Jennifer Devins, Author at Factor 8 | Inside Sales Training

About Jennifer Devins

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6 Tips to Improve Marketing-Sales Alignment in Your Organization

16 Feb 2023

Jennifer Devins Lead Qualification + Follow-Up, Team Engagement + Culture, Sales Team Challenges, Sales Rep Tips

6 Tips to Improve Marketing-Sales Alignment in Your Organization

According to data from LinkedIn, 90 percent of sales and marketing professionals believe their strategy, processes, content, and culture are not aligned.

From our experience, that number isn’t hard to believe at all.

And it’s really frustrating to see, because organizations that don’t align marketing and sales miss out on so much potential:

27% faster profit growth
36% higher customer retention
Increased likelihood to meet (56%) and exceed (19%) revenue goals

So how do you get your marketing & sales teams in sync? Here are some tactics you can start implementing today to improve marketing-sales alignment.

What is marketing-sales alignment?

The best way to think about marketing-sales alignment is this:

Ultimately, Marketing and Sales aren’t two separate teams. They’re one team: the Revenue team.

At the end of the day, Marketing and Sales have the same goal. They simply use different tools and tactics to get there.

Marketing-sales alignment is just an intentional, strategic agreement to work with – not against – each other. There are a number of ways this can take shape, depending on the organization:

Share common goals, priorities, & KPIs
Use marketing tactics (e.g. buyer personas, automation) to improve sales effectiveness
Use sales tactics (e.g. one-to-one connections, qualifying questions, pipeline automation) to improve marketing effectiveness
Create a common lead-to-opportunity pipeline where qualification and handoff happens smoothly
Engage in joint training sessions to help everyone improve and expand their skill sets

Because every organization is different, how to prioritize and apply these tactics will depend on your specific needs and your team structure. However, no matter which approach you take, the key is to focus on building cohesion and unity among your revenue generators.

Why does marketing-sales alignment matter?

We all know that Marketing and Sales don’t always get along. They have their territories and AORs and may not like it when the other steps on their toes.

However, this tension is detrimental to an organization’s ability to grow. Here are some stats to prove it:

60 to 70% of B2B content is never used because the subject topics are irrelevant to the buyer audience (Content Marketing Institute)
79% of marketing leads never convert due to a failure to nurture consumer connections (HubSpot)
55% greater increase in customer satisfaction rates for companies that align sales and marketing objectives (The Aberdeen Group)
Companies have generated up to 208% more revenue after aligning sales and marketing (Wheelhouse Advisors)
Marketing-sales alignment leads to 36% higher customer retention rates and 38% more sales conversions (MarketingProfs)

Why does marketing-sales alignment lead to these results? Some of the key benefits of marketing-sales alignment include the following:

Big vs. small picture

Generally, marketers look at large-scale audiences, and salespeople focus on individual prospects. Both are important for effective revenue generation. If you lose sight of the individual prospect, you’re going to start to seem out of touch. But if you focus only on a handful of people, you won’t be able to scale.

Data vs. anecdote

What do your customers want? This is a key question that every organization wants to answer, and marketers and salespeople generally use different approaches to arrive at one. Marketers rely on data, which reveals big-picture trends. Salespeople rely on individual anecdotes, which can reveal key information that may get lost in the data.

Focus your efforts

When you have Marketing and Sales working in tandem, each of them can focus their efforts on the same industries, verticals, and segments. For example, Marketing can create content that they deploy through paid ads, social media, and email. Sales can then see who engages with that content and follow up with personalized messages.

If they convert, Marketing gets attributed revenue. Sales gets warm leads. It’s a win-win for everyone!

Improve the customer experience

Marketing-sales alignment also results in a seamless experience for prospects and customers as they move from one stage of the buyer’s journey to another. You don’t want them to hear one message from marketing materials and another from a salesperson—that is jarring and reduces their trust in your organization.

