RELATED: Best Products for Sales 2019

In this article:

1. amoCRM
2. Bitrix24
3. bpm’online CRM
4. Insightly CRM
5. Less Annoying CRM
6. Pipedrive
7. Salesforce CRM
8. Salesfusion
9. Zoho CRM

Lead Management Software | Benefits, Specs, and Customer Reviews

Lead Management Software Definition: This is a tool that helps optimize the process of acquiring and maintaining relationships with potential clients.

1. amoCRM

amoCRM prides itself for its 24/7 customer support. While a common complaint with this lead management software is that there’s a bit of a learning curve to be able to get the most out of its numerous features, customer support is available all day, every day, to address the concerns of users and guide them in using the product.

Benefits

• Optimizes the process of nurturing a lead for you
• Possesses custom web forms to help in generating leads
• Supports up to three languages, English included
• Has a reengagement process for clients who have completed a transaction with your business
• Synced mobile app available for immediate use

Specs

• 24/7 Customer Support available
• Free trial available
• Plans and Pricing: Base—$15 per user/month, Advanced—$25 per user/month, and Enterprise—$45 per user/month
• Useful for all business sizes
• Cloud and open API deployment available

Review

Check out this amoCRM review from Software Advice:

2. Bitrix24

Users of Bitrix24 are satisfied with the number of features and tools that this software has. However, they also note that this software doesn’t have as easy-to-understand of an interface compared to other tools.

Nonetheless, this software still has high functionality and is overall a solid lead management software for many users.

Benefits

• One of the few lead management software that has a website and landing page creator with free web hosting and unlimited bandwidth
• Able to make direct calls to a client straight from the software
• Easy integration of this CRM to your established website
• Has tools that help reengage with struggling employees
• 12 languages supported, including English

Specs

• No 24/7 support available. Although this is the case, they have an in-depth customer helpdesk section for customers’ reference.
• Free trial available. On that note, a free version of the software is available for the use of 12 users with up to 5 Gigabytes of data.
• Bitrix CRM+, Standard, Professional cloud pricing respectively: $69 for 6 users/month, $99 for 50 users/month, and $199 for unlimited users/month.
• Useful for all business sizes
• On-Site, Cloud, and open API deployment available

Review

Here’s a Bitrx24 customer review from Capterra:

3. bpm’online CRM

People who have used bpm’online CRM have mostly been giving it positive reviews. The main criticism of bpm’online as lead management software, however, is that it takes time to better customize the software to suit the business.

Benefits

• Aligns the marketing, sales, and customer service operations in one platform
• Easy-to-understand interface for beginners
• Provides real-time data on your clients and enables you to answer to their needs in real-time as well
• Great customizability which makes it easier for users to adopt the lead management software into their business
• Built-in tools and features that help optimize various CRM processes

Specs

• 24/7 Customer Support available
• Free trial available
• bpm’online CRM bundle price differs depending on various factors. Check out their CRM bundle calculator here.
• Medium to large business size customer types
• On-Site and Cloud deployment available

Review

Below is a review for bpm’online from Software Advice:

4. Insightly CRM

Insightly CRM software

Overall, reviews are satisfied with the services of Insightly CRM. However, users would prefer to have smoother processes for more long-term clients.

Benefits

• Links well to social media networks
• Provides you with micro and macro perspectives and reports on various business activities
• Mobile versions are available for easy portability
• Organizes contacts and leads into various categories for easy viewing
• Supports users at every touchpoint with their leads

Specs

• No 24/7 Customer Support available. However, they have a help desk for customers available.
• Free trial available
• Insightly CRM Plus, Professional, and Enterprise pricing respectively: $29 per user/month, $49 per user/month, and $99 per user/month
• Suitable for all business sizes, including freelancers
• Cloud deployment only

Review

Check out how one Insightly user rates this software in this review from Software Advice:

5. Less Annoying CRM

Due to the fact that Less Annoying CRM’s goal is to be straight to the point, it is not really as advanced in its features as its counterparts. However, if you are only a small business trying out lead management software for the first time, then this is a great option for you. It’s a no-frills tool that is ideal for beginners.

