As covered in Rozzer’s ‘11 Tips for Aligning Marketing and Inside Sales’, a high-performing Inside Sales team can send lead conversion rates sky-rocketing bringing joy and riches to you and your firm.
It may not be cool, fun or sexy but a large part of managing an Inside Sales team is having robust processes in place – when and how to contact a prospect; what to do before, during & after the call; correct use of your CRM and other systems; the handover to Sales; and of course how reps will be compensated.
Get these locked down and you’re free to do the fun part – the motivating, cajoling and rewarding. Get it wrong and you’ll spend most of your time on the back foot, neck-deep in admin.
Something that will make establishing these processes a lot easier is having a central guide or ‘playbook’ that documents the core Inside Sales processes and procedures. This keeps everyone on the right page and accelerates the on-boarding of new hires. Here are some sections to include:
1) Aim & goals
Right at the top, lay it on the line as to why the team exists and what its purpose is. This could be along the lines of… “The aim of the Inside Sales team is to provide a predicable pipeline of qualified opportunities to the Sales team to increase new customer acquisition. This is achieved by improving lead conversion rates, enhancing market coverage, having more 1-1 conversations, qualifying opportunities early and thereby increasing win rates.”
2) Sales process overview
Being an Inside Sales rep can be a tough gig so make sure the team knows their importance to the business by showing them an end-to-end view of how Inside Sales fits in the sales cycle.
Tip: Reps that are rock-solid on the Sales Process theory will likely find your processes and CRM tools a lot more intuitive.
3) Demand generation
Leads don’t just fall from the sky, they take skill, money and hard work from marketing gurus to acquire. If Inside Sales reps understand and respect this, they’ll be more likely to treat leads like gold.
4) Prioritization & Assignment
When your reps get to work in the morning, who do they call? Then who? Clear prioritization will keep them efficient and focused on high-priority prospects. Also make sure you get their territories and lead assignment processes crystal clear or face the inevitable turf wars.
5) Call prep
I always give the same pep talk to new reps, “This lead cost $250 to acquire and could be worth millions to the company and thousands to you. So please make sure you do your homework before calling them.” A short (e.g. 5-step) research template they can pin up on their cubicle will help with this.
6) The Call
After about a week on the phones, all Inside Sales reps consider themselves experts and will have developed their own pitch. However at least starting them off with a high quality script will give you the best chance of them staying on message. You can also lay down the SLAs e.g. “Leads will be followed up within X timeframe, and contact will be attempted a minimum of X times.”
7) Post call
More process, but this is an easy one. “Log your call correctly in the CRM system and you get paid; don’t and you don’t.”
8) Handover to Sales & opportunity progression
After a rep has booked a meeting, what happens next? If you’re primarily rewarding them based on sales-qualified opportunities generated (which you should be), then this will be of big interest to them. Any monkey can book meetings. What you want is qualified opportunities that have a high chance of closing.
9) Metrics & reporting
Targets that need to be hit and how their output will be recorded, tracked and reported.
10) Compensation framework
The section your reps will flick to the moment you give them the guide.
It may not be cool, fun or sexy but a large part of managing an Inside Sales team is having robust processes in place – when and how to contact a prospect; what to do before, during & after the call; correct use of your CRM and other systems; the handover to Sales; and of course how reps will be compensated.
Get these locked down and you’re free to do the fun part – the motivating, cajoling and rewarding. Get it wrong and you’ll spend most of your time on the back foot, neck-deep in admin.
Something that will make establishing these processes a lot easier is having a central guide or ‘playbook’ that documents the core Inside Sales processes and procedures. This keeps everyone on the right page and accelerates the on-boarding of new hires. Here are some sections to include:
1) Aim & goals
Right at the top, lay it on the line as to why the team exists and what its purpose is. This could be along the lines of… “The aim of the Inside Sales team is to provide a predicable pipeline of qualified opportunities to the Sales team to increase new customer acquisition. This is achieved by improving lead conversion rates, enhancing market coverage, having more 1-1 conversations, qualifying opportunities early and thereby increasing win rates.”
2) Sales process overview
Being an Inside Sales rep can be a tough gig so make sure the team knows their importance to the business by showing them an end-to-end view of how Inside Sales fits in the sales cycle.
Tip: Reps that are rock-solid on the Sales Process theory will likely find your processes and CRM tools a lot more intuitive.
3) Demand generation
Leads don’t just fall from the sky, they take skill, money and hard work from marketing gurus to acquire. If Inside Sales reps understand and respect this, they’ll be more likely to treat leads like gold.
4) Prioritization & Assignment
When your reps get to work in the morning, who do they call? Then who? Clear prioritization will keep them efficient and focused on high-priority prospects. Also make sure you get their territories and lead assignment processes crystal clear or face the inevitable turf wars.
5) Call prep
I always give the same pep talk to new reps, “This lead cost $250 to acquire and could be worth millions to the company and thousands to you. So please make sure you do your homework before calling them.” A short (e.g. 5-step) research template they can pin up on their cubicle will help with this.
6) The Call
After about a week on the phones, all Inside Sales reps consider themselves experts and will have developed their own pitch. However at least starting them off with a high quality script will give you the best chance of them staying on message. You can also lay down the SLAs e.g. “Leads will be followed up within X timeframe, and contact will be attempted a minimum of X times.”
7) Post call
More process, but this is an easy one. “Log your call correctly in the CRM system and you get paid; don’t and you don’t.”
8) Handover to Sales & opportunity progression
After a rep has booked a meeting, what happens next? If you’re primarily rewarding them based on sales-qualified opportunities generated (which you should be), then this will be of big interest to them. Any monkey can book meetings. What you want is qualified opportunities that have a high chance of closing.
9) Metrics & reporting
Targets that need to be hit and how their output will be recorded, tracked and reported.
10) Compensation framework
The section your reps will flick to the moment you give them the guide.
Is there any further reading you would recommend on this?
ReplyDeleteAmela
Lead conversion