RELATED: How to Win at Sales Development – 27 Tips from the Experts

In this article:

1. Creating a Sales Improvement Plan from Relevant Data
   1. Understanding the Relationship Between Compensation and Quota Attainment
   2. Identifying Activities Through Opportunities
   3. More Activities But Fewer Commitments

Improve Your Business Strategy and Reach Goals With a Sales Development Action Plan

Creating a Sales Improvement Plan from Relevant Data

The post is about the data Gabe Larsen shared in the State of Sales Development report and how I think sales leaders should put that data into action. How to interpret, how to test, how to implement, etc., to create a business development action plan and improve your sales team’s performance.

There’s a lot of data in there, and I can put a spin on that data to see what may or may not work. I’ve been running sales and sales development teams for years and have utilized different compensation plans, gone to market strategies, and deployed different technology and processes, and I know some tactics work and some don’t.

So, I can take this from a practitioner perspective by utilizing the report findings and applying my own experiences with them. Doing this helps me identify and share possible solutions to achieve an effective sales business action plan for sales reps to follow.

Here are some points I observed with Gabe Larsen’s State of Sales Development report that are crucial in creating a business action plan to achieve your team’s sales goals.

1. Understanding the Relationship Between Compensation and Quota Attainment

I think the biggest item that struck me from this report was the negative correlation between compensation and quota attainment. To me, this shows a misalignment of performance-based results.

I’m a HUGE fan of performance-based compensation where the individual contributor (SDR, AE, etc.) receives compensation based on their direct influence of what they can control the most. This means SDRs are comped on qualified pipeline contribution and not only if the deal closes.

What is Performance-Based Compensation? With PBC, employees get paid based on the results of their direct effort or their sales performance, such as achievement or excess of quota.

The negative correlation from this report begs the misalignment between individual sales goal attainment and compensation. This goes in line with the next finding that 62.6% of organizations use closed deals to determine compensation, and for SDRs, that’s just not great.

That number is also up from 2017 so it’s becoming more widely adopted. Which again leads to the next data point about companies comping on pipeline generation report highest SDR quota attainment.

RELATED: Sales Development 2017 Infographic: Quota Attainment is Only 64%

2. Identifying Activities Through Opportunities

The other area that I want to double click on (as Gabe would say!) is the activities through opportunities section. I made a lot of notes in these next few areas because this needs to be dialed in a bit.

For instance, on page 27, it says the average activities per day is 107.8. However, in the next graph between inbound and outbound reps, neither of those are above 100, so how is the average 107.8? This is the same with the other metrics.

One comparison is average by day, whereas some are average by month. Creating consistent alignment on those will help for comparison purposes.

What I think needs to be identified are directional paths toward activity-based results starting with calls/e-mails (and even separating the two), conversations, appointments booked, appointments held, opportunities created, and opportunities accepted. These could be averages per day/per month, as well as separating between inbound and outbound SDRs.

Ultimately, where I see this being important is compared to page 5.

On one hand, it’s easier to forecast outbound activities because it’s somewhat consistent from day to day. Whereas inbound can fluctuate based on the marketing plan and other marketing activities (email blasts, campaign blasts, new product blasts, etc).

Inbound creates more peaks and valleys, which is inconsistent call flow. So, the fact that inbound quota attainment is higher makes sense because it’s harder to predict inbound call flow.

Whereas outbound call flow is pretty static (60 dials per day, 30 emails per day, 15 conversations per day, one demo per day, etc.). Those benchmarks can be easily formulaic when determining pipeline contribution (average deal size) and revenue (average close rates).

So, activity-based KPIs can be peeled back a bit to see what kind of correlation can be drawn from outbound activities and quota attainment vs inbound.

3. More Activities But Fewer Commitments

Lastly, I think what’s really interesting on page 28 is that activities increased by over 10% between 2017 and 2018, but meetings held decreased by 20%! That’s crazy sauce!

More activity is leading to fewer commitments. This is an area I’m personally struggling with now—trying to create effective cadences from demo booked to demo held and what tactics work (email reminder 24 hours before and/or day of, text message reminders, accepting calendar invites at time of meeting booking, qualifying questions on demo booking, agenda setting, etc).

Clearly, there’s a need to produce some best practices to increase demo hold rates and all we are seeing now is that more activity isn’t yielding better results and revenue.

So that’s a start, but cadence activity is certainly interesting as well on page 34. Double-clicking into how long cadences last, how many touch points and through what channels is really interesting to see how those shift.

I’d even think separating those into < 90-day sales cycles vs > 90-day sales cycles could be really interesting as well. Qualification method is interesting, too.

These are three points I noted from Gabe Larsen’s sales development report. In making a sales development action plan for 2019, it’s important to address these past issues from the data presented in the report.

Looking for more materials that can teach you more about sales development and how to write a sales plan will also benefit your organization more.

As for me, I’m starting to become a fan of PACT (Pain, Authority, Consequence, Timing) from Trish Bertuzzi’s book, The Sales Development Playbook. I’m still trying to figure out the best ways to ask for these, but it’s a great qualification idea for sure.

Have you created your sales development action plan for 2019? What did you consider in coming up with a team and individual sales plan? Share what you came up with in the comments section below.

UP NEXT: 

• Top Tips For Sales Development
• Must Have Sales Management Software
• The Sales Cadence Tool You Need To Generate More Leads

These problems often lay outside the realm of our products and services but due to the widespread need for advice in these areas, we have spent a great deal of time analyzing them and searching for solutions.

Pay particular attention to Time Wasters #6 and #7.

TIME WASTER #2 of 15: Poor Hiring

Many sales organizations spend a great deal of time and money on systems, leads, and facilities only to forget the most important thing: building a strong sales team.

Before you hire your first employee, identify a “success profile,” a list of characteristics that will make a successful part of your sales team. Hire only people that match your success profile.

