Lead Qualify + Categorize

5 Tips to Transition from Field to Inside Sales

15 Mar 2023

Lauren Bailey Call Intros (SWIIFT), Call Bridging, Sales Rep Tips, Prospecting, Lead Qualification + Follow-Up, Cold Calls

5 Tips to Transition from Field to Inside Sales

There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it – virtual selling is here to stay, folks. That’s why the transition from field to inside sales is becoming more prevalent.

If you’ve spent years perfecting the art of in-person selling and are struggling (or resisting) the shift to virtual, it’s time to get on track and embrace it.

I get it – virtual selling is a whole different ball game where reaching contacts is harder, your sales cycle is longer, talk tracks are shorter, and a whole slew of other things you’re not used to.

That’s why I took 30 minutes on our recent Sales Shot to break down key virtual and hybrid work practices that will help you feel like a superstar again.

Whether you’ve been at it for awhile or recently transitioned, these are tips you can start implementing RIGHT NOW to help you fill those holes in your pipeline.

DOWNLOAD: How to Sell to the CFO to Keep Deals Moving

Pick Up The Phone

Do you like baseball? (Even if you don’t, stick with me for a minute.)

Home base is closing the deal and having a happy client – but you can’t get to home base if you aren’t even on first! First base is getting someone on the phone.

Chances are, they’re not going to pick up on the first try. In fact, less than 20% will connect on that initial call. Even if it takes 12 attempts to connect – you keep calling!

Research shows that 30% of leads are never even contacted at all. That’s a ton of missed opportunity. Especially when you consider that 82% of buyers admit they bought something after a series of cold calls.

So, moral of the story: Pick. Up. The. Phone.

Always Leave a Voicemail

If you’re making all these calls, you’d absolutely better be leaving a voicemail – a GREAT voicemail. In fact, make voicemails your new BFF!

Voicemails have a few different goals. The most obvious one is getting a callback. Realistically, most of them are probably never going to get returned. But here’s what you CAN do: create a positive impression of yourself and your company, and guilt them into either picking up the phone or eventually calling back. So, get creative and make it fun!

The 4 most effective types of voicemails are:

Lever – Drop their first name, reference one of their coworkers, mention a previous rep they worked with – something that’s going to get their attention! Whatever you do, make it about them!
Mystery – Keeping the message short and vague can pique their interest.
Urgency – Are you running a limited promo on a product or service? Are they losing money by the minute if they aren’t using your product? Give them a reason to JUMP!
Value – There are 6 of them we teach (remember SWIIFT, everyone?), but remember that during economic challenges people tend to care most about saving money and mitigating risk.

Whatever you do, ALWAYS leave a voicemail. No voicemail = no touch. It’s like buying a billboard and leaving it blank. Yikes!

Quick Tip: Send an email right after you leave a voicemail. Your likelihood of getting a response is MUCH higher when you mix voicemail + email.

Embrace Smaller Goals

A year ago, your quota probably looked a whole lot different than today. So, take your goals and break them up into smaller, more achievable pieces!

The average successful call is now just 3.5 minutes!

Structure your calls around these 3 key questions:

What do I need to learn?
What do I want them to know?
What commitment do I want to close?

Qualify Your Leads

Do NOT go through an alphabetical list of prospects and pick away at it until you get to Z.

Take the time to actually qualify your leads and call based on that score! You’ll have A,B, C, and D leads (and you can probably skip the D leads). Start with your A leads and work your way down the list until you finish the C leads.

As a general rule, here’s how often to call each lead:

A leads = 10-12 dials
B leads = 8 dials
C leads = 6 dials

Build A Bridge to Call #2

If you got someone talking on the phone after a cold call, the hardest part is over. So make sure you’re taking advantage of it by ALWAYS scheduling the next step WHILE you’re on the call.

Can you schedule the follow-up call now? How about sending a calendar invite with next meeting’s info? Have you given your cell number to get theirs?

Give yourself permission to call back by urging them to look at their calendar and confirming when you’ll be connecting again.

WATCH: Transitioning from Field to Virtual Selling

Keep in mind, the more you try out these tips, the easier it gets and the more success you’ll see. So get on the virtual train with the rest of us and start building that pipeline. You got this!

NEED MORE TIPS TO MASTER INSIDE SALES?

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

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!

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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?

20 Jan 2023

Amy Wunderlich Lead Qualification + Follow-Up, Closing, Sales Rep Tips, Prospecting

How to Use Sales Intelligence to Close Deals and Boost Profits

The buyer’s journey is evolving quicker than ever before. Prospects want personalization at every level of the sales cycle, yet customization is impossible without accurate and relevant data, as every salesperson knows. This is where sales intelligence comes into play.

Sales intelligence is a word used to describe collecting and analyzing customer data to enhance lead generation, boost conversions, close extra transactions, and offer you a much larger and more precise picture of the sales process.

Finally, the primary purpose of sales intelligence is to improve your understanding of present and future consumers. Any information you acquire will be unique to your company.

