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Sales Strategy

How to drive Predictable Revenue growth with a Radical Sales Pipeline Strategy

SOMAmetrics sales pipeline strategy

One of the first things we look at when working with a new client is their sales pipeline strategy. And, we are often surprised at how inadequate their sales pipeline strategy is. All the more surprising because these are typically highly experienced sales leaders. Don’t get me wrong—their sales strategies are detailed, well-thought-out, and comprehensive. They have worked out their sales targets, territories, and have fielded each territory with experienced sales pros.

And yet, when it comes to their sales pipeline development, their plans seem inadequate. Sales pipeline strategy is critical because as the sales pipeline goes, so do sales. The whole predictability of revenue growth depends on the predictability of sales pipeline. After all, it’s the foundation on which sales is built.

In fact, the most cost-effective way to realize sales targets is to invest in sales pipeline development. It is the surest way to see high ROI on the investment made in the sales organization.

In this article, we will cover the most important building blocks of a sales pipeline strategy. Our experience is that clients who follow this approach generate the quality sales pipeline they need to deliver predictable revenue growth.

The Building Blocks of an Effective Sales Pipeline Strategy

Start Right: Invert Your Funnel

Step 1: re-orient your mental funnel concept. The traditional concept of a funnel was based on how one pours liquid into a narrow necked bottle (fig 1-A). The top of the funnel is wide, and it tapers into a narrow bottom. In this case, gravity would aid us in getting the fluid into the bottle.

However, as every sales leader knows, there is no such aid from gravity when it comes to sales. In fact, Marketing, Prospecting, and Sales teams all face tremendous resistance from prospects. 

A more intellectually honest mental construct would be an inverted funnel (fig. 1-B). This more realistically shows the effort required to engage over-messaged prospects and overcome their deep skepticism. In truth, we are dragging prospects up against inertia and risk-averseness. Let’s start by being clear on what we are up against. 

Another way to look at this is that you want sales to go up, not down.

Build a More Segmented Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

The Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is the first point of alignment for Marketing, Prospecting, and Sales to ensure they are engaging the same audience with the same message. Yes, the engagement happens on different platforms/media at different times. And yes, the messaging itself is varied so as not to bore the prospect to death. But it must be aligned and consistent across all three teams.

Which means that if you find it necessary to use different sales teams, you should focus each team on a specific ICP. Let’s say you sell regulatory compliance solutions (reg-tech) to consumer lenders. At the top tier, you sell to global lenders such as Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, HSBC, etc through your enterprise sales reps. At the middle tier, you sell to regional (multi-state) lenders using your account execs, and to the local community banks and credit unions, you sell through your junior reps.

These must be defined as three separate ICPs, with detailed descriptions of the account (company) as well as the personas (decision makers) to be engaged. And each sales tier should be extremely knowledgeable of their market space and their targeted personas.

This is foundational to building an effective sales pipeline strategy.

Define Average Deal Size (ADS) Separately for each ICP

Depending on whom one asks, the question “What is your average deal size?” seems to elicit different answers. For instance, we may ask someone in marketing and hear, “Our ADS is around $60,000”. Then we talk to a sales rep and he says he is looking at deal sizes between $250K and $500K. That is too wide a range to reconcile.

What that tells us is that those in marketing may be literally averaging across multiple tiers of customers, leading to messaging that is overly diluted.

 If you have multiple sales tiers, and you have defined multiple ICPs, you should arrive at a specific ADS for each ICP.

Measure your Average Closing Ratio Separately for each Sales Team

Similarly, measure the average closing ratio of each sales team separately. 

As it is very likely that your most experienced sales reps sell at the top end, you will likely see better closing ratios (25%-35%) there. Conversely, those selling the smaller ticket items to smaller customers may be more junior, and consequently show a much lower closing average (perhaps as low as 10-15%).

It would be just as bad a mistake to take the averages of these closing ratios as it would be to use an average ADS across all tiers.

Build your Sales Funnel Math Separately for Each Sales Tier

Armed with a well-defined ICP, ADS, and closing ratios, it is now possible to build a highly effective sales pipeline strategy for each tier.

The chart above shows the SOMAmetrics approach to funnel math. Here is a quick example:

  • Average deal size $100,000
  • Average closing ratio = 25%
  • Incremental revenue target for this tier = $10 million.
  • This means, on average,  we need 100 closed deals to reach our sales target.
  • Which means that, at the 25% average closing ratio, we need 400 sales qualified opportunities (SQOs).
  • If our SQO to SQL (sales qualified lead) ratio is 80%—which, by the way is pretty good—then we need about 500 SQLs from the prospecting/marketing teams.
  • If it takes on average three quality conversations (QC) to set a qualified meeting (SQL), then we will need about 1500 QCs to meet our Incremental revenue target, and so on.

Remember that these are cumulative numbers. Someone who wasn’t reachable last quarter, maybe reachable now. Someone who wasn’t interested 4 months ago, maybe interested now, and so on. Therefore, It is not necessary to have very large numbers at the bottom of the funnel stack. What is more important is the quality.

If the ICP is well-thought out and your value prop is compelling, then sooner or later, many in the ICP will be interested at least to explore your solution (pipeline development).

You will find a much more in-depth and thorough discussion on the best practices in prospecting at the high level in the seminal book, “The Radical Pipeline Strategy: How to Grow Pipeline and Revenue by Optimizing Sales Development”.

Integrate into One Cohesive Plan

Let’s assume that what we worked on in the previous section was for your middle sales tier. You would do the same for your top and bottom sales tiers. Once you have separately built your funnel math, and you have the separate numbers, then you can integrate them to arrive at your holistic revenue plan.

Taking a somewhat simplistic example, let’s say your overall incremental revenue target was $25 million. You think you can get $10 million at the top; $10 million at the middle; and $5 million at the bottom sales tier. You would build each funnel separately to support your target for that funnel. 

SIP: The Solution for Executing your Sales Pipeline Strategy

So far, we discussed in some detail the building blocks of an effective sales pipeline strategy. Next we will see the building blocks of a highly effective solution for building a high quality sales pipeline.

For this discussion, we will focus solely on the the prospecting (SDR/BDR) team for two important reasons:

  1. While there are numerous high quality tools for aiding the work of marketers and sales professionals, that doesn’t seem to be the case for those tasked with prospecting.
  2. Companies make lots of investments on marketing and sales. However, if an adequate amount of quality pipeline doesn’t materialize, then all that was accomplished was to increase costs.

Yes, there are a number of tools that boost the efficiency of Sales Development Reps (SDRs). With these tools, SDRs can easily make 100 dials a day.  However, we haven’t seen tools that boost the effectiveness of SDRs—their ability to engage high-level decision makers and book qualified meetings.

Therefore, we would like to recommend a tool that significantly improves the effectiveness of SDRs, enabling them to build high quality sales pipelines, cost-effectively. We call this solution SIP (SOMAmetrics Intelligent Prospecting). The key components are listed below.

GOSPA Manager

Now that you have developed your specific sales pipeline strategies for each sales tier, you are ready to execute.

Going back to our earlier reg-tech example, let’s say you have two SDR teams:

  1. The more senior SDR team prospects for the enterprise sales team
  2. The junior SDR team prospects for the regional accounts sales team

Let’s say you have one manager for each team.

You give each SDR manager his/her numbers—their incremental pipeline amount and average deal size. From these, they can figure out their quarterly targets including the quarterly number of meetings needed.

They then divide the overall number by the number of SDRs on their team to arrive at each SDR’s quarterly target.

