Of course… the data isn’t always spot on. 

B2B buyers are completely digital and in control.

Buyers are used to having the information and resources they need to build their own criteria. And they are harder to reach than ever. 

Random acts of selling are inefficient and unpredictable. Reps guess at what’s important and what to do. Don’t be that guy: 

Managers respond by getting them to just do more stuff, then call it productivity. 

Don’t confuse busy with productive or effective. Waste scales as well. 

Without process or insights, sellers target randomly and often target the wrong people altogether. They look busy, but it won’t lead to consistent results. 

Too often reps get deep into a deal only to be surprised they haven’t looped in all the right people.

What they really need is not more, at first, but better. Then more of what works.

Use your selling time for, well selling. Move from guessing to guided. 

Scale what works best.

Stop guessing. Start selling. 

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As organizations solidify their plans for the new buying landscape, sales leaders are adapting to the new normal. Many of the changes that happened in the past year are likely here to stay, and that has huge implications for sales teams that have had to go back to the drawing board on their sales organization and sales motions.

Since the landscape has changed dramatically in the past year, here’s what changed about the traditional inside sales vs. outside sales conversation and how sales are building new, digitally enabled teams, no matter where they set up their workspace.

The Death of the Conference Room Meeting

Some constructs of field selling are canonical, like conference room meetings and stakeholder meetings. Field reps work to get stakeholders into one room, where the decision-making happens between the champion, boss, and the approver. Before COVID-19, the conference meeting was earned once or twice over a 6-9 months sales cycle, but post-COVID, it’s earned zero times because conference rooms aren’t an option.  

Field reps need the same level of visibility they’d have in a conference room without insisting that it looks just like it used to. And, truthfully, buyers never really liked the conference room meeting anyway. The challenge for field reps is to create and deploy a process that is buyer-friendly but still gets things done.

Creating a digital conference room goes beyond Zoom calls. Sales reps need to create systems that allow them to get the visibility they would have if they were in the room. They can identify who is not in the room but should be, and create action plans and next steps for stakeholders.

Digital field reps will develop an ability to manage mutual action plans or “close plans” in a digital way. All of the same steps that happened in the field through emailed spreadsheets and word documents need to take place digitally in real-time: information security review, legal review, design review, sign-off from finance on ROI, etc.

Embracing Change and Changing Biases

When it comes to adapting sales teams to the new normal, bias from experience will be sales leaders’ worst enemy. The book many seasoned reps swore by has now been thrown out. The true risk for sales leaders is believing they have it all figured out. For teams to succeed today, they’ll have to forget their biases and embrace change.

For field reps who have become digital field reps, adapting to digital tools and engaging with the customer using those tools will be critical. Buyers are digitally native and frequent, asynchronous communications are the norm. Sales leaders who can step up to that challenge and play in a digital environment will be more productive than ever before. Investment in tools that allow sales reps to see their territories at a high level as well as engage in authentic, personal, and natural conversations with buyers will be key to making this happen.

Inside sales leaders will need to stretch their teams as well. As many teams are asked to do more with less, inside sales reps will need to work larger deals and step into a multi-stakeholder process. As they expand into enterprise-level deals, they’ll learn to manage longer sales cycles and stretch into selling more products and more complex products and services from the inside.

Sales leaders for any team, no matter how it is configured, must loosen up on definitions of standard operating procedure.

Strategic vs. Transactional Selling

The definitions between inside and outside selling have converged. However, there is still a relevant distinction related to the characteristics of the sales cycle. Many sales leaders continue to think about sales teams as inside vs. outside when the conversation has shifted to strategic (enterprise) vs. transactional selling.

This shift in terminology matters because even though field reps have been working from home, they didn’t become inside sellers. They continue to use their unique and valuable skillsets to work digitally.

A successful outside sales rep today embraces technology and uses the right tools. They have seen and embraced the shift in buying behavior and are using it to their advantage. For teams that can leverage their experience and expand their range of tools, they will be prepared to meet the challenges ahead.

As sales leaders consider their modern sales teams, it’s important to let go of the idea that the selling landscape will return to normal. The challenges that many teams face will not be solved the same way as before. Sales reps should pick up new, digital tools and processes that enable them to engage with customers and their territories in new, creative ways. And, as the rules of engagement continue to change, the sales leaders who can adapt first will be the ones who win. 