Benefits

• Constantly updated lead management software
• Has an interface that is straight to the point with no fuss
• Simple contact management tools available
• Contains every basic thing that you will need to drive a lead to be sales-ready

Specs

• No 24/7 Customer Support available. However, they do have help and training resources to guide you.
• Free trial available
• Unlimited contacts for only $10 a month
• Best for small to medium businesses, including freelancers
• Cloud and open API deployment available

Review

Below is a testimonial from Software Advice on the effectiveness of Less Annoying CRM from one of their users:

RELATED: Lead Response Infographic – How Many Touches to Make a Sale

6. Pipedrive

Pipedrive has a multitude of features that answer a lot of the needs of its users. However, one thing a couple of users have mentioned is the need for a better emailing system in the software.

Benefits

• Aids in sales management by highlighting the right deals to focus on
• Plenty of areas to customize to better fit your business operations
• Multi-currency payment scheme
• Collects crucial client information through various forms
• Up to 13 language capabilities, including English

Specs

• 24/7 Customer Support is unavailable. However, they do have a support center to help you.
• Free trial available
• Pipedrive Silver, Gold, and Platinum pricing for annual or monthly billing respectively: $12.50 or $15 per user/month, $24.20 or $29 per user/month, and $49.17 or $59 per user/month
• Best for small to medium business sizes, including freelancers
• Cloud deployment only

Review

Here’s a review from one of PipeDrive’s users from Software Advice:

7. Salesforce CRM

The majority of Salesforce CRM’s users see it as an excellent piece of software that helps optimize plenty of organizational processes for them. Some users, however, do mention that the software isn’t intuitive so it can be a bit difficult to use.

Benefits

• The system is portable through its mobile apps for Android and iOS
• Comprehensive reports and notes of activity history
• Supports up to seven languages, including English
• Keep customer information and track customer actions all in one place
• Automate task management of leads to certain users

Specs

• 24/7 Customer Support available
• Free trial available
• Salesforce has a comprehensive editions list overview. Thus, pricing will depend on your choice of product.
• Suitable for all business sizes, including freelancers
• Cloud and open API deployment available

Review

Check out what one user thinks of SalesForce CRM in this Software Advice review:

8. Salesfusion

Salesfusion CRM software

Overall, users have found Salesfusion to satisfy their business needs. Although, they would appreciate an easier interface for other areas of the software in the future.

Benefits

• Saves time by fully-integrating all sales processes into one interface
• Align sales and marketing efforts easily with this lead management software
• Assigns a value to each lead for your reference
• Designed for B2B companies
• Easily connects with other CRM platforms

Specs

• No 24/7 Customer Support Available. Additionally, no obvious helpdesk for customers as well.
• Free trial available
• Salesforce pricing depends on the number of contacts desired
• Suitable for small to medium-sized businesses mostly
• Open API deployment only

Review

Check out this Salesfusion review from Software Advice:

9. Zoho CRM

Due to the fact that Zoho is one of the top lead management software out there, few negatives can be said for this software. However, users do note that more deployment options and better help centers would be a great improvement to the software.

Benefits

• Real-time tracking of key performance indicators
• Integrates well with various social media platforms
• Has complementing Zoho apps for a seamless system
• Ability to import leads coming from all sources
• Has the ability to connect clients who are sales-ready to your choice of a salesperson

Specs

• 24/7 Customer Support available
• Free trial available
• Zoho CRM Standard, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate pricing respectively: $12 per user/month, $20 per user/month, $35 per user/month, and $100 per user/month
• Suitable for all business sizes, including freelancers.
• Cloud deployment only

Review

Here’s a ZohoCRM customer review from Software Advice:

Whether you are a startup or a conglomerate, there is a lead management software out there that’ll suit your organization. All you need to do is to figure out your needs and goals and find the software features that align with them. We hope these reviews of some of the top lead management software in the industry has helped you narrow down your choices.

Which one of these lead management software have you tried and how were they for you? Leave a comment below to let us know!

Up Next:

• Best Lead Generation Methods for Creating Pipeline
• Is CRM Dead? How Sales Reps Can Get the Most Out of CRM
• Must Have Sales Management Software

RELATED: The Inbound vs. Outbound Process For Lead Response — What You Need To Know

In this article:

1. An Introduction to Inbound Leads
   1. Respond to High Priority Inbound Leads in Under 5 Minutes
   2. Find the Balance Between Speed and Score
   3. Don’t Ever Reach out and Start a Conversation with This Line: “May I Help You”?
   4. People Who Download Your Content Will Most Likely Never Read It
   5. Prospects Rarely Want to Talk to a Salesperson
   6. Prospects Are Impressed with Hustle
   7. If You’re Going to Reach Out, Do It Immediately and Don’t Wait for a Couple of Days
   8. Account-Based Sales Don’t Have to Equal a Slow Response

Sales Lead Management | Tips to Get Your Prospects

Sales Lead Management Definition: Sales lead management is a set of practices, systems, and methodologies that help generate prospective customers in businesses. This practice, system, or methodology operates through different types of sales programs and campaigns.

