The Clear & Complete Guide to Account Based Sales Development
Your guide to smart prospecting in an Account Based Everything world Contents
Introduction 3 Part 7 33 Part 13 127 A bold strategy for companies that don’t The WHO of Account Based SDR tools and technology want to wait around for revenue to show up Sales Development
Part 14 134 Part I 4 Part 8 46 Conclusion: an idea whose time A new kind of sales development The WHAT of Account Based has come Sales Development
Part 2 8 About Engagio 136 The rise of account based thinking Part 9 59 The WHERE of Account Based Sales Development Part 3 13 Account Based Sales Development: two big ideas brought together Part 10 84 The importance of coordination
Part 4 19 Silos don’t work in an account based world Part 11 95 Growing and managing a sales development team Part 5 23 Hello, Account Based Everything Part 12 120 ABSD metrics Part 6 31 The WHO, WHAT and WHERE of Account Based Sales Development
2 Introduction A bold strategy for companies that don’t want to wait around for revenue to show up
There’s never been a more exciting or a more rewarding time to be in B2B sales & marketing. After decades of hunch-based, adrenaline-fueled, Hail-Mary revenue generation, we’re entering a completely new era. An era steered by strategy, tuned by technology and driven by data.
It’s all coming together right now, as you’re • Across both – the lead-centric approach is or business development is giving way reading this sentence – a perfect storm of giving way to an account based strategy to a far better mousetrap: Account Based innovation that’s giving enlightened companies that aligns everyone around the deals that Sales Development (ABSD). an unprecedented degree of control over their matter most own fortunes (and an unfair advantage in the That’s what this is all about: a new sales marketplace). Put all three of these together and a hugely development role that lives at the center exciting model takes shape. And it works: the of a coordinated, integrated Account Based We’ve already experienced Phase One—a wave companies following this new model are Everything approach. of transformation in the people, processes and growing like wildfire and running circles around technologies that create and convert their old-school competitors. If you’re in marketing, sales or sales opportunities: development, this is the beginning of Pick any B2B company that has experienced an exciting new phase of your career. • In marketing – ideas like marketing automation, insane growth over the last 12-18 months. inbound tactics, content marketing, lead Chances are, they’re using the strategy that Hang on to your hat. scoring and nurturing have re-invented you’re about to discover. demand creation • In sales – the increasing specialization and This is Account Based Everything (ABE) – professionalization of sales development is and it’s driven by a new incarnation of the sales replacing cold calling with intelligent, laser- development discipline. Today, what used to targeted prospecting be called prospecting, inside sales, telesales
3 Part 1
A new kind of sales development
4 A new kind of
sales development 1 Part sales kind of new A development
In some form or another, sales development “Throughout history, specialization “For many companies, sales has been around for a long time. In fact, some of the world’s most famous companies (like has been the breakthrough development reps are the first line Salesforce.com) were built on it. to better techniques. It allows of human contact with prospects.” people to excel at a few The idea of breaking out a specialized sales Trish Bertuzzi specific tasks.” development role from the Sales department The Sales Development, is based on unassailable logic: Ken Krogue Playbook • It focuses Account Executives on what they President and Founder, do best: closing deals InsideSales.com • It professionalizes the process of opportunity creation and qualification – giving the job to people who are especially suited to it • It boosts sales productivity, accelerates growth and lowers costs at the same time
At the start, the sales development role combined both inbound opportunity qualification and outbound prospecting efforts. It was a big step and the companies that pioneered it grew at impressive rates. But it was only the beginning.
5 A simple model 1 Part sales kind of new A development
Traditional sales development was not The transformation in sales development has particularly sophisticated: been driven by two big developments: “59% of sales development • Hire hungry, ambitious young people 1) Separating inbound from outbound organizations create specialized • Stick them on a bank of phones Just as sales development itself is a teams for inbound and outbound.” • Give them big, broad lists of people to call specialization, the new version takes it one TOPO: The 2016 Sales Development (and/or inbound contacts to qualify) step further: creating two teams with very Benchmark Report • And stand back different goals A recent Bridge Group study It was a blunt instrument, but it worked a lot One team focuses on responding quickly showed that inbound/outbound role better than asking Account Execs to waste and efficiently to inbound interest created by specialization resulted in a 16% increase their time hunting for opportunities. marketing (email, advertising, the web, etc.). in Pipeline Power Score (their metric for revenue generation efficiency Two big developments The other focuses on creating opportunities and effectiveness) Today, sales development has become much using outbound tactics (primarily phone and more focused and dramatically more effective. email – more on this later). “Sales development specialization is an accelerator on the path to The new sales development discipline has Both teams are important. But both involve repeatable and scalable pipeline.” been well evangelized by the people who different skills and different tactics. Trish Bertuzzi, pioneered it, in books such as Predictable The Sales Development Playbook Revenue by Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler; The Sales Development Playbook by Trish Bertuzzi; and From Impossible to Inevitable, by Ross and Jason Lemkin (we highly recommend all three).
6 A simple model (cont’d) Part 1 Part sales kind of new A development
2) Focusing the outbound team on key accounts By the end of this book, we think it’s an idea “If you want to go upmarket, The split of sales development into two teams you’re going to want to pursue. But first, let’s coincided with the rise of a powerful strategy: track back and cover the critical context of the which you absolutely must to an account based orientation (instead of a new sales development approach: account grow, you have to go outbound. lead-centric one). based thinking. Winning large customers is much
While inbound teams are heavily weighted to more about causing a sale, not smaller companies (there are just many, many “As soon as the account based just catching one.” more of them), outbound teams can be focused wherever they’ll make the most impact. For any model takes hold, it leads to more Ken Krogue company chasing big deals, the natural focus personalization and more human President and Founder, for outbound sales development teams are the touch. Sales development is the InsideSales.com top tiers of named target accounts. natural place for that.” And when that happens, a new kind of machine is born. Craig Rosenberg Co-founder and Chief Analyst, This whole book is about the collision of TOPO outbound sales development with account based thinking. But for now, think of it this way: creating and training an entire team of specialists whose only job is to penetrate big, named accounts, is a very big idea indeed.
7 Part 2
The rise of account based thinking
8 The rise of 2 Part The rise of based thinking account account based thinking
As we detailed in our earlier (and rather awesome) ebook, The Clear & Complete Guide to Account Based Marketing, thinking of accounts instead of individual leads is hotter than a hot thing in an oven full of heat.
The first wave of account based strategies were grouped under the Work the whole account or lose the deal misleading name account based marketing (ABM) – probably because Sales had always thought in terms of accounts, while the idea was new 100% for marketing (whose core processes and tools were built around leads). ntent to purchase drops hen the decision group increases dramatically when a second from five to six, purchase likelihood decision maker is present further sinks – to a dismal 30% Regardless of where it sat, account based thinking took off because % it’s exactly what most B2B companies need most:
Buying teams are getting bigger 0% According to CEB research, the average buying team today includes 5.4 people. With increasing risk aversion, technology complexity and compliance concerns, few experts see this shrinking any time soon. 2 %
As every sales pro knows, the bigger the team, the less likely they are to end up buying. After all, it only takes one veto to kill a sale (or one 0% person on holiday to stop a deal in its tracks). 1 2 6 Size of bu ing team verage bu ing group size This risk is far higher if you’re tied to a lead-centric approach, talking n =3, 000 to single individuals in isolation. Clearly, winning big deals today means working the entire account. Purchase intent, by buying team size. Percentage of respondents stating “we will definitely buy from this supplier in the next six months” (Answer 8, 9 or 10 out of 10)
Source: CEB analysis 9 The rise of account based thinking (cont’d) Part 2 Part The rise of based thinking account
Big deals build big businesses Inbound can only get you so far (or so fast) The pioneers proved the model For most B2B companies, Customer Acquisition As powerful as inbound marketing can be, Reports from the front lines of account based Costs and Lifetime Value economics are far ‘fishing with nets’ will always catch a lot more programs have been astonishingly positive. more compelling in the enterprise market. And small companies than big ones (there are far Account based programs have been shown to for many, big deals are worth 10-20 times more more of them out there). yield the highest conversion rates and greatest than the average deal size. These are company- revenue growth of all the programs they run. making deals and they’re worth building a sales More importantly, inbound programs take And the wider sales and marketing community and marketing strategy around. 6-9 months to start seeing results and a full has taken notice. 12-24 months to start seeing significant value. For a new product or line of business, you have to start that process all over again. Account based marketing
Most companies simply don’t have the luxury delivers the highest Return on of waiting for the lead-centric inbound model Investment of any B2B marketing to ramp up. Outbound, account based efforts strategy or tactic. Period. are a much faster route to revenue. ITSMA Finally, even companies that have already established their inbound machine are finding that they’re starting to reach saturation. It’s just far more crowded out there and everyone is competing against a lot more content aiming at the same audience. For many, inbound is starting to see diminishing returns.
10 The benefits of 2 Part The rise of based thinking account account based thinking
Our Clear & Complete Guide to ABM outlines the industry’s consensus on the benefits of an account based approach. We won’t repeat it here… but we will summarize it:
Efficiency Acceleration Customer experience It focuses time and resources Deals proceed faster when you It delivers the consistently on accounts most likely to drive coordinate efforts around them. relevant experience that revenue. customers demand. Alignment Big wins It tightly integrates your sales Account penetration and The deal sizes are bigger. and marketing teams. expansion It guides intelligent account Close rates Sales excellence expansion at existing customers. It increases the quality of your It enables the challenger sale. biggest opportunities. Not a bad business case!
11 The benefits of account based thinking (cont’d) Part 2 Part The rise of based thinking account
We don’t need to hammer home the argument here: the power of an account based approach has been accepted by virtually every progressive sales and marketing leader – and is being put into practice by every high-growth B2B company that isn’t selling exclusively to small businesses.
Now it’s time to apply it in new ways…
12 Part 3
Account Based Sales Development: two big ideas brought together
13 Part 3 Part Based Sales Account big two Development: together ideas brought A big idea
We’ve seen the rise of the specialist sales development role and the new focus on the outbound side of the discipline. And we’ve seen the rise of account based thinking. Now it’s time to put them together.
Account Based Sales Development is a coordinated strategy that combines personalized, multi-channel, multi-threaded, outbound activities to create high-value opportunities in new and existing customers.
14 Part 3 Part Based Sales Account big two Development: together ideas brought A big idea
It’s all about the orchestration Account Based Sales between marketing, sales development and sales Development is a coordinated Much more sophisticated and effective than ‘hitting Built on relevance and value the phones’ or blasting strategy that combines personalized, for each individual in the out emails multi-channel, multi-threaded, buying team Targeting the entire buying team as a team – not as ABSD never sits back and outbound activities to create isolated individuals waits for opportunities: it goes out and creates them high-value opportunities in new The big deals that It’s just as powerful for fuel hyper-growth and existing customers. customer success as it is for acquisition
15 How ABSD differs from
traditional sales development 3 Part Based Sales Account big two Development: together ideas brought
Account Based Sales Development is a huge TOPO Research, one of the pioneers of account “The new Account Based step from the original telesales ‘boiler rooms’: based thinking and the new sales development discipline, puts it this way: Sales Development leaps • It’s targeted – aimed at selected, named ahead of yesterday’s siloed accounts, not huge, undifferentiated lists “Unlike ‘batch and blast’ outbound sales sales development.” • It’s personalized – based on relevant, crafted development in which SDRs send large volumes conversations instead of standard, one-size- of template-based messages, Account Based Kristina McMillan fits-all scripts Sales Development is personalized to the • It’s researched – driven by systematic insight account and person receiving the message.” Sales Development Practice generation (not two minutes on LinkedIn) Leader, TOPO • It’s multi-channel – maximizing reach by using According to their 2016 benchmark study, all channels, not massive spamming campaigns 45% of sales development teams today are • It’s integrated – a coordinated effort supported already account based (even if not fully by marketing – not another silo evolved); 27% are partially account based; and • It’s patient – with less emphasis on short-term 28% are ‘greenfield’ (reaching out to the whole calls-to-action such as demos and more on market). Three years ago, these numbers high-value engagements such as meetings would have been reversed. ABSD is the new to share insights or trends SD. TOPO again:
“Account Based Sales Development is today’s most effective account based tactic… Rather than rely on the high-volume process of outbound prospecting, organizations now strategically define a smaller, more targeted set of accounts and run personalized, buyer- centric campaigns against those accounts.”
16 When ABSD makes sense 3 Part Based Sales Account big two Development: together ideas brought
Account Based Sales Development isn’t the When you’re selling across disciplines answer for every B2B company or every Big, multi-disciplinary buying teams can kill challenge. But if the following things are true for a deal faster than you can say, “Bob doesn’t The Tiger Team your business, ABSD is probably your best bet: like it.” The more people involved in making Some companies sell to lots of small- or influencing a purchase, the more you need ABSD. and mid-size customers as well as to When big deals matter big enterprises. For this kind of mix, If big deals are 10-20 times bigger than average When inbound just isn’t fast enough we’re seeing a two-pronged approach: deals, ABSD is a no-brainer. These big deals When you can’t sit around waiting for great a general sales development effort for don’t just justify the effort, theydemand it. deals to get swept up into your demand-gen the wider market and a specialist, ‘tiger nets – or when your inbound efforts are starting team’ for landing the big accounts. When you can identify your ideal prospects to see the diminishing returns. If you don’t yet know which accounts might buy, you may not be ready for ABSD. If you do, and can name them, you’re ready. “There’s still a place for what
When your deal sizes are six figures we call greenfield [not account ABSD is required for $100k-plus deals. And it’s a based] sales development. really good idea for $50-100k deals. Below £20k If you can sell to a broad range are probably too small. of customers, it can still make When you need sales efficiency sense. But as soon as you’ve got If boosting your opportunity-to-close rates a focused ideal customer profile, would make a big impact, you want ABSD. account based is the way to go.” But if your sales team just needs more at-bats and the quality or size of opportunity is not the Craig Rosenberg issue yet, you may need to wait a while (after all, Co-founder and Chief Analyst, even low-probability opportunities are better TOPO than none!). Hopefully this state won’t last long.
17 Q&A 3 Part Based Sales Account big two Development: together ideas brought
Matt Amundson, Vice President – Sales Do you think a 100 percent ABSD strategy What would you say to organizations that Development & Field Marketing, EverString is the ideal, or is it a mix of lead based and might think they’re too small to adopt account based? a ABSDR approach? What do you look for when you’re hiring an SDR? From an outbound sales development The magic in combining account based For me it’s all about prioritization and time perspective, yes I’d say it should be 100 percent marketing and sales development is that management. The capacity to transition from account based. Even in high-velocity, smaller organizations can build pipeline to one account to the next – from one message commoditized markets, if you don’t know that support sales team faster than ever before. to the next – and maintain focus. the person you’re calling is a good fit for you, it’s a wasted call. In the past, building a strong inbound engine So I look for nuance and breadth of experience was a numbers game, like fishing with a wide in grads – people who balanced studies with The cost of the false positive may be very low net. It required some brand awareness and a sports, or worked their way through school. (versus the high cost of a false negative), but if level of commoditization – not to mention the That’s more important than grades. Like you have the right structures in place, it’s worth ability to build a strong marketing team, which salespeople, SDRs are determined type-A spending time to personalize your approach. is hard in itself. You needed all three, and it personalities, but they also need to be creative didn’t happen overnight. enough to craft a thoughtful, personalized And you get round one of the biggest problems message that resonates even when it’s cold. with lead based sales development that says if With an account based approach to marketing you can’t get through to your lead then you’ve and sales development, you expedite the And I do like it when they’re straight out of hit a wall. With an account approach, you have process by a huge factor. With a strategic plan college, so they don’t have to un-learn any other avenues that can take you to the account. and a personalized story, you get to the people other companies’ sales methodologies. who make buying decisions, fast – you trade your net in for a spear.
18 Part 4
Silos don’t work in an account based world
19 Silos don’t work in an 4 Part in an work Silos don’t account based world account based world
The pioneers of account based approaches in general – and Account Based Sales Development in particular – have all come to the same conclusion: it works best in companies where all the revenue-generating disciplines are closely aligned.
In short: silos suck.
For this reason, the term ‘account based Teams that work in isolation are the ones that marketing’ is misleading and the wrong term miss opportunities; duplicate efforts; waste to describe the process we’re talking about. insights; drop the ball in clunky ‘handovers’; There’s a danger that it perpetuates the siloed and inhibit every important metric from close marketing that’s holding us back. rates to deal velocity.
What really works in the account based In contrast, teams that work together in model is the close integration of marketing, coordinated programs that target key accounts sales development and sales (plus customer are dramatically and measurably more efficient success for those who have the discipline). and effective.
20 Don’t do this alone 4 Part in an work Silos don’t account based world
If Marketing embraces ABM without a deep Finally, account based sales in isolation results alignment with Sales, you get isolated tactics in Account Executives wasting their time in like ad retargeting and fancy mailers or field prospecting without any support or leverage. events that Sales doesn’t care about or That’s expensive and inefficient. participate in. What works is integration. That’s the heart To really engage with a target account, the of any account based strategy. human touch is essential: someone needs to pick up the phone, send a personal email or make a real connection on social channels. “ABM is a strategic business Only then can the account-focused marketing tactics make an impact. initiative. If it’s only sponsored by Marketing, it becomes Similarly, Account Based Sales Development a campaign.” without support from Marketing leads to a bunch of junior reps generating their Jeff Sands own accounts and writing their own emails – then doubling the volume to try to ITSMA improve performance.