Sales intelligence data goes far deeper than traditional customer data, allowing you to get customer insights such as demand data, buyer journey duration, source of acquisition, and improved customer persona profiles.

This article explains why and how sales intelligence is crucial for your business to close more deals and boost profitability.

Why is Sales Intelligence Important?

The sales intelligence platform can provide new ways to obtain new sales. Here are a few reasons why sales intelligence is so important for your business.

Discover Your Market Potential

You can access diverse prospects within your target market.

During talks with their target audience, many businesses merely nudge the tip of the iceberg.

The good news is that sales intelligence provides a highly complete, comprehensive perspective of your industry, guaranteeing that you don’t miss any prospective possibilities today or in the near future.

Identify Your Target Audience

Wouldn’t it be nice to get rid of most (or maybe all) of that significant research you have to do to find out what your target audience is looking for? It’s possible with sales intelligence. Static data and dynamic data are combined to make it easy for you to identify your ideal customer.

Monitor Your Competitors

Sales intelligence platforms can assist you in identifying your competition. It can also assist you in keeping track of what they’re up to.

Sure, you definitely know who some of your rivals are, but can you honestly say that you know who every one of them is?

Sales intelligence can assist you in locating each competition and monitoring their market performance.

Find Out Decision-Makers

When reaching out to your prospects, you must know the decision maker or the right person to help you reach the decision maker. It simplifies the procedure and helps you appear more professional.

Sales intelligence tools assist you in determining who the best point of contact at a firm is. You may search and filter by position titles and hierarchical levels to choose who to contact directly.

How to Use Sales Intelligence Tools to Boost Revenue

Build Your Ideal Customer Profile

One of the most critical and early phases in lead generation, qualifying, and nurturing is creating your ideal customer profile (ICP). However, because business is so fast-paced, the typical ideal consumer profile will not suffice. This is where sales intelligence can help.

By understanding more about your customers, sales intelligence data can increase the overall accuracy of your ICP. Insights such as intent drivers, content consumed, purchase triggers, region of operations, company size, and more may be obtained.

Enhance Sales Prospecting

Getting straight into the minds of your buyers and knowing what drives their buying decisions is one of the most important sales intelligence strategies. You may contact them more effectively if you understand their goal and are confident in your facts.

When intent data is integrated into sales intelligence software, you may begin to get notifications with specific purchasing signals when a prospect has the potential to convert into a client. These are hot leads on which your sales staff may zero in and provide modest nudges to persuade them to convert.

Assume a potential customer has had a fundraiser and is looking for expertise in your sector. What does this have to do with you? It signifies they are in need of and have the money to spend on the goods or services you are offering.

These insights might serve as a trigger for your sales team to contact the most relevant individual in the organization for a quick talk.

Better Lead Quality

The goal of the sales game is to obtain more leads. Many rookie salespeople believe that the goal of click funnels is to get more individuals into the funnel. In reality, the sales funnel assists in filtering out folks who aren’t yet ready to buy! When a customer becomes a possible qualified lead, sales intelligence tools alert you. This is due to the solution’s ability to track prior sales. It will also assist you in forecasting their future requirements.

You may also use website analytics with sales intelligence tools. This allows you to see what goods consumers are interested in rather than what they’ve purchased. This information can then be entered into your CRM.

These analytics can function in two ways. The first is to gather cookies and use them to reverse engineer where the user has visited. The second method is to utilize cursor trackers, which detect a user’s location and correlate it with what’s on the webpage. To process this raw data, both current methods employ AI.

Acquire Key Competitor Insights

While one of your company goals may be to sell a significant quantity of products or meet particular revenue targets, the truth remains that success depends on a variety of things other than how much you sell and how much income you generate. You must keep an eye on your opponent to stay ahead of the game.

Your competitive intelligence program can provide you with critical information. One crucial piece of intelligence you may get is the expiration date of contracts with your competition. This information is important since it allows you to create a sound strategy to entice them away from your rival and toward your brand.

You may accomplish this by demonstrating the benefits of your unique selling proposition, addressing their issues more efficiently, or simply providing a better value. With the correct tools, you can detect new competitors in real-time, monitor their campaigns and behaviors, and evaluate past data from your competitors.

Boost Revenue

When working with customers or clients, you must guarantee that your company remains relevant in the marketplace. This implies you’ll have to keep working on your brand. You’ll also need to expose your company to as many customers as possible continually. In short, you must continue to prod people with the brand to remember it.

Unfortunately, a company’s marketing budget is limited. You may increase your income by using sales intelligence technologies. They aid in determining whether or not a person has previously dealt with your firm. Following that, they choose the optimum moment to give them promotions.

It’s also a good idea to develop a filtering procedure for your customer list. Self-exporting is a big deal in the market. This may upset them and drive them away from your rival.

Final Thoughts

In the B2B arena, sales intelligence and sales intelligence tools are crucial not just for businesses because they help complete more transactions. Still, they are also vital for consumers who want to acquire a product or service that adds value to their business and alleviates their pain points. While several sales intelligence firms provide various sorts of sales intelligence tools and sales intelligence software, you must choose the one that is best for you.