An Introduction to Inbound Leads

Discussing inbound leads with coworkers

Responding to inbound leads shouldn’t be rocket science; however, in some cases, the sales lead management process is difficult to implement. I was mind-blown a few months ago when I saw there was actually a debate online on whether you should respond to inbound leads immediately or give them a few days.

Now, I know that a prospect needs time to get familiar with your company and your content before jumping into a sales conversation. However, all the data we have gathered from analyzing lead responses from over 4,000 companies prove otherwise.

You can download the “Response Audit” study if you don’t believe me – or check out this bite-sized infographic to summarize lead response management practices – and how companies are performing today.

I’ll give you a hint – it’s not pretty.

1. Respond to High Priority Inbound Leads in Under 5 Minutes

If someone comes to your website and fills out a form or asks for a demo, you need to answer them immediately. There is good data to back up this information: if you respond in under 5 minutes to your sales lead, you’re 100 times more likely to contact them and 21 times more likely to get them into your pipeline.

2. Find the Balance Between Speed and Score

I was consulting with a company in New York at one point. They received about 10 leads per person per month, and they were struggling for a pipeline.

They took every lead seriously by responding quickly to them. When it comes to another company in Los Angeles, they had 35,000 inbound free trials a month.

They could not possibly respond to all of them, so they only responded to leads with a predictive score of A or B. The big question is – what does your data say?

3. Don’t Ever Reach out and Start a Conversation with This Line: “May I Help You”?

Responding to leads creatively

You need to be different than anyone else in getting your sales leads. Go to a challenging model of teaching, tailor, and take control.

The reason I personally download online content is that I have a problem. If you’re an expert, solving the problem with that content, I want you to tell me what I’m supposed to do.

I love the consultative approach to selling because it shows you care about your prospect and solve their problems – not just talk about your product.

4. People Who Download Your Content Will Most Likely Never Read It

People sometimes act like it’s a big deal if you contact them and they didn’t have the chance to read your content yet. News flash: people don’t read your content anyway.

Even if you give them a couple of days, they generally won’t read it, and they won’t wait for you with detailed questions about it.

RELATED: 5 Prospecting Myths Debunked

5. Prospects Rarely Want to Talk to a Salesperson

When someone downloads an eBook or white paper, they don’t want to talk to anyone yet – that’s a common misbelief.

Are prospects ever dying to talk to a salesperson? Are you suggesting they will want to talk to you “later”?

I don’t believe that.

Prospects want to talk to a salesperson when they call in or when they request to be contacted. Besides that, they are not anxiously waiting for salespeople to bother them.

Sales is about helping people – making them understand that they need you when they don’t think they do.

6. Prospects Are Impressed with Hustle

I’ve been in the research game for sales management for a while now. One thing that stands out to me as the most common qualitative answer to people responding quickly to leads is “Wow.”

Sure, there will be people who will be bothered – but they are in the loud minority. Sales is not about making every single person happy; it’s about doing what brings results in the long term.

7. If You’re Going to Reach Out, Do It Immediately and Don’t Wait for a Couple of Days

Some advocates are waiting multiple days to contact their qualified leads, without really accounting for a prospect’s short attention span. All the data we have say the longer you wait, the less chance you have to get in touch with a person – and the lower the chance to get them into your pipeline.

I know it feels nicer to wait until the prospect is ready, but data on lead management solution say it’s the wrong approach.

8. Account-Based Sales Don’t Have to Equal a Slow Response

A lot of people believe that with account-based sales (ABS), you should send leads to account executives and then let them follow up when they can as part of their overall strategy. But, that doesn’t apply to any situation in a sales lead management system.

You need to know what your data say and act accordingly. I’ve now seen multiple companies get rid of their inbound response teams just to replace them in 6-12 months when the numbers went south.

Last but not least, you should know that the average market responds to inbound leads in about 38 hours.

