A Unique Understanding of Inside Sales Compensation: Take Our Survey

We’ve just released our annual survey covering compensation for inside sales professionals. The survey evolves every year with the help of our clients and the inside sales community, who review and edit the questions before we release it. It’s crucial to get the questions right, as an increasing number of companies start up or grow their own brand of phone and Web selling initiatives. Because we at Phone Works spend every day starting up, expanding, optimizing and testing inside sales groups of all sizes, we have a unique perspective on what inside sales professionals and their executive managers need to understand when budgeting and structuring incentive compensation. Asking, “What do your inside sides reps earn in base salary and commission?” is no longer a specific-enough question, as specialized roles emerge.  Consider, for example, the differences in hiring profiles, job requirements, objectives and compensation in the following positions:

• “hybrid” (inside/field) reps who spend most of their time “inside” but also travel when appropriate
• reps who engage, generate and qualify sales opportunities but do not close
• reps who manage a territory with a field rep partner and carry a team revenue quota
• reps who only sell new business or only sell to existing customers
• reps who only renew service agreements or subscriptions monthly, quarterly or annually
• VPs, directors or managers who have other managers reporting to them vs. a team of reps as direct reports

Take a look at the (free) compensation survey reports we’ve produced in the past. And if you want early results that will help you with end-of-year planning and budgeting, take this year’s survey now.

Top 4 Sales 2.0 Initiatives for Q3 & Q4

Companies are emerging from their mid-year planning meetings having evaluated their sales performance for the first half of the year, and sales managers are resetting priorities for the third and fourth quarters. In Phone Works’ consulting work with large and small companies across industries, we are observing some trends.

Here are the top four Sales 2.0 initiatives we’re seeing for the second half of 2010:

1. Closer Analysis of Sales Cycle Metrics and Conversions

Sales 2.0 managers are realizing that measuring only revenue is not enough if they really want to improve sales performance. They are defining, measuring and analyzing sales cycle steps — based on how their buyers buy — and they’re getting a better grip on forecasts, and well as a clearer understanding of where both their teams and individual reps need help.

2. Alignment of Sales and Marketing

Whether they call it “closed loop,” “demand to close” or “click to cash,” Sales 2.0 leaders are attempting to work more closely with their marketing peers to integrate the functions. Their goals are to agree on the best-qualified prospect profiles, engage the right buyers, track and measure the results and ROI of lead generation marketing programs, and determine hand-off processes from marketing to sales — and vice versa, if a buyer isn’t ready to make a purchasing decision and is better served through a lead nurturing program.

3. Scrutiny of Technology ROI

Amid all the promise of Sales 2.0 technologies, many Sales 2.0 companies are getting smarter about determining the impact of technology on their sales results. In some cases, managers who previously implemented systems in hopes of a quick fix are now revisiting adoption and rollout plans and analyzing their sales processes to see where technology can accelerate or improve their sales. By establishing before and after metrics, Sales 2.0 managers can better justify what can be substantial investments in time and money associated with new technology purchases.

4. Creative New Ways to Engage Prospects

It is getting increasingly difficult to get the attention of our overworked, overstimulated buyers, who are being bombarded by marketing campaigns and sales calls in multiple media. We know personal, timely messages that are relevant to our prospects are the only ones getting through, but even these carefully crafted e-mails or voice mails can be lost in sheer volume of messages in the average business decision maker’s inbox. Sales 2.0 professionals are experimenting by sending personal notes by snail mail; including videos in e-mail; posting comments on prospects’ blogs; reaching out via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn — anything to stand out from the crowd and get a response.

Have you redefined your sales priorities? What are YOUR key initiatives for the second half of 2010?

Tags: Engagement, marketing and sales alignment, Sales 2.0, sales process

Sales 2.0 Book Available in Chinese

“Sales 2.0″ coauthor, Brent Holloway, writes:

We are pleased to announce our book, Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology, was recently translated into Chinese by our publisher, John Wiley and Sons. Several thousand copies have been ordered.

According to Wikipedia: “The economy of the People’s Republic of China is the third largest in the world, after the United States and Japan, and China is the fastest-growing major economy in the world. The market-oriented reforms China has implemented over the past two decades have unleashed individual initiative and entrepreneurship.”

With more than 1.3 billion people, China has more than four times the population of the United States. China’s economy is developing across a wide range of industries, and we anticipate their businesses will leverage many of the innovations and lessons learned from other businesses in more developed economies around the globe.

We give examples in the book about how the Sales 2.0 concepts and practices are applicable to a wide range of industries, not just technology. Likewise, we believe Sales 2.0 will apply to a wide range of geographies, not just the United States. We look forward to feedback on the book from our readers in China — as well as to learning about how they apply Sales 2.0 practices in their businesses. We will share that feedback with you in future posts.

Tags: China, Sales 2.0

Guest Post: B2B Sales Reps Need to Become Better Marketers

This is a guest post by Chad Levitt, sales executive at HubSpot. A previous post features my interview with Chad, “How an Inside Sales Rep Built a Million-Dollar Pipeline Using Social Media,” which is one of the most-read posts on this blog.

What do you think about what Chad has to say? Can sales reps do an effective job at marketing?  Should they spend time writing blogs and creating other content? What are your thoughts and experiences?

Here are three realities in the B2B sales profession:

1. It is harder to reach your customers and prospects by phone and e-mail.

2. Your customers and prospects are less willing to meet in person.

3. Your customers and prospects are busier and more distracted than ever.

The hard truth is that customers are getting better at ignoring our sales efforts, they are less willing to meet, and they are more distracted than ever. Despite these three realities, quotas are not going down, and you are paid to meet and exceed your numbers.

How do you do it?

