Teleprospectors are the vital link between Marketing and Sales; they are responsible for transforming Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) into Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). Teleprospectors work with your prospects through the qualification process until they are ready to be handed over to your sales team. Therefore, it is important that their engagement methods, messaging, and targeting is spot on. To ensure this, your company’s marketing and sales experts should provide Teleprospectors with sales tools to help them effectively navigate the lead qualification process. One such tool is a call guide or script.
A call guide or script is used to meet the following objectives:
Provide a quick introduction of your company to prospect (30-second commercial)
Give prospect insights into issues you have solved for your clients (select 1 great client story)
Uncover prospect pain/need and additional qualifiers
Determine if prospect is ready now or within your company’s established timeframe (typically under 6-months)
Generate a first meeting or demo (either on the phone, web or in-person)
Generate a Sales Qualified Lead
The script will have an opening statement, as well as the qualification questions that you want answered. The opening of the call guide is very important. Literally, in 30-60 seconds, the Teleprospector has to share who they are representing and why they are calling.
Call Guide Opening
The Call Guide Opening has the following basic parts: the 30-second commercial, a customer story, and segue into qualification questions. Here’s an example of each of the sections:
30-second Commercial: SOMAmetrics is a sales and marketing consulting practice and we help our clients accelerate growth.
Customer Story: In 2011, we assisted a $50 million dollar Tech company, which had lost half of its revenue and customers. The CEO brought us in to implement our Sales and Marketing Best Practices and as a result, 2012 revenues increased by 57%. The client has been working with us for over 18 months and we expect 2013 revenues to increase by an additional 35-40%.
Segue into Qualifying Questions: Perhaps your company has similar challenges? Is now a good time to ask you a few brief questions, to get an understanding of how we might work together? (If no, get a date/time).
Create distinct call guides and openings for each of your Targets (CXO, VP/Director, and Manager). The Teleprospector will have fewer than 60-seconds to engage the prospect. Consequently, the messaging needs to be spot on to keep prospects interested and to give your Reps the opportunity to share more information about your product or service.
Companies that have complex sales solutions have additional challenges in meeting their revenue targets because it is even harder to predict if a deal will close. Anything can go wrong to delay or even stop the deal from closing. This is a major problem that many of our clients struggle with. SOMAmetrics specializes in helping clients address a number of issues related to complex sales and this article discusses some important points executives should think through.
For discussion purposes, we will define a complex sale as one that typically targets large organizations (fortune 2000 companies and government entities); poses significant risk and cost for the customer; involves at the very least a handful of key stake holders besides the final economic decision maker; many times involves a CEO, CFO, or CIO (a CXO); where decision making process is complex; and is usually the result of a company or division-wide initiative.
To complicate things further, even among similar companies, different tiles may be in charge of the same initiative or drive, making it difficult to determine where to begin the prospecting process. Hence, a complex sale involves significant research time to uncover the many moving parts and weave together a coherent sales opportunity assessment:
What is the driving issue/initiative behind all this?
Who are the key stakeholders that must be involved? What are the key pain points and concerns of each?
Who has the most urgent pain and therefore wants to see this taken care of sooner than later?
From where is the funding going to come for this? Is it all in one place (department or division), or will it be shared, and how?
When all is said and done, who is the final decision maker?
These are only some of the early questions that must be answered to even understand if there is a viable sales opportunity or not.
Using Sales Reps to Prospect is NOT a Good Idea
Often, we find that companies rely on their field sales reps to prospect and find viable opportunities in complex organizations from scratch.
We don’t think this is a good idea. This task is very different from what sales reps are very good at–calling on prospects who have agreed to see the sales rep. It requires making 10-15 dials just to reach John Doe who may or may not even be the right person to start with. Then, John only has time for a quick conversation and suggests the rep call Jane Smith. Another 20 dials later, the rep finally reaches Jane, who adds more to the story and suggests that the rep also give Maggie and Mike a call. And so on.
And this is only the first round of calls. There will be follow up calls to one or more of these stake holders to find out more about one or more issues.
It is not unreasonable to expect that 500 or more dials might be made into a single account to determine whether or not there is a viable opportunity to move forward.
The question here is: who is better at quickly and cost effectively uncovering viable sales opportunities? A field rep that will, on average, make 10-20 dials a day, or a professional Teleprospector who regularly makes 70-80 dials a day?
Our experience repeatedly shows that field sales reps engage in early prospecting ONLY when their pipeline dries up. This in turn makes it very difficult for companies to reliably forecast what their revenues look like more than 3-4 months out. Since the sales cycle for most complex sales products tend to be six months or more, this means that a company cannot reliably predict revenues outside of the current quarter.
Our recommendation is to use Teleprospecting to build the sales pipeline for the field sales. This avoids the yo-yo effect and makes revenue target more reliable. In this scenario, a senior Teleprospector will do all of the initial research to gather the coherent sales opportunity story and pass it on as a Sales Qualified Lead. This opportunity story is a synopsis of what the key initiatives are; which departments or divisions are directly involved; who the key stake holders are, which CXO is driving this initiative; what the individual pains, concerns, and desires of the various stake holders are; and what a reasonable timeframe looks like for making a final decision on the solution to this set of challenges.
Choosing the Right Person for a Complex Sales Role
The right type of Teleprospector to successfully perform this would have the following qualities:
Was quota-bearing field or inside sales professional who understand sales and particularly complex sales into enterprise account
Is very comfortable and successful at accessing and selling to CXO’s
Has the right temperament to work alone as well as to enjoy interacting with others
Is an avid learner, always trying to learn more about his/her industry and what the pain-points and new concerns for the targeted CXO’s are
Understands that this is painstaking work that will require hundreds of dials and many dozens of conversations that may or may not lead anywhere, and still enjoys the hunt
And finally, the right senior Teleprospector is results driven and has a strong sense of urgency
This is a specialty area and the right person must be matched to the job.
SOMAmetrics helps clients build quality pipeline for their complex sales by assembling all of the various components necessary to deliver the desired amount and quality of pipeline including: project management; best practices; marketing and sales automation; expert Teleprospecting; and clearly defined metrics against which performance is measured each month.
Alicia Assefa is intimately familiar with building quality sales pipeline for complex sales. As VP of Global Teleprospecting for a global software company, her team of 35 Teleprospectors supported five Business Units: Enterprise Management Solutions (EPM; Workload Automation; Project Portfolio Management Security; and Mainframe). Each Teleprospector carried a SQL to Sales Funnel Quota of $10M and a SQL to Closed Deal Quota of $4M. One division with eight sales reps generated $80M in Sales Funnel and $32M in revenue from the SQLs provided by Alicia’s team. The same resulted for the other business units.
As General Manager of the SOMAmetrics Sales and Inside Sales Practice, Alicia brings her expertise in helping clients design end-to-end solutions for building quality sales pipelines for complex sales.
