Focus on the right segments, focus on the right buyer personas, focus on the right pains that the persona is likely experiencing, and focus on the best activities necessary to get the team to their goal of creating new opportunities for the sales team.

I encourage all of our teams to have a model day for success, and apply it daily. It sounds a bit cheesy and perhaps micro-manager-esque, but the day of a prospector needs to be hyper-focused. Why? Between inbound emails, outbound emails, outbound calling, inbound calling, and researching it is very easy for someone in this role to get distracted and in turn not meet their daily productivity goals. To be less of a micromanager, ask your rep to design their own model day — what works for them, what they think they need to be successful — review it with him/her, and then hold him/her accountable.

Here is an exercise that I encourage lead gen reps to execute at the end of every day to get focused and buttoned up for the following day (45 mins):

1. Pick 3-5 companies to focus on tomorrow that you want to “win over” (i.e. set an appt)
2. Identify each company’s email formula (i.e. first-name.last-name@company.com)
3. Identify the corporate # (make sure it’s accurate in sf.com)
4. Identify a minimum of 5 leads per company in addition to what you may already have in your CRM (this might be more difficult if your target is more narrow, but then again, it doesn’t hurt to have convos with potential champions!)
5. Identify if you have any 2nd or 3rd connections with these leads in LinkedIn; reach out to those connections asking for an introduction
6. Find something interesting about the company that is relevant to leverage (i.e. new product release, promotion, award, etc.)
7. Send emails to the new leads to warm things up for your call tomorrow

I can assure you that your reps will come in the following day with a greater focus if this exercise has occurred the evening prior!

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What I am seeing pretty consistently amongst most of the teams that I’ve worked with is that they are great when it comes to initial touch points and content sharing with leads that are just becoming “aware.” At this point, no hand-off to sales reps has occurred. Once the prospect becomes interested, and he/she is open to the next step, then a second call, most likely with a field sales rep, occurs. If on that call/demo/meeting the prospect shows signs of closing in the next 30-60 days, the sales guys are usually ALL over it.

If not — and if there is not a true sense of urgency on the buyer’s end — it’s likely the sales person won’t develop a true feeling of ownership over the account. This is when things start to fall through the cracks. The touch points (human and/or marketing) can run dry. Email blasts can go out with content that has NOTHING to do with that particular target buyer persona or what their needs are at that particular stage of the buying cycle. Garbage.

In order for the sales engine to run as efficiently and effectively as possible, those “gray zone leads” — which I’ve referenced in many previous points — need to be touched consistently, and they need to be touched with messages that are going to resonate with their particular situation, ultimately to keep them moving toward the buying stage.

This is no easy feat, and I wish I had all the answers. Your expansion stage company’s relationship marketing program is going to be very specific to your target segment, it’s buyer personas and the direct marketing channels that make the most sense given the buyer’s preferences. That said, I’ve outlined a series of questions that will at least get you thinking about how to implement this type of program so that you can get the MOST out of all of the prospects that have entered the buyer’s journey.