This is where GOSPA comes in. GOSPA stands for Goals, Objectives, Strategies, Plan, and Activities. It is a proven model for aligning the needs and wants of the individual SDR with that of the company. By the way, it’s a good idea for the SDR manager to also build his/her GOSPA as well.

Each SDR will build his or her own GOSPA–how they plan to hit their numbers. They will submit their GOSPA to their manager, who will review with them and make suggestions as needed. SDRs have to hit their assigned numbers, but they can commit to a higher number if they wish to make more money.

Now that each SDR has both the assigned and committed numbers, he/she can set these as targets and work towards hitting them.

We have found that when SDR teams use GOSPA, the average quota attainment rate increases by as much as 40% or more. Here is an article that discusses GOSPAs and how to use them.

ICP Briefs

Think of your most experienced sales reps or SDRs. What makes them good at what they do is that they know their prospects very well. They know the industry or market space. They know what that prospect does–what her responsibilities, headaches, priorities, and goals are. 

Which means they know how to talk the prospect’s language. As a result, they don’t waste their prospect’s time. Which is why they tend to sooner or later catch their prospects, and why prospects agree to talk to them when they connect.

Now, what if all your SDRs were like that? By how much could your sales pipeline grow? And how much would that increase your sales?

Sure, training is important. But the data shows that people tend to forget what they have learned unless they apply it immediately and consistently. However, today’s environment is different. It takes a lot of effort to reach a high-level decision maker. New or junior SDRs don’t get a lot of chances to practice what they were taught. Which increases their likelihood of forgetting much of what they were trained on.

A better approach is to give them briefs—on the industry, personas, and competitors. These briefs are short but powerful. They show them only what they need to know. They point out the trends and challenges in that space. They illuminate how their prospects think, what their priorities are—how to talk to them.

Best of all, these briefs are always there for the SDRs to take a quick glance as a refresher. Unlike training which is an event that occurs at a specific time, and then is over, these briefs are always available to the SDRs.

Prospect Engagement Tools

Depending on the industry and personas you target, it could take twenty (20) or more touches before your SDRs connect with the right person. That’s dials, voicemails, emails, and LinkedIn messages.

The more compelling the emails, voicemails, and LinkedIn messages, the higher the connect rate. Prospects become intrigued and more willing to take a call. 

If you agree with this logic, then you don’t want your SDRs writing their own emails—especially your junior SDRs. What we have seen happen too often is junior SDRs Googling to find templates, make small changes, and send these off. Templates by nature are generic, which is the opposite of compelling.

Get these emails, voicemails, and LinkedIn messages professional crafted. It’s well worth the small additional cost.

Call Navigator

After making hundreds of dials with the help of a power dialer, your junior SDR is finally talking to the COO of a bank. Now what? How does he open the call? How does he intrigue the COO to want to hear more? How does he qualify to make sure there is need?

And having done all that, how does he get a meeting?

One thing you and I know is that the qualifying questions your SDR asks are in themselves telling. Prospects know by the questions they are getting whether they are talking to someone who will waste their time or not. 

What if the SDR got some simple objection such as “I don’t have time right now” or “Why don’t you send me some information I can take a look at?” What if the prospect asks how much it costs? How does your SDR neatly navigate these, finish qualifying, and get the meeting?

As the name implies, a Call Navigator walks your SDR through the prospecting call. How to open it, what example stories to tell, how to handle objections and questions, and more.

Campaign Manager

Marketing teams spend a lot of money on multiple lead generation campaigns every year. Some are event-based such as conferences or webinars. Others may be promotional such as ads. SDRs play pivotal roles in the achievement of campaign objectives. 

For instance, if you are sponsoring an expensive conference, you want to drive as many prospects to your booth as possible. Making sure your SDRs are well aware of the campaign, remember to mention it, and know what to say can make or break the campaign ROI.

A Campaign Manager ensures that a specific campaign relevant to the ICP that the SDR is calling into is front and center on that SDR’s view. It constantly reminds the SDR to be sure to invite the prospect before ending the call.

In Conclusion

At SOMAmetrics, this is how we help our clients build their sales pipeline strategy, and then provide them with the solution they need to effectively execute their strategies.

Clients who use the SOMAmetrics Intelligent Prospecting Solution (SIP) see as much as 50% increase in sales pipeline development within 90 days.

Let’s schedule a quick call to discuss your needs and how we may be able to help you.

Sales Engagement Platforms: The Wild, Hungry Beasts!

Sales Engagement Platforms (SEPs), such as outreach.io; frontspin.com; groove.co; to name a few, enables your SDR and Sales Teams to track and personalize the steps in a buyer’s journey. They automate menial tasks, ensuring that prospects are “touched” in a regular cadence until the sales cycle, or “sequence”, has ended. When used effectively, SEPs allow your Sales and SDR teams to spend more time generating revenue in an extremely efficient manner.

Sales Engagement Platforms are a much needed solution to save time in the Sales tech stack. Nonetheless, they are difficult to maintain and manage. I’ve implemented these solutions at numerous companies. Our customers believed that once the implementation was completed, the SEP would manage itself. However, this is not the case. SEPs are like wild, hungry beasts: they require constant care and feeding to remain manageable. If left in the hands of your Sales or SDR teams, it will be difficult to determine if your sequences, cadences, and content are effective.

The Problem with Sales Engagement Platforms

When companies implement SEPs, they feel confident that this new solution will help them reach more people faster, and in a more personalized manner. SEP’s provide great stats on open rates, and provide dashboards so that the team can see what to do and who to contact next. Great news!

Here is the problem: companies fail to understand that their SEP is only as good as the latest content that has been added to the SEP library. Consider these points:

1. Recycling emails and content will not garner the customer engagements you are seeking.

Every sequence has a life span, let’s say 10 weeks. Once the sequence is completed, you can create another sequence for the customers who didn’t engage with you. Every customer interaction should be of value to your customer. Thus, reusing the content from the first sequence may not work; the customers who didn’t engage haven’t seen your value, yet. Provide updated content which will make you the thought leader, and provide valuable insights for customer success. Emails, blogs, infographics, videos, and social media should be refreshed every month or—at the very least—every quarter. Assign someone in your organization to create and update content regularly.

2. “Snippets” must be valuable content.

I often get emails that start with, “Hey Alicia, did you receive my last email?”, or, “Following-up on My Last Email”, which I delete before opening. If I don’t know “immediately” who the sender is, their value prop, and what they want, why should I waste my time wading through a string of emails to determine their value to me? Provide content that is of value to customers across multiple platforms and your response rates will improve. (Hint: Every company that has a SEP uses these generic snippets. Consider this: hundreds of these snippets are going to customers every day. If everyone is doing this, your emails will fade into the background and your sales engagement tools will go suffer).

3. Sales Engagement Software provides team members a fast and easy way to message to customers.

However, this feature may not be helpful. SDR’s and Sales Reps are not necessarily the best writers when it comes to conveying your message. Your team members may or may not understand your message and value-prop, or they may not consistently express the benefits of your solution. To remedy this, task a company writer to write these personalized emails with the plan to refresh every month or so.

4. CRMs have an Administrator and SEPs should have one too.

To get the highest value out of your SEP,  give someone (not a SDR, Sales Manager or Sales Rep) in marketing operations or sales enablement the job of:

  • Managing the SEP solution
  • Creating the sequences
  • Updating and refreshing the content library
  • Tracking the data of the content, sequences, cadences
  • Creating nurture sequences
  • Reporting results to the management team

Make no mistake about it: this is a full time job. If you don’t plan to centralize the management and feeding of a SEP, don’t purchase one.

