The sales technology stack follows the strategy for how an organization goes to market. It is the collection of software tools that help sales teams develop, enable, implement, and manage sales programs that resonate with prospects and customers. A tech stack is built like a house, according to a plan, with every component designed to serve a specific purpose. The tools should interact with each other in ways that create maximum efficiency.
Analyses of sales effectiveness are usually based on the views of sales leaders. While those opinions are clearly important, it is equally important to hear about the day-to-day realities of sales directly from the reps in the trenches. That is why the TOPO Sales Sentiment Index (SSI) is based on feedback from sales reps themselves.
Most sales reps know that discovery is an important part of an effective sales engagement. But too many reps use the discovery process (often limited to just a single meeting) as a way to promote the features and benefits of their solution, rather than exploring the challenges faced by the prospective buyer and determining thoughtfully how the solution can best answer those challenges. This tendency undermines reps’ ability to build rapport with clients and act as insightful, credible resources for them—which means fewer closed deals.
If you want to join the ranks of the highest of high-growth companies, do not leave alignment to chance. It’s a fool’s errand to expect a 22-year-old sales development rep (SDR) fresh out of university to develop a consistent, scalable, repeatable prioritization, execution, and qualification process. Be prescriptive in your expectations and methodical in the tools you arm your teams with. I use the sales development team as an example because they bridge the gap between marketing and sales, and are a pivotal piece to the pipeline puzzle.
The only thing growing faster than our clients revenue today is the change they face in order to sustain growth.
With our mission to help sales and marketing organizations grow revenue faster, we are excited to share that TOPO has agreed to be acquired by Gartner, the world’s leading research and advisory company.
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.
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.
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.