1. Who will be responsible for managing your relationship marketing program?
2. Where does this stand priority-wise with other goals that he/she may have?
3. Have you clearly defined your target market segments?
4. Have you clearly defined your buyer personas (pains, needs, buying criteria, who influences them internally and externally, etc.)?
• Okay, if you don’t have these first four questions answered, but you’ve got a Lead Qualification team prospecting already, I’m a little nervous for you. THANK GOODNESS you are reading this post, because you need to act fast (but be smart about it). There’s no time like the present to analyze your historic data (i.e. closed deals, pipeline, etc.) to FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS on that segment (or two), and those buyer personas you are confident you can completely win-over and you can continue refining your messaging and product roadmap around. But I digress.
5. Do you understand the key milestones in your personas’ buying  journeys? (Aware –> Interested –> Paying Customer)
6. What direct marketing channels are going to make the greatest impact with your buyer personas?
7. Who influences your buyer personas, and do they have content that is readily accessible that can be repurposed?
8. What existing content do you already have that can be repurposed?
9. What new content do you really need based on buyer personas pains and what it will take to move them through the buyer journey?
10. What will be the frequency at which you touch your buyer personas with messaging as they move through their buyer journey?
11. What technology do you have/need to invest in to best manage and track your marketing efforts and the responses they generate?
12. How will your marketing automation tool be synced with your CRM?
13. Is the CRM set up in a way that is conducive to properly categorizing leads based on where they stand in their buying cycle and what their particular pains/needs are?
14. Who will train your lead gen team on the right questions to ask to determine which bucket the lead belongs in for relationship marketing as well as the overall process — where the human touch point falls into the equation?
15. What is the quick hit relationship marketing program that you can use to test and execute your messaging and touch point model for a specific buyer persona?
16. How will you measure the success of your relationship marketing efforts and your quick hit program?

The concept came to OpenView Labs’ Kevin Cain and myself after numerous conversations within and outside of our portfolio regarding how much time, energy, money, and preparation actually goes into building a truly effective prospecting engine. It was quite apparent that most senior managers we’d initially conversed with — to no fault of their own — were having a hard time envisioning exactly what goes into setting up this type of operation. An infographic seemed to be the most appropriate delivery format, as it would serve as an easily digestible snapshot that could articulate our message.

For most companies at the expansion stage, building and managing this type of engine is completely foreign, so level-setting expectations and getting commitment of resources is key when engaging with stakeholders who want to build their company’s pipeline with this outbound approach.

Sure you could get a couple new hires, give them a phone and a lead list, and say, “Alright, start making calls now!”

But let’s be serious — that is NOT the right approach. It will only lead to failure.

And at the expansion stage — you don’t have time for failures that could have been prevented. 

In the last three years, over half of our portfolio companies have engaged with the Labs team for some guidance in launching a lead qualification/generation initiative.

LET ME BE CLEAR: They rely on our team not necessarily to do all the work for them, but rather to guide them down the right path and make sure that all the i’s are being dotted and the t’s are being crossed. We assist them in avoiding the common potential hurdles of building this type of team by helping them plan, accordingly.

This infographic, at a high level, explains what an initiative owner at a company needs to consider and/or build in order to set a lead gen team up for success. And quite frankly, if the questions it poses can’t be answered, you might as well hold off until you are comfortable and confident in each regard. Otherwise, your business will be drained of time, money, and resources taken up by backtracking.

In previous posts, I’ve written about almost all of the aspects of launching this type of team within your organization — from developing the best conversation guides to getting the right lead qual manager in place. One thing that I have yet to write about, that I feel could be beneficial for our readers who are building out this capability internally, is the training program itself.

Overlooking a thorough yet concise lead qual training agenda can set your effort back weeks, if not months.

Below is a sample first week training schedule for your team to use as a baseline.

Please note:

• There is very minimal product training – spend more time instead focusing on the VALUE PROPOSITION and the buyer personas
• By the 3rd day, the reps are on the phones (if you’ve done your pre-work, and you’ve got the right assets/messaging in place, this is realistic…I promise)
• End of day and week retrospectives need to become a part of our team’s culture, starting in week 1 (what went well, what didn’t go well, how can we improve moving forward)
• This agenda is not the end all, be all… the goal is to get you thinking about the best topics to cover! 

ALSO keep in mind:

 Good luck, and happy hunting!

With that said, SIMPLE also has to be SMART. Taking out the clutter to make things simple requires some brain power. Here are seven places to start.