The most important person in a sales organization is a “scrappy sales manager,” someone who has a clear vision of the company’s direction and goals and who works tirelessly at following that direction and reaching those goals. Too much time is wasted by employees who either don’t know these things or simply don’t care. You can remedy that by hiring a sales manager who knows, cares and carries that message to the rest of the sales team.

Once you have a strong sales manager, build a sales team that will support him or her.  The best way to hire proven salespeople is by asking your existing salespeople. They have worked with other great salespeople and know who will be successful with your company—and who won’t. Every sales organization has a top producer: find out who that was at the companies where your people have worked and offer them a position with your company.

During each potential employee’s interview process, include a way to simulate a real work environment prior to a full commitment of hiring.

Best Practice: Hire each employee into a 60 day probation/evaluation period. This will encourage the sales person to quickly learn your systems, processes and products without wasting any time. Once they have successfully passed the probation period, continue to offer incentives and evaluation to boost morale and prevent a drop-off in initiative and productivity.

TIME WASTER #3 of 15: Poor Performance Management

Performance Management consists of clear objectives, fair goals, simple priorities, and immediate feedback. In order for your sales team to succeed, you must first define exactly what—and when—you want things done. Each salesperson should have a job description and certain priorities that make sense in your business. Prioritize leads, lists, sales stages, size of accounts, etc., so your salespeople are soon thinking along the same lines that you are. Communicate to your team what you expect from them and continually let them know how they are doing in reference to your expectations.

Best Practice: Make sure every one of your objectives can be measured. Provide feedback—both positive and negative—quickly and in a way that is fair and reasonable. In sales, you can provide the best feedback by playing back a sales rep’s recent interaction with a prospect or customer and using it as a training opportunity.

TIME WASTER #4 of 15: Low Levels of Motivation

Low motivation usually arises from one of the problem areas previously mentioned (poor strategy, mis-hiring, unclear objectives, unfair goals, complex priorities, and slow feedback) as well as from poor leadership, lack of discipline and accountability, and a win-lose or lose-lose pay plan.

Salespeople want to sell as much as possible as easily as possible. They will be quickly demoralized when obstacles that are outside of their control prevent them from succeeding.

These things tend to dampen sales teams’ motivation:

1. Pay plans that reward actions and events beyond the employees’ control.
2. Pay plans that take too long to reward success.
3. Lack of immediate recognition.
4. Lack of clarity about expectations.
5. Goals that are set too high.
6. Lack of leads or good lists.
7. Products or services the salespeople don’t believe in.
8. Working for a Sales Manager who isn’t perceived as fair.
9. Poor communication of what is good and bad.

Best Practice: Ask your salespeople what motivates them, do your homework with the experts, make a list viable incentives and get started.

TIME WASTER #5 of 15: Poor Lead Generation Resources

Why cold call if you can have inbound leads generated from an effective marketing campaign at a fraction of the cost? Our biggest and best clients take this seriously and use web, radio and television outlets to provide sustainable and scalable sources of qualified leads.

It’s all about the leads. We don’t see nearly as many successful companies leaving the lead generation process to their sales people.  If you don’t provide pre-qualified leads, at least provide your sales teams with good lists to call. Good lists cost roughly 5% to 10% of the money you spend on labor costs and can increase results dramatically (we have seen results as high as 1300%), yet some companies we studied left their reps to spend as much as 40% of their time looking for someone to call. Not only are you wasting your most valuable resource—your sales team—you risk losing your most effective sales reps to companies that are willing to give them a higher rate of success by providing warm leads.

We also advocate using dialing technology to triple or quadruple the contact rates of new leads and allow salespeople to spend less time between conversations with decision-makers. Dialers that connect your sales reps to a live call as soon as he or she has ended another call will keep your sales reps busy making sales—increasing their success and profitability.

Best Practice: Invest in good leads or lists. The Internet is already the fastest growing and least expensive source of leads for almost every business. Create an effective website and generate leads.

TIME WASTER #6 of 15: Improperly Timed Response to Lead Inquiries

Every day we find another company that spends tens of thousands of dollars to create a fancy website, spends thousands of dollars each month with Google, Yahoo, or MSN to drive clicks and contracts with a web-analytics company such as Omniture, Webtrends, or Visual Sciences to analyze and improve the conversion on their website only to let a lead sit for 48-72 hours before calling them back!

Laura Ramos, of Forrester Research, studied how effectively companies respond to their leads and wrote an article entitled “How Mature is B2B Lead Management?” (November 2006). In her study, only 10% of sales departments respond to leads within 24 hours and 41% respond to leads in one to three days. Nearly half of the sales departments she studied had yet to standardize how to route and respond to leads within the organization.

Hot leads cool off quickly. Our best clients know their key action is to call them back immediately. Response time should be measured in seconds and minutes, not hours and days.

WAIT!  Our latest research is starting to show that with some lead offers it is actually better to wait a specific period of time before you call back.  We show the results can vary significantly.

Best Practice: Respond immediately to leads that are requesting demonstrations, pricing, or have immediate questions.  Other forms of lead offers should be tested to find the optimal time to respond for the highest conversion and qualification ratios.  Automate lead qualification and routing to eliminate delays in entering your lead information into your system and getting them to the right sales rep.

TIME WASTER #7 of 15: Too Few Attempts to Contact Leads

While it may seem that giving up on a lead after five attempts to contact him or her five saves time, it is actually a huge time-waster. After spending thousands of hours and dollars creating and maintaining a campaign to attract leads, failing to follow-up effectively is in effect dumping all those hours and dollars down the drain.