Read Alicia’s latest book on the topic, “Teleprospecting for Executives who Sell Complex Solutions“, detailing Alicia’s experience, knowledge, and philosophy on building highly effective Inside Sales and Teleprospecting Organizations.
Please contact Alicia Assefa today at 510 206 9263 or email her at Alicia@somametrics.com
Over the past 20 years of working with some 100 small and medium sized companies, we have found that the top six reasons why companies miss their revenue targets are:
Not setting Valid Revenue Targets
Poor quality of sales pipeline
Insufficient size of sales pipeline
Bad fit between What you sell and the Sales Team’s skills
Poorly Defined Sales Structure
Misuse of Sales Quotas and Sales Incentives
Slow conversion of Contracts to Revenues
Some of these are quick fixes. Others may take some time to address. We also recommend that companies tackle this issue in the order listed above, as some are interlinked and are prerequisite steps to the next.
1. Not setting Valid Revenue Targets
Yes, this one surprised us too, but many CEO’s and their executives don’t clearly know what revenue targets they want to achieve. When we ask, “What is your revenue target for this year?” some say they don’t know; others answer vaguely; still others give inconsistent numbers from one executive to another within the same company.
Even when companies do set revenue targets, the question is whether these are valid. A valid revenue target is one that has its foundation in data. It is composed of what is possible, but it stretches the company to live up to its full potential.
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The first criterion for A Valid Revenue Target is that it is based on data. You must first do the analysis necessary to know what is possible. You should look at the various products you sell, then set different targets for your customer base versus new customers. They add all of these to come up with the total for the company.
2. Poor quality of sales pipeline
The next reason for missed revenue targets is low quality sales pipeline. This means that sales people are engaging prospects that are not likely to buy anytime soon, for a number of reasons. Poor quality of sales pipeline shows itself primarily in two ways:
Deals that don’t close (low closing ratios), and
Deals that don’t close for a long time (long sales cycles)
Both of these are symptoms of poor quality sales pipeline and they typically manifest together. The end result is a Sales Organization that works hard to produce little and is demoralized.
Of these two, the second is a bigger problem. Companies seem to accept the delay as being their “sales cycle”. When we ask our prospects, “What is your average sales cycle?” we get responses such as, “Well, that depends…” or “It varies anywhere from 3 months to 18 months…”, and other similar responses. Such ambiguity regarding sales cycle length tends to indicate poor quality of the sales pipeline, rather than indicating the true sales cycle period.
There are many reasons why a company may have a large but poor quality sales pipeline.
The first is that marketing leads are being passed straight to Sales people without being properly qualified, and the Sales Reps begin working all of them in the order they are received, rather than in quality-prioritized way. So, the Sales organization may be working hard, but it is not producing much.
The second reason is that marketing leads may be qualified by a telemarketing team, but the company thinks that this is an entry level job and hires very junior people to qualify leads. What typically happens in this case is that these junior telemarketers prospect to their own comfort and skill level—i.e. junior level people in the prospective company—rather than to real decision makers. Then they pass these as “qualified” leads to the Sales Team. Sales Reps will find out that these are not the right prospects ONLY after they talk to these “qualified” leads. Again, Sales works hard, but not smart.
Use a Teleprospecting team to further Qualify the Marketing Qualified Leads before passing them on as Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)
Don’t have your Teleprospecting cold call to find SQLs. This is very slow, very expensive way to prospect. Instead, market continuously to your target market and pass on warmer leads or Marketing Qualified Leads to further qualify.
Have a healthy mix of marketing campaigns designed to interest both decision makers and line managers so you have the business line managers recommending you, and the decision makers finding sufficient business return to make the purchase decision.
Use the Four Quadrants to guide your Marketing and Sales efforts. Marketing and selling to your existing customers is very different from marketing and selling to non-customers. And, even getting existing customers to buy new products requires a different kind of marketing and sales than asking them to buy more of what they already buy from you.
Some Additional Quality Points
Teleprospecting is the Quality Assurance (QA) “department” when it comes to Sales and Marketing. Just as companies would test their products to make sure they are of sufficient quality before bringing them to market, so must companies check the quality of the leads before passing them on to Sales.
It is also important to understand that Teleprospecting is NOT an entry-level position. It is a business process that requires very skilled and experienced telephone sales professionals who have the competency and confidence to talk to senior level decision makers.
If a company is not using experienced Teleprospectors to qualify the marketing leads before passing them on to Sales, then the company is probably wasting money paying junior level people to do a very difficult and sophisticated work.
Download the diagnostic checklist to see why you may be missing your revenue targets
The next reason why companies fail to achieve their revenue targets is because they don’t have sufficient size of sales pipeline.
If Sales reps do not get sufficient number of Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs), then they tend to start thinking “scarcity” rather than “abundance”. Insufficient Quantity then becomes Poor Quality (Reason #2 above) as Sales Reps start hanging on to opportunities they know will not close, trying to artificially inflate the size of their pipeline.
And almost just as bad, even when reps close any of these leads, they tend to have done so by offering deep discounts, since they cant walk away from tough negotiators.
Any sales rep afraid to lose anything on his or her pipeline exudes that fear and will be quick to either offer or agree to a deep discount. Experienced buyers can smell that fear and wring out price and other concessions before agreeing to sign the contract.
The worst of this is when a shrewd negotiator uses one of your sales reps to provide him with a low price quote, which he then takes to the vendor he had chosen all along to get a better price from that vendor.
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The solution is to keep the Sales pipeline stocked with sufficient size of well-qualified sales leads. This process starts with reverse engineering the numbers to arrive at the required size of the pipeline, starting from the sales target.
Let’s say your target is to achieve $25 million in new sales and your average sales price is $25,000. That means you will need to close one thousand (1,000) new deals to achieve this revenue target, on average.
If your average closing ratio is 20%, then you will need five times as much in sales pipeline, or about $125 million in sales pipeline.
Obviously, you have to build that pipeline throughout the year. Without adjusting for seasonality and/or ramp-up period, this assumes that you would need to build roughly $31.2 million in new sales pipeline each quarter, or roughly $10.5 million each month. We highly recommend that you pad this pipeline by another 20% to ensure that you will achieve or exceed your revenue target.
4. Bad Fit between What You Sell and Your Sales Team’s Skills
Assuming that you have set valid sales targets, and that you have provided your Sales team with sufficient size of high-quality sales pipeline, why would you miss your revenue targets?
Often, companies simply grow their sales force by hiring anyone they consider to be a “closer”. After all, that is what a Sales Organization is for—to close deals. So, what could be wrong with hiring more “closers”?
The problem with this is similar to a hospital hiring anyone who is a licensed MD. Sure a hospital needs doctors, but how many doctors of what kind are needed? A heart surgeon is not the optimal substitute for a kidney ailment, and an Optometrist can’t fill in for a podiatrist.
