Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Feb 23, 2009 @ 01:00 AM
There has been quite a bit of discussion on this site on the subject of Call Metrics, or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Just how many calls per day should a rep make, anyway? Much of the talk has been about whether telesales reps' KPIs are fair, and how the numbers are derived in the first place. In my opinion, the only valid call metrics are the ones are quantitively tied to quota.
Here's a model that you can use to determine if yours are meaningful. If you're an inside sales rep, see if these synch with the ones you're using now. If you're not using metrics right now, create your own chart, and you can see how many calls you'll need to make each week to make quota. If you're a manager, building a model using the formula below can be a great way to help your inside sales reps meet quota. If your ultimate objective is qualified leads or appointments, just substitute those outcomes for "sales."
You'll want to devise both a Weekly Sales Quota sheet, and a Daily Call Quota sheet. I've added straw figures as examples, and they'll be different than yours. In my telesales training courses, we always cover how measuring success is an important way to increase sales numbers. Use this model to chart your sales success.
How to derive a Weekly Sales Quota sheet for Telesales Reps:
1) What's the rep's total monthly sales quota? (Let's say $100K)
2) What's your company's Average Sale Price? (Let's say $5K)
3) Divide sales quota by ASP to get Total Number Monthly Sales needed to make the rep's sales quota: (Result is 20 sales)
4) Divide Total Number Monthly Sales by 4 to get Total Weekly number of Sales to meet quota (Result is 5 sales per week)
How to derive a Daily Call Quota sheet for Telesales Reps:
To begin determining your own company's Daily Call Quota sheets, you'll need to know:
1) Your rep's monthly sales quota (see above)
2) Your ASP (see above)
3) What your company's suspects-to-prospects ratio is
4) What your company's prospects-to-proposals ratio is
5) What your company's proposals-to-close ratio is
Here's a model used by one company: Let's say that for every 100 suspects:
1) 20 become prospects
2) 5 of them typically reach the proposal stage
3) 3 of them close
Therefore, a rep would have to call 200 suspects per week (40 calls per day):
1) To get 40 prospects (8 per day)
2) To generate 10 proposals per week
3) To generate the 6 closes per week needed to slightly exceed quota
Ramp-up time: How long after a proposal is generated does it typically take for a sale to close?
If you use this model, there will be a ramp-up time equaling the time it takes a sale to move from proposal-to-close stage. If the time is typically one month, then your reps should be fully productive using this model by the second month of its implementation.
As an exercise, plug in your own figures, and you'll have a good idea of the call numbers you'll need to make to succeed. Constantly exceeding quota is one of the 20 characteristics of a superior inside sales rep. Develop your own KPI figures, and add them to your Best Practices playbook.
So that's a formula I've found successful. What's yours?
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Feb 16, 2009 @ 01:00 AM
As a telesales rep selling technical products and services, you're probably using presales tech support, a sales engineer, or a systems engineer, often popularly known as an SE. This provides high value to the prospect as a major part of the consultative sales process, but it also provides high value to you, the inside sales rep. Without the SE, sales wouldn't happen. In my experience, SEs love being part of the sale, they celebrate when sales are made based on their expertise, and frankly, aren't appreciated enough. I always bring this up in my telesales training courses, because it's so important. There are 5 important rules in working efficiently with your SEs, and if you follow them, you can increase sales pretty dramatically. Here they are:
Basic SE rule #1: You don't have to (nor, in many cases, should you) be on the telephone with your SE during a tech call. Because:
- Your time is better spent making sales calls to prospects and customers
- Your SE is capable of handing the call in your absence, provided you've given him or her the data needed to represent you
- SEs expect to be able to handle the call alone
Basic SE rule #2: Provide a feedback loop to your SE, so he or she can assess team-prospect progress
- After you've fully qualified the opportunity, try to get your SE engaged right away. SEs enjoy being part of the sales process.
- SEs might be able to help you to propose a more effective solution. (And by the way, SEs are typically trained to suggest more effective solutions to you, not the prospect).
- In pre and post-call debriefing, discuss ways your SE can help you in upselling (expanded feature sets) and cross-selling (complimentary products and services).
- Post-demonstration: ask the SE to send all relevant issues to you, to use in your follow-up call to the prospect.
- Ask your SE to copy you on all prospect-SE correspondence (you can then cut & paste it into your CRM, or drag & drop into a correspondence folder particular to each field rep
- Tell the SE about any account-specific needs (e.g. a larger-than-usual opportunity, a "challenging" prospect, etc.)
Basic SE rule #3: Respect (and work with) your SE's time constraints. An example? Short-time calls. SEs can field ad-hoc calls on an as-needed basis, but there are several things you can do to help them use the time efficiently (so they can help as many of your telesales colleagues as possible). Here they are:
- Tell the prospect that you can get him or her five minutes or so with an SE right now, provided that one is available and off the phone. This will help set the expectation on the part of both parties that the call will not be a long one.