21 Part 4 Part in an work Silos don’t account based world What if you’re not aligned yet?
On the account based journey, total alignment is the goal. But the important thing is to always make progress towards it. You can’t stop your revenue machine, hold everything and wait until you’ve achieved perfect alignment. So get going now:
Start with an alignment Agree on key metrics and Meet regularly – to review workshop – sit down together SLAs – agree on what good processes, metrics and progress. and discuss the account based looks like, what metrics you’ll approach and why you need to track and what commitments Use common data and change the way you work. you’ll make to each other. technology platforms – avoid silo systems! Define your ideal accounts – Build a foundation – implement make sure you’re all aiming for an account-centric data the right deals. infrastructure, including things like lead-to-account matching.
22 Part 5
Hello, Account Based Everything
23
Part 5 Part Account Hello, Hello, Account Based Everything Based Everything
Because silos hold back account based success, more and more sales and marketing leaders are no longer talking about account based marketing, they’re talking about Account Based Everything.
Account Based Everything is a strategic go-to-market approach that orchestrates personalized marketing, sales, and success efforts to drive engagement and conversion at named accounts.
24
Part 5 Part Account Hello, Hello, Account Based Everything Based Everything
With ABE, nothing is random: it’s a systematic go-to-market strategy. Account Based Everything is Not a campaign Delivering a consistent buyer a strategic go-to-market approach experience, with clear, consistent An integrated program that orchestrates personalized messaging from that aligns all revenue- each department generating teams marketing, sales, and success efforts and in every channel
Always a super-targeted effort targeting big to drive engagement and conversion prospects and existing For acquiring new customers. Never ‘spray clients and existing and pray’ at named accounts. customer expansion
25
Part 5 Part Account Hello, Account Based Everything Based Everything
The essence of the Account Based delivered by all departments (Marketing, “This isn’t about account based Everything (ABE) strategy is coordinating Sales Development, Sales, and Customer relevant interactions that span multiple Success). When you can do that, the results marketing campaigns or sales players in the account (decision makers will always be greater than individual tactics, this is Account Based and influencers) andmultiple channels departments working in isolation. Everything.” (email, phone, social and demand gen) Craig Rosenberg Co-founder and Chief Analyst, TOPO
Account Account Based Based Sales arketing “Account Based Everything Development recognizes that it takes a village to zero in on key accounts; that One central account all functions must be integrated, based view from marketing to sales development, sales and Account Account customer success.” Based Based ustomer Sales Tom Scearce Success TOPO
26
ABE and the three critical Part 5 Part Account Hello, revenue objectives Based Everything
Account Based Everything isn’t a specialized The ABE effect In short, the transformation to an ABE approach strategy to keep in a box in the corner. As TOPO Companies that implement ABE see some is essentially the culture change that sales and research slide shows, it’s a strategic initiative unexpected effects: marketing have been waiting for. that addresses the three most important revenue objectives of any B2B company: Morale rises as you escape the discouraging ‘hamster wheel’ of high-volume, low- “Adopters of an Account Based engagement tactics. New customer acquisiton Everything strategy are seeing Performance improves as it takes far fewer significant lift in engagement Helps acquire new customers, leads to secure an appointment. particularly high value targets rates, pipeline per account, The voracious need for net new leads and upsell/cross-sell numbers.” decreases as you waste less time on low-potential situations and invest more Craig Rosenberg Pipeline velocity time in relevant interactions. Co-founder and Chief Analyst, TOPO Accelerates velocity o e isting Mutual respect grows as everyone in sales opportunities at target accounts and marketing recognizes the value and contribution of their colleagues.
You learn faster as more of your team gets direct engagement with the people who matter most. Account expansion
Drives expansion (upsell cross sell You grow faster taking the big revenue steps at e isting accounts that only big deals can deliver.
You scale up based on success, with your costs rising directly with your pipeline.
27
Part 5 Part Account Hello, Inbound + Outbound = Allbound Based Everything
The rise of Account Based Everything has The problem with inbound only The benefits of outbound sparked a debate between the virtues of In the early days of digital demand-gen, some The excitement surrounding the rise of inbound inbound versus outbound models. This is as companies evangelized an all-inbound model. marketing blinded many B2B companies to the good a time as any to try to put this argument That approach has serious limitations: power of outbound. Now it’s back in the to bed. spotlight, and for good reason: Inbound takes a long time to scale – For the most progressive leaders in sales and anywhere from 1-2 years, as discussed above. Outbound delivers big wins faster – because marketing, ‘inbound vs outbound’ misses the it’s more targeted and more proactive. point. Both can be important to the growth of Sales gets dependent on leads – a B2B business, but they do very different things a dangerous dependency. Costs vary with pipeline – double your efforts and require different processes and skills. and you double your output (which doesn’t Inbound marketing can get saturated – happen with inbound). Inbound is an always-on strategy that urgently with less return on incremental investment. responds to demonstrated buyer intent. There’s zero waste – all your effort is focused That said, the answer is NOT to stop inbound on the accounts that matter. Outbound is a thoughtful outreach strategy efforts: they’re too important for that and, once that crafts and coordinates targeted messages up to speed, create a flywheel effect that is You reach higher in key accounts – with to named accounts. an important growth driver. inbound, you’re at the mercy of who comes to you (usually junior people looking for competitive bids). With account based outbound you reach out to senior decision makers with a solution focus. That leads to more strategic deals and can even avoid competitive bake-offs.
The revenue is stickier – smaller, inbound deals are more likely to eventually churn than larger more strategic deals.
28
Part 5 Part Account Hello, The answer is Allbound Based Everything
When asked whether inbound or outbound is important to your company’s “An optimized balance of inbound and outbound growth, just say, “Yes”. The fact is, they both are. marketing techniques, i.e. “Allbound marketing”, consistently generates high quality leads that “After 18 months of building the outbound SDR ultimately produce revenue.” team, outbound accounted for 35% of new ARR. Dan McDade Outbound can make a huge impact in a relatively President and CEO, PointClear short time, especially if there’s already significant inbound traction.” Allbound combines the best of inbound with the best of outbound, deploying each strategy where it makes the most impact. Robby Allen Director of Sales Development, Zenefits
ccount t pe Pipeline KPI averages* Works best when
Large: Influenced: >75% • large deal sizes • Defined targets Outbound strategic/enterprise Sourced: <10% • Aligned sales and marketing
Influenced: 60-75% Named/territory Sourced: 15-25% • Smaller deal sizes Inbound Small/midsize Influenced: 50-60% • Broad targets and non-named Sourced: 25-45%
Source: *SiriusDecisions
29 Pause for breath…
Okay, we’ve seen the emergence of two big ideas: For the rest of the book, we’ll drill down into the Who, a dedicated sales development role and an account What and Where of ABSD – a deep dive into the engine based approach to revenue generation. room of your ABE strategy. We’ll also show you how to build a team, coach them for success and run And we’ve seen why it’s so important to build your a successful ABSD operation. Account Based Everything strategy on an integrated sales, marketing and customer success team Get this part wrong and you may find yourself spinning (instead of a silo). your wheels a bit.
We’ve seen that a specialized Account Based Sales Get it right and you’ve strapped your company Development role is a coordinated, multi-channel, to a rocket. outbound effort that doesn’t replace butcomplements your existing, inbound lead-generation.
30 Part 6
The WHO, WHAT and WHERE of Account Based Sales Development
31
The WHO, WHAT and WHERE of 6 Part WHAT The WHO, and WHERE of Based Account Sales Development Account Based Sales Development
Our discussion of best-practice Account Account Based Sales Development flips the funnel Based Sales Development follows a simple, Who/What/Where framework: hat do we here should ho should Who do you need to target? want to say we say it we say it to
(offers) (channels (segments
What will you do to get their attention and interest?
Where will you engage with them? ho are hat should here should we trying we say we say it to reach (content (channels S (accounts
Traditional demand generation starts with ‘what do we want to say?’ . Account Based Sales Development starts with the buyer and works up from there.
32 Part 7
The WHO of Account Based Sales Development
33 The WHO of Part 7 Part The WHO of Account Based Based Account Sales Development Sales Development
The most important decision you’ll make in your ABSD strategy is the list of accounts you decide to target: The Who. The idea is simple: you need to focus 100% of your efforts on the right targets. Not 80% or 90% — 100%.
In old-school prospecting, companies let the Pain points – Are they experiencing the to analyze the best customers of your closest recent graduates who populated the sales problems you solve? competitors: where are they winning and why? development team decide who they wanted to call. In enlightened ABSD, this is a strategic Technographics – What other systems decision, made from above and at the start. do they use? “Most companies believe they
Define your Ideal Customer Profile Behaviors – Do your best prospects do have a solid understanding of similar things? Past behavior is a great guide Your account selection process comes down their ideal customer profile and to future decisions. to a specific definition of your Ideal Customer that it has been communicated Profile (ICP), the companies that best match Strategy – Are they pursuing a strategy that’s your goals. A strong definition will include the across the organization. In reality, consistent with deploying your solutions? key dimensions that define the high-value they have dozens of different accounts that are most likely to buy, including Region – Do you have sales coverage in their assumptions floating around.” things like: region or country? Trish Bertuzzi Firmographics – company revenue, growth One way to decide on your ICP is to reverse rate, number of employees, industry, engineer your existing best customers to see The Sales Development location, structure… what they have in common. Another is Playbook
34
Part 7 Part The WHO of Select your target accounts Based Account Sales Development
Once you know the specific profile of an ideal Level 2 uses basic data, collected manually, Clearly, the accuracy and completeness of account, it’s time to actually pick the accounts; loaded into a spreadsheet and scored, to your account selection improves as you move to name the companies you’ll be targeting. help guide the reps to the accounts closest up the maturity spectrum. Do what you need to the ICP. to do – but be advised: time, money and effort On this front, there’s a maturity spectrum, with spent on rigorous account selection will be increasing accuracy and sophistication as you Level 3 adds in more specific data (e.g. intent, repaid many times over in the number and move up. sales triggers, etc.) and adds nuance to your quality of opportunities you generate. scoring and modeling. Level 1 is a blunt selection: you let sales reps A very big point: it’s critical to involve the select the accounts they feel are the best fit. Level 4 uses predictive analytics tools to crunch Account Executive in picking the target Not very scientific (but better than throwing big data sets to drive a complex model. accounts. You need their insight and their a dart at a directory). buy-in. Otherwise, you risk developing an account and bringing it to Sales – only to have them say they’re not interested. They key is to develop the accounts they Level 1: Reps sel select Based on intuition and experience. care about.
Level 2: Basic data Adding in manually collected data and simple scoring. “Data is a never ending problem. Prospectors have a clear idea Level 3: Advanced data Adding purchased data and more of which companies should be advanced scoring or modeling. a good fit, and which shouldn’t.”
Level 4: Predictive analytics Sophisticated predictive scoring Aaron Ross and modeling. Predictable Revenue
35 Putting your Part 7 Part The WHO of accounts into tiers Based Account Sales Development
Not all accounts are the same. So you’ll also need to organize your target accounts into tiers, based on how valuable they might be (and how Aim high much research and personalization will go into The Bridge Group clusters target C: Compelling Events: Companies each one). accounts into four buckets: in which a need is created suddenly by a trigger event. We’ll cover this in more depth in the Research A: A-List Accounts: The named or section (page 53), but for now, just think about strategic accounts on your dream D: Dead Ends: Companies that can’t how you might split your target accounts into client list. The deals that can change or won’t buy from you. tiers, applying a different treatment strategy your company. to each tier: The Bridge Group advises focusing your B: Bread & Butter: Your sweet spot outbound SDRs on the A list and let the customers. There may be too many inbound team focus on B. 5–50 accounts to identify by name (there may (To us, a case can be made for adding Classic ("tens") be thousands), but you can do it C accounts into the SD list if they meet by characteristics. core criteria.)
50–1,000 accounts Lite ("hundreds")
1,000+ accounts Hybrid ("thousands")
At Engagio, we advocate using a version of Account Based Sales Development for all tiers, not just the top.
36 How many accounts Part 7 Part The WHO of should you target? Based Account Sales Development
The number of accounts you choose to target A resource view for each Tier in your ABSD program – and the We think the best way to select target accounts number of accounts per AE and SDR – will is by looking at how many resources you have How Engagio does it depend on things like: to invest. And that depends on how you handle At Engagio, each Account Exec has the different tiers or styles of ABE. A given a territory consisting of: • Your expected deal sizes enterprise Account Executive may only be • The length of the sales cycle handle a few Tier 1 accounts, but a corporate • 5 Tier 1 accounts (deep • Your available sales resources rep could probably handle a few hundred personalization, • Your current level of engagement Tier 3 target accounts at a time. Put another no generic marketing) with major prospects way, the right number of accounts is the • The intensiveness of your number that your team can handle in • 45 Tier 2 accounts account based strategy a tier-appropriate way. (medium personalization, no generic marketing) We know one company where management felt their reps could have 100 named accounts • 150 Tier 3 accounts at a time – but they gave each one 150 accounts (light personalization) so the reps wouldn’t feel like their territories were too small. Our theory is that one rep can’t handle the work to create deep profiles for more than 5 accounts; and they can’t sign up to always follow-up personally (not via automated marketing) for more than 50 total accounts.
37 How many accounts should you target? (cont’d)
Part 7 Part The WHO of Account Based Account Sales Development
You can also look at it based on the capacity Engagio customer sample: accounts per account owner of your outbound Sales Development Reps 00 (SDRs). According to TOPO, the ideal number of accounts per SDR is 88 at a time. (That is of 0 course an average, the right actual number will 00 vary by deal size and complexity.) The question is, how often can you contact a given account? 2 0 Assuming every six months is the right frequency, then the right total number of accounts is 6 x 88 = 200 528… or about 500 accounts per outbound SDR. 1 0 But remember, there are big assumptions built into that calculation. In practice, the number 100 of accounts in an ABE program and the number 0 of SDRs per account varies quite a bit. 0 Across a sample of Engagio customers, the median number of accounts per account owner is 50. Quite a few “A better guide to the best Engagio customers have a lower number, 20 to 30 accounts per account owner, and quite a few have 100 accounts-per-SDR ratio might or more accounts per owner. be the number of people in the buying organization rather “We’ve seen 200 accounts per than pure deal size.” rep and 10 accounts per rep.” Ken Krogue J.J. Kardwell President and Founder, President & Co-founder InsideSales.com EverString
38
Part 7 Part The WHO of Mapping into buying centers Based Account Sales Development
Large enterprises aren’t cohesive, monolithic Updating your Account List structures – they’re made up of distinct operating business, many with separate • Don’t fall into the trap of constantly changing How Engagio handles divisions and locations. And, depending on your the accounts on your target account list: it can account list management solution, each division may have multiple foster a habit of giving up too soon At Engagio, a new rep can take a buying centers (for example, you might be able Tier 3 account from another rep if to sell to both the Sales department as well • Sales development in enterprise accounts they’re going to turn it into a Tier 1 as the Service department). takes time – it can take years (but the pay or Tier 2 account. off is worth the effort) Part of building your target account database Otherwise, they must keep their Tier 1 is understanding these hierarchies and • ‘Not interested right now’ is a starting point and Tier 2 accounts for at least a year, relationships, and mapping where you have not end of the road! and can’t swap out more than 25% existing relationships, where your competitors of Tier 3 accounts each quarter. are, and where there is whitespace. • Rule of thumb: don’t turn over more than 25% (Otherwise, it’s easy to give up of your account list each quarter too quickly.)
We also keep a list of “On Deck” accounts that could be nominated into a target account if space opens up.
39
Part 7 Part The WHO of Ideal buyer profile Based Account Sales Development
Once you’ve selected your target accounts, The key is to discover and map the After identifying the key buyer personas, you need to identify the right people to important roles inside every buying team. marketing needs to build out profiles for each approach within those accounts: the members This list (from Wikipedia) is a good summary: one: your IBPs. These are detailed portraits of of the buying team and its key influencers. the people in each role, including things like: Remember, you’re not waiting for them to Initiator: the person who starts the swim into your net, so you need to identify decision-making process. • Demographics – age, seniority, salary range… them in advance so you can design strategies • Psychographics – attitudes, beliefs and biases… to reach them. Decider: who makes the actual • Job dynamics – day-in-the-life insights, purchase decision. pain points… The first step is to identify thekinds of people • Key challenges – goals, strategies, pain points… you’ll want to reach: your Ideal Buyer Profiles Buyer: who selects the suppliers • Background – career route, past roles, skills… (IBPs). This is most often led by marketing and and manages the buying process. will include not just job titles (which vary widely For instance, it’s not enough to know that you’re from company to company) but also job Influencer: who contributes to the targeting the CMO in your target accounts. You function, discipline, seniority and priorities. specifications and evaluation. ideally need to know that you’re reaching out to ‘brand-conscious CMOs obsessed with User: who actually uses the product customer experience but without deep or service. experience in digital' as well as what kinds of messages and content they respond to. Gatekeeper: who controls the flow of information in and out of the company.