Jacques Werth, the author of High Probability Selling, quotes a 14% contact ratio in a business-to-business environment. Our studies show B2B prospecting contact ratios hovering around 10% across most industries. However, our studies also show that if a sales rep attempts to contact a lead 4 to 6 times, he or she reaches a lead contacted ratio of 55%. Such low actual contact ratios tell us one thing: most sales reps are giving up too early!

We also found that most sales reps make follow-up calls at roughly the same time each day. This seems counterintuitive: if a lead is unavailable in the morning, continuing to call them each morning for five days will waste time and yield little result.

A recent study we did in conjunction with FranklinCovey and published by MarketingSherpa yielded some very interesting data about what time of day is most productive to call leads back.  See MarketingSherpa Article

A dialer can help solve these problems, particularly one that can try calling a number at different times of the day and on different days of the week in order to ‘wring dry’ a leads’ potential value. Some of our clienets make twenty to fifty attempts on each lead, calling mornings, afternoons, and evenings. Our internal staff and many of our clients contact between 80% and 90% of all contactable leads.

Best Practice: Track every dial and every contact. Separate your contactable leads from those without viable contact information. Track how many attempts your sales reps make to contact leads and the actual percentage of contacted leads for 30 days. Once you form a baseline, begin increasing contact attempts to increase your contact ratio up over 80%.

TIME WASTER #8 of 15: Dialing Time, Busies, No Answers, Bad Numbers

As a company that embeds dialers and telephony ‘power tools’ in its CRM software, we were disappointed to find that the actual dialing process is one of the lesser of the time wasters. However, it is still a significant problem. While it is important to reduce the amount of time sales reps spend dialing, it is far more important to keep them busy and on task by giving them enough leads to call and tools to make calling leads easier.

This is especially true in the business to business (B2B) world where selling is so much more complex than selling to consumers. The dialing experience is only a small part of the whole productivity equation but we found that technology could take a lead generation representative from 40 or 50 dials per day to a range of 170 to 210. A normal sales representative with responsibility for the entire sales process can go from 20 to 30 dials to between 70 and 100 dials a day.

In the business to consumer (B2C) world, ratio and predictive dialers significantly overcome the time wasted with waiting for rings, busies, no answers, and bad numbers. Ratio dialers and predictive dialers combined with a lead-management CRM database to keep everything organized can boost sustainable dials to 400 or even 600 per rep per day.

Best Practice: Utilize a hosted dialer and lead response management solution to help your sales reps do 8 hours of work in 2 to 2.5 hours.

TIME WASTER #9 of 15: Voicemail and Answering Machines

Up to 60% of all calls a sales rep makes can go to voicemail or an answering machine, either directly or when routed by a receptionist. If a lead generation rep makes 200 calls in a day and 60% of these calls go to voicemail, he or she could leave 120 voice messages that average about 1 minute long. A single rep could waste 2 hours leaving messages—and that doesn’t include the time spent dialing and being transferred to a decision-maker’s voicemail box!

Most reps don’t make that many calls and don’t bother leaving nearly that many messages, but what if they could?  We have seen call-back ratios that range from less than 1% to as high as 22%. Clearly, there is a potential ROI—but is it worth the gamble?

Recent technology allows a sales rep to prerecord an entire library of voice messages in his own voice. When he is sent to voicemail, he can select an appropriate message to leave with the click of a button before immediately moving on to the next call. Since these digitally recorded .wav files are often recorded over the phone and saved to a CRM or dialer system, they cannot be distinguished from a live call.

In one series of tests using this technology, we saw an average call-back rate of 4.8%–far higher than other forms of direct marketing. What’s more, the prospects never suspected that they had received a pre-recorded message.

Best Practice: Provide voice-messaging technology coupled with dialers to increase your sales’ reps effectiveness without taking any additional time.

TIME WASTER #10 of 15: Poor Training, Coaching or Mentoring

It is a rare company that has developed a strong in-house sales training program. Training, by definition, is what someone else does to you. Learning—the part that sticks–is the do-it-yourself part. Most companies conduct single-event training seminars: a one-day event that focuses on a single skill and sends its attendees out to put everything they learned into practice. This strategy yields a noticeable effect for 6-8 weeks before the attendees return to a baseline only slightly higher than before.

We recommend a better way.

Sales coaching or mentoring are much higher forms of training. Coaching methodologies employ ongoing, two-way, interactive training and learning and focus on sustained productivity increases through constant repetition and rehearsal.

Sales coaching is similar to sports coaching: the coach doesn’t show up to lecture for a day and then expect his players to win the championship on their own.  A good coach works with his team every day. He watches them during practice and on game day to guide them as individuals and as a team. A sales coach does the same thing. He or she spends time on a regular basis working with sales reps individually and as a team to help them hone their skills and work together better.

Best Practice: Ensure that each sales rep spends 1 to 2 hours each week reviewing and rehearsing sales and lead qualification methodologies with a designated coach or mentor.

TIME WASTER #11 of 15: Poorly Defined Sales Processes

This is where the typical Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system comes into play. A study was done to show that solving this time-waster resulted in a 17% increase in net sales productivity. (Contact CSO Insights for more information.)

A 17% increase in sales is a great return on a relatively small investment. While analyzing and designing an effective sales process is not difficult, implementing it can be. Sales reps who prefer their “home-grown” approach may fight the process and actually hurt overall productivity. An effective customer relationship management system must appeal to the sales reps by solving immediate pains and by making it easier for them to stay organized and keep promises to their customers and co-workers.

A typical Sales Process usually involves the following steps:

• Introduction
• Qualification
• Demonstration
• Proposal
• Overcome Obstacles
• Closure
• Follow Through

It is critical to analyze and formalize your sales process. If you don’t feel competent enough to do this on your own, hire one of the many sales consulting firms that are only a few clicks away on a Google search.

Best Practice: Invest the time and money in formalizing your sales management processes and implementing the underlying technology to optimize it for your sales reps.