- Recognize that "a quick sec" is never just that, from you to an SE, or a prospect to an SE.
- As an alternative, you can set up a scheduled time for the prospect to talk with an SE, if longer is needed.
- Best of all worlds: ask the prospect to forward an email to you, with the tech issues defined. The SE can then get back to the prospect efficiently, and effectively.
- When using a calendar to schedule a prospect-SE discussion or demonstration, always tell the prospect that it's tentatively scheduled, based on confirmation that the time hasn't been booked simultaneously by the SE. Fill out the schedule in your calendar, then email the SE, requesting confirmation.
- Use instant messaging for quick questions, when you're engaged in another task.
- Ask your SE to let you know when the evaluation you've sent out has been "handed off" to someone else.
- On scheduled demonstrations, make sure to invite all prospects well ahead of time, to ensure your SE's time allotment is well-used.
That leads to Basic SE rule #4: Always provide the SE with the information he or she needs to make the call successful for you. The information consists of:
- The URL for the prospect's company (the SE can help you more if he or she knows what your prospect makes)
- Your CRM data filled out properly, so the SE can see what you've been discussing with the prospect, and how far you've gone in the qualification process. Make sure you have the title of your contact, as well as his or her mobile number. Important qualification for the SE to know would include:
- the business reason that your solution makes sense for the prospect
- when the prospect needs to have a solution on board
- what the prospect needs to see or hear in order to say "yes"
- what your next step is with the prospect, after the tech call has taken place
- an explanation to your SE the logical reasoning behind any unusual/non- standard request regarding a prospect transaction.
- Information about any other competitors that may be involved
Basic SE rule #5: Make sure your SEs know they are appreciated. Here are four ideas:
- SEs need to hear about sales wins as much as you do. Let them know how much they've helped to make the sale go through, and thank them.
- Don't burn their time on unqualified calls. Ensure that each call you refer to an SE has been qualified first.
- If you have a number of SEs, ask your least-familiar SE to help you with a prospect, then take him or her out to lunch to discuss business, philosophy, and fun.
- Make sure they always get credit on the OPF (order processing form).
So now you have some great thoughts on better ways to work closely with your sales engineers. They are an extremely critical piece in the technical sale, and far too often they're taken for granted. But believe me, every sales person cries when a great one leaves the company. And if you treat them right, they won't want to leave the company, and will continue facilitating your sales success. Why don't you do something nice today, and take your SE out to lunch. While you're at it, you can ask how you can make his or her job easier in trying to win you the sale. And add superior communication with your SEs to your Best Practices playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Sun, Feb 15, 2009 @ 02:15 AM
In a management blog I read recently, the following question was asked by an Inside Sales Manager: "As a sales leader, would you rather spend your energy mentoring the timid or teaching the superstar? I am curious as to your thoughts on whether or not it is more appealing to train shy and unproven rep into a confident producer or instruct a sales superstar into a humble team player? Why?"
I put this under the category of having a good challenge instead of a bad problem. In the real world, we often work with both categories of reps. Most of my clients have a mix of junior-level reps - some right out of college - that begin as lead qualifiers, and senior level reps. And yes, some of the senior reps have egos (years ago, before I started my telesales training company, I was one of them.) Ideally, you want the junior reps to learn sales skills from the senior reps, so a good approach is to set up a situation in which a senior rep can mentor a junior rep without the senior rep losing productive time. There are many ways of doing this, but one way is to ask the senior rep to take the junior rep out to lunch one day every two weeks or so, impart a proven, effective sales tip over lunch, and have a discussion about it. Have the company pay for lunch. The sales superstar will then be a team player (although not necessarily humbled), the junior rep will learn from one of the best, and management will have the best of both worlds: a senior rep that's highly productive, and a junior rep that's quickly improving his or her sales skills.
Some of the best inside sales reps I know today were fresh out of college when they attended my telesales training courses. They were terrifically smart, but a bit scared, and they took to mentoring right away. I paired them with senior reps during class exercises, and the senior reps loved "showing their stuff" with a room full of ready ears. During the ensuing months, the junior reps kept learning at a fast rate, as the mentoring relationship became less formal and more collegial. Bottom line? Team communication is improved, the senior rep continues at the highly productive rate, and the junior rep begins to increase sales faster. If you're a manager, consider using this technique to make your team work more cohesively. Add it to your Best Practices playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Feb 09, 2009 @ 02:55 AM
Most of us in the inside sales business couldn’t predict
that we’d be in this profession when we were in school. We had many different
proposed career tracks, and I’ll bet very few of us had “high tech inside
sales” as a career target. But somewhere along the line, someone took a risk on
us, hired us with little or no experience, mentored us, and kick-started our
careers.