In the same way, a closer is not a closer. A talented sales rep who always blew her numbers selling $200,000 complex enterprise solutions will struggle to sell $500 licenses. A sales rep that is a genius at explaining very complex concepts simply and getting the sale, will struggle selling simple products that don’t need much explanation. The top sales guy at a construction company selling construction projects will flounder selling a consulting service to the construction industry.
Simply because a sales reps resume said she did over $1 million in sales selling for her previous company doesn’t mean she can do it for your company—unless the sales skills required are a match.
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The solution is to always hire the right skills for the right job.
The Prospecting Myth – understand and accept that Prospecting and Selling are two different but related phases of making a sale. The work is very different. Prospectors make 60 or more calls a day in the hopes of connecting with maybe 4-5 people a day and hopefully getting one Sales Qualified Lead a day. The Teleprospector is on the phone all day long, never meeting anyone, and hardly leaving her desk except for short breaks here and there.
Sales reps, on the other hand, are great at building rapport and engaging prospects—once they have them in a meeting. Sales reps don’t do well with a 30 second conversation. They are far better at a 30 min to 2-hour conversations.
Far too often, we see companies hiring sales reps to do their own prospecting and justifying this by saying, “That’s what the base salary is for…” It may sound like smart use of money, but it is actually the opposite. It is a waste of money because the end result is a highly frustrated and unproductive sales rep.
The “Selling is Selling” Myth – selling is NOT selling. Selling cars is very different from selling homes. Selling homes is very different from selling enterprise software to the global financial services firms. Selling telephone headsets is different from selling telephone equipment, which is different from selling telephony services.
There are many differences in the sales of each of these. The work ethics is different. Some require lots short, low-priced transactions as in sales of cars. Others require skill in simplifying complex concepts and reducing them into easily provable business benefits. Still others require the ability to talk to very senior people in large global companies, while others require talking to the foreman of a construction project.
Where one skill was the key to success can become useless in another.
Always determine what kind of skill you need for a given role, then how many of that role you need to fill. Don’t start hiring until you do.
Then interview very carefully to make sure you have found the right candidate.
Lastly, put in place the early flags that will tell you whether you have hired the right person or not, much sooner than later.
5. Poorly Defined Sales Structure
Having identified the right sales talents and having hired them, it is critical to place them in the right roles. Too often we see those with very good service instincts required to hunt, and those with very good hunting skills required to nurture and grow accounts. Again, these are very different types of skills and personalities and your company will likely need both. Just make sure you place the right person in the right role.
It will be very difficult for you to achieve your revenue targets if you don’t properly optimize the structure of your Sales Organization to align with the intended prospects.
Quadrant 1 is the domain of the Hunter and the Teleprospector. You need a professional Teleprospector to find the right door into the account, and the Hunter to find a way to get into that door. Don’t waste the Hunter’s talents in finding the door. Assign a skilled Teleprospector for each Hunter—even one Teleprospector 2-3 hunters is a much more cost-effective organizational structure. And don’t look for service-oriented people to do a hunter’s work. In Quadrant 1, impatience is the virtue, and you need professionals that consult and then tell the prospect it is time to make a buy decision.
Quadrant 2 requires light selling and heavy marketing. Therefore, you can use junior level order takers in training to be hunters or account managers. Their job is to assist customers in ordering more.
Quadrant 3 requires significant account management and relationship building skills. Make sure you place a service oriented sales rep who enjoys working with her accounts to determine what they need and when, and gradually increase the size of each of her accounts. In Quadrant 3, Patience is virtue.
Quadrant 4 is pure New Business Development. You need someone with an entrepreneurial spirit, someone who likes to go where no one has gone before (at least in your company). The challenge here is to find the first key customers that don’t mind being the first to use your products in quite that way. And each of these have to be total success so you can obtain the reference-able customers necessary to get more. At some point, you will start adding your Hunter-Teleprospector team from Quadrant 3 so as to get more customers, and this new market will need to be segmented into three other quadrants.
The Four Quadrants of High Growth provide a highly effective way of segmenting markets enabling you to create the right territory assignments that are a fit for the appropriate sales roles and talents.
6. Misuse of Sales Quotas and Sales Incentives
One of the worst understood and often misused sales management tools is a sales quota. The first and worst offender is having different sales quotas for different sales people, not because they sell different products and/or to different customers, but because they just bring in different levels of sales.
As an example, one company we work with set their target for new incremental revenue to be $10 million. While we couldn’t see how they arrived at that number, other than a straight increase over the previous year’s $9million, that was not the real issue
The real issue is how they decided to allocate “quota” to the team. The company has six sales people. Management first announces the incremental revenue target and then announces the “quotas” for each rep.
Their top producer was to bring in $4.8 million of the $10 all by herself—or 45% the new revenue
Three other reps had their quotas set to $1.5 million (15% each)
The last two were assigned half a million each, or 5% of the revenue.
When we asked if these six reps sell different products or to different customers, the answer was “No, they all sell the same thing…”
The reason the first sales rep was expected to sell nine times as much as two others was only because she was good. So, she was being punished for being a great sales rep by having her quota raised, yet once again.
Using quotas in this way is punitive to your best people, possibly forcing them to look for less stressful position in another company, while allowing your worst performers to continue to perform at a low rate with no repercussion. Obviously this is not what you want.
The Right Approach to Setting Quota
The appropriate use of Sales quota is to establish the floor or minimum of what a sales rep must bring in to justify the expense of keeping that sales rep on the payroll. In the example above, since the company would never let go of their top sales rep, then the continual raising of the quota would only drive this rep away due to the intense stress that creates.
The right approach would have been to set a quota of, say $400,000 which means that if any has trouble meeting this number, then it is not cost-effective for the company to keep this rep and should let her go.
Also, quotas should be exactly the same for all reps who sell the same thing in equivalent markets or sales territories. Otherwise, you can expect a sales rep to think it unfair if his or her quota is higher than others who are selling the same product(s) in an equivalent territory. The above-mentioned Four Quadrants provide a systematic methodology for assigning selling territories for a given sales role.
The right Way to Incentivize Reps
Quotas should never be used to incentivize sales reps to produce more.
The right way to incentivize sales reps to produce more is to give them financial incentives to do so. Now that you have set quotas for the minimum productivity you need to justify the cost of keeping a sales rep on the payroll, the rest is to provide a combination of commissions, short-term rewards, and recognition to drive productivity.
Rather than having a straight commission rate no matter how much a sales rep sells, provide a variable one that increases every time a sales rep achieves a new sales production level.
Lets illustrate these two improvements over the bad practice of misusing quotas to try and increase sales productivity.
Scenario 1- Misused Quotas
In this scenario, a company pays a straight 7.5% commission on sales. The company also has also awarded different quotas to their sales reps as indicated above, with the top rep struggling to make $4.5 million in sales. The two least productive sales reps each are told to achieve $500,000—which they may or may not achieve, and it is not clear what would happen to them. In fact, these two sales reps typically bring in around $300,000.