If you thought you’re being different by responding quickly – you’re not.

Marketing teams should do what’s best for your customers and respond quickly to your leads.

To learn more about responding to inbound leads, watch this video from our VP, Gabe Larsen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTz_oCzE79I

With these tips for sales lead management, generating your leads will be more effective. Just remember to always respond in less than five minutes to increase the chances of successfully getting them. Apply these lead generation tips now and see results in no time.

What other sales lead management tips can you add to the ones mentioned above? Share them in the comments section.

Up Next: 

• Prospecting At Scale To Grow Sales
• 10 Secrets For Responding To Inbound Leads
• Do You Know What Your Sales Team Is Doing With Inbound Leads?

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on February 1, 2018, and has been updated for quality and relevancy.

In this article:

1. The Problem with Overqualifying Leads
2. Qualifying Leads with BANT
3. Quantify Leads in High-Velocity Sales Funnel
4. Work on BANT with These Questions

How Quantifying Your Leads Can Help Your Business

The Problem with Overqualifying Leads

The ability to quantify or measure the value of the leads is essential for any business. Lead generation and management cost time and money companies may never be able to get back.

Companies are spending huge amounts of their marketing budget on new and innovative tools, techniques, and systems. They do this to generate interest in web leads and increase sales. The problem is they use antiquated techniques to qualify those leads. The bias wastes much of the marketing investment put into those efforts.

Here at XANT, we designed technology to address this. Our software automates and optimizes the qualification process once the marketing efforts generate interest. As such, we see hundreds of companies and their qualification metrics and techniques. One of the most common problems appears when lead qualification reps over qualify their leads, preventing those leads from entering the sales pipeline.

Qualifying Leads with BANT

Companies use dozens of over-qualification methods to move leads into their sales pipeline. One of the most common is the BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) Approach. This traditional sales method follows a basic model wherein the lead qualification rep filters candidates based on the following parameters:

• If the company already has a budget allocated to a solution
• Whether the candidate is the decision maker or the authority to give the green light to the solution
• Whether the company has a specifically defined need for the solution and is willing to put their money down in a timely fashion

Only those who meet these criteria may enter the sales process. BANT and similar qualification approaches are still valid when you want to quantify transactional sales and cases where the product scope is understood and well established. They are not as useful in the world of high-velocity sales. The product or solution features complexity in selling. Prospects and customers may also need further education. Trish Bertuzzi, an industry leader and friend, already recognized this trend in her 2010 blog post.

Quantify Leads in High-Velocity Sales Funnel

These qualifying techniques weaken in the high-velocity sales model, where these methods become too limiting. XANT has adopted a high-velocity selling approach based on a quantification model. By quantification, we don’t limit the number of leads entering the sales pipeline.

We stretch the sales funnel on the top as well as the bottom. Lead qualification reps broaden the top of the sales funnel more than normal. It then allows less-qualified leads into the sales process. More leads exit the bottom of the funnel, and the business makes more customers with the less-qualified leads.

My reps seek to understand the company and its process, operations, and potential needs to build a case for our quantifying solution. They use their understanding of the company to:

• Navigate to find authority
• Educate potential customers of need
• Justify timing
• Help create budget

Work on BANT with These Questions

To build BANT, my reps ask certain types of questions to qualify the company, such as:

1. What does your company do and/or sell?
2. Who are your customers?
3. How do you find potential customers?
4. How do you communicate with potential customers?
5. What is a typical deal size for your company?
6. What problem were you hoping to solve by contacting us?
7. How many employees does your company have?
8. How long has your company been in business?
9. What is your company structure, and where is your place in that structure?
10. How long have you been with the company?
11. What is the typical sales cycle for your company?
12. What are the challenges or problems your company is dealing with?

Our company uses the Miller-Heiman approach as a strategic selling method. It explains how a sales rep’s opportunity comes when the target company is in either growth or trouble phase. Asking the above questions helps the rep discover what phase the company is in. They then know how to best plan his approach. Then, as reps approach the sales process, they adjust their message based on quantification to deliver a customized solution designed to build and justify BANT. They don’t instead of filter leads based on qualification.

The quantification model has worked well to increase our sales velocity, but it has some inherent risks or pushbacks. First, the internal costs associated with the sales process are higher. It requires more resources to push more leads down the pipeline. The good thing is I have also found the extra output at the end of the pipeline justifies the additional resource at the top. To quantify a lead pays for itself. Second, a typical sales rep will lack the motivation to adopt this model unless his current comp plan incentivizes the additional work caused by quantification.

