3 Question Quiz: Test your Inside Sales knowledge

Think you have a pretty good handle on common inside sales practices? Let’s see how your knowledge compares with results just published from our 2011 Inside Sales Metrics Survey.

Questions

1. What’s the industry average number of inside sales reps per manager?
2. What’s the average ramp time for new IS reps?
3. Did high-performing companies – those that achieved 100% of quota in 2010 – have higher or lower quotas than average companies?

Answers

1. The average ratio of IS reps to managers was 9:1.
2. 5 months…the average ramp time for new IS reps.
3. You might think high-performing companies had lower quotas, explaining how they could achieve their results, but quite the opposite was true.  According to our survey, on average, high-performing companies had quotas of $9.9M vs. $7.8M. Their success factor?  Their reps made quota nearly 20% more often than reps at average companies.

Want to learn more about what’s happening in the industry and how high-performing IS teams differ from the average? Download any or all of the reports from the survey.  You’ll find breakouts on Inside Sales, Sales Development (Lead Generation), Renewal Operations, and Management Practices.

So how did you do?  How many questions did you get right?  What were your answers?

Hope you had fun with this. A big thanks to all who participated in the survey and especially InsideSales.com and AA-ISP for helping us publicize it.

Tags: inside sales, inside sales metrics, inside sales practices, inside sales quota, inside sales ramp time, inside sales renewal operations, quota, sales development

Headed to #sds11 and #ls_2011…See You There?

I’m off to Phoenix tomorrow for the SiriusDecisions Summit (#sds11 on Twitter.)  With so many companies looking to improve the integration of their sales and marketing organizations and measure the revenue contribution of marketing programs, I look forward to learning about how companies are going about aligning the functions and how that impacts their revenue results. I’m also glad to see that SiriusDecisions has organized breakout sessions around the topics of Social Media, Sales Enablement and Online Marketing. These are key areas where our clients are asking for strategy and implementation assistance and it will be fun to bring a sales leader’s perspective to these conversations. If you’ll be at the conference, come say “hi.” I’ll be at the Wednesday evening reception  signing books in Clickability‘s (now part of Limelight Networks) booth and talking about how marketing – especially your web site – can increase selling and buying productivity. I’ll be tweeting pithy take-aways from the sessions, too.

From Phoenix,  I head to Minneapolis, where the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (AA-ISP) is hosting their third annual Leadership Summit (#ls_2011 on Twitter.)  And what a year it is for inside sales leaders! Studies are showing that inside sales is growing 15 times faster than field sales.  Conference organizers are expecting over 300 attendees: a 30% increase from last year. At the summit, I will be leading an executive panel on Opportunities and Challenges in Inside Sales. I will also be presenting Social Selling for Executives: What the Management Team Needs to Know to Succeed with Today’s Customer as part of a special Social Selling University workshop immediately following the Summit.

Hope to see you there! Any information you’d like me to report on from either conference? Questions you’d like me to ask the panel of sales executives?  Packing advice for both Phoenix, where it is 90 degrees F as well as Minneapolis, where it is 60?!

Tags: AA-ISP Leadership Summit, inside sales, online marketing, sales enablement, SiriusDecisions Summit, social media, Social Selling University

Guest Post by Josiane Feigon: Sally has my vote!

It’s so great to hear the community’s reaction to our announcement of Sally Duby’s change in role at Phone Works. Here’s a particularly nice one, celebrating Sally’s contributions to the inside sales profession, from our friend and partner, Josiane Feigon.  Josiane is President of TeleSmart Communications, author of “Smart Selling on the Phone and Online” and writer of the “Cubicle Chronicles” blog, where this post appeared yesterday.

Two weeks from now,  the most influential inside sales experts will gather for AA-ISP’s Leadership Summit in Minneapolis on May 10th and 11th. The line-up of speakers, authors and sessions is impressive. These two days will be packed with information designed to energize and educate you to a new level. If you haven’t signed up, I highly recommend you carve out time to attend this fantastic event. You can even use my promo code “TeleSmart” when registering and get a discount to attend the conference.