You create a sales strategy that complements your outbound activities with innovative inbound marketing strategies. For those new to inbound marketing, it is a discipline that uses search engines, SEO, blogs, and social media to help customers find you. There has been a shift in power from B2B sales reps to buyers. To take advantage of this shift, inbound marketing was born and is revolutionizing the way companies market in a Web 2.0 world.

Many inbound-marketing strategies can be adapted to the sales rep’s role. The combination of outbound/inbound marketing strategies will help you create higher levels of awareness with customers and prospects. You will get in the door more often, so you can create the relationships that allow you to sell.

Here is a big idea: You need to stop seeing yourself in the business of sales and more in the business of creating content that sells. It is a subtle but huge difference. Take some time to think about it.

How to get found and create more awareness

For many sales reps, you have an assigned territory or set of accounts. You know where your customers are: They are at work. This is a great place to start adapting inbound marketing to complement your outbound activity.

Inbound marketing focuses on being where your customers and prospects are meeting, sharing and having conversations. For the inbound marketer, this means having a blog and a highly visible social-media presence. But, for the B2B sales rep, you need to think about it from a slightly different perspective.

For the sales rep, ALL your customers meet, share and have conversations physically at work and virtually through e-mail. It makes sense to focus here first.

Your customers and prospects also use social-media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook — but that is a different sales strategy.  Don’t think about that now; it’s the icing on the cake. Let’s make the cake first.

Get found by your customers and prospects

The building block of getting found through adapting inbound marketing to your business is to create your own personal sales-rep website. You should secure your name as the domain: www.yourname.com. Keep in mind your website can just be a blog; many blogs functions as full websites.

What you should include on your personal sales-rep website

• Post video clips of great customer references. Yes, you should ask to video your customers. Post video clips of yourself detailing, at a high level, your most compelling solutions; use visuals, whiteboards, etc.

• Create a video clip to feature on the home page that explains—in less than one minute—why you and why your company. Make it sizzle.

• Write blog posts about satisfied customers, trends in the industry, common customer challenges, etc.

• Enable your site for both e-mail and RSS (Really Simple Syndication), so your customers and prospects can be alerted automatically when you post new content.

• Post Slideshare presentations your customers and prospects will find valuable.

• Have an “About Me” page and a “Contact Me” page. Share your interests, and get real.

• Use calls to action on your pages and in your content to have your customers opt in to newsletters and future communications from you.

• Try free or paid analytics software so you can see who is visiting your website, from what company and what pages they visited.

• Add a “share this” plugin that makes it easy to e-mail and share your website though the popular social networks.

Start sharing your personal sales-rep website with your customers

Send a personalized e-mail to your customers and prospects letting them know about your website and why you created it (you created it because you know how busy they are). Put your website URL on your business card, and spread the word as you speak to your customers and prospects. If your content is good, your customers will begin to respond and share with their colleagues. Your message will grow legs and get viral in your accounts.

The ultimate differentiator is you. Be a purple cow, a pink dinosaur or a spotted zebra. Just be something different. Something that will get attention. You will be glad you did.

Chad Levitt is the author of the New Sales Economy blog, which explores using social media, Sales 2.0 and inbound marketing as a B2B sales strategy for the Web 2.0 world.

Social Media Marketing and Online Lead Qualification: What is Effective?

A current debate that I’m following — and would love your perspectives on — is whether and when to require a prospect to complete an online lead qualification form in exchange for content, such as a report, e-book, recorded webinar or white paper. I find that traditional marketers and social media marketers disagree about the use of forms or landing pages that appear when a prospect clicks on a link to offered information. Generally speaking, social media marketing professionals claim that the new culture of selling requires open sharing of information (“conversations”) to create trusted relationships. Therefore, in the social and mobile world, the general consensus is that required forms can be an instant turn-off for customers. On the other side of the debate, most traditional direct marketers — and sales managers — suggest that if a prospect isn’t willing to share some information about themselves, their companies and their buying processes, they aren’t qualified and are wasting sales people’s valuable time.

In the Sales 2.0 world, where marketing and sales are closely aligned functions, I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with and share ideas with some of the best lead generation marketing thinkers and practitioners. One of them is online marketing manager Dave Ewart, whom I met when we at Phone Works were assessing and improving his company’s inside sales team. Dave’s Twitter campaigns have been a success in terms of generating interest; he knows his message, audience and offer are relevant because of his click rate. But he’s testing several new approaches to improve his rate from click to conversion (to qualified sales opportunity and through the sales cycle to close):

1. Instantly delivered summarized content, tailored to the medium

Dave has created a “social-brief” content format: a mobile-friendly template for all his marketing assets, from white papers to webinars, consisting of about 300 words of high-value content — not marketing speak. This provides immediate value to prospects by instantly delivering what they clicked on. And through invitations to “Share This” embedded in these briefs, he’ll expand his reach even more (and track those referrals).

2. Full content in exchange for an e-mail address

To receive the full content (such as a PDF or recorded webinar), Dave’s prospects will be asked for one thing on a form: an e-mail address. Since the content will be provided by e-mail, he’ll be able to verify  the e-mail address is valid. Dave says, “I didn’t give up on demand generation, just optimized it.”

His view is that this gets the prospect into his CRM system and gives him the ability to develop the opportunity through lead nurturing (“drip”) campaigns. His theory is that when qualified prospects revisit his site, they’ll be more inclined to provide additional demographic information, and he’ll have more behavioral data to score.

By removing “friction from the conversion cycle,” as Dave calls it, he is expecting to see ROI by generating more leads, more re-tweets (RTs) and more followers who should engage additional prospects.

What is your view of using lead qualification forms in social media campaigns?  Is it a valid assumption that the most qualified prospects are those willing to fill out lead qualification forms?

Tags: Dave Ewart, lead qualification, marketing and sales alignment, Sales 2.0, social media marketing, twitter