TIME WASTER #12 of 15: Poorly Defined Lead Processes

A typical lead management process goes something like this:

• Leads generated on a website sit in the webmaster’s box until she checks it.
• The webmaster checks her box once each day and sends any accumulated leads to the sales manager’s box until he checks it.
• The sales manager checks his box once each day. He sorts the leads and sends them to the appropriate sales rep.
• The sales rep types the lead information into a tracking system—a spreadsheet or contact manager—before calling the lead. After making 4 or 5 attempts to contact the lead, she moves on to other leads.

The process from lead capture to first contact attempt often takes between 48 and 72 hours. The time to first contact can often be as long as two weeks—plenty of time for the prospect to forget your company or sign up with your competition.  Lead management is nearly as important as sales yet it is often the most overlooked process.

Why?

The lead management process is often where the marketing department hands off the leads it generated to the sales department. Leads are often lost in this “gray area” and neither department wants to take responsibility: marketing blames sales for failing to follow-up and sales blames marketing for sending them unqualified leads.

Another failure in most lead management processes is found in the lack of automation. Leads are routed through a slow pipeline that could easily be replaced by technology and reduce the time between lead generation and first contact from days to minutes.

Best Practice: Effective lead management includes such disciplines as:

• Lead Capture
• Lead Routing
• Lead Response Management
• Lead Qualification Skills
• Lead Tracking
• Lead Reporting
• Lead Source Analysis

Create a clear process for each aspect of lead management. Invest time in the process and money in the systems to leverage the ability to quickly and effectively qualify and sort leads and you will find hidden increases in productivity.

TIME WASTER #13 of 15: Fulfillment Overhead—E-mails, Mailers, and Proposals

In our observations, the average salesperson spent 1.5- 2 hours per day following up on calls by typing e-mails, sending mailers, and formatting proposals. Some reps spent as much as 3.5 to 4 hours on these tasks.

Rather than waste time between calls with these repetitive tasks, automate the process with templates. Create a flow chart for your typical sales processes and find the places where e-mails, faxes, mailers, proposal and other typical media are needed. Create a template for each one, provide them to your sales representatives and watch the sales process for 30 days. Analyze which templates worked and which ones didn’t, refine the process more and you reduce your wasted time by 50% and cut the time spent on each sales process by as much as 80%!

For example, it took an average of 45 minutes to prepare a proposal in our own office.  We took the time to create a template for the proposal process and cut the average time down to 2 minutes.

Best Practice: Look at the standard emails that go out, create a template library, use a database that merges personal prospect and product information, and send them with a click of a button. Get rid of expensive and time-consuming mailers and go electronic.

TIME WASTER #14 of 15: Taking Too Many Notes

The average sales rep spent a surprising 7.5 minutes after every call making notes. He or she usually recapped the conversation, scheduled follow-up events and tasks and summarized e-mails, faxes, and proposals sent.

Many reps recorded unimportant information. We recommend recording information that:

• Provides a memory link back to the discussion;
• Records action items with associated date and time information;
• Clearly notes elements of a needs analysis or qualification.

Rather than re-typing information sent to the customer in the notes, simply link the actual emails, faxes, and proposals to the customer record in the database. Not only will you have a copy of the actual document, you will drastically reduce the amount of time spent in note-taking.

Best Practice: Invest in the systems that allow sales reps to tie copies of information sent to the customer directly to the customer record. Encourage the reps to practice typing notes and linking information throughout the phone conversation to reduce time spent after the conversation taking notes by as much as 75%.

TIME WASTER #15 of 15: Not Knowing Your Wins and Losses

The marketing department almost always wants the sales department to report results, link campaigns to toll free number and track the search engine keywords that bring in the most sales but it rarely happens. However, knowing the sources of your successes and failures will help you streamline your marketing and ultimately tap your most profitable sources of prospects and profits.

Very few companies track a lead from capture to conclusion or interview prospects and customers to find out why they do or do not buy. However, a sales team that fails to track why it wins or loses each sale is like a sports team that refuses to watch film of its competition before a game to prepare and then film of the actual game to improve for future wins: real progress is impossible unless it takes the time to learn from past successes and failures.

Best Practices: This time-waster covers nearly every area of the lead management and sales processes but it is also very simple to eliminate. The key is to start simple: pick 5 to 10 Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) to track for 30 days. Once you have a baseline to work with, begin making changes and tracking them to see how they affect performance and profits.

You can begin be picking the most important Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) such as:

Internet-based Leads

Counts: Impressions, Clicks, Leads, Prospects, Customers

Ratios: Impressions to Clicks, Clicks to Leads, Leads to Prospects, Prospects to Closes.

Cost per: Click, Lead, Prospect, Customer

Cold-Calling Leads

Counts: Dials, Contacts, Presentations, 1^st Appointments Set, 1^st Appointments Held, Demonstrations, Proposals, Closes

Ratios: Contacts per Dial, Closes per Proposal, etc.

Cost per: Dial, Contact, Demo, Close

Revenue

New Revenue per month, Revenue lost per month, Average Revenue per Account, Average Revenue per Sales Rep.

To learn about more metrics that your team should be tracking, check out our guide 10 Inside Sales Metrics That Actually Work. Tracking metrics enables you to focus your effort and increase your impact by letting you know exactly what’s working and what’s not. Don’t just do more, do more of the right things—the things that will impact results.

We are in the midst of a new global war. This is not World War 3 with weapons of mass destruction. We are not talking about the zombie apocalypse. However, the players are more powerful than governments and the stakes are higher than sovereignty. This a war with clear sides, leaders, battles, bullies, real money, and power at risk. This war is a global war over data—the Cloud Data Wars.