Simplify This:

Training/Onboarding: Please, please, PLEASE do not let your most technical product-oriented employees play a major role in training sessions. It’s completely unnecessary, and very un-simple. In week 1, lead qualifiers should not be learning about your software’s most intricate details or about the roadmap that your developers have in store. ACK! While I totally get the need for everyone thinking “big picture,” focusing too much on product-talk, rather than training lead qualifiers on the value proposition, pains, and solutions, is a huge distraction, not to mention downright misleading. What is the LAST thing that lead qualifiers should be discussing on an initial prospecting call? Features and benefits. Keep training simple and focused on what’s most important in order for the new hires to be successful in their new roles.

Value Proposition: A crystal clear value proposition is one of the most important tools in a prospector’s kit. If it’s too complicated, not only is your lead qualifier going to be confused, they are going to confuse the hell out of those individuals that they are connecting with over the phone. The more relevant and simple the value proposition is, the greater the pipeline and the shorter the sales cycle. End of story.

Conversation Guide: I’ve made a stink about this in previous posts, however I’m very comfortable with saying it over and over again — throw out the scripts! Simplify with a conversation guide. A conversation guide is a one-page document that highlights key points you’d like your callers to touch upon when they’ve got a prospect live: intro, value prop, pains, gains, qualifying questions, and wrap up/next step suggestions. That’s it! Let your individual prospectors fill in the gaps with their own words — simple, right? Again, as long as it’s smart, you are golden.

Hand-off Processes: Field reps are busy, busy, so this point is a little different from the rest in that your lead qualifiers should also be making things VERY simple for the reps they are supporting. Streamline things for your lead qual by laying out the hand-off processes in the form of a checklist. Simplify the appointment setting for your field reps by making sure they have all their notes logged in sf.com, a follow up task set in sf.com, and a calendar invite with all details from the initial conversation along with the prospect’s contact information. The more complicated you make it for the field rep to prepare and take the call that your lead qual are setting up for him/her, the less likely the appointment will occur.

CRM: Is your sf.com jam-packed with dozens of random lead fields that your sales team isn’t even using any more? Do you have 53 different lead statuses? Do you have overlapping reasons for leads being unqualified/nurtured? Do you have overlapping activity types? Clutter in your CRM leads to confusion, which leads to lead qual and field reps using the tool differently, and incorrectly. Before you launch a lead qual team simply clean it up.

Daily Structure: An email coming in, an email going out, a call going out, an email response sent, a prospect calls in, a call to a new prospect — now multiply this x10.  Sound like a typical morning for a lead qualifier? This type of activity is chaotic and inefficient. So as the manager, what can you do? Help your team simplify! I’m not saying don’t encourage many calls or emails. I’m saying encourage grouping all like-activities together in chunks of time.  If your reps are constantly having to change their mindset throughout the day, and be reactive rather than proactive, frustration will be high and productivity will be low. Create a model day for success for your team, and coach everyone to plan their days accordingly. Oh, and turn off Outlook during prime outbound prospecting times!

End-of-Week Retrospective: Any portfolio company that OpenView Labs has supported in launching a lead qualification team is quite familiar with these two words: retrospectives and impediments. A retrospective is an end-of-week meeting where the whole lead qual team comes together to discuss the week: what went well, what didn’t go well/impediments, how those impediments can be resolved best, and what is the action plan for next week. Simple right? It’s simple because the meeting has structure, and things that are typically swept under the run can be brought to light and resolved in an open and accepting environment. Following an end of week retrospective meeting, I encourage managers to send out a weekly update report with the SAME format. Not only do these reports help get everything out of your and your team’s heads and into the open, they are also really helpful for planning purposes and creating visibility for those who are so invested in seeing the lead qual team succeed. Thirty minutes — that’s all this report takes. Keep it simple — only the highest priority items that went well, need to be resolved, or need to be focused on the following week. If all stakeholders have visibility into your team’s week, and it’s buttoned-up and focused, they will be confident in your management efforts. That will also allow them to simplify — by not having to worry about what the heck is going on, and whether their investment was in fact worth it!

How have you found ways to simplify your outbound prospecting efforts in order to improve efficiency? Please share!