Whether Inside Sales is brand new to your organization or you're ready to branch out, starting out the right way is critical. We'll walk through the key components required to start and continue on the best path to success.
7. THE RIGHT INSIDE SALES MODEL
FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION
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1. Lead Generation - Fill the funnel
2. Discrete - Quota carrying
3. Hybrid - Inside/Outside
4. Teaming - Inside paired with Outside
“In 5 years, Inside Sales will
produce more quota than
outside sales.”
Dave Elkington, CEO, Inside
Sales
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Team Structure
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1 10
On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your Sales Organization’s alignments to
your Company goals?
1. Is your company a start up?
2. Are you rolling out a new product?
3. Are you going after a new segment?
4. Did you get all the headcount you wanted?
5. What are you doing different this year than last?
Team Structure
10. OVERVIEW
Generating Revenue
“Plan your work, work your plan.”
Can you confidently answer the questions:
1. How do you make money?
2. What’s your monetization path?
3. Where’s your revenue coming from? (What’s your Ideal
Customer Profile?)
4. How do you acquire customers?
5. How do you retain customers?
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11. ICP
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Demographic
1. Company Industry
2. Size of company
3. Buying team
4. Sales team
5. Use case
1. Who buys?
2. Why they buy?
3. What are they solving?
Quantitative
1. What product/service did they
buy?
2. How long was the sales cycle?
3. Successful win information
4. Loss information
Kite Desk blog post
19. NEXT STEPS
1. Determine Ideal Customer
Collect your data points
Who/which departments need to be a part of this
conversation and exercise
2. Acquire Customers
Determine how to get your solution in the
customer’s hands EASILY
Where are your customers and how do you go
after them?
3. Retain Customers
What does this need to look like?
Who should be a part?
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25. IDEAL PROFILE OF AN INSIDE SALES
PERSON*
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“The challenge facing Inside Sales Leaders around finding
qualified talent is staggering. In essence, today’s Inside Sales
person has to not only have phone, e-mail, and internet
competencies, but also the “chops” once seen in the very best
field sales people.”
Paul Macura, Vice President, Oracle Direct
*AA-ISP Training, Development and Accreditation Webinar 8/14
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Effective Job Descriptions
26. IDEAL PROFILE OF AN INSIDE SALES
PERSON*
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*AA-ISP Training, Development and Accreditation Webinar 8/14
The Old Inside Sales
•Good communicator
•Good on the phone
•Some sales experience
The New Inside Sales
•Excellent communicator
•Great on the phone
•Quota carrying inside sales experience
•Virtual presentation expertise
•Social Media skilled
•Video Capable
•Negotiating
•Closing
•Relationship/Account Management
•New Buyer Requirements
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Effective Job Descriptions
27. THE 4 KEYS PILLARS OF PEOPLE SUCCESS
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Effective Job Descriptions
28. JD EXAMPLE
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Effective Job Descriptions
At ABC, we <INSERT VALUE PROPOSTION> and are looking
for likeminded folks to join our team. The role of our <XYZ>
is absolutely mission critical in achieving our goals. Our
<ROLE> fulfill the important role of facilitating business
conversations with our prospects and customers, ensuring
we’re a fit for them, and making sure they are delighted
with our service.
In this role, people that have the below track record and
qualities are successful:
If you want to join a growing company where you can
leverage your professional skill set to <INSERT VALUE TO
CANDIDATE> and be part of a team that has tremendous
upward velocity, contact abc@abc.com
Learn more about <ABC> here.
Make it
exciting!
Be real!
What’s in
it for
them!
29. NEXT STEPS
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1. Benchmark you current job description
2. Identify areas of improvement
3. Determine plan to fix
4. IMPLEMENT
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On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your overall recruitment and retention
efforts?
1. Job Description Rating:
2. Networking Rating:
Effective Job Descriptions
32. WHAT SALES ONBOARDING REALLY IS
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Onboarding and Training
33. SALES ONBOARDING – NEXT STEPS
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Make it a part of your Hiring Strategy
Make it a part of your Team and Company DNA
Document, document, document.