How to measure marketing-sales alignment (or lack thereof)

So how do you know whether your marketing and sales practices are aligned (or mis-aligned)? What are some of the metrics you should be tracking?

Here are a few I’d recommend:

Follow up rate for marketing leads. If your reps don’t follow up on hot leads, it either means they’re not taking Marketing’s efforts seriously, or Marketing is doing a poor job attracting potential buyers.
Use of marketing content in sales. If your marketing team is creating content that speaks to customers’ pain points and underlying needs, then salespeople naturally will want to use it. If not, then either the content is bad, or salespeople need to be educated on its value.

Marketing lead-to-opportunity conversion rate. If salespeople are following up on marketing leads but nothing’s happening with them, usually that means that Marketing doesn’t understand a) what constitutes a quality lead, or b) hasn’t aligned their messaging with Sales.
Average number of touches to convert marketing leads into customers. If marketing leads take a lot of effort to convert, odds are Marketing doesn’t fully understand the ideal buyer profile.

Another thing to keep in mind: if you’re having vastly disproportionate success or failure in one team versus the other, then that’s a big misalignment red flag. If one team is dropping the ball, that’s real opportunity you’re missing out on.

How to improve marketing-sales alignment in your organization

Now let’s get into the nitty-gritty: how do you improve marketing-sales alignment within your own organization? Here are six steps that will get you on the right track.

1. Get buy-in at all levels

Before everyone gets aligned, you need to get buy-in—from C-suite, to marketing and sales leadership, to the salespeople on the ground.

The best way to do this is to communicate the value: how will marketing-sales alignment help them be more successful? You can reference info shared above to help you make that case.

2. Maintain clear, open communication

Alignment doesn’t happen by accident. You need to clearly and proactively maintain open lines of communication so everyone stays on the same page:

What does the marketing team need from the sales team?
What does the sales team need from the marketing team?
From start to finish, what does the standard sales cycle look like?
What does our ideal customer profile look like for each product?
What does a bad lead look like?
Which content and campaigns tend to attract the most high-quality leads?
What can each team do better?

This approach also allows you to quickly identify gaps and get ahead of any problems.

3. Share and translate respective goals

One of the reasons marketing and sales teams so often misalign is because they have separate goals and success metrics. The best way to combat this is to create shared goals.

For instance, hold Marketing accountable for the revenue they drive (not just the value of the opportunities). They’ll quickly take an interest in sales enablement.

For Sales, hold them accountable for what they do with Marketing leads. Even if they’re bad leads, they should follow up with them and then communicate the issues so that they can be fixed.

4. Establish service-level agreements (SLAs)

Now for this next tip, keep in mind that different organizations have different levels of formality. Whether a formal, contract-style service-level agreement (SLA) is right for you depends a lot on your culture, team size, and the current state of relations between your marketing and sales teams.

However, one thing is the same for all organizations: set clear expectations for both teams.

An SLA should define the common goals for Marketing and Sales and include key deliverables:

Marketing goals can include leads generated, qualified leads generated, opportunities created, and revenue produced.
Sales goals can include follow-up time, frequency, and the percentage of leads that the sales team is expected to follow up with

SLAs can help establish mutual accountability and start to build trust with everyone.

5. Coordinate content marketing with sales

This is one that’s often overlooked but very important. Marketers often generate content without asking the key question: will this provide value to our target buyers? Or, is this something a buyer is even interested in?

That’s where salespeople can help. After all, they’re on the front lines with customers every day. Often, they can provide a gut-check on content, provide potential topics, and, most importantly, share real-life questions prospects ask during the buying process—which can lead to some great topic ideas.

Additionally, salespeople with active presences on social media can help promote key content and support your marketing efforts.

6. Invest in technology that supports alignment

Finally, it’s important to have the tools and technology in place to enable marketing-sales alignment. This is even more critical in a post-COVID, remote environment.

