Insights and Research for Marketing, Sales Development and Sales

59% of companies don’t have a well-designed sales process. That’s according to data from TOPO’s Inside Sales Benchmark Report. TOPO Analysts have spent the last several months benchmarking inside sales organizations across 90+ metrics in an effort to understand the processes, people, technologies, metrics, and plays used to drive out-sized revenue growth. One of the most surprising findings from the benchmark data is just how few companies are satisfied with their current sales process. On March 18, TOPO’s Chief Analyst, Craig Rosenberg, will discuss how companies can design and implement a world class sales process. He’ll share sales process data, best practices, and examples of real sales processes used by the world’s fastest growing companies.

In February, TOPO customers benefitted from some amazing additions to the customer community, two incredibly successful TOPO events, and two new research documents on the latest and most impactful trends in sales development.

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.

The number one challenge I hear from sales development leaders is how to successfully manage the SDR lifecycle. This can take many forms: hiring, onboarding, training, performance, motivation, internal promotions, attrition, and so on. The average SDR lifecycle is 14.2 months. Given this figure, it’s not surprising that the sales development organization is often described as the “minor league team” for the rest of the organization. This poses a unique challenge for SDR leaders who have to constantly fill seats in the “leaking bucket” that is the SDR team, and get each rep performing as early, as consistently, and for as long as possible.

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.

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).