I often think of Perry Lynne at Atron, who hired me to sell
software development tools even though I barely know the difference between a
bit or a byte, or Dave Retz, one of the developers of ARPANET, who hired me (a
commission-only photocopier salesperson at the time) to sell X.25 gateways running on the
IBM Series/1. Both Perry and Dave took a chance on me, even though I didn’t
have the credentials to work for them. And very few weeks go by when I don’t
think of how much they contributed to my career by taking that chance. So this
week I called both of them to thank them.
The "thanks" was long overdue, but they enjoyed hearing from
me, hearing about my subsequent successes, and learning how they contributed to
my career, even though many years have passed. I started reflecting on how
sometimes we all forget to thank the people that got us here. In most cases,
they did take a risk, because I think few of us were all that well-qualified
for our first inside sales job. Today, I’m getting my nephew into the business.
He’s bright, great with people, and a hard worker. And someone’s going to take
a chance on him, too, and he’ll be a great inside sales rep.
Today, I’d like you to consider the person that jump-started
your career. Why not make a call out of the blue to say thanks for believing in you when you were starting out. You’ll make that
person’s day.
The other thing I’d like you to keep in mind is the value of
doing some mentoring yourself, and getting someone into the business. I know
tremendous inside sales reps that were pulled out of auto parts stores,
restaurants, and administrative positions. Someone saw their potential, and got
them involved. And this cross-pollination of people from different walks of
life is one of the things that makes our profession an exceptional one, and
never dull.
Whenever I teach an inside
sales training course, I’m invariably asked about motivation, and discussions on ethics arise as well. And on these
two topics, I think that both thanking someone important to your career and helping a
great person to get into the business carry elements of both ethics and
motivation. Add these elements to your Best Practices playbook. Maybe one
day, you’ll get that thank you call yourself.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Feb 02, 2009 @ 01:13 AM
What makes a superior salesperson? I don't mean merely successful. I mean superior. This question was posed by Ian and Jennifer, two very astute Inside Sales Managers with whom I communicate on a frequent basis. After training and coaching hundreds and hundreds of telesales reps, I do have some answers, because I've worked with many of the best. The list of the key elements that made these reps superior isn't long, but it raises the bar over which a rep must jump in order to constantly over-achieve and outperform others. And the list isn't just about superior sales characteristics either. It's also about superior habits in the workplace. I've broken it down into Superior Sales Characteristics and Superior Work Habits. Take a look:
Superior Sales Performance Characteristics
1. Achieves the sales goal of being over quota every month.
2. Has a sales-oriented call objective for every call. Every call must result in a sale, an agreement to action, or disqualification.
3. Turns cold calls into warm calls by doing pre-call research, both on the CRM system to determine previous same-company contacts, and on the prospect's website, to look for conversation points that could dovetail with his or her solution offering.
4. Habitually begins the sales process by calling the highest level executive responsible for his or her solution set.
5. Fully qualifies the prospect on the first call.
6. Is able to determine the quantifiable business need (return on investment) of the prospect for his or her solution on the first call.
7. Is able to make a concise value statement about his or her offering.
8. Has memorized answers for every question and objection that could occur in the call.
9. Is a territory expert: has had discussions with at least one high level executive in every Major account or Target account in his or her territory, and knows the sales status in each company.
10. Keeps stellar notes in the CRM detailing critical conversations and account status.
11. Has documented the decision process in each account from lower-level contacts directly to the CXO level.
12. Is customer-focused: strives to ensure that his or her offering betters the lives of his or her customers.
13. Sells consultatively: is considered an expert resource for those to whom he or she sells, as well for in-company colleagues.
Superior Work Habits
1. Works a full complement of territorial hours: for example, a rep working in the Pacific Time Zone with an Eastern Time Zone territory works 6 am to 3 pm.
2. Doesn't complain, but rather offers well-thought-out solutions to internal company problems, taking into consideration the financial realities, culture, and politics of his or her company.
3. Stays away from non-work-related computer and social activities during working hours.
4. Enthusiastically supports internal initiatives from his or her Sales Management team.
5. Focuses on the positive, staying away from gossip regarding other individuals or his or her company.
6. Is constantly in self-improvement mode through coaching and learning experiences.
7. Takes the "high road," acting ethically, honestly, and with consideration to others, to prospects and customers, as well as in-company colleagues. And always keeps his or her word.
You might know of additional superior characteristics. If you do, please post them to the blog and share them with others. In the mean time, adopt these practices if you're an inside sales rep, and share them with your team if you're an inside sales manager. Add them to your Best Practices playbook.