Some examples of these technologies include:

Integrated marketing & sales CRMs
Marketing automation tools
Sales automation tools
Conversation intelligence
Asset management platforms

The more technology you have to align your team and the more ingrained that technology is in their workflows, the more aligned everyone will become.

Final thoughts: moving forward in unison

At the end of the day, Marketing and Sales aren’t separate teams. They’re one team: the revenue team. Get them aligned so you can manage and move forward together!

WANT TO KEEP YOUR REVENUE TEAM IN THE KNOW?

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9 Feb 2023

Jennifer Devins Sales Rep Tips, Prospecting, Sales Pitch (SWIIFT), Emails + Sequences

How to Write Better Sales Emails: 12 Actionable Tips

Have you ever written a bland sales email that made you think: If I was the prospect, I’d delete this in a heartbeat?

Don’t lie. Because we’ve all done that.

Let’s face it: writing a sales email is HARD. In less than 100 words, you’ve got to do multiple things:

Hook: Get the reader’s attention
Add Value: Communicate your value prop clearly and concisely
Rapport: Build trust with the prospect
Drive to the Next Step: Convince the reader to follow your CTA

And worse: if you come across as trying too hard or being too sales-y, then you’ll end up in the trash.

Even if your organization has a solid sales process and your reps are great on the phone, sending an email to support your sales calls is an essential part of prospecting. So let’s walk through some tips to write better sales emails—and some templates that can get you started.

READ: Sales Outreach: How to Incorporate Emails and Phone Calls Into Your Sequences

What is the point of sales emails?

Before we dive into some stats, tactics, and strategies, let’s get one thing straight: sales outreach is simply a means to an end.

The end: getting the prospect to either hop on a call, or tell you they’re not interested.

If you aren’t achieving one of those two things, then you’re likely experiencing one of the following problems:

You’re not targeting the right prospects
You’re not capturing the prospect’s attention (either in the subject line or email opening)
The prospect doesn’t trust you
You’re not making your value prop clear
There are no clear next steps for them to take

Here’s the thing: 72% of business professionals prefer email communication for back-and-forth interactions. So rather than write off email as a dead art form, let’s see about making those emails better and more effective.

Who should write sales emails: sales or marketing?

And this is where we get into an age-old debate: who should write sales emails? Sales or Marketing?

A lot of organizations prefer the marketing team to take care of this. But the main reason for this is that a lot of salespeople are bad at writing emails. Either because they aren’t gifted writers, or because they get so focused on a singular goal (e.g. pitching) that they come off as too aggressive or tunnel-visioned.

But although marketers typically have more experience writing emails, that doesn’t mean they can necessarily write one-to-one communications. Here are some of the reasons:

Marketers struggle to write in the salesperson’s voice
Marketing emails tend to lack one-to-one personalization and connection
Marketers aren’t researching the individual prospects, so they don’t know how to tailor their message to the audience

So while salespeople should write their own emails, it’s a good idea to seek out advice from Marketing on how to do it well. Plus, this is a great way to generate more marketing-sales alignment.

Here are some ways your marketing team can help salespeople write better email outreach.

Buyer Personas & Prospect Psychology

A key part of any marketing strategy is creating buyer personas to better understand your target customer. These resources can help salespeople better understand how prospects think and tailor their message accordingly.

Data & Insights From Marketing Campaigns

Marketing campaigns create data. Sometimes this data shows that a campaign has worked well. Sometimes it shows that it’s flopped. Either way, this can be helpful in understanding which creative, copy, and other elements have been effective at drawing in your target buyer.

Key Messaging & Value Prop Statements

Remember how I said earlier that a sales email should clearly state your value prop?

Guess who’s spent months, perhaps years, researching and refining the best way to communicate that value? That’s right: the marketing team.

If something in your email isn’t hitting the right pain points, your marketing team can help you figure it out. Plus, if you’re wondering “what do I even say?” in your emails, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

Automation Expertise

Like it or not, your marketing team has (or should have) a ton of experience marketing key communications and messages. They know the pitfalls of batch sending a thousand emails a day (don’t do this) and how to avoid getting your email account suspended.