Includes Product and marketplace information
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Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Result
Paperwork/intro
’s
Intro’s/downloa
ds from Product,
Marketing
Intro’s/downloa
ds from other
departments
Read, recap
Sales Process
Messaging
Recap/mock-
sales calls
Comfortable
with value prop
Read, recap,
shadow, tech
CRM
Sales Process
CRM/Tools
Sales Messaging
Review with
Leadership
Recap/mock-
sales calls
Comfortable
with VP in own
words
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Onboarding and Training
34. WHAT SALES TRAINING REALLY IS
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Onboarding and Training
35. SALES TRAINING – NEXT STEPS
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Make it a part of your Onboarding
Make it a part of your Team/Company DNA
If you’re a start-up, take away the option and make it
mandatory and round robin the team – have them join
webinars, read books, etc.
Document, document, document.
What verbiage – email and voice mail – work (Sales
Playbook, anyone?
Shadowing
Live call feedback
Create an editorial calendar with the team
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Onboarding and Training
43. WHAT YOU’LL BE DOING
Manage and Own Up
Leading down
Collaboratively work across departments
Motivate your team
Create and update process
Train and Onboard
Measure success and make adjustments
Known by their peers in the industry and community
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Leadership & Coaching
44. BY THE NUMBERS
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#1 Top Challenge for Sales Leaders
Training and Development
_% Manager’s Account for employee’s
variance in engagement
70%
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Leadership & Coaching
46. THE BASIC TABLE STAKE
1:1 Example Agenda
▪ By the numbers: goal to quota attainment
▪ Activity metrics review
▪ What went well this week?
▪ What didn’t go well?
▪ What should you work on next week?
▪ What do you need me to do?
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Leadership & Coaching
47. TRAINING AND COACHING CALENDAR
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Leadership & Coaching
48. NEXT STEPS AND RESOURCES
Why did you decide to become a Sales Leader?
Examine these motivations very carefully
What do you need to start doing?
What do you need to stop doing?
What type of Leader do you want/need to be for your team?
What actions are you taking to make this happen?
Create your overall Training, Coaching and 1:1 Calendar
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1. Jeffrie Story – Unleash your Sales DNA
2. WideAngle – 1:1 software and resource. www.wideangle.com
3. Ambition – connect your teams. www.ambition.com
4. Leisa Reid- Management Training
http://employeemanagementconsulting.com/
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Leadership & Coaching
53. DASHBOARD BASICS – KEEP IT SIMPLE!!
Does what your reps look at align to their goals?
Same question for you
Can they at-a-glance, look at their dashboard and
know where they’re at? (Both daily and monthly?)
Same question for you
Recommend setting up your dashboards and having
your reps start their day there
We can’t improve what we’re not measuring and we
certainly can’t pay on it.
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Reporting
59. WHO AM I?
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@DionneMischler
Professional
17 years in Sales and Technology
Built first official Inside Sales team in 2007
Today, Founder of Inside Sales by Design
President of AA-ISP OC Chapter since 2009
Personal
Born and raised in the Chicago Suburbs living in OC
International Business & Business Administration
degree from Carthage College
Married 9 years; Mother to 2 children
Passionate about Inside Sales and Education
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If you take nothing away, I encourage you at least start/continue your 1:1’s.
And here’s how. This is the culmination of all these efforts so far. and our example 1:1 <CLICK> Take a look at your coursework, you’ll see these examples and other dashboard. It all comes together. <CLICK> Activities breed outcomes and data doesn’t lie. Alignment is super important here. Training your people to talk the talk and walk the walk is critical. Circle back to the sales playbook session – see how it all comes together?
Having the data at your fingertips also helps in crafting your business case for money requests for sales tools. More to come on that in the next session.
Manager manages the process and doesn’t provide any more value.