40
Part 7 Part The WHO of Why do SDRs need IBPs? Based Account Sales Development
The Ideal Buyer Profile helps SDRs in two Remember: Although your Ideal Buyer Profiles important ways: can tell you a lot about what messages will resonate with a given buyer, they don’t Who does persona development? 1. They guide contact building – leading the completely replace your research on actual The wider sales and marketing team reps to the most important people in the contacts (discussed below). A crafted message should work together to develop target accounts to a persona in a specific industry is a powerful personas, with marketing taking thing on its own – but relationship-building the lead on building out the profiles 2. They help reps understand the person they’re should also reflect the things they learn about and stories. prospecting – to know what drives them, each individual contact (a recent blog post they what makes them tick, what language will wrote; a speech they gave, etc.), especially for Often, it’s then left to the SDR to find the resonate, etc. Tier 1 accounts. As you go lower down your contacts that match those personas, account tiers, the base profile plays a bigger though in some companies, marketing In short, crisp and clear IBPs are an essential role in shaping interactions. assists as well – especially for Tier 1 element to any ABSD strategy. and Tier 2 accounts.
41
Part 7 Part The WHO of Top down or bottom up? Based Account Sales Development
There’s a lot of debate about whether an account penetration strategy should be top down (starting with the most senior executives) or bottom up (starting with actual product users or middle managers who need to get approval from above).
There are pros and cons to each: the top down approach tends to lead to bigger deals but at a slower deal velocity. Bottom up can progress quickly but can more easily hit road blocks or find themselves locked into a departmental solution rather than an enterprise-wide one.
One of the best things about Account Based Sales Development is that you can combine both strategies in one outbound program, reaching out to the most senior decision-makers with strategic messages while targeting the pain points of the more junior buyers.
42
Part 7 Part The WHO of Multi-threading Based Account Sales Development
In Account Based Everything, you’ll need Tip: more than one or two personas in each target account – B2B buying is a team sport. A lot of ABSD experts coach the ‘Two Nos’ rule: an The term ‘multi-threading’ account should never be marked ‘no contact’ until Comes from the world of computer Deals that move forward on the basis of just at least two of the key personas have said no. programming. It refers to a program one or two buyer contacts are the most likely or operating system that can handle to fail. Your contact can get sick, go on vacation multiple user requests – or threads or leave the company – stalling or killing your “Targeting enterprises is trickier – at a time. A nice metaphor for the deal. That’s far too high a risk for the deal simultaneous relationship building sizes we’re talking about. You need to build than the transactional model in Account Based Everything. connections with as many members of the used for smaller companies. buying/influencing team as possible. You need to navigate multiple buyers and roles.” "For deals over a certain Ken Krogue threshold, it is unacceptable to President and Founder, come to the table with only one InsideSales.com person at the target company.” John Gilman VP Worldwide Commercial Sales, NewRelic
43
Part 7 Part The WHO of Database build out Based Account Sales Development
The success of your Account Based Everything “If I could find the right person, program will depend on your ability to fill your database with contacts that match each buyer I could usually have a productive persona for each target account. business conversation with them. It was just a pain in the ass to find When you’ve mapped out the ideal personas, you can easily see which roles you’ve already them, especially in the Fortune got contacts for and where you still have 500 size companies.” coverage gaps. Aaron Ross To fill the coverage gaps, you need data. Predictable Revenue According to TOPO, you should acquire or append records until 100% of the target accounts and at l east 70-80% of buyer personas are represented in the database. “The single biggest time-killer The good news: there are lots of tools is finding out who to contact. and data sources that can help – from You don’t want your expensive LinkedIn to vendors like NetProspex, Leadspace, ReachForce, InsideView, Account Execs doing that.” ZoomInfo and Datanyze (a very small sample – there are more in the Tools Ken Krogue & Tech section below). President and Founder, InsideSales.com
44
Part 7 Part The WHO of Data maintenance Based Account Sales Development
If the world stood still, mapping your buying Even if you start with perfect data and 100% centers and filling coverage gaps would be account coverage, that data will decay at a rate a one-off exercise. In the real world, it’s of anywhere from 2-7% a month, depending on a continuous process. the role and industry. People leave companies, change positions, get promotions, etc. all the time. So you’ll need an easy way for the team to continually update your data – plus a regular data hygiene check to see if you’re still up to date. At Engagio, this is a quarterly process for all target accounts.
45 Part 8
The WHAT of Account Based Sales Development
46
The WHAT of Account 8 Part The WHAT Account Based of Sales Development Based Sales Development
Now that we know WHO we are going after, let’s move on to the WHAT: the actions your SDRs will take as they work to penetrate target accounts.
The sales development Play A Play is a series of steps that orchestrates “The idea is to design a surge The most successful sales development interactions across departments and channels teams leave very, very little to chance. Instead to achieve a business purpose for one or more of activity across all account of letting individual reps decide who to call, buying centers at target accounts. stakeholders – and parlay they develop target account lists and map that into richer engagement.” the buying teams inside them. The Play is a crucial concept in Account Based Sales Development. It’s the recipe for the Tom Scearce Similarly, the best sales development teams overall account penetration program and it design the specific interactions that the reps should be designed up front, then improved TOPO will have, while leaving plenty of space for over time. targeting and personalization. The WHAT and WHERE sections that follow Finally, the best SD teams are the ones that cover the elements that go into the sales “We find that senior executives run the whole Play – the coordinated series development Play. But keep in mind that that’s are 2.5 times more responsive of activities across all channels, targeting where this is all leading: a systematic program multiple buying personas. of activities aimed at turning a target account to quality multi-touch campaigns into a real opportunity. than are junior executives.” Dan McDade President & CEO, PointClear
47
WHAT:
harnessing the power of relevance 8 Part The WHAT Account Based of Sales Development
The success or failure of your Account Based Your entire program is designed to deliver Sales Development strategy depends on your relevant messages to the right people at the ability to be relevant to your target contacts. right time. And relevance can only come from insight: a real understanding of the buyer’s Relevance separates enlightened sales challenges, opportunities and pain points. development from spam. If you cut corners here, you risk damaging your Relevance earns email opens and more relationships with the most important people at importantly, responses. your most important accounts. It’s just too easy for them to hit the spam button and block you Relevance gets buyers to lean forward instead from ever reaching them again. To deserve the of drawing back. attention of your target accounts, you need to earn it. And that’s where research comes in.
48
Sales spam is embarrassing 8 Part The WHAT Account Based of Sales Development
We’ve all come to accept a certain amount These kinds of tactics are bad enough for "Template emails are roulette of marketing spam (though we still hate it). small deals. For the big opportunities, you’ve But ‘sales spam’ is far worse. Sales spam got to raise your game. It’s so easy to hit the wheels. If you only get 100 rolls pretends to be personal and relevant while spam button – why would you ever risk your of the roulette wheel, then you being exactly the opposite. ability to communicate with the most need to increase your odds.” important people from the most important Emails with badly automated personalization accounts by sending them a generic, Craig Rosenberg make you look stupid. irrelevant message? One of our favorites started with “Hi, Mr. Jr!” Co-founder and Chief Analyst, to a friend whose name was Bill Smith Jr. TOPO Another called Jon Miller ‘Steve’ in the salutation. Nice.
Approaches that focus on the salesperson’s The old way The ABSD way needs are a turn-off. “I’ve been trying all week to get you” is your 1. Hire lots of SDRs 1. Identify specific accounts problem not theirs. 2. Buy lists of leads cold call 2. Engage those accounts with Generic, templated emails are crass. compelling commercial insight They pretend to be personal but betray the opposite. “Always be closing” “Trusted advisor"
Blind templates are dangerous. Secret weapon: Secret weapon: Maria Pergolino tells of a sales rep she Managing high-volume operations Better data, more research heard about who kept not-so-nice personal notes about the buyer in Notes field in their Quantity Quality CRM. Result: an email that arrived with the unflattering comments included!
49
Cold calling has gone cold 8 Part The WHAT Account Based of Sales Development
A recent Baylor University Keller Center And LinkedIn reports that 90 percent of B2B Research Report found that for every decision-makers never respond to any form 330 cold calls made, only one appointment of cold outreach. Ouch. Mike Volpe’s was set (a 330:1 call-to-appointment ratio). Prospecting Armageddon The problem is not with the ‘calling’ Mike Volpe, one of our favorite start-up the problem is with the ‘cold’. Do your growth advisors, describes what he homework or get the cold shoulder! calls ‘Prospecting Armageddon’: a cycle of failure that traps any sales development team that skips the ‘relevance’ mandate. It looks like this:
he rosepecting rmageddon
People filter and ignore BDRs send (even more cold emails
BDR miss BDRs use goals b/c tools to send low response even more cold emails mikevolpe com
Getting your Who/What/Where framework right will keep you out of this cycle of despair!
50
What relevant
outreach looks like 8 Part The WHAT Account Based of Sales Development
There’s no mystery to the kinds of things that What does “relevant to my business” mean? make people lower their Sales Defense Barriers The three most important factors in an and listen to your SDRs: enterprise decision: Sales reps are 5x more likely to get engagement if they add value to • Helpful advice about best practices • Knowledge and understanding prospects, but just 20% of sales • New insight into pressing issues of my unique business issues people are currently seen as valuable • A look at how similar companies attack • Knowledge and understanding by their buyers. the same problems of my industry • Reliable data that throws new light • Fresh ideas to advance my business Salesforce blog on a challenge • Expert views on trends and futures Source: ITSMA
These are the same things that made content In other words, the best prospecting messages marketing replace old-school, broadcast-style, prompt Challenger Sale-style conversations. 74% of buyers choose the sales rep interruption-based advertising. And they work that’s first to add value and insight. just as well in a sales context. Corporate Visions
“75% of executives will read unsolicited marketing materials that contain ideas that might be relevant to their business.” ITSMA
51
The Challenger Sale:
commercial insight – 8 Part The WHAT Account Based of Sales Development not ‘thought leadership’
Account Based Sale Development is the ideal enabler of The Challenger Sale, a breakthrough concept summarized in the excellent CEB book with the same name.
The book shows how the best sales reps are Demonstrate an understanding of the General information those who are comfortable as Teachers and prospect’s world. Be credible/relevant Tailors. Teachers offer unique perspectives They don’t just claim an understanding, ccepted information to their prospects and are great at two-way they prove it and back it up with evidence. Be newsworthy communication. Tailors understand the Thought leadership prospect’s value drivers and can craft messages Disrupt the prospect’s world view. Be rame breaking to their economic motivators. They break the frame of reference to expose a nsight flawed assumption, challenging the status quo. ead to supplier This approach is far more specific and tailored Commercial insight than generic ‘thought leadership’. In fact, There’s a lot of noise for SDRs to cut through, it’s something far more valuable: customized but if they succeed then they get to the real commercial insight. commercial insight that can make a prospect lean forward. The best sales development teams are the ones who best deploy this kind of commercial insight. Specifically, they: “Educate without pitching.” Ken Krogue President and Founder, Source: CEB InsideSales.com
52
WHAT: building your account
insight using research 8 Part The WHAT Account Based of Sales Development
Valuable, relevant commercial insight comes “The sales development role from research. The depth of research will reflect which tier a given account is in. is the lynchpin of Account Based Everything. ABE is driven by Tier 1: Deep research insight, research and feedback Each account is treated as a “market of one”, with intensive research and account plans - and who has more real-time and full buying center mapping. These insights access than the SDR?” ensure that each interaction is completely customized and personalized for that account Tom Scearce (and ideally the person). TOPO
Tier 2: Medium-depth research A lighter level of research but the goal is still that each interaction is personalized or customized (remove these accounts from generic marketing emails to ensure each touch is personalized, reviewed, and approved by a human).
Tier 3: Light research Teach reps to discover ‘3 things in 3 minutes’: a fact or insight on the Industry; on the Company; and on the Persona or individual contact. Very light customization on some channels (e.g. sales email); other channels get segment- and/or persona-specific messages (e.g. in online advertising).
53
Part 8 Part The WHAT Account Based of Sales Development What you’re researching
For a Tier 1 account (with the most intensive research), research will almost always include:
Market dynamics Strategy Door openers Size, growth, maturity, disruption, Business model, priorities, strategic University ties, home towns, sports teams, competitors… initiatives, successes, failures, whitespaces… interests, conference attendance…
Company Connections The account insight profile must be a living Revenue, profitability, growth, market Any links from your company into theirs: past document, regularly updated with new share, stock performance, outlook, employment, association memberships… information. The entire team should be acquisitions, history… alerted to important updates to any of the History above categories. People Complete view of your prior interactions Leadership, buying teams, stability, with the account (emails, meetings, deals)… Again, the research intensity will depend on culture, values, tenures in key roles, the account tier. Research is time-intensive, attitudes, preferences, biases… Technology so instill a discipline about getting a return Competitive solutions, complementary on that investment. Relationships solutions, collaborative solutions, etc. Organizational structure, reporting, power centers, buying teams…
54
Who does the research 8 Part The WHAT Account Based of Sales Development
Who has responsibility for account research Whichever approach you choose, someone - the SDR? The Account Exec? Marketing? has to own the research function and be accountable for it. So much depends Sources of insight The answer varies by company – and may on this insight. Where do your researchers get also vary by account tier. We like this simple their information? A few sources: structure (but we’ve seen many others work too): • The company website • Annual reports Tier 1 – AEs are responsible for creating and • SEC filings maintaining the account plan (with quarterly • Analyst reports updates), but Marketing plays a BIG role • Press releases in helping and supporting. • Blog posts • Investor relations Tier 2 – SDRs and Marketing coordinate on the • Industry media profile. This will often be led by the SDR team, • Financial press unless company has a dedicated Account • Influencers and bloggers Based Marketing function. • LinkedIn • Speeches and conferences Tier 3 – SDRs are the primary owners of the • Product and technical literature research, with help from Marketing and various tools. Possibly with a specialized research role In general, researchers are that does nothing but account profile building resourceful people who quickly (an example of even greater specialization become black-belts in Google. in the SDR function).
55
The role of data
in profile-building 8 Part The WHAT Account Based of Sales Development
Not all the insight in an account profile has to be hand- assembled. In fact, most companies use some form of sales intelligence solution, integrating new data sources to accelerate the process and add detail.
There are also dozens of useful tools to help with this, including but not limited to Mattermark, Owler, InsideView, DiscoverOrg, Compile, RainKing, DataFox, Avention, and Hoovers. (See Technology and Tools section on Page 127 for more.)
Marketing interactions are another important source of account data: knowing what web pages, emails and content the account has interacted with will help steer your team towards new opportunities and better conversations. Integrating your marketing automation with your CRM system makes it easy to pull this kind of data into your profiles.
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Trigger events 8 Part The WHAT Account Based of Sales Development
Some of the insight in your account profiles “The goal of sales development is to peel the market layers back will be fairly static or slow-changing. Other items will be timely – and many of these and find customers that represent the best business fit for the might be ‘trigger events’ that indicate company and engage them in a dialogue.” a window of opportunity is opening up. Robby Allen Only you and your team will understand the Director of Sales Development, key trigger events that matter most to your company, but these are the kinds of triggers Zenefits we’ve seen:
• Funding round • Acquisition Profiling by persona • Use phone/tablet • New office opening It’s not enough to simply craft • New executive hire messages to each account. You also VPs and Directors • Award win have to craft them for each persona. • Oversee large teams • New business win Your Ideal Buyer Profiles should drive • Improve team performance • Industry recognition this, but here are some additional • Efficiency, scalability, output • Promotion examples that add a layer of insight • Solution focused according to role: • Use phone/tablet The important thing is to spot the trigger events early and alert the SDR that it’s time CXOs Managers to reach out (“Hey Laura, congrats on the • Looking of the “next big thing” • Hands on, in the weeds big win…”). • High-level P&L • Project focused • Travel a LOT • Potential power user • Work weekends and evenings • Buy-in still important
57
Q&A 8 Part The WHAT Account Based of Sales Development
Scott Gaydos, Demand Generation Lead, Guru What kind of impacts have you seen in moving Do you use template emails or crafted, to outbound ABSD? personalized emails? What are the most important metrics to track in By homing in on our ICP (ideal customer profile) Our first email is always personalized. Our an ABSD team? we have seen a significant increase in our follow up emails have a templated flow, but At Guru two of the most important are coverage average deal size and our win rate. have elements that are personalized. and engagement – at the account and the contact level. We target sales leaders, Over the past few months we’ve seen our win We have several triggers we use to identify enablement leaders, and customer support and rate jump to just under 60 percent, while our companies that, from our experience, are most success leaders. So our process starts with average deal size has more than doubled willing to engage in a conversation: knowing who these people are and ensuring (and it’s still growing). they live in our CRM. • Raised funding – most likely to be used to grow Having the discipline to focus everything from sales and marketing We aim to understand who the key players at sales outreach to content strategy, social • Recent change in sales or sales enablement our target accounts are, and what level of campaigns, online ads, events and partnerships leadership – looking to make changes exposure they have had to Guru. Have they is a huge part of why we have been successful. to improve sales effectiveness downloaded our content, had a conversation We do not just chase revenue everywhere. • Hiring more than four sales reps – will need with an SDR, clicked on an ad, created a free to scale their team quickly Guru account, and so on? We focus on the areas where we know we will have the best results for our customers. This is With these triggers in mind, we create content Then we try to set up a next step that also proven by our high adoption rates and low geared at helping to solve associated pain progresses the relationship. When there are churn rates. points – and train our sales reps on how and higher levels of engagement with an account, when to share it. we see the change and we evolve our communications with our contacts there. The result is a play that is filled with valuable information for our prospects as they experience these triggers and transitions. We try to add value with each interaction, and that is seldom achieved with templated emails alone.
58 Part 9
The WHERE of Account Based Sales Development
59
The WHERE of Account 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development Based Sales Development
That’s the WHAT of Account Based Sales Development: the insights and messages that will guide your SDRs as they personalize their engagements with prospects. Now let’s move on to the WHERE: the channels and touchpoints that your SDRs will use to deliver those messages.
