best practices for managing inside sales with salesforce.com

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Salesforce Inside Sales Best Practices August 2012

| Copyright © ShellBlack.com

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•  Have a Call Strategy

•  Leverage Salesforce

•  Measurement and Management

•  Other Items to Consider

•  Appendix

Agenda


Call Strategy

•  For this team, since the main method of engaging contacts will be by phone, it is important to have a Call Strategy in place

•  Your Call Strategy should be designed to accomplish these three things: 1  Increase contact rates 2  Know who to call (and something about them) 3  Have a goal for each interaction (what to

accomplish)

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Things that can increase Contact Rates •  Quality Lead sources

•  Speed to respond to a new Lead

•  Timing - Time of Day & Day of the Week

•  Persistence

•  Having a Direct Dial Number

•  Calling from a Local Number

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Speed Matters (Immediacy) When Responding to a New Lead

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“The Lead Response Management Study” by Dr. James Oldroyd. MIT

Call new Leads quickly – it’s really that simple


Timing Matters – Time of Day

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Optimize your call times if your reps can only dedicate a limited amount of time each day to outbound calls. Not a good time to talk? Ask your contact when is a good time to call back.


Timing Matters – Day of the Week

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People are busy during the beginning of the week, and by the end of the week they are not interested in starting new projects.


Be Persistent

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The average sales rep only makes 1.3 phone calls on a lead before giving up. If the contact ratio is 10%, then 10 calls = 1 contact!


Direct Dial Numbers Help

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Google with a wild card search on the phone number and the person’s name – for example, “Joe Contact (214) ***-****” – will often return results with direct phone numbers. Other tools that can be used to find direct dial numbers include: LinkedIn, Zoominfo, InsideView and Data.com Also, don’t be afraid to leverage a cell number!

TIP: Next time you hear “Your call is being answered by Audix,” punch in **6. It will say “enter last name, followed by pound sign.” Put in the contacts last name (e.g. Richard), and it will say “Steve Richard, extension 4237.” Now that you have that magic 10 digit direct dial number!


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Source: “31 Sales Must Haves” – InsideSales.com

Use a Local Number if Possible


Don’t Waste a Call Attempt

•  Do some research upfront (next slide) §  Know who to target (roles in the organization)

–  Try to identify Contacts with the budget, authority, need, and timeline (BANT)

§  The goal is to know something about the contact and their company in order to build rapport quickly

•  Know how to disposition calls that do not result in a contact

•  Have a call script and an objective for each interaction

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Buy or Enrich Existing Lead Records

Data.com / Jigsaw allows you to search for Contacts by Company, Level, Department, Title, etc.

Check to if you have missing or out of date contact information

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Do your homework in advance

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Leverage Salesforce “Social Contacts”: • LinkedIn • Twitter • Facebook Visit the company’s website: • What do they do? • Read their press releases

The more you know, the easier to build rapport & credibility


Have a plan on how to disposition each unsuccessful call attempt

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Example: After the first call, be sure to leave your first voicemail and email. You should not leave another voicemail or email until after the fourth and the sixth call

Source: “31 Sales Must Haves” – InsideSales.com


Call Scripts – Make the Most of Each Interaction

Example six step process to ensure a productive and successful first call: • Step 1: The Opening – This is where you introduce yourself. Tell them who you represent and why you’re calling. Reinforce what the lead expressed interest in.

• Step 2: Establish Trust / Build Rapport – Do some research in advance (look at the company’s website and your target contact’s LinkedIn profile) so you can demonstrate you know something about them and their company (see previous slide).

• Step 3: Positioning – Where do you stand in the race? What does your company offer, and how is it different from competitors in your industry?

• Step 4: Cool Feature and Key Benefit – What can you do and, more importantly, what can you do for me? It’s great if you can state a quantitative benefit.

• Step 5: Proof Story – Why do you have credibility? What proof can you impart that indicates what you’re telling me is accurate? This is where you tell the success story of another customer, quote an article, a piece of research, something outside of what the company itself is saying.

• Step 6: C2C (Commit to Continue) – Do you have time right now for me to show you how we can make your business more successful? Set the appointment as early as possible in order to maximize the percent of appointments held.

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Your Contact Strategy can be replicated over multiple channels (don’t limit yourself to email and phone)

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•  Appendix

Agenda


Help Reps Manage Their Day

•  Don’t let the day rule the rep (don’t be reactive)

•  Organize data in Salesforce to support a rep’s call strategy, account planning, and pipeline management

•  Ensure reps know how to leverage: §  Tab Views (“My New Leads”, “My Open Opportunities”) §  A Lead Scoring system (later slide) §  Dashboards (later slide) §  Activities (Emails, Log-A-Call, Tasks and Events) §  Stage, Close Date, Contact Roles, and “Next Step” on

Opportunities §  Console View or a Dialer (later slide) §  Chatter (for deal collaboration)

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Lead Scoring •  A Lead Scoring system answers the following question quantitatively – “Who

are my hot Leads?”