Leader makes changes for the better.
What are your company goals? Is your sales team aligned to company goals?
By answering these questions and breaking it down into a sales process, you’ll be able to identify which type of sales roles you’ll need.
What are your company goals? Is your sales team aligned to company goals? Did you simply look at your territories and numbers and add X%? Or did you a bottoms up approach? And look at capacity of a territory?
Company goals: Bottom line/top line growth, customer growth.
Discussion: For example. Let’s say you’re just adding an IS function or wanting to step it up. What are they doing today? What’s the goal? How do you know if you’re successful? Is there a Sales Process to follow?
Are you adding appointment setting? Have their goals, examples, ICP
Very simple, way to start. Start with the demographic and this ties back to your ICP. As a sales leader, you’ve worked with marketing to focus your ICP – again, confirm, confirm, confirm. Is the target customer really the target? This affects your go to market, outbound/inbound strategies, etc. From there, you’d look at your quantitative info and dive into the What, How long, What does a win look like and what does a loss look like. Ties to your Sales Process and cascades down to your Sales Teams and Customer Success Teams. What you’re driving at is COS. You’ll want to leverage data to determine are the right people selling the right products/services to the right prospects/customers. This information also feeds into your UVP creation.
How do you make money? Let’s walk through defining the basic of money received in exchange for goods/services.
How do you get to your ICP? Where are those people? Online, events, etc. How do they buy? How do you aquire?
Sales plan along with your marketing plan.
Ok. You know your ICP, you’ve defined your UVP. Now, you need to go where your ICP/target audience is located. Where are they?
Now you’ve found your ICP AND where they’re located. Now the question is: Are you easy to buy from? If not, you’re customers will go somewhere else or simply not buy. Is it easy to buy from you? Do your customers know what to do when?
Once you have your ICP, you’ll need to determine your messaging to your audience. Practice, practice, practice. Validate, validate, validate. And once you have one prospect that has agreed to become a customer – how do you bring them into the family? Have a process with your early adopters, document, so it’s repeatable and scalable.
Sit down and sketch this out. It will definitely change, however, start the documentation process.
Are you able to retain your customers? Research tells us that it’s much less expensive to keep customers than it is to get new ones. Let’s walk through new customer acquisition cost – product creation, product marketing, marketing, sales, customer onboarding, customer implementation. Verses customer success.
From Bain and Co.
Alrighty, you’ve got your ICP, you’ve gone fishing successfully in the right spot. You’ve signed and onboarded a handful of customers – how do you keep them. There are ultimately two metrics to track your business – NCA and Customer Churn. Done correctly, your customer churn is 0. The point is to love on and hug your customers so they stay. There are a number of ways to do this to give value back to the customer.
Has Three Stages. I’m a fan of simple and this is a good way to start.
Who are they calling and what are they saying?
What are your company goals? Is your sales team aligned to company goals? Did you simply look at your territories and numbers and add X%? Or did you a bottoms up approach? And look at capacity of a territory?
Great to have segmentation and this great graphic from Predictable Revenue. Tailor it to your company and the desired outcomes. Build out a database or an incubation phase, expand, etc.
Company goals: Bottom line/top line growth, customer growth.
Discussion: For example. Let’s say you’re just adding an IS function or wanting to step it up. What are they doing today? What’s the goal? How do you know if you’re successful? Is there a Sales Process to follow?
Are you adding appointment setting? Have their goals, examples, ICP
According to date from Inside Sales.com and other, IS is growing at approximately 300% if not more. That # is probably higher. Quick poll – how many of you here are either starting or growing your teams?
So then the question becomes – how do you scale effectively? We’ve passed the “what” stage and are moving to the “How” and “why” stages. Having an effective onboarding and training program gives you the how and why. With the measurable results on the back end to course correct as you go.
On our previous slide we talked about recruitment and retention – it is amazingly hard to find IS people, regardless of role. Imaging going to work somewhere that set you up for success. Let’s go to the other side of the table – imaging being at a job fair and being able to tell candidates you have an onboarding program. Guess who gets the better candidates? Let’s talk about candidates for a minute.
