What Really Matters? An Inside Sales Guide

When it comes to inside sales, two things are true:

• Many expansion stage companies have tried inside sales and failed or were unable to scale appropriately

• Many expansion stage companies are unable to correctly assess their inside sales team and have not reached maximum productivity within it

What are the most important factors/elements to avoiding or correcting these pitfalls?

Before I answer that, a few caveats:

• Assessing and understanding  your sales process from identification to closure is critical

• EVERYONE in the organization must invest in the inside sales team

• Does your culture support your inside sales expectations?

What follows is a guide I built to get the most out of your organization’s inside sales team.  (Feel free to reach out to me if you’d like a copy in a guide format.)

The critical elements for a highly productive inside sales team:

Culture & Team Structure

Sales Metrics

• Measurements/Expectations
• Feedback

Tools & Resources

• Training
• Automation Systems
• Scripting & Content

Hiring & Recruiting

Setting the right culture and structure in the inside sales team:

Hire a very committed  manager

• Someone who drive metrics and feedback
  • Proactive mentality

• “Lead by Example” Philosophy
  • Holds everyone accountable
  • Coaches/Participates
  • In before everyone out after everyone
  • Campaign Driven

Set up a “Model Day for Success”

• Expect 8 hours of productivity
• Assess best time for activities to take place
  • Two types of activities
    • Reactive
    • Proactive

Drive productivity through campaigns

• Assess “sweet spot”
• Define resource to make successful
  • Emails
  • Scripts
  • Reference material

• Run contests around them
• Evaluate success quickly or change course
• FEEDBACK…let everyone know how they are doing

Establish the correct sales metrics — and USE them!!

Obviously…REVENUE IS KING!!!

• Set realistic revenue targets and drive over-achievement
  • True sales people will gravitate to good comp plans

• Revenue results are a “lagging” indicator to performance

Set good metrics around “LEADING” indicators to performance

• “If an Inside Salesperson does XXXXX weekly, we can say that we had a good week and our pipeline is moving correctly.”
  • Call activity
    • Number of outbound?
    • Number of Inbound?
    • Time?
  • Email activity
    • Is the number of them important?
  • Demos/downloads
    • Is a demo critical to my sales process?
    • Is a download important?   

 

• Net new opportunities added to the pipeline
  • Define what a “net new” is
    • Example: “A new opportunity is an opportunity where we have spoke to the correct person, identified pain, have a definitive next step(download, call , demo) and confirmed the prospect is truly interested.”

Set expectations for each

• Competitive salespeople want targets and challenges
• Each metric should have an expectation or target
• Present these expectations to the team in a written format and confirm that they are understood

Feedback

• Post results on white boards in your office
• Send results out weekly to entire organization
• Discuss them at weekly meetings
• Use them to praise, reprimand, or (if not understood) redirect the focus

Use metrics to scale your team

• Assess a “day in the life” of your salesperson
  • Are they following your “Model Day for Success”?
  • Are the number of reactive activities taking time away from proactive ones?
  • If so, it is time to scale

Use metrics to act on low performers

• By only evaluating revenue numbers, you risk investing too long in an underachiever
• The 90-day factor
  • If in 90 days, a salesperson is not hitting your “leading” indicators, you must act quickly regardless of revenue numbers
  • Blue birds and ramp up quotas can allow underachievers to hide; productivity metrics do not

Tools and resources — You cannot expect high productivity unless you are supporting it!!

Training

• Don’t just focus on product training
• Focus on:
  • Sales Training as it relates to your methodology
  • Buyer profiles
    • Who buys our product and what do they do all day?
  • Competition
    • Who are they?
    • How do they sell against me?
    • How do I sell against them?
  • Pain/gain
    • What pain is a prospect suffering that will lead them to buy?
    • What gain does my solution provide?
  • Technology landscape
    • Train on the environment your product works on/in
    • 101 stuff….the history of

 

• This will allow you to hire less-experienced, highly motivated people if done right! We will talk about  hiring in a minute…

Invest in a good automation tool  

• There are many out there
• Map the automation to your sales process and expectations
  • This will allow you to track metrics effectively
  • It will allow your salespeople to maximize productivity if they are not working through various resources
    • Example: Calling out of spreadsheets or Excel files, searching the Internet for names and numbers, tracking activities manually or even not having a database of customer information.

Scripting & content

• Provide your team good scripts
  • Scripts should be written for each scenario the team will have:
    • Objection handling
    • Cold Calling
    • Customer Calling
    • Follow-up
  • Good email templates
    • Follow-up emails
    • Prospecting emails
    • Clarifying emails

 

 

• Provide the right material
  • PDFs
  • Reference docs
  • Objection handling guides
  • Sales literature

Recruiting and hiring

Hire commitment over competence

• If you have a good 90-day ramp-up program, you can invest in competence. You cannot, however, coach commitment.

Focus on behaviors

• Competitive?
• Goal-oriented?
• Career-driven?
• Motivated in the industry?

Don’t be afraid to hire out of college

• Experience is costly
• Many experienced inside sales people have learned bad behaviors
• Invest in your team’s development and it will work; if you can’t, it will not

OVERHIRE!!

• Attrition will happen no matter what you do
• Use metrics to know when to hire
• You can hire low-cost individuals to start by focusing on proactive activities with a career path to deeper sales roles and more reactive selling activities

Set culture in motion from date-of-hire

• Entry testing
• Set expectations while interviewing, when making an offer, and on the first date of orientation
• Communicate investment in the individual’s competency development

Invest in recruiting

• Use the obvious:
  • Social Media ( i.e. LinkedIn)

• Partner with local colleges
  • Work with career departments:
    • Internships
    • Co-op programs
    • Business schools/professors to source the best talent

• Prospect the interviewing candidate for more talent
  • If you are going to hire the person, ask for more names

• Offer a referral incentive program
  • Sales people will generally recommend only talented individuals

Conclusion

• The right culture
• The right metrics/expectations
• The right feedback
• The right investment in tools and resources
• The right hiring and recruiting program…

…equals…

A HIGHLY MOTIVATED, HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE INSIDE SALES OPERATION!!!!