Sales Recruiting – Three Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

There are no guarantees in sales performance, but you can minimize your risk by hiring only those Reps that have a higher likelihood of succeeding. You just have to figure out what they look like!

Critical Mistakes:

1. Domain Knowledge: Don’t assume a candidate is going to be perfect for the job just because they have numerous years of experience in your space. Some Sales Reps move around from company to company in an industry, but that doesn’t mean they have the recipe for success.

2. Personality: Don’t assume a Sales Rep will be successful because he/she has a “Sales Personality”. We’ve all hired Sales Reps based on impression. He/she came in and delivered a knock-out interview and was well-liked by the team. It’s a no-brainer to hire that candidate, right? Wrong. A natural sales personality can be misleading. Make sure they have the foundation to be successful.

3. Wishful thinking: Don’t hire a candidate just because you are hopeful that he/she will be successful, when he/she hasn’t had much success before. For example, you’ve been recruiting for months, you really want the position filled, and this candidate “seems” like they could be successful in this role. Sure they struggled at other companies, but they had good reasons for leaving and their references were great. You just need to spend time with them to make sure they are properly trained……we’ve all been there. This is a recipe for disaster. Don’t make excuses for candidates. You’ll be better off prolonging your search and holding out for the right candidate. Your pipeline will thank you for it!

How to Avoid These Mistakes:

Create a realistic job profile and stick to it. The profile should include domain experience, related experience, education, and certification requirements. Consider how much time you will have to train this candidate, and factor that into your requirements. If a candidate doesn’t have what you are looking for, keep looking.

Check references thoroughly. Ask tough questions, but remember references will lean towards positive responses, so ask in a non-threatening way. For example, “We can all improve, tell me what areas you feel I should work with Mr. Candidate on to make him more successful in this role?” Clarify the skill set and activities required of the role and see if that lines up with the previous roles the candidate held. For example, “What types of activities did Mr. Candidate do in his role with your company? What was expected of him? How did he perform against expectations?”

Clearly explain job expectations up front. Don’t assume that the candidate understands the expectations of the job. Explain what a typical day would be like, working hours, activities, level of participation, training, team activities, territory, goals, etc. Making sure the candidate understands the role clearly can help avoid the headache of finding out there is not a fit 6 months down the road.

Meet the family. Have the candidate meet other reps and other functions he/she would interact with before moving forward with an offer. Feedback from the team can help determine whether there is a good cultural fit. Be sure to guide your interviewers on what questions to ask to determine fit, but allow them flexibility to probe into other areas. For example, if you have your candidate talk to someone in field marketing, coach the field marketing person on the job profile, but allow them to see how the candidate would fit into field marketing activities.

Look at past success as an indication (NOT guarantee) of future success. On the other hand, if the candidate has never been very successful, don’t assume your company will be the candidate’s big breakthrough.

Written by: Kristina McMillan, Sr. Project Manager, SalesRamp

Developing a Hunter Mentality in your Inside Sales Team

There are two predominant types of sales reps, hunters and farmers. Whether you have a lead qualification team, an inside sales team, or an outside field team, you need to foster a hunter mentality in your Reps. Though farmers are very important to nurturing customers and handling inbound inquiries, focusing your efforts on farming alone can be a road to failure. Fostering a team of hunters will fill your pipeline and expand your revenue attainment.

Hunters focus on:

• New opportunities, new accounts
• Outbound Prospecting

Farmers focus on:

• Existing customers, nurturing accounts
• Inbound Leads, follow up

Find out if your Reps are hunters or farmers by having them take the assessment at: http://chally.com/sp/hunter-farmer-test.html

Hunter traits can be developed through intense training, including:

• Role plays
• Live monitoring
• Strategy sessions
• Consistent outbound activities

What to look for in Hunters

• Reps  that get their sales energy off of the “hunt” for the new opportunities
• Reps that are consultative, who find and assess opportunities and match them to solutions within your offering that meet the specific needs
• Reps that are independent
• Reps that can generate buzz and excitement around your offering – they are product evangelists

Written by: Kristina McMillan, Sr. Project Manager, SalesRamp

Tools, Tools, Tools – How do you choose?