Don’t hesitate to rely on them for key insights and to help get started, especially if automation tools are new to you or your team.

Avoiding Tunnel Vision

Here’s the thing: salespeople can be aggressive. All we care about is selling product and getting people on calls, which is great.

But that often means that we have tunnel vision: we go into sales emails just focused on talking up the product and pushing people to get on a call. For prospects who’ve just heard about the company for the first time, this can be a bit concerning.

Having the marketing team (or anyone, really) look over the email can help you avoid some common pitfalls:

Are you talking about the value, or features and functionality?
Are you making your company the center of the email, or the prospect?
Are you talking about what the prospect needs/wants, or what you want them to need/want?

Remember to keep your messaging SWIIFT. New to SWIIFT? Check it out here.

Getting an outside perspective can help you break out of the tunnel vision and craft a message that’s more likely to convert.

12 Actionable Tips to Craft Better Sales Emails

So although Marketing can help you improve your sales emails, you still have to sit down and write the darn things yourself. Here are 12 actionable tips that you can implement fairly easily, and will take your emails to the next level.

1. Target the Right Leads

This is the most important, but most people skip over it. Before you sit down to write an email, know exactly who you’re targeting, and make sure they’re actually a good fit. Otherwise, your stellar emails will fall on deaf ears.

2. Don’t Just “Set It and Forget It”

Automation enables salespeople to do outreach at scale. However, that doesn’t mean you should “set it and forget it.” Make sure you’re constantly reviewing your data, and making adjustments based on prospect responses (or lack thereof).

3. Keep Your Sales Emails Short and Sweet

Great sales emails are shorter than you probably think. Stick to 100 words or less (125 max). That seems daunting, but people aren’t going to read much more than that. So you may as well pack all your key info into that space!

4. Personalize Your Emails

Don’t just copy and paste and change the first name. Research the buyer and try to understand their situation and how you can help them do their job better. There’s no turn-off like a lazy salesperson!

5. Make Your Value Prop Clear

Always picture your prospect asking the question: why shouldn’t I delete this email? Because, let’s face it, that’s the default setting. Make the value you offer them crystal clear. Better yet, write in a way that makes it irresistible.

WATCH: Fast And Easy Ways To Speak Value With Your Prospects

6. Reference Your Competitors

This may seem counterintuitive, but remember that buyers today are more informed than ever. They know who your competitors are. So you may as well own the conversation and clearly state why you’re better than them.

7. Write a Catchy—but Not Gimmicky—-Subject Line

Your subject line is make or break. Including things like questions, curiosity-invoking statements, value props, and more. Of course, keep it short—60 characters or less. But avoid the gimmicks (e.g. “alert,” first name tags, etc.). Buyers today see right through those.

8. Craft an Irresistible Hook

The first five words determine whether the prospect reads your email. Are you hooking them and enticing them to keep reading? If not, write it again.

9. Use Video in a Smart Way

Emails that use video get a 96% higher CTR than those that don’t. Add in a personalized video to engage the prospect, build credibility, and even show off some of your personality.

WATCH: 7 Phone & Video Prospecting Tips for Sales Reps to Crush It

10. Close With a Question

The goal of an email is to keep the conversation going. So make sure your email is open-ended. Closing with a question is a great way to do this.

11. Include Important Links in Your Email Signature

Rather than load the body of your email with links to press articles, webinar recordings, case studies, social media, etc., use your email signature. That way, if the prospect wants to learn more, they’re in a non-intrusive place.

12. Make Incremental Improvements Based on Data

Without data, you really don’t know what’s working and what isn’t. Look at which subject lines, hooks, CTAs, etc. are getting the best responses. Then optimize all your emails to match.

Final Thoughts on Writing Effective Sales Emails

Writing effective sales emails isn’t a skill that reps develop overnight. It requires continual practice, and perhaps additional training and coaching. Keep at it, and remember – it’s all part of the process.

