Inside Sales Best Practices

Continuing on the theme of demand generation (DG), the sales development rep. (SDR) role is important to any business. Of course, different companies have different titles for similar roles. Some call it an inside sales rep (ISR), while others call it business development representatives (BDR), or account development rep (ADR). Regardless of the title outbound prospecting (cold calling), is an important part of your demand generation plan.

Fundamentally, the objective of the SDR role is to generate sales pipeline. Naturally, that sales pipeline needs to be with solid opportunities that convert into closed-won sales (business that brings in revenue). Although part of the sales model includes inbound requests, there is no getting away from the need for outbound prospecting in this role. An SDR needs to know and understand the products or services they sell. They must target potential customers, connect and engage with them to book appointments for deeper discussions with account executives for example. A savvy and effective ISR also does their research into their prospect personas, and individual prospects - to personalize their messages and approach.

Before handing a marketing qualified lead (MQL) to a sales executive the SDR assesses whether the prospect is a good fit for the offering. By doing so the SDR ensures the likelihood the account executive will accept the lead, moving them in to the opportunities stage, and ultimately closing these deals.

An interesting study from Baylor University from 2012 looked at sales organizations, phone calls made by these sales teams, and their overall processes. One interesting finding from the study was that the average sales representative has to make 209 cold calls to generate one single appointment. I would argue that since 2012, I think this number has increased... perhaps to between 225-275 calls for an appointment. A CSO insights study from 2020 then showed that only 33% of a sales professionals’ time is spent actively selling. Combining these two results point to a clear need for efficient sales process design within ISR teams, to make sure they are effective, and making an impact.

On a brighter note, despite the challenges, according to Discover.org (now ZoomInfo), 75% of prospects have attended an event or scheduled a meeting based on a cold-call from an inside sales representative. In that regard, remember that your attitude counts. Close (2021) noted that 93% of cold-call success can be attributed to the tone of the sales professional’s voice during the conversation. So be engaging, and excited to speak with the prospect, for best results.

In this light I took up a conversation with Tim Reeb, an old colleague from a former company who has thus far, focused his career on inside sales practices. Tim has both been a business development professional as a practitioner, and has led several ISR teams. What follows is an afternoon discussion about his learnings and best practices on filling that sales pipeline.

Top 3

Before all else it's important to get the basics down. Learn the product and services that you are selling. Understand the competitors and the competitive landscape. Most importantly, understand the prospect to whom you are selling. Here is where persona research can be a good thing to understand what matters most to the prospects that convert into customers.

Second, is learning how to expose gaps. Knowing a bit about the prospect gives you the advantage of understanding their typical pain points. Understanding pains means you can quickly adapt your talk track with the customer, to focus it on existing gaps they currently have which are causing the pains. This technique not only builds rapport, it also opens the door to a further discussion about how to solve the prospect's challenges, ideally with the products and services that you sell.

Tim's third point is that it is all about persistence and grit. It's clear from the studies above that this is a numbers game. It's about having the discipline to get the basics down and to repeat the key sales process tactics over and over until you get a hit. Part of the grit factor is to understand that to be a BDR means you have to be able to take rejection. Straight up you're likely to get rejected many more times than you get to 'yes'. Those are the honey strewn, delicious positive moments that you savour, and that take you through the negatives to the next 'yes moment'. These positive moments are the ones that move the needle!

Part of this learning journey for the sales team is to make this job as measurable as possible. Truly, it is about finding the actionable insights and moving on them.

Inbounds vs Outbounds

Tim suggests that for outbound calling, ONLY reach out to people who look like your current converting clients. This point goes right back to knowing your personas, and making sure to speak to their pains. It helps to identify others who are similar to your existing clients in pain points, and situation. Make sure to know how they resolved their challenges with your product or service. Think about how tremendously powerful of case studies, here.

Qualifying inbound leads is easier than outbound prospecting. For newer members to your inside sales team it's wise to start them off with inbound leads. This starts building up some of their confidence. It allows them to have a few wins under their belt and to ultimately graduate towards outbound calling. However many teams won't be large enough or have enough inbound lead volumes for one SDR alone. In that case, mix the inbound and outbound calling to diversify each reps prospects.

