RELATED: WHAT 3 TOP SDR LEADERS ARE DOING RIGHT NOW

In this article:

1. Meet the Speaker
2. Sales Mistakes – the #1 Mistake
3. How to Fix the Problem
4. When’s the Right Call Block Time and How Can I Accelerate Performance?
5. How to Deal with Negative Pushback
6. Don’t Waste Time on the Wrong Activities
7. How do You Lock Down the Next Steps?

Sales Mistakes and Tips for Getting the Most from Your Sales Team

Meet the Speaker

Michael Pedone is the founder of Salesbuzz.com, an online training company for B2B sales teams that need to overcome call reluctance.

Michael has been a straight commission sales rep for over 25 years. “He launched an internet marketing company during the dot com meltdown and defied the odds by turning it into a massively successful venture. A large factor in its success was Michael’s ability to teach his proven phone sales techniques to his ever-expanding staff, creating swift growth for the company”.

Sales Mistakes – the #1 Mistake

The main sales mistake reps make is probably the same mistake they were making pre-COVID-19.

When reps are making outbound sales calls, they are making the ‘follow-up call’ first. When sales reps try to close those deals, they are spending a lot of energy on those calls and pushing back the ‘first-time’ calls in the afternoon.

This means reps have a lot less energy and don’t make as many calls as they should. They then tell themselves they will do the calls the next day but the cycle repeats, a bit like a farmer that wants to keep reaping but never planting seeds.

This is how sales slumps happen. The bigger issue is that when reps feel the effects of the sales slump, they change their sales process because nothing’s working.

The pipeline disappears because of the lack of first-time calls and desperation kicks in causing reps to make ineffective changes. Usually what’s getting changed is what was working when reps were putting in the energy.

How to Fix the Problem

When sales slumps happen the best way to get through them is to get disciplined and create some call blocks in the morning between 9am-10:30am for first-time calls. The follow-up calls should be done in the afternoon.

Following that simple step, be disciplined in that area, and you’ll see your numbers take off; possibly not in the first few days or week, but eventually you will see a solid pipeline and you’ll eliminate and minimize those drastic sales slumps.

When’s the Right Call Block Time and How Can I Accelerate Performance?

There are more segmented sales roles and more things on our plate now than before than ever before which means there’s no ‘one size fits all’ approach, but with people working from home, one common thread is reps are having a hard time getting the ‘first-time’ call done first.

There’s no right or wrong, there’s only what’s better for you.

If you know that you have to do your prospecting, get up early if you have to and get it done before the day starts, build that list, and always have a list ready to go when you start your working day.

Have a list of people that are prospects/suspects and make a commitment to do nothing else until you knock out 10/20/30 ‘first-time calls’. Then go to your follow-up calls but your day’s tasks should be broken down in that order.

The reason sales reps do follow-up calls first is because it’s easier, less stressful, and they want to close a sale or book an appointment as soon as they can.

Here’s the problem – people typically have more energy in the morning, so why do the easy task when you have the most energy? Do the harder task when you have the most amount of energy and in the afternoon do the easier jobs.

If you commit to taking that ‘cold shower’ at the start of your day, and do all of your first-time calls before noon, you can come back after lunch and the rest of the day is cake! The pressure is off!

Schedule your follow-up calls from 1-5pm, and maybe take a 30-minute break around 3pm to build your prospect/suspect list for the following day. Then finish the day strong, have a power hour for the last hour of the day, and complete any calls that you haven’t done.

Discipline yourself to do that enough and you will have a great pipeline, and you won’t have to worry about a sales slump, due to not ‘planting any crops’.

How to Deal with Negative Pushback

A lot of people get negative pushback from making sales calls because they are disrupting people at home, for example, while people are home-schooling their children.

What’s bothering them is that it’s not that they’re getting the call but that the message isn’t resonating, and the opening statement is the problem. Many salespeople don’t realize their low responses could be due to their message being off.

The opening value statement when contacting prospects by phone has 2 objectives:

• Piquing interest
• Gaining permission to ask questions/continue with the call

If you have a solution to specific problems, you need to know how to ‘pick your zebra out of the herd’ (who have that problem) and how to contact them – whether phone, email, LinkedIn or a combination, etc, to pique their interest.

Be tactful and empathetic but go straight to the question and target the pain.

If you learn how to agitate that pain, scratch that itch, pique curiosity in the first 5-15 seconds, your customer will be responsive. Make sure you’re ready for that response and be prepared for the next stage of the sales process. Once you learn how to master that process, you’ll start making money and sales becomes fun again!

Don’t Waste Time on the Wrong Activities

Salespeople have been oversold on the need and value of research. Although important, there should be a two minute cap on researching to determine if your customer qualifies as a prospect/suspect. If you get to know your ICP (ideal customer profile) you will reduce research time.

Spending longer researching could be down to call reluctance which comes back to sales skills, which if you fix, the call reluctance will go away.

Again, there’s no one size fits all approach, consider outsourcing that part, or get an intern or junior sales rep to build the list.

If you’re not satisfied with the results you’re getting, break the mold and think outside the box and make things work for you.

How do You Lock Down the Next Steps?

Whether a cold call or a warm lead, the process is the same and actually hasn’t changed since sales began.

There are four phases to getting a sale.

1. The opening value statement. openers have a specific job and must pique interest and ask permission to continue with the call.
2. Qualifying (3 steps)
   • Problem recognition – the customer needs to recognize they have a problem even if that is with their current product which they believe is the solution.
   • Identify the person’s real role in the decision-making process.
   • Provide pricing options so the customer can clarify if the product is within budget. One of the biggest objections that sales reps have is that the customer can’t afford the product, so qualifying this at the early stages eliminates that objection early on and shoots the closing numbers up after the presentation.
     Presentation
3. Closing

Watch the full webinar to learn more sales mistakes and tips from Michael Pedone

For more free info on inside sales, go to the SalesBuzz.com blog and use the search function to find anything you need.

If you have any questions about Playbooks or XANT, go to xant.ai/playbooks where you can watch a great ‘day in the life’ video and get a flavor of how reps and managers connect to customers quickly.

What time of day do you do your first-time calls? What sales mistakes have you made in the past? Please share your sales mistakes and thoughts in the comments section below.

Up Next:

• 14 SKILLS SALES DEVELOPMENT REPRESENTATIVE HAVE MASTERED
• 9 SALES TOOLS TO INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY
• HOW TO RADICALLY REORDER SALES IN A CRISIS [WEBINAR]

Dave Boyce, CSO for Xant, hosts this webinar with guest speaker Kraig Kleeman on how to radically reorder sales in a crisis.

RELATED: 3 TIPS FOR MANAGERS AND REPS TO KEEP MOMENTUM IN PLACE DURING COVID19

In this article:

1. 1. 1. Meet the Speaker
      2. The Current Situation
      3. The Sales Function
      4. Reordering Your Sales

• • • • Review
      • Structure
      • Content
      • Sales Meeting

1. 1. 5. Reorder Sales in a Crisis Summary

Reorder Sales: Still Build Toward a $Billion Outcome

Meet the Speaker

Kraig Kleeman is an accomplished author and speaker, dubbed the world’s greatest cold caller. Kraig is a world-leading growth advisor, a sales strategist, and he hosts his own instructional sales enablement YouTube channel – KraigKleemanTV.

Kraig’s concepts around radically reordering the way we think about sales is especially relevant during the current crisis.

The Current Situation

Due to the current coronavirus pandemic, a lot has been happening in the world, almost like a tectonic change. The world seems to be restructuring itself; layers of culture and society, including businesses, will need to be significantly reordered.

The sales function within the business will specifically need reordering, possibly whether we like it or not.

The Sales Function

The world has changed, but your organization’s business sales function needs to go on, so this might mean changing your outlook to achieve primary goals.

Consider these points?

• What is the purpose of a sales organization?
• How do you load-balance headcount as it relates to appointment setters and appointment closers?
• How do you put together your sales team in your organization now?
• Have you re-examined your sales organization recently?
• What sort of content/ what kind of language are you using in customer-facing mode?
• What sort of touchpoints are you using to reach out to customers, and how is it all architected?

The purpose of a sales team is to create valuation – to build and drive the valuation of the company, perform well for employees and shareholders, and be a strategic weapon or tool to drive the valuation.

If you turn sales off and underinvest in that function, your valuation disappears. If you ramp up sales and step on the gas, then valuation increases.

Knowing how to step on the gas appropriately to extract the most yield from that particular environment at this turbulent time is key to success.

