TOPO is committed to bringing the sales development community the latest trends, data, and best practices from the world’s fastest-growing companies. Today, we interview David Dulany, the Manager of Sales Development at OpenDNS. He’ll share his thoughts on sales development best practices, goals, challenges, technology, and metrics.
David will be speaking at our upcoming Sales Development Council meeting on April 10.
The most recent version of the TOPO Sales Benchmark found that 59% of companies lack a well-defined sales process. It’s a shocking statistic given that your sales process represents the step-by-step plan for how you will win a deal. A good sales process moves prospects to a final purchasing decision, applies to many customer and deal types as you grow, and scales across your sales organization as you hire. By definition, it is one of the most important things your sales organization can design, build, and optimize.
In this post, we present 7 best practices used by high growth companies when designing their sales processes. It includes content from the recent TOPO webinar: How to Design Your Sales Process: 7 Best Practices.
One important note – there is a big distinction between your sales process and your CRM. Sales process is NOT CRM. Most sales organizations confuse the two. The sales process is a strategic plan for winning business, while the CRM is the platform you use to manage, enforce, and track the process.
At a recent TOPO Demand Generation Council event, Marketo co-founder Jon Miller gave a provocative presentation on account based marketing (ABM). Although ABM has been around for some time, we’ve seen growing interest on the topic the last few years. In fact, there’s been a major uptick in ABM interest in recent months, particularly among companies that have grown to approximately $100 million in revenue using inbound, demand generation tactics.
TOPO is committed to bringing the sales development community the latest trends, data, and best practices from the fastest-growing companies in the world. Today, we interview Liz Cain, the Senior Director of Global Business Development at NetSuite. She’ll share her thoughts on sales development best practices, goals, challenges, technology, and metrics.
One surprising question we get frequently when providing advisory support to clients is: “Do you have any good icebreakers for our upcoming sales meeting?” We recommend the “biography test” icebreaker for sales meetings with between 4 to 20 attendees. The idea originated with a learning and development professor at Stanford who developed an icebreaker called the biography test. They have successfully used it for years with everyone from students to dignitaries. At TOPO, we’ve used it successfully for numerous sales kickoff and training meetings. Feedback from clients has been 100% positive.
TOPO is committed to bringing the sales development community the latest trends, data, and best practices from the fastest-growing companies in the world. Today, we interview Jorge Soto, Head of Inside Sales, MoPub at Twitter. He’ll share his thoughts on sales development best practices, goals, challenges, technology, and metrics.
TOPO is committed to bringing the sales development community the latest trends, data, and best practices from the fastest-growing companies in the world. Today, we interview Kristina McMillan, Director of Sales Development for Five9. She’ll share her thoughts on sales development best practices, goals, challenges, technology, and metrics.
TOPO Demand Generation Council Event #3 took place on Friday and was huge a success. Our Demand Generation Council Events bring together demand generation practitioners to listen to presentations from TOPO Analysts and demand generation leaders. The room is filled with some of the best demand generation leaders in the business and the conversations are lively. This event had 35 attendees who shared best practices on high growth demand generation strategies, ranging from account-based marketing to working with sales development.
The TOPO Sales Development Councils have been a tremendous success. For each council, we bring together sales development practitioners to listen to presentations from a TOPO Analyst, as well as two sales development leaders. The room is filled with some of the best sales development leaders in the business and the conversations are lively. This event had 50 attendees who shared best practices and collaborated on and, in some cases, argued about high growth strategies for sales development organizations.
TOPO is committed to bringing the sales development community the latest trends, data, and best practices from the fastest-growing companies in the world. Today, we continue our sales development interview series with Kevin O’Malley, VP of Marketing and Sales Development from Catavolt. He’ll share his best practices, most impactful decisions, goals, challenges, metrics and the most effective technology his team is using today.