Your SDRs are primed with relevant insights to Some of the channels used in Account Based share with their target accounts. Now it’s time Everything fall into the marketing domain to reach out. – and it’s important to include these in your It’s all about ‘you’, not ‘me’. thinking. We’ll talk about those later. This No matter which channel the SDR In traditional prospecting, reaching out meant section will highlight the channels that are uses to engage with prospects, hitting the phones. Later, it meant firing off used by the sales development reps. messages must all be crafted around dozens or hundreds of emails. the recipient and their needs.
In today’s Account Based Sales Development, “Avoid over-dependence on This sounds almost too obvious to prospecting is always multi-channel. Each a single technique. Prospectors mention but it’s amazing how many channel has its own strengths and weaknesses, emails or voicemails we all receive but something akin to magic happens when should be experts in two to four that start with the sender’s company you combine them into a coordinated program. complementary techniques and their needs. If your messages and know the pros and cons don’t answer the ‘Why should I care?’ If you take nothing else away from this question – and do it first, they will fail. section, take this: a mix of channels will of each.” always out-perform any single channel. Aaron Ross & Jason Lemkin From Impossible To Inevitable
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The big three 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development
There are many ways to reach out to target “Voicemail and email are contacts. But the ABSD discipline is built on the big three: equally important. And together, Mix it up! they’re twice as effective as We’re focusing on the three main 1. Human email – as opposed to automated all other touches combined.” sales development channels here, templates or marketing automation campaigns but remember, there are many more 2. The phone – including voice mail and live calls Trish Bertuzzi ways to reach out. Think about using 3. Social media – and industry community sites any or all of these formats and The Sales Development channels to reach your prospects: Your ABSD Plays will largely be built on touches Playbook across these three channels. Let’s take them • Text messages one at a time… • Memes • Gifs Pick the channels they like most • Personal video • Snapchat What’s the best channel for reaching out to • Pinterest a prospect? The channel they like best. The • Instagram “perfect” prospecting email sent to someone • Google+ who gets a thousand emails a day may be less • Personal podcast effective than a ‘good enough’ direct message • WhatsApp sent to someone who likes to communicate • SlideShare over Twitter. Find out! • Google Hangout • Periscope • Use your imagination…
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1. Human email 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development
Personal email – sent from an SDR to a prospect How much should you template? The goal is to make sure the prospect feels the – is the workhorse of ABSD. Done properly, Human email doesn’t mean that every email email really is written to him or her, as an these emails feel much more like personal must be hand crafted from start to finish. That individual. That’s not a trick, it’s the truth (if not, business communications than marketing or wouldn’t be scalable across all account tiers. you’re doing it wrong). To do that you must show selling (because that’s exactly what they are). that you’ve been thinking about them. Rule of thumb: the more important the Human emails are: account or the contact, the more you want • Plain text, not HTML to personalize and the less you want to use “Dear
• One-to-one or one-to-few (it’s okay to Tier 2: Personalized, perhaps using cc people if they’re the same persona) the 10/80/10 approach The 10/80/10 approach • Team-worthy: don’t send the exact same Tier 3: Customized rather than personalized Some SDR teams apply a 10/80/10 email to four team members, but you can (e.g. targeted to their industry and persona, rule to their human emails: Customize send one relevant email to the entire team uses their name and company name) the first 10%; Use the template for the next 80% (with possible personal tweaks); Customize the last 10%
62 Human email (cont’d)
Part 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development The subject line
Subject lines are the gateway of email prospecting. Fail here and the best-crafted email in the world will never get read. Some tips:
Start with ‘you’ or ‘your’ Be personal Avoid marketing speak People care more about themselves than The one-to-one starts here. We all get way too much of it. about you. Examples: Bad Examples: Examples: Subject: Why your recent blog post hit Subject: Your free security audit! Subject: You may have started something me so hard Subject: This will change your life Subject: Why your boss is so grumpy these days Subject: Your recent talk at Dreamforce Subject: [Dan Brown] says we should speak What these all have in common is they are Be intriguing focused on helping the recipient, not on helping A subject line is a teaser. Make them want Try starting with a benefit the prospector. Ideally, use the strategy that to open it up. What’s in it for them? will result in the most relevant email.
Examples: Examples: Subject: You kind of asked for this Subject: I can save Sanstreet $35k Some subject line inspiration Subject: Your CRM seems to be leaking Subject: A more agile IT approach There are some great lists of Subject: How [competitor A] is cutting waste for WidgetCo sample subject lines out there, check out ones from PipeTop and Hubspot. Google them up for “Only 23.9% of emails are opened.” some inspiration. TOPO
63 Human email (cont’d)
Part 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development The opening
So you earned the open. Nice one. Now you’ve got maybe 7 seconds to capture their full attention. A few tips:
Start with them Be personal (again) Don’t start with an introduction Don’t waste the vital first few seconds. It’s a personal note, remember? You can do that later.
Examples: Examples: Bad examples: As a Hadoop user, I’ll bet ten bucks you’ve I was reading an article by Bob Apollo My name is Bob Roberts and I work for Sourghum discovered the ‘alt-45’ error message. and I thought of you. Dynamics, a leading blah blah blah… Don’t you hate that? As a Cornellian, I knew you’d like this one. Let me introduce myself. I’m a… [never mind, Your recent post on drone warfare made they’re gone] me laugh out loud. Twice. [Mutual connection] suggested I get in touch.
Don’t apologize “You’re sorely mistaken Never start with an apology – this matters! if you believe that flooding Bad Examples: an executive’s inbox with Sorry to take your precious time but… rote solicitations will escape
I apologize if this isn’t relevant to you but… the DELETE key.” Ari Kaufman CEO, Placeable
64 Human email (cont’d)
Part 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development The body
Right after your killer opening, you need to do two things: prove that you did your homework and show them why they should stay with you.
Use your insight Be excited Don’t brag Now’s the time. Roll out the research. People want to work with people who love No one likes a braggart. what they do. Examples: Bad Examples: Congrats on your acquisition of Global Felt! Examples: We’re the Number 1 supplier of lard to the I think I can accelerate your IT integration by To be honest, the article blew me away – and defense industries and we’ve won every about six months, but I won’t know for sure I wanted to get to you right away. Here’s why: Lardie Award since 1983. until we’ve spoken. I can’t wait to show you our new benchmark Don’t take my word for it: CustomerCo says As your CEO said in yesterday’s investor research – it totally changed the way I think we’re the ‘best lobby carpet solution provider call, “It’s time to go all in on Blockchain.” about managed print services and I know it’ll in Southeast Nebraska’. The problem is, your Microsoft legacy stack do the same for you. is going to hold you back.
65 Human email (cont’d)
Part 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development The call-to-action
Every email needs to ask the prospect to do something.
Guidelines instead of templates Make it clear Some SDR teams use email This is no time to be coy. guidelines rather than templates. An example (from MJ Hoffman’s Examples: Basho training focused on answering Is there a way to get 15 minutes “Why You, and Why You Now”): on your calendar? • The subject line includes the Come and get the report here word "you" – there’s no form to fill out. • The first paragraph shares a piece of relevant news Don’t ask for too much • The second paragraph is the It’s a big jump from an email to a marriage. "So what?" – why they should take your call Bad Examples: • End with a CTA: such as a request Try our nuclear power plant for a year for a meeting and if you don’t like it, we’ll take it back.
Call me to discuss your next office move.
66 Human email (cont’d)
Some example emails 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development
From: [email protected] Notes: To: [email protected] • Mentions a mutual friend in the subject line
Subject: Ray said you’re ramping up fast • Starts with enthusiasm and proof of homework
Hi Jon • Signals willingness to help
Congratulations on the launch of PlayMaker: very cool software! • A single proof point
Knowing how you worked at Marketo, I’m guessing you’ll be ramping • A personal tweak ‘… would kill to work for Engagio.’ up your sales team right about now. • A clear CTA I think I can help. We placed 180 top-notch reps into SaaS companies in the last three months and I’ve got some talented folks who would kill to work at Engagio.
How can I get ten minutes on the phone with you to show you our way of working (it’s a world away from the typical head-hunters!)?
Ready when you are,
DK
67 Human email (cont’d)
Some example emails 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development
From: [email protected] Notes: To: [email protected] • Flattery works! (But make it true)
Subject: Loved the ABSD Guide • Tie your solution to their world
Hi Jon • Have a bit of fun
I LOVED the Clear & Concise Guide to ABSD. • Be conversational
You convinced me about predictive analytics – now I want to convince you of something: analytics plus data cleansing is a killer combination that doubles the value of your models.
I do a 3-minute demo that blows people’s socks off. It shows how we solved the single biggest problem facing data-driven geeks like you and me.
How’s Tuesday at 10am for a call?
If not, suggest a slot or two and I’ll book it.
DK
68 Human email (cont’d)
Some example emails 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development
From: [email protected] Notes: To: [email protected] • Way more templated than it looks
Subject: San Mateo is ground zero for ABE • Funny and straight to the point
Hi Jon • Asks for the order
I traced back the aftershocks of the Account Based Everything revolution and they led straight to your office. Tip: Craft your signature The missing piece, I’m convinced, is pastrami. A short, professional email signature paired with a good photo can Hot pastrami delivered to your office every Friday at lunchtime. increase the response rates to your emails. People remember photos better than text – and they remember people photos most of all. The [ABE] revolution needs fuel. But we need you at your desk.
Stay in. Eat. Stan Woods Managing Director, Velocity Partners Ltd 0208 940 4099, velocitypartners.com I’ll even throw in a Dr Brown’s Creme Soda for a buck more.
Click here and your order is pretty much done.
DK
69 Human email (cont’d)
The “Lost Lamb” approach 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development
Aaron Ross, co-author of Predictable Revenue, developed a specific Other examples of this approach include emails that have the subject line type of prospecting email in his time at Salesforce. Instead of a traditional “Question” or a cryptic “XXX”. Our view is that while this ‘teasing’ approach sales email or call, he simply asks senior executives for help in finding can work, it should probably be reserved for Tier 3 accounts and you the right person to talk to, then uses the introduction as a door opener. should use more relevant messages for Tiers 1 and 2 (where you should His example: know the right person already!).
Subject: Can you point me in the right direction?
[firstname],
I'm sorry to trouble you. Would you be so kind as to tell me who is responsible for [insert your biggest pain point here that resonates with your ideal customer; OR insert function like “sales” or “recruiting”] and how I might get in touch with them?
Thank you, Name/Signature
70 Human email (cont’d)
Part 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development Follow-up emails
When the first email doesn’t get a response you need some good follow-ups.
If the first email wasn’t opened at all, you might No guilt trips – don’t try to shame the prospect try re-sending it with a new subject line. The into replying. Just get to the point (a new point). prospect won’t know it’s a repeat and the new subject line may do the trick. Referring back can work – a quick reference to past attempts is fine (without the guilt). “Just If that’s not an option, you need a well-crafted bumping this to the top of your inbox…” is a way follow up (most likely a series of follow-ups). to recognize that the prospect is busy without harassing. “I’ve tried you three times…” is just Follow-up tips annoying and highlights your failures. Try a different angle – the first one didn’t resonate, so pick a new issue or entry point. Use your research – refer to a recent blog post If you tried a pain point, start with a case study or relevant news item. Make it timely and this time. Have the email come from a different connect it to the prospect directly. person in your organization. Change the tone. Mix it up. Always offer value – emails that say “just following up” or “just checking in” are annoying and offer no benefit to the recipient.
71 Human email (cont’d)
Follow-up emails 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development
Try RE: – If you have started any thread with the prospect, use it to create Notes: an RE: subject line (a ContactMonkey study shows they get opened far • Refer back but don’t overdo it more often). Some even delete the original subject and simply leave “RE:” as the subject line. But tread lightly: a faked “RE:” is not a great signal. • A short, sweet case study with money attached
In fact, follow-up emails should be guided by the same principles • Ask for the demo as first emails. But you now have some data to work with: what didn’t work for this prospect! An example:
Subject: RE: A new angle on your conversion challenges
Hi Jon
My last email used a killer statistic to drive home the importance of conversion rate optimization. This time, I want to tell a story:
ShowerRign.com, our third client ever, used our services to re-design their home page and CTA. Within three weeks, their conversion rate jumped 75% and never came back down.
By their own calculations, that one decision made them $650,000 in three years (and is still earning more).
More than half a million in revenue from a $75/month service…
Sound like it’s worth a 17-minute demo?
DK
72 Human email (cont’d)
Last ditch emails 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development
When nothing has worked over many attempts, you’ve got little to lose. Notes: It’s time for a Hail Mary pass to try one last time to shake the prospect • A bit of self-effacing humor into action. • Show that determination is a character trait The key to last ditch emails is to have fun with your desperation – but never make it their fault. An example: • Bring in something personal
Subject: My Aunt Ethel said to try you one more time
Hi Jon
My Aunt Ethel was a remarkable woman. Six sons. Two husbands. Three hip operations. Kind of a hero.
And there was one thing Aunt Ethel drilled into me over and over again as I was growing up: “Determination beats genius 99 times out of 100.”
That’s great news because I’m no genius. But I AM 100% determined to have a five-minute chat with you about your lead scoring.
Humor me. Prove Aunt Ethel was right. All it takes is one click.
DK
73 Human email (cont’d)
Last ditch emails 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development
Subject: Y’all get eaten by an alligator? Notes: • Again: have fun with it Hey Doug - • Images can help: Puppies? Kittens? When someone seems really interested in Engagio, then goes silent, I can only assume: • Don’t promise it’s the last attempt (it might not be!)
• You’ve just been swamped, or • Went in another direction, or • Were eaten by an alligator. The four options email An effective way to make that last ditch attempt is to give the If you’re alive and well, please let me know how to move forward prospect four options and them respond with a simple number: – or I’ll be forced to get even better clip art... 1. Yes, I want to schedule a demo – let’s find time
2. Let’s touch base in two weeks
3. I’m interested, but not for a few months
4. Please stop bothering me! Best,
Jon
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2. Phone and voicemail 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development
Outbound calling is an extremely important part Tips • Be brief – a short call can be more successful of any ABSD strategy – including both live calls • Start strong – just as with emails, the opening is than a long one – if you get what you came for. (rare but valuable) and voicemails (the unsung important. Don’t waste it with slow introductions. super-tactic). Dive in. “…just making sure you got the new book we sent you.” Actually achieving a live call is a big win “Hi Doug, I read your post on AI yesterday and – but don’t hold your breath. TOPO estimates wanted to reach out. I’ve got some data that • Once you’ve established permission, ask open that it takes 18 dials to actually connect with I think is right in your sweet spot and wanted but pointed questions – get the prospect to talk a buyer. (Most SDRs give up long before to send it over…” about his or her challenges. that – a big mistake). • Get to value fast – the ‘What’s in it for me?’ “Can you tell me how you guys solve The live call question is burning in the prospect’s mind. this today?” If you do actually connect with a buyer, Answer it as quickly as you can. be prepared. SDRs should have a call guide • Ask for the next step – know what you called that helps them get straight to the point and “My head of research has just finished for and ask for it clearly and directly. avoid the waffling that tends to characterize a benchmark report that shows some un-rehearsed calls. interesting things about your competitors.” “Can I set up a quick call with our CTO in the next week?” Unlike voicemail or email, voice calls are two-way communications that allow the SDR Too often, the SDR will jettison the carefully to ask questions and listen hard for the answers. planned relationship-building program and, But this skill doesn’t always come easily to less in a rush of adrenaline, try to turn into a closer. experienced SDRs. Training and coaching That’s a shame, because a helpful, high-value (covered in the next section) are keys to call with an SDR who really listens is a building skills in the back and forth of the compelling experience that can significantly live sales development call. accelerate an opportunity.
75 Phone and voicemail (cont’d)
Voicemail 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development
Because very few people return voicemail messages from SDRs (from 0-1% ever do), too many think of them as failed attempts Don’t expect a callback. to make contact. Nothing is further from the For voicemail messages, leaving your truth: a well-planned voicemail is a valuable phone number twice (at the beginning touchpoint and a key part of every Play. and end) is a dying practice.
Not only do you get to deliver a message with In fact, don’t even ask for a callback added voice and a personal touch; you’ve – ask the prospect to review your note also put a marker down and made another so you can set up a meeting. Most impression. Research shows that a voicemail people (especially introverts) are just message increases the likelihood of getting not going to call back someone they a response to a later email: all of a sudden, don’t know. So make it easy for them. there’s a person behind those messages. “Hi, this is Mike calling from Green The double touch Leads. There’s no reason to return this Some experts say the instant voicemail/email phone call, but if you could reply to combination – known as the ‘double touch’ the email I sent yesterday— I’ll send or ‘double tap’ –can significantly increase email it again — I’d really appreciate it...” response rates. Others have found it less effective. Do your own testing with your Recognize everyone’s natural prospect base. resistance to being sold to – and soften it.
76 Phone and voicemail (cont’d)
The TOPO voicemail
framework 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development
The voicemail framework provides a step-by-step process for creating and delivering impactful voicemails. This research note will explore each element The top 20 performers in TOPO’s Sales of the framework in more depth. Development Benchmark Report leave 29.5 voicemails a day and an average of 3.8 voicemails over 17.6 days per prospect.