Expanding the lifetime value of a company is essential. The four indicators to add valuation are: –

1. Rapid growth
2. Reduce customer acquisition costs
3. Increase the lifetime value of the company
4. Retention

RELATED: HOW TO EFFECTIVELY LEAD FROM HOME

Reordering Your Sales

Review

Look at how many demos (or meeting 1s – or whatever you call the first real introductory meeting that starts the sales cycle.) your sellers do per person per day?

What ratio of appointment setters (SDRs – Sales Development Reps) to closers do you have?

What messages and content do you use? Examine and understand how your messages are being delivered to customers. How do you deliver the messages, for example, is the content automated, structured, etc. or do the SDRs just complete a daily task list?

Structure

Load balance your SDR team to a minimum of 5:1 ratio, i.e., five SDRs minimum per seller.

Those SDRs need to be equipped with messaging and content that’s been highly customized, and that’s rooted in hermeneutics (the science of language) and sales proposal writing.

The SDRs should sit in on the demo meeting and take all the notes, put all the information in salesforce, and do all the administrative tasks relating to CRM. The SDR should carry all motions and follow the customer meetings until close.

Sellers should barely use your CRM, only to check which appointments they have and get themselves acquainted before they go into the sales meeting. Ultimately their role is to take the demos and sell/pitch and close the sale.

Content

The message, or content, should be highly customized and include the four pillars of buyer thought – topics, trends, metrics, and outcomes. You will begin to appeal to buyers when you understand the way they think, i.e., they think topically, and they want to know what’s trending.

Look at what’s trending, and what outcomes could result, then lead with fact-based research instead of product gains. Your customers will think quantitatively and will be more interested in outcomes than the features and benefits.

In adhering to task management, the SDR should incorporate key language, which is highly valuable and conforms to power persuasion that makes it difficult for the customer to say no.

Try to automate every message so that they are pre-created in advance for all SDRs to use so that SDRs don’t have to think about what message to send; instead they simply follow a set of tasks and adhere to task management.

Therefore, the language needs to be highly assumptive. Incorporate principles like ‘power response to power.’ For example, “my managing director has asked me to schedule a meeting.” Use different terms and keywords for different companies.

Sales Meeting

Ensure that the sales data projected to the customer in the sales meeting is relevant.

Focus on three very poignant points by citing fact-based research but stimulating the customer to talk that then creates some communication and some engagement around problems and issues that they’re having internally.

Key attributes to a successful sales meeting should include citing valid research, having at least three fast facts, let the customer talk, use open-ended questioning techniques, be a great listener, and qualify deeply in the context of the fact-based research.

Use a demo to explain how your product can make a big difference to the client, specifically honing in on the outcomes your customer has described. Once you build value in the mind of the buyer, they will want to make an investment in your product.

Reorder Sales in a Crisis – Summary

Make sure you have a structure or formula that works within your sales team. The goal should be to build valuation. You will need:

• A ratio of 5:1 SDR to sellers.
• Refined content and delivery.
• Your SDRs to be following all administrative steps until close.
• To let your SDRs invoke power by referring to persons in the management team.
• Your sellers to be the revenue carrying employees who should be concerned with closing sales only.
• Make your sales demo relevant, based on factual research and honed in on client needs.

How can you reorder sales in a crisis? What processes have worked for you? Share your ideas in the comments section below.

Up Next:

• • • HOW TO TAKE CARE OF YOUR B2B TEAM DURING CORONAVIRUS
    • HOW TO AVOID DISTRACTIONS WHILE WORKING FROM HOME
    • HOW TO KEEP YOUR SALES TEAM MOTIVATED WHILE WORKING FROM HOME
      

1. 1. 1. The Productivity Gap
      2. What is Remote Selling
      3. Tools as a Force Multiplier

• • • • Navigate the Organization
      • Stakeholder Meetings
      • Proposal Review

1. 1. 4. The Impact
      5. Conclusion
         
      6. Support

Grow Your Business with These Remote Selling Tips

This webinar runs through a five-step agenda discussing the poignant topic of remote selling and what you can do to accelerate productivity.

Jacco Van Der Kooij is the Founder and CEO at WinningByDesign.com, a consultancy business that helps design go-to-market models and trains sales, CMS, and marketing teams for success.

He founded WinningByDesign over 7 years ago, and they have offices in San Francisco, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, and Sydney. All are intending to help clients big and small, with a process-driven approach to sales.

The current pandemic crisis means we are faced with a lot of change that we have not experienced before. Separating the human suffering from a business perspective, you can turn this situation into an opportunity for you and your teams.

The Productivity Gap

In response to COVID-19 cases, productivity across the world in enterprise and SMB sales has dropped, particularly on:

• • Pipeline creation (lead generation)
  • Pipeline conversion (sales)
  • Retention/churn
  • As a sales professional, things will change, and they may not be the same again.
  • Recovery will take a while, but we can use this to our benefit to learn more.
  • There will be setbacks, and lingering issues will remain.
  • However, if we prepare today, then ramp faster, we can gain market share, improve win rates, and speed up the sales cycle. 

What is Remote Selling?

There are typically three types of sales right now. Transactions which are done mostly in person but with some remote actions, deals which are done chiefly remotely but with some in-person activity (such as visiting the client onsite), and thirdly, inside sales organization primarily dependent on lead generation and predominantly online

Synchronous sales refer to sales that are done directly with real-time contact, such as face to face meetings. Asynchronous is the opposite and refers to such activities as emails or recorded demo videos.

Remote synchronous meetings have an advantage because there is no wasted time on travel. Using asynchronous techniques can also speed up the sales cycle by alerting clients to your product as soon as they have time to send the data, or even have it available online.

Combining the efforts of both techniques will result in the compression of the conventional sales cycle.

RELATED: HOW TO COMP SALES TEAMS IN A CRISIS

Tools as a Force Multiplier

Navigate the Organization

To find people that matter quicker, Jacco Van Der Kooij suggests using Crystal Knows to identify the ‘Initiator’ within an organization.
In Playbooks (from XANT), hints are given as to who is who within an organization based on past deals, job roles, and previous influences. Combine these two tech platforms to get great results.

There is so much online data available which can help you to cut out wasted time getting to know people.

Leverage what your clients provide online – identify people in the organization faster, develop rapport immediately, lower cost, and be more scalable.

Stakeholder Meetings

Remote meetings with stakeholders can take weeks to arrange and delay the sales cycle. Working remotely can speed this up by getting people in a remote room quicker. Other benefits include:

• • Fewer actions to follow up
  • Materials can be distributed easily
  • No ‘road blockers’
  • More balanced meeting online/ democratizes attendance
  • Seeing all names and faces at once makes it easier to check for visual clues and to engage with everyone

Assign a person to engage with others in the group, e.g., in chat format. This will mean people have access to document links, more actions will be resolved immediately, and because the facilitator will read out questions, there is likely to be more engagement.

Proposal Review remote selling

Create engagement with your clients using a variety of techniques. Use color and design to highlight your proposal or engage people by adding comments into sections of the document.

When presenting, use side by side demonstrations to create an authentic and personal experience. This will add relevancy.

Making your proposal bespoke will speed up the back and forth process, add relevancy, and be better quality.

Ultimately, aim for your proposal to be a living document.

RELATED: HOW TO MANAGE A SALES TEAM WHILE YOU WORK FROM HOME

The Impact remote selling

Look at the anatomy of your deals and factor in sales as a science.

Benchmark data should include contract value, win rate, sales cycle (days), calendar meetings, and meeting format.

Reducing the number of meetings will increase the win rate. Fewer meetings also minimize the possibility of things going wrong, or salespeople messing up.

Use these techniques to become better than everyone else, even if slightly better, small impacts will compound returns.

It’s feasible to outcompete your competitor and get really good at online selling to ensure you make big gains.

Make meetings more efficient, use tools to make the sales even better, shorten the sales cycle, all to improve the win ratio – that is the impact!

Conclusion- Focus on 3 Things

• • Create the playbook – dedicate the playbook to online/digital format
  • Operate the tools – understand and integrate the tools to work online
  • Train on expert skills – for online, modern setups

Your business needs to be 100% remotely architected, using playbook or sales processes, automated with tools, specialized with skills, and data-driven. A combination of tools and data is the key to success.

Support remote selling

Be part of a community to survive the coronavirus crisis; share best practices, and support each other.

XANT.ai is offering a playbook for free during the pandemic crisis to help people. At the same time, they figure out how to work better remotely. You can also head to our website to find out further information.

There are free resources on WinningByDesign.com, and you can check out and subscribe here to their YouTube channel.

What new sales methods have you adapted to? Share your ideas in the comments section below.

