Category: Sales and Marketing

After seeing it mentioned on another blog I picked up the book Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology by Anneke Seley and Brent Holloway. The authors do a good job making the case for sales development reps, telesales, and using the web as part of the selling process. For those versed with the modern B2B SaaS customer acquisition model of the past five years it won’t be much new information but those transitioning from a traditional enterprise sale to a hybrid model or more telesales, this is a strong primer.

One question I see frequently is around metrics for sales development reps. Here are example sales development rep (SDR) metrics from the book for a 12 week pilot period (pg 173):

• Number of outbound calls and e-mails per day/week/pilot period including ramp: 45/135/1521
• Contacts (connects, returned calls and returned e-mails) per day/week/month at 12 percent rate: 5/15/183
• Percent of contacts in A lead category: 4 percent
• Number of contacts per pilot period in A lead category: 7
• Percent of contacts in B category: 6 percent
• Number of contacts per pilot period in B lead category: 11
• Average deal size: $80,000
• Pipeline value per month (A & B leads): $1.44 million

So, a trained sales development rep spends three months prospecting, connects with five people per day, and generates seven hot leads and 11 warm leads. These numbers are inline with what I’ve heard from other entrepreneurs and show that SDRs work if the economics of the deal make sense.

What else? What are your thoughts on these metrics with sales development reps?

Continuing with yesterday’s book review on Predictable Revenue, there’s one critical takeaway: specialization of sales functions is paramount. The idea is that sales reps are often juggling multiple tasks and even the best intentioned ones spend time where they can maximize their personal commission. Inevitably, when the near-term opportunities grow, the long-term prospecting fades. When the near-term opportunities grow, the farming and account maintenance of existing customers fades. Enter specialization.

Here are the four areas of sales rep specialization in startups:

• Market Response Rep – Qualifies and nurtures inbound leads that are handed off to an account executive once engaged in the sales cycle (one rep can handle approximately 400 inbound leads per month)
• Outbound Sales Development Rep – Cold calls and emails potential prospects and nurtures them until they are ready for an account executive (one rep should generate 10-20 qualified leads per month)
• Account Manager – Manages the relationship with existing customers and continually looks for ways to add more value
• Account Executive / Sales Rep – Carries a quota and is responsible for taking leads engaged in the buying process through to close and hand-off

When a person on a sales team spends 30% of their time on one of the above functions that isn’t their primary function, that’s a good sign there’s enough work available for a full-time person dedicated to it. After you hire a sales rep (before a VP of Sales!), the next hire should likely be a sales development rep.

What else? What are your thoughts on the four areas of sales rep specialization in startups?

Recently I read Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into A Sales Machine With The $100 Million Best Practices Of Salesforce.com. This is a good book for startups with a B2B sales process and average lifetime values of at least $10,000. The general premise is that companies should have a dedicated person/team that is responsible for prospecting and generating qualified leads with quota-bearing sales reps exclusively focused on engaged leads (no prospecting).

Here are a few notes from the book:

• Targeted unsolicited emails are more effective than cold calls
• Use SalesLoft to manage the entire process
• Separate roles should be used for prospecting for leads (sales development reps), following up with inbound leads (market response reps), closing deals (account executives), and maintaining accounts (account managers)
• Delineated roles result in better results and specialization of skills as well as more measurable results
• A full-time sales development rep should create 10-20 qualified leads per month
• A full-time market response rep can handle 400 inbound leads per month

There’s too much talk of “Cold Calling 2.0” in the book which is literally cold information-request emails (legal spam) to targeted people within companies that fit the ideal customer profile. It does make sense that busy executives are more likely to respond to a short, relevant email that is highly targeted.

Overall, the book is recommended for startups with a B2B sales process that want a more modern perspective on consistent quality lead generation, and thus more predictable revenue.

What else? What are your thoughts on Predictable Revenue?

Sales reps are awesome: smart, hard working, and in control of their own destiny. They also love the thrill of the hunt — whatever it takes to win the business. With such passion for winning a deal comes the desire to provide discounts. Quotes like “the client will buy if we just give a discount” or “the client really wants our stuff but can’t afford it” are common. Product should always be sold based on value, never on price.