The Reign of Data-centric Business Models

As the Computing Cloud has become organized and ubiquitous, data has been aggregated to deliver collective, global intelligence to feed products and services that improve our lives. These new products and services generate big, big money. Data is now bought, sold, and traded as currency outpacing gold, oil, and even crypto-currencies. The players in the emerging cloud data war are the largest companies on the planet, and in many cases, they have already secretly invested billions of dollars in a race to own the most and the most important data. Much of this is hidden from the public’s view, but we have all benefitted from one of its outgrowths – Artificial Intelligence (AI).

AI has become the buzzword du jour and is being used in boardrooms, investor meetings, and in most product and sales pitches as a way to claim innovation. The easiest way to understand the relationship between the cloud, data, and AI is to consider consumer Internet applications.

Beginning with the advent of Web 2.0, most modern B2C applications are architected from the ground up with data-centric business models. Amazon knows that “people who bought X also bought Y.” Netflix knows what “people like you” enjoy watching. And, Waze knows what drivers 20 minutes ahead of you are encountering in real time. The way these benefits are delivered is simple: Web 2.0 applications collect data from every user, aggregate it, analyze it, and then contextualize it for the benefit of each individual user. Your personalized Netflix recommendation doesn’t come solely from your own viewing history—it comes from the viewing history of “people like you.” Your Waze navigation recommendations don’t come from previous trips you personally took—they come from other drivers who are on the road right now.

If AI is the engine, data is the fuel. In 1998, Google declared its mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Organizing all the information from the world’s libraries and archives seemed daunting in 1998—but we are so far beyond that now.   Almost 90% of the world’s total documented information (data) was created in the last two years, and the pace of data creation is only accelerating with IoT.

From Hardware to Data: The Evolution of Tech Wars

In the 1980s, technology wars focused on chip speed and hardware acceleration. Players like Sun, HP, Intel and their competitors were largely concentrated in and around San Jose, California. They scrambled to raise a few million dollars to fund production runs for their latest inventions. This was the Hardware Era.

In the 1990s, workflows were encoded into software, and investment sizes grew to the $tens of millions as players like Microsoft, Apple, and Intuit standardized and scaled major categories of productivity. This was the Software Era.

By the 2000s, the Internet had arrived, and major players parallelized hardware in the cloud and transferred software to this more efficient, centralized architecture. Players like Google and Amazon and Microsoft battled over who would own the Cloud infrastructure, and other players like Salesforce and the whole of the consumer Internet took advantage of the new infrastructure to build new cloud-based business models. This was the Cloud Era.

Today, we live in the Intelligence Era, and $billion bets are placed on data. Which data is most important? Who will generate it? Who will collect it? Who will aggregate it, analyze it, and own it? In the Intelligence Era, data is the prize. Whoever controls data, controls intelligence. And whoever controls intelligence, controls commerce. The data economy is global, and control of the right data eventually means control of global sectors of the economy.

Let the Cloud Data Wars Begin

This is not a new phenomenon. The battle over data began over 15 years ago as Cloud applications began collecting and aggregating data through web technology platforms. However, the data gold rush has intensified at an increasing rate, culminating last week at the 2018 Salesforce.com Dreamforce event. No wonder the world’s largest corporations have entered the fray:

• 2016 – January: IBM buys the Weather Channel for $2 Billion to provide IBM Watson access to the global weather data asset.
• 2016 – June: Microsoft beats Salesforce in a bidding war and pays $26.2 Billion for LinkedIn and its data on over 400 million professionals across the globe.
• 2016 – October: Salesforce (among others) rumored to be bidding for Twitter to get access to global trend data (failed attempt).
• 2017 – March: Salesforce partners with IBM Watson, gaining access to global Weather Channel data among other things.
• 2018 – March: Saleforce pays $6.5 Billion to acquire Mulesoft—a data integrator.
• 2018 – September: Microsoft, Adobe and SAP announce the Open Data Initiative (ODI).
• 2018 – September: Salesforce counters the ODI announcement with its own announcement of “Customer 360”

What does all of this mean?

1. It’s all about the data, stupid.

So far, B2B Artificial Intelligence has been the bubble that wasn’t. Sure, it’s fun to think about the B2B equivalents of AI-guided commerce or AI-guided navigation, but AI cannot operate without impressive amounts of data. In the B2B world, a critical mass of data is hard to come by. Since no single company has enough data to fuel AI, the launches of Einstein and Watson in B2B have been more like thuds. One can have all the AI algorithms in the world, and even a platform to run them on. But without critical mass of data those investments will go underutilized. 

2. Cross-company data is a requirement.

If no single company has enough data, what about “all the companies”? Yes, that would do it. The B2C world solved this by building apps that track all consumer activities and then use that collective data to help each individual make better decisions like what to buy, what to watch, how to get from point A to point B, etc.  For B2B intelligence to take hold, we need cross-company data to be collected, normalized, and categorized for analysis. This allows each company to make decisions based on the superset of possibilities, not merely their own history with their own customers (the consumer alternative of which would be if you were the only driver in the world who had installed Waze). 

3. Follow the money.

If one were to organize the world’s B2B data to optimize business outcomes, where would one start?  With cost-takeout initiatives? No. The most lucrative optimizations are ones that drive revenue. This means focusing on Sales and Marketing, which is exactly what Microsoft, SAP, and Adobe have done with their Open Data Initiative.

With points 1-3 above in mind, let’s focus on collective sales and marketing data—the holy grail of the Cloud Data Wars.

One Big Step for Tech, One Small Step Toward AI Sales

Kudos to Microsoft, SAP, Adobe and Salesforce. All four have recognized that customers are frustrated by status quo. And all four have taken a first step toward gathering more data to feed AI systems in an attempt to inform better B2B sales and marketing and better customer experiences. While it is a small step toward optimizing B2B sales, market leaders have declared data to be the prize, and they are moving heaven and earth to organize the world’s B2B sales and marketing data.