High-performing SDR teams focus on the fundamentals — rapid lead follow-up, better lead quality, proper automation implementation, and optimization of processes. Instead of constantly doing more of the same motions to build pipe, they’re focused on building systems that utilize data and their SDRs’ productivity to its full potential.

The Variables of Successful SDR Teams

SDR organizations spent 2020 adjusting to remote and digital selling. Equipping and supporting a remote workforce quickly took time and effort. Many SDR organizations have adapted to these changes and are focused on understanding their new normal.

Understanding the activities that matter most to your business and your sales cycle can help guide your strategic plan. Our research found that the top 50% of the attainment group prioritized dials, emails, and some social selling techniques. These variables should be taken in context with other data like customer needs and buying cycles.

The benefit of analyzing this data is to understand which activities provide the best outcome and then push your SDR teams to prioritize the tasks that matter and stop wasting time on the tasks that underperform.

Less Hunting, More Targeted Outreach

An SDR’s time is valuable. Putting their skills to the best use means nurturing contacts that are most interested and most likely to want to continue a conversation with sales rather than hounding uninterested leads.

Automation tools and honing in on lead scoring to identify the best contacts is one way SDR teams can make sure their activities yield the best result. Our research found that when it comes to sales types, quota attainment remains fairly consistent. However, marketing SDR teams succeed best when they’re in lead/contact-based teams.

Regardless of team focus, SDRs achieve attainment when they’re talking to interested prospects. Doing the work ahead of the first contact by scoring leads properly, generating interest through marketing, and building automation allows SDRs the time they need to focus on the contacts most likely to close.

Replace Guessing with Guided Sales Engagement

The first step to a successful SDR team is knowing your unknowns: which actions garner the best results, what do your teams need to be successful, how do you find and nurture the contacts that want to hear from you? To answer these questions, you need data to counteract gut instincts and insights where your SDRs and reps can use them the most. Then your SDRs can move from haphazard and indiscriminate sales activities to the ones that work.

Playbooks by XANT gives your sales leaders the visibility, accountability, reporting, and guidance they need to make reps their most effective. Instead of spamming contacts with email or endless cold calling prospects that aren’t interested, SDRs can spend time on the most important tasks and be more creative and targeted in their outreach. Automation takes onerous manual tasks off their plate and lets them do more with less effort and better results.

Building a successful SDR team relies on good strategy, structure, and data. Reaching attainment in the new sales landscape will take creativity, experimentation, and a robust system that can support your team no matter where or how they work.

If you notice that buyers aren’t responding to your emails or engaging with your reps, here are three reasons why your sales process needs work and what you can do about it.

Most Lead Response Times Are Too Slow

A slow response from a rep wastes the time, effort, and budget required to generate a lead. Or worse, a lead might receive no response at all. Data from Harvard Business Review found that businesses’ average response time to respond to a web-generated lead was 42 hours. Even worse, many companies aren’t responding at all to their web-generated leads.

We analyzed over 55 million sales interactions and their outcomes within 400+ sales organization processes to uncover the importance of the 5-minute rule. Sales teams that can respond to leads within 5-minutes were over 8 times more likely to convert that lead. 

The three most important elements to maximizing pipeline are increasing speed to respond, speed to engagement, and speed to meet. Implementing processes and automation to get to leads faster will start the conversation quickly and increase your likelihood of qualifying and closing the deal.

Focus on the Solution Instead of Features

Prioritizing customers’ needs means throwing out one-size-fits-all slide decks and adapting the conversation to fit them.

Rather than focusing on features and hoping your customer will know how to apply them to their business, first improve the quality of your discovery calls, including the questions you ask and the amount of listening you do. The purpose of a discovery call is to vet their own processes and to uncover their true objectives and challenges. Then, you can promote relevant use cases and ideas for solving specific problems. Sales reps should think about decision makers’ needs above all else.

