving out, you’re too easy. (Location 1381)

My Favorite Sales Call Question Of All Time (Location 1388)

After hearing time and time again about these frustrations, I came up with simple distinctions between the three fundamentally different kinds of leads: “Seeds,” “Nets” and “Spears.” (Location 1411)

Defining Prospects, Leads, Opportunities, Clients and Champions (Location 1424)

Present them with a couple of logical next steps and let them decide how and when to move forward (of course, with some helpful reminders now and then if they’ve stalled). (Location 1444)

If you see prospects getting stuck somewhere in your “layers,” consider redesigning your next-step offers. (Location 1456)

What Inbound Marketing Methods Work? Each of the activities is ranked in order of its ability to generate leads more easily: (Location 1466)

Pick three areas first in which to create momentum, before trying to do them all. (Location 1477)

On the web, you can accelerate the pace of referrals by “entering the conversation,” setting the precedent for receiving referrals by giving referrals (the law of reciprocity: (Location 1482)

HubSpot’s WebsiteGrader.com is a free SEO and website analysis tool that lets anyone analyze the effectiveness of their site and online marketing. (Location 1487)

Even if you’re a company that doesn’t sell software, what kind of free trial can you offer? A free consultation? Free online training videos? Samples of your work? Sample product? (Location 1491)

At a minimum, all you need your email system to do is share your blog posts via email and to invite people to events or webinars you’re holding. (Location 1509)

80% of webinars are not for selling but for teaching: TEACH people something useful in the webinar. How can you help them do their jobs better? (Location 1515)

Studies conducted have shown that less-educated people tend to click on pay-per-click ads, while more-educated people click on organic search results. (Location 1524)

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 (disclosed) pay-for-performance basis, in which they help promote your company in exchange for a pay-per-lead or percentage-of-revenue basis. (Location 1530)

But I’ve found that the ROI from social media isn’t cumulative or compounding when used in isolation - unless you’re already famous. I do think it’s a very important part of an inbound marketing mix as it adds a human face to your company. However, it does not immediately drive a lot of direct traffic that converts into leads. (Location 1536)

How Marketo Efficiently Nurtures, Scores And Delivers Tons Of Qualified Leads To Sales (Location 1558)

Awareness, Inquiry, Prospect, Lead, Opportunity and, ultimately, Customer. (Location 1561)

Marketo believes that their “Modern B2B Marketing” blog (http://blog.marketo.com) is the main reason the market’s awareness of them grew so quickly and greatly sped up how fast they landed their first 500 customers. (Location 1569)

Marketo’s blog is popular and successful because they provide a platform to share all kinds of modern marketing best practices and thought leadership. They invite all kinds of other thought leaders to share on their blog (I’ve been a guest writer). They’ve become a trusted authority. Creating a company blog is a great way to establish brand presence, drive SEO rankings and give prospects and partners an easy way to get to know and trust your company. It is a place to prove your company as a thought leader in your vertical or industry. (Location 1572)

Only certain premium content and research papers require a prospect to fill out a registration form. People hesitate to register even for free content when they first find you, before they get to know you even a little bit. (Location 1580)

Marketo has a neat capability of “progressive profiling”: instead of asking someone to fill out a big long form (reducing conversion rates), Marketo can ask for information bit by bit as someone registers for different pieces of content. (Location 1582)

The first time a prospect registers, they might be asked to share only their name and email address. The next time the prospect downloads a new piece of content, the forms are pre-filled and can ask for additional information such as title and company. (Location 1584)

They tell them apart by the “lead score,” which rates how hot or not someone is, on a scale of 1 to 100. (Location 1590)

Potential buyers with fewer than 65 points are called “prospects”; potential buyers with more than 65 points are called “leads” (Location 1590)

How Marketo Uses Lead Scoring To Prioritize Leads (Location 1592)

Here’s some example data on Marketo’s conversion rates: (Location 1616)

Keeping In Touch With Automated Lead Nurturing Campaigns (Location 1617)

After the decision is made that a visitor is a viable prospect, Marketo begins their 21-day follow up campaign: (Location 1625)

If the prospect does not engage actively, they then receive “Stay In Touch Campaigns.” (Location 1628)

Marketo’s Five Tips for Effective Lead Nurturing: (Location 1633)

The Marketo Lead Lifecycle (Location 1638)

This process has multiple tracks and three outcomes. The tracks include: (Location 1642)

Here are Marketo’s five primary criteria: (Location 1649)

Conferences and tradeshows have a bad (ok, terrible) reputation for generating worthwhile leads (Location 1669)

If You Only Track Five Metrics… Track as many of these as you can in your sales force automation system’s dashboards: (Location 1757)

Nine Principles Of Building A Sales Machine (Location 1808)

Five of the most important metrics in lead generation and sales development: (Location 1828)

Separate The Four Core Sales Functions (Location 1840)

The Four Core Sales Functions (Or “Themes”) (Location 1854)

Consulting Services (Location 2460)