Up Next:

• • • 19 EFFECTIVE COLD CALLING TIPS FOR B2B
    • HOW TO CONNECT AND ENGAGE WITH C-LEVEL EXECUTIVES
    • HOW TO CREATE AN EFFECTIVE SALES CALL SCRIPT OUTLINE
      

Learn call planning best practices from Jeff Boyle of Cision and find out why you should never skip this part of the sales call process.

RELATED: How To Optimize Your Sales Process Top To Bottom

In this article:

1. Why Pre-Call Planning Is Important
2. Pre-Call Planning Objectives
3. Is 15 Minutes Enough for Sales Call Planning?
4. The Pre-Call Planning Process
5. How Your Pre-Call Preparation Benefits the Sales Process
6. Pre-Call Planning Mistakes to Avoid
7. Key Takeaway

How to Do Sales Call Planning Effectively

Jeff Boyle is the Senior Director of New Business at Cision. Their company offers public relations and communication software, and they connect their clients with social influencers fit for their brand.

He started his sales career with Corporate Executive Board and now, he’s been with Cision for 12 years.

He began in the industry as a sales rep. Boyle has since then moved up to become a Manager, Director, and now a Senior Director.

The three managers under his team work with small and mid-market sectors. He also handles five enterprise sales reps who focus on Fortune 1000 companies.

Why Pre-Call Planning Is Important

Boyle is a sales leader who spends time with his managers and reps and listens to sales calls. In doing so, he realized that his sales reps were asking prospects questions they should already know the answers to.

Sales leaders often focus on things like forecasting, pipeline, and KPIs. On the other hand, frontline managers spend a lot of their time putting out fires.

As a result, pre-call planning always gets pushed aside, and the importance of sales call planning is not emphasized. Boyle admitted that he noticed this happening to his own sales team.

The fact of the matter is, it’s very important to start off a sales call knowing what you’re getting yourself into.

Pre-Call Planning Objectives

While pre-call planning is essential, Boyle warned against spending too much time on it when there are other revenue-generating activities you also need to focus on.

As a sales leader, you can coach your reps to follow a template, blueprint, or checklist which consist of the following:

• What information they should look for
• How long they should spend on each step of the pre-call planning process
• Indicators that tell them when it’s time to move on

Boyle recommended having a checklist that sales reps can accomplish within 15 minutes. The main point is to make sure the reps are doing their homework before going into a sales call.

At Cision, Boyle and his team use Salesforce as their CRM system, and they document everything there. Sales reps can use the notes left in the CRM for pre-call preparation and even throughout the sales process.

Is 15 Minutes Enough for Sales Call Planning?

Boyle clarified that the preparation time could vary, depending on the kind of opportunity the sales rep tackles. Tenured reps, for instance, are more experienced so they can tell good opportunities from bad ones.

The important thing is that sales reps don’t wing a call.

With the 15-minute time limit, you’re not overkilling or overcomplicating planning the initial sales call and approach. As Boyle said, too much pre-call preparation can also become a disadvantage.

You can break down the pre-call steps within 15 minutes as they’re very straightforward. It’s not rocket science, but where people fail is in the execution.

Everyone knows it’s important, and they should always do it. Yet for some reason, they don’t allot enough time to prepare for their sales calls.

The Pre-Call Planning Process

Boyle shared with us the five-step pre-call planning process his team follows. The process may vary per industry, but as mentioned earlier, the steps are straightforward so you can use this as a template for your own team:

1. Research the Contact and Their Company

The first step, which you should do no matter what, is to research your prospect and their company. There are so many resources you can use to gather information on your contact, such as their company website and LinkedIn.

In the first two to four or three to five minutes, get to know your contact and their company.

Visit their website and check out the “About Us” tab to learn their story and values. From there, you can determine how your business aligns with their corporate vision.

For Cision, the website’s News and Blog parts are very important as these cover their industry. Boyle shared that their sales reps normally research this information:

• Is the prospect pushing out content?
• Are they writing content on their blog?
• Are they creating white papers?
• How are they generating buzz and driving traffic back to their website?

Boyle also recommended researching the company’s leadership. Figure out who the buyers and decision-makers are so you can bring them up during the call.

The hardest part is trying to figure out who you should be talking to. That is why researching the contact, their title, and their company are important.

A lot of times, sales reps aren’t speaking directly to the decision-makers. What they can do is plant the seed on those decision-makers through their contact.

2. Check Your CRM System

While listening to his team’s sales calls, Boyle noticed that his reps kept asking prospects similar questions:

• Have you ever heard of Cision?
• Were you able to get a chance to look at Cision before?
• Have you ever reviewed Cision before?

This made him realize that it’s important to go into your CRM system and look at past notes. You need to refer to previous notes to answer these important questions about your prospect:

• Was your prospect involved in another sales process?
• Why didn’t they come on board with your company?
• Why didn’t they buy? / What derailed them from buying?

Boyle emphasized that finding the answers to these questions are very important. You should also figure out the source of the lead so you can tailor your pitch accordingly.

RELATED: Mapping The Sales Process: 6 Steps For Success

3. Explore the Contact’s LinkedIn Page

The next step is to explore the contact’s LinkedIn page. Following this step in your pre-call planning gives you more insight into the landscape you’re dealing with.

In their LinkedIn page, you can find out what their current role is and see if they got promoted.

You can even view what their past experiences were in other companies. LinkedIn also recommends related profiles, and often, these are their teammates and bosses.

This way, you learn not only about the contact but also their whole team.

4. Competitor Overview

Boyle admitted that he’s big on conducting a competitor overview pre-call. It’s important to find out who the prospect’s competitors are because it builds credibility.

It’s also extremely beneficial if you’re going to name-drop current customers you have that happen to be their competitors. This piques their interest — they’re going to want to know about your company and how their competitors are using your services.

5. Plan for the Call

After gathering all the information you need, the last step is to plan for the call. You can now formulate the questions you want to ask, such as pertinent information you weren’t able to find out from the research.

Remember to jot down your notes and questions, so you can refer to them during the call.

There are many different ways you can form your checklist, but it all boils down to the execution.

How Your Pre-Call Preparation Benefits the Sales Process

If you’re in the inside sales industry, the main purpose why you’re doing pre-call planning is to have leverage throughout the sales call. Yet the struggle you have with inside sales is, you’re not speaking to the prospect face-to-face.

That’s why it’s very important that you engage them and spark their interest within the first two to five minutes of the call.

If you can show the prospect that you’ve done your homework by doing research on them and asking them tailored questions, they’ll know you’re for real. For Boyle, that right there sets the stage for the rest of the sales process.

These are the important things you want to accomplish during a call, especially for inside sales:

• Build your credibility
• Show the prospect you care about them
• Show the prospect you want to help them overcome their pain points and achieve their goals

Pre-Call Planning Mistakes to Avoid

Boyle shared two things you need to avoid when doing pre-call planning. First is creating a script.

Creating a script for your sales call may make sense, especially for new hires. When there’s a lot of information to digest, rookie sales reps tend to rely on their script.

Inside sales reps, in particular, can leverage scripts as they don’t talk to prospects in person. Yet, Boyle said this is a common mistake.

According to him, using bullet points is better. Following a script can make you seem robotic or rehearsed, and it’s better to be yourself in a call and sound natural.

Following bullet points also allows you to be more flexible in case you encounter derailments or objections. You can deviate as needed to accommodate your prospect’s needs.

The second thing you need to avoid is getting sucked into social media. If you’re not careful, you might waste your time on personal browsing instead of doing your research.

Boyle also reminded that you need to stay focused when you visit the prospect’s website. Only visit specific parts of the website you need information from.

You have to understand that your objective is to develop trust and a good relationship with your prospect. You don’t need to know everything about them to do this — just enough information to start the conversation and tailor it.

Key Takeaway

The key takeaway Boyle imparted is this: Don’t assume your sales reps are doing pre-call planning despite knowing how important it is.

Take the time to ask them how they prepared for their call. It will surprise you how often your tenured reps wing calls.

It’s important to give your sales reps a template, blueprint, or checklist they can follow for their pre-call preparation. Remind them to spend at least 5-15 minutes on this task.

Pre-call planning is an essential part of the sales call process that salespeople should never skip. It may take extra time and effort, but when done correctly, it can yield excellent opportunities.

Follow Jeff Boyle’s five-step pre-call planning process today or create your own, so you won’t miss out on building lasting relationships with your prospects!