One of the highlights of the upcoming  event is the Awards Ceremony, which recognizes some of the most influential inside sales professional. Last year, I was honored with this award and hope to hold on to my crown this year also. But wait, there’s room for more – so Sally Duby gets my personal vote for most influential inside sales professional 2011.

For the past 15 years, Sally has been at the helm running Anneke Seley’s successful company, Phone Works. Her leadership has helped PhoneWorks achieve tremendous growth. She has also been instrumental in developing Silicon Valley’s Telebusiness Alliance which is a thriving professional organizaiton of inside sales managers and directors who meet on a bi-monthly basis to discuss trends, compensation, tools, etc.

Sally Duby and Kevin Bacon have one thing in common, everyone revolves 6 degrees around them. Over the years, I have found myself in so many situations where I mention Sally Duby and suddenly, I’m family – everyone knows Sally!  If I ever start a Perez Hilton–type gossip blog or an Entertainment Today show around the inside sales industry, Sally will be my main source.

There’s nothing worse that being misunderstood and the inside sales field is one of the most complicated and confusing industries out there and many people don’t get it. Sally Duby does–inside and out. She knows the field, the people, the processes, the technology and deeply understands how it all changes within seconds. She knows how a company never really believes they have arrived because once they do, it’s time to tear it down and put it back together.

Sally has recently taken on a new position managing the SMB business for Skype, working closely with another inside sales powerhouse, Cathy Sidwell. These two together will transform Skype and make inroads into areas we never thought possible, so I’m excited to see it happen and wish her luck.

Tags: AA-ISP, inside sales

Video and Playbooks for Sales Enablement

I’m publishing a series of Q&A excerpts from my interviews with Sales 2.0 leaders. This is the second of three excerpts from my interview with Sharon Little, former director of field marketing communications for VMware.

Anneke: Everyone I talk to is excited about the potential of video content. How are you incorporating video into your portal?

Sharon: We’ve noticed video has really taken off in the past year. Within VM Vault, we’ve created VM Video Vault, which is based on technology from Altus. All content is searchable by spoken word and can be downloaded to a phone or other mobile device. This creates a great training tool. It’s very beneficial when learning a pitch to see someone else give the presentation. Our non-English-speaking reps appreciate the ability to read the words and view materials at the same time.

One of our sales VPs for a newly acquired technology recently recorded a video that was viewed by 750 people. This was a very effective way to transfer her knowledge to them and build traction with the new technology.

Anneke: Any words of advice for implementing video programs — or challenges you’ve encountered?

Sharon: Historically, one of the challenges with video is bringing in a $10,000 video crew every time you want to shoot something. That’s not scalable, even for a company with a generous budget. We learned that reps are OK with a lower-quality video for training purposes. We have experimented with low-cost Flip cameras and portable tripods. These videos can be turned around in a couple of days without having to call in the professionals … and the price is right.

Anneke: Let’s talk about something else that has a lot of buzz: plays and playbooks. You recently asked us, at Phone Works, to create these for your inside sales organization. What are they all about?

Sharon: Playbooks provide content customized to specific buying scenarios or campaigns. They are particularly useful when you want the sales force to customize to the buyer, the product, the stage of the sales cycle. They guide reps step-by-step through their daily workflow: from pre-call research, to call/online strategy and objectives, to systems use, to competitive selling (which we call “Fight Plans”). Playbooks provide actionable, consumable information and make the sales process consistent, measurable and scalable. And they are integrated with salesforce.com, our CRM system, so a rep can access them directly from a lead or opportunity.

Anneke: Any adoption issues with playbooks?

Sharon: We validate new playbooks with selected field and inside reps, before we roll them out, to make sure they include what Sales needs to close a sale for a particular product or solution. Adoption is streamlined, because field needs are already incorporated into the deliverable. Plus everyone who provided input also acts as a sponsor when a new playbook is rolled out.