Scenario 2 – Proper Use of Quotas and Variable Commission rates
In this case, the company has the same quota for all sales reps selling the same products in equivalent territories—say $300,000. If any sales rep brings less than that, then the sales manager will have to seriously consider letting this sales rep go and look for a better-suited sales professional.
Commission rates are 5% for achieving quota ($300,000); then 6% for sales of $301,000 to $400,000; then 7% for sales of 401,000 to $500,000; then 8% for sales of $501,000 to $700,000; then 9% for sales of $701,000 – $900,000; and 10% for sales over $900,000 to $1.2 million; and so on.
Let’s see the effect of this variable commission rates on those two least productive sales reps.
Under the old model, if the sales rep sold $300,000 she would make. The increase in commission to get this rep to sell $301,000 is another $75 only.
Under the second model, this rep will see a jump in commission of $3,060 for selling one more $1,000 because of the 1% increase in commission on ALL $301,000.
For sales level of $401,000:
Under the first scenario, sales rep will earn $7,575 in additional commission compared to sales on $300,000
Under the second scenario, the sale rep will earn $13,070 more (because of the 2% increase in commission over the entire $401,000).
What we have done differently is that both our stick and our carrot are stronger and clearer in the second scenario. Sales people could lose their job if they produce under $300,000 and the upside for them for continually increasing their productivity is significantly higher under the second scenario. Both are hard to ignore for any sales rep.
The key is to first determine how much of revenue you are willing to allocate to compensating your sales force, and then designing the commissions to incentivize increased sales productivity.
7. Slow conversion of Contracts to Revenues
If your company cannot invoice a customer until certain conditions are met, and you have significant time lags in meeting these conditions, then you will likely miss your revenue targets, even if the “booked” revenue is equal to or exceeds your revenue target.
For publicly traded companies, this is a legal requirement that must be met to recognize revenue within the specified accounting period. However, even for a private company, pretending a deal is closed when the signing of the contract is contingent upon the deliver of conditions within a specified time frame is a recipe for missed revenue targets.
At best, the customer simply will not pay until all conditions are satisfied—and though you will receive the funds at some point, this puts significant cash-flow strains on your company.
Even worse, the customer will get out of the contract if you don’t satisfy the conditions and you will have wasted significant resources to get a contract without receiving any funds in return.
Far worse would be if that customer was upset enough to give your company bad reviews. Then future prospects might be skeptical about signing up with you.
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The first step is to monetize this issue so you know how much money you are not collecting as a result of the time lag between signing a contract and delivering what is expected so you can invoice the customer.
If your business model is a recurring revenue model where customers pay a certain amount each month, each month that you have not yet delivered is what you are forgoing.
As an example, let’s say you charge $5,000 a month and it takes you roughly 60 days to get a new customer to be ready to be invoiced. That means that you have foregone $10,000 due to this delay. Let’s say on average you close five such deals a month. That means, on average each month, you are losing about $50,000 in opportunity costs (money you could have earned that you are not).
Next, let’s say you figured out a way for cutting the time from 60 days to 30 days. That means you are now saving $25,000. Therefore, you can spend up to $25,000 each month to reduce this to 30 days and it would be a wash from a cash-flow perspective.
However, the real gain comes with increased new customer satisfaction—customers want to start seeing the benefits of their purchases as soon as possible. After all, that was the reason they decided to buy. Therefore, speeding up the process of realizing the benefits would significantly increase customer satisfaction.
If you can get customers to write great reviews, agree to be references, and in other ways provide you with positive testimonials, then this will go a long way in enabling your sales people to close more deals in shorter time.
Conclusion
Your company may not have all of these issues. However, if you are having difficult meeting your revenue objectives, it his highly likely you have at least one of the above seven challenges.
Having worked with over 100 companies, SOMAmetrics has developed the tools, resources, and expertise to help your company overcome the challenges that prevent you from consistently achieving your revenue targets.
The first step is to conduct an Assessment of your company to determine which of the above challenges you may be facing, and what the root causes are. The next step would be to look at some options of how to address these challenges and begin to consistently achieve your revenue objectives.
SOMAmetrics provides a one-week assessment service that enables you to quickly identify where the bottlenecks are in achieving your revenue targets and develop viable options to address this.
Please contact us today to determine how we may be able to help.
You have hired a team of junior folks, whom you have trained.
Their base pay is in the $25K-$45K range and your company throws in a few bucks, when a lead is accepted by Field or Inside Sales
You have provided the scripts and CRM for the Teleprospectors to use
The team has been given additional sales tools, such as objection management documents, which they can use if a conversation goes south
They have been assigned daily/weekly/monthly metrics, such as 50-70 dials, per day, 5-10 Key Contacts, per day, etc.
Why Your Teleprospecting Team Isn’t Making the Cut
Your Teleprospecting team is well armed and ready to make calls. The problem is that if and when they get Sr. Executives on the phone, they are not able to translate these calls into viable leads. More times than not, Teleprospectors crumble at the first objection and end their calls. Or they call lower-level titles, in the prospect organization. Non-decision makers tend to be accessible and easy to speak with. However, leads from non-decision makers are not viable and tend to be rejected by Field or Inside Sales.
Companies see Teleprospecting as a junior-level position. I believe that this is the wrong way to think about Teleprospecting. Let’s consider that the Teleprospector is probably the first person from your company that your prospect will engage with. The Teleprospector, therefore, needs to be seasoned and experienced to handle the nuances of a first call. The argument that I have heard, many times, is that Teleprospectors aren’t closing business. They are qualifying prospects for interest. I beg to differ. Every communication with a prospect is an opportunity to close. There are many closes to consider: to close for the next meeting; to close on getting to a viable decision maker; to close for a trial or demo. Companies need to hire people who can close at any stage of the cycle. This is another reason why they should consider hiring seasoned professionals for this role.
Seasoned people have the experience to understand business drivers and what drives the people who make business decisions. Junior level people don’t have the experience or understanding of these concepts. It takes a lot of time, many, many, many phone calls and trial and error to understand these concepts.
Many years ago, I was asked to set up a Teleprospecting Organization for a SaaS company whose product significantly reduced energy spend for the manufacturing and utilities industries. Our prospects were CIO’s at Fortune 500/1000 companies. It was a complex solution with a long sales cycle (9-18 months). I knew that I needed to hire the most skilled people to ensure that we could navigate the issues prospects might throw at us, each day.
The team that we hired received a base salary of $70K with their total compensation reaching $125K, at plan. At first, the CEO was concerned that we were paying this team too much. However, after he saw the results of his pipeline (it was rapidly increasing) he changed his mind.