How Sales Engagement Platforms Will Drive Revenue

The Sales Engagement Platform is a wonderful tool which, when used correctly, can help you increase customer engagement and grow your revenue. When this sales technology is not managed consistently—for example, with refreshed materials and sequences, or if Sales Reps and SDRs are expected to write content to deliver your messaging—you may find that you have wasted a lot of money on a solution that becomes unwieldy over time. Remember, managing your SEP is a full-time job. If you want to increase customer engagement, invest in a full-time team member to manage it.

Read the book The Radical Pipeline Strategy: How to Grow Pipeline and Revenue by Optimizing Sales Development. This book outlines tested best practices and implementation strategies that I developed while rebooting and building 65 SDR and Inside Sales organizations.

Schedule a Meeting with Alicia

Find out more about SOMAmetrics’ Intelligent Prospecting Platform and get free resources on our website at www.somametrics.com.

Prospects are Real People Too: Using Prospect Personas to Land Calls
Use Task Force Teams to End the Great Reshuffle
How Difficult Is It to Generate a Meeting? Common Misuses of SDR Teams in Appointment Setting

5 Reasons Why Your Sales Development Team Is Failing

Sales Development

Ten years ago, I wrote a book titled, “Teleprospecting for Executives Who Sell Complex Solutions”, a workbook to help executives understand how to properly run a Sales Development operation in a B2B setting.

I recently reviewed my book to see what had changed, expecting to make massive changes before publishing on Amazon.

While some of the details may have changed, I was astounded to find that fundamentally not much has changed in the Sales Development world since I last wrote my book.

Today, most companies have invested in Sales Development Teams—typically referred to as Sales Development Reps (SDRs). This team is hired to generate meetings for their sales team organization. The majority of these SDRs are not successful. The Sales organization doesn’t accept meetings that they generate, and the trust between the departments fades very quickly.

At the same time, SDRs feel like they have worked hard to generate these meetings. They fail to see why a sales process and strategy do not accept these hard-won meetings. Sales Reps find that marketing meetings with SDRs are shallow, don’t map to the relative customer buying journeys, and rarely include decision makers.

What Has Changed?

Ten years ago, each of my sales development representatives received around 200 solid MQL calls each month. While about half weren’t that great, the rest were good enough for the team to call in to qualify for need and pain.

Now, decision makers don’t read their emails or answer the phone unless they know the caller. This has put a huge burden on demand generation development teams to drive traffic to their websites. But these inbound leads dribble in and the numbers aren’t large enough to support an SDR team.

Therefore, to fill the gap, demand gen teams depend on content syndication to make up the difference and send these to their SDR teams to ensure that they have someone to call. News alert! Qualified leads from content syndication will only burn out your SDRs because very few out of thousands actually have a need. Most of these prospects are just doing research for personal reasons or just to keep apprised of what data tools are available, maybe for future use.

The business world has changed! It has become more difficult to engage prospects and to generate leads. This is one of the reasons why SDR teams aren’t effective. Now let’s look at other reasons.

5 Reasons Why Your Sales Development Team Is Failing

1. Inbound lead traffic is low

Demand generation teams struggle to get quality, meeting-ready leads in front of the SDR teams.

2. Companies hire junior level people to generate meetings for sales

As stated in my book over 10 years ago, it is counterintuitive to expect your least experienced people to be the first point of contact with your very special prospects (decision makers, influencers, etc.). Junior people don’t understand your prospect personas, what keeps them up at night, and how to engage them on the phone to get to their needs/pains even if the prospect doesn’t have an initiative. When a junior SDR has a call guide, they don’t have the skills to make the points on their own and to tell a story about the value prop of the solution they are calling about. They also don’t know how to pivot when the call goes off-script.

In my book, I tell a story about a senior SDR who reported to me. He had a call with a CTO at a Fortune 100 Manufacturing company. David (the Sr. SDR) had a quick meeting with me to review his sales strategy and process for the upcoming call. He had just read an article in CIO Magazine which reviewed why CIO’s/CTO’s typically last in their positions for less than 18 months. During the call, he mentioned the article when the CTO told him that he wasn’t interested. David replied, “Sure I get it. Your job isn’t to figure out how to lower your energy spend. I just read an article that discussed how CIOs like you only keep their jobs for 18 months, because CEOs don’t believe that they are effective. I’ll send you the article.”

It took David about 3 years of hard work and a personal drive to become a sales qualified Executive. Juniors will cost you a lot more, in the end, because they are not effective and require a lot of training.

3. Companies believe that the SDR’s job is to generate appointments

This is wrong! The job of the SDR is to build a sales pipeline and execute through sales operations. The method used to build the pipeline is by setting meetings with decision makers and/or influencers to understand the prospect’s pain and to show the prospect how their problem is bigger than the cost of the solution. Companies don’t establish that their job is pipeline development, even though that is what everyone wants…. More and better pipeline.

The best way to establish pipeline growth is with a compensation plan that includes a small part of the variable for the appointment, a bigger part for an approved SQL, and a larger part based on the amount of pipeline generated each month/quarter from these appointments. I have coached my clients to add a bonus that maps to the closed deals from these appointments. Regardless of structure, the compensation plan focuses on pipeline growth.

4. Companies don’t establish the right KPIs to track and measure SDR activities

Dials made and emails sent are good to track, however, these elements do not ensure quality meetings. There are a few key SDR statuses that I look for (the details are in my book). Meaningful Conversations or Key Conversations are calls with a decision maker or someone in the know to identify some issues/paints. Often it requires more than 1 call to get all of the details to generate a strong meeting for Sales.

However, if there is interest, the timeline is decent, and the person is the right person, then there is enough information to set the meeting and send to sales. Either way, this status needs to be tracked, among others. From my perspective, Meaningful Conversations Or Key Conversations are the SDR pipeline and they should have 2-3x their meeting quota each month.

5. The SDR process is different from a sales processes

Most companies don’t understand this and set up their CRM as a one-size-fits-all. SDRs should make a lot of calls and send many emails/day. SDR Managers need to keep track of these activities, which won’t necessarily lead to a great meeting, they are required to get meetings. As stated, there are other KPIs to track as well, to ensure that SDRs are driving to their goals.

In addition to mapping the KPIs into the CRM, key qualifiers that your team needs to gather should be in the CRM. This will ensure consistency in B2B sales, and enable the SDR Manager to track the quality of the lead/meeting before they are given to sales. As such, there should be two approved workflow processes set up to track the meeting:

  • Make sure that there is a process for the senior sales manager to approve the meeting.
  • Once the meeting is approved by the SDR manager, the workflow should move the meeting to receive the account executives’ approval after the call has happened.
  • If the Exec doesn’t approve the meeting, the lead should be pushed back to the SDR with notes of what is needed to make this a better meeting. This gives the SDR a chance to re-engage with the prospect and get more information about their inside sales.

These 5 points of failure, if fixed, will enable your SDR team to generate meetings that build an effective sales pipeline. Pipeline is King!

Read the book The Radical Pipeline Strategy: How to Grow Pipeline and Revenue by Optimizing Sales Development. This book outlines tested best practices and implementation strategies that I developed while rebooting and building 65 SDR and Inside Sales organizations.

Schedule a Meeting with Alicia
Prospects are Real People Too: Using Prospect Personas to Land Calls
Use Task Force Teams to End the Great Reshuffle
How Difficult Is It to Generate a Meeting? Common Misuses of SDR Teams in Appointment Setting

4 Sales Development Manager Oversights That Hurt SDR Teams

sales development manager

Regardless of whether the Sales Development team in your company is under Sales or Marketing, your Sales Development Manager must manage the SDR team like a Sales Manager manages her sales team.