Why do think sales reps follow or not follow the pre-call planning process? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

Up Next: 

• What Role Content Plays In The Sales Process w/Dave Koslow @DocSend
• How Chat is Disrupting the Sales Process w/Jonny Everett @The Chat Shop
• Pipedrive Review: Overview, Features, And Pricing

Everyone has done their fair share of selling, but few have taken steps to learn the recipe for a successful sales career. Joe Haynie from JCI talks about the sales principles that guided his career and molden him into the sales leader he is today.

RELATED: The Five Principles Of Sales Forecasting

In this article:

1. Focus on What Your Customer Needs
2. Value, Not Features
3. Choose Your Altitude Through Your Attitude

How to Increase Sales | 3 Sales Principles That Can Help Boost Sales

Joe Haynie is the General Manager at Sensormatic (NYSE: JCI) and has been in the sales business for over 40 years. These are the three sales principles that guided him throughout his long career.

1. Focus on What Your Customer Needs

Focusing on the customer is the start of a successful sales career. Go above and beyond what you need and talk to your customers.

The more customers you help succeed, the more you’ll succeed personally.

2. Value, Not Features

Your product or service has a set of cool stuff. You’ve got all these cool things you’re happy and excited to share with people.

The bad news is that the customer doesn’t care. You should then show what value and benefit you bring to them.

All they care about is “How is this going to help me?” when you present your product or service.

RELATED: 5 SaaS Sales Principles To Boost Performance

3. Choose Your Altitude Through Your Attitude

Choose your own altitude by your attitude. You have the choice to separate your difficult experience from your response to that experience.

How you respond to all the challenges you face makes all the difference between a success and a failure.

Keep these sales principles in mind and expect a great journey to a successful sales career ahead of you. We’re looking forward to having Joe Haynie again to explain these principles in more detail in a future podcast.

What are the core principles of selling you keep in mind in your career? Let us know in the comments section below.

UP NEXT:

• 5 Principles For Becoming A Leader Of Change In Your Sales Organization
• 5 Essential Change Management Principles
• How To Cold Call Your Way Up To A $1.6m Pipeline

Lori Langholz of BDO shares why you should let go of question-based selling and move to insight selling, and how this shift can benefit your sales team.

RELATED: Why Become An Inside Sales Rep? Insights From Inside Sales Experts

In this article:

1. Why You Should Move from Question-Based Selling to Insight Selling
2. The Disadvantages of Question-Based Selling
3. How to Approach Insight Selling
4. Why People Choose Question-Based Selling over Insight Selling
5. How to Elevate the Buyer Conversation
6. What You Need to Do to Ensure You Know Your Buyers
7. Tips for Assembling Your Client-Facing Team
8. Why It’s Important to Always Come Prepared

Question-Based Selling Methods: Why You Should Let Them Go

Lori Langholz is the Chief Business Development Officer of BDO, a public accounting firm. Its U.S. firm is based in Chicago while theglobal headquarters is in Brussels.

BDO is a professional services firm where selling is a shared responsibility among everyone and not only for full-time sales professionals.

Langholz is an expert in the field with 13 years of experience in BDO. She started in the company as a Business Development Manager, where she was an “individual contributor.”

She moved into a management role several years later. Four years ago, she earned the responsibility of leading the firm’s function nationally.

Now, Langholz has a team of 80 business development professionals. She works with their firm’s leadership on the strategy and execution of business development and growth strategies around the country.

Why You Should Move from Question-Based Selling to Insight Selling

BDO’s desire to focus its engagement towards its buyers and clients inspired the shift from question-based to insight sales. They aim to provide the “exceptional client experience” they market and want their buyers and clients to experience that throughout the entire process.

That’s why their Marketing team worked on customizing messages that cater to buyers’ needs starting from the beginning of their journey. At the same time, their Sales team makes sure they’re focused not on what they want to sell but on what the buyers need.

Langholz expressed that this became an “interesting conundrum” for her because the sales training she received was question-based. She believed that asking enough questions will yield a result and help her find something about the buyer.

She practiced question-based selling, but one day it hit her that her method of asking questions felt like an indictment to her clients. Questioning people’s actions and getting a negative answer from them makes them look like a fool in front of their staff or their boss.

Sometimes, they haven’t thought of or addressed the concerns she asked them about. By questioning buyers about it, she made them feel as if she was indicting them.

The Disadvantages of Question-Based Selling

Making your buyer feel bad by indicting them is the last thing you want to do. That’s why when you bring up something they either haven’t done, haven’t thought of, or don’t even know, their immediate responses are:

• “We’ve done that.”
• “We’ve looked at that, and it doesn’t apply to us.”
• “That’s not beneficial to us.”

Yet the truth is, they simply don’t want to acknowledge that they haven’t done their job the way they should have. They won’t admit they haven’t done their due diligence.

You can’t say you’re focused on your buyer when you ask them indicting questions. You aren’t helping them succeed, but rather, pushing them towards your product or service.

By shifting to being more issue- and insight-driven, you can collaborate with your buyer rather than indict them.

How to Approach Insight Selling

Langholz shared some practical ways on how to approach insight selling. Instead of questioning your buyer’s practices, you can phrase your conversation this way:

“We’re seeing this phenomenon in the market. Are you seeing the same in your business? Here’s our point of view about that phenomenon.”

Here, you focus on something that’s happening in the market, a bigger issue affecting their business. Some common topics you can touch on are trade, tariff, and new pronouncements by governing bodies.

Ask your buyer how that market phenomenon is affecting them, then show them your research results and what you’re doing with your other clients.

Finally, ask them what they envision for their company in the future. Let them define that ideal future state.

No one is in a perfect position, as we’re all constrained by challenges in areas like capital, talent, and data. Now, however, you’re co-developing the solution with your buyer that’ll benefit their organization.

The more your client invests in the solution, the more willing they are to buy it.

You’re getting them to see that the solution you’re developing is in their best interests. As Langholz often says, don’t sell to someone something they don’t need.

Don’t pitch something you can’t deliver in the best way. If you can’t help the buyer with their problem, say it.

If you can help them succeed in their business, make sure they know it. You should aim to have an authentic co-created solution for your buyer.

Remember that people will see right through you. You should have genuine intentions to help them address their issues and solve their problems.

Buyers are smart — they can research anything you tell them so you can’t fool them.

You have to believe in the fact that the issue on hand is important to them, and thus, it should be important to you, too. You also have to guarantee that you’re a good solution-provider for their problem or opportunity.

Why People Choose Question-Based Selling over Insight Selling

Langholz shared the reasons why people choose to apply question-based selling instead of insight selling. One reason she observed is bringing up topics you’re not an expert in makes you feel vulnerable.

When you open up a topic that’s outside of your personal expertise, it can expose you.

Langholz believes that’s not how buyers think. They know nobody is an expert on everything, and they appreciate that broader business conversation.

She also observed that some people are afraid of the broader business conversation. They don’t know how to have a conversation outside of their particular expertise.

The common reason is this: question-based selling is an easier method. Salespeople want to get the deal, so if they can get to it more quickly using this method, it’s what they will use.

When buyers express their willingness to buy something, salespeople won’t want to stop them.

Langholz believes sticking to question-based selling makes you prone to lose out on a bigger opportunity. You may have closed the transaction, but you might have had a chance to close an enterprise transaction if you listened to the customer more and exercised more patience.

How to Elevate the Buyer Conversation

There’s also the challenge of elevating the buyer conversation and getting to the heart of the issue. To overcome this, Langholz reinforced the importance of knowing your buyer.

It’s tough to elevate the conversation if you don’t know enough about your buyer. The first thing you need to do before meeting with them is to prepare.

Langholz admitted that it’s hard to gain sales insight. You have to know what your buyer’s business is all about and what their challenges are.

That’s where the magic comes from, which a lot of people are still trying to get.

Langholz stressed that you also have to be well-versed with what’s going on in the world. You need to be able to connect the macro trends to what your buyer is potentially facing.

These macro trends can be things like digital transformation, cybersecurity threats, or global economic issues.

You need to be aware and be willing to commit to learning those significant issues, as well as your buyer’s business. It’s not the easy way for sure, but it’s way more effective.

RELATED: Sales Effectiveness Metrics For Evaluating Your Team [INFOGRAPHIC]

What You Need to Do to Ensure You Know Your Buyers

The reality is, there’s no magic bullet when it comes to learning more about your buyers. You need to figure out what works for you.

Know yourself and how you consume information, then build a process that works for you to get the information you need about your buyers.

Langholz shared that some of their sales reps in BDO do the research and put together a dossier of information.

Buyers are smart, but two can play that game. You can also search online to get pertinent buyer information.

All you need is the discipline to properly prepare for a buyer meeting. As Langholz said, “what’s common sense is not always common practice.”