Business buyers have similar expectations as consumers; they want a sales process tailored to the things that matter to them. According to data from Salesforce, 72% of business buyers expect vendors to personalize engagement to their needs. Only 27% of business buyers say companies generally excel at meeting their standards for an overall experience — leaving the field wide open for reps who can align themselves with their customers’ priorities.

Stop Wasting Valuable Rep Time

Manual administrative tasks are bogging your sales reps down. When we surveyed over 700 sales reps, we found they only spend about 35% of their time selling. Of that leftover time, administrative tasks took the largest chunk (14.8% or 5.9 hours per week). Identifying the guesswork, the bottlenecks, and the waste holding your reps back and then solving it will naturally free up time for selling.

Mapping your current sales process and assigning metrics to each step will reveal the inefficiencies, allowing you to either implement automation or devote more resources to solve the problem.

Automation and operationalization also streamline and standardize processes so sales reps can complete them accurately and consistently across all their accounts and the business.

If you’re struggling to convert or qualify leads, these basics might be the place to start. Solving the three obstacles of lead time, understanding and relating to your customers, and uncovering and fixing process bottlenecks will improve your conversions and revitalize your sales process.

Build real, meaningful relationships with valuable content and use the many tools at your disposal to create quality, actionable leads without a lot of effort.

During our Sales Development Summit 2020, Daniel Disney shared his top 10 tips for selling more through LinkedIn in 2021. Here’s how to keep up with the trends and changes to the algorithm and stay on top of what’s relevant now.

Focus on a Personal Brand

Personal brands are the biggest untapped gold mine for social selling. Reps should have a credible presence online. A good personal brand will generate inbound leads as reps share and create valuable content. Prospects will absorb a personal brand and then reach out to a sales rep to learn more.

“A personal brand done right can have a huge impact on nearly every part of the sales process,” says Disney.

A personal brand also helps speed up the outbound process. The first contact with a prospect is less awkward and more engaging when both the rep and the prospect know more about each other through LinkedIn. As you share insights about you and your journey, your prospects will know more about you and how you’ll be able to help them solve their problems.

And the best part is you don’t need to spend a penny to get started.

Build a Better Profile

Many sales representatives do not have fully optimized profiles, which is one of the simplest ways to make a big impact. The standards and expectations for profiles have changed, and it’s important to keep them up to date and relevant. Here are a few tips for filling in the gaps on your profile: 

• Solid color profile background. They make you stand out more with less clutter behind you.
• On-brand backgrounds. Optimized banners are like your own billboard. In a few engaging words, tell your prospects how you can help them.
• Optimized summaries. Dig into the problems you solve, the customers you’ve worked with, and your background.

“Your LinkedIn profile is your digital presence; make sure it looks professional,” says Disney.

If you were speaking with customers face to face, you’d dress well and look the part, and your digital presence should be no different.

Take Advantage of Video Messages

Video messages are among the top trends in sales, but many sales reps don’t know how to use them well. The key is to use them in a balanced cadence and find out what format works best for your prospects.

Here are a few more tips on how to make your videos pop:

• Keep your messages 45 to 90 seconds long.
• Make them hyper-personalized. Take this beyond just a sign with their name on it and include pertinent information about them and their brand.
• Don’t over-rely on video messages. Continue to send mail, email, cold calls, and referrals.

Production value matters with video. Think about what you wear and what your background looks like, as well as your sound and lighting quality.

Tell Your Story in a Post

Long-form posts continue to be the best performing content on LinkedIn. To start writing them, spend some time reading what others in your market are writing about to learn how to craft them well.

Consistency is key for posts. Share personal and professional stories that provide value to your prospects once or twice a week. These posts are not the place to focus only on what you sell; keep it relevant and interesting to your audience.

Lastly, optimize your content for readability. Add spaces between your paragraphs to make it easier on the eyes as readers scroll, and only add a couple of relevant hashtags and avoid tagging people unnecessarily.

Drive ROI with Native LinkedIn Articles

Like long-form story posts, articles published on LinkedIn have high ROI. While it can feel like a big step to generate content, it’s another important way to deliver value to your prospects. Sales reps are used to writing engaging content in emails and sales material, and a blog post or article isn’t much different.

Keep articles from 800-1000 words and focus on the value you bring to your customers. Choose topics and key areas that you’re passionate about.