1. SDR Team Managers need to manage by two sets of numbers

Over the years, I have learned that the job of an SDR team is not to generate meetings. It is to generate pipeline for Sales. Each Sales Development Manager (“SDR Manager”) should have a pipeline quota they must achieve. Pipeline is King! If the SDR team achieves its meeting quota but misses the pipeline quota, that is a big failure in my mind. On the other hand, if the team misses its meeting quota but hits or exceeds the pipeline quota, that is a big win.

Sales Managers need to ensure that their Sales Execs are not sand-bagging and adding deals at a lower pipeline value. This is often a bone of contention for SDR teams. Sales Development Managers must meet with Sales Leadership regularly to keep both sides honest.

2. Track the Sales Development Manager’s time over 5 days

You can create a spreadsheet with columns that have a field label “type” and other fields for the days of the week (M-F).  Some examples of these types include:

  • Team meetings
  • Coaching Individuals
  • Reporting
  • SDR Pipeline Review (The SDR Pipeline tracks the Key Conversations that each SDR has achieved and needs to be 2-3X the meeting quota)
  • Meeting Approvals
  • Other Meetings
  • Admin Work.

Without fail, this exercise has shown me that most SDR Managers spend less than 12-15% of their time coaching and assisting their team to improve skills or experience. If your team is primarily made of junior SDRs, then senior Sales Managers need to work with the team regularly to brainstorm business development tactics. My recommendation is that management focuses 30-40% of their day coaching their teams. Time spent coaching a team with the use of the call guide, messaging, persona needs, and role-playing will help to elevate the team of junior SDRs.

3. Forecasting meetings and pipeline growth

This skill should be a part of every Sales Development Managers’ job. It is very important to track weekly progress, where the team is, and what the SDR Manager forecasts for the Quarterly regional sales. Forecasting is also important because if the team is off at any point during the quarter, the SDR Manager must pivot on their strategy to ensure that the team will still produce strong results with their support.

4. Build a mini business plan

This will outline how the team plans to achieve their goals and objectives in a specific amount of time. GOSPA (Goals, Objectives, Strategies, Plans, and Activities) is a 1–2-page plan which focuses on the manager and the SDRs on the how of achievement. Each set of quarterly goals should be given to team members. Most companies fall short by not engaging team members to determine the “how”. These documents should be reviewed with the SDR Manager to determine if the SDR has set realistic objectives and strategies.

Team members who review and update their GOSPA’s will be more successful than those who don’t. If a team doesn’t know how they will tangibly hit their objectives, they won’t succeed. Strategies may need to be changed, throughout the quarter to hit numbers. If the team has a method for developing a strategy, are monitoring where they are each week, and are responsible for the “how”, they are more likely to be successful.

Treat your SDR teams as a strategic part of your sales organization (even if they report into Marketing). The team will generate viable meetings and pipeline for the Sales team.  

Focus your SDR Managers on what matters.  Pipeline is King!

Email me at alicia@somametrics.com if you want to reboot your SDR team.

Learn about our SDR Enablement.

Schedule a call with us today.

Why Sales Development Representatives Underperform

sales development representatives

Before sales development representatives existed, remember telemarketers? Without caller ID, we didn’t know who was calling until we picked up the phone. We were trapped in by someone on the other end trying to sell us something, not taking “no” for an answer. We hated it.

And so did the telemarketers. They mostly got yelled at for wasting their time or simply hung up on. It was a job for the desperate and paid very little.

Sometime in the 1980s, someone went to B2B companies and proposed to set appointments for their sales process teams. They hired good candidates (better than the telemarketers) and trained their “tele-prospectors” well on the prospects they were calling into

Eventually, the client companies thought they could save some money if they brought these skills in-house. They started hiring “Business Development Representatives” (BDRs) to take inbound calls and set appointments. They hired “Sales Development Representatives” (SDRs) to make outbound calls and do the same.

And that’s where things started going wrong. This was a cost-saving initiative and most executives had “B2B telemarketing” in their minds when they posted these job descriptions. They hired junior sales reps—many from retail or financial services— and gave them basic training (mostly on their own products). They let them loose to make phone calls on their prospective customers.

What could go wrong?

This is typically a path to increasingly lower returns. Using junior-level people results in a dismal sales pipeline built, which means that more have to be hired to meet the desired quota, which leads to greater resistance of hiring skilled people at higher rates and trying to find even less expensive ways to staff this critical operation.

There is a better way.

If you are going to hire junior SDRs and BDRs, then you must use effective time management to train them and arm them with the tools they need for success. Use sales prospecting metrics (start with pipeline as your top metric), arm them with a strong understanding of the business marketing and personas they are calling into, and change the process from a phone-first to an email-first approach.

Brand your company as a source of valuable insights and information—a thought leader. Craft each email that goes out by making sure:

  • Your company name and the BDRs name are in the “from” part of the email
  • The subject lines are informative (and not, “Jim, quick question?”)
  • Leave well designed and customized voice mails making it clear which company and which BDR left the voicemail
  • Don’t forget to make sure your company name shows up on the caller ID
  • Brand your emails and calls separately from your competitors until your prospects recognize you—and want to pick up and talk to your sales executives.

Don’t do what others do. Do what is in the best interest of your prospects by not wasting their time and ensuring each email and call is worthy of their attention.

Read more of our blogs here.

Schedule a call with us today.

Grow Sales Pipeline and Drive Revenue Growth

grow sales pipeline

Grow Your Sales Pipeline to Fix Missed Revenue Targets

How can you grow your sales pipeline and consequently fix missed revenue targets? If you think of your total revenue operations, it is likely fed by four major revenue streams:

  1. New orders from totally new logos
  2. Reorders or renewals from current customers
  3. Upgrades, up-sales, and add-ons from existing customers
  4. New orders from entry into brand new markets.

In all but one (reorders/renewals), the key challenge is how to grow a sales pipeline of sufficient size and quality. It is also finding one that consists of informed decision makers who are actively searching for a solution within budget.

The fundamental thesis of this blog is that missed revenue targets happen primarily as a result of missed pipeline targets.

grow sales pipeline

If you are skeptical about this, consider the following research findings:

  1. New customer acquisition cost is increasing by an average of 10% or more each year.
  2. Over 100 million new businesses are started each year, worldwide.
  3. Partly as a consequence of that, nearly 80% of B2B companies change vendors within 24 months.
  4. Nearly half of sales reps (49%) fail to meet their quota—a trend that has been consistent for some 10 years now.


If we put the stats together, the story looks like this: competition is intensifying and competitors are stealing customers. So, we have to find opportunities for new customers just to grow at the same rate. This is forcing us to spend more marketing and sales dollars to acquire new customers, creating a spiraling cost loop.

Furthermore, we continue to design, invest, and build our sales pipeline management the same way we did in the 20th Century—and our sales reps struggle to meet their sales quotas.

Things were definitely different then. Buyers more or less welcomed sales calls because salespeople were a source of valuable information about what competitors were doing and so on. Then internet boom allowed for buyers to research this data for themselves, so sales teams became more a nuisance than an asset and were mostly shut out.

Fast forward to the 2010s, content and social media became king as B2B companies began to invest in their marketing efforts. And then the global pandemic hit and sealed the deal of a new sales process. Now, marketing is everything: ABM, demand gen, growth marketing, etc.