Hire for you team and your culture….train skill. Make sure they’re able to ramp up and have the sales chops. Highly recommend an assessment before hiring. Jeffrie Story with Unleash your Sales DNA.
And here’s why. Remember, IS is growing. Be prepared. Our expectations are higher both as employers and as customers.
Look for these ideal qualities. Table stakes. Is your jd attracting candidates like these? Is your company attracting candidates like these? Are YOU attracting candidates like these?
Let’s take a step back and provide context. You’ll want to insure you have the right people in the right seat BEFORE starting Training and Onboarding. Recognize this is a process. NOT an event. These are all highly and tightly coupled. Starts with your JD – it’s your calling card and represents your brand and hiring manager. Would you want to work for you? Are you out there in the community? You’re here and that’s a start. So let’s dive into Training and why it’s important.
Go back to slide 13 and the table there. If you don’t have something documented, start with Word and a simple table. You don’t even have to be that specific right now, simply give yourself a framework. Here’s the key; USE the framework as you go, update it, and the fog will lift and your vision will become crystal clear. The point here is to start somewhere, anywhere, and determine where you want to be. Perhaps by the end of Q1 if you’re hiring people.
Better visual – I’ve always used the analogy of Lines on the Road. Consider Training and Onboarding the lines on the road of your Revenue Stream. And in order to proceed along that revenue stream, these pieces must be in place. How fast you go and how far you go, depend on these four key components being in place. They must also be consistent and effective. Measure, measure, measure.
So let’s talk about Onboarding.
Assimilation into your Company culture and Team culture; along with goals.
Your overall onboarding program will depend on your company, product, role and overall complexity.
Some good things to measure when onboarding: ability to capture and say company VP in own words both verbally and written. Mock sales calls go extremely well. Back in the day, the question was, can a kindergartener or 5th grader understand what you do? Now, the question is, if you were to explain to your parents what you do, would they understand?
Some organizations are putting in certification programs. If you’re not there yet, recommend setting a weekly cadence with your new hires with a definitive 30 day expectations.
I worked for a MSFT partner with 5 practice areas. The onboarding program I designed was 30 days of immersion before they were allowed on the phones. It was drinking from the fire hose – reading, reading, reading, and meeting with me twice a day to review. Went from me to 10 and 18 million dollars.
If you’re a transactional company, maybe you need 10 business days. Teach the product and then the value proposition.
This is NOT HR onboarding. That should actually be called Employee Orientation.
Begin with the end in mind. Where do you want your new hire to be at the end of week 1, week 2, week 3, etc.
Again, sales is about revenue. What happens when your people are onboarded appropriately, all departments have a stake in revenue generation.
Yep, drinking the kool-aid. This is ongoing and the desire of a true professional to master their craft. Sales is ultimately the ability to deliver results. You want folks that are walkin’ the walk and talkin’ the talk – representing your brand appropriately in the market place.
Sales training drives recruitment, retention, and provide a better oval customer experience.
As a professional, ongoing training is a must. It is for teachers, doctors, lawyers, insurance adjusters, etc. Not saying you have to embrace each and every new fad that comes out b/c sales has always been and always will be about the art of conversation. Training is about staying sharp. If you’re an athlete and work out twice a day in high school, then you go to college, get married, have kids, and work 60 hourse a week – guess what you’re not able to do…everything you did in high school. BUT, if you still worked out at least once a day, over the course of the next 20 years, you’d still have some game. Maybe not as fast and sharp, but you’d still have game.
Keep your sales saw sharp! Helps drive recruitment, retention, and the customer experience. Let’s briefly talk about all of those.
Recommend a Training Editorial Calendar
For example, I create a Sales Training Editorial Calendar and populate it with my team. And share with other departmnents. Do you have training or sales enablement?