Real Life Example
Below is a real call that one of my Teleprospecting Reps had with the CIO of a Multi-National Food Manufacturer
Dave Teleprospector: Hi Mike, This is Dave, with XYZ Company. Our solution enables companies like yours to reduce energy spend by 50%, year over year. Our clients include _,_ and_. The purpose of my call is to understand your needs and to determine if we might have a solution for your company.
Mike Prospect: Dave I received your company’s email blast and I am not interested.
Dave Teleprospector: Mike, so what you are telling me is that you are not interested in reducing your company’s energy spend? Mike, I recently read an article in XJournal, where the research showed that most CIO’s stay in their positions for under 18 months because CIO’s are perceived as being ineffective. I’ll be happy to send you that article. The reason why I mention the article is because our solution can help you reduce your company’s energy spend by 50% or greater, which could help to make you highly effective.
Mike Prospect: Dave, that is very interesting. Yes, it would help me to find out how we might reduce our energy spend. Currently our energy spend is a significant part of our operating budget.
Dave was able to qualify this account and pass it on as a highly qualified lead for his Sales Rep. This lead went to the sales funnel, after the Field Rep had his first meeting with the prospect.
This Teleprospector was highly qualified to speak to any C-Level Executive because of his Experience
Dave knew that C-Level Execs are easier to reach in the early AM or later PM.
He managed his weekly schedule so that he would be making his dials to his significant prospects, during these times.
Dave did his research.
He was constantly sourcing information about the industry, his company’s technology and trends that might of interest to his prospects. He knew that C-Level Exec’s would be interested in information that would be of help to them or their company. He was always learning, in order to be prepared for any call. He could discuss the significant business drivers that would interest his prospects, at any time during his calls.
His conversations were never scripted
(He used a guide with key messages and questions) and his messages were targeted to the titles he was planning to call. He had a message for CIO’s, CEO’s, COO’s, each somewhat different, however, each addressed the interests of the specific title he was calling.
Dave would regularly call his assigned Field Reps to ask them about their worst sales calls and best sales calls, each week.
He would ask them what they could have done or said, differently. He used this information to tailor his messaging and up his game.
Dave had over 5 years of Sales experience, before I hired him. He was not trained, per se, to do the above. Out of his experience and good instincts, he was able to develop a set of skills that helped him to generate extremely valuable leads for his sales team members.
Example Call between a Junior Teleprospector and a C-Level Executive
Junior Teleprospector: Hi Mike, This is Junior, with XYZ Company. Our solution enables companies like yours to reduce energy spend by 50%, year over year. Our clients include _,_ and_. The purpose of my call is to understand your needs and to determine if we might have a solution for your company.
Mike Prospect: Junior, I received your company’s email blast and I am not interested.
Junior Teleprospector: Mike, can you tell me why you are not interested?
Mike Prospect: I actually am pretty busy right now. Why don’t you send me some literature and if I think there is a need, I will give you a call.
Junior Teleprospector: Mike, sure thing. I’ll send you our brochure and if I don’t hear back from you in say 2-3 months, would it be ok to give you a call to see if your situation has changed.
Mike Prospect: Sure, that will be fine.
The call with the Junior Rep has kept this Fortune 500 Multi-National Food Manufacturing Company from being included in the sales funnel for a while, if not forever. It might take hundreds of calls, like this, before a Junior Teleprospector has enough confidence and experience to effectively manage their prospect conversations.
Although the Junior Rep call is not based on a real call, the gist of it is based on my experience with managing many Junior-Level people, at over 50 companies. A call center Manager can provide some guidance, but they can’t sit in on every call, made by every Rep in their center. And, it is illegal to record calls, in many states, now. So a lot of trial and error goes on, at your company’s expense. The end result is a frustrated sales team, a sales funnel that is full of junk or no sales funnel at all. In short, a lot of frustration and missed opportunities happen when junior level people do prospecting.
How to Make Teleprospecting the Best Part of your Sales Organization
Give the role a different title.
There is something negative about Titles that start with Tele (Telly). Many of the Sales VP’s that I have worked with said Tele-Marketing or Tele-prospecting in a very disparaging way. Just because the meetings are via the telephone (Telly-Phone) it doesn’t follow that these meetings are not important. Like I said earlier, the first contact with your prospect is often via the phone and could be very important to your company. Change the title to Corporate Sales Rep, New Business Development Rep, Funnel Development Rep, Pipeline Builder or Sr. Hunter, for example. A title, such as these, will immediately elevate the position and credibility of the team member.
Find people who have at least 5+ years of experience selling complex solutions, either over the phone or in the Field.
The bad news is that many people lost their jobs, during the great recession of 2008-2009. The good news is that these ex-Field/Inside Sales Reps want to get back to work and are happy to do prospecting. I know this because these are the types of people we hire at SOMAmetrics. It is better if your Sr. Hunters have had to carry a quota, in the past. They get the concept of a qualified lead, pipeline and revenue, while a junior person, and might not. During the interview process you can find out if the candidate likes phone work and if he/she has carried a quota. Email me at alicia@somametrics.com, if you’d like to receive my effective and proven Inside Sales/Teleprospecting interview questions.
Pay well
Highly qualified leads that are with decision makers are priceless. They increase the productivity of your Sales Reps and build pipeline faster and more efficiently than leads from lower level titles. In the long run, if you hire skilled Sr. Hunters, you will increase the quality of your leads and the productivity of your sales team. Every company, I know, wants a productive sales team.
Keep hours flexible.
While it is important for your Sr. Hunters to meet their metrics, let them work a more flexible schedule. C-Level Execs are available in the early AM or later PM. As long as your Sr. Hunters are meeting their daily/weekly/monthly metrics, they don’t need to start at the same time, each day (7-4 or 8-5, for example). They may want to start as early at 5 AM, one day (especially if they reside in Western States) or come in as late as 10 AM and stay until 7 PM, for example.
In short, treat this position as you treat your Field or Inside Sales Teams; as very important contributing members of the sales team. Hire people with experience and pay well. You will reap the benefit of their experience and ability to uncover real need from real decision makers. Your pipeline will build faster and your close ratios will improve. All good!
I have personally implemented over 50 Inside Sales and Teleprospecting organizations at technology companies. Please email me alicia@somametrics.com, if you want my advice or assistance with your Teleprospecting teams.
Why do people work? Do people work only to earn money, pay bills, and live in some comfort? Or might they also work for a more inherent reason?
We all need money to live in comfort and to support our families. However, I believe that most human beings thrive in environments that provide recognition for their accomplishments. While you can assist your roommates or family members at home, whether or not they will notice and appreciate your efforts is often a crapshoot.
On the other hand, I believe that a place in which we can be recognized consistently is at work. When we are at work, we are measured for our contributions toward revenue growth, or for our efforts that increase net profits. Revenue growth and net profits can be measured, and their increases are easy to appreciate because increases in these areas impress investors.
It is important that all individual employees be given a set of metrics or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that they can be measured on. If everyone is held accountable for their jobs and measured accordingly, they have a framework by which they can be recognized.