With all the web-based sales tools out there, it’s hard to figure out which ones are most useful for your sales organization.  Some of the organizations we’ve worked with recently are in “tool overload”. They’ve embraced sales tools, but with so many point solutions, their Reps are spending all their time surfing from one tool to another, without an effective strategy for prioritizing their activities. It’s another form of a very common problem – spending too much time researching prospects and not enough time calling them. Or worse they aren’t using the tools at all because they view them as cumbersome, or a waste of time, thus they are just throwing money down the drain.

Determining the right tool strategy for your organization requires a thorough assessment of your Sales Reps, marketing resources, go-to-market strategy, and prospect behavior. For example, if your prospects are mid-level HR Managers, you might utilize tools that increase you phone interactions, as these folks might be more likely to give you 5 minutes on the phone, whereas IT Managers might prefer email interactions. Take a serious look at your sales organization and assess what areas can benefit the most from automated sales tools. There is no set formula that says you must purchase 5 tools to be successful; you don’t even need to purchase one from each of the categories below. Find the one tool that you think would have the most impact on your biggest sales challenge, and start there.

If you are already using a slew of sales tools, but still aren’t seeing the productivity from your Reps, consider scaling back, or swapping some of your existing tools for new tools. Figure out the most important tool based on prospect behavior and coach your Sales Reps on how to utilize the tool in a time-effective way.

Also, talk to your high-performing Sales Reps, find out what tools they are using that may or may not be provided by your company. Ask the Reps where they have had the most success in the past, and how they feel about tools you are considering using in the future. Involving the Reps as much as possible in these discussions can significantly improve user adoption of the tools.

Below is a list of the commonly used tools we’ve come across, and a brief summary of what they can do. Use this list to figure out the best tool strategy for your sales organization. For the purposes of this post, we are going to focus on tools related to lead qualification since filling the front end of the pipeline is a persistent problem.

Automate Lead Generation

Eloqua (www.eloqua.com) – A marketing automation platform for building and managing your prospect database, scoring and routing leads to sales, and measuring marketing’s impact on the business. There are modules for campaign management, lead management, contact management, and marketing measurement.

Marketo (www.marketo.com) – A marketing automation platform that allows users to automate demand generation campaigns and deliver high quality leads to Sales. Marketo helps Sales understand, prioritize and interact with the hottest leads and opportunities.

Silverpop (www.silverpop.com) – Provider of web-based marketing tools for creating, automating, and delivering online messaging. The platform also scores leads and measures campaign ROI.

Genius.com (www.genius.com) – A demand management software platform that automates marketing workflows and provides real-time sales alerts on qualified lead activity. The platform includes solutions such as email marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring, website tracking, instant alerts, and closed-loop reporting capabilities.

Find Prospects

ZoomInfo (www.zoominfo.com) – A subscription based database of company and individual profiles. Allows you to search by geography, title, company size, industry, or keywords; build lists for finding and nurturing leads; or find comprehensive profiles for select individuals.

Jigsaw (www.jigsaw.com) – A database of contacts and company information that allows users to buy or trade contact information and research companies for prospecting activities.

InsideView (www.insideview.com) – A sales intelligence application that aggregates and analyzes relevant executive and corporate data from thousands of social media and traditional editorial content sources to uncover new sales opportunities.

Dow Jones (www.dowjones.com) – A subscription-based database that allows Sales Reps to search company and executive profiles, build lists, and get notifications of important changes within target companies that might signal buying activities.

Hoovers (www.hoovers.com) – A subscription-based database of proprietary business information available through the Internet, data feeds, wireless devices, and co-branding agreements with other online services. You can search contacts, build lists, and view organization hierarchies.

OneSource (www.onesource.com) – A subscription-based database of proprietary business information solutions, including company, executive, and industry intelligence. You can search contacts by title, industry, geography, and company size, and build lists for marketing campaigns..