It’s the blind leading the blind. (No offense to blind folks.) We’re meant to be constantly improving and as leaders (again, congrats for being here) it’s our job to keep our own saws sharp in order to keep our teams’ saw sharp. (I had two folks in my career that worked for me that felt they shouldn’t have to read “ work” books on their own time. Needless to say, some changes were made.)
Let’s keep our eyes open, our skills sharp….and to deliberately repeat….having a reputation as an organization that does these things, you will attract the right folks. Word gets around.
Folks today need and want specifics. Training and onboarding give everybody that clarity….and allow to improve or prune more expeditiously.
Go back to slide 17 and the table there. If you don’t have something documented, start with Word and a simple table. You don’t even have to be that specific right now, simply give yourself a framework. Here’s the key; USE the framework as you go, update it, and the fog will lift and your vision will become crystal clear. The point here is to start somewhere, anywhere, and determine where you want to be. Perhaps by the end of Q1 if you’re hiring people.
Now let’s go to Leadership – particularly Coaching and Reporting
Manager manages the process and doesn’t provide any more value.
Leader makes changes for the better.
It’s not about you. It’s about making your team successful. How do you do that? What does a day to day look like?
It’s not about you. It’s about making your team successful. How do you do that? What does a day to day look like?
Why does that matter?
AA-ISP Top Challenges Report & Trends from 2015
On-going
Speed
Industry & Product Focus
Time as an issue: setting aside the time to properly train and focus
Gallup - engagement
The leader. Yep, I said it, it’s the leader of the group that can make or break success. Here’s why: according to a recent Gallup poll, Manager’s account for 70% of an employee’s variance in engagement. Wow. Also according to Gallup, an engaged workforce outperforms it’s less engaged counterparts by 147% per share. Staggering.
Dionne
Here’s why being a good leader matters. People don’t leave bad companies, they leave bad managers. It’s about the people.
If you’re a leader, you’re a “people” and it matters . Especially now when candidates and employees have access to information on you too. A colleagues company let go of an executive because of his conduct over the weekend that was on FB. Integrity matters, ethics matter. Your reputation will follow you or open doors.
Our behavior and conduct matter and we’re constantly being observed – both consciously and subconsciously. Your team mimics your behavior. If you’re a leader who is never on time for the start of your meeting, guess what, your people aren’t either.
How are you doing in being a good example? And showing your humanity? Again, take a look at the Strength ID Checklist. Know your people and your people should know each other.
If you take nothing away, I encourage you at least start/continue your 1:1’s.
And here’s how. This is the culmination of all these efforts so far. and our example 1:1 <CLICK> Take a look at your coursework, you’ll see these examples and other dashboard. It all comes together. <CLICK> Activities breed outcomes and data doesn’t lie. Alignment is super important here. Training your people to talk the talk and walk the walk is critical. Circle back to the sales playbook session – see how it all comes together?
Having the data at your fingertips also helps in crafting your business case for money requests for sales tools. More to come on that in the next session.
If you take nothing away, I encourage you at least start/continue your 1:1’s.
And here’s how. This is the culmination of all these efforts so far. and our example 1:1 <CLICK> Take a look at your coursework, you’ll see these examples and other dashboard. It all comes together. <CLICK> Activities breed outcomes and data doesn’t lie. Alignment is super important here. Training your people to talk the talk and walk the walk is critical. Circle back to the sales playbook session – see how it all comes together?
Having the data at your fingertips also helps in crafting your business case for money requests for sales tools. More to come on that in the next session.
Let’s talk about reporting.
And before starting your planning process; keep this phrase in mind. Feelings and what we like, don’t matter. Data and actual evidence from our customers is the key in making decisions. The data will guide us in allocation of resources and time. Ultimately, keeping our Cost of Sales low while bolstering sales.
What are your company goals? Is your sales team aligned to company goals?
What are your company goals? Is your sales team aligned to company goals?
What’s on your dashboard? You should have two – MTD and YTD.