Insights and Research for Marketing, Sales Development and Sales

Last Friday, TOPO hosted the fourth meeting of our Demand Generation Council at the Rosewood Sand Hill in Menlo Park. Like other TOPO Council meetings, we focused on providing a forum for leading demand gen practitioners to learn from each other. Each Council features three speakers who share the processes, plays, organizational elements, and technologies they use to drive key revenue metrics. Demand Generation Council #4 attracted over 30 demand generation leaders who were interested in learning about different strategies and tactics. Once again, overall demand gen process, specific programs, and supporting technologies took center stage.

TOPO hosted its inaugural Sales Technology Council last Friday at the Rosewood Sand Hill in Menlo Park. TOPO Councils provide a forum for leading sales practitioners to learn from each other. Each Council features three speakers who share the best practices, strategies, and tactics they use to drive revenue growth. This particular event attracted over 30 sales leaders who were interested in learning how to think about the sales technology stack, specific sales tech use cases, and the adoption challenges that continue to plague many sales organizations.

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 Daniel Barber, the Director of Sales Development and Operations at ToutApp. He’ll share his thoughts on sales development best practices, goals, challenges, technology, and metrics.

The TOPO Sales Development Councils have been a tremendous success. At 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 40 attendees who shared best practices and collaborated on 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 world’s fastest-growing companies. Today, we interview Chris Flores, the Manager of Inside Sales at Namely. 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 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.

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.

Many sales opportunities stall when a scheduled meeting with the buyer fails to take place. Buyers get busy, lose interest, and run into a range of other issues that will cause them to miss a meeting with you. At times, the missed meeting just delays the sales cycle by a few days. But a missed meeting is often the first sign the buyer is entering a prolonged “dark stage” or, worse yet, is about to become a closed lost opportunity. It’s a sales cycle conversion point that most sales people spend very little time thinking about.

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.