At the end of your post, include a good CTA and fill out the “About the Author” section. This is where you can deliver your pitch and talk about yourself.

“When sharing content on LinkedIn, make more of it valuable to your network,” Disney says.

Research Your Prospects

A little preparation goes a long way. Spending 30 to 60 seconds skimming a profile is generally enough to gather important information you can use to increase your conversions dramatically.

Many reps don’t take the time to read about their prospects and miss out on valuable information. Some other places to look include what they’ve shared, their activity, and even who they’ve connected with.

Comment and Share Authentically

When it comes to leaving comments on prospects’ posts and content, it’s important to stay true to yourself. Don’t comment to sell; engage to provide value and build a relationship.

Commenting on every post can look fake or forced; only add a comment when you have an opinion and feel confident to engage professionally.

“If your only motivation is to sell, people will see right through you on LinkedIn,” Disney says.

Copy and paste messages and comments will be crystal clear to prospects as a selling tactic. Have a genuine interest in your prospects and seek to provide value.

Build Voice Notes Into Your Cadence

Voice notes are another option for messaging in LinkedIn to add to your cadence.

Include a strong CTA and keep them engaging. Invite prospects to reply with their email address to start a conversation.

Create Video for Your Feed

Video content and LinkedIn Live bring video to your feed. Just like video messages, make sure you talk to your camera and keep your production value high.

Look for opportunities to do things differently with video. Conduct an expert interview with someone credible and relevant. Provide stories and insights you might have written in a long-form post. Keep it fresh and always relevant to your ideal audience.

ABC, Always Be Consistent

If you want to leverage social selling, you need to be consistent. LinkedIn engagement isn’t a one-and-done task or something you can do for a week and let fall by the wayside.

While social selling and developing relationships may take time, the opportunities are there for those willing to work for them.

If you’re not social selling, now is the time to start. Time is running out to catch the wave of organic growth on LinkedIn.

Just like Facebook has made organic growth next to impossible after they focused on paid ads to reach an audience, it won’t be long before LinkedIn follows suit. It will require more effort and budget to get the same results.

Organic reach is available on LinkedIn to everyone willing to put in the effort to create, share, and engage with relevant, authentic content.

But when CSMs are overloaded with accounts, it’s easy to get bogged down by day-to-day tasks. Important events like renewals might get missed, customer messages go unanswered, and customers may feel left out of the loop when new features or problems arise.

Playbooks gives CSMs more visibility into and accountability for their accounts. They can see quickly how a customer is coming along at any stage of their journey and engage with them at the right time with the right message. CSMs can also receive activity triggers whenever there is a change for an account record or be alerted if a certain amount of time has passed without activity on an account—ensuring that customer relationships remain healthy.

Here’s how Playbooks gives CSMs the tools to manage their accounts intelligently and give customers the attention they need, whether they have dozens or hundreds of accounts.

Stay Ahead of the Customer Journey

For organizations who’s reps manage large books of business, automation for customer success managers (CSMs) is essential. The right tools enable CSMs to focus their energy on the right accounts at the right time, no matter the number of accounts they manage.

Keeping up with renewal timelines, tracking onboarding and implementation, and pinpointing issues before they become a problem for sales are just a few of the ways that CSMs can easily stay on top of their accounts through automation.

For customers with fewer accounts, beginning with Playbooks allows CSM teams to scale quickly and without sacrificing quality or letting tasks slip through the cracks.

Automation and Personalization for Onboarding

During the sales cycle, reps use automation to customize messages, cadences, and contacts. This level of personalization doesn’t have to stop after the deal closes. Using a tool like Playbooks during onboarding gives customers the same tailored experience as they go through the next important step of their journey.

Customers purchase products as a solution to business problems, and hangups with onboarding, using or understanding key features, or other failures to adopt are top reasons why they churn. And while your organization may collect a lot of user data, gathering it into one place and turning it into action is what makes that data valuable.

Automating the adoption phase of the customer lifecycle allows CSMs to create and view adoption metrics. If a customer dips below certain levels, they can receive educational emails or an invitation to schedule a session with their account manager to resolve issues before they become a renewal problem. CSMs can even use integrations to email personalized video messages to customers at the point of purchase or throughout the onboarding process.