Once you have created the metrics and KPIs, you have the framework to build a consistent recognition process for every contributing member of the company which can be implemented across the organization. As I mentioned earlier, I believe that people thrive on recognition. To help your employees thrive, your company should consider building a continuous recognition program.
A continuous recognition program may recognize those individuals who consistently meet their objectives. This is an easy place to start. To get your entire organization to flourish, however, your company might consider recognizing employees who have made incremental improvements. You may want to recognize people who contribute to the greater community, for example. The continuous recognition program can be run as often as you’d like — monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, etc.
Give Managers the opportunity to do “spot” recognition, on the fly and in front of their teams. This type of recognition will prevent complacency. Imagine how you might feel if, out-of-the-blue, your manager recognized you and gave you the rest of the day off because of your contribution to the company.
The method of recognition can take many forms. As a company, decide if you will give days off, gift cards, cash, etc. However, don’t let these be the only forms used for recognizing your team members. A nice letter, on company letterhead, or a note of thanks can go a long way in motivating your team and building a “thriving” organizational culture.
Once you design a continuous recognition program and implement it, you will watch your team members and organization prosper
Why is the Telemarketing Infrastructure So Important?
I have written a few blogs on the topic of the lead qualification process, however, I continue to find prospects without a clue as to the meaning of a lead qualification process or how to start begin the process.
Here are a few “Best Practice” tips that I share with all of our clients. Numbers matter and to ensure that your company’s telemarketing is a success, the infrastructure needs to be in place to track the call activity and the progress of each lead. Without this information, you won’t have the data to track the success of the Telemarketing team. A successful Telemarketing organization is focused on generating qualified leads that build the sales funnel. Without a pre-defined process, your team may not be successful.
Best Practices
Start by Mapping Your Lead Process into your CRM Your lead qualification process includes the questions that will help sales to move the sales process forward. Most companies understand the basic qualifiers, such as:
Need– Prospect has a need for your solution or service
Authority– You uncover the person or people who can make a purchase decision
Budget– Prospect has assigned a budget for the solution or can set aside funds for
the right solution or service
Timeframe– The prospect can make a purchase decision within a reasonable timeframe, for example, in under 6 months
These are generic qualifiers and from my perspective don’t really add value to the quality of the lead. A lead that is highly qualified will have additional qualifiers that support your business. These are the questions that provide intelligence that helps marketing build better campaigns and give sales a great overview of the prospect so that they are better prepared for their first prospect call.
Build a list of qualifying questions that are specific to your business and map these intoyour CRM. Ensure that your Telemarketing team understands the value of this information and make sure that they ask these important questions.
Implement a Lead Approval Workflow
All leads aren’t created equal. Some leads will need further development or may need to go into a nurture program. Therefore, it is important to have a process where every lead can be reviewed and assessed before they become sales opportunities.
Build a lead approval workflow that enables your Telemarketing Manager to review the leads and pass on to Sales for final approval. In addition, the approval process should give Sales an opportunity to validate the lead and approve or reject the lead, before it moves to the sales funnel.
Create a field that captures the “rejection” reasons, so that your Telemarketing team can understand why their leads are being rejected. You can use this information to train your team and help them to improve their qualification skills.
Create Dashboards to Manage by the Metrics
Build dashboards to monitor the Key Performance Indicators or Metrics that are important to your business. These dashboards should include call activity and other sales related activity levels, campaign results and pipeline growth. Dashboards will enable you to keep a pulse on your business.
Build the Infrastructure
Implementing these basic “best practices” will save your company a lot of grief. You will capture intelligence that can help your marketing department improve its campaigns. Sales will love your Telemarketers, because they will receive excellent leads from the team. The review and approval process will ensure the quality of each lead passed to sales.
The question that Whitney Houston asked in her hit song “How Will I Know” is often asked by Telemarketing Managers. Of course they ask, “How will I know if Sales really loves us?” Here are a few best practices that will make your Telemarketing team loveable, for years to come.
First, make sure that you have a well-defined lead qualification process. Get buy-in from all stakeholders including Marketing, Sales and Product Marketing. Once you have determined the lead qualification process, map this process into your sales automation application. Ensure that the mapping includes workflows that enable approval for leads before they get turned over, officially, to sales. (Check out the SOMAmetrics blog “CRM: Is Your Lead Process Mapped”, to get more details).
Now that you have the infrastructure in place to manage the flow and qualification of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) to Sales Qualified Leads, you are ready for the next step. Here’s the secret sauce that will get your Telemarketing team rave reviews. Your leads need to contribute 3X or more to the sales funnel and contribute a minimum of 50% of the revenue.
Below are the best practices that I have implemented to support these outcomes:
-Pay a bonus for every SQL that is approved by Sales. The bonus amount should be commensurate with the complexity of the solution and the Key contact required for a qualified lead. For example, if your solution is a high priced IT Infrastructure Solution and VP’s and C-Level contacts are required to consider the SQL as “qualified” you may need to pay a handsome bonus to keep your Telemarketers motivated.
-Assign an SQL-to-Sales Funnel Quota for each Telemarketing Rep. For example, if your Telemarketers are supporting 2 Sales Reps (a ratio of not more than 1 Telemarketer to 2 Sales Reps, is highly recommended) and each Sales Rep has a quota of $1M, the Telemarketing Reps Sales Funnel Quota is $6M. Pay a bonus for pre-determined increments of this quota.
-Make sure that Fifty percent (50%) or more, of closed deals, come from SQLs that were generated by Telemarketing. Therefore, using the example above, the Telemarketer should have an SQL-to-Revenue Quota of $1M. The SQL-to-Revenue bonus should be the largest component of the Telemarketing Reps variable compensation.
Telemarketing Managers should be compensated in a similar fashion. If everyone on the team is accountable for highly qualified leads, the Sales Funnel and Revenue, your Telemarketing team will be in complete alignment with the Sales team. Sales will really love you if Telemarketing focuses on what they focus on: sales funnel growth and revenue.
A common mistake companies make, which I have seen often, is their focus on the tail end of the Revenue Realization Cycle (RRC) such as closing ratios, sales cycles, and forecasting what will close this quarter, while neglecting to track and measure all the upfront work that needs to be done prior to these stages. Champion boxers say that the fight is won in the gym, not in the ring. This means that if they adequately prepare for a fight and are in great shape, they have the best possible chance of winning the fight.
In the same way, companies that measure only the tail-end of the RRC are basically entering the ring unprepared and expecting to win the fight, by just trying hard. Unless they have very short sales cycles (less than 1-2 weeks), their ability to impact the current quarter’s outcome is minimal.
For companies that have sales cycles longer than 30 days, the battle to achieve quarterly revenue targets actually started the previous quarter. If they didn’t start last quarter, they most likely will lose the battle this quarter.