AI Value of Data = Breadth X Depth X Quality

The true value of AI is directly proportional to the breadth, depth and quality of the data that feeds it. In today’s information-rich environment, B2B buyers are largely self-educated before engaging a salesperson, and thus buyers hold all the cards. Data about buyers, what they are researching, how they buy and how they engage can give sellers an advantage when vying for limited attention and limited budget dollars. In this case, more and better data about more buyers is the key.

Silos à Singular Visibility à Collective Intelligence

There are three basic levels of data intelligence—siloed, singular and collective. Most companies are stuck with Siloed Data, struggling to analyze data stranded in diverse CRMs throughout their organization. Without systems to integrate these silos of data, companies do not have a 360° view of customers and prospects and cannot effectively understand their customers. Integrating data across silos appears to be the purpose for Salesforce’s acquisition of MuleSoft.

Microsoft’s ODI announcement and the Salesforce Customer 360 vision are both trying to deliver Singular Visibility, or insights mined from integrated data throughout an organization—a marked improvement over the siloed data status quo.

The true promise of AI can only be unlocked by tapping into Collective Intelligence—using advanced analytics to uncover predictive and prescriptive insights from the collective actions of millions of buyers throughout the world. Amazon is the best B2C example of this model, using AI-driven Collective Intelligence to disrupt online commerce and become one of the first trillion-dollar businesses.

Unlocking the Promise of AI to Fuel B2B Sales

Unlocking Amazon-like AI recommendations for B2B sales starts with data from a collective universe of buyers. Applying AI’s advanced analytics to global, cross-company, multi-CRM behavioral and experiential data helps the best performing companies develop customer and prospect understanding that has never before been possible.

XANT has understood the symbiotic relationship between AI and Collective Data since day one of our company, and we have crowdsourced the world’s richest set of 120+ billion behavioral data available to power AI sales.

As we watch the Cloud Data Wars unfold, we are more certain than ever we are in the best position to deliver on the promise of AI with our Collective Intelligence Data.

In the End, the Buyer Wins

Of one thing we are certain: the data arms race will transform buying experiences for the better. More informed buyers and sellers will be happier and more productive with fewer blind spots, less friction and fewer frustrations—three realities that plague sales today. And, as Martha says, “that’s a good thing.”

To learn more about how AI and Data, feel free to download the Frost and Sullivan Report entitled, “How Artificial Intelligence is Disrupting Sales”

Those insights MUST include answers to these questions:

– How much money are you leaving on the table? (missed value)

– What’s the fastest way to get more value? (marginal value)

– How many of your highest value leads go untouched? (untapped value)

Getting these answers in real-time is incredibly difficult, and most organizations don’t know where to start.

That’s about to change.

XANT engineers have innovated the way to use, and deliver value with artificial intelligence (AI). We’re excited to announce the launch of Neural Insights: a sales insights discovery tool that uncovers hidden revenue value so sales teams know where to focus.

Join the XANT Webinar:

Michael Murff, head of Neuralytics AI, and Aron Janmohamed, Head of Product & Customer Marketing at XANT, will give you a preview of this revolutionary technology. Using human judgement and insights offered by artificial intelligence, XANT can help all sales reps reach their sales quota.

Your sales data is a lot like a distracted, anxious mind.

It wants to show you everything instead of the one or two clear insights that would really make a difference.

The result?

Decision fatigue. The curse of having too many choices and not enough clarity. This can cripple your business if left unchecked.

Why is it so Hard to Focus Our Data?

We’re addicted to information. And who can blame us? Sales is a numbers game. Your team intercepts leads, opportunities, calls, emails, and texts daily – the more data the better, right?

Not necessarily.

Too much data can hide actual, actionable, answers hiding in your analytics. Those are the insights that relieve the growing pains of a scaling business.

Today we’re going to dig deep and learn how to unearth those vital insights. You’ll learn how to train your data to be actionable, so that your metrics are less overwhelming and your goals are more attainable.

Disciplining Your Data

Your data is only as valuable as the ROI from using it. If you’ve been in business for any extended period of time, you’re probably bursting at the seams with customer data.

It might seem impossible to organize your data into actionable analytics, but it’s never too late to reign in your metrics. It can even be quick and easy – if you know what you’re aiming for.

Give Your Data a Goal

First, you need to define a goal. A crystal-clear goal with trackable results.

Don’t go too broad. “Double last year’s revenue” sounds like a big, beautiful goal – but it’s made out of several, smaller, goals that need to be completed first.

Those smaller, more focused goals are SMART:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Actionable
• Realistic
• Timely

Applying these criteria ensure your goal is achievable. Even better, if you don’t achieve it you’ll be able to see what went wrong.

You should start with a problem, phrased as a question.

How do we convert more site visitors into customers?

From this question you can distill several stages of your sales cycle. You need to recognize site visitors as being separate from customers, for example. By breaking down your problem into relevant business areas, you can create defined SMART goals and use the correct data to analyze them.

We’ve broken down the 3 major stages of a buyer, from lead to customer, so you can see how your powerful your data is when it’s focused on a SMART goal.

Lead Data

A lead is anyone who hasn’t truly engaged with your product yet.

Maybe they’ve visited sections of your site, or entered their info into a form, or they might have even started a trial – but they haven’t engaged enough to be considered a true prospect.

Lead data includes:

• User flow
• Traffic source/channels
• Time on page
• Bounce rate
• Pages per session

You should have a pretty clear view of your target customer by now. If not, take a day to define exactly who your ideal customer is. What do they need to know before buying from you?

Apply that same knowledge to your lead acquisition process. If users are visiting your home page and then bouncing on the pricing page, you’ve got a few things to think about.

Is your traffic source sending leads who aren’t a fit (or ready to buy) to your site?

Are your leads being educated on why they need your product?

Is your website confusing, muddled, or difficult to use?

