The epiphany has hit me like a ton of bricks. I’ve been told to tell sellers at SKOs that they are the “CEOs of their own territories”, yet only to see how little support sellers are given.
The average seller is spending 25% of their week on Administrative tasks (that’s more than >1 day per week, per seller!). https://blog.thecenterforsalesstrategy.com/how-much-time-do-your-salespeople-spend-selling
Let’s explore…
Here are the three topics this week:
1. The Future: Remove $5/hr tasks from sellers at scale. POD Selling, sales support.
2. Time Management / Pace Management neglected in a sales quota waterfall.
3. The counter-culture is emerging. Live / Experiential events for your C-level buyers.
The Future: Remove $5/hr tasks from sellers at scale. POD Selling, sales support.
Most sellers are on an island. Sure they have a LOT of sales tools, but those tools have created many times MORE work, not less. Specifically, $5/hr tasks.
The more that I scale offshoring sales & marketing support tasks for CEOs and Founders at Get Levrg, the more I see the parallels to sellers.
- Time is Critical
- Sellers are utilizing it well
- $5/hr tasks removed from the seller’s hands buy back much more time for $500/hr Value Creation.
$5/hr Task
- Find contact info for a prospective buyer
- Summarize Zoom call in CRM
- Build a Call Prep document
$500/hr Value Creation
- Have a phone conversation with a buyer.
- Have a Zoom call with a new prospect.
- Have a highly contextual meeting.
I see this massive opportunity. I call it P.O.D.
Preparation:
- The mindset of utilizing sales support offshore for a team of sellers
- Benchmarking “Time Vampires”
- Infrastructure to Success
Objectives:
- Accountability/ROI Metrics
- Support Rings (Levels of tasks removed from sellers)
- Workflows / SOP’s
Deliverables:
- Level 1 SOPs (ex. Email & Calendar management)
- Level 2 SOPs (ex. Call Prep documents)
- Level 3 SOPs (ex. Proposal deck design)
I’m going to be pulling on this thread hard in 2024.
Time Management / Pace Management is neglected in a sales quota waterfall.
We have an excellent free resource GAP Calculator – Quota Attainment & Activity Tracker which this version does not take into account a “Magic Date” (which we help develop with customers on Day 1 of the relationship).
What is the “Magic Date”?
This is where sales teams fall down. They develop quota attainment calculators that reverse-engineer goals into activities – great. However, I watch time and time again when the sales team misses their mark. They fall behind in their activities.
The magic number takes into account the realities of YOUR sales cycle velocity. The time it takes your sales team (on AVG) to win a deal. For example, your AVG sales cycle velocity is 90 days. If you create a new sales opportunity after Q4 of the year (let’s assume you have a calendar fiscal year end), then every opportunity created after October 1st is presumed to close in the next year.
The magic date is critical for your 2024 planning. You have to plot a course of action that accounts for that date. Again, if you have a 90-day sales cycle, you are building an activity calculator that is 9 months long, not 12! Everything new after that magic date is for the following year.
The counter-culture is emerging. Live / Experiential events for your C-level buyers.
Mark my words. 2024 will have a major rebound into live events. I’m writing this from Milan, Italy where I spoke in front of +500 CEOs and CROs, and I had many conversations about my prognostications.
Thesis – in the world of AI and email Automation, CXOs are really tired of trying to learn best practices from their computer screen. Most CXOs are older than me (I’m 45 years old), and they previously learned best practices at live events/networking.
Like any counter-culture, as the world accelerates left toward AI, there will be a healthy counterculture looking right to do the opposite.
I think live networking events HAVE to be a part of your sales & marketing mix in 2024. While they feel subscale, their sales conversations are typically 2-3x better than outbound leads/opportunities. Get your sales team ready to press palms again.
FREE RESOURCE – Activity & Pipeline Gap Calculator
Does each of your sellers know the exact number of conversations they will need to have next month to highly influence Pipeline Creation?
Have they accounted for the headwinds and tailwinds?
- Leads from Marketing
- Leads from the BDR team
- Leads from Channel Partners
What is their ‘Self-Sourcing’ GAP?
How many opportunities do they need to self-source?
How many conversations will be required to create enough opportunities to win?