The litmus test you should use is to look at how they can assist you in completing more business with less effort. Suppose they do not provide reliable information on prospects, their interests, and insights into their behavior patterns to help you plan your follow-up activities. In that case, such tools may not be the best fit for you.

Want more prospecting and sales intelligence tips?

23 Nov 2022

Amy Wunderlich

Power Prospecting: Spend Less Time, Get Better Results – April 6th, 2023

30 Apr 2021

Lauren Bailey Sales Rep Tips, Lead Qualification + Follow-Up

How to Build an Account and Lead Qualification Strategy

Does anyone out there NOT have a story about working their tail off to reach a Decision Maker only to find out that it was a bum lead? Account and lead qualification strategies and categorization are topics near and dear to my heart because:

Yeah, I’ve done it too
I hate wasting time more than I hate wasting wine
I fancy myself a strategic sales gal

It’s this third point that really struck me in a recent client site. Reps were calling lists of 800 leads from top to bottom every day. At 8 am the next day, they started again at the top. That’s actually physically painful to me, is it to you?

Create A Better Lead Qualification Strategy

If they employed a lead qualification strategy (and you bet they do now! :)) then reps would be speed-dialing through all 800 leads with the first goal of NOT reaching the DM, but instead reaching any “live body” to ask 3-4 quick questions and determine the account’s worth.

For this client it was:

Size of company (employees)
Size of facilities (square footage)
Type of operation (manufacturing, warehouse, etc.)

With the right delivery, these 3 questions net the rep everything they need to know to classify this account as an A, B, C, or D opportunity. Sure it’s not exactly right, but it’s close enough to build a strategy.

Now, Work Those “A” Accounts

How much harder would you work an A account? I recommend you call it 15 times. Odds say that you’ll connect with over 95% of leads after 15 attempts. A “B” account would net about 10 attempts from me, and I’d throw a few Hail-Mary calls at a “C”.

What else could you capture while on the phone? An email? Another contact?

Then, We Have Reasons To Celebrate

Here’s another benefit of a lead qualification strategy: when we break the cold call down into two stages (qualify it, sell it) then we actually set better expectations for our reps and give everyone more chances to win. (celebrate the number of leads qualified for the day!) Best of all, they’ll never call a list “from the top” or “alphabetical order” again.

A strategic seller is a successful seller!

Now, where is that leftover wine?

9 Sep 2016

Lauren Bailey Sales Rep Tips, Lead Qualification + Follow-Up

Top Three Mistakes That Reps Make On Lead Follow Up

We’ve all heard the scary lead follow-up stats floating around – 73% of web leads are never contacted (Source: HubSpot), 44% of salespeople give up after 1 contact attempt (Source: Scripted), and that as much as 50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first (Source:InsideSales.com). Companies work so hard to get leads in the system, but how do you make sure that your team is making the most of those leads?

“Companies work so hard to get leads in the system, but how do you make sure that your team is making the most of those leads?”[video that I did for Zoom Info recently on the most common mistakes that reps make on lead follow up and how to overcome them.

While you’re out there, make sure you subscribe to the Factor 8 YouTube channel to ensure you always get our latest content!

LB

17 Dec 2015

Lauren Bailey Sales Rep Tips, Lead Qualification + Follow-Up

All I Want For Christmas is 100 Qualified Leads

How To Get 100 Qualified Leads

As children around the globe look to the skies in wonder about Santa, Inside Sales leaders will also look to the heavens contemplating the “gift” of increased 2016 quotas. Now, I don’t have the HBR research to back this up, but my experience has shown that expectations on Sales teams get increased approximately 100% of the time. That means it’s on us to find avenues for growth in the coming year (please Santa?!).

I’m betting that you can hit those growth numbers with nothing more than your existing lead sources…if you’re willing to take a new approach.

I’m not suggesting that you blindly “smile and dial” through an endless pile of names and numbers…be better than that. I’m going to suggest something that might sound like Sales heresy, and it’s not for the faint of heart:

Don’t seek out the Decision Maker on your first call.

The goal for call 1 is simply to determine if this is a customer worth pursuing. Why wouldn’t you want to target the decision maker out of the gate? I’m so glad you asked…Here are my Top 5 reasons for separating qualifying and first contact into two distinct calls:

Winning is Fun. Every qualifying call can be a success with just one piece of data gained.
Talk to more people. No more leaving months of voicemails (just to find out they’re a bad fit!)
Power through leads quicker. Qualifying calls don’t need to be customized OR researched
Gain better information before talking to the DM to increase your odds of success – show him/her you’ve done your homework.
A qualified book leads to a proactive territory strategy focused on top leads – most companies try each lead 2.5 times and then trash it. Ouch.

Hmmm…more fun, more success and less wasted time. Might be worth a shot. Want more details on how this would look? Jump to our site for tips, videos, and success stories or to leave me a post on what you hope Santa brings you this year.

Happy Holidays and Happy Selling!