WANT MORE SALES TIPS TO OWN YOUR PROSPECTING?

Join one of our upcoming Virtual Sales Training Masterclasses! We offer 4 different classes for BDRs, SDRs, ISRs, account executives, and account managers all focused on areas like prospecting, objection handling, running virtual sales demos, closing, and more!

VIEW VIRTUAL SALES TRAINING MASTERCLASSES

2 Feb 2023

Jennifer Devins Team Engagement + Culture, Team Performance + Confidence, Strategy + Planning, Empathetic Management, Remote Leadership, Sales Leadership Insight, Sales Rep Tips, Sales Manager Life Savers, Coaching, Prospecting

Top Pipeline-Building and Recession Selling Tips

Regardless of the industry you’re in, there’s no escaping the dreaded R-word: Recession.

Some industries might be struggling more than others (over 58,000 tech workers have been laid off since 2023), and those ‘other’ industries might not even be feeling the effects at all. But the bottom line is: you never know when you might be impacted by a recession or by the mitigating factors in a nervous and challenging economy.

Whether you’re in the thick of it or preparing for the worst, if you’re in sales the good news is you’ve got plenty of ways to protect the pipeline you’ve built and keep building on strong momentum.

Factor 8 Founder Lauren Bailey recently chatted with Doug Landis – advisor to the biggest and brightest SaaS startups and current Growth Partner at Emergence Capital, and Zach Miller – a 20-year enterprise-selling veteran and Vice President of Sales at Highspot. Together they compiled essential tips for both reps and managers to keep building pipeline, continue selling, and boost company culture and morale during an economic downturn.

WATCH: How To Build Pipeline And Keep Selling During A Recession

Spoiler alert: DON’T wait to implement these or fall into the analysis paralysis trap! Vigorous execution of these strategies ASAP is the best way to get ahead.

Top 3 Tips for Sales Reps

Get Used to Selling to New Personalities

If you’re a rep, the likelihood of the CFO getting involved in your sale just got higher. They’re often now the ones making the final decisions when it comes to implementing new tools and products and adding it to their existing budget. You may also want to get comfortable selling to procurement.

Own Your Own Mindset

Don’t wait around for your managers to offer you more development, ask for it! If you’ve got goals you want to accomplish or skills you want to learn, do some of your own research first. Find the people who know what you want to know and utilize existing resources. Don’t make excuses to your own success – get out there and make it happen!

DOWNLOAD: Essential Virtual Selling Tips Guide

Emphasize Loss, Not Gains

It might sound counterintuitive – but how many times do you think a decision maker has heard about all the money they’ll save if they just invest in [x] product? Probably about over a billion dollars worth! Finding ways to surpass the ROI and value your product adds by highlighting what they’re missing is the A+ solution right now.

Example: If you don’t buy today, you risk losing out on $100,000 a quarter.

(Looking for more tips on virtual selling? Factor 8 can provide the training and resources you need to excel. Learn more about our training and coaching services here. )

Top 3 Tips for Sales Managers + Leaders

Get Involved Now

As a leader, it’s important you have a pulse on your reps’ activity without micromanaging. Both of you are in a critical atmosphere right now when it comes to sales – so make sure you aren’t waiting until there’s a problem or all hands are needed on deck before getting involved. Mitigating risk is important on both sides of the transaction!

Protect Your Time

What’s the one thing you still have full control over? Your time! This is your best resource to utilize and protect. You may be inundated with “fire drills” from your reps – but making sure to prioritize and block off your schedule is still a crucial part of ensuring responsibilities are front and center.

Celebrate Wins

Quota is probably not the best way to motivate your reps right now if things are tight. So what can you do to keep culture motivated and morale high? Rethink your incentive structures! Shift from focusing on closed business to most leads, highest number of calls, or celebrate the smaller wins that might have previously been overlooked. When employees feel successful, they’ll also feel good about going back to work.