Salespeople know that they need to come prepared, but they still go to sales calls unprepared. There are a lot of excuses not to get this done, but discipline is key.

Tips for Assembling Your Client-Facing Team

When it comes to assembling the client-facing team, Langholz shared that BDO believes in having pursuit teams. One of their golden rules is “never go alone.”

That’s why she recommends building a team of industry and subject matter experts, covering areas that interest the buyer.

Building a well-rounded team is important, and it starts with understanding what’s important to your buyer. Then, make sure your salespeople are meeting the buyer’s needs.

Salespeople need to come prepared to share their insights on what they know is important to their buyer. This is why BDO believes in teams “pursuing work.”

Why It’s Important to Always Come Prepared

The client-facing team should always go into a buyer meeting as a cohesive group. Again, preparation is key because it can become messy if the team isn’t prepared well in advance.

The best practice is to have prep meetings where you go over what your team will do during the presentation, such as:

• Who’s doing what
• Who’s going to say what
• What the rules are

Also, anticipate the questions your buyer might ask. Everyone has a part to play, and they should know what kind of message they need to deliver.

You won’t want to have a team member who ends up not saying or doing anything throughout the entire meeting. The team’s preparation and practice are the keys to making everything effective.

If you’ve got the right people in the room, you can make a big difference.

Moving away from the long-standing practice of question-based selling may come as a challenge, but insight selling can bring more opportunities for your sales team to provide excellent service to your buyers and clients.

Rolling with the changes isn’t always easy, but it’s definitely as rewarding as it is challenging.

What selling method are you using for your business? Let us know how it benefits you in the comments section below.

UP NEXT:

• Product Selling vs Solution Selling w/Scott Crosley
• The Selling Formula w/Brian Robinson
• How To Connect And Engage With C-Level Executives

Nobody likes change, but it’s something sales teams have to deal with every day. Sharlene Dozois of Cision talks about employee engagement ideas that help everyone navigate change.

RELATED: 4 Strategies For Training Employees On Salesforce & Other SaaS Products

In this article:

1. Why Employee Engagement Matters in Times of Change
2. Over-Communication Is the Key
3. The Over-Investing Paradox
4. Employee Engagement Ideas to Retain Key Players
5. Boosting Your Employee Retention Program
6. Why Regular Feedback Matters

Employee Engagement Ideas | How to Engage Your Employees in Times of Change

Sharlene Dozois is the Senior Vice President of Sales and Client Experience at Cision. Cision is a Montreal-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company focusing on the communications field.

She has held sales and marketing leadership positions in various companies for the past 15 years. Outside of work, she’s a Marvel franchise aficionado.

Why Employee Engagement Matters in Times of Change

A lot of company growth doesn’t happen by developing products. A lot of times, this growth also happens through mergers and acquisitions.

What is a Merger? A merger happens when two or more business entities join to form a new entity with a different name. All parties during a merger each have a share in control, ownership, and profits.

What is an Acquisition? An acquisition occurs when one company purchases at least 50% of another company’s assets.

Mergers and acquisitions create a lot of change. This, in turn, creates a lot of insecurity within the low and mid-level staff, as oftentimes, they’re not sure where they fit in the company’s goals.

It also creates uncertainty in the product marketing strategy.

Over-Communication Is the Key

When these types of changes happen, there’s no such thing as communicating enough. First things first, you need to have a clear-cut vision of what you want to achieve through this merger or acquisition.

A lot of times, companies jump right into cutting employees without having a clear idea of how it helps the big picture. Being able to communicate that vision is one of the challenging things that helps to stabilize employees.

How frequent this communication also matters. Sometimes, you can’t share all the finer details (due to timing, competitive advantage, etc.), and that’s fine. What’s more important is that all employees need to have a good idea of the direction the company is going and how this impacts day-to-day operations.

If you keep things at too much of a high level, people lose where they fit in the picture. They’ll always ask: What does all this mean to me and my job?

The Over-Investing Paradox

People always talk about cost in times of change, and especially in the context of laying off or keeping employees. Whether it’s a merger, acquisition, or even just launching new products, there’s always an economy of scale.

What is an Economy of Scale? These are cost advantages a company gains from efficiencies in the production line.

One of the things we all know as sales leaders is it’s difficult to hire.

You have to go through the onboarding process and train your new employees first. It takes time to get them up to speed so they’re performing at the level you want them to be.

Sometimes, companies immediately try to cut costs without getting a full picture of its implications.

The key to managing change is to over-invest in certain areas. It’s not just from doing less, but it’s actually from doing things more efficiently.

Think of it this way: would it make sense to lay off employees only to re-hire replacements nine or so months later? In the end, you lose the sense of how much it costs to bring new people on.

It’s so costly to lose good employees, and leaders need to know that.

Sometimes, there are situations where you know it’s definitely out of your control. However, showing the metrics of how much revenue a person can generate over the course of a year can be enough to shift the conversation.

Employee Engagement Ideas to Retain Key Players

When big changes like these happen, you’d want to keep your good employees.

When a change happens, a domino effect starts, and you’ll have more disengaged employees. Some of those people you wanted to stay end up going.

Here are some employee engagement ideas you can use to retain your key people:

• Identify the employees you want to keep and let them know they’re a key player.
• Let them know you appreciate them. Management tends to forget to provide feedback and appreciation.
• Make them feel that you’re going to navigate the change together. Don’t leave them in the dark.

People join companies and leave managers. Do your part in being one for the team and make sure you walk the talk.

RELATED: How To Maximize Employee Commitment To Accelerate Sales Growth

Boosting Your Employee Retention Program

You’d need to have a solid employee engagement program even for your best employees. Here are some aspects you can improve on to improve employee engagement and morale:

• Compensation is always a big factor, and there’s no going around it. Make sure the compensation structure aligns with what the company is trying to achieve.
• Invest in training and development. All employees look for opportunities to develop and learn.
• Set regular periods for recognizing employees and getting feedback from them.

When it comes to engaging employees through training, make sure there’s a practical component that employees can apply in their work.

In Cision’s case, they combined online training with a hands-on component conducted by actual users of a particular technology. The employees can then show other people how they applied those concepts.

Why Regular Feedback Matters

Communicate clear objectives right down to the frontline employee. Make sure they understand their role and what you want them to achieve in a particular quarter or year.

Set a regular schedule (usually through your 1-on-1s) and treat that as sacred whenever you can.

In times of big changes, it’s easier said than done, but these feedback periods are so critical in times of change. Your team needs that feedback, and they want to sit with you to discuss it.

These are some employee engagement ideas you can put in place to retain key employees in times of change. With the right management and communication strategies, you can ride the waves and survive.

You can connect with Sharlene Dozois over at LinkedIn if you want to keep in touch with her or to continue the conversation. Refer that you’ve connected through Sales Secrets, and she’d be happy to chat with you.

What employee engagement ideas have you done to retain your best performers? What challenges did you encounter along the way? Share your experiences in the comments section below.

UP NEXT:

• Training, Teaching, And Education: Bringing New Employees Up To Speed
• Gamifying Your Workforce: How To Make Engagement Fun
• How To Become An Agile Inside Sales Rep

Learn the trends in account management and find out the secrets on how you can win in this important sales function in this Sales Secrets episode.

RELATED: 7 Best Effective Account Management Strategies

In this article:

1. Why Account Management Is Important
2. How to Optimize Your Account Management
3. The Trend on Subscription-Type Models
4. Growth Opportunity in the Subscription Economy
5. How to Stay on Top of the Trend with Your Account Management Team
6. Prioritization Is Key in Account Management Strategy
7. The Tactical and Strategic Elements of Prioritization
8. Key Account Management Roles
9. Tracking Account Activity
10. Proactive Account Management Planning
11. Key Takeaways

How to Approach Account Management

Suneal Rao is InsideSales.com’s Director of Market Strategy. His role focuses on how to grow revenue by considering different markets, product capabilities, and market segments.

Account management is part of Rao’s work, and one of their goals is to innovate the process so they can cater to industry trends.

Why Is Account Management Important?

Sales companies always work towards ensuring they’re making the most revenue possible. Now, with the increase of subscription-type models both in SaaS and the physical world, focus on account management is going to be one of the companies’ top-line goals.

It’s for this reason why this sales function is important. Unfortunately, from a tools and technology standpoint, there hasn’t been much focus on account management.

Often, it’s up to the engaged and motivated account manager to figure out the best method and find ways to stay on top of all their accounts. The good news is, these shortcomings also present opportunities for optimization.

How to Optimize Your Account Management

A Gartner study revealed that 80% of a company’s revenue comes from 20% of their customers. Revenue is highly leveraged on the existing top customers.