B2B Bottleneck

So, B2B companies created a bottleneck, an operational bow-tie with large Marketing spend and large Sales spend. They gave practically no spend or thought to what connects the two big operations, namely Sales Development.

Here is one way to think about this. Your marketing department is tight on time and resources on sales performance (as much as you spend there). So, marketing campaigns end up going after the Total Addressable Market (TAM) instead of a more focused Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM). You end up getting leads that are too small, too big, or in geographies you can’t really sell for whatever reason.

None of these will ever go on your sales pipelines, and yet these “leads” pass on to your sales reps. They become overwhelmed by all these leads just to find the ones that they can actually work with.

The Problem with your Sales Pipeline

So, you hire Sales Development Reps (SDRs) to help with that. Only, you hire junior people, provide them with basic training and lots of technology, and let them loose on these new prospects.

The problem now is different. You have someone who was just a few months ago working at Starbucks calling on a senior decision maker who has been doing this for 10, 15 years. It’s like a high schooler saying to an NBA player, “Let me show you some slick moves…”. It’s not going to work out well.

So, all the money you spent on your marketing gets throttled down in the middle. Good lead generation slips away because those tasked with following up and setting appointments simply don’t know how to execute social selling or talk to these people.

As a result, your sales organization has to do its own prospecting. They spend less time moving those in the sales pipeline towards a close. The end result is missed quotas and missed sales opportunities.

The Solution

The solution is to design your company’s revenue operations in such a way that you avoid the bottleneck. This allows revenues to smoothly flow from Marketing all the way to Sales, facilitated by SDRs who grow the sales pipeline for the sales organization.

Sales Development is a strategic revenue operations partner—equal to Marketing and Sales. It needs to be headed by a senior strategic thinking leader, and its members must be capable of talking at the level of senior decision makers in global companies.

Most importantly, your Sales Development organization has to grow the sales pipeline (not meetings) and should be compensated the same way your sales organization is—by how much it contributes to revenues. It’s time to really rethink our revenue chain, and redesign it from the ground up to meet 21st Century sales needs.

The SDR Funnel Math – Fix the Key Metrics Before You Increase the Size of Your SDR Team

sdr funnel math

As we work with clients, we hear the same questions over and over again: Should we hire more Sales Development Reps (SDRs), or sales reps? Or both?

And our response has been invariably the same—it depends.

  • If your conversion metrics are all good, then by all means hire more.
  • If not, fix your conversion metrics first before you hire more. Otherwise, you are throwing good money after bad.

Let’s say your sales goal is $10 million and your average deal size is $100,000. This means your reps need to close 100 deals. So far, looks pretty straightforward.

Here is where the “it depends” part begins.

·   If your average closing ratio is 10%, then you will need 1,000 opportunities in your pipeline

·   If your average closing ratio is 20%, then you will need 500 opportunities in your pipeline.

Just this one metric alone clearly demonstrates that improving the quality of the pipeline reduces the burden on both your sales and SDR teams. SDRs don’t have to book as many meetings, and sales reps don’t have to struggle to work with so many prospects at the same time.

It also makes it easier to see why you will not need to hire more SDRs or sales reps with the second scenario, while you are more likely to believe you “need” more of both with the first one.

The SDR Funnel Math

But, I’m sure you know it’s more complicated than that.

Working with the conventional three-tier funnel model (Top, Middle, and Bottom), Marketing is supposed to keep filling the Top of Funnel (TOFU) with qualified prospects so that enough go to the Middle of the Funnel where your SDRs call to qualify and book appointments for the Sales team, which works on the Bottom of the Funnel to push prospects through the funnel to a close.

For this article, we will focus on understanding what is happening in the Middle of the Funnel.

Let’s say on average, each of your SDRs can book around 5 meetings a month, of which sales accepts about 70%, and of those Sales accepted meetings, about 66% make the meeting (one-third are no-shows or cancellations because the prospects didn’t see any real value in making the meeting).

Also, let’s say the average deal size of these leads were they to convert is about $75,000

So, the pipeline value that your average SDR is building for the sales team is =  5 meetings x 70% acceptance rate x 66% show rate x $75,000 or  $173,250/month per SDR. Not much, and may be the reason why you were thinking of hiring more SDRs.

However, before adding to your payroll cost, think of what can be improved.

What if I showed you that you can increase the average pipeline to $484,500/month per SDR—a 180% increase in pipeline built?  Would you first look into that to see if that were possible, or still go ahead and waste time and money hiring more SDRs?

I am going to assume you said you wanted to first look into how you can increase the average pipeline built by 180%.

Key Metrics

Looking at our formula above, there are four key metrics we can improve:

1. Average meetings set by a SDR per month

2. Average Sales acceptance rate (a measure of quality of the meeting)

3. Average meeting show rate by prospect (also an indication of the quality of the meeting set)

4. Average deal size (again, a measure of the quality of the meeting)

Improving any one of these metrics will improve the average pipeline size built by each SDR. Improving all four metrics will dramatically improve the average pipeline built by each SDR.

The Before and After In Action

Look at the chart below:

We see that we are making small improvements in the range of 20% (for appointments set per month/SDR) to about 36% (number of appointments accepted by Sales).

And yet, the cumulative impact is 180% increase in sales pipeline built

Not just Pipeline Metrics—Sales Metrics also Improve

In fact, you can argue that if you improve the quality of the pipeline (highly qualified and more motivated prospects in the pipeline), then the average closing ratio of your sales reps should also improve. After all, they are meeting with the right people who are also highly engaged.

If we assume we improved the average closing ratio by 25% (from 20% to 25%), then actual booked sales will improve by a whopping 250%–just from the above quality tweaks.

Training and Support–The Secret Sauce to SDR Funnel Math

Improving the SDR metrics and understanding SDR Funnel Math is the key to improving sales metrics. And the secret sauce to that is training and optimizing your existing SDR team.

Before you hire more people, fix these metrics. As an old mentor of mine used to say, “First, Nail it. Then, Scale it.”

Would love to hear your thoughts on this. Let’s schedule a call to see if we can help you analyze your current SDR operations and see if there are any gaps that need to be addressed. Visit our homepage to learn more about us.

Quadrant 3: Customer Retention and Upselling to Drive Sales

customer retention

Quadrant 3 is all about encouraging existing customers to buy new products; generally upgrades, add-ons, and bundles. In general, the goal is to increase the number of products your customers use by about 15-20% per year. It may seem like a big ask, but keep in mind that, apart from Quadrant 2, these buyers have the lowest perceived risk — they’ve bought from you before and are going to be a lot more willing to buy from you again, studies show. Meanwhile, the chances of selling to a new prospect are between 5 and 20%; selling to an existing customer skyrockets to as much as 60-70%. 

It’s crucial to invest in 3rd Quadrant prospects as it’s been proven to yield massive ROI. Bain & Company found that even a 5% increase in customer retention can lead to a 25-95% ROI. That’s a five-fold return. In the following sections, we’ll be looking at the strategies industry leaders are using to drive Quadrant 3 sales. 

Customer Support Strategy

The reduced risk factor for Quadrant 3 prospects is dependent on their elevated trust in your company. Make sure your customer support strategy continually renews their trust in you and keeps you fresh in their minds. 

This can be facilitated by having a scalable support infrastructure like chat and self-help portals that can offer painless and quick support to customers as they learn and use your products. You should also maintain good communication with customers in order to stay relevant and keep them educated on your products and updates as they come out. 