READ: Creative Tips for Rewarding Top-Performing Sales Reps

Remember: the economy is cyclical, so this downward turn isn’t forever. If you’re having a tough time adjusting to the new normal, take a deep breath and remind yourself this is a great opportunity to invest time into your personal training, building pipeline, and preparing for when business is back to booming. You’ll be ready!

Struggling to maintain your schedule? Do you want to take your team to the next level? Check out our Virtual Sales Manager Training Bootcamps.

WANT MORE RECESSION SELLING TIPS?

26 Jan 2023

Jennifer Devins Prospecting, Lead Qualification + Follow-Up, Cold Calls, Video Meetings, Voicemails, Emails + Sequences, Sales Rep Tips, Remote Selling

7 Phone & Video Prospecting Tips for Sales Reps to Crush It in 2023

Plenty of sales reps love the convenience of email and LinkedIn prospecting. But rapid-fire, stock messages do little to build rapport and trust with your prospects.

That’s why, as much as some people despise it, you have to pick up the phone.

As young reps continue to phase into the sales force, there is a growing challenge for them to get beyond the keyboard. And while the pandemic certainly didn’t help matters, fostering those face-to-face (or voice-to-voice) connections has become more critical than ever.

Suffice it to say that salespeople can’t afford to rest on their laurels. We have to fight harder to build pipeline, persuade prospects, and win deals.

That means moving from behind the keyboard, picking up the phone, and utilizing videos in prospecting.

If you’re ready to crush it in 2023, here are seven tips that can help our reps make the most of phone and video in their prospecting efforts.

1. Don’t rely on email alone

It’s important to connect with people on social and email, certainly. But think about it: when’s the last time you bought something over email?

Never mind that people are wary of scammers and phishing attempts. No one buys from text on a screen.

People buy from other people. More importantly, they buy from people they trust.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use email. But there are ways to make email more engaging and personal.

For example, emails that use video get a 96% higher click-through rate than those that don’t. It makes sense: video shows off your face, which helps to foster that personal connection.

So if you’re relying on a “spray and pray” approach to email where you’re sending as many as you can hoping for something to stick, just stop. You’ve got way more tools at your disposal.

2. Make your videos watchable

Just getting started using video in your prospecting efforts is a great first step. But if you really want to maximize your chance of success, then you need to make your videos as watchable as possible.

Most people drop off of videos 70-80% of the way through. So it’s important to structure your video so you get their attention and deliver necessary value as quickly and efficiently as possible—before they click away.

Here are some tips to make your videos more watchable:

Start with empathy. Show the prospect that you truly understand the problem they’re facing.

- Lead with value. Catch the prospect’s attention by offering something to help with that problem as early in the video as possible.

Use a list to structure your video. “3 things before our call tomorrow,” or “4 things I noticed on your website.” That will help make the video more scannable and increase the prospect’s likelihood of retaining that information

Caption your video. Adding captions to videos can increase the watch rate by up to 80 percent. Captions also help with scannability.

Put your call-to-action in the middle. It logically makes sense to throw the CTA at the end. But by that point, most people have dropped off. Put it in the middle to increase the likelihood that people will actually see it.

3. Use the prospect’s name off the bat

The first few seconds of a video are key to getting your relationship with the prospect off on the right foot. One great way to do this: use the prospect’s name.

This goes back as far as Dale Carnegie: people perk up when they hear their own name. When you use their name, you set the tone of the relationship as a familiar one, which increases their likelihood to trust you.

What’s more, when you use a prospect’s name in a video, it’s proof that you aren’t batch sending messages. You’re taking the time to record a personalized message, which shows that you’re putting effort into building that connection.

WATCH: 10 tips for building human-to-human connections on sales calls

4. Don’t just call prospects once

It’s no surprise that phone calls used in tandem with email help to increase the likelihood of a response.