There are certain risks associated with the quantifying leads, but if the company’s and employees’ incentives align, you will find the same results we found. The quantification model will dramatically increase your customer acquisition rate by significantly boosting sales. Ultimately, it can help make you build a sustainable business.

What do you think about quantifying leads instead of qualifying them? Share your thoughts about this topic in the comments section below.

Up Next: High-Velocity Sales: Win Faster

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on June 28, 2012, and has been updated for quality and relevancy.

In this article:

1. What We Discovered about Our Buying Leads
2. The Difference between Tire Kickers and Buying Signals
3. Sorting Sales Leads
4. The Mistake We Made
5. Free Lead Response Management Study

Tire Kickers | How They Differ from Buying Signals and Why They’re Also Essential Business Leads

What We Discovered about Our Buying Leads

Sales can be tricky because customers can differ – some of them may have started as Tire Kickers. About three years ago, we were analyzing the leads that come from our website. We’re trying to find out if some were better than others.

Everything we do at XANT is according to metrics. Instead of just hiring marketers, we hire math and economics majors in our marketing department. It is all about studying and testing and analyzing.

So we charted out our leads and we found that there were two obvious “clusters” of leads based on the types of offers we had made to generate them. I call them “Buying Signals” and “Tire Kickers” and we found there was an 8 to 1 difference in the results they generated based on overall revenue.

The Difference between Tire Kickers and Buying Signals

When are prospective buyers Buying Signals? Buying Signals are just that, respondents to offers that clearly say, “I’m anxious to talk to somebody at XANT about making a purchase decision.” I have “need,” not just “interest.” Anything product-centric, pricing-related, commitment-based, etc. We learned that even a toll-free number is an “offer” somebody can choose to accept on a website (and is often the very best one.)

Tire Kickers want to learn something. They aren’t ready or don’t have the time to buy. They have the “interest” but not the need. These prospects may not even know they have a need yet or the intention to buy.

The way to turn Tire Kickers into Buying Signals is to spend time providing compelling information and education.

Sorting Sales Leads

Our research shows people who are Tire Kickers are eight times less likely to buy than a Buying Signal.

I remember interest is the counterfeit of need. It belongs to the marketing department, whose job it is to educate. In contrast, need belongs to the sales department, whose job it is to build value and close to fulfilling the need.

The kinds of Buying Signal leads include:

• Free trials
• Demos
• Product overviews
• Contact us
• Product slicks
• Pricing requests
• Proposal requests
• Toll-free phone numbers

The kinds of Tire Kicker leads are:

• Company overviews
• Whitepapers
• Research papers
• Webinars (including on-demand webinars)
• How-tos
• Forums
• Blogs

The Mistake We Made

What did we do? We cut out most of our Tire Kickers and focused on Buying Signals. We even scaled back our well-known research papers like the one Inc. Magazine quoted.

What happened?

For a certain time, it was well. Things went great for about two months. Our sales went up, then they went down. And our leads started drying up. We couldn’t figure out what happened until one day, we looked at previous leads and found people typically downloaded two to three Tire Kicker offers before moving to the Buying Signal leads. It was a “lead funnel,” and we had stopped the new leads from entering it.

So immediately, we put back all our Tire Kicker information leads and expanded them.

It was almost a disaster, but it turned out to be one of the most important things we have ever learned.

I hope this article helps you in selling by defining Tire Kickers and Buying Signals. They illustrate why both are important in the business. In this way, you can tailor your strategy based on how far in the lead funnel your prospective buyer is.

Do you have Tire Kickers in your business? How do you transform them into Buying Signals? Share your tips below.

Up Next: How to Prioritize Sales Leads

Author: Ken Krogue | Google+
Summary of Ken Krogue’s Forbes articles

Free Lead Response Management Study

Answer the question, “When should companies call Web-generated leads for optimal contact and qualification ratios?”

Get LRM Study Now

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on October 10, 2011, and has been updated for quality and relevancy.

Kraig is author of “The Must React System” and “Building a Winning Brand” and has ample experience prospecting. He spoke to us about sales development and some of the key trends facing that important role trends-driving world-class SDR teams.

He tells us that sales development rep tends to be “the trendy term” for lead development professionals used in the Software as a Service (SaaS) or cloud computing. The terms might be different depending on industry.