Keeping close contact with customers also yields valuable insights into their buying behavior, which can help when it comes to pitching new products to them down the line. Knowing your customers well (including their needs and pain points) translates into knowing what to suggest to them to make their processes more efficient. 

Customer Retention Strategies 

Quadrant 3 sales rely on offers like bundles, packages, and deals that incentivize customers to buy more products from you. Make sure you figure out which products are best paired together and create promotions that offer added value to the original products your customers want to buy. 

Automation can play an important role here, too. Use it to promote targeted marketing campaigns to customers based on what they’re already buying. For instance, if a customer is already buying product X, use marketing campaign A, and if they’re already using products X and Y, use campaign B. 

Sales reps should also be invested in these strategies. Train them on which products are to be recommended together and on how to pitch an additional product without coming off as too sales-y; customers want to know that you’re on their side and trying to add value to their purchase rather than simply selling to them. Management can build a compensation plan around account penetration to encourage Sales reps to fine-tune their upselling capabilities. 

Upselling Strategy

Everything discussed previously has essentially been strategies that support upselling, which is the main goal in Quadrant 3. Upselling is when you recommend additional products that will complement those the customer is originally buying. HubSpot has outlined some key strategies that support upselling and will ultimately drive Quadrant 3 sales. 

First, determine which product combos get the best results, both in sales and in customer satisfaction. You want to find combinations that make sense to customers when pitched (and can be backed up by proof, like with case studies or infographics) and that will ultimately add value to the customer’s original purchase. Tracking KPIs and asking for customer feedback can give some direction to these efforts and highlight which pairings you should be pushing. Oftentimes, segmenting customers by personas can help fine-tune which recommendations to provide and to whom.

Make sure your upselling strategy is based on integrity; you’re only hurting yourself if it’s done with anything less. Though upselling is generally very profitable, if customers sense they’re being taken advantage of or don’t find added value with the extra purchases you recommend, they’ll lose faith in your business and might churn. The products you upsell must be chosen with customer experience in mind, with the main goal of making them better, easier, or more efficient. 

To support upselling, make sure to consistently introduce new products that can complement one another. Releasing a new product every 2-3 years is recommended in order to keep complementary items current and relevant. 

Recapping

Quadrant 3 is a great place to invest selling resources and if your customer retention and upselling strategies are well-thought-out, it can bring in considerable ROI. Driving sales in this Quadrant is all about investing in an excellent and helpful customer support strategy that will build trust between your customers and your brand. Some key customer retention strategies can also help boost your upselling capacities to reach your maximum Quadrant 3 selling potential. 

You can find more resources like this on the SOMAmetrics website under resources. Or click here to schedule a call if you would like to speak with one of our associates.

Quadrant 1: High Growth Sales Strategy

sales strategy

According to Hubspot, customer acquisition costs have skyrocketed in recent years, increasing by as much as 60%. What this means for B2B companies is that it will be crucial, now more than ever, to have an effective Sales strategy that will optimize customer acquisition and drive down costs. Customer acquisition falls within the first Quadrant of the Four Quadrants of High Growth model, which is a highly effective sales strategy that helps B2B companies optimize their Marketing and Sales resources through segmentation to achieve the highest ROI.

Quadrant 1 is all about attracting new customers to the customer base, with a general goal of growing it by 15-20% each year. This is normally where companies throw the most money, especially as compared to the other three Quadrants, and because customer acquisition costs have only gotten higher in recent years, it makes sense to invest in a highly effective strategy that will use these funds as efficiently as possible. In the following sections, we’ll look at the strategies industry leaders are using today to drive growth in Quadrant 1. 

sales strategy

Content Strategy 

Since Quadrant 1 is largely about attracting new customers to your company, content will be the most important element of a successful high-growth sales strategy. The Marketing and Sales teams should come together to define what marketing content needs to be created to drive prospects through the various levels of prospect awareness, which range from completely unaware to engaged and actively searching. This content should be created with the goal in mind to produce the desired amount of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), and so a level of automation is required here to provide prospects with the right content as they engage with entry-level materials. To read more about the Funnel Framework and how prospects progress through their buyer’s journey via content, click here. 

Hubspot has outlined the best content strategies we can employ to drive growth in Quadrant 1. Content marketing is quickly emerging as one of the most effective ways to reach new customers. Not only does it alert them to the existence of your company and expertise, but it also offers valuable, free, insights to them that will build their trust in your brand. Within this area, you can provide blogs, content offers such as ebooks or guides, and even videos that will all surface when prospects research their company’s pain points online. To drive results here, search marketing (both paid and organic) can be used to ensure your online presence makes an impact on your Quadrant 1 growth. 

Additionally, email marketing remains one of the most effective ways to directly reach and engage a customer base. Nurture emails can help convert new subscribers by delivering helpful information and slowly increasing brand awareness, and in later Quadrants, new product information and discounts can increase customer retention. 

Sales Strategy 

On the Sales end, having a broader, formal strategy is crucial to ensure you meet that goal of increasing the customer base by an annual 15-20%. This is done best by defining the qualification criteria that make a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) and then by mapping these criteria into the Sales Operation and Sales Automation system. The automation of this process will ensure that Sales immediately follows up with SQLs, and a thoughtfully-designed compensation program can incentivize agents to drive the Sales Cycle through lulls. 

Onboarding & Customer Support Strategy

Once we’ve reached a sale, the customer experience becomes only more important. The goal here is to turn new customers into happy and satisfied ones within 2-3 weeks一 and having a strong onboarding and customer support strategy can help here. 

Learning how to use a new product can be tricky, especially for working professionals who may not have much time to dedicate to their understanding of your process. According to Salesforce, a great thing to keep in mind when crafting your onboarding strategy is to keep it simple; streamline your instructional content so that only the most essential items are present during the first steps of the onboarding process. That way, new users won’t be deterred or overwhelmed when interacting with your products for the first time. 

Additionally, have an abundance of various materials available to them to reference during and after the process. This can include blog posts, video tutorials, instructionals, or even email sequences delivered over a set period following the purchase. To ensure things are going smoothly, it can be helpful to send out a follow-up email a couple of months down the line, which has the added benefit of delivering customer insights about the onboarding process. 

Overall, the process must be as quick and painless as possible for the new customers. At a broader level, it can be helpful for the onboarding team to be organized around facilitating an efficient process for the customer; at the start of the process, outline each key component and assign agents accordingly. This will allow them to complete the onboarding process efficiently and with the highest level of accuracy. 

After the onboarding process is complete, make sure that the customer support is there to keep customers happy and loyal to your brand, important needs that fall under Quadrants 2 and 3. 

Recapping

Quadrant 1 is all about attracting new prospects to your customer base, and creating a high-growth sales strategy can drive ROI in the face of increasingly expensive customer acquisition costs. Having an optimized content strategy, an automated sales strategy, and a simple, easy-to-use onboarding process can all drive sales Quadrant 1 and prime customers to remain for Quadrants 2-3. 

You can find more resources like this on the SOMAmetrics website under resources. Or click here to schedule a call if you would like to speak with one of our associates.

How Prospect Education Can Drive the Sales Funnel

The Sales Funnel is a way of defining the process. Prospects will go through when getting educated enough to want to meet with Sales. In the following sections, we’ll be breaking down the three stages of the Sales Funnel that make up the buyer’s journey. Additionally, we’ll highlight which Prospect Education content will be the most helpful to Prospects at each stage. Content is becoming increasingly important in the B2B Marketing world today. Studies have shown that the use of Prospect Education content is now one of the top strategies for 77% of B2B marketers. 