22 2 Seconds
Pre voicemail stablish Deliver all to Send research trust value action email
Voicemails should Spend no more Differentiate yourself Tailor your message Always close with one ither send your email be no more than than three minutes by leveraging your to be as relevant simple call to action prior to leaving a voicemail, 20 to 25 seconds to find two to three pre voicemail research as possible to your Don t tiptoe around or ueue it up to send in length, and should key points that will to build rapport with prospect Don t ust the topic ask or what immediately a terward be immediately help you establish your prospects pitch your product you want followed by an email. trust and deliver value
77 Phone and voicemail (cont’d)
Trish Bertuzzi’s 4 rules 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development of voicemail
Trish Bertuzzi recommends short voicemails – under 40 seconds. These are her four rules from the terrific Sales Development Playbook (examples ours).
1) Be different and be relevant 3) Don’t reference previous attempts Don’t just ‘touch base’. State the reason for These highlight failure and don’t add up to the call and share relevant, useful information. a relevant reason to call. Friendly ghosting ‘Ghosting’ is calling a prospect but “I saw you speak at WAPworld yesterday. “I left two messages and sent an email last week. not leaving a voicemail message if Great talk. You referenced some data about Just making sure you got them.” [Guilt trip] you don’t connect live. It’s a low-value SMS and I wanted to make sure you got a copy touch but sometimes a valuable one of our latest report…” 4) Don’t trick prospects in a wider, multi-touch Play. Some Never pretend to be an acquaintance or bullshit SD leaders design ghosting into 2) Be specific with the ask in any way. There’s no trust without integrity. their Plays. Ask for a reply to your email… just make it clear what you want them to do. “Hey Dan, Bob. Give a call when you get a mo: 555 777 5555. Thanks, Bud.” [Yuk] “If you can respond to my email before Thursday I can be sure to get you a place at the roundtable Bottom line: never let your SDRs think in town next week.” of voicemail as a failed attempt to make a connection. A confident, upbeat, clear and compelling voicemail is a high-quality connection.
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3. Social media 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development
The third leg of the SDR stool is social media. Don’t send a connection request until you’ve That includes LinkedIn – the world’s biggest made a legitimate connection. It can be seen professional network – as well as Twitter and as faking an existing relationship. Facebook for B2B? relevant industry community sites (such as Some B2B professionals argue Spiceworks for IT pros). Don’t cross the creepy line. “I noticed on against Facebook as a business Facebook you were at M&M World with communications channel. We find The etiquette of social media is a bit different your kids!” (You don’t have to use everything Facebook can be an effective channel from that of email and phone conversations. you know). for marketing to your key accounts Make sure your SDRs understand the medium by promoting relevant content – and the specific Dos and Don’ts of each Make sure your own social profile is in order. we just don’t use it for one-to-one platform before diving in. This is a two-way connection: make sure you SDR touches. look worth connecting to. Social tips for SDRs Get to know someone before you ask to The golden rule of social media is simple: do business. You wouldn’t pitch at a dinner give more than you ask for. Generosity is party (would you?). the best approach
Only send one InMail to a prospect on LinkedIn unless they respond. Any more The triple touch feels like stalking. A social touch followed up within seconds Don’t spam LinkedIn groups. Sharing relevant via voicemail and email. Baddabing. content is fine. Using the group as a dumping ground or a captive audience isn’t.
79 Social media (cont’d)
A sample InMail message 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development
Showing how to initiate a conversation and progress the connection:
Subject: Great post!
Hi Dave,
I loved your post on the 7 Deadly Sins of data management – I’ve sent it on to three colleagues.
Given your views, I think you’d love our new data preparation toolset.
Can you suggest some half-hour time slots this week that might work for you?
I’ll keep it super-short!
Don
80 Social media (cont’d)
Part 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development Jill Rowley’s 5 social selling tips
Jill Rowley is one of the world’s top social selling evangelists (and an Engagio investor). Here, she shares her thoughts on social selling (adapted from a Hubspot interview).
1) Build personal credibility 3) Bring content to the conversation 5) Measure your returns Make your SDR’s social presence – and all their Content is the currency of social media. SDRs Social media can eat up a rep’s time. It’s interactions – about helping people succeed in shouldn’t just post your thoughts, they should important to be able to track engagements their jobs – not about blowing their own horns. add value by sharing relevant content. That to make sure that time is well-spent. One of includes content produced by your company the many social media monitoring tools can 2) Always be connecting and posts or pieces found out on the web help keep the whole team on track. Be wherever your prospects are and look for (with attribution of course). opportunities to help them further their goals. Retweet their tweets. Comment on their posts. 4) Sometimes listening is best (But don’t be creepy – authenticity wins). Reps don’t always have to engage at every opportunity. Sometimes learning something important and responding in another channel is best.
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WHERE:
designing Plays 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development
We’ve looked at the three main channels for The well-designed Play While a Play that uses only a few touches SDR interactions. Now let’s put them together A well-designed Play looks at: is unlikely to penetrate a large account, into your Plays. That definition again: simply throwing more touches at the problem Channel diversification – the optimum is not the answer either. A Play is a series of steps that orchestrates combination of voice, email and social media interactions across departments and channels touches plus coordination with marketing to achieve a business purpose for one or more and other parts of the company (including “Reps are giving up too quickly… buying centers at target accounts. the executive team where appropriate). It takes between six and ten Pre-designed Plays are a way to ensure that Number of touches – Three touches for attempts (including at least four all reps follow best practices throughout their Persona A. Twenty for Persona B, etc. by phone calls) to properly account development work – from the first touch to the last – and that these touches are Duration – All touches in 3 weeks? Thirty weeks? prospect a given contact.” coordinated with Marketing and Account Execs. Roles – Who does what? Assign tasks to team Trish Bertuzzi The most successful teams design their Plays members, including sales, SDRs, marketing The Sales Development carefully and improve them continuously senior execs. You don’t need every email Playbook as they engage with prospects. and every call to come from just one SDR.
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WHERE:
designing Plays 9 Part The WHERE Account Based of Sales Development
The goal is a well-designed, neatly As we’ll see in the next section, coordination “Companies are still struggling orchestrated Play that proves itself in is key. the real world and improves over time. with their touch patterns. But remember: Plays are like diets – they work A few years ago, it was just A sample Play if you stick to them. ‘Do more touches!’ Now it’s Here’s a sample play based on one from TOPO, showing SDR and marketing touches: more sophisticated: more about the mix and frequency.’”
Touch Day Step(s) Description Kristina McMillan
0 Pre Research Find out 3 pieces of relevant informations Sales Development Practice Leader, TOPO 1 Pre ABM ads Build awareness with targeted ads
2 Pre Dimensional mail Package / postcards to decisions maker + influencers 3 1 Triple touch Human email + voicemail + social (InMail) “Multi-channel cadences 4, 5 1 Double touch Human email + voicemail simulate the richness of face
6, 7 3 Double touch Human email + voicemail -to-face relationships while keeping the costs down.” 8, 9 7 Double touch Human email + voicemail
10, 11 13 Last chance Last chance email + voicemail Ken Krogue Ongoing Ongoing Nurture Share relevant insights ever 3-4 weeks InsideSales.com
83 Part 10
The importance of coordination
84 Part 10 Part The importance coordination of The importance of coordination
Success with Account Based Sales Development is directly related to your ability to align all of your customer-facing teams in a coordinated strategy. There can be no silos.
Your football team If you really want to move the ball down Disrupting an existing list of priorities is not easy. Think of your Account Based Everything the field, you need players in multiple There’s just too much resistance. So trying to do program as a football team (American football positions working together as a team: it alone, as an SDR, is a low-probability exercise. that is – soccer is way too random): SDRs, Marketing, Account Execs, Senior Instead, you need the coordinated activities of Execs – the whole line-up. Let’s look at marketing and sales to challenge the prospect’s The Coaches design the Plays. a few of your teammates. priorities and make room for yours. These are often Marketers or SDR managers – ideally in partnership with each other. Working with Marketing As outbound Account Based Sales “You want software that helps Quarterbacks call the Play. Development goes mainstream, the bar gets align Marketing and Sales. You This is usually the Account Exec but might higher and higher. Without question, the be the Account or Relationship Manager, winners will be those who best synchronize don’t want to bake in silo-thinking.” for existing customers. their sales and marketing teams. Matt Amundson Players run the Play. In her book, Snap Selling, Jill Konrath talks Vice President – And you need lots of different positions. about the ‘harried buyer’ who has too many Sales Development You wouldn’t field a team with eleven wide demands on his time to be able to make yours receivers (they’d get crushed); or eleven a priority. Throwing a new problem on to his & Field Marketing, linemen (the ball would just sit there). list is the last thing he wants to do. EverString
85 The importance of coordination (cont’d) Part 10 Part The importance coordination of
Beyond hand-offs “There is no longer a clear There are no ‘hand-offs’ in an Account Based Everything model. Instead, Marketing According to research by SiriusDecisions, buyers hand-off of a lead between and Sales work together from the very start, want Marketing and Sales involved equally at Sales and Marketing. Marketing and throughout the revenue cycle. EVERY stage of the buying process. increasingly is nurturing and
Unlike traditional demand gen, which has advancing prospects through the a sequence of hand-offs from Marketing to “The integration of Marketing entire sales process. That’s why Sales Development to Sales, ABE functions there’s an increased focus are intertwined at every step. It’s not just and Sales Development is a more effective way to sell – it’s a much dramatically better than each on conversion rates rather better buying experience as well. working on their own. You don’t than simple lead numbers.
In the big picture, your company doesn’t care even need the data – which is It also means that Sales and about ‘marketing generated opportunities’ everywhere – it’s just intuitive: Marketing have to collaborate or ‘sales generated opportunities’. The working together works better.” more than ever.” important thing is opportunities. Period. The best teams work together and take credit Craig Rosenberg Peter Mollins together. At Engagio, Marketing and SDRs earn quota credit for the same opportunities. Co-founder and Chief Analyst, VP Marketing, This encourages collaboration, not in-fighting. TOPO KnowledgeTree
86 Part 10 Part The importance coordination of Marketing's role in account research
Marketing doesn’t just help in the WHERE part of ABE, they also help in the WHO and WHAT stages: sourcing account data, finding contacts within accounts and researching accounts to generate the commercial insight that’s so important.
For many B2B companies, Marketing owns this “Marketing and Sales Development are the two departments tasked important function (working closely with Sales and SDRs). It makes sense: Marketing should with having the first conversation with future customers. They’re the always have an eye on the wider market, the big two friends in the group who need to be on the same page when they trends, the pressing issues and the emerging approach two strangers at the bar and ask for phone numbers. pain points. Harnessing this perspective to build richer, better-informed account profiles and personas will always empower the SDRs to Specifically, marketing needs to coach Sales Dev on the language and have better conversations with the right people. product positioning that they’re after, and Sales Dev needs to coach Marketing may also see contacts within a target marketing on the effectiveness and feedback from customers engaged account before they appear on the Sales radar with these campaigns.” screens. Web, email or content consumption activity within an account can give a valuable Robby Allen heads-up to SDRs that something is going on. Director of Sales Development, Again: an integrated effort from a tightly aligned Zenefits team is what works.
87 Marketing channels for 10 Part The importance coordination of account based Plays
The SDR Plays outlined above should also include marketing touches, often across a few key channels.
Events Direct Mail Display advertising Owned events such as dinners and meetings Simple personal letters sent by post or high- With techniques like IP-lookup and retargeting, at third-party events are ideal for Account value, dimensional mail pieces are a great way account-targeted display ads can reach only Based Plays. to supplement the Play with tangible touches. the people inside target accounts. Just think of how many emails you get each Or hold a workshop for the whole buying team day, compared to how many packages show And sponsored posts on LinkedIn, Facebook, – at the customer’s offices or at yours. up on your desk. Snapchat and Twitter let your micro-target right down to the persona level. We’ve seen ABE teams send iPods pre-loaded Tip: with audio content, remote-control cars (where Use display ads to promote your account- you need to take a meeting to get the controller), specific content and messages, choosing Executive invitations should come from cases of wine, coffee gift cards… and simple, content on the issues that sync with your someone at the same level or higher; you are hand-written notes. It’s the resurgence of the play and persona. unlikely to get an executive to attend an event VITO (“very important top officer”) letter. just because an SDR reaches out to them
Tip:
Offers sent by mail are perceived as 24% more valuable than offers viewed only on a screen. U.K. Royal Mail, February 2015
88 Personalized content 10 Part The importance coordination of
Turn generic marketing content from your content marketing programs into highly-targeted or even personalized content for use across your Plays. Marketing that doesn’t scale Buyers are overwhelmed by slick campaigns Dimensional mailers, handwritten letters, These can be important touches – and, when they designed by vendors trying to ‘scale up’ their Scrabble tiles spelling out the customer’s come and get it, you get important signals about marketing efforts. Against this background, a name… For your most important accounts, what each buying team is most interested in. high-touch, low-scale, personal touch can anything that helps you stand out is worth it really leap out and get noticed. – especially if it doesn’t scale.
“Do things that don’t scale.” Jason Seeba, CMO, Bloomreach
The content personalization spectrum
100% ighly ighly ustomized Industry-specific ulti sector Generic personalized personalized customized
reated ust or reated or isting content, isting content ontent targeted Targeted to a Broad content this account A D multiple heavily adapted with lighter spin to one industry cluster o related or all targets, but persona personas at or one account or one account markets still relevant to a single (eg insurance the account target account and banking
ccount ased ver thing emand generation personalization at scale non personalized
89 Working with
Account Executives 10 Part The importance coordination of
Quota-carrying Account Executives (AEs) are That’s why today’s Account Execs have expensive resources. The whole idea of sales increasingly become the quarterbacks of the development was designed to keep AEs focused ABE team. They care about these accounts on closing deals instead of chasing prospects. and they want to manage the relationships – while at the same time, getting the most value But in Tier 1 and Tier 2 accounts – the big deals from their sales development and marketing that will make or break their targets – Account team members. Execs don’t just appreciate being included, they insist on it (and for good reason).
Yes, there are still old-school ‘sales animals’ Bringing in company executives that hate to collaborate or will resist new tools. If you want to reach an executive at But these are quickly giving way to enlightened a target company, you’ll always have sales professionals who understand the value the most success if it comes from an of an integrated, Account Based approach. executive at your company. This is a big card to play, so you can’t over-use it. But for key touches in Tier 1 Plays, “With cross-functional account it can be hugely effective. teams, you decide how often meetings happen and who attends which ones. There’s no need to overload the Account Exec.” Tom Scearce TOPO
90 Working with
Account Executives 10 Part The importance coordination of
Tips for bringing AEs into Plays • Get AEs on board early, at the strategy stage Team Selling: use the whole company • Get their active involvement in designing Plays Think creatively about how touches from non-typical roles at your company • Don’t just assign tasks to AEs out of context can help your Plays. You can mix up the – they should know the Play is running at one demographics of the sender with of their accounts different genders, races and styles – you never know what will resonate • Key emails should come from the AE (after their best with the target. At Engagio, we personal review and approval) run a Play for certain prospective customers that includes an email from • AEs may be the best to send high-value reports one of our developers, asking if there or studies are any features they’d like her to build.
The point is that when someone buys your product, they’re buying the whole team – not just the sales rep. So why not include members of your whole team in your Plays?
91 Coordinated Plays 10 Part The importance coordination of
Plays can go way beyond basic prospecting into Deal acceleration Plays Upsell/cross-sell Plays target accounts to include every step of the Sales development and marketing doesn’t stop Upsell Plays orchestrate interactions with buying journey – including Customer Success when the account moves into the deal stages. customers you already know, helping them – as well as customer-facing interactions from Instead, they should support the AE to increase to get value from their solution so they buy any department. win rates, justify a higher selling price, and more. Cross-Sell Plays are about introducing increase deal velocity. A Play that surrounds the additional solutions, often to new users and If it matters to your business, there’s a Play that account with broader awareness and touches buyers at the same company – ideally using can help you achieve it. After all, these critical influencers that the AE isn’t talking to works your prior success as a starting point. Again, goals and processes demand and deserve wonders for this. Targeted Account Based marketing has a role to play here, keeping the careful attention and pinpoint execution. advertising and retargeting programs are a new solutions top-of-mind during your upsell/ great tactic here. cross-sell campaigns. Your extended Plays might include strategic initiatives and tactical programs such as: Executive alignment Plays Conference meeting Plays Design and run a Play to connect your Events cost a lot of money to create or Handoff Plays executives with executives at customers and participate in. You can’t just wait for the key Anytime a customer’s primary contact is prospects. This will be built around highly- people in target accounts to show up at your changing from one owner to another, the last relevant emails that come directly from your event or at your stand. Running a coordinated thing you want is to fumble the handoff. If a executives. But it can also include direct mail Play around an event is a great way to maximize prospect agrees to a meeting with an Account and targeted ads in places like LinkedIn to raise your return on investment by setting up meetings Executive, a best-practice handoff can include your brand’s profile just as the executive with the right people from the right accounts. an email introduction to the AE, followed a few approaches are being made. An email/voicemail/social media blitz can fill minutes later by an email from the AE directly, your time slots with high-value conversations. and a series of follow-ups if the customer And social media or banner advertising can doesn’t respond for any reason. Similar, when the reinforce the urgency and relevance. AE closes a deal, they can launch a best-practice Play to introduce the Customer Success Manager and start the onboarding process.