1. Practice Makes Perfect

The best sellers ever in the world, people like Zig Ziegler, people like Dale Carnegie, they were most likely born that way, says Kleeman. Most sales organizations, however, are made up of average people that need to work hard to get to the same results.

“Guess what? An exceptional sales process will always make an unexceptional seller produce exceptional outcomes,” said Kraig, on the Playmakers podcast. Technology helps SDR’s so that they waste no time and spend all their day just refining their skills.

Companies need to have an automated and tightly development process for SDR’s. This will build predictable pipeline and make their job easier.

2. Onboarding Should be Short and Sweet

The onboarding and training process needs to be streamlined, adds Kraig. SDR’s  should become as productive as possible in the shortest time.

“By day 10, your new SDRs should be scheduling meetings at plan. (…) They should be given tight scripts. They’re not allowed to go off script until they’ve proven mastery at being on script,” said Kraig.

According to the latest XANT research, the average ramp time for a sales development rep is 4 months. With an average tenure of 2.7 years, the productive time is greatly diminished if they don’t ramp up quickly.

3. Selling to the C-Suite

It’s important that sales development representatives learn how to do enterprise sales and have meaningful conversations with C-level executives. And this is done with a data-driven approach, shows Kraig.

“Learning to lead with fact-based research is by far the most valuable tool for cracking the enterprise sale and for learning to sell to the C-suite,” says Kraig.

Your presentations need to be as well-produced as the ones from prestigious polling companies, has adds. The public should be able to contribute with replies to open-ended questions, being active and engaged.

4. Social Selling Limitations

Social selling is very common practice, and has become a buzzword lately. However useful it may be, there are limitations to it, says Kraig. A study of over 1,000 C-suite executives showed that 77% did not have a photo to their social media profile, nor did they have or give any recommendations.

“If you are going to attack the C-suite, and you’re selling to the enterprise, tools like LinkedIn and other social media channels are not powerful for engagement. They are not powerful for discerning information, and for understanding your target deeply,” said Kraig.

5. A Low Cost Sales Development Team

Sales development fuels your pipeline with qualified leads – but it can be an expensive engine. The “State of Sales Development” study from XANT shows that the average sales dev has a base compensation of around $43K, with average on-target-earnings (OTE) of around $83K.

“You can unlock cash by off-shoring your SDR teams to a region in the world that speaks fabulous language. By finding the right location, by training those people properly, here’s what you can expect. You can expect the cost per head all in to be about 30% of your current costs, and the yield per head to be approximately 80%,” said Kraig.

He adds that companies should not outsource, but rather develop their own call center off-shore, where they can avoid attrition and recruit the right talent to impact the bottom line.

If you want to learn more about the process to develop your SDR team, click to listen to the podcast:

To get the results of the “State of Sales Development” study from XANT Labs, click here.   

There are two key points to follow with inbound leads:

1. Immediacy in Handling Inbound Leads

When handling inbound leads, it’s all about immediacy. You have leads coming in, you need to get to them fast. There are two important deadlines: 5 minutes, and 24 hours since they reached out.

Ideally you should answer a lead in under 5 minutes. You really don’t want to be in the 24 hour range with your reply.

In the first two days after a lead contacts you, you should get to as many people as you can.

2. Put Them Back in the Funnel

If your initial contact with a lead is not successful, make sure you have a blitz campaign set up. The blitz campaign should tell them a bit more about you and how you can help them.

After 10 to 15 days where you hit them with your blitz campaign, where you explain your intent and what you do. After the blitz campaign, you enter them into a drip campaign.

Here’s the secret: with the drip campaign, if they interact with your content, put them back in the funnel for the blitz campaign. This way, they get a chance to learn about your offer again.

Hope this helps you the next time you get another inbound lead. At XANT, we are aces of lead management – and the AI-powered technology really makes a difference for the immediacy of your response rates.

Think you have a good cadence? Use the link below to assess it . . .

The G Show is Gabe Larsen’s weekly show about the sales industry. We post short videos weekly to give you the scoop on what’s happening in the sales industry, and what strategies sales reps are using to reach their numbers.

Subscribe to the DailyG below:

They’re the engine that puts fuel in your sales pipeline – day in and day out.

