Qualification and Sales Methodologies
One area where I think New Zealanders tend to have a different outlook on the rest of the world is Sales Qualification. There is nothing wrong with responding to enquiries. However, without the right qualification, you can be spending a lot of time with people that aren’t in a position to purchase.
I found this myself quite challenging when I first started at Salesforce too. All too often I’d be trying to convince people that what I had to offer was what they needed.
At Salesforce you have a monthly target – there is in a way like 12 financial year ends each year. If you’re not spending time with people or companies that are going to be spending money then very quickly you’d be on a performance improvement plan (PIP)
So shall we say, I learnt very quickly to respect my own time. That change in attitude made me approach sales differently. I learnt the art of making the uncomfortable comfortable. Having a set strategy in place on every Sales call. Is this person the decision-maker, do they have a budget for this project or is it an enquiry, what business problem are they trying to solve and what is the financial impact of the problem. Is there a timeframe that we can work to. These set of layering questions typically brought out their intent to purchase, how they were going about purchasing and what you had to do in order to win.
Having a target to achieve every month ensured that I respected my own time and worked on deals that would help me achieve that number.
Depending on the size of your business. It’s super important to make sure that you either have your A-player as the first contact for any prospective leads. Or if you are slightly larger that this A-Player is responsible for a team of Sales Development Representatives (SDR’s) who apply a well-integrated sales methodology that accelerates pipeline velocity.
If you have a large business an SDR team can really help accelerate your sales pipeline. They handle all the inbound leads and outbound prospecting. Its a great training ground for future Sales Executives.
I learnt that there are four key best practices you should follow in order to get the most out of this
- Data Quality – Clean Data from a marketing automation product like Pardot should always remain a top priority. Using Pardots functionality like lead de-duplication, lead assignment rules and nurture campaigns keep the right people engaged.
- Qualification – standardisation of qualification BANT does the customer have a BUDGET, are they in a position of AUTHORITY. What is the NEED and TIME when will the be expecting to make this happen? Is there a mutual fit by asking open-ended, layering questions. If everything stacks up here it’s about then giving this lead to a more senior sales representative introducing the parties with a focus on business pains.
When it comes to qualification it doesn’t just end on the first call. That’s simply the starting point. The customer may not have disclosed everything, someone else may have a different point of view. At every interaction continue to QUALIFY.
- Operational Rigor – Ohio State University did some really interesting research on lead response management and what impact it had on connecting with customers. When to get in touch with them and how many time to try them.
They examined three years of data across many companies that responded to web-generated leads. From over 15,000 unique leads and over 100,000 call attempts here are their findings.
When to call?
The study concluded that there was a 164% difference in getting contact from a first call if the call was made in late afternoon versus early afternoon.
How quick do you need to be?
There was a 900% increase in connection rates if you called the customer in the first 5 minutes versus 10 minutes. Getting someone to talk about your product or service when it’s on their mind pays big dividends
Persistence Pays off!
Always make at least six calls. The study concluded that 90% of the calls that made contact were on the 6th attempt. Most sales reps give up to soon.
- Team Motivation – there is no greater incentive in developing a sales methodology for your business than motivation. It’s not just about rewarding them financially. Make data transparent, have leader boards to create competition. Have a winners award. If employees know what it takes to see growth in their career that is tightly aligned to the success metrics of sales methodology. It drives that behaviour.
Moderno Solutions are experts in the area of building bigger pipelines, converting more deals using Salesforce technology. We’d love to have a discussion with you.