Improve Phone Connect Rate

ConnectAndSell (www.connectandsell.com)– Enables Sales Reps to connect with more prospects in a given timeframe than they would otherwise be able to reach. This is done through a combination of patented switching technology and virtual sales agents that connect your Rep to live prospects. The company guarantees at least 5 connects per hour, or the hour is free.

Find Mutual Connections to your Leads

PeopleMaps (www.mypeoplemaps.com) – Allows Sales Reps to use their contacts and the contacts of their coworkers to find warm connections to prospects and companies.

Create Sales Presentations

ClearSlide (www.clearslide.com) – Allows Sales Reps to give virtual presentations via a url address, and track the viewing of those presentations for follow-up.

Brainshark (www.brainshark.com) – Provider of on-demand, multimedia-rich presentations. Users can easily create content, deliver their presentations, and track the viewer’s behavior to measure the effectiveness of the presentation.

Outsource Sales Activities

The Lead Dogs (www.leaddogs.com) – A provider of outsourced sales services for lead generation, lead nurturing, inquiry management, and customer base selling. They produce qualified leads for your sales team.

Tippit (www.tippit.com) – A demand generation program that delivers Highly Qualified Leads, through 3^rd party information sources, on a pay for performance basis. Through their Content Syndication Platform, Tippit drives prospects to your organizations white papers, webcasts, and online advertising.

Rainmaker Systems (www.rainmakersystems.com) – A provider of outsourced sales and marketing solutions for converting web visitors to leads, generating appointments, increasing sales of subscriptions/warranties, renewing maintenance contracts, telesales, etc. via their Revenue Delivery Platform.

BAO, By Appointment Only (www.baoinc.com) – A provider of outsourced lead generation services that call prospects and set up meetings on a pay-for-performance basis.

Improve Sales Enablement

iCentara (www.icentera.com) – A sales enablement software platform allows users to create intranet sales portals along with extranet channel partner and customer portals that deliver a consistent marketing voice across the entire organization and beyond.

SAVO Group (www.savogroup.com) – Sales Enablement software that connects employees from every department – Sales, Marketing, IT, Subject Matter Experts – with the best materials, insights and expertise.

Kadient (www.kadient.com) – An on-demand sales enablement platform for creating sales content, developing sales playbooks, and tracking sales performance analytics.

By: Kristina McMillan, Sr. Project Manager, SalesRamp

So you’re in sales, what’s your lead generation strategy?

It’s critically important for inside sales to be tightly tied to lead generation. The Inside Sales Manager should work closely with the lead generation team to set a strategy, manage campaigns, and measure the results.

Consider this: Do your reps know what your prospects are currently doing to address their pain? Are your prospects using a competitive solution? What triggered your prospects to recognize that they had a problem in this area? Are your reps able to create pain for prospects that don’t know they have a problem?

As an Inside Sales Manager you need to have a clear understanding of your prospect’s pain and priorities, and how your solutions fit into their needs. This will help you determine which strategies, campaigns, messaging, etc. will resonate most with your prospects. To gain a better understanding of your prospect, work with your marketing team to:

1. Understand the status quo – Often, the biggest competitor in a market is the status quo. This may include older versions of competitive solutions, your own solutions, or home-grown solutions.  Understanding what your prospects are doing now to address their pain is crucial. If prospects think their home-grown solutions are good enough, you need to figure out how to show them the cost of not changing.
2. Identify trigger events – know what causes a prospect to feel the pain you solve. There may be specific events that trigger this pain, such as a change in leadership, downsizing, reorganizations, mergers, acquisitions, customer trends, industry trends, legislation, or any number of events that cause a company to reassess how they do business. Build campaigns and messaging around these events to help prospects understand how you solve their pain.
3. Train Reps to create urgency – How often do you get a lead that is “just looking” or “still doing research”? Train your reps to create urgency with prospects.  Reps must take a careful approach, or they can risk aggravating a prospect and turning them off of your company. Help them understand the costs of not acting, but don’t be pushy if the timing is still not right. This is part of the lead nurturing process.
4. Define the criteria for lead qualification – Be sure to have a solid lead-qualification process in place so that only sales-ready opportunities are passed to your sales team. Establish a definition for a qualified lead from marketing. Better yet, pass all marketing leads to a Lead Qualification Group, so that they can further qualify leads and generate Qualified Sales Opportunities (“QSOs”).
5. Don’t ignore prospects – It’s good to target certain segments or verticals, but don’t ignore prospects who are genuinely interested if they are not from your target market. You may uncover a new market or segment that you hadn’t considered before. Study customers from non-target segments to highlight key indicators they demonstrated in the buying process that can be used to generate rules for following up on new prospects from non-target markets.
6. Track relevant information – Create. Measure. Adjust. Repeat. Track as much relevant information as possible for late stage opportunities and closed deals. Information about the prospect’s pain, existing solutions, and triggering events can help you understand who to target and their level of qualification based on these indicators.
7. Use marketing automation – If your marketing team isn’t already using marketing automation, encourage them to adopt an automation strategy. Marketing automation allows you to connect with prospects often and efficiently, to nurture them with relevant and targeted campaigns, and to measure the effectiveness of your marketing activities.