The problem, however, is that only 10% of sales reps make more than three attempts to reach a prospect. Calling more than three times may seem like a lot, when you consider that it takes anywhere from seven to fourteen touches to get a conversation with a prospect, then frequent follow-up is key to make that conversion.

Also remember that while email and social media are powerful tools, they have one purpose: to get you on a call with the prospect. That’s the only way you’ll be able to sell them.

5. Don’t waste time following up if your data is incorrect

Spray and pray is popular because it’s quick and easy. Even if half the data is incorrect, you’re spending so little time on each prospect that it nets out positive.

But when you’re taking the time to follow up multiple times, record videos, and build relationships with prospects, investing in the wrong people can be a significant time sink.

That’s why it’s important to do your homework. One tip we recommend at Factor 8 is if you get a voicemail, hit the 0 button to find the directory or talk to someone else in the company.

What I tell people is: try to be James Bond for about 10 dials. You’re going to learn something critical that will help you find the right person or provide you with important information that you can then use to land the deal:

Who reports to who?
What system do they have?
How long has your decision maker worked there?
Are there any current projects that are a priority?
How many employers/locations are there?
Other key influencers that you should include in the process?

Use your personality, talk to people, and get some critical account information that can help you become more successful as you build your relationship with them over time.

6. Qualify, qualify, qualify

First of all: sales qualification is not the same as lead qualification. The latter is a marketing indication that a prospect may be ready to buy due to their engagement. Sales qualification is about how much money you can make with a particular account—what’s the potential that they’ll buy from you?

There are a number of factors that go into play here:

Size of sales team—more reps means more revenue
Is the company B2B or B2C?
What tools or platforms does the company already have (especially important if you sell SaaS)?
Do salespeople have to acquire their own tools or does the company provide them?

One great tip for this: don’t blow past the gatekeepers! In your haste to get to the decision maker, you may end up missing the opportunity to gain some vital information on the company that can help you tailor your video and phone communications.

7. You were hired for your personality—use it

If marketing could source leads and close deals on their own, we wouldn’t need sales.

The reason you have a job is because salespeople can do something marketers just can’t. You weren’t hired to send canned messages. Marketing can do that more efficiently than you.

Salespeople are there because personality makes a huge difference in how prospects feel about potential vendors. For many businesses, it’s the people that are the differentiator between themselves and their closest competitors.

So let people get to know you. You’ve been hired to be a personality. Use it!

If your sales team struggles to use phone and video effectively, Factor 8 can provide the training and resources needed to get everyone up to speed. Learn more about our training and coaching services here.

Want more prospecting and sales intelligence tips?

13 Dec 2022

Jennifer Devins Sales Training + Development, Sales Training Budget + Cost, Hiring + Retention, Team Performance + Confidence, Strategy + Planning

How to Create A Sales Team Development Plan and Budget

Professional development opportunities are a major factor in the decision to change jobs. That’s according to numerous research papers, including our recent Sales Team Retention survey. So if you want to improve employee satisfaction and stave off attrition, then a sales team development plan must be a top priority.

By giving your reps a roadmap to build their skills and advance their careers, you give them a compelling reason to stay in your organization. Read on for actionable tips to build the perfect development plan for your sales team.

Why is sales team development critical?

Sales team development is more important than ever. Ambition found that 98% of sales reps would stay with a company forever if they were given ongoing development opportunities.

What’s more, companies that invest in sales team development put themselves at a significant competitive advantage by retaining talent. Losing a salesperson costs an average of $115,000.

Your sales team is only as good as the people on that team. By investing in their development, both as individuals and as a group, you can improve their ability to meet quotas and move the needle.

How to build a sales team development plan

Sales development doesn’t just happen. It’s the result of a lot of intentional strategy and effort and requires a commitment of resources from the organization.

As such, it’s important to have a clear plan to get you from Point A to Point B. A cohesive development plan includes role definitions, resources, expectations, and timelines. Here are some steps you can take to develop your own.