92 Coordinated Plays (cont’d) Part 10 Part The importance coordination of
Customer onboarding Plays An accounts receivable Play “Shake the Tree” Play Your customer experience starts with a Late payment can cripple a business, choking At Engagio, we have a Play that an Account professional, proactive onboarding experience. off cash flow. A Play engineered to chase up late Executive can use if an account goes cold after Instead of leaving that to chance, design a Play payment can pay for itself many times over. showing initial interest. The first step is a to orchestrate all interactions across channels Late payment should trigger a series of personalized email from our Sales Manager to and departments to bring a new customer escalating interactions, starting with your their main point of contact. If that doesn’t drive a on-board in the best possible way. You might Accounts Receivables team to their Payables response, the next email comes from Engagio’s send customers a welcome pack, send a letter team; then from your Account Executive to their CEO to the executive sponsor at the prospect. from a senior executive and drop a ‘here to help’ Business User; and finally from your Executive Next is an email from our Customer Success VP. email from the head of customer service. to Executive if needed. If that still doesn’t work, we try a very different email such one from an individual engineer or Customer marketing Plays Trigger event Plays marketing manager. By switching personas, Want to reach out to a customer asking for a Sometimes a trigger event in a target account is styles, and messages, we’re far more likely reference, case study, or other ask? Streamline a defining moment and creates a short window to reactivate the account than if the AE alone the process with best practice emails. of opportunity. Have a Play pre-scripted that kept persisting. Orchestrate the ask across multiple customer can kick off the moment the trigger event is personas from multiple players on your team spotted. For example, the hiring of a new and your chance of success goes way up. VP can kick off a ten-step Play that brings in SDRs, Marketing and the Account Exec. Customer Renewal Plays Renewals are the lifeblood of many B2B and SaaS companies. A well-designed Play can manage and automate the ideal 180-day, 90-day, 60-day, 30-day, and 15-day interactions that lead to increased renewals. This is an all-hands Play with notes from Account Execs, Customer Service and senior executives – all singing from the “Stay with us!” hymn sheet.
93 Time for a time-out 10 Part The importance coordination of
We’ve looked at the Who, What and Where And you’ve got to design Plays that deliver of ABSD. Who do you want in your crosshairs? your insight to the right people across multiple What can you do to engage them? Where departments and channels. will you do it? Wherever this happens, a mix of channels will In the bad old days, a lot of the decision-making always outperform any single one. It takes total about the accounts to target and the individuals coordination and zero tolerance for silos. to profile was left to the new recruits. Now it’s a serious, strategic job for everyone right up Next up, we’re looking at scaling your sales to the top brass. development operation, equipping your people with the right tech, and measuring You’ve got to search for true relevance in your successes. your messages, which means knowing the difference between ‘thought leadership’ and real, customized commercial insight.
94 Part 11
Growing and managing a sales development team
95 Growing and managing 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development a sales development team
The Account Based Everything model is built on the professionalization of the sales development discipline. In a successful ABE strategy, you can’t just hire a bunch of young Sales Development Reps, give them a list of companies, and say ‘Good luck’.
This section of the Clear & Complete Guide Establish your sales development goals Building on success, your company may focuses on building a professional sales There are many reasons to build an Account need to penetrate a new market, from development team that consistently delivers Based Sales Development team. The important the top down. the big opportunities that drive rapid growth. thing is to know why you’re doing it and to make That might mean a focused ‘tiger team’ that sure your key stakeholders agree. runs alongside your existing demand-gen The goal is nothing short of excellence at scale. machine, but is focused on one market. In an account based environment, every Your goals will reflect your unique situation: at-bat is important. While you don’t want to Your priority might be revenue growth remove the ability for a smart SDR to use his An early-stage company might need to give from existing customers. or her judgment, you do want to instill focus, their Account Execs more at-bats as a priority. That means a concerted cross-sell/upsell efficiency and control to the SD process. That would mean a lower qualification program targeting the biggest opportunities threshold: more meetings, more learning and a fully-utilized sales team. and working closely with Customer Success.
A mature SaaS vendor with a roaring You get the idea. Your situation guides your inbound machine might need to maximize goals, which guide your strategic decisions. AE productivity and focus on key accounts. Even if your goals seem obvious to everyone, That would mean a tighter, longer sales we urge you to write them down and get all development process. your key stakeholders on board.
96 A value-add mindset 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
Remember, this is sales development. Big Proving relevance to their prospects, advising opportunities always develop over time. If all on their most pressing challenges. you want is to attack a market and generate Adding value meetings fast, that’s not an ABSD program. Adding value to the conversation by reflecting One team we’ve seen has the target the prospect’s real pain points and finding ways of getting high-value prospects on the This is about penetrating big accounts and to help – even before selling starts. phone with a market insight expert for landing big deals. The ‘pile ‘em high and sell a 30-minute trends-and-implications ‘em quick’ mindset doesn’t apply. Instead, the briefing. There’s no selling at all – most successful ABSD practitioners have a until the relationship is established ‘value add’ mindset: they define the role as: and the prospect’s challenges are well understood.
97 Qualifying your
named accounts 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
The sales development process comes down But for outbound Account Based Sales to an extended period of relationship-building Development, asking reps to filter down and, simultaneously, account qualification: by Urgency (timing) and Money (budget) Meetings or opportunities? determining if the account is worthy of your will often create too high a bar. The result Trish Bertuzzi and The Bridge Group sales resources. is that too few meetings are passed to Sales. identify two very different SDR strategies: one is to get introductory Account qualification is a bit different in an Recognizing that the biggest deals will always meetings, the other is to generate outbound ABSD approach than in traditional take more time and that budget may not yet qualified opportunities. sales development. have been set even in very attractive accounts, we recommend a much simpler filter for ABSD: For complex purchases where the need In an inbound world, qualified opportunities setting introductory meetings using AN for to change is less obvious, a ‘get the using the classic BANT qualification (Budget, Authority and Need. meeting’ model may be best. This brings Authority, Need, Timeline) tends to work quite the sales exec in early to try to create the well. It’s a quick and easy set of filters that If they fit the Ideal Customer Profile and the need. For categories where active helps focus the reps on opportunities that are authority and need are present… you should buying is happening now, the ‘hunt for likely to convert in a reasonable timeframe. be good to go. live opportunities’ model is often best.
More recently, the ANUM qualification The goal for ABSD should be getting a meeting How SD teams split today: (Authority, Need, Urgency and Money) with the right person at the right companies. Setting introductory meetings 38% has started to replace BANT in many sales development teams. To us, ANUM is just Setting semi-qualified a softer version of BANT – but they both meetings 18% work fine in the typical inbound model. Passing fully qualified opportunities 42%
Source: Bridge Group
98 Helping your SDRs apply
‘AN’ qualification 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
Authority and Need are still fairly abstract, fuzzy “Defining ‘Need’ means establishing that terms – especially for inexperienced SDRs. the prospect has a CRM system but does NOT yet use predictive analytics. Ideally, Red Flags In your training, you’ll want to make these they are frustrated by their ability to identify Part of qualification is also looking concepts more specific and granular, building their best opportunities.” for attributes that would disqualify in as many objective measures as possible. an account (for now), such as: You’ll never remove the need for subjective “To us, ‘Authority’ relates to these specific judgment, but you can make sure concepts target personas with the following reporting • Recent purchase of like Authority and Need have some granularity. structures…” a competitive solution For instance: • Lack of critical infrastructure “‘Authority’ can only come from budget holders needed to deploy your solution “We define ‘Need’ as more than one contact at Director level or above. Lower than that • No individual ‘owner’ of in the account agreeing that one of the and they can’t drive our deals through a given problem following five pain points are present in the the organization.” • Imminent platform change target account.” that would stall your deal
Make sure these ‘red flags’ (or, more accurately, their absence) are part of your qualification screening, too.
This doesn’t mean you should remove those accounts from your Target Account lists, especially if they’re Tier 1 or Tier 2 accounts. It simply means they need more development before passing to sales.
99 SDR compensation 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
How and how much should you pay your SDRs? Factors that drive compensation include The average for the role has stayed pretty flat experience, average selling price, the region, for the last few years, so this Bridge Group data the vertical market and the goals of your SDR Companies with the largest is a good benchmark: team (whether they’re meeting setters or lead share of variable comp paid qualifiers). The Bridge Group offers a handy on “Opportunities Won” see online Compensation Calculator that can help an 11% lower than average PPS. Average SDR compensation you set your own compensation scheme. Bridge Group Base salary $46.0k The variable part On-target earnings $72.1k To keep things simple, the variable portion of the compensation package is usually based Base % | Variable % 64% | 36% on only one or two factors. Of the five most common factors, a Bridge Group study shows Source: The Bridge Group: that first two are most used: Sales Development 2016: Metrics and Compensation Research Report • Number of meetings/opportunities passed • Number of meetings/opportunities accepted • Value of opportunities won • Number of opportunities won • Number of activities
Companies paying the largest share of their variable comp on “Number of Meetings/Opportunities Passed” have a 6% higher Pipeline Power Score than the average.
100 SDR compensation (cont’d) Part 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
Best-practice advice is to be careful about compensating on closed revenue or opportunities won – SDRs can’t control these, so they may find them de-motivating instead of motivating. Also, long sales cycles and short SDR tenures mean they may never see much of the closed business they initiated!
Finally, paying too much of the variable comp based on won opportunities tends to turn the SDR into sales support administrators – to make sure their deals get over the line. An enlightened manager won’t let that happen.
ompensation metrics for S S
60 53%
0
0 33%
0
20
10 7% 4% 3% 0 S s S s S s Other Revenue only revenue pipeline only
Elements that define commision achievement
Source: TOPO The 2016 Sales Development Benchmark Report
101 SDR compensation (cont’d) Part 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
“Meetings held per week is a great leaderboard metric for an SDR team. It tells you which rep SPIFFS and Competitions is bringing the most customers in the door. SDRs are competitive types. That’s why so many SDR Managers It’s important that it's weekly. You might have create fun contests to motivate the right behaviors. bad days as an SDR, but you can't have bad Here are some ideas: weeks. Sales development is a weekly business.” Break into teams and compete for prizes Robby Allen Create teams randomly or do it by location if your SDRs are Director of Sales Development, in different offices. Then let the games begin!
Zenefits Run timed ‘sprint’ competitions Pick metric and give SDRs a day or two. Short and fun.
Create a new metric Combine KPIs into one magic metric, with weightings for the different components. Then make that the killer KPI to track and compete against.
Run a ‘best email personalization’ contest Prizes for the SDR who creates the most relevant email from the master template.
Simply celebrate success in public You don’t always need winners and losers. You can call out any extraordinary behavior or success in a team meeting or by email or Slack. Attention and appreciation are their own rewards.
102 Quotas 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
Once you know your compensation metrics, you need to set your goals Another data point to consider, from our friends at EverString and quotas. As with any target, the key is to set a level that will stretch your (who know their way around the SDR discipline): SDRs to deliver their best performance – but that doesn’t set them up for constant failure. • 12 meetings per month per SDR • 6 opportunities per month The reality is that there is no one source to tell you where to set the • 2 Stage Two opportunities per month (active buying cycle) quotas. It will vary on deal size, the percent of pipeline you expect to get from SDRs, your SDR to AE ratio, and many other factors. This data from TOPO shows some averages by Average Contract Value, but remember they are just that – averages.
S s generated per S per month
0
24.7 2 Average 20 17.5 1 2 16 1 11.3 10
0 0 10k 10 0k 0 100k 100k
Average contract value
Source: TOPO, The 2016 Sales Development Benchmark Report
103 Quotas (cont’d) Part 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
Whatever you set quotas at, track how many SDRs meet their number each month. The Bridge Group also has an excellent Sales Team Grader that lets you compare your own team’s performance against the How Engagio does it benchmarks. We recommend doing that (it takes five minutes). At Engagio, we set our SDR quotas based on “points” earned for meetings and opportunities at the accounts they cover. They earn points for all meetings and opportunities, regardless of whether they directly sourced it or merely influenced it – this encourages cross-department collaboration, rather than fighting over who 6 % gets credit. at/above quota Middle Rep Quotas are set so that if the SDRs make their quota, the AEs will have enough pipeline to make their quotas (plus some padding): % o goal
• Inbound — the quota is 28 points / month per rep. They earn 1 point for each qualified opportunity created at non-target accounts.
20% 0% 0% 0% 60% 0% 0% 0% 100%110% 120%1 0%1 0%1 0%160%1 0%1 0%1 0% • Outbound — the quota is 36 points / month per rep. They earn 1 point for each qualified meeting (Director or higher) Bottom fifth Top fifth at Target accounts, and 1 point for each qualified opportunity Average % o goal Average 1 0% o goal at Target accounts.
Engagio has a ratio of 3 SDRs for 4 AEs. A screen from the Bridge Group’s Sales Team Grader
104 Where the sales development
team reports 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
The sales development team can report to It’s still most common for SDR teams to report “The Marketing and Sales Sales, to Marketing or be its own department. into Sales. This is likely because SDRs often All of these can work well, as long as it’s run serve as a “farm team” for Sales, and so Development motions are really by a dedicated leader who understands the it makes sense that Sales does the hiring similar – and the messages discipline and its role in the Account Based and management. Also, the more the SDR must be highly synchronized, Everything ecosystem. team focuses on outbound prospecting, the more likely it is to report to Sales – since so the natural home for Sales the prospecting skills are closer to the core Percentage reporting to sales by focus Development may be Marketing.” sales skillset. Matt Amundson 64% That said, we’ve seen some ABSD teams Vice President – nbound ocused move into Marketing, which argue is the Exclusively inbound qualification groups are 2 1 Sales Development more likely to report home for best practice ABE: 58% to arketing & Field Marketing, Mostly inbound qualification • Marketing and SD are both focused on creating EverString pipeline, while Sales is focused on closing it 72% • Marketing and SD both need a longer-term Appro imately 0/ 0 mindset, in which opportunities are nurtured • The concept of Account Based Everything 80% requires orchestrating ABM and ABSD ostly outbound prospecting activities into coordinate Plays 86% Our advice is that the ABSD team can live clusively outbound prospecting in either Sales or Marketing, but what matters is (a) Sales is responsible for hiring and Source: The Bridge Group: Sales Development training and (b) Marketing is responsible 2016: Metrics and Compensation Research Report for coordinating activities and Plays.
105 Specializing within
outbound sales development? 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
Some SDR departments are themselves split But we’ve also seen those who warn against “I like specialization. Every time up into even more specialized teams: it. They feel that over-specialization decreases management flexibility: if you lose a ‘mid- I break out a team to focus on • By industry market healthcare SDR’ you’re left with a very a market size or a vertical, I see • By region specific gap to fill. Similarly, a specialized SDR big uplift. It lets us optimize • By account size may find it harder to move up into a sales role in a different niche. Of course, the bigger your what works.” We’ve seen SD leaders who swear by this team is, the less likely these concerns are – after all, specialization into Sales and SDR to happen. Chad Burmeister made sense, as did further specialization into Sr. Director, inbound and outbound Sales Development, The rule of thumb might be to dedicate Sales Development, RingCentral so why go further? The more you speak to the a portion of your team to a specific market only same audience, the better, the argument goes. if that market represents a significant segment that’s large and important to your business.
106 Recruiting 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
Different leaders look for different qualities, Grit helps – this is no place for the easily but they do tend to converge on a certain type: discouraged. In 2016, the average required Most prefer very little experience – often Of course, different kinds of SDR are suited experience for an SDR hire was hiring straight out of college – and some to different kinds of prospecting. In your 1.3 years - an 18% annual rate actually avoid SDRs with many years’ company, you may find they don’t look very of decline since 2009. experience. They feel that old-school sales different from your best AEs – they just have development processes are so different that less experience. The Bridge Group: Sales Development they often don’t correlate with success 2016: Metrics and Compensation in the new model. Research Report “For great sales development Some like hard-workers who may not be academic high-fliers – others look for high- reps, I’m looking for assertive powered types from the very top schools. go-getters who are interested in It varies by the company itself and the kinds Sales and can handle objections of accounts the rep will be calling on. ”95% of sales development leaders confidently. When you add an purposely hire SDRs with less than Some like seeing that a parent or family account based approach, two years of experience.” member was in Sales – giving the rep some I add creativity to that list understanding of the job, even at entry level. TOPO: The 2016 Sales Development – they have to be able to craft Benchmark Report All seem to like a typical ‘Sales profile’ a message to a person.” – a confident, ambitious, extrovert with the ability to prioritize, juggle and manage time. Vice President – Sales Development Everyone wants ‘smart’ – the new SDR role has to craft messages to audiences. & Field Marketing, That takes intelligence and empathy. EverString
107 Recruiting (cont’d) Part 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
The bigger the deal, the more experience is required:
Required Experience by ASP n years
1
1 1 1
1 1
2 k 2 k 0 k 100 2 k 2 0k Research shows that experience of SDRs tends to rise with deal size, as you might expect
Source: Bridge Group
108 Your hiring process 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
For most companies that deploy them, the To feed the process, you need to create “Hiring top talent is the fastest way SDR team quickly becomes the engine of the and manage a hiring pipeline just as you revenue machine. You need more SDRs to grow, would a lead pipeline. That means knowing to gain an unfair advantage in and as SDRs get promoted it creates an even how many resumes you need to see in order Sales Development. Leaders who bigger demand for new SDRs – and it’s a to feed your initial phone interviews, your spend 50% of their time recruiting demand no one can afford to leave to chance. in-person interviews… all the way to offers and acceptances. future leaders will consistently As the SDR team becomes increasingly outperform their peers.” professionalized, so do the hiring processes If you map out your pipeline and keep an eye that feed it. You’ll need a rigorous, systematic on ‘conversions’ at each step, you can see if Daniel Barber approach to hiring that’s actively managed as you’re on track for your hiring needs or falling VP Sales at Datanyze a strategic initiative. behind. Hiring is essentially a long sales cycle: you need to keep an eye on leading indicators The hiring pipeline or you’ll find yourself short-handed – and Many SD leaders prefer cohort hiring missing your targets. – hiring in groups – instead of a rolling process of single hires, for these reasons: For Netsuite, 10,000 resumes lead ultimately to just 60 hires. They use • It regularly focuses everyone’s mind on hiring hiring managers to do initial interviews, as you recruit a new ‘class’ followed by a panel of three business • It leads to more efficient onboarding development reps (screening for • New hires bond with each other and help each culture fit) and two Account Execs who other succeed came up from Sales Development.