This is why it is crucial to understand and know the structure of sales development, the specific activities for pipeline generation and above all, the people and what they do to guarantee the health of your pipeline

In an effort to understand the sales development role, XANT Labs commissioned a study in partnership with SalesForLife, BridgeGroup, Drift, Datanyze, OneMob, and Tenbound.

The study includes 900 companies and reviews the four elements of a successful sales development team: structure, systems, people and pipeline.

The findings were very telling of where we are today with SDR and where there is a gap in their activity.

Inside vs Outside Sales Development

The lines between inside sales and outside sales keep blurring, shows the research. More and more customers are empowered and contacting companies, rather than waiting to be contacted.

According to the study, there are an estimated 677,479 sales development reps in the U.S.

About 17 percent of sales development reps are inbound sales, while 28% are outbound sales. More than half – 54 percent self-report as doing both inside and outside sales.

Sales Technology Systems

Sales technology has become an extremely important part of every sales development team’s makeup and organization. Companies spend overall on sales development technology is $1.4 billion. This is just a small part of the overall 14.9 billion spent in total on sales technology industry.

In the research, companies reported the average annual spend on sales technology was $3,894 per rep/year.

That’s around 17% less than what they spend on account executives, who seem to get the lion’s share of the budget. Companies have around one sales development rep for every three account executives.

The $3,894 covers an average of 4.8 categories of sales tools per rep. The most popular categories were (excluding CRM):

• Social prospecting (30.3%)
• Data/list services (21.6%)
• Email engagement (20.7%)
• Phone (16.0%)
• Sales Cadence (12.8%)
• Lead/Account Scoring (10.7%)

Sales Development – The People

Companies need to pay market value to retain their top people. The Sales of Sales Development offers a benchmark on sales development compensation.

According to the XANT research, the average base salary for sales development reps is $41,675, with an average on-target-earnings (OTE) of &80,774. While earnings will vary based on the region, there is one aspect which remains constant – and that is variable income.

A section of sales representatives’ incomes are variable to ensure performance and quota attainment. The mix between base and variable was a 60/40 split, with 59.7% for the base and 40.03% for the variable.

Pipeline Generation Activities

As far activities go, sales development reps are certainly not idle – they place dozens of calls and send a host of emails and voicemails every day to generate qualified pipeline.

Sales development reps did an average of 94.4 daily activities including an average of 36.2 emails (38.4%), 35.9 phone calls (38.0%), 15.3 voicemail messages (16.2%), and 7.0 social media touches (7.4%).

They reps had an average of 14.1 meaningful conversations a day, which was around 15 percent of their daily activities.

For all their effort, not all sales development reps are able to reach 100% of their quota.

Why Sales Development Reps Only Report 63% Quota Attainment

The quota for pipeline generated was $658,692, however companies report only 63.5% quota attainment for SDRs.

The report is an eye-opener for sales leaders interested in increasing their team’s performance.

For high-performing teams, the combination of sales training, self-motivated sales reps and AI-recommended lead prioritization can mean the difference between failure and success.

Sales leaders need to see this as an opportunity to make changes – and act on it. We need to enable sales reps to work smarter, rather than harder.

You can read the executive summary of the State of Sales Development 2017 here.

Random Sales Cadences Kill Your Conversations

The sales cadence is a sequence of activities to improve contact and qualification rates. They may be phone calls, emails, voicemails or other sales activities. The latest research on sales cadence from XANT showed that most of the time, sales reps will set sales cadences arbitrarily, without any regards as to what is performing well.

The study analyzed thousands of companies and revealed:

• The most common outreach practice is email (32 percent of respondents use this method)
• 61 percent of first contacts happen via email
• The second most utilized cadence is a single call and voicemail (6 percent)

But is it the correct approach, to send a single call and a voicemail? Sometimes, leads will need more than that to ‘warm up’ and actually be willing to set an appointment with your sales executives.

Download 7 Free Sales Cadence Templates

The optimal sales cadence can boost your company’s financial results by up to 110 percent. When you perform a sales cadence correctly, it will increase a rep’s ability to interact with a prospect, educate them to become potential buyer and prevent deals from falling through, the research report shows.

We’re here to help out! XANT is giving away seven sales cadence templates that are guaranteed to double your contact rates in just 20 days.

Download the 7 sales cadence templates and fire up your sales team!