Following these steps will help you figure out the right lead generation strategy for your team. That said, it is just a place to start. The right mix of lead generation strategy and activities will fluctuate as your market changes, but the basic principles (the steps above) remain the same.

Post comments of what you are doing – your lead gen strategies, what’s working, what’s not – we’d love to hear from you!

By: Kristina McMillan, Sr. Project Manager, SalesRamp

Back to Basics: Sales Fundamentals

In a world of on-demand tools and automation, it’s easy for Sales Reps to get overwhelmed and lose sight of the most basic fundamentals for success. It’s our job as Sales Managers to help our Reps sort through all of the tools and automation, and to determine how to be most effective with their time. We need to keep the basic fundamentals at the forefront of our minds while also seeking to improve prospect intelligence and hit rate through tools and automation.

These fundamentals are:

Volume of Activity: There must be activity to generate quota or revenue. Simply, if your Reps aren’t making calls or sending enough emails to reach your prospects, no amount of tools or automation will help. Set reasonable and measureable activity goals for your Reps, such as number of completed calls per day, number of conversations, number of emails sent

Knowledge: Ensure your Reps know your products and services better than anyone. Test their knowledge through role playing and product discussions.

Articulate and Concise Communication: Besides knowing what they are talking about, Reps should know how to articulate their knowledge about your products and services. Monitor calls and do roll playing to see how your Reps communicate your messaging.

Awareness: Making sure that your Reps can listen to and understand what prospects are communicating is crucial. Your Reps should not just be telling your prospects about your products, but seeking to understand the prospects needs and relating those needs to your solutions.

Strategy: Every Sales Rep should know the basics of sales strategy: how to navigate to the right prospect, how to uncover the prospect’s pain, how to qualify a prospect, how to position against competition, and how to close. Monitoring your Reps calls is the best way to find out their areas for improvement.

Attitude: A positives, enthusiastic, and professional attitude is one of the most important assets of a successful Sales Rep. Cultivate an environment that supports this type of behavior and discourages the contrary. Work with your Reps, through role playing and call monitoring, to improve their professional demeanor.

By: Kristina McMillan, Sr. Project Manager, SalesRamp

Welcome! How can we help?

Hello, and welcome to The Pipeline Professionals, the official blog of SalesRamp. We put together this blog to address the need for practical sales knowledge for all types of sales professionals.

Who are we? We are a sales and marketing consulting firm that specializes in optimizing inside sales teams and delivering vital customer feedback through market research studies. Visit www.salesramp.com to learn more.

Sure, now you are thinking, why should I read yet another blog on sales? Our answer is simple – we’ll use this blog to discuss current issues from the trenches (i.e. challenges facing Sales Dev Reps, Inside Sales Reps, Field Reps, Sales Managers, Marketing folk, customers, partners, buddies, etc.) and give you our perspective on dealing with these real-time issues. We will also occasionally take it “Back to the Basics” and refresh those tried and true sales methods, best practices, and just darn common sense that we should all be reminded of from time to time.

So if you think you can benefit from real challenges, dilemmas and solutions from other sales reps and  managers, tune in and give us your thoughts.