That’s why optimizing account management means you’re getting the most long-term value out of your top 20% customers. This also means you need to have a strong account management function.

Rao also cited a similar study from the Gartner group, where they found out that only around 30% of Account Managers hit their goals. Clearly, there’s a challenge for those who manage accounts to find ways to get the most out of the accounts they’re responsible for.

The Trend on Subscription-Type Models

In the industry as a whole, there’s a broader trend around subscription-type models. A McKinsey study says that the subscription model doubled between 2011 and 2016 and that growth continues.

Rao gave an example of an existing trend where managing existing accounts and customers using a structured approach is critical:

Many believe that the future of transportation isn’t going to be individual car ownership but rather, subscriptions. Instead of buying their own cars, individuals and businesses pay for transport service subscriptions.

For instance, an employee of InsideSales.com can rent X amount of car or bus rides per month. This can also work with other means of transportation, such as the bicycle, scooter, or moped.

As Rao said, this level of subscription-based economy is going to proliferate throughout our entire lives in many different ways. Anyone can take advantage of extra capacity at any time, or they can get what they need at any given time.

This is the overarching scheme in the industry. For this reason, managing accounts can become critically important as opportunities come to light in this economy.

Growth Opportunity in the Subscription Economy

Rao confirmed that he sees big growth as people move into the subscription economy more and more. This is because the phenomenon is already happening both in the physical and digital worlds.

Soon, the competition won’t be about who’s sold the most number of goods, but rather, the number of subscriptions you get.

Subscription companies have to compel customers to subscribe on a monthly or annual basis to get a certain amount of usage. This is where the competition lies with other subscription companies.

How to Stay on Top of the Trend with Your Account Management Team

The move towards a subscription economy is certainly a challenge. As Rao said, the first part of dealing with any challenge is to recognize it and try to get ahead of it.

It’s essential to understand the importance of having the right people, process, and technology. Account management is people-centric, which is the most critical part of the equation.

Though, as Rao pointed out, we need to find ways where the process can raise the bar of what Account Managers can achieve. It’s not enough to have your best Account Managers understand all the best practices and hope that disseminates across the organization.

Keep in mind that account management has already evolved from merely providing support to providing strategic guidance. It’s also people and relationship-driven.

RELATED: Account Management: The Next Business Growth Frontier

Prioritization Is Key in Account Management Strategy

As the Gartner study revealed, 80% of a company’s revenue comes from 20% of their customers. This means it’s important for companies to focus their resources on those who matter to their business.

Prioritization is key. When it comes to account management strategy, you have to figure out:

• Who to go after
• Where you spend your time
• The balance of sales reps to accounts

As Rao said, you have to prioritize not just by who you have the best relationship with but also by other tools and measures.

How can you measure the potential growth of an account? They may not be on your top 20% right now, but they have white space opportunities.

Then, figure out how you can build the account’s muscle. This illustrates the need to go beyond individual capabilities.

Companies need to help augment those capabilities, steer conversations, and guide strategies.

The Tactical and Strategic Elements of Prioritization

Prioritization has two elements to it, Rao explained. On the tactical side, it’s figuring out where you spent your time.

This also means determining what you did last week versus what you’re doing this week. Rao said that many sales reps over-report how much they do.

They don’t do this maliciously, he clarified. It’s just that when the reps are so involved in activities, it’s hard for them to quantify these in retrospect.

From a strategic perspective, Rao observed that account management teams haven’t properly aligned which industries, verticals, or accounts they should prioritize. They should base their prioritization on the most important factors to them.

Rao shared these guide questions so that account management teams can determine what they need to spend more time on:

• Within your organization, are there certain reference accounts you’re trying to build?
• Are there certain industries and verticals you want to expand?

Account management teams can properly prioritize by doing the following:

• Increase the touches on top accounts, industries, or verticals
• Provide the right sales and marketing collateral
• Strategically plan to drive their goal to completion

Key Account Management Roles

Prioritization is a key account management strategy, yet there are still other things account managers need to fulfill to succeed in their role.

First, they need to become a more strategic function. This means transitioning from a customer support role to a revenue-generating function.

Prioritization is always going to be a key practice to achieve this.

It’s also important to align marketing and sales collateral. This means ensuring that any marketing effort is driven through and leveraged in that one-to-one relationship between account management and their accounts.

Other key account management roles include tracking account activity and understanding customer territory penetration.

Ultimately, the goal of account managers is to drive the following:

• Proactive renewal conversations
• Proactive upsell conversations that leverage the whole storyline of the organization, from Marketing to Sales

Tracking Account Activity

Let’s dive deeper into one of the account management roles: tracking account activity. Rao gave the transition period as an example where you can see this role in action.

When an account manager gets promoted or they find a new opportunity, they hand off their accounts to the person replacing them. When this happens, account management teams should be able to keep track of their strategy and where they are in that strategy.

Keeping track of account activity allows them to engage the account over time. Documenting the progress within the strategy is also important in cases of hand-offs.

The account management structure should up the level of Account Managers’ performance by providing structure and visibility. It should also enable performers to increase what they’re able to achieve.

Proactive Account Management Planning

How can you have a proactive account management team? Rao shared one of their practices where they use the renewal date as a trigger event.

His team kicks off proactive engagement with stakeholders months before the set renewal date.

You can follow this example by picking key stakeholders, and then set a timeline for proactive engagement (say, six months before the renewal date). You can align your engagement content either with marketing or account management content.,

Then set up a cadence that says, “We’re X months from renewal. I want to set up a business review to outline the value that we’ve had over the last six months or the last year.”

Then, leverage that cadence to set the meeting, meet with the right stakeholders, and kick off your renewal strategy.

Key Takeaways

It’s high time to step up your account management game. You need to arm your people with the right tools and get the process right, so your account management team can function as a revenue machine.

As Rao said, account management is quickly becoming a strategic revenue drive for the organization. It’s going to be critical to revenue growth.

The industry continues to transition and evolve. How can you structure, standardize, and prioritize key account management roles so more account managers can hit their goals?

The first step is to have the right people on your team, Rao said. Then, figure out how you can standardize the process using available technology today so that you can have a well-functioning organization.

In turn, you can hit your account management renewal and upsell goals.

Understanding the value and trends in account management allows you to maximize this sales function. From its role in customer support, this function has now evolved into becoming a real revenue machine.

Applying account management best practices like prioritization lets you harness its potential as a strategic revenue drive for your organization.

What potentials and challenges are your account management team facing today? We’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.

Up Next: 

• Secrets Of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Tactics w/Shari Johnston @Winning By Design
• Three Steps To Successful Account-Based Marketing
• Cold Calling Secrets: How To Eliminate Fear, Failure, And Rejection

In this article:

1. About My Guest — Blake Johnston, CEO of The Outbound View
2. What Is Inside Sales?
3. What Are Agile Inside Sales Professionals?
4. The Importance of Having Agile Inside Sales Reps
5. How to Become Successful Agile Inside Sales Reps
6. Qualities of an Agile Salesperson
7. The Defining Trait of an Agile Inside Sales Representative 
8. Developing These Traits and Behaviors
9. Incorporating It into the Hiring Process
10. Failure in Developing Agile Traits
11. 3 Habits That Can Help Inside Sales Representatives Develop These Skills and Behaviors
12. Performance Indicators to Test Agility in Sales Reps

Success in Sales | Becoming an Agile Inside Sales Representative

Inside Sales Representative Definition: Salespeople who represent their company by selling goods to businesses and individuals remotely, either via phone or online. They don’t meet customers/clients in person and rely only on technology to reach out to prospects.

About My Guest—Blake Johnston, CEO of The Outbound View

Today, we’ll talk about what it means to be an agile inside sales representative and how to be one. This episode contains plenty of vital information sales managers can apply to help their team experiment and explore for growth.

To shed some light on the topic, we have Blake Johnston, CEO of Outbound View, with us. He shares his experiences with us as well as some teachings he has acquired over his years in business.

Outbound View is a sales and marketing consultancy firm that primarily focuses on outbound marketing strategies, appointment setting, inbound marketing strategies, and demand generation.

One example of how Outbound View showed qualities of being agile is when they decided to set appointments for their clients. Initially, they only wanted to help companies learn how to increase the demand for their goods and services.

Seeing as many clients were looking for this service, Blake Johnston and the company decided to offer it as well. Today, the firm helps companies in both setting appointments and increasing product demand.

What Is Inside Sales? 

First of all, let’s do a brief introduction of what inside sales is.

Inside sales is the process of selling products and services through a remote location. This is unlike the traditional door-to-door salesman because the selling is done through other means.