109 Onboarding, training
and coaching 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
New SDRs don’t start contributing to revenue on Bryan Gonzalez of TOPO suggests three day one; they have to ramp up. The faster you principles for SDR onboarding: ramp them up, the sooner they’re feeding your 1. Make it SDR-specific pipeline and the more value you get from them Hands-on onboarding that focuses on specific for the duration of their tenure as an SDR. SDR skills is far better than general introductions to the company, market and product. Teaching So your onboarding process needs to be as core skills such as buyer-centric messaging, rigorous as your hiring. outreach best practices, and live call execution is essential. In a 2016 Bridge Group study, ramp time (time to full productivity) fell from 3.8 to 3.2 months 2. Use hands-on management despite the fact that companies are hiring less Instead of dropping SDRs into the deep end, experienced reps. That’s evidence that we’re managers have to stay with them on the front all getting better at onboarding and, given the line, giving hands-on coaching and training short tenure in the role (see next page), this has from the very beginning. ‘Trial by fire’ too early to continue. could actually prolong ramp time instead of shortening it.
3. Make it intensive Gonzalez argues that onboarding should take one month instead of three. That means an intensive management effort in a focused onboarding program, so that reps are hitting full quota targets in month two.
110 Onboarding (cont’d) Part 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
The TOPO SDR Onboarding Framework Training & coaching Whenever possible, use people who have done looks like this: Creating effective SDRs doesn’t stop after the SDR role to contribute to – or even deliver onboarding. The best teams are built on – the training modules. That makes sure you’re nboard continuous training and coaching. always connecting the skill to the job. Train
Playbook urriculum Certifications oach Training The SDR training program needs to be as formal Tip: “Nothing beats role-playing and systematized as the onboarding process. as a form of training.” Leverage the SDR Playbook – TOPO recommends capturing the entire SDR role in Your SDR training program should include Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler what they call a Playbook (which is different from all the job-specific skills, such as: Predictive Revenue the Plays we talk about in this guide). Then start the onboarding program with the SDR Playbook: • Effective researching everything they need to do the job effectively. • Call preparation • Personas and their drivers Follow an onboarding curriculum – a specific • Core industry trends and issues sequence of training modules organized into • Plays and their touches 2-hour sessions focused on specific topics (key • Product training and updates buyer personas, etc.). • Your tools and internal processes • Overviews of your competitors Reinforce lessons with certifications – • Objection handling increase retention of the onboarding material • Use cases and case studies through testing and certification on key skills (e.g. an objection handling test).
The TOPO framework shows that the SDR development goes on with continuous training and coaching – we’ll discuss that next.
111 Coaching 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
Coaching is a critical aspect of managing SDRs. You’re turning inexperienced graduates into pipeline creators. That doesn’t happen without SDR coaching hacks front-line coaching sessions in which the Jason Richman, Senior Sales Manager at Hubspot, suggests these SDR coaching techniques: manager can zoom in on specific skills gaps and reinforce positive behaviors. • Team competitions – Whenever a meeting is created, post it to the CRM system and make it a competition between reps Sales Development Managers should commit to 4-6 hours per month of coaching per SDR, • Group call reviews – Hubspot holds weekly “SDR Film Clubs” to review and analyze recorded including three activities: calls by their rock start SDRs
1. Observe what they’re doing – watching • Peer mentorship – Connecting new SDRs with top performers for one-to-one mentoring them interact • Manager one-on-ones – Weekly meetings to review pipeline, Play activities 2. Diagnose their behaviors – and align them and call recordings to the defined process • Call assists – Once a week, Jason books an hour with each rep to make connect calls together. 3. Prescribe specific actions – to encourage He doesn’t participate in the calls but is there to suggest questions and review the call right away correct behaviors and enhance skills Given Hubspot’s hyper-growth, these are tips we’d all do well to follow. There are many behaviors to monitor but coaches need to focus their attention on the (Thanks, Jason). critical skills of the SDR role: outreach, messaging, call skills, Play cadences and metrics.
Good training doesn’t just improve SDR performance, it improves job satisfaction and helps keep them in role longer.
112 SDR job tenure 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
Sales Development has one of the shortest Clearly, it would be great if you could increase job tenures of any role in business. TOPO puts the average tenure of your SDRs, but most the average at 14.3 months while Bridge Group experts accept that short tenure goes with We like the way Craig Rosenberg shows a 14 month average – a sharp decline the territory. This is a very tough job, full of thinks about it: from the 2.4 years seen in 2009. rejection and prone to burnout. It’s populated “The short tenure is a trade-off. In return, by ambitious (impatient) young people who you get awesome, motivated young Think about that. The average SDR stays in are eager to get into Sales – at double the people who absolutely kill it for a year the job for 14 months. Subtract three months income and glory. or so.” for onboarding and ramp and you’ve got less than a year of full productivity before the rep Put that all together and it’s no surprise moves on. that SDRs move on so quickly.
If ‘moving on’ means moving up into an AE Yes, you can extend the tenure of your role with your company, it doesn’t hurt quite SDRs with a lot of attention, great training as much. But if your company only sells and mentoring and a full commitment to an to enterprises, you’re probably losing them account based approach. But you’re unlikely entirely (you’re unlikely to move them to push the average tenure much closer to straight from SDR to an enterprise AE role). two years.
113 Promotion paths 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
Most SDRs see the role as the first stepping Type of career path/promotion tracks stone for a career in Sales. That’s great for you – it’s a source for people who often become Step-promotions 46% Companies with step (micro-) your best Account Execs – but it also puts (Junior SDR, Associate SDR, promotions achieve a 6% higher a strain on the sales development team, Senior SDR, etc.) Pipeline Power Score. But companies constantly draining it of its best reps. with a defined SDR-to-AE path actually Promotion across teams 35% achieve a 9% lower PPS (robbing Peter To give SDRs a sense of career progression (Inbound, outbound, enterprise, etc.) to pay Paul?) within the role, many companies implement a series of step promotions: Into a quota-carrying role 58% Bridge Group (e.g. , SDR to AE, etc.) • Associate SDR – until they make the grade • SDR – during full productivity Source: Bridge Group SDR Report • Senior SDR – as they progress to mentor others The bottom line: Carefully managed promotions These micro-promotions progress in defined, are an important part of running an SDR team. ‘Ramp-Achieve-Advance’ cycles that last from But don’t let promotions happen too soon – you four to six months each. don’t want to always be losing your best SDRs!
Micro-promotions are popular (as the table shows) but you may also need defined paths into other sales development roles (such as outbound) and a path into quota-carrying AE roles.
114 Time management 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
Like everything else in successful ABSD A sample schedule teams, the daily schedule of the SDR is never TOPO offers this daily schedule with notes left to chance. Time management is reported for guidance: as a primary cause of reps failing to meet their targets, so a tightly defined schedule is critical. 8 - 9:30am Queue up prospects the 1 - 2:30pm In your final block of dedicated Follow-up responses/ previous day to begin calling Double touches prospecting time, you must immediate outreach immediately in the morning. (15 DTs = 30 touches) complete your daily activity The schedule should be based on the daily Follow up on any email goals. Don;t take another break responses as well. Set a goal to until you have. goals and activities needed to achieve the accomplish before taking a monthly quota. To do this, blocking out specific break e.g. make 10 calls. 2:30pm Break times for specific activities is key. The goal is 9:30am Schedule breaks every 2-3 to carve out one activity at a time, giving it total Coffee break hours. 3 - 4pm Work with your manager to Meeting hour establish a rule with your focus, then moving on to the next activity 10 - 12pm Schedule dedicated blocks (I am available for meetings) organization that you will only to keep fresh. Double touches of prospecting time on your be available for internal (20 DTs = 40 touches) calendar that nobody is allowed meetings during a dedicated to interrupt. Stay productive by time that won’t distract you Do the math setting mini-goals for these from prospecting. Ideally this blocks. For example, you should occurs during none-ideal If you need 8 connected calls a day to hit complete 20 DTs in the double calling hours. touch block. your targets and each takes 5 minutes, allow 4 - 5pm Use your final hour of the day to 40 minutes a day for these calls. And if you need Next day prep set yourself up for success the 12 - 1pm By lunch, you should have next. This may include list to make 40 double-touches (email plus voice Lunch completed over 50% of your building, buyer research and mail) with each taking 6 minutes, that’s four daily activity goal. crafting new messaging. hours of DTs per day.
Tip: Tip: Avoid ad-hoc meetings and other distractions End each day prepping for tomorrow until reps have made progress against their daily and set aside 30 min a day to learn goal, such as making 10 calls before a 9am coffee something new. break or only allowing meetings to be scheduled after 2pm.
115 Time management (cont’d) Part 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
The best time of day for calling You’ll see different data for different companies, LeadResponseManagement.org conducted but remember: the time zone of the prospect an excellent study (using InsideSales.com data) is what matters – your 4pm isn’t always theirs! on the timing of outbound calls. The study is full of great insights to help you build your daily schedule, but here’s a choice nugget: Tip:
4 to 6pm is the best time to call to make Setting up custom reports or dashboards contact with a lead – 114% better than in Salesforce can help support the management calling at 11 to 12am. of your daily schedules.
ime of da initial dials to leads that become contacted
0 0
00 0
2 0 0
2 00 0
1 0 0
1 00 0
0 0 0
0 00 00 10 10 11 11 12 12 1 1 2 2 5 5 6
Source: Insidesales.com
116 Team structure 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
Deciding how many accounts each SDR In a recent TOPO study, the ratio varies by company size, with larger companies having more AEs per can handle and how they’re deployed and SDR (likely because larger companies focus more on profitability than growth at any cost): managed is an important part of your ABSD strategy – but there are no fixed answers atios of S S to sales reps for atios of S S to sales reps for here. Your structure will depend on your companies under 5m in revenue companies over 5m in revenue goals, deal sizes and AE capacity. 5 . % Average: 1 to 2 1 Average: 1 to . %
. % The average ratio is 1 SDR to 2.5 .5% . % 5. % Account Executives. This ratio is 5. % 5.9% down sharply from previous reports. . % . % As recently as 2014 the ratio was 1:3.9. 1 to 1 1 to 2 1 to 1 to 1 to 6 1 to 1 1 to 2 1 to 1 to 1 to 6 Source: TOPO Sales Development Benchmark Report (February 2015)
Another study by The Bridge Group shows a similar split:
S to ratio (SaaS vs on Saas umber o A s supported by a single SDR . . . .5 . .9
.5
ess than 1 20 100
Source: Bridge Group 2016 benchmarks
117 Reps to manager ratio 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
Most SDR teams have a fairly flat structure, umber of S S to managers with each manager leading 6-10 SDRs (the 9. Bridge Group reports that the average ratio is 1:8.1, while TOPO sees an average 1:8.7 ratio).
A lower ratio doesn’t mean better performance 0 . . – the same Bridge Group report found no relationship between SDR to manager ratio and Pipeline Performance. .
Interestingly, the Bridge Group did that SDR 0 teams directly led by “managers” achieved 8% higher PPS than those with “directors” or “vice umber of S S to managers to S S of umber presidents” in first-line leadership roles. This is likely because managers have more time to directly manage their SDRs, as opposed to 0 leaders with broader scope of responsibility. Average nterprize id market Startup
ompan Size
TOPO: The 2016 Sales Development Benchmark Report
118 Territories
and multiple locations 11 Part and Growing managing a sales team development
Assigning your SDRs to accounts is another The round robin or pool approach tends Cons of multiple locations strategic decision that will be guided by the to apply more to inbound teams than unique dynamics of your situation. to outbound ABSD. • Challenges with collaboration • Possible retention issues in isolated teams Assigning SDRs to territories (rather than Multiple locations • Risk of culture split specific AEs) seems to be the dominant Many companies run their SDR teams from • Less clear or more complex career pathing method, as this Bridge Group data shows, but several locations – due to acquisitions and more and more companies are experimenting /or to the difficulty or expense of hiring all As with many ABSD issues, you can make with other options (such as named accounts) SDRs at headquarters. Secondary locations it work either way – as long as you apply to deal with the fact that opportunities are rarely tend to be in lower-cost areas that have best-practice hiring, onboarding, training equally distributed across territories. access to educated talent; The Bridge and coaching. Group says the most popular are Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, o territories are built and Utah. actor Percent using to determine territories 37% of groups have reps in the same Pros of multiple locations role working in different locations.
eography % • Increases the hiring pool The Bridge Group: Sales Development
amed accounts % • Can hire in lower cost locations 2016: Metrics and Compensation • Maintain continuity of existing teams Research Report ound ro in % • Can foster healthy competition erticals % • Natural A/B testing to improve overall performance Shar tan pool %
Source: Bridge Group
119 Part 12
ABSD metrics
120 Part 12 Part ABSD metrics ABSD metrics
So how do you measure the success of your ABSD efforts – and track the indicators that keep you on track? A systematic approach to metrics is the answer. But you can’t just apply typical metrics from the traditional, lead-centric demand-gen world.
Why ABSD metrics are different TOPO identifies two categories of metrics “The value of a sales development ABSD metrics are different for these reasons: that are most relevant to outbound ABSD (a third, conversion metrics, are more suited effort is measured by increased • They track accounts not leads to Inbound models): won business per Account • They focus on quality not quantity Executive and/or accelerated • They track impact and influence more Activity based metrics – number of calls, than try to apportion ‘credit’ (the ABE emails, contacts over a period of time; new customer acquisition.” world is much more of a team effort) coverage of accounts, etc Trish Bertuzzi Outcome based metrics – the pipeline The Sales Development, and revenue numbers generated by SDRs Playbook
Let's take a look at these:
121 Activity-based metrics 12 Part ABSD metrics
Activity-based metrics answer the question, Account coverage – if your SDRs are Dials-to-conversations – similar to “Are my reps doing enough of the right things?” responsible for building contacts or mapping dial-to-connects but an even higher bar How you define ‘the right things’ will reflect your accounts, you can track their progress own SDR playbook but they’ll be the things on this front you train and coach. Things like: Tip:
Task completion – are they keeping up to date Tip: The industry average is 22.5 dials to one on tasks or falling behind? (ABSD software like meaningful conversation, but if you’re Engagio manages tasks and tracks task It takes 12.73 dials to get a connect when calling calling highly solicited divisions, such as completion – just sayin’) direct phone numbers and 18.83 when calling IT or Marketing, or very senior executives, switchboard numbers. the ratio is closer to 30:1. Dials, emails or contacts per day – you’ll set TOPO TOPO your own targets based on the daily schedule but remember: highly personalized emails and conversations do take longer than templated “In the old days, we might have ones (and they’re worth it) simply tracked, say, 300 dials a day. Today, it might be a fair amount of dials but also 10-12 emails, or 20 conversations a day.” Chad Burmeister Sr. Director, Sales Development, RingCentral
122 Activity-based metrics (cont'd) Part 12 Part ABSD metrics
Meaningful conversations – according to Trish Tip: Bertuzzi, if you’re only going to track one metric, track this On average it takes 3 meaningful conversations to get 1 appointment. Conversation to appointment – measuring TOPO the quality of conversations
onversations per rep per da verage number of touches and S puts on a lead nbound vs utbound
% % nbound . . Outbound
%
. . . .
. 9% . . . %
. .5
2 2 11 12 Total eaning ul mails oicemails Social Dials
Source: Bridge Group Source: TOPO
123 Outcome-based metrics 12 Part ABSD metrics
Activities are all very important – but only Pipeline created – the number and value of if they generate the outcomes you need. meetings and/or opportunities created for AEs So you need to track that too. Outcome- Three big metrics that Zenefits tracks: based metrics include: Revenue generated – the mother of all metrics: 1) Account to opportunity conversion the value of closed deals initiated by SDRs – essentially the effectiveness of the ‘Accounts accepted’ rate – a pipeline metric SDR on a per account basis. We often often measured per thousand accounts celebrate the high volume opportunity prospected, as in this Bridge Group benchmark: creators in the SDR world, but how many accounts did they have to work ridge group outbound inde through to get there?
5 5 2) Meetings held per week – Much more
important than meetings set and a metric that a lot of organizations get wrong.
3) Opportunity to close ratio – this tells you if the SDR, Sales, and Marketing teams are aligned.
Robby Allen, Director of Sales Development, Zenefits
1 201 2 201 201 201 1 201 2 201
Note, however, that this metric should be significantly higher for ABSD than the average.