Here are some tips for preparing a discount policy for sales reps:

• Make a discount policy right away and implement it as soon as you have a sales rep
• Never give anything without asking for something in return (e.g. we’ll provide a discount in exchange for you being a case study)
• Clearly articulate when a discount can be given and when it can’t (a policy written in advance removes emotion from a deal that’s hot and heavy)
• Provide points or units for discounts so that they are rationed by reps (e.g. X discounts for every Y deals sold)
• Consider reducing commissions even further when a discount is given (e.g. X% discount results in Y% reduction in commission)
• Outline a floor price that the deal can never go below (e.g. no more than X% discount regardless)

Discounts are a part of life unless you employ the CarMax model with no discounts at all. Most companies do allow some discounting and a discount policy should be put in place.

What else? What other tips do you have on discount policies for sales reps?

At every conference I attend there’s at least one presentation with slides that contain dozens of words. Inevitably, the presenter mumbles something to the audience like “you probably can’t read this” and continues right on. Whenever this happens I cringe and immediately think of Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint. Well, after this most recent conference, and seeing another slide with unbearably small words cluttering the screen, I came up with another rule:

All words on a presenter-led slide need to fit in a single tweet.

Now, there is a major qualifier included in there: presentation slides delivered live before a group should follow this rule whereas slides that are designed to be handouts should have much more information. If a presenter is taking the audience through his or her slide deck, each slide should have no more than 140 characters, just like a tweet. There’s elegance in brevity. Audience members should focus on the presenter, not read the extensive text on the slide.

What else? What do you think of the presentation slide fit-words-in-a-tweet rule?

At today’s Pardot User Conference the marketing agency Brainrider gave a great presentation titled Developing Customer-Centric Content. The big takeaway for me was that too many sites organize content based on how marketers think about types of resources (e.g. PDFs, Case Studies, etc) as opposed to how the potential customers think about what they want. Have you ever gone to a site and generically said that you want a PDF? I didn’t think so.

Here are notes from their presentation:

Things to define:

• Driven by objectives
• Customer-focused
• Demonstrating subject matter expertise
• Supporting your programs
• Measuring performance

Checklist for better content:

• Be customer-focused
• Start with light content
• Make it findable
• Measure what works

What business are you in?

• Target
• Needs and pain
• Value proposition
• Content categories

Start with light content:

• Leverage “as is” content
• Repurpose existing content
• Use light formats
• Curate and share 3rd party content

Leverage as-is content:

• Existing brochures
• Resource center
• Slideshare
• LinkedIn

Repurpose existing content:

• 1-page download
• Checklist
• Resource post
• Blog post

Make it findable:

• Use keywords in your title
• Describe why it’s worth reading
• Use images and graphics for key concepts
• Headers and lists to be scannable
• Include more information links at the bottom

Measure what works:

• Track content by category in Google Analytics by segments
• Pageviews, Avg. time on site, Pages per visit, Gated downloads

Brainrider argued their case well that marketers need to develop customer-centric content and provided great examples.

What else? What are your thoughts on customer-centric content?

Every B2B startup needs to make a commitment to content marketing. A commitment to content is devoting serious organization resources to developing great content on a regular basis. Blogging? Check. Social media? Check. Videos? Check. Webinars? Check.

A commitment to content is not cheap or easy. It takes a tremendous amount of time and money to produce great content with a consistent rhythm. One of the more difficult aspects is staying with the process long enough to produce the desired results, much like it takes time to build a brand. The best thing to do is to hire great people, come up with a process, and run with it.

Content marketing is not merely a function of marketing. Content should be developed by team members throughout the company. Sales, services, support, operations, engineering, and other departments interact with customers and prospects on a daily basis. Best practices, trends, and more are constantly uncovered by team members. These people should be part of the content army.

A commitment to content is hard but the payoff is immense.

What else? What are your thoughts on a commitment to content marketing?

It’s that time of year when managers are running around working on their 2012 plans. Well, for B2B marketers in startups, I want to offer a quick and dirty marketing plan format. Here we go:

• Rhythm
  Outline the responsibilities for daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly efforts. Developing new content on a regular basis for different channels is especially important.
• Projects
  Layout strategic projects for the year in broad brush form (save the details for separate documents).
• Goals
  Articulate the goals and metrics for macro-level items like monthly traffic, leads, Twitter followers as well as more precise goals for different initiatives.
• Budget
  Make a Google Spreadsheet detailing the different line item costs on a monthly basis for the year.

This simple approach helps get different team members on the same page and provides a guide for the new year.

What else? What are some other items to add to the B2B marketing plan for startups?