We just had a call with a customer who is booking 8% “Customers on the Move Signals” – to – SQL Ratio. Think about that! The AVG customer of ours receives 250 Signals (AT BATS) every month from our Signals database. 250 swings at the bat, every month, as a self-fulfilling prophecy of “Customers on the Move”.
Here are the three topics this week:
1. +90% email delivery success partnering with Voila Norbert.
2. Reports – where reps can’t / aren’t making money is alarming.
3. The Centralized Support team that’s changing the “Hours in Market” for Account-based Sellers.
+90% email delivery success partnering with Norbert.
We have tried so many tools, and partner agencies – and have fallen FLAT ON OUR FACE multiple times.
Then we partnered with Norbert.
Simple, effective, and most importantly – accurate.
Our customers are amazed. ZoomInfo, Lusha, and Apollo have been good, but this has been great.
There is a great article from PopUpSmart outlining the Top 15 email finding + deliverability tools for you to check out here.
Over the last month, we’ve had conversations with the top email deliverability experts in the world:
Jesse Ouellette @ LeadMagic
&
The team @ Revli
To summarize the top ingredients to success, here is what your sales & marketing team needs to focus on:
If a newer domain is – warm up the domain. Launching a newsletter? Launching a new company? Launching a new domain for lead capture? You need to spend 1-3 months “warming up” the domain. We partnered with Instantly.
Your email domain is like a credit score:
There is a collective credit score that every seller is improving or destroying.
Each email account has its own credit score. Specific sellers on your team are either improving or destroying your reputation.
What destroys the reputation?
Negative vs. Neutral vs. Positive Engagement. This is where your SDR / BDR team, strapped to a Salesloft or Outreach rocket is KILLING your reputation!
CRAPPY EMAILS
X
SUPER SCALE
= No one responding for a while
= Email Deliverability scores plummet.
= Email relegated from Inbox, to Updates or Promotion Inbox (GMail Systems), to Junk / SPAM.
It’s not just that your prospecting team is struggling with activity levels, but you have one hand tied behind your back because your email reputation is crippling.
Fixing email accuracy is one step toward recovery. At least people receive your emails, thus improving the probability of positive responses, thus improving your domain reputation.
REPVUE – where reps can’t / aren’t making money is alarming.
There are a series of websites that are now helping sales reps either:
- Select
- Benchmark
- Consider Migrating Into
Based on the “claimed” Sales Quota Attainment vs. Reality Sales Quota Attainment in companies.
This level of transparency is overall good for the sales ecosystem, but a real black eye for standard operating sales leaders.
Here are some of the alarm bells for companies, sales leaders, and sellers:
If I’m the CEO of one of these called-out companies, these websites are ultimately going to hurt talent acquisition and talent retention. Be prepared to defend your past outcomes.
B. If I’m a sales leader of these called-out companies, your talent will have their heads on a swivel. It’s really frustrating for a seller to be told “$100,000 base + $100,000 commission = $200,000 OTE” only to earn $126,000 for 2 years. The sellers leave, the territory has a hole, a panic sets in, you over-hire / under-qualify hire or promote, and the <50% sales quota attainment sets in.
C. If I’m a seller in an over-promised, under-delivering sales environment, I’m looking for the escape hatch.
What can you do to combat this?
100% Transparency – don’t run from this. This is like when companies ran from their Glassdoor reviews or tried to game the system… it almost always backfired. Embrace the suck. “It too shall pass”. You can’t do anything about the past. Only forge forward.
2. Make a plan with sales leadership/sales enablement to make this a Beacon of Light to which talent is measured. Make “Sales Quota Attainment” a front-and-center KPI that everyone in the company understands is critical. Help the team understand that this is a loop.
Great talent is attracted to a great probability of success.
Great talent wants reality to align with expectations.
Great talent will hit the sales quota.
More great sales talent will be attracted to our team and join.
We will “soften up” our market and steal market share from our competitors.
More and more customers will want to do business with us.
Thus, in turn, more and more great talent will want to join us.
The Centralized Support team that’s changing Productivity Time for Account-based Sellers.
There is nothing more infuriating to a sales leader than seeing sales activity low, and then hearing from sellers that “we’re so busy” or “we don’t have time for that”.
“I don’t have time” is code for either:
It’s not a priority in my eyes
I’m not interested
Either way, this is why 18% of your seller’s time is spent on Administrivia – $5/hr Tasks that have little value creation for your sales pipeline.
List building
Email finding
LinkedIn profile squirreling for Signals
Cadence/email crafting
Database entry
Email nurturing (when there is little customization involved)
LinkedIn connecting
But there is a WAY smarter way:
Centralized a Support Team. Some companies call this an LDR (Lead Development Rep), and some companies place this role under Revenue Operations.
Here is how it works:
Step 1 – Outline the Sellers you want to analyze
Step 2 – Have the seller (working with a sales leader) objectively outline all the tasks, actions, and activities they do in a day. OBJECTIVELY place that information in 1 of 2 columns:
$5/hr Task that anyone could do.
$500/hr Value Creation that this seller was BORN TO DO.
Step 3 – Calculate all the $5/hr Tasks X number of sellers, and you will start to see a Support Team that needs to form, responsible for offloading these Tasks. Now the Sellers can focus on the BIG ROCKS.
- Time on calls engaging customers
- More demo time
- Time-building relationships with the Buying Committee
- Deeper proposal / In-Contract reviews with customers
- Etc.
The Centralized Support team that’s changing the Productivity Time for Account-based Sellers.
FREE RESOURCE – Fortune 2000 Executive Job Change Alerts.
Do you sell into the Fortune 2000?
Curious to know which accounts are in the “Window of Change?”
The “Window of Change” is the First 100 days when an executive is:
- Newly hired
- Starts to evaluate the People, Processes, and Technology they need to change
- Meets vendors/partners to enact that change
- Acquires budget (typically at their end of Q1 board meeting)
- Starts deploying up to 70% of their remitted budget by > Day 100.
Be there first to plant the Seeds of Inception!
Free Resource:
Self-Generated Quota Gap & Activity Tracker
Do your Account Executives (AE’s) need more leads than Marketing can provide?
Do your Account Executives have a sales quota that’s larger than your current Inbound Marketing lead flow?
Each AE needs to understand their “Self-Generated Quota Gap” – the percentage of quota THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR not covered from inbound sources. They have to create this sales pipeline themselves.