Communicate Important Announcements Quickly

At XANT, our Customer Success Managers use our product to deliver release notes to customers after a release.

Not only is this useful for notifying customers about our latest features, but we can also integrate calendar invites and LinkedIn messages. If a customer wants to talk to their account manager about the new release, they can do that seamlessly.

After every new release or throughout the customer lifecycle, automation allows customers to receive content that matches their journey. Playbooks keeps the line of communication open to account managers so customers can stay up to date on what’s new with your products, provide feedback, and get support. All of these events are tracked and become invaluable during the sales and renewal cycles.

Harnessing customer data with Playbooks and turning it into actionable and automated goals and tasks makes a CSM’s job easier. As a result, customers will have a better onboarding and adoption experience. Your CSMs might be managing hundreds of accounts, but every customer will feel taken care of on an individual level. Demo Playbooks now to see how it can help your CSMs.

Like any tactic, too much of a good thing or improper technique is behind the bad reputation. Sales automation combined with accurate, reliable data is a massive time-saver and a pipeline-builder. Below, we discuss how to leverage this technology for good and how to ensure your message not only gets into inboxes and actually gets opened.

Cut Out Costly Administrative Tasks

For sales reps, time spent crafting individual emails, scheduling follow-ups, building records in the CRM, etc., is all time that could be spent with customers or closing deals. Each of these tasks adds up to lots of lost time. In fact, we found after surveying over 700 sales reps that they spend just over a third of their time (35.2%) actually selling—only 14 hours out of a 40-hour week.

A good portion of reps’ time is eaten up by manual tasks such as product issues, approvals, internal policies, paperwork, etc. And while automation can’t solve all these problems, it can significantly reduce them and get reps back to selling.

With automation, AI and algorithms work behind the scenes to:

• Eliminate time-sucking administrative tasks
• Automatically record and update information in your CRM
• Set time-based reminders for reps
• Implement custom tiered rules

In many cases, these automated tasks not only save time, but they can be more accurate and consistent than relying on sales reps to complete them manually every time.

Engage With the Right Leads in the Right Way (Based on Data)

Playbooks simplifies and automates the data gathering process, and, with AI, produces buyer intelligence to guide reps as they engage with leads, contacts, and opportunities.

Buyer intelligence can predict how a customer might prefer to be contacted, the best days and times to reach them, and recommends other contacts to bring in to close deals. These tools look at past and current behavior to predict future outcomes, so the more they’re used and implemented, the better the data gets. For instance, Playbooks can identify the level of influence a contact may have on buying decisions, their behavior (including channel preference and how and when to engage), and suggest other contacts that may influence a deal.

Leveraging data is critical to staying above the constant noise customers receive in their inbox. Sales engagement automation goes far beyond just personalization in an email and can be the difference between winning and losing a deal. Buyer intelligence and sales engagement automatization can prioritize tasks so reps know which steps to take next, identify and score accounts that are most likely to take action based on behavior, verify customer data to minimize wasted time calling dead phone numbers, and give insight into customer behavior to identify potential opportunities.

Proper use of AI and sales engagement give a key strategic advantage in the new landscape of sales—it’s no longer a luxury but a necessity. With an ever-changing sales landscape that is reliant on digital tools, the pace will only get faster and faster. Sales leaders who take advantage of platforms get a leg up on the competition by increasing targeted outreach and guiding efforts. Increase rep productivity and see consistent results with data on your side.

As part of the XANT Sales Development Summit, Matt Loria, Senior Director of Sales Development at Salesforce, hosted a session on how he and his team have found success while working remotely. Below we detail three keys he has found to help keep his sales team engaged, motivated, and successfully hitting their goals while working virtually.

Centralized Communications Have Never Been More Important 

According to Harvard Business Review, virtual work has widened the gap between efficient and inefficient companies. One study estimated that the best-performing companies increased productivity by 5% during lockdowns. Less-productive companies saw meetings grow by nearly 13%, and the number of attendees increased as well. 