Analyze your lead data and come up with a single solution to test your hypothesis. If the bounce rate on your homepage is high, that’s a great place to start.

SMART goal: Improve lead retention rate X% this month by optimizing homepage messaging for our ideal buyer.

Prospect Data

Prospects are a bit further down the funnel. They’ve taken the steps to qualify themselves as buyers. This is usually the stage where your sales team should get involved.

But first, how do you define a prospect? What action can a lead take that will dramatically increase their odds of buying?

Once leads have taken that action, analyze their behavior with prospect data.

• Product engagement
• On boarding open rate
• Lead response rate
• Demo meetings scheduled
• Purchase rate

Are your prospects on the path to becoming customers? If you aren’t seeing steady growth, look for holes in your funnel by asking yourself:

1. Is your on boarding process clear and useful for your user?
2. Do your prospects have an accessible way to get their questions answered?
3. Is your sales team scheduling enough meetings relative to prospect volume?

If you’re willing to look deep, and remain honest, you can usually find metrics to improve at this stage of your sales process. The hand-off from marketing to sales is one of the biggest culprits when investigating low conversion rate.

SMART goal: Improve lead to prospect conversion X% this month by segmenting on boarding sequence according to traffic source.

Customer Data

Your customer data may be the most neglected, and plentiful, of all. It’s easy to forget about the users who are already paying you money while you chase the ones who haven’t yet.

This is a huge mistake. Existing customers are your best source of referrals, feedback, and renewals.

Examine your customer data to find opportunities for higher retention.

• Churn rate
• Customer/prospect ticket ratio
• Support response time
• Average deal size
• Renewal rate

Your customers are often the first sign that something is wrong with your sales funnel. If your product or support is lagging, they’ll be the ones to let you know.

Is your sales team closing deals regularly?

Are your customers renewing regularly? Are your most loyal customers referring new customers?

Is your churn rate increasing? Is churn higher among specific segments of users?

Being proactive is the best way to retain customers. Use your customer data to forecast problems and solve them before they escalate.

Keeping Your Data Disciplined

Analyzing your data through the lens of hyper-specific goals forces you to focus on what’s actionable. From there you can make dashboards that measure the success (or failure) of your goals, without digging through your other numbers every time you need an insight.

Consider each dashboard its own campaign. It should give you some insight into the performance of a particular part of your business. Then you can test and iterate until you’ve got a home run.

Maintaining laser focus on the analytics that matter, without being distracted by the ones that don’t, helps you restore the power of your data – without letting it overwhelm you.

XANT will soon be announcing full integration of high impact mailers into sales technology…. but I need your help.  We want to know your thoughts and opinions of high impact mailers so we can use these tools to their fullest potential.  

Take the Survey and Learn About High Impact Mailers

XANT Labs is currently running a survey called “The State of High Impact Mailers.”

Click below to take the survey on high-impact mailers. We’re trying to get as many sales professionals to take this survey, to make sure we’re as accurate as possible.  The survey only takes five minutes to complete. Your responses will be kept anonymous and only be reported in aggregate – and, of course, you will be able to get a copy of our research findings.

So go ahead, invite your friends and tell us what works for you!

Let’s learn together about how we can best use high impact mailers.

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:

Companies report only a 64% quota attainment, on average, for their sales development reps.

The “State of Sales Development 2017 study shows some stats on the activity and results of sales development reps in the United States. The report also looks at the sales technology systems they use and the structure of sales development organizations.

Sales Development in 2017 – How 900 Companies Do SDR

Here’s just a few things we learned with this poll:

• Sales development reps have an annual quota of $658K;
• They have around 14 meaningful conversations per day;
• They also send around 37 emails per day;
• And they place around 36 phone calls every day;
• They also  send around 15 voicemails and have about 8 social media activities every day.

The State of Sales Development focused on 900 companies and reviewed the four elements of building an optimized sales development organization: structure, technology, people and pipeline. The study was created by XANT in partnership with SalesForLife, BridgeGroup, Drift, Datanyze, OneMob, and Tenbound.

You can download the report below:

Or you can download the infographic that shows every-day activity of a sales development rep.

Over the last week, many news sources have tried to estimate the overall cost the eclipse would have on the U.S. economy. In one often mentioned article, it was estimated that the U.S. would lose nearly $700 million in productivity as employees stretched their legs and headed outside to see the live event. In my opinion, experiencing a natural phenomenon like this isn’t a waste of time, but being a numbers guy I couldn’t help but listen as one of our data scientists ran up to me after the eclipse was over and said, “Dave, youm won’t believe what happened during the eclipse!” Laughing out loud, I told him I knew exactly what happened as I had watched it with my own eyes. As only a true nerd could, he said, “Exactly!” and then he began showing me charts and graphs about the lost productivity North American sales teams experienced.

He showed me Mondays for the last year, and told me that today’s eclipse caused 7.7% fewer dials to be made than on a typical Monday. Interestingly, today’s activity numbers look more like a typical Friday, which happens to be the worst day of the week in regards to productivity.

When the team analyzed the exact time frame of the solar eclipse (11AM to 1PM MST) the data showed 18.5% fewer activities made in comparison to other Monday’s throughout the year. Notice in the graph that there typically is a lunch break that occurs but with today’s festivities, that lunch break was more dramatic and there was a dip in activity at 12:30 MST that normally doesn’t occur.

This might not mean much but then the team turned those productivity numbers into dollars and cents. In total, North American sales teams lost $72 million in productivity thanks to the solar eclipse. That’s a decent number but we have seen similar effects from the Super Bowl, FIFA World Cup, the US inaugural address, and NBA Finals.