Given the fact that inside sales adds a different aspect to salesmanship altogether, how does one define an agile inside sales professional?

What Are Agile Inside Sales Professionals?

Agile inside sales representatives are professionals who display distinct qualities that help them overcome certain challenges. Johnston has worked with hundreds of salespeople and knows sales managers are always looking for agile agents.

However, a lot of sales managers don’t really understand what it means to be agile or what qualities to look for. Once the agent does something to impress them, they usually believe these are agile individuals who can help them grow.

Sales managers should understand what it means for sales reps and teams to be truly agile.

For example, apart from good communication skills, try to gauge how well they can deliver customer service and maintain good client relationships.

Just because they can present themselves well doesn’t mean they have a knack for spotting opportunities and providing solutions.

Overall, look for signs of these qualities:

• Show a desire to learn
• Urge to take action
• An insatiable curiosity for things

People who display these qualities often have a growth mindset that can be very beneficial for the development of both the agent and the institution they work for.

The Importance of Having Agile Inside Sales Reps

Johnston describes inside sales reps as chief experimenters. Companies often assign them to run and test new campaigns.

It’s also quite rare and impractical for companies to run a marketing campaign without actually testing it first. There’s always room for improvement in the persona the team adopts, emails they send, and rates they offer, among others.

If the inside sales reps aren’t agile enough, the company will end up using the same ineffective campaign for multiple weeks.

This kind of inefficiency drains the company of its finances and energy resources. To progress, inside sales teams need to determine which ideas to kill and which ones to scale moving forward.

How to Become Successful Agile Inside Sales Reps

Inside sales teams should also think like marketers. This department comes up with a full campaign and action plan to reinforce the results.

Inside sales teams make hundreds of small decisions on a daily basis, so it is very beneficial for them to examine the results of whatever decisions they made.

Some questions you’d want to ask your inside sales reps include:

• Is your persona a good one to use?
• What message are you trying to send to the customers?
• Is your offer a mutually beneficial one all parties involved can be happy with?

Sales managers and veteran sales reps might not know the gravity of their decision since they’ve been making them for so long now. For new hires, a small mistake with one of these decisions can cost them their careers.

If you want your inside sales team to be more agile, incorporate these questions into their routine. Get them to make a habit of going through these before making decisions.

Qualities of an Agile Salesperson

Agility in sales often shows through specific qualities. As a sales manager, you should know how to scout for effective agile agents and mold them to bring out their true potential.

These are some qualities of an agile inside salesperson:

1. Has an Insatiable Curiosity

It’s often easy for sales managers to determine if an inside sales representative has a focus on learning and iterating. These people constantly:

• Make adjustments
• Ask questions
• Strive to gather as much information both within and outside their niche

Agile sales reps who have these qualities are often great at conversations. Rather than bombarding clients with useless information, they have a genuine desire to understand the other party’s situation, which helps break down the buying process.

2. Bites Toward Action

Inside salespeople need to know how to act on their own. Knowing when to take action is also a quality needed to be an agile inside sales rep.

For example, some sales reps wait half a day just for their manager to give the go signal on a decision. Instead of waiting for the signal, sales reps need to know when it’s better to use their best judgment.

As a manager, you should instruct your sales team to differentiate between situations that need confirmation and those that don’t. Otherwise, it could lead to wasted hours that could’ve been spent prospecting clients or even closing deals.

3. Recognizes Assumptions

Inside salespeople can have a lot of assumptions and superstitious beliefs. They may seem harmless, but over time, these assumptions can negatively affect a person’s career.

Agile inside salespeople recognize and acknowledge when they make wild, non-factual assumptions.

Afterward, they experiment on these assumptions to understand what works and what doesn’t.

For example, let’s say an inside sales representative doesn’t do calls on Monday. They don’t do it for any specific reason.

All they know is they’ve been avoiding Monday sales calls ever since they started being an inside sales rep.

If they’re meeting the quota, then their manager probably wouldn’t mind that, but what if they were to conduct a fact-based experiment on that assumption?

Not only could they exceed their quota, but they can also start doing more productive activities that actually lead to results.

RELATED:  Why You Need Data Driven Hiring…NOW!

The Defining Trait of an Agile Inside Sales Representative 

Out of the three qualities we mentioned, which one is the most important according to Johnston?

The answer: curiosity.

Johnston firmly believes that curious sales reps are naturally better at conversations. Their inborn knack for asking questions allows them to gather the information they need about their clients.

Plus, Johnston states that there are a lot of toxic salespeople who are too set in their ways. Instead of being stubborn about what they know, these sales reps should develop the habit of asking the right probing questions.

Developing These Traits and Behaviors

These skills are not something people are either born with or without. With the right guidance, your team can develop the traits they need to become agile inside sales reps.

What’s important is to follow the right processes that lead to development. For example, everybody talks about A/B testing, but very few actually push through with it.

A/B Testing Definition: It’s a two-sample hypothesis-testing method that compares the results of two different variants.

To create an agile inside sales team, you need to incorporate A/B Testing into your workflow. Rather than it being a seasonal occasion, make it a weekly habit to experiment on different strategies with your team.

For example, what Johnston does is he conducts a weekly client meeting that revolves purely around experiments. Afterward, they track the results of their experiments and log them in an excel sheet for future reference.

Remember that conducting experiments without properly analyzing the results afterward is useless. Experimenting is important, but meetings devoted to analyzing results are equally vital.

Tip: You can track your team’s progress in developing agile skills with the help of project tools. You can type in ‘experiment board’ on Google and it’ll show you a variety of possible apps you can use.

Johnston personally recommends using Excel. It’s simple, efficient, and a lot of salespeople are adept at using it.

Incorporating It into the Hiring Process

Johnston suggests that it’s vital for managers to look for agile inside salespeople during the interview process. As we discussed earlier, a lot of people already know that they want to get agile sales reps, but not many know how.

The key here is to ask the right questions as well. Just as sales reps need to probe clients, managers should probe candidates as well.

Some questions managers should try out include:

• What’s an example of a scenario where you didn’t have much information on a specific subject you need to tackle?
• How would you have solved a problem where you lacked data and information?

Then, you can limit the time they have to work on it. Let’s face it, agile inside sales reps don’t have all day to solve a problem, right?

Failure in Developing Agile Traits

Johnston says that a lot of times, the reps aren’t at fault. In fact, he blames leaders for the lack of agile inside salespeople in the industry.

Sales leaders often claim they want their inside sales reps to learn and grow through experiments, but do nothing to reinforce them. Managers and leaders should hold themselves accountable for the things they want their team to achieve.

This goes for advancements and updates, as well. Make sure to relay any new inside sales techniques your team needs to apply.

Otherwise, your inside sales reps could waste their time using ineffective and outdated methods that you taught them in the past.

3 Habits That Can Help Inside Sales Representatives Develop These Skills and Behaviors 

1. Conduct Frequent Follow-Ups with Outbound and Inbound Leads

This particular habit is something that can help a sales rep develop their sense of action-taking.

Instead of waiting for your leads to reach out, a rep can develop agility by reaching out to them first. Follow-ups may not guarantee a sale, but at the very least, it lets you know how you stand with the customer.

2. Get to Know Your CRM

All internal and external sales professionals should try and get to know the Customer Relationship Management software or CRM they’re using.

Those who don’t use their CRM to the fullest might miss out on critical features that could significantly improve and optimize their sales process.

This is the reason why curiosity is an integral part of becoming an agile inside sales rep. By getting to know more of the CRM, a rep is giving themselves the chance to be curious and gain benefits from it.

3. Continue Working on Possible Customer Inquiries and Objections

Staying on top of possible questions or objections from prospects will help them get further in the sales cycle. Aside from that, it’s a way to be objective about one’s assumptions of their prospect’s responses.

By preparing for these objections beforehand, a prospect will be more reassured that a rep is capable. This will give them the impression that the rep knows what they’re talking about.

This can also help reps keep calm and composed since objections won’t catch them off-guard.

Performance Indicators to Test Agility in Sales Reps 

1. Lead Response Rate

Agile inside sales reps are proactive. Thus, one performance indicator that leaders can use to check this is the lead response rate of their reps.

If an inside sales rep has become quicker in responding to leads, then it’s a sign of improvement in terms of proactiveness. An improvement in this area can help them have better conversations with prospects.

2. Call Duration

Measuring the average call duration of your inside sales team will help you determine which sales reps are taking too long or those on the other end of the spectrum and finish calls quickly. Then, find a link between their call duration and how it translates to their numbers.