124 Outcome-based metrics (cont’d) Part 12 Part ABSD metrics
Bridge Group’s ABSD Waterfall Marketing Qualified Accounts (MQAs) The Bridge Group “Outbound Index” While traditional demand gen looks suggests tracking Reach, Pass at Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), and Pipeline: an Account Based model looks at Marketing Qualified Accounts: • Reach the percent of accounts that engage in a conversation An MQA is a target account (or discrete Reflecting quality of data and dials buying center) that has reached a • Pass: the percent of reached sufficient level of engagement to accounts passed to Sales indicate possible sales readiness. Reflecting quality of contacts • Pipeline: the percent of passed The idea of a handover from Marketing accounts converting to opportunities to Sales is more relevant to an inbound Often correlated to the number model. But we thought you might of contacts per account touched wonder why you’re not seeing MQLs in this Metrics section! Current benchmarks (though once again, ABSD metrics should be higher): REACH RATE now sits at nearly 39.6% PASS RATE now sits at 11.4%. PIPELINE RATE now sits at 73.5% passing to Sales.
125 Q&A 12 Part ABSD metrics
Steven Broudy, Head of Account Why is it so important that Marketing and Sales Why is some degree of automation important in Development, Americas, MuleSoft Development work together throughout the outbound sales development? buying process? At MuleSoft, we’ve made a massive investment Are there any important metrics that are As a sales development leader, it's important in building a team of A-players who inspire each overlooked by ABSD teams? to recognize that your organization serves as a other to win. The metric that often gets overlooked is the critical lynchpin between Sales and Marketing. success of a SDR at proactively going outbound Given our dedication to keeping that team to create and close qualified opportunities within It’s therefore of the utmost importance to happy, challenged and engaged, it’s critical to a list of named priority accounts. have visibility looking both backwards, into eliminate as much of the repetitive work Marketing's demand generation efforts, typically associated with daily sales To do this you need a high level of process and forward, into the entire sales pipeline. development tasks as possible. orchestration across functions, such as: Conversion rates at every stage of the sales Some degree of automation, while still • Collaboration with the broader account team in and marketing funnel need to be proactively enabling a high level of personalization (at order to decide on which accounts an SDR will monitored to detect issues with the pipeline. scale), empowers an SDR to focus not on the prioritize menial work often associated with the role, but • Having fields in your CRM that track which Above all, it’s critical to ensure that a reciprocal instead on driving highly-qualified named accounts an SDR owns, and which he or feedback loop exists across Marketing, Sales opportunities. she is prioritizing Development and Sales. • Reporting out on SDR activity, pipeline creation, Those are the opportunities that help drive and opportunity win rates within these accounts business transformation for our prospects and customers – and they’re more rewarding for the Most importantly you need to create and foster Sales teams to work on. It’s a win-win situation. a culture of accountability – one that aligns the entire account team in the effort to drive revenue within this account base.
126 Part 13
SDR tools and technology
127 Part 13 Part SDR tools and technology SDR tools and technology
Increasingly hard-to-reach buyers combined with the rising demands on the sales development team mean it’s becoming essential to streamline, automate and accelerate the SDR function. Manual processes just can’t scale to meet the need. This is a job for technology.
This section introduces you to the kinds of tools We organized the ABSD tech universe “When it comes to SDR and technologies that are available to make the into three big buckets: SDR job more efficient and effective. technology, you want Iron Man, Core Sales Development Tools – not Terminator. Technology Fortunately, there are a lot out there. the essential accelerators is there to make a good
Infrastructure Tools – salesperson better… not to take the foundation ABM layer the human out of the equation.”
Added ABM Tools – Matt Amundson for filling out your stack Vice President –
Let’s take them one at a time. Sales Development & Field Marketing, EverString
128 Core sales development tools 13 Part SDR tools and technology
Covering the Who, What and Where of ABSD: Where: Where: Human email/sales email Orchestration Who: To streamline and automate the creation, To synchronize interactions that span channels Data vendors sending, and tracking of highly relevant emails (email + phone + social + demand gen) and To identify and prioritize target accounts, – ideally emails that are personalized, reviewed, departments (Marketing, Sales Development, find accurate contact data, and maintain and human-to-human. Sales, and Customer Success) into coordinated data quality. multi-step Plays. Example vendors: Example vendors: Dun & Bradstreet, Leadspace, Engagio, Outreach, SalesLoft, ToutApp, Yesware… Example vendors: Engagio (Yep – just us!) DiscoverOrg, Email Hunter, Norbert, Datanyze, LeadGenius… Where: Phone/dialer “Orchestration is the big step – What: To increase efficiency and improve the quality Account insight and consistency of phone and voicemail the leap from old-school sales To understand account and market dynamics interactions. development to the new Account and find relevant issues that will resonate Based Sales Development.” in target accounts. Example vendors: InsideSales.com, FrontSpin, RingDNA, Ring.io, Velocify… Kristina McMillan, Example vendors: LinkedIn, InsideView, Mattermark, DataFox, Owler… Where: Sales Development Social media Practice Leader, What: To monitor and interact with prospects and TOPO Person insight customers via social channels. To help research individual prospects and customers to tailor your messaging. Example vendors: LinkedIn, Twitter, rFactr, Nudge… Example vendors: LinkedIn, Crystal, Accompany, Triggerfox, CharlieApp…
129 Infrastructure tools 13 Part SDR tools and technology
Beyond the core sales development Account based analytics Account planning technologies, there are additional tools that To understand which accounts have the To map accounts, track account information, are essential for any account based strategy: best engagement and opportunity for and manage account strategies. growth (tracking MQAs), optimize SDR Example vendors: Altify, Revegy, manual… Lead-to-account matching performance, and measure which marketing To match leads to the right target account, investments best reach target accounts CRM tie their activity to the right company, route and accelerate deals. To manage accounts, contacts, opportunities, them to the right owner, and get credit for and so much more… the campaigns that touch them. Example vendors: Engagio, ZenIQ… (plus BrightFunnel and Bizible for attribution- Example vendors: Salesforce, Microsoft Example vendors: Engagio, LeanData… based analytics) Dynamics, Oracle, SugarCRM, Hubspot…
130 Added tools for account
based marketing 13 Part SDR tools and technology
In addition to the core tools, there are lots Who: Who: of tools that can accelerate your broader Predictive analytics Intent & technographics ABM initiative even further. Together with the To identify and score potential accounts based To improve account selection with sales tools, these make up the core elements on likelihood to convert. advanced data. of an Account Based Everything stack. Example vendors: 6Sense, EverString, Infer, Example vendors: Bombora, BuiltWith, Lattice Engines, Mintigo, Radius… Datanyze, Ghostery, HG Data…
131 Added tools for account based marketing (cont’d) Part 13 Part SDR tools and technology
Where: Account advertising To run account-targeted display ads to build Sales development technology maturity awareness in specific accounts and support When it comes to technology for sales development, TOPO identifies three levels of maturity the sales development and deal processes. and reflects the usage levels for each:
Example vendors: Demandbase, Terminus, Top level Technology Current usage LinkedIn, Madison Logic… Level 1 CRM 100 % (Foundational) Where: Linkedin 100% Website personalization To customize your website experience Sales email applications 97.7% for specific accounts and industries. Contact data 83.7%
Example vendors: Demandbase, Evergage, Level 2 Marketing automation 61.5% Marketo, Triblio… (Growth) Dialing automation 49.6% Where: Direct & dimensional mail/physical Level 3 Gamification 29% (Optimze) To send packages, hand written letters, and Reporting and analytics 28.1% other items to key people at target accounts. Predictive analytics 15.0% Example vendors: PFL, Bond… (this can also be done manually with checklists, mail Source: TOPO SDR Benchmarks houses, etc.)
132 Account Based Everything
market map 13 Part SDR tools and technology
Who: Selection What: Insights Where: Interaction
Data Vendors Predictive Account Insight Ads Website Direct/Physical Events
Other
Phone/Dialer
Social Intent and Technographics Human Email
Person Insight
Orchestration Synchronize Interactions into coordinated Plays
Complementary Infrastructure Attribution Account CRM Lead to Account match (L2A); Planning Routing; ABM Analytics
133 Part 14
Conclusion: an idea whose time has come
134
Conclusion: 14 Part Conclusion: an idea whose time has come the new growth rocket
Generating revenue is the most important activity in every company. Every single job across the business depends on you doing yours.
Over the last decade, the way companies like practices summarized in this guide, we’re yours attacked the revenue generation convinced you will succeed, just as the pioneers challenge has changed dramatically. But all of ABSD have succeeded before you. that was just a prelude to the next big leap waiting for you: Best of all: this journey is also hugely rewarding on a personal level. The colleagues whose lives Account Based Sales Development is not just you’ll touch (in Sales, Marketing and beyond) the engine of the Account Based Everything and the SDRs whose careers you’ll launch will model that’s sweeping through B2B: it’s the find this new approach far more gratifying than engine of a kind of hyper-growth that very the old-school, volume-driven grind. It’s faster, few companies have ever experienced. it’s more successful and it’s easy to feel the difference from day one. Get this right and the rest of your career is on a similar trajectory: the sky’s the limit. In short: this is going to be amazing.
No, it’s not an easy path. There’s a lot to get Onward and upward! wrong and more than a few mis-steps along the way (real transformation is never smooth). But if you follow the principles and best
135 About Engagio 15 Part About Engagio
Engagio PlayMaker lets you design and orchestrate Engagio Scout puts account insights (every email, multi-step Plays that span channels (email + phone meeting, and interaction and more) at the SDR’s fingertips + social + demand gen) and departments (Marketing, when they’re reaching out to accounts so every interaction Sales Development, Sales, and Customer Success) is more relevant. to engage target accounts with the human touch. The result: fully-orchestrated and streamlined Plays It supports multi-threaded, Account Based Plays, that take you deep into target accounts – and prove it. coordinating communications from everyone on your team to everyone at the target account. Shouldn’t we be talking?
Unlike other sales email tools, PlayMaker emails are personalized, reviewed, and sent by a human to drive more meaningful connections. So you don’t risk your relationships with key people at important accounts by sending them generic, automated emails.
PlayMaker assigns and tracks Tasks, making sure everyone is coordinated, Sales and Marketing stay aligned, and no one falls behind on their activities. What’s not to love An Engagio screen – just to make you beg for that demo. about that?
136 About EverString 16 Part About EverString
EverString helps your company grow with predictive What can you do with EverString? marketing and predictive sales by using advanced machine learning and data science to expand your • Account-Based Marketing database to find the best-fit accounts, prioritize incoming accounts and leads for your sales team, and help sales with • Segmented Email Nurturing their outbound prospecting. • Sales Prospecting
EverString Audience Platform brings together sales and • Multi-Channel Demand Acceleration marketing for a databacked and streamlined go-to-market strategy. With over 20,000 curated data signals from 27 • Personalization million B2B accounts, EverString provides the context and • New Market Expansion insights that sales reps and marketers need to effectively engage buyers. • Sales and Marketing Alignment
Our easy-to-use platform enables both sales and Want to learn more? Reach out to us at marketing teams to create relevant audiences using www.everstring.com/contact predictive data science and modeling.
137 Thank you!
Big thanks to the people who helped us shape Special Thanks Books this book by generously sharing their time and To the two analyst firms who do so much From Impossible to Inevitable, expertise. You guys rock. to help Sales and Marketing leaders make Aaron Ross, Jason Lemkin better decisions: Craig Rosenberg Predictable Revenue, Ken Krogue The Bridge Group Aaron Ross, Marylou Tyler Chad Burmeister Specialists in building, expanding, and Lars Nilsson optimizing inside sales strategies for B2B The Sales Development Playbook, Matt Amundson companies, including the big decisions Trish Bertuzzi Kristina McMillan around implementation strategy, process, Tom Scearce tactics, technology, and tools. The Clear & Complete Guide Scott Gaydos to Account Based Marketing, Steven Broudy TOPO Research Engagio Robby Allen A research and advisory firm that helps sales and marketing professionals adopt Sales Manager Survival Guide, the patterns, behaviors, and Plays that drive David Brock exceptional growth. Both are amazing resources for anyone Whale Hunting with Global Accounts, who cares about selling. Barbara Weaver Smith
138 Experts
Account Based Everything and the new Account Based Everything Inside Sales Sales Development discipline didn’t just Anthony Kennada Gainsight Anneke Seley Reality Works Group happen. They were generated from the Barbara Weaver Smith The Whale Hunters Bob Perkins AA-ISP front-line experiences of the world’s most Carlos Hidalgo ANNUITAS David Kreiger SalesRoads progressive sales and marketing leaders Craig Rosenberg TOPO Elisa Ciarametaro Exceed Sales - and from the guidance of some of the David Raab Raab Associates Jerimiah Lancaster VTS Inc. world’s smartest analysts. Jeff Pedowitz The Pedowitz Group Ken Krogue InsideSales.com Jeff Sands ITSMA Larry Reeves AA-ISP Follow these people! Justin Gray LeadMD Matt Bertuzzi The Bridge Group Kathy Macchi Inverta Sally Duby The Bridge Group Lincoln Murphy Gainsight Steve Hays InsideSalesTeam Maneeza Aminy Marvel Marketers Steve Richard ExecVision Matt Heinz Heinz Marketing Trish Bertuzzi The Bridge Group Megan Heuer SiriusDecisions Tom Scearce TOPO Sales Development Aaron Ross Predictable Revenue Chad Burmeister RingCentral Daniel Barber Datanyze Heather R Morgan Salesfolk Kristina McMillan TOPO Liz Cain OpenView Venture Partners Mark Cranney Andreessen Horowitz Mark Hunter The Sales Hunter Matt Amundson EverString Ralph Barsi ServiceNow
139 Experts
Sales Executive SD Executive Social Selling Andrew Riesenfeld Heighten Clifton Ashley Rimini Street Amar Sheth Sales for Life Ben Sardella Datanyze Don Erwin SmartRecruiters Barb Giamanco Social Centered Selling Bill Binch Marketo Katherine Andruha SugarCRM Jack Kosakowski Creation Agency Bridget Gleason Sumo Logic Lars Nilsson Cloudera Jamie Shanks Sales for Life Chris Cabrera Xactly Mike Kunkle BrainShark Jill Rowley #SocialSelling Don Otvos Datahug Peter Oliver Sandler Training Jon Ferrara Nimble Emmanuelle Skala Digital Ocean Robby Allen Zenefits Koka Sexton Social Selling Labs Even Walser Brandwatch Somen Mondal Ideal Kurt Shaver The Sales Foundry Kathy Lord Intacct Steven Broudy Mulesoft Lindsey Boggs Lindsey Boggs Consulting Kevin Gaither ZipRecruiter Neal Schaffer Maximize Your Social Lesley Young Box Tim Hughes Digital Leadership Associates Mark Roberge Hubspot Megan Dahlen Microsoft Michelle Ashley ServiceMax Patrick Donnelly UserTesting Peter Caputa Hubspot Russ Hearl Datahug Scott Schnaars Dynamic Signal Sean Burke Kitedesk Steve McKenzie InsightSquared
140 Experts
Technology General Sales Bastiaan Janmaat DataFox Andy Paul Zero Time Selling Jeffrey Gitomer Gitomer Gold Brandon Redlinger Engagio Anthony Iannarino The Sales Blog Jill Konrath Sales Speaker and Author Bubba Page Outro Bob Apollo Inflexion-Point John Barrows j.barrows LLC Craig Klein SalesNexus Bob Marsh LevelEleven Jonathan Farrington Top Sales World Donal Daly Altify Brendon Cassidy Cassidy Ventures Keenan A Sales Guy Drew D'Agostino Crystal Butch Bellah Sales Management For Dummies Kendra Lee KLA Group Dustin Grosse Clearslide Christine Crandell New Business Strategies Lee B. Salz Sales Architects Falon Fatemi Node.io Colleen Francis Engage Selling Solutions Lori Richardson Score More Sales Fred Shilmover InsightSquared Colleen Stanley SalesLeadership Max Altschuler Sales Hacker Henry Schuck DiscoverOrg Craig Elias Shift Selling Michael Bird D&B Howard Brown RingDNA Dave Brock Partners in EXCELLENCE Mike Weinberg The New Sales Coach Jim Benton Clearslide Dave Kurlan Kurlan and Associates Nancy Bleeke Sales Pro Insider Jim Fowler Owler Deb Calvert People First PS Paul Castain Castain Training Systems Kyle Porter SalesLoft Don Cooper The Sales Heretic™ Peter Ostrow SiriusDecisions Manuel Medina Outreach.io Elay Cohen SalesHood Richard Harris Harris Consulting Group Mark Kopcha Revegy Elinor Stutz Smooth Sale Rob Jeppsen xVoyant Miles Austin Fill the Funnel Gerhard Gschwandtner Selling Power Sean Sheppard Growth X Nancy Nardin Smart Selling Tools Grant Cardone Cardone Training Technologies Stuart Silverman SalesRamp Nick Hedges Velocify Greg Alexander Sales Benchmark Index Tamara Schenk CSOInsights Peter Gracey Quota Factory Jacco Van Der Kooij Winning By Design Tibor Shanto Renbor Sales Solutions Sangram Vajre Terminus James Muir NextGen Tiffani Bova Salesforce Tawheed Kader ToutApp Jason Lemkin SaaStr Tim Clarke Sales Cloud Salesforce Tracy Eiler InsideView Jeb Blount SalesGravy Tim Sanders Deeper Media Travis Truett Ambition Jeff Hoffman MJ Hoffman Yonatan Stern Zoominfo Jeff Shore Shore Consulting
141 Credits
Written by: Jon Miller Co-Founder and CEO, Engagio @jonmiller
Doug Kessler Co-Founder and Creative Director, Velocity Partners @dougkessler
Designed by: Velocity Partners @velocitytweets [email protected]
142 101 S. San Mateo Dr., Fl. 4 1850 Gateway Drive San Mateo, CA 94401 San Mateo, CA 94404 engagio.com everstring.com [email protected] [email protected]
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