When trying to find more time for your teams, it can be tempting to cut meetings. But Loria says it can be detrimental to your organization to take this approach. Don’t simply eliminate meetings, he says, optimize time spent together. Make trades for a more optimized environment. As an example, Loria has traded long, monthly all-hands meetings for shorter weekly meetings.

To determine if a meeting is necessary, Loria recommends asking the following questions:

• What are we doing?
• Why are we doing it?
• How will we measure success?
• How do our organization’s goals align with your personal goals?

If you’re in a meeting and you can’t answer the four questions above distinctly and clearly, it’s probably not the best use of time to have everyone on that call. 

Build a Milestone-Driven, Virtual Friendly Enablement Program

During his weekly meetings, one critical piece of content Loria shares is a centralized selling resource. He uses this document to help reps understand the primary business drivers for the quarter and ensure that every rep knows their focus and the resources that will support it.

Having a visual resource like this is key to continuing to develop talent virtually. Each team member and manager must know what they’re buying into—communicate upfront and often about their responsibilities. 

Loria recommends creating and sharing a visual map of what the rep’s job will look like over the course of one or two years. Share how managers will be involved in developing their skills and what will be required, including self-directed learning. 

Keeping the Team Involved by Creating Energy

The final key Loria recommends to unify virtual teams is to find ways to create energy. Great leaders unlock their employees’ ability to go above and beyond, but this doesn’t mean employees need to do more than their job responsibilities—or work outside their business hours. So much time is wasted on tasks and work that isn’t optimized for success, can you energize your team and unlock an extra 10% of optimized time each day? 

Companies that minimize wasted time perform 40% better than the rest. Those companies that use their time efficiently understand the importance of helping their team members develop a sense of purpose. When reps dedicate their time, talent, and energy to a purpose—they understand their work has a bigger impact than just helping them reach their quotas. 

One effective tactic Loria suggests is calling out and highlighting those doing exceptional work. He recognizes them through personal phone calls, callouts in weekly meetings, and inviting them to share best practices slides for the team. 

While the job and communication can be more challenging in a virtual environment, Loria says one message he ensures his team hears is that even though challenges present everyone with many reasons not to be successful, it makes it feel so much better when you overcome these and celebrate success at the end.

Utilizing XANT Playbooks helps you overcome the challenges of working in a virtual world, bringing your sales team into a more connected and efficient sales process. Optimize your teams’ time by leveraging smart and advanced tools to find the best contacts and ways to engage with your prospects while eliminating wasted time cleaning up data. 

Get in touch with XANT today to learn more about Playbooks.

These shifts were already in motion, though; the pandemic simply accelerated them. Sales teams especially faced the need to adopt and lead new digital strategies. 

In B2B, millennials are quickly becoming the majority in both selling groups and buying groups, and they are digital natives. Their first instinct is to go online when they need to buy or sell. It’s not hard to do either—about 62% of the sales journey can be done online before ever talking to a salesperson. 

Brands must recognize the implications of digital transformations, and have tools to help them embrace it in the right ways.

Buyer Centricity: Engage Well and Often

Sales teams are learning they can get just as much done, if not more, from their homes. There’s going to be debate about the long-term justification for physical offices, and there’s already discussion about mental health and social engagement with colleagues. But a lot of you have figured out creative ways to keep your employees happy and with a better work-life balance. 

None of this, however, takes away from the responsibility for sellers to know how to make meaningful connections with buyers.

Sellers have to be faster, more content-rich, and more instrumented in their processes. To do this, they will need a tech stack to guide them. 

4 Tactics to Increase Connections

A sales engagement platform such as Playbooks can guide your sellers in making those meaningful connections. This is because of a few key features: 

1. Stay on top of opportunities: sales engagement can help you prevent leads and opportunities from slipping through the cracks. With orchestrated plays, your team can review and easily follow to-dos for the day, including staying on top of urgent and past due tasks. They’ll know exactly who to engage, on what channel, and when to increase their odds of building and closing pipeline.
2. Customizable prioritization: your sales leaders can establish rules, sorts, and filters based on the activities and outcomes you value most. Engage the contacts and accounts that are most likely to create value.
3. Data insights that matter: the most valuable resource your sales team has is time. Sales reps only spend about a third of their time actually selling. Sales engagement should proactively alert sellers to relevant insights about their buyers, along with their behaviors, and even indicate which are most likely to engage and buy. 
4. Automation: there are certain things reps should always own and do, but there’s quite a bit that should simply be done automatically. Automation systems and rules in sales engagement should give your sellers a lot more time to actually sell.

