Insights and Research for Marketing, Sales Development and Sales

Sales Development has evolved from a secret sauce of high growth companies to “table stakes” for B2B sales organizations. 15 years ago, I remember having to make impassioned pleas for executive teams to invest in sales development. Back then, there was only a 50% chance they would make that investment. Times have changed. Now, you would be hard pressed to find a successful, high growth technology company that doesn’t have a sales development team.

In 2014, TOPO benchmarked the sales development function at high growth companies to understand the processes, people, technologies, metrics, and plays they employ to drive revenue growth. The benchmark data reveals a handful of patterns shared by high-growth companies that are extraordinarily valuable for other companies to understand. In this post, we’ll focus on 11 key strategies identified in the data. There are many more in the actual report.

When you sign up for the on-demand version of our webinar  “11 High Growth Sales Development Strategies”, you can watch a presentation on these 11 strategies and you will also receive a copy of the 2014 TOPO Sales Development Benchmark Report.

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 Sean Kester, Head of Sales Development from SalesLoft. He’ll share his best practices, most impactful decisions, goals, challenges, metrics and the most effective technology his team is using today.

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 Lars Nilsson, VP of Sales Operations from Cloudera. He’ll share his best practices, most impactful decisions, goals, challenges, metrics and the most effective technology his team is using today.

In the 2014 TOPO Sales Development Benchmark, only 27% of companies surveyed still used BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeframe) for their sales qualified lead (SQL) definition. This represents a recent, yet significant change in thinking about what constitutes a sales qualified lead. While BANT qualification still works well in certain organizations, the majority of organizations are using a looser definition such as ANUM (Authority, Need, Urgency, Money) or AN (Authority, Need).

The modern sales development organization revolutionized the way companies could think about pipeline and revenue growth. Separating the prospecting and qualification of leads from the later stages in the sales process enables the sales organization as a whole to become highly specialized and more effective. Without the distraction of having to find and qualify their own leads, and with the assurance that their pipeline will be consistently filled with opportunities, sales reps can optimize their own sales process to increase conversions throughout the pipeline. This is all to say, the true value of a sales development team is that it enables sales reps to focus on what they do best: close business.

The TOPO blog is committed to bringing the sales development community the latest trends, data, and best practices from the fastest-growing companies in the world. But it’s really great leaders that take those insights and drive action from them; that lead their teams to perform like the best in the business. Over the next several weeks, TOPO will be posting an interview series with the world’s best sales development leaders and practitioners.

To kick us off, Ralph Barsi, Senior Director of Sales Development at Achievers, shares his best practices, most impactful decisions, goals, challenges, metrics and the most effective technology his team is using today.

Ralph will also be moderating TOPO’s upcoming webinar, 11 High Growth Sales Development Strategies.

Hiring enough good salespeople is one of the most important things a company can do. That’s because the rate at which you hire salespeople is one of the primary factors in determining how fast you’ll grow revenue. At it’s most basic level, sales is about establishing a company-wide revenue target, assigning an appropriate quota for salespeople, and then hiring enough reps so that you can hit the company-wide target. In other words, individual quota assignment multiplied by number of sales people = company bookings or revenue target.

Sounds simple, right? Not really, especially given the large number of dynamics that can derail your sales hiring. While some of these dynamics are obvious (e.g. hiring bad salespeople), others are less obvious. In this post, we’ll analyze four non-obvious sales hiring traps that can derail your sales team’s quota achievement, including:

1. Accessing a large enough candidate pool;
2. Shortening the average time it takes to achieve full quota;
3. Knowing when to accelerate or decelerate sales hiring; and
4. Covering rep attrition with your sales hiring plan.

Here’s the scenario: You’ve identified a lead you want to talk to. You have crafted several thoughtful emails, left impactful voicemails, and maybe even retweeted a prospect’s latest update. Finally, FINALLY, you get the prospect live on the phone, and that’s where the trouble starts: the buyer comes in with objections.

The ability to effectively manage live calls is one of the most challenging aspects of being an sales development rep. It is also one of the most important. TOPO considers live call management 1 of 3 essential pillars for SDR success. SDRs that do this well have mastered the ability to overcome objections from the very beginning of the call (the classic, I’m busy right now, just send over some information), all the way through to close.

What makes a good sales pitch? If you’re like most salespeople, you’d give a two-part answer to this question – a well-designed set of slides and effective delivery of those slides. While that answer is technically correct, it understates the impact that a great sales presentation can have on moving buyers through the top of the sales funnel. It also fails to capture the dozens of elements that makes for an effective sales pitch, from preparation to delivery to closing for next steps. Use the following tips when designing and delivering your sales presentation to ensure that your driving the highest conversion rates possible.

In today’s selling environment, the ability to deliver an effective sales email is absolutely essential to prospecting success. The phone is still a critical channel, but it is highly inefficient. According to to the outsourced demand generation and training firm, VorSight, it takes 22.5 dials before you can have a meaningful conversation. As a matter of fact, Coca Cola just disconnected their corporate voicemail. This has made connecting via email more important than ever, and the industry is responding, as evidenced by the rise of sales email applications such as YesWare, ToutApp, and SalesLoft. However, corporate buyers are getting more emails than ever before, with the combination of sales emails and those being sent via marketing automation. This means, while email is essential, your email will be ignored if you are not able to pierce through the high volume of emails your prospects receive daily with compelling email copy that provides value to your prospect.