 |
 | Contact Us |
|
| Return to MWJ Home
| ||||
|
June 2009, Issue 64 |
Sales Engagement
What's the Buzz About Sales 2.0? Q&A from Sales 2.0: How to Get Started, with Jim Banks, CEO, ShadeTree Technology; and Sally Duby, President, Phone Works LLC 
In this Q&A from the ShadeTree Technology live Webinar, Sales 2.0: How to Get Started, Sally Duby of Phone Works LLC and Jim Banks of ShadeTree Technology answer questions about Sales 2.0 implementation, how to start an inside sales team and how to change the culture of your sales organization. Bonus material: We've included responses to questions that were not covered during the live event. View the on-demand Webinar.
 Sally Duby, Phone Works LLC: Great question. There are two areas that would yield pretty quick results. One is understanding and having your sales process documented and looking to see where you've got some challenges—perhaps your conversions might not be where you expected them to be, or maybe it's your close rate or not getting enough people signed up for a demo or a trial. And then looking at applying technology to those challenges to help increase efficiency and effectiveness. There are so many great technologies out there, such as ShadeTree, that can really have a huge impact on your results if implemented properly.
The second place is looking at how you can implement a low-cost sales channel such as inside sales or sales development qualifying leads to impact the performance of your field sales team, and to help get them focused on bringing in what is typically new business, the higher dollar business. Give your sales team only the really "quality" leads to work on. Q: Jim, according to our recent poll, 47% of you said that outside sales was responsible for qualifying a prospect. How can outside sales take advantage of Sales 2.0?  Jim Banks, ShadeTree Technology: The whole idea of lead qualification, whether it's the responsibility of the outside person or a middle person if you will, such as Marketing, is predicated upon understanding clients' needs. So a field sales organization in some regard is best suited to understanding those needs. The issue is the cost of using high-priced outside salespeople to do this kind of work. The first thing that field salespeople need to do is to become more inside-oriented when they're doing their lead qualification. If their charter is to find that new lead, they need to become a tethered headset-oriented sales professional and to be able to focus on a particular area and to make extensive use of their CRM system. So they're going to be calling on a particular type of decision maker, about a particular product offering, and find 5 to 10 of those, and then power through those, and then move on to something else.
The best way that outside salespeople can take advantage of Sales 2.0 is to take an inside approach and make extensive use of social networking such as LinkedIn, ZoomInfo and others, and then get on the phone and become more "inside-like." Q: Sally, Sales 2.0 seems to rely heavily on effective inside sales teams. What's the best way to go about building an inside sales team from scratch? Sally Duby, Phone Works LLC: I would always start off with a pilot. You take an area or territory of the company where there are people who are really receptive to an inside sales team, who will support it. And then you do a 12-week, 16-week or 20-week process. But the point is that you set them up for success. It's a lot more than "here's a person and here's a phone and go do it." You need the right process, the right leads to support them, the right technology to support them, and an understanding of what you need to measure and track. Once everyone sees how well it works, and it starts generating excitement, then, as we saw with a medical device company we worked with, you've got all the field salespeople saying, "Hey, I want one of these groups; I want a group like that to support me in this way." Rather than having salespeople feel threatened, they're buying into it because they can see some tangible results happening in another area. Q: Sally, some of these strategies require a significant change in the culture. Where do you start making that change, with your inside sales or with your top performers? Sally Duby, Phone Works LLC: Inside sales seems to be a natural place to start. A lot of these Sales 2.0 principles we've actually been doing for a long time. So the adherence to process and metrics and measurement and technology are all pretty standard for inside sales organizations that are running well. On the other hand, if you have some top performers who are really open and willing to change, then that is also a great place to start, so you could do both and address the change in culture from both angles. Q: How does a company best prepare its sales force to converse with all its different buyer types? Jim Banks, ShadeTree Technology: The first thing to identify is who the buyers of the organization's products are. For example, is the product purchase typically recommended by a technical buyer or team and approved by an executive? Analyzing past transactions with the sales teams involved in closing those transactions will provide the needed answers to identify the different buyers and influencers. Once that has been established, a selling organization can look at the role of these different buyers and determine what was important to them in terms of their decision-making criteria. This information provides the foundation to formulate messages that will capture the attention of these buyer types in a call prompt, script or e-mail. The marketing team may also add value in this area. Q: Jim, does a company have to use Salesforce.com or buy the ShadeTree application to improve lead qualification? Jim Banks, ShadeTree Technology: No, lead qualification improvement is based on a few simple actions that can easily be practiced by anyone. First is to understand your unique buyer types and create effective messaging that gets the buyers' attention as we previously discussed. Second is doing adequate research on the company and actual lead. Next is to have a constant and consistent approach to lead follow-up. Assuming a company is generating leads through marketing efforts or the sales team is doing their own direct research of organizations that are likely to buy or consume the selling organization's product, which culminates in a person to contact, initial calls and timely follow-up are critical to success. One phone call rarely converts a lead into an opportunity, so scheduling the next action and executing that action 100% of the time separates the professionals from the rest of the pack. ShadeTree's product working with Salesforce delivers data and workflow that simply makes these actions easier and faster. Return to MWJ Home Jim Banks is Founder and CEO, ShadeTree Technology, and Sally Duby is President, Phone Works LLC. Marketing Watchdog Journal is a monthly newsletter from Bulldog Solutions, a lead optimization and lead management company dedicated to helping our clients generate more, better leads and turn them into revenue. We welcome your feedback on this newsletter's content and design, and encourage you to share your ideas for topics you would like us to cover in future issues. Please send your comments or questions about Bulldog Solutions to Amy Bills, Director of Field Marketing. |
 |
HOME | PRIVACY POLICY | CONTACT US © 2009 Bulldog Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved. |