If you don’t know your Funnel Math (how many impressions you need to generate qualified leads that result in your quarterly revenue targets—as well as how long it takes to do these), you don’t know what to measure to support revenue objectives.
DEMAND GENERATION
How many impressions (touches, including number of emails, direct mail, ads, etc.) will it take to get to the optimal number of raw leads to get to the right number of warm leads to hit your revenue target? Once you know the number of impressions required, you will need to understand the conversion ratio of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). Are your MQL-to-SQL ratios 10%, 5% or less? Knowing these numbers are essential elements for creating successful demand generation campaigns and building an SQL funnel or pipeline.
SQL FUNNEL
How many dials, on average, does it take to get a conversation with a decision maker? Who cares? At the end of the day, if your Teleprospecting team isn’t having daily conversations with decision makers, you aren’t going to build a sales pipeline or generate revenue. There are tools out there that track phone connects or enable your Teleprospecting team to “log a call”. In general, these tools are good and can support the day-to-day management of your Teleprospecting team. Your team must make a minimum number of daily dials to reach decision makers. However, we recommend that you focus on the number of conversations that Teleprospectors have with decision makers, each day, because conversations with decision makers move the sales process forward. Call logging tools don’t track that kind of data. You will need to build this process into your CRM. It keeps Teleprospectors on their game and gives managers insight into the activities that matter.
MQLs take time to be nurtured and developed before they become SQL’s. Therefore, you’ll need to build an SQL pipeline to support the Sales pipeline. Most companies have no concept of an SQL pipeline, which is usually 4 times the SQL quota (25% of SQLs convert to sales pipeline. You’ll need MQLs and callers to build an SQL pipeline. These are the front-end Revenue Realization Cycle numbers you will need to track, measure, and know very well.
Make sure that you have an SQL quota for each Teleprospector and track the SQL funnel, regularly. Track your SQLs through the sales funnel to get an accurate picture of your SQL-to-Closed Deal ratios. Knowing these RRC numbers will help you meet revenue targets.
If you are planning to build a Teleprospecting organization, to qualify leads, there are a few items that need to be in place, before you get started. First, make sure that you have a flexible and easy to customize CRM that will support the daily activities of your Telemarketing team. The CRM should allow the easy build of management reports and dashboards, so that you can manage your team by the key metrics that ensure success.
Next, work with Marketing and Sales to design an effective lead qualification process. At a minimum, an effective Lead Qualification Process should include the following:
Qualification questions or the key questions that are used to qualify prospects
The disposition of each lead, as the qualification process progresses
Lead touch rules that monitor the number of times a lead is touched before it
is abandoned or sent back to a “nurture” program
Next step details that outline what needs to happen to fully qualify the lead
to make it “sales” ready
A quality control process that enables sales management to review the
quality of each lead to ensure that they are quality leads
Qualification Questions
The lead qualification process starts with the questions that the Teleprospectors will need to ask to uncover need and interest in your solution. The right questions will uncover:
Need: Does the prospect have a need for your
product or solution?
Authority: Is this particular prospect the person
who can make a purchase decision?
Decision Maker: What is the name and title of the person
who can make the purchase decision?
Budget: Does this prospect have money to make a
purchase or CAN they secure the funds to make a purchase?
Timeframe: When is the prospect planning to solve
their problem and purchase a solution or product like yours?
Decision Process: How will the decision be made? Will there be an evaluation committee or
will some other process be used to make a decision?
Understanding of Solution: Does the prospect understand the problem/issue your solution or product
resolves?
Next Step: If the prospect is interested in your solution, what is the next step to move the lead from an MQL to an SQL?
Determine the minimum number of completed questions you require to meet the expectations of your Sales team. It is highly unlikely that your team will get all of the key qualification questions answered every time. Decide on the minimum amount of information you
need to give a lead a “B” rating. If a lead has fewer than the minimum, the lead is still a work in progress and should stay in the Teleprospectors pipeline until the minimum standards have been met.
Lead Disposition
The Lead Disposition is the label you assign to leads as they go through the qualification process. The dispositions help Sales
Management to quickly identify the progress of each lead, if a Teleprospector is having trouble qualifying leads and to zero in on leads that are ready to go to Sales. Here are a few of our favorite Lead Dispositions:
Untouched: This disposition tells the Teleprospector that this is an MQL that has never been contacted. This disposition helps Managers to see if the team has enough new MQL’s to contact. It can also help a Manager determine if MQL’s
are being called in a timely manner.
Pursuing: When an MQL is in the pursuing disposition, it means that the MQL has been called, however, no contact
has been made with this prospect.
Contacted: Once a call has occurred and contact has
been made with the prospect, MQL’s can be moved to the disposition “contacted”.
Key Conversation: Not all connects are created equal. If important information or Key
information was gathered during a connected call, this should be listed in the disposition. Managers should report on this important disposition, during their meeting with Sales. Key conversations are the conversations that move the sales process forward. If Teleprospectors aren’t having a number of Key conversations, each week, there may be something wrong. This disposition enables the Manager to identify problems with the MQL’s, target list or Teleprospecting skills.
Potential SQL: A potential SQL is a lead that has a definite interest and need. The Teleprospector
may need to gather more information to turn this lead into an SQL; however, this is a hot target. Over
time, Potential SQL’s build, creating the Teleprospecting pipeline. Managers keep track of these leads
because these leads are likely to become SQL’s fairly soon.
SQL: SQL’s are ready for the Sales organization. They have the information required to make a highly qualified lead.
They are the leads that will go into the Sales Funnel.
Bad Data: You can try your best to get leads with the most accurate information. Sometimes, prospects leave their positions and move to another company. Sometimes prospects give false information on registration pages. Sometimes the data is incorrect and you may not know why. It doesn’t matter. If the data is bad, the Teleprospector won’t be able to reach the prospect. Take the lead out of the leads area of the CRM and have someone work on the lead to get better data.
Unable to Reach: If the Teleprospector has reached the limit on the touch rules and has had no response from the prospect then
the lead disposition becomes “unable to reach”. Your CRM administrator should take these leads out of the leads area and put the lead into a nurture program.
These dispositions will help your Teleprospectors to effectively manage their call activity and enable the Manager to track lead
progress and identify issues quickly. These dispositions will enable Marketing to get a pulse on the success of their campaigns and the quality of the MQL’s that they are creating for the Teleprospecting team.
Touch Rules
Part of the lead qualification process is determining the number of times a lead will be touched before it is abandoned or put into a
lead-nurture program. You don’t want your prospects to feel as if they are being “stalked” by your Teleprospecting
team. Keep the rules simple, which will enable compliance. Here are my touch rules:
First call: Touch #1. Leave a voicemail and send an email. Wait 2-3 days before you make another call attempt.
Second Call: Touch #2. Move on. Wait 2-3 days before your next call.
Third Call: Touch #3. Send an email. Wait a week before you make another call.