Sales engagement can be one of the most powerful tools for remote and digital selling, but it takes more than having just this one tool. You need content. 

Buyers should be offered an intuitive self-learning experience about the platforms they need to adopt. They don’t want to jump on the phone with a salesperson as soon until much later in their buying journey. 

Self-guided buying journeys require relevant, adequate, and available content. And not just for buyers! Your sales team must be well-versed in the story you’re telling. By enabling a remote sales team, you also enable the remote buyer. With so much of buying and selling now occurring in digital channels, having the ability to meet your buyers where they are is crucial to winning over your competition. Download our ebook, The Future of Sales, for more information on where sales is headed and why you need to look into remote selling.

So, what does it mean to have a quality MQL and how can sales teams ensure that they’re optimizing them to their full potential?

It Starts With Your Data Quality

Sales and marketing teams must agree on the definitions, the processes, and the handoffs. Unfortunately, 90% of marketing and sales professionals admit that their goals are misaligned. Get around this by working together to see what has gone poorly and what’s gone well to determine how lead scoring should work. 

It’s been found that only 27% of leads handed over to sales teams are high-quality. How do you drive more? Using real data is key—do high-quality leads include people who are reading your blog or downloading all your marketing content? The foundation of a good MQL is in its data. 

You should establish fair parameters for what defines your MQLs. You’ll want to drive enough leads by creating wide enough parameters to send leads down the funnel and hand enough off to sales, but you want to make sure you aren’t scoring too many leads either or reaching out too early. A mass quantity of low-quality leads will create extra work for sales teams that won’t lead to any results as they track down contacts that are not interested in buying. 

Use your data on your buyers and firms to establish more lead scoring rules. A decision-maker downloading a buyer’s guide is probably more likely to purchase than an entry-level researcher downloading a trends report.

Once you’ve established more information on the leads you’ve followed up with, be sure to provide cross-functional feedback to marketing. Sales teams who notice flaws in their leads but don’t speak up will continue getting the same poor leads.

Finally, be sure to revisit your lead scoring option. Continually checking in on your lead health will help revenue teams establish the best scoring rules.

Protect Your MQLs With Sales Engagement

Hopefully, if your MQL parameters are set up soundly, you won’t have to deal with leads falling through the cracks very often. But it happens regardless and teams have to find out why. 

First and foremost, check in with your team. Often, SDRs believe they are reaching out more often and more frequently than actually are, in reality. Our data suggested that at times, SDRs believe they’re reaching out twice as often in half the amount of time as reality. And what’s more, the optimal metric is different from both what they’re perceiving and doing. 

Technology can help revenue teams protect MQLs from being neglected. Sales engagement platforms such as Playbooks can give teams the helping hand with lead contact. 

Teams can see real-time data with a sales engagement platform to optimize their interactions with leads. How often your team is reaching out, the frequency, and how long after a lead qualifies is critical information to inform sales leaders on where your team can improve. 

To combat any lagging metrics, sales engagement platforms can typically send reminders or provide front-and-center to-do lists for their teammates with prioritized lists of tasks for the day. Knowing who to follow up with, the most likely buyers, the most effective tasks, and other hints and reminders for your team can increase sales efficiency and create manageable days for sales professionals often stressed by long hours and constant “no’s.” 

And finally, sales engagement can protect your leads through automation. Inevitably, we sometimes forget to engage, don’t have enough time to properly nurture our leads or some other way life gets in the way of engaging. Automation can help save time and still properly make effective contact with your leads and help them avoid falling through the cracks. 

It’s wise to consider what goes into your MQL scoring and whether or not your current methods are leading to high-quality leads. Ensure your revenue teams are working together to align their goals for the best results and that your data that goes into your MQLs is sound. Consider investing in a sales engagement platform to offer your team the helping hand to increase your effectiveness. Get in touch with XANT today to see how Playbooks could help your team.