Insights and Research for Marketing, Sales Development and Sales

One of the most critical roles a sales development rep (SDR) plays in an organization is to qualify prospects before they speak to sales. But the pressure to quickly qualify and handoff meetings to sales reps often results in leads that are passed along before the prospect has been fully qualified. This issue is compounded by sales reps with differing opinions of what constitutes qualification and who may ignore qualified leads that have come from SDRs. This lack of alignment causes problems on both sides of the handoff.

Marketing organizations need to accurately track and measure results for account based and volume efforts separately, but require the ability to view them side-by-side. The world’s fastest-growing companies understand how all go-to-market (GTM) approaches contribute to revenue. Reviewing common metrics together demonstrates how account based and volume initiatives move through the sales process to generate results.

TOPO is excited to share that Summit 2020 will be April 23-24th, in San Francisco on the Embarcadero overlooking the waterfront. With over 86% of attendees expected to return, we are grateful for 5 years of ongoing support and are excited to welcome new attendees to make Summit 2020 the best yet!

Before joining TOPO as a Research Analyst, I was a marketing strategist at high growth B2B tech companies and always looking for ways to drive efficiency (more quality revenue with less effort). I usually did this by understanding and then intentionally breaking processes. I used industry research (including TOPO best practices!) in order to justify my gut decisions, which helped me maintain my credibility and drive results in the face of uncertainty.

Marketing teams look for ways to improve results with every program. Marketers can accomplish that goal with an orchestrated program that leverages multiple channels and functions to meet a specific objective for a specific list of target accounts. These programs do not replace existing always-on marketing programs—whether account based or demand generation—but instead create greater impact with stronger results, more focused messaging, and better calls-to-action.

Every marketing organization includes a demand generation strategy to raise awareness and bring more leads into the funnel. Adhering to best practices and measuring deep into the sales process helps to identify areas of improvement, eliminate stalled pipeline, and show the impact of marketing to the business.

Sales development reps (SDRs) are responsible for creating qualified meetings for sales reps. While this seems like a straightforward process, TOPO has identified a breaking point.

Many sales organizations fail to address what happens before and after SDRs set up those meetings. This oversight creates confusion.

SDRs pass leads before they are fully qualified, sales ignores qualified leads, or sales fails to document what happened in the meeting and next steps. More often than not, issues like these lead to a lack of alignment and the SDR program suffers.

A trial provides prospects an opportunity to test a vendor’s solution before purchasing. In the age of Software as a Service (SaaS), many technology companies provide self-serve demos. While this works for single-user purchases, it’s not as effective for more complex purchases where multiple stakeholders are forced to navigate the intricacies of trials on their own.

In our first post on sales enablement, we explained the optimal sales enablement stack and the trends influencing its evolution. In part two of the series, we focus on the market landscape, along with TOPO’s predictions and buyer guidance.

One of the key factors for sales success is an organization’s ability to enable sales by providing the required resources to sell effectively. The more fluid and effective a sales rep’s interactions with a buyer, the faster reps can close each deal. And the faster they can close, the more deals they can close. That’s where sales enablement technology comes into play.