For inbound lead qualifications it's easy to categorize these into three groups. Always work to answer the question “why are you here?” The first group is the inbound grouping, seeking education. In some cases these are literally students or university/college professors. This group is often easy to disqualify given that they are unlikely to purchase most B2B offerings (unless you are expressly selling into the education sector). If you are not selling into education, then disqualify with information from LinkedIn or ZoomInfo, before ever making it to the MQL stage. Second, are the people with problems who are seeking information on how to solve their challenges. This is your sweet spot group. This is also where sales reps need to spend most of their time. The third group are the partner requests. Depending on your company this could be interesting or may be referenced to your alliances group for followup.

Top Tools for Inside Sales

Two tools were most notable for Tim. First is Salesforce CRM, followed by Outreach or Salesloft. It is evident to all sales staff that Salesforce is the defecto standard for your sales system of record. Then think of Outreach / Salesloft as tools which are your ISR’s system of execution.

Systems of execution (Outreach and Salesloft), are in integral part of the SDR role. It takes away part of the unnecessary thinking about what is next on the process roster. Instead the sales rep knows exactly which is the next lead on which to follow up. These tools provide a list of all the contacts to which each rep must reach out, for that day. It also provides a sequence of activities. So, directly after a first call to Mary Winsalot, if the call resulted in a voice mail message left, the sequence might immediately send an automatic email to Mary informing her of the call. It may then suggest to the SDR that they connect with Mary on LinkedIn. Then it pops up the next prospect, scheduling Mary for another call tomorrow, with the rep. The beauty is that these tools make it easy to control the flow of the ISR routine, experiment with it, and get new reps up and running faster.

These tools track the activities of the ISR daily, scheduling followup tasks based on a sequence (set out by the ISR leader), and make sure the SDRs are always directed to next steps – without having to think about it or switch applications. The beauty of these solutions is that they help dramatically improve the efficiency of the sales development team. Given the earlier statistic that only 33% of an ISR’s time is spent on actively selling, improving the efficiency of the team if improving the impact of the team!

Keeping the BDR Team Motivated

Here, two things Tim points out are to be honest, and to be human (real) about things. Whether you have a remote sale team, or local and in-person; the SDR role is a difficult one. There are some great rewards to it, but there is no doubt about it ... it is a challenging role. As a leader, treat your teams with honesty, even when the news is not inspiring. Secondly, never lose sight that your team are people with feelings, wants, and needs. Don’t be a rude, difficult, or uncaring boss (note that I did NOT say leader in this negative context). Listen to your team’s concerns. Reflect on them. Formulate ways to overcome the challenges. Do it together, as a team.

The Inevitable Slump

Slumps happen to everyone. There will be times when nothing seems to be working, and nobody is picking up your calls. During those times it’s easy to become reflective and panic. But, don’t overthink things! Sometimes things just happen, despite having the best systems and methods.

Certainly, continually think of ways to improve your processes, but don’t try to change too many things at once. Double down on your activities. Be reflective on what you are doing as a team. Watch for even the smallest of successes, to learn from them – and repeat those actions.

Practice the improvement cycle: take action, get results, measure them, reflect on what works, adjust, and take action again (cycle repeats).

As an aside, a closely related article and topic is the review of Sales Development... a Primer. The book itself is an excellent read for any inside sales professional. The LinkedIn article is a brief summary of it. It is written by two long standing ISR professionals, who loved their work, had a passion for the profession, and made plenty of money becoming highly specialized, focused, and experts at the role.

Greatest recent Aha

Tim points to two important learnings in his career, in this role. User personalization, and start using video.

About personalization, people want to know that there are humans behind the email, or interactions. They want to know that a message actually came to them from a human, rather than a marketing automation system. As Tim put it, “I want to know it did NOT come from a robot!” Personalization, breaks through this, sending the message that you are real – to the prospect.

In that regard, use LinkedIn and put unique characteristics into your messages, where ever possible.

On videos, try short video messages in your introductions, and cold-emails. There is even the capability of including short videos within your LinkedIn messages. Try a short video with the person’s name written on a card in your video, like “Hi Bob!”. Another creative and good example is to include a screen shot of the prospect’s web-page, if it is the CMO you are trying to reach. It will get their attention as an opener, as long as you weave it into a solid storyline for your talk-track.

Then, keep experimenting, and looking for what works!

Many thanks to Tim Reeb, Sales Development Manager at Epsagon.