Fourth Call: Touch #4. Leave a voicemail. Wait a week before you make another call.
Fifth Call: Touch #5. Move on.
Email: Touch #6. Send an email stating that if the prospect has a need that they should call the Teleprospector
back, at their convenience.
After Touch #6: Change the disposition to “Unable to Reach” and put prospect into a nurture program.
Your business may require different touch rules. What we have found, working with over 100 Software companies, is that if a prospect doesn’t return calls or reply by email after 6 touches, they usually aren’t interested. They may have interest, in the future and may respond at some point in the nurture process.
Next Step Details
In our experience, a Teleprospector will touch a prospect 3 to 4 times before they get all of the information they will need to turn an MQL
into a viable SQL. After each good connection with a prospect, information is acquired and the Next Step details should be updated. The Next Step field details the requirements to move the sales process forward. For example, a next step might be to provide the prospect a private web demo. The Next Step is not just a callback. It is an action that moves the sales process forward.
QA SQL’s
Once a lead is qualified, fully, the disposition becomes “SQL”. Before the SQL is passed to Sales, the Manager should review and approve the SQL, to ensure that the SQL meets the minimum qualification criteria. CRM’s, such as Salesforce.com, provide workflows that can trigger an action, such as when a Potential SQL moves to an SQL. We have set up workflows for our clients that trigger an email to the Manager, who takes the action of reviewing the lead before it is converted to an opportunity for Sales. Once Sales has reviewed and contacted the lead, Sales should “Approve” or “Reject” the lead, before it is converted to an opportunity. The QA process enables the Manager to keep close tabs on quality and provides the team instant feedback, as Sales reviews and processes leads. If more than, say 10% of the SQL’s are rejected by Sales, there may be a problem. This process ensures quality leads and instant feedback for the Teleprospecting team.
Define the Qualification Process Before You Hire
You will save a lot of time and frustration if you develop the Teleprospecting infrastructure, before you hire your first Teleprospectors. Make sure that you:
Select a CRM that effectively supports a Telemarketing
team
Design a leads process that has buy-in from both
Sales and Marketing
Map your leads process into your CRM to track
the status of each lead
Build a QA and Lead Hand-Off process into the
CRM to ensure lead quality
Take the time to define the lead qualification process to ensure success from the start. It will be well worth your time.
About SOMAmetrics
SOMAmetrics enables clients to revitalize their Sales and
Marketing organizations, so that they meet and exceed their revenue objectives
each and every quarter.
If you aren’t reviewing your CRM structure at least twice a year, it is likely outdated for your current needs—not to mention future ones.
Almost every one of the 100 plus Software and SaaS companies that we have worked with over the past 20 years had some sort of sales automation tool which they used to manage their sales operation. Most of these companies used their CRM to track sales activities and to manage their sales funnel. Some use their CRM more intensively and at the cutting edge, while many use the CRM out of the box and just scratch the surface of the power of their CRM.
Most CRM’s out of the box are designed to be flexible, powerful and extensible—which means you won’t get much out of them unless you customize them extensively and adapt them to your needs. One critical omission, we found with many of our clients, is that they hadn’t mapped their lead qualification process into the CRM. Most often, it was because they didn’t have a well-thought-out lead qualification process, to begin with. While other times, if they had a defined lead qualification process, they hadn’t thought to map this process into their CRM.
At a minimum, an effective Lead Qualification Process should include the following:
The key questions that are used to qualify prospects
The disposition of each lead, as the qualification process progresses
The number of times a lead is touched before it is abandoned or sent back to a “nurture” program
Next step details that outline what needs to happen to fully qualify the lead to make it “sales” ready
A quality control process that enables sales management to review the quality of each lead to ensure that they are quality leads
Lead Qualification Process
You’ve done your Four Funnel™ Math and know how many impressions (the number of times you touch your target prospects utilizing a pre-determined marketing-mix, which can include email campaigns, social media programs, webinars, content placement, tradeshows, etc.) you need to generate the right number of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL’s) for your Teleprospecting team. Once you know the number of MQL’s required to support your Teleprospecting team, you are ready to create the process that your Teleprospecting team will utilize to generate Sales Qualified Leads (SQL’s) that will build the required pipeline to support your revenue objectives.
What Are Qualification Questions?
The lead qualification process starts with the questions that the Teleprospectors will need to ask to uncover need and interest in your solution. The right questions will uncover:
Need: Does the prospect have a need for your product or solution?
Authority: Is this particular prospect the person who can make a purchase decision?
Decision Maker: What is the name and title of the person who can make the purchase decision?
Budget: Does this prospect have money to make a purchase or CAN they secure the funds to make a purchase?
Timeframe: When is the prospect planning to solve their problem and purchase a solution or product like yours?
Decision Process: How will the decision be made? Will there be an evaluation committee or will some other process be used to make a decision?
Understanding of Solution: Does the prospect understand the problem/issue your solution or product resolves?
Next Step: If the prospect is interested in your solution, what is the next step to move the lead from an MQL to an SQL?
If your Teleprospectors gets the answers to all or the majority of these questions, you have a solid, highly qualified SQL for your Sales Team. If you agree with that statement, the next question is: Wouldn’t it be good to capture this data in a format that will allow you to run reports and track the answers? We believe the answer is “Yes!”
However, most of the clients that we have worked with didn’t capture this information in their CRM. These clients didn’t have fields in the CRM that captured the qualifying questions or the answers. They forced their Teleprospectors to put the answers to these questions in the “Notes” field in their CRM.
Not everyone is good at taking notes. Not all notes are created equally and not all notes fields allow enough characters to adequately capture the information that we listed above. Notes are difficult to read and it is nearly impossible to report on data in the notes field. If you are forcing your Teleprospecting team to put this important information into the notes field you are missing out on gathering extremely valuable intelligence that your prospects are telling you. You are missing important intelligence that could help Marketing build better demand generation programs and to improve marketing strategy or messaging.
It is an execution mistake that will keep your Teleprospectors from generating highly qualified Sales Qualified Leads (SQL’s). Our advice is—collect quantifiable data (as captured by checkboxes and dropdowns, for example) when you can and augment with notes fields.
Otherwise, you are likely to be wasting money with a Teleprospecting operation that cannot provide you the actionable intelligence you need to improve sales.
About SOMAmetrics
SOMAmetrics enables clients to revitalize their Sales and
Marketing organizations, so that they meet and exceed their revenue objectives
each and every quarter.
Over the past ten years, we have worked on a variety of
Salesforce.com CRM implementation projects including: new implementation;
significant upgrades and optimization projects; data cleansing and migrations;
and integrations with other cloud-based tools.
We have assembled a team of experts ranging from marketing
and sales consultants, to business analysts and programmers to assist with Salesforce.com
or other CRM implementation project.
Contact us today to find out more of how we can help you
meet and exceed your revenue objectives quarter after quarter.