Because these stages relate to different levels of engagement and awareness, the content that should be sent out to buyers will differ depending on what is the most relevant to their interest level. What’s important to note here, too, is that actively searching and fully engaged prospects will enter the funnel from the top like everyone else一 but will then progress through the stages very quickly, hence why it’s so helpful for Marketing to nurture Educated Prospects to meet with Sales.

Prospect Education is the best way to drive the Funnel; attracting more prospects to the Top and helping others advance to the Bottom and eventually on to meet with Sales.

prospect education sales call

Top of Funnel (TOFU)

The Top of Funnel (TOFU) is where your prospects begin their buyer’s journey. Depending on what level of Buyer Readiness each individual prospect is at, the speed at which they progress through the funnel will vary. 

Before prospects can reach the TOFU stage, they must first get acquainted in some way with your company. Demand Generation content is broad, less targeted content that’s meant to attract new prospects to your funnel. This type of content should be created to attract the most people possible and to be broadcasted easily to a large population. The emerging strategies Marketers use today are mainly SEO (optimizing access to blogs, podcasts, or other content) and online ads (perhaps on Google, Facebook, or YouTube), which can all attract attention to, or at least spark awareness of, new products. 

In engaging with this material, the Prospect is sent to a landing page that describes the asset and if they are interested, they’ll fill out their contact information (typically start with just first name, last name, email, and title). Then, they’ll get added to the top of funnel. 

For these unaware Prospects, having online content readily available is the only way for them to find their way into your funnel. Additionally, for Prospects who are already aware of their problem and are close to purchase-ready, letting them find your content is the best way to escalate them quickly through to the Sales level.

Once a prospect is added to the top of funnel, they’ll therefore need quite a bit of education and nurturing before they may graduate to later funnels, and they often repeat the cycle in TOFU a couple of times before progressing. 

What prospects need at this stage is lead generation content, which is generally shared with them through email nurturing. This will still be very broad and educational in nature一no need to give them the hard sell just yet. Instead, it will build up trust over time as they slowly start to recognize their problem and realize the power of your solution. Light, easily digestible content like relevant blogs, short quizzes, or engaging infographics can all educate buyers at this level. 

Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) 

As TOFU prospects engage with the content you send them in their targeted nurture emails (clicking, downloading, etc.), they’ll eventually work their way down the funnel to the middle, at which point the marketing content to be sent to them will become a little more specific and targeted. 

MOFU prospects make up about 20-30% of your target market and have generally already begun to have conversations with Sales to assess their options. At this point, Marketing’s job is to give them all the information they need to see why your company is their best option. This content will be more specific to your solution in particular and can take on a more aggressive sales approach. Content like buyer guides, case studies, white papers, third-party analyses of your product, and competitor comparisons are all good options for prospects in this range.

Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)

Once the prospect has narrowed down their options to a select shortlist and has started looking at pricing, they can be moved to the more Sales-oriented level at the bottom of the funnel. Clicking on the demo/meeting request button will also instigate this. BOFU prospects represent around 3-5% of your target market and are already fully aware of their problem and of their options in resolving it一they just need to find which product is the best fit. 

Actively searching prospects will advance to this level quickly if Marketing educates them effectively when they initially reach the TOFU. Otherwise, prospects can reach this level through extensive prospect education during their buyer’s journey. 

BOFU engagement will lean more towards the Sales side of Marketing, with the ultimate goal being to book a chat with a Sales rep and sign a deal. Chats about pricing, appointments, and deliverables, and customer testimonials will all be relevant to BOFU prospects at this point.

Recapping

Having the right content in Prospect Education available to Prospects during their buyer’s journeys will help them advance down the Funnel and encourage them to eventually meet with Sales. It’s important to have content available that will meet them where they are in their buyer’s journeys. To read more about this type of Prospect Education, and why it’s so important post-Pandemic, click here.

You can find more resources like this on the SOMAmetrics website under resources. Or click here to schedule a call if you would like to speak with one of our associates.

Educating Prospects: Why It’s Crucial in 2021

The Pandemic changed how we do business in countless ways, and the business leaders who have thrived post-Pandemic have been those who have adapted their strategies to the new demands of their clients. In any business world, but especially that which we’re seeing today in the wake of the Pandemic, educating prospects is crucial in order to ultimately meet with a Sales rep. In the following sections, we’ll be talking about how buyer behavior has changed due to the Pandemic and how the savviest (and successful) thought leaders in B2B Marketing have adapted their Prospect Education to thrive in today’s new business landscape. 

educating prospects

How the Pandemic Changed Buyer Behavior

When the Pandemic hit, the business world was pushed almost completely into the online realm. This reshaped how B2B buyers and sellers interact with each other and business in general. Since much of the buying process went virtual, many buyers shifted their approach to online buying. Reportedly, 68% of B2B buyers now prefer to do most of their product research online—before ever meeting a Sales rep, and even partly as a prerequisite to meeting one. 

When Prospects start realizing they have a problem in their business, they’ll go online to research what it may be and how they may solve it. Often, they’ll come across a variety of products and will then research each promising one to narrow down the ones they’d like to talk to a Sales rep about. During this buyer’s journey, they’ll engage with different types of content that they may come across online; blogs, white papers, videos, infographics, and more. 

Buyers today are used to finding most of their product information online and independently, meaning that they’ve taken much of the Prospect Education you need them to have about your products into their own hands. This can be either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you react to this shift. If you have an abundance of relevant, helpful content out there for them to find in their research, this could actually optimize your Sales process. However, the content they use to make a decision could just as easily be that which they find on your competitor’s site… 

What this means for Marketers is that it’s important, now more than ever, to meet Prospects at every stage of their buyer’s journey with relevant, helpful content that will give them the information they need to advance down the Sales Funnel. 

The Three Levels of Buyer Readiness

One way we like to classify Prospects is by the stage of buyer readiness they’re at in their buyer’s journey. As Prospects move along the buyer’s journey, they follow a fairly predictable route that begins with them being oblivious to their problem and eventually ends with them realizing their issue and actively searching for solutions. It’s crucial to understand and break down the various levels that each buyer traverses along this journey to target them with the correct content for the stage they’re currently at. In other words, someone who isn’t currently sure of what problem they’re having isn’t going to want to see a case study just yet. 

Level 1: Prospects with No Clue

These prospects are oblivious and unengaged, just beginning to feel and take note of a pain point in their business, but they may not know that it’s a problem yet or, if they do, they won’t know how to fix it. They’ve begun some light research into the symptoms of their problem and are starting to understand the various potential options they have to solve it down the line. For those that are clueless, the marketing challenge is immense. You need a way to deliver messages to them, which generally comes from Lead Generation content such as blogs, infographics, or online ads.

Level 2: Exploring Prospects 

Exploring Prospects are interested but not yet engaged. They’re fully aware of the problem they’ve been experiencing and are actively seeking to solve it. They’ll be researching all of the products available to them and interacting the most with those whose content is the most informative and relevant to their needs. 

At this stage, they should have ample access to relevant and helpful information to learn more about how they may solve their problem. They likely won’t be ready to talk with Sales until they’ve learned enough about the issue and their options to solve it.  

Level 3: Actively Searching Prospects

Actively searching and fully engaged prospects are deep in their buying journey and have likely narrowed their list down to a few options that have stood out to them along the way. They’re now searching for the final information that will let them decide on which solution to employ to solve their original problem. 

Content at this stage should be targeted for those at this advanced level of buyer readiness, like comparisons between your product and your competitors’ or more in-depth content like case studies and white papers. 