Did the U.S. lose nearly 700 million in lost productivity due to the solar eclipse? I’m not sure but I can tell you that today sales teams lost $72 million. Truthfully, I think we’ll make it up tomorrow. If your company’s solar gathering was anything like ours, it wasn’t a waste, it was boost. I felt rejuvenated and refreshed after seeing such an amazing event and I know the rest of my team felt the same. Yeah, today we lost some productivity but I’ll bet you tomorrow we’ll make it up. What do you think?

• How many times should I attempt contact?
• How long should I wait between attempts?
• What methods are most likely to result in a conversation?
• What messaging will resonate with my potential buyer?
• When I should I give up?

These are only a few of the many questions sales reps consider when creating their optimal cadence. Because these cadences are built purely on intuition, the answers to the above questions introduce a variety of answers – many of which limit a sales rep’s ability to effectively turn prospects into potential buyers.

Place one call too many, and you tick off your lead.

Give up too soon on someone, and you will turn up short on quota.

So, what is the right cadence and how should companies begin building them?

Sales Cadence, Defined

I asked our Labs team — the research and best practice arm of XANT to see if they could crack the code. In analyzing 14,000+ cadences, made up of 144,000+ total activities, across nearly 9,000 companies, the team determined a more clear definition of sales cadence and uncovered five critical components for a successful cadence.

Their research revealed that an optimal sales cadence is a sequence of activities that increases contact and qualification rates. When cadences are performed correctly, they not only increase a rep’s ability to engage with a prospect, but they also educate them on how to become potential buyers.

Key Elements of an Optimal Cadence

Most sales leaders measure their sales teams’ productivity by the number of contact attempts per lead. While volume is an important part to a sales rep’s success, when it comes to effective cadence, the number of attempts is only one piece of the puzzle. Here are the five key elements:

1. Attempts: The total number of touch points made
2. Media: The type of communication methods used
3. Duration: The time between the first and last attempt
4. Spacing: The time gap between contact attempts
5. Content: The messaging used

For organizations to build optimal cadences, all five elements need to be studied and implemented. Unfortunately, this is where most sales teams go wrong. Oftentimes, reps think they have a strong sales cadence when in fact, the numbers tell a different story.

According to a research report by TOPO(1), sales development representatives believe they perform:

• An average of 15.5 touches per lead
• An average of a 20-day duration for their cadence

When we examined the actual data, we compared the TOPO averages versus our medians to eliminate the effect of outliers and the numbers were significantly different(2).

• 4.05 total attempts(3) – 26.1% versus the actual number
• 4.89-day duration(4) – 24.5% versus the actual number

Is it a wonder they’re all missing their numbers?

Surprised? I’m not. Most of us think we’re better than we are and more often than not, we judge ourselves as better than average in most traits.

What’s the best way to overcome this attitude? Have a professional point out that you suck. So, that’s what I’m doing. I’m calling your sales teams’ bluff and telling you not to believe everything you hear.

XANT’s Sales Cadence Audit Report

The “Cadence Audit – 2017” research report from XANT also showed that:

• The most common outreach practice is a single 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 a voicemail (6 percent)

When cadences are performed correctly, they increase a rep’s ability to interact with a prospect, educate them to become a potential buyer and prevent deals from falling through, the research report shows.

Perfecting cadence is a core component of both the art and science of effective inside sales. When sales reps lead with an unstructured cadence, they put potential sales at risk. Optimal cadences can boost results by up to 110 percent. These are not trivial improvements.

It’s crucial not to leave your sales cadence to chance.

Email Prospecting vs Cold Calling

Most commonly, sales cadence is picked subjectively by sales representatives in companies. They will simply cherry pick the method they find most convenient for contacting their leads or prospects.

And right now, the preferred method of sales communication is email.

However, much is lost in an email exchange –  a pause on the phone, or a subtle sigh, can offer you valuable input into a prospect’s situation.

Furthermore, in the later stages of the sales cycle, phone calls are much more valuable then emails for progressing a deal.

First, sales leaders need to establish the winning sales cadence strategy that works for their company. They also need to educate sales representatives to make sure sales cadence best practices are implemented.

XANT Sales Cadence Strategy

Building your sales cadence purely on intuition can limit a sales rep’s ability to effectively turn prospects into potential buyers. This is why we’ve created a research study. Using this research, you will be able to figure out how sales representatives contact their leads and how they follow up, and determine what are the best ways to improve your organization’s performance.

Download the executive summary of the Sales Cadence Audit to learn more.

· The five components of a cadence
· What are the baselines and benchmarks by industry for each component
· How to successfully implement cadence best practices in your organization

(1) TOPO’s 2016 Sales Development Benchmark Report. A summary can be found at https://blog.topohq.com/emergence-strategic-sales-development-2016-topo-sales-development-benchmark-report/

(2) The average attempts per lead was 6.60, still significantly lower than the TOPO data

(3) 4.05 represents the median and only includes calls and emails not social touches

(4) 4.89 is the median

We live in a world of inside out marketing. We’re guessing at who we are talking to. We are guessing at what we should say to them. We need to rethink how we are engaging with the marketplace. Chief Customer Officer at Big Willow, Neil Passero poses the question, how many deals are you missing out on? Many of your buyers will not be in your CRM, they are not responding to your marketing program but they are out on the web searching for you, searching for services, or searching for competitors. This is the power of data and particularly intent and behavioral data and if you can use this data effectively you can grow your sales pipeline significantly.

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

• The missing link in the sales process and why companies are missing out on a lot of sales deals
• The power of data and how it can help you sell more
• What is behavioral and intent data and how you can use it in your business

Links and Resources Related to This Episode:

• 116: The Three Value Conversations That Can Change Everything w/Tim Riesterer @CorporateVisions

• 114: Next Era Selling: Key Strategies to Make Your Business Unstoppable w/Britton Manasco @Visible Impact

• 115: The Digital Sales Revolution: Are You In Or Out? w/Mario Martinez Jr. @Vengreso

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