1. Establish a sales development budget

On average, 1–3% of the total annual budget should be earmarked for development. Small to medium businesses are spending more than $77,000 annually on outsourced sales training and development. Large companies spend more than five times as much.

If you under or over-spend on sales development, that will create bigger problems down the road. Over-spending without generating results will cause you to lose buy-in among executive stakeholders. Under-spending is unlikely to generate positive results.

By understanding your needs, you can set a realistic budget that suits your goals and needs and, more importantly, moves the needle in the right direction.

Download our Sales Training Budget Guide to help you determine how much to budget for development.

2. Reallocate unused resources

There’s no point in spending money on tools and resources that no one uses. A great way to invest in development without increasing costs is to look for resources that you aren’t using. Rather than waste those dollars, use them to grow and improve your team.

3. Identify high-impact opportunities

Most companies have limited budgets. This is especially true in today’s economic climate.

The key to an effective sales team development plan is knowing where to spend the most time and money. After all, you want your limited resources to go where they’ll have the greatest impact.

This is where having high-quality managers makes all the difference. When you support your managers and empower them to make decisions around resource allocation, they can effectively support your sales reps at every stage of onboarding and production.

Effective managers understand the best delivery methods for training and development. Live in-person and virtual training sessions are both great options for team training. For companies that are local, live training sessions are refreshing in today’s remote-heavy work environment. Getting reps face-to-face for in-person training is worth the cost of the return. For remote companies or spread-out teams, virtual sessions are a great alternative to in-person meetings. For best results avoid pre-recorded training videos. When participants are able to meet in person or join a live virtual session, they feel more engaged and collaborative, which promotes learning.

4. Prioritize your tools and tech stack

Not all tools and technologies are created equal. For example, many sales teams have a digital resource library—a big expense content bank that no one uses. It’s important, then, to look at your current resources and decide which are actually empowering your team to do their jobs better.

Instead of thinking of technologies by their product class (e.g. “asset management platform”) think of them based on the problems they solve for your organization (e.g. storehouse of information to educate our reps).

When you break out the mold, you may find other more creative solutions to the problem (e.g. interactive, live training sessions vs. pre-recorded talking-head videos).

5. Make use of free resources

While it’s important to invest resources in sales development, there’s a wide range of free courses, webinars, and training available online. In an interactive group setting, these resources can be a valuable tool—and they don’t require additional buy-in from budget holders!

However, it’s not enough to simply throw these free resources at a rep without any context or structure. Prepare discussion questions and exercises to test skills during webinars and presentations.

When reps take part in live discussions and practice the skills they’re learning, they’re more likely to retain and apply them when they hit the floor.

6. Think outside the classroom

Training and lecturing are two different things. Lecturing is telling someone how to do something, while training is actually showing them.

Take new hires out of the classroom so they can see skills being put to use in real-life scenarios and how to put them into action themselves.

7. Focus on moving the needle

Hiring and training salespeople is an investment. To get the best return on that investment, you can’t treat it as a one-and-done. Skill retention requires applied learning and repetition.

Don’t waste your investment by neglecting follow-up sessions, coaching, and feedback. Good coaching builds on the skills learned in training and helps reps understand where they are and where they need to be.

8. Leverage gamification

Gamifying information is an easy way to improve retention and increase problem-solving. New hires who are challenged to solve problems and demonstrate skills outside of the pressure of the sales floor feel safer trying new things. Contests, competitions, and similar tactics help reps use skills in dynamic ways.

Who needs a sales development plan?

You may be wondering: do you even need a sales development plan?

The answer is YES if you want to:

Meet quota consistently
Retain your team over the long haul
Improve morale
Grow and scale your business

Regardless of size, every sales department needs certain skills and information to be successful. A comprehensive sales development plan lays the foundation for your team to build and adopt these skills.

Reach out to learn more about our customizable virtual sales training programs and get the best out of people.