•  The higher the score, the farther along the Lead should be in the evaluation, and ultimately, the buying process

•  Three basic questions that should carry a lot of weight in your score (1) is this the right contact (2) are they a good fit and (3) are the interested

•  Lessor weighted, but can incrementally adds value over time, is the lead’s continued engagement with the salesperson (e.g. responds to emails, phone calls, requests information, agrees to meetings, etc.)

•  How complete a record can impact your lead score (e.g. do you have a direct dial number, their title, department, etc.)

•  Points can be added for the right company demographic (size, industry, Lead Source)

•  Leverage Workflow and formula fields on the Lead record to calculate the score for the rep

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Benefits of Using the Console

•  The Console is a multi-pane view that allows a rep to step through a targeted list based on a View of either Leads or Contacts and log activities from a single screen - thus reducing clicks

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Benefits of Using a Dialer

•  Measure the amount of time reps are on the dialer

•  Voicemails can be pre-recorded so a rep can start to leave their voicemail and move on to the next call, increasing call efficiency

•  Management can set the dialer to record a percent of calls over a certain duration (e.g. 60 seconds) to inspect call quality and rep knowledge (great for managing remote reps)

•  Ability to dial from a bank of local numbers

•  “Screen pop” incoming calls (matching on the phone number of the Lead or Contact record)

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Voicemails and Emails can be queued up with a Dialer to disposition call attempts quickly

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•  Appendix

Agenda


Measurement Best Practices •  Use the same metrics up and down the organization

§  If it is important to the manager to track, it’s important to the rep

•  To avoid surprises at the end of the month, give each rep their own Dashboard so they can track their progress towards goals

•  Leverage the “Running User” on Dashboards and set the underlying reports for “My Records.” This will make it easier to clone Dashboards for new reps

•  Use the Gauge metric to track attainment towards goals (or conditional formatting in tables - i.e. shade the number red, yellow or green)

•  Show them the money! (self motivate) If possible, have a rep’s dashboard show commission obtainment MTD / QTD based on closed deals

•  Know which Lead Source (list) produce the best quality leads. Track contact, conversion and win rates by marketing source

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Management Best Practices

•  Run your weekly sales meetings from your Salesforce Dashboards. No need to have reps submit a weekly forecast – it’s in Salesforce!

•  Don’t allow reps to talk about deals that aren’t being tracked in Salesforce. If it’s not in Salesforce it doesn’t exist

•  Promote friendly competition with “Leaderboard” Dashboards with user profile photos (no one wants to be on the bottom of a list)

•  Spotlight reps hitting their objectives to demonstrate to the rest of the team the goals are obtainable

•  Spend the time needed to educate reps on how to read pipeline metrics to understand concepts like pipeline health and stage aging

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Easy things to measure in Salesforce •  Activities

§  Dials, Emails Sent, Meetings created §  Use a custom “Type” field for further

categorization (e.g. presentations made) §  “Last Activity” on a record (activity aging)

•  Adoption §  Login frequency §  Records created

•  Sales Process §  Leads converted §  Opportunity Stage Aging §  Close rations (win ratios)

•  Quota Attainment §  Sales MTD, QTD vs. Goals

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•  Appendix

Agenda


Don’t Recreate the Wheel

•  Leverage the knowledge from other sales groups to increase effectiveness early §  What is the typical buying cycle (3 mo, 6 mo?) §  Is there seasonality to these services (e.g. tax time, end

of year) §  What’s the average size deal §  How do they overcome objections §  Who do they target (role in the organization) §  How do they position themselves against the competition §  If contact attempts are unsuccessful, is there a handoff

back to marketing for continued lead nurturing §  Who can the rep engage if they have a question

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Establish Ground Rules up Front

•  Are reps able to call on existing contacts?

•  Establish when a sale should be handed off to outside sales §  What makes a deal “too complex” (e.g. delivery across multiple

locations, services that are tied to other operating companies)

•  Establish rules for channel conflict and sales crediting §  When is a Contact “free game” (e.g. no interaction with an

existing Contact for six months, or no sale to that company in over a year)

§  Use Salesforce as the system of record §  If a sale has to be handed off, is there any sales credit for the

originating rep?

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Provide Marketing Support

•  Don’t allow reps to create their own marketing materials. Create a content library of approved customer facing materials that adhere to brand guidelines §  HTML Emails §  Presentations §  White Papers §  Proposal Templates and Contracts §  Testimonials §  Approved List of Client Referrals

•  With the exception of email templates, store resources in Documents or Files in Salesforce

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Staffing Considerations

•  Align comp plans with the desired results

•  A new team will need intensive training and coaching (system, process & product)

•  Partner new reps with sales leaders

•  Learn quickly what profiles are successful for future hires

•  Always have a pipeline of potential new hires – you will have turnover

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Appendix


Top Problems for Inside Sales Managers

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Source: January 2012 – InsideSales.com - 608 respondents, 350 were sales managers and 258 were sales reps


Top Problems for Inside Sales Reps

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Source: January 2012 – InsideSales.com - 608 respondents, 350 were sales managers and 258 were sales reps


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