Automatic Email Send

Predictive Playbooks is an AI-enabled sales cadence application that helps sales teams enhance their performance and build pipeline. Among other cool features, Playbooks enables reps to quickly personalize emails before sending. However, it has not always accounted for communications that don’t require customization, including product or funding announcements, conference invites, and follow-up emails. We solved for this with the Automatic Email Send functionality.

To use automatic emails, simply add or edit an email step and switch it to “Send Automatically”, then select a send time.

• Reps can create plays with 3 consecutive steps using auto-emails.
• Currently users can configure auto-emails from the extension. This functionality will be coming shortly to the manager application.

Automatic emails do not appear in the list of tasks to do for a given day, because the sales rep  does not take any action. If reps need to view or edit an automated email, they can access them in the Playbooks menu under the new Automated Tasks option.

Next Step Date to CRM

Our active user community told us they wanted to know the next scheduled date of interaction with prospects. We listened to their feedback and added the option, within Predictive Playbooks, to publish the next date of interaction with a prospect directly into the CRM. Using this information, teams can now generate reports showing their interaction schedules with associated dates of contact.

CRM admins must configure the functionality to make it available.

Other Product Improvements

The latest Playbooks release also adds other improvements and fixes to known issues:

• Fixed an issue where tasks would get stuck for deleted prospects
• Updated icons in the play creation screen
• Removed the “Busy” option from call results
• Addressed a number of issues around long phone extensions breaking the UI
• Added text formatting support to Cue cards

Predictive Playbooks helps teams build pipeline and increases rep productivity and efficiency with predictive insights at each stage of the funnel.

Sales teams using the AI powered InsideSales System of Growth experience an increase in revenue of up to 30% in as little as 90 days.

If you’re interested in how you can use sales acceleration technology to benefit your business, contact us to watch a demo!

Steve is executive director of innovation for MarketSource, a sales outsourcing company. They have developed a proprietary, proven process to improve sales funnels and deliver better sales.

Audit Your Sales Process to Increase Sales Results

The process improves sales revenue by focusing on three key points.These are sales training, eliminating time wasters and using sales acceleration technolgy. He detailed the process in the XANT podcast: “The Art and Science of Sales: Three Levers to Pull to Increase Sales Results.”

Listen to the podcast below:

Step 1: Sales Instructional Training

Step one to improve sales revenue is instructional training for sales teams, showed Steve. Sales reps need to know how to approach gatekeepers and build that relationship to reach decision-makers.

“It’s all about your approach, and really the first things that you say need to help build that initial rapport. You don’t want to come across too salesy, and you don’t want to appear like a telemarketer. We’re not telemarketers, we’re salespeople,” said Steve Bonvissuto, on the podcast.

He advises that sales reps always understand the industry they are selling in, and ideally have a background working in it. This way, they can build rapport with the gatekeepers for optimal sales process.

Step 2: Optimize Sales Process and Eliminate Time Wasters

The next step is to optimize the sales process and minimize or eliminate time wasters, shows Steve. There’s several steps you can take to eliminate inefficiencies. One of them is working on time spent within the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.

“Your CRM, you want to be able to make it as seamless as you possibly can for your sales reps. You also want to be able to report on what they’re doing, so that you can begin to change. We don’t want to put a lot of text in a CRM, so you want to avoid creative writing,” shows Steve.

He adds that sometimes, sales representatives sometimes end up doing customer support, when they should be selling. You need to recognize when this happens and make sure to avoid it, adds Steve.

Step 3: Sales Acceleration and AI Technology

Sales acceleration and sales enablement technologies do a lot to increase sales productivity, shows Steve. Using these technologies, you can customize your CRM to make sure all reps’ activities are contributing to revenue. Furthermore, using artificial intelligence can take the guesswork out of prospecting and help you focus on the deals that are more likely to close.

He recommends XANT technology to help increase efficiency for sales teams in any industry. The AI powered predictive capabilities of the InsideSales platform allow sales reps to focus their efforts where it matters and minimize time wasters.

“We model out the day in a life of the sales rep. Then we customize the CRM to make sure that the technology is aligned with the business process. […] The way we set up your technology with InsideSales and Salesforce is that it becomes a tool that reps to accomplish their job. It’s not just another tool that they need to go into at the end of the day to demonstrate that they’ve done something for the day,” concluded Steve.

If you want to find out more about how to minimize time wasters and optimize sales team’s activities, follow the PlayMakers podcast with Steve Bonvissuto.