It needs to be pointed out that a “Contact Us” form will not cut it here. You must provide them with a way to schedule either a demo or a call with one of your sales reps, on their own and see that the meeting is set on their calendar as confirmation.

Why it is Critical to Educate Prospects

As mentioned above, prospects these days like to complete the majority of their buyer’s journey before they meet with a Sales rep. In fact, a study found that around 70% of B2B buyers both define their needs and locate various solutions before agreeing to meet with reps, meaning that what buyers today want is not to be sold to, but instead to be assisted along their purchasing process with the right information that will supplement what they already know. 

It is critical to educate prospects along their journey so that they have all the information they need to want to book a meeting with Sales. We already know that this is the case with B2C; it’s been shown that consumers are 131% more likely to buy after being exposed to early-stage educational content. Keeping in mind the human behind a B2B decision-maker, we can apply this knowledge to the B2B realm to understand just how important prospect education is. Indeed, a study found that 96% of companies agree that customer education is important, whereas another study showed that 69% of B2B marketers point to relevant content as the most effective tactic for lead nurturing. In short, the more educated prospects are when they meet with a Sales rep, the higher the likelihood that they’ll make the deal. It’s up to marketing to educate prospects so that the leads that Sales receives are all actively searching for solutions and are fully engaged with the product. 

In a day of a majority-virtual purchasing process, the products with the most relevant content will win the most meetings with Sales reps and ultimately earn the most closed deals. Since actively searching and fully engaged prospects are the readiest to buy, the only question now is from whom.

You can find more resources like this on the SOMAmetrics website under resources. Or click here to schedule a call if you would like to speak with one of our associates.

The Four Quadrants Model of High Growth

The Four Quadrants of High Growth is a highly effective sales strategy that enables B2B companies to optimally deploy their limited marketing and sales resources to maximize revenues. This model divides a company’s total addressable market—first vertically into two halves of customers and non-customers, and then by product into existing products and new ones.

Unlike other segmentation strategies that mostly focus on non-customers and can be difficult to implement, this system ensures that Sellers look at the entire potential market for growth. This includes their existing customers and new markets that they can enter.

https://www.somametrics.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=4484&action=edit
SOMAmetrics Four Quadrants – click to enlarge

We discuss each of these highly targeted strategies in the sections below. The end result is four quadrants representing different levels of risks and relationships:

Quadrant 1: Increase Customer Base

Increase customer base using the Four Funnels Sales Methodology.

Quadrant 2: Increase Usage

Make it simple for existing customers to order more of what they already use.

Quadrant 3: Introduce New Products

Sell to current customers products they are not currently using by upgrading, up-selling, and cross-selling new products.

Quadrant 4: Enter New Markets

Selling new products to new customers. This is the same as entering a new market.

Download this white paper to learn how to sell effectively in all four quadrants!

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Quadrant 2 has the lowest perceived risk from the buyer’s perspective, followed by Quadrant 3. The quadrant with the highest risk is Quadrant 4, since there are no references yet. Quadrant 3 is selling to non-customers who don’t really know the company. What we need to do in terms of marketing and selling is, therefore, quite different from one quadrant to the next.

In Quadrant 2, the seller hardly needs to educate customers on the company or product since they are already very familiar with both. At the other extreme is Quadrant 4. This is a totally different market from the one(s) to which the seller has traditionally sold, and the likelihood that Quadrant 4 buyers have adequate familiarity the company or its products is quite low.

Therefore, using the same approach for all quadrants will not work—marketing and sales efforts will likely be overkill in Quadrants 2 and 3 while insufficient in Quadrants 1 and 4.

We can segment our total addressable market into these quadrants and optimize our messaging, offerings, and resources for each. This is more likely to maximize revenues at the lowest costs possible and maximize our net income.

This approach is one of the foundational strategies of the Predictable Revenue Model; it’s designed to position a company to achieve a consistent High Growth rate.

Strategy Matters

Companies that out-perform their competitors do so primarily because they execute a defined strategy. They don’t try to go after everyone with the same message, product, or offering. They segment first, then tailor everything to fit that segment.

Segmentation makes it easier to isolate the right opportunities for a given company and highlights the right strategies to win those opportunities. Because you have the right message and the right offering for the right customer, you can shorten your sales cycles and increase your closing ratios. Effective B2B marketing naturally leads to effective B2B selling.

This is the essence of strategy – focusing limited resources on the best opportunities in the most optimal way to maximize results.

This strategy makes the segmentation process more intuitive. It also makes execution simpler and more full-proof.

Each Quadrant is Different

We all know that if we really want to sell our products and services, we have to tailor them to our customers’ preferences. We tend to forget this is just as true regarding how we market and sell our products. Our methods must be tailored to the customers’ buying preferences.

Marketing/selling to existing customers is totally different from marketing/selling to non-customers. Even for existing customers, there us tge marketing/selling necessary to get them to order more of what they already purchase. Then, there’s the strategy that gets them to try new products they haven’t used before. We know this is true from our own direct experience as customers.

Sometimes the right strategy is just to automate and make it simple for customers to order whenever they want. Why slow them down by having them talk to a sales rep?

At other times, there is a great need for consultation before sales can happen. Case studies, demos, and references are all a necessary part of reassuring a skeptical buyer that she won’t regret her purchase. Yes, the high-powered consultative sales rep is essential with a new customer buying for the first time. But he would be expensive overkill for a simple reorder of a product a customer has purchased dozens of times before.

The essence of this approach is matching a company’s limited resources to the type of selling opportunities a company has and doing this as an everyday process – increasing sales, while keeping the costs of selling low.

  • There is only so much you can sell to existing customers. And sooner or later, for one reason or another, you are going to lose some customers. You must acquire new customers not only to continue to grow but also to replace those you lose. That’s what growth in Quadrant 1 is all about. What is the best way to achieve this?
  • Quadrant 2 is about customers who buy a given product. Your goal is simple — get them to buy more of what they are already buying. How do you get them to do that?
  • Once you have maximized your revenue from Quadrant 2, the only way you can get more business from existing customers is to get them to buy some of the other products you sell. That is how you get growth in Quadrant 3. What is the best way for you to do that?
  • And if you are very successful and grow fast, you will eventually saturate a given market segment and can’t sell more there. You will need to find a new market segment where you can continue to expand, which is what Quadrant 4 is about. How do you do that?

When you look at it this way, it is apparent that your sales and marketing strategies in each quadrant need to be sufficiently different.

However, it is not just the strategies that need to be different. Systems, processes, assets, and people you use in each quadrant also need to be optimized for that quadrant to achieve the best result in that quadrant. Just as you look for a specialist when you want to see an eye or heart doctor, you also need specialists if you need to grow each sector on a consistent basis. You need people who are experts in each quadrant.

End Goal–Predictable Revenue Growth

If you have one-size-fits-all marketing and sales strategy, you will see mixed results. You want reliable, predictable revenue growth. That is why you have to optimize sales and marketing for each Quadrant.

We discuss these highly targeted strategies in the sections below:T

Q1: Increase Customer Base

Q2: Increase Usage

Q3: Introduce New Products

Q4: Enter New Markets

Schedule a call with us today.
Increasing Your Customer Base (Quadrant 1)
Selling More to Existing Customers (Quadrant 2)
Selling New Products to Existing Customers (Quadrant 3)
Developing New Business (Quadrant 4)

Read the book The Radical Pipeline Strategy: How to Grow Pipeline and Revenue by Optimizing Sales Development. This book outlines tested best practices and implementation strategies that I developed while rebooting and building 65 SDR and Inside Sales organizations.

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