Anneke: Do you have any metrics showing that playbooks — or other enablement-content programs — increase sales?

Sharon: It’s very difficult to tie bookings to a single tool or training effort, and it can be a trap to attempt to show ROI on every enablement deliverable. At the same time, success metrics — both objective and subjective — should be created for all enablement efforts, with the understanding that it is not always possible to show a direct cause-and-effect relationship.

What about your organization?  What new opportunities and challenges have you experienced using video?  Have you been able to measure the effectiveness of your sales playbooks?

Read the full interview with Sharon Little in the Resources section of this website.

Tags: enablement content, enablement ROI, inside sales, marketing, marketing and sales alignment, Metrics, playbooks, plays, Sales 2.0, sales and marketing alignment, sales enablement, sales enablement tools, sales playbooks, sales process, step-by-step, validate tools, video content, video training

Cutting the Cost of Inbound Marketing

Guest blog by Sally Duby, Anneke’s business partner and Phone Works GM

Just got done reading Gary Ambrosino’s blog posting, Why Inbound Marketing Is Costing You Money and What To Do About It – Part 1. What a pleasure – first because he gave Phone Works a nice shout out (thanks, Gary), and secondly because it’s a topic we discuss daily with our clients.
 
In the post, Gary shared this “typical best practice sales funnel.”

 
He goes on to talk about the high cost of converting Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) to Opportunities, focusing on the middle two tiers of the funnel and leaving us wanting more in anticipation of Part 2 (nicely done!). In Part 2, he promises to talk about how to reduce Inside Sales Costs (ISC) and accelerate MQL-to-Opportunity conversions. I’m on pins and needles.
 
In the meantime, I’d like to add that it’s critically important to also look at the top of the funnel. That 30% – 50% figure is the first number I would explore. It’s too high! One of the quickest ways to increase Inside Sales efficiency is to highly restrict the number of inbound leads that convert to MQLs and pass on to the Insides Sales/Business Development (Sales Development) team. You only want your reps spending time on MQLs that show strong buying behaviors and meet your target profile. Keep the others in the top of the funnel, where they can be nurtured through automation until they’re closer to buying or they pop out of the funnel.

Marketo, as a company, does a fabulous job of this. As does SalesForce.com.  They are masters of inbound/demand generation marketing, driving a huge number of leads into the top of the funnel. But then, they quickly narrow the funnel, only letting through those that fit a tightly defined profile.  This might make a lot of sales teams nervous, but these highly successful Sales 2.0 companies have learned that it’s much more cost effective to weed out leads at this stage than to pass them on and waste expensive IS/BDR time.
 
How do they narrow the funnel? They employ marketing automation tools as effectively as any company we’ve seen. They track inbound lead activities, carefully study their reports, and continually refine their qualification criteria to arrive at a combination of behaviors that represents a high likelihood to buy. It’s not enough that a website visitor downloads free content or spends a lot of time on their site.
   
Bottom line? If you’re serious about driving down the overall cost of sales (and who isn’t?), you need to look at the entire Marketing/Sales equation.  Are your leads passing through to Sales too quickly? Food for thought…if you follow closed deals at best performing companies, you’re likely to find that they spent 50-60% of their time in the sales cycle being nurtured on the marketing side, before passing to sales as an MQL.

Now, if you’ve been following closely, you’ll notice that I didn’t throw out a figure for how many inbound leads should pass to the MQL tier. Why? Because it’s highly dependent on your sales model – whether you’re a B2B or B2C business; the cost of your product or service, and how complex the sale is. Still, we’ve found across the board that successful businesses are significantly below the 30% – 50% range shown in the funnel above.
 
I’d like to hear from you. What do your numbers look like for converting inbound leads to MQLs?

Tags: Business Development, cost of sales, cutting cost of sales, Inbound Marketing, inside sales, Inside Sales Costs, inside sales efficiency, ISC, Lead Nurturing, lead qualification, marketing and sales alignment, Marketing Qualified Leads, MQLs, sales cycle, sales development, Sales funnel