If it’s too short, then reps might not be building rapport with the prospects, which might not encourage them to do business with you. However, if it’s too long and doesn’t lead anywhere, a rep might just be wasting their time and that of their prospect.

Overall, one common reason leaders are behind in hiring and developing agile inside sales reps is their lack of knowledge. Despite not experiencing them in the past, leaders should now use the technological advancements that provide data to their advantage.

Awareness that these models exist is not enough. You and your team need to experience and experiment with these first hand to determine which ones work and which ones don’t.

Did this episode help you understand what it means to be an agile inside sales representative? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!

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• 5 Best Practices To Deal With Phone Anxiety As A Sales Rep
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Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in February 2019, and has been updated for quality and relevancy.

In this Sales Secrets episode, you’ll learn how the right sales development program can produce the three skills a sales development representative must possess to succeed.

RELATED: Sales Development Action Plan For 2019

In this article:

1. Sales Development Rep Skill #1: Conversation Starter
   1. Sales Development Program: How to Start a Conversation
   2. Respect Your Prospect’s Time
2. Sales Development Rep Skill #2: Lead Management
   1. Sales Development Program: Ways How to Exhaust Your Leads
3. Sales Development Rep Skill #3: Warm Transfer
   1. Sales Development Program: How to Execute a Warm Transfer
4. Final Advice

The Sales Development Program for Successful SDRs

Tyler Wicks is the North American Sales Enablement Instructor of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). He’s been a part of the organization for three years. He started out as an inside sales representative for new business before moving into sales management.

Realizing he wanted to make a larger impact on the culture and the people within his organization, he assumed the role of Sales Enablement Instructor.

Now, Wicks instructs HPE’s inside sellers and onboards their field sales teams and solutions architects. HPE believes SDRs have an important role to play, so they’ve been building up their numbers.

Currently, they have around 60 SDRs, and their end goal is to increase their number to between 80 and 100.

Sales Development Rep Skill #1: Conversation Starter

Sales Development Representatives need to find the right conversation starter to engage prospects successfully.

The first skill a sales development representative has to have to win is the ability to start conversations.

Wicks shared that many of their SDRs are in the early stage of their careers. They either had one job prior, or their first job is being an SDR for Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Being new to the industry, they’re prone to become overwhelmed with the available technology. They find themselves asking, “How can I have a good conversation if I don’t know all about this technology?”

That’s why Wicks often reminds them that the first thing they need to do is to pick up the phone and just jump right into it.

As an SDR, you need to start somewhere. Moreover, selling is about relationships.

You need to catch your prospect’s attention early on in the conversation. You also need to quickly find a common denominator with the person you’re speaking to.

A common denominator is a very relevant topic you and your prospect can both relate to. It may have nothing to do with your business, but it can help you establish a relationship with someone new.

Sales Development Program: How to Start a Conversation

When it comes to starting conversations, Wicks shared with us the acronym he uses — A.C.T. This stands for authenticity, connection, and topic, which he teaches his sales development program trainees to apply.

SDRs should genuinely want to find mutual ground with their prospects. They have to understand the people they’re talking to, so they can figure out how they fit within their organization.

That genuine rapport-building eventually leads to something more meaningful, no matter how long it takes.

To get to know prospects better, SDRs should be willing to lend a listening ear. One conversation starter that Wicks shared was:

“I’ve got a basic understanding of your organization, but I’d love to hear it from your perspective.

I also have a fair idea of what you do as a [prospect’s position]. Would you please help me understand what your role means to you and how you influence your organization?”

When you start your conversation with these types of questions, you’ll get your prospect talking about themselves. They’ll also share with you what kind of involvement they have in their organization.

Through that, you can begin developing common ground with them.

Respect Your Prospect’s Time

Wicks is a big believer in asking a prospect first if you caught them at a good time. Yet, here’s what we know to be true: it’s never a good time.

Sometimes, people immediately agree to talk to you. Other times, they reluctantly agree.

Some people find excuses to not talk to you, or even outright say, “Now is not a good time.”

As an SDR, you’d want to set the tone upfront that you respect your prospect’s time. If you didn’t catch them at a good time, don’t force it.

Yet there’s a flip side to that, Wicks said. You also have to be aggressive.

Those who undergo training in his sales development program know that getting rejected is their first opportunity to set an appointment.

Wicks shared this response you can use: “I totally understand. When would be the next best time for me to get in touch with you?”

Then you can guide them to that next best time. Follow up your response with, “I’ve got an opening tomorrow. Would tomorrow work for you? Maybe I can catch you early in the morning or in the afternoon?”

Wicks advised not to leave the appointment setting up to your prospect. If you do, it may take you a long time to get ahold of them, or you may never even have the chance.

RELATED: The Five Sales Development Plays To Nail In 2019 w/Dan Gottlieb @TOPO

Sales Development Rep Skill #2: Lead Management

SDRs should make it a point to reach out to all qualified leads.

The second skill that successful SDRs have is the ability to manage leads well.

One of the pain points of SDRs is the quality of leads they receive. Sometimes, they feel like the leads are junk, and they don’t have the right contacts.

There are different tools available for you to get the right contacts. You could be using helpful tools like DiscoverOrg, Zoom Info, and Hoovers in your business.

As Wicks said, if you know your sales organization is paying good money for these tools, quit griping about bad-quality leads.

Even if not all the information is accurate, you’re still getting qualified leads. That’s why Wicks advises SDRs to take the initiative to find the right contact within the account.

Leverage one of your tools and exhaust the lead.

As a sales leader, Wicks shared that closed out leads due to bad contact information bother him. What’s more, the SDR touched the lead only once and didn’t make an effort to exhaust it.

He encourages SDRs to dig deeper into the leads to find the right information and exhaust them. This typically means making eight to eleven touches on a single lead.

Sales Development Program: Ways How to Exhaust Your Leads

As Wicks shared with us, they found that eight to eleven touches are their optimal numbers when it comes to exhausting leads. After that, they believe it’s time to close out the lead and tell Marketing that they’ve already tried all options but didn’t get any traction.

Wicks admitted he hadn’t decided yet on the optimal order of communication. He tells his reps to switch it up between phone calls and emails but to always indicate their next step.

For instance, the SDR calls someone first. In the voicemail they leave, they tell the prospect they’ll follow up with an email.

If they email someone first, they’ll mention within the email that they’ll follow up with a phone call.

Wicks shared that they manage a large portion of their enterprise large accounts via email, but he’ll still instruct their enterprise reps to utilize phone calls.

As he said, they can’t just be “transactional and reactive” to the business. They need to get in touch with the people they’re dealing with as it creates a more personal touch.

Another tip that Wicks shared is to ask the prospect what their preferred method of communication is. It’s a big deal when you get someone to agree to text, call, or email you.

Sales Development Rep Skill #3: Warm Transfer

The warm transfer or introduction is crucial in keeping a prospect interested.

The third skill is being able to execute a warm transfer. Wicks believes that the disconnection happens when it’s time for the SDR to pass the lead along to the Account Manager.

SDRs need to create an appropriate talk track instead of dryly passing the lead to the next person in the sales process.

There has to be a warm introduction. The SDR should set the tone, and the second call should not be a complete rehash of what happened during the first call.

Sales Development Program: How to Execute a Warm Transfer

Wicks said the key is to have the SDR get on the line to make warm introductions. This eliminates a lot of confusion for the customer.

SDRs are the front-liners who initially engage with the customer. If they fail to mention they’re going to introduce the customer to an Account Representative, odds are, the customer forgets the name and gets confused.

The handoff will be way more effective if the SDR makes the warm introductions. They shouldn’t expect the next person in the process to establish a connection with the customer immediately.

If there’s a common ground between everyone, utilize that. You can start the warm introduction with something personalized:

“[Account Manager’s name] and I were on the phone the other day. Would you believe he’s also a die-hard Yankees fan like you and me?”

That kind of introduction gives you an opening to connect and involve the next person in the sales process.

Final Advice

Wicks firmly believes that everything starts with initiating a conversation. It’s awkward, and you get anxious, but you need to start building your confidence somewhere.

Failing at the beginning is normal, and if you do, make sure to fail forward.

Wicks advised to document and listen to your phone calls as well as your peers’. Then, figure out how you can better streamline and articulate your message because you only have a short window to do it.

Like other industries, sales development continuously changes to meet different needs. If you want to become an SDR who is able to roll with the punches, learn from the sales development program, Tyler Wicks shared.

Acquire the top three skills that successful sales reps possess. Make sure to practice them with every chance you get, so you can become an expert.

Which of the three skills are you good at, and which do you need to improve on? Share them with us in the comments section below.

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