Predictable Prospecting
The Future of the World of Sales and Sales Technology
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Episode Highlights:- What’s going to change in the world of sales in 2017?
- Using technology to create meaningful conversation
- Client tiers and personalizations
- How do you train a sales team to connect with prospects?
- Sales and the call center mindset
- Social selling
- Predictions for the fourth medium of selling
Resources:
Episode Transcript
Interviewer: Great. I’d love to hear from you what you think your top trend is. What’s going to change in the world of sales in 2017?Marylou: Well, there are kind of four things. Really, it’s all about the ideal account profiles and the ideal prospect personas and the tools that are going to be available to make it easier for us to develop and evolve those two areas because, and I specialize top of funnel obviously. We are all about trying to get conversations with people we don’t know for the purpose of determining whether our product or service is a fit or not and then if we determine that that is happening, we want to be able to consistently and predictably put those folks in our active pipeline so that we can qualify them out. I think what’s going to happen is that the tools are getting more intelligent for us. That suggests that since we have tools that are more intelligent, we’ll be able to fine-tune and hone in on who we should be talking to, where they are in their behavioral or thought process, how to start those conversations and how to do it in a way that’s meaningful. None of this dialing for dollars kind of thing or casting a wide net in the hopes of getting somebody interested in what we have to say. It’s really about focusing on account-based selling, focusing on going after those whales and creating targeted campaigns that increase our conversion rates. Interviewer: Is this while you’re going in that world it’s the first person directly come out and said that way, sort of unique in what we’ve captured so far? What do you think the driving force is between that? Do you obviously personally in the predictable revenue world? Marylou: Yup. Interviewer: Specialization at scale? Where do you see that trend and that change over the last four or five to six years. What’s driving that? Marylou: I think it’s just the knowledge basis, we’re getting smarter, intra and inter company wide. It used to be in the olden days that all these departments were siloed and now we’re seeing an inner connectivity that didn’t exist before. The ability to exchange information and do it in a way that’s more intelligent and overlaying that with predictive analytics and the things that are coming out with the artificial intelligence, I just think it’s going to be a very easy touch and the ability to have everything at our fingertips is going to be a lot more advanced than it was a couple of years ago. If we’re smart and we use that information to frame our conversations in a more authentic and value driven way, then by definition sales should be easier for us. Interviewer: I guess that this makes sense. I get this data, I figure out who my ideal customer profile is, and I feel like I have good understanding of the market place. What does outreach look like? One of the predictions we had with personalization is that it’s going to hit a scale. People are going to personalize things way beyond what they’ve done before. Marylou: Correct. Interviewer: But what does the outreach look like? What does the cadence like that look like? Is it something where you’re spending more time with an organization and really understanding it or what does that look like? Marylou: It’s going to depend on the product and service you sell. I think there is going to be tiers of accounts, we’ll have our core accounts where we’re going to be using account-based selling tools that make personalization more painless and hyper personalization is what we call it in the new book. It’s basically going to give us the ability to add scale and consistently generate email conversations, voice conversations that are hyper personalized but we’re using intelligent data to actually put it into a sequence. We’re leveraging technology, we’re leveraging process, but we’re also leveraging the tools that allow us to hyper personalize. I think there’ll be a blend of phone and email, still. I think social is a good lever to build relationships. I’m not sure if it’s going to be quantifiable in the next couple of years in order to use that as a predictable stream, but I do believe that getting and looking at our clients in a way that we’re structuring them into segments and tiers and then applying the right level of personalization for whatever tier we’re working in is the way it’s going to work, if you’re smart. Interviewer: Where I think the world is today and where I think the organization that that’s really hard to execute against that, especially in an SDR level. At the top of a funnel level. They’re going to name what’s going to reveal really large part of that. How do you train a team so that we can adapt to your world? How do I train an SDR to really personalize and understand the type of business acumen and the type of information you need to know to truly reach a prospect with the message that works? Marylou: I think it’s a matter of looking at the physical position in the pipeline where you’re working and personalization gets heavier and more hyper as you move further into the pipeline when you’re at top, top, top, or you’re just trying to weed through who you’re going to start conversation with. I would leverage as much technology as possible. Sequencing and cadencing, there are tools now that’ll do that for you, while you’re sleeping type of tools. You can put somebody in a cadence and almost set it and forget it in terms of the touches. It’ll remind you when you need to call, it’ll remind you if you want to do an intra-day immersion phone campaign, for example, where you’re calling in and around the influencers of a company. It’ll tell you who you should be calling based on the metrics that you set and the thresholds you set for scoring, for outbound, as well as inbound, as well as click-throughs and everything that you need at your fingertips. It is a dynamic predictive analytics engine that’s serving up for you in your calling cue or in your email cue who’s bubbling up to the top. You don’t have to think about it or try to figure out who that is. The technology will do that for you. Interviewer: I still think there’s some of that where if you’re using that lead management tool, you and I are in just on the phone, we’re not going to broadcast, you’re looking at outreach or SalesLoft or even Velocify the world, instantsales.com. You will get something like that, those type of companies, I feel like if you’re using a tool like that, it’s harder to do the personalization side of it to where you’re having a really high level educated conversation with your ideal customer because you’re not allowing your team to have some autonomy on how they reach out, when they reach out. Marylou: I disagree with you because I think where you’re missing the mark here is where that record is, where that contact is positionally in the pipeline. The tools like you’ve mentioned are great for getting someone what we used to call on predictable revenue a cold status to working status. You’ve identified the right person, you may have built the bullseye out, you may have done the mapping. When they move to working status, that’s when you leverage hyper personalization. The new book Predictable Prospecting has all of the email templates that are in there for people to look at are all hyper personalized but they’re all where the record is positioned or the contact record is in the working status. You should only have between 20 and 40 accounts that you’re working at any given time. An SDR can manage those using hyper personalization by having templates that are served up in an leveraging document technology that will help you figure out this is email number one, here’s two, this is when you send it and it’s basically you take those templates, you personalize them with the intelligence that you’ve gathered in your CRM, or if you’re doing research on each. There’s a 3-10 minute per account, if you’re working a hundred accounts like that, no, you’re right, you can’t personalize. But if you’re doing it correctly, and you’re only move those accounts that have raised a fingernail or that you know who the right person is and move them to working status, you have a much smaller universe to work with and you can hyper personalize at that point. Interviewer: I feel similarly. I just want to see your opinion on that because I’ve heard that as well, it’s really, really hard even from our SDR team it’s really difficult when you have a tool like that in place to organize and put it together and it’s a harder prediction than that the number of account that are being worked will be a smaller number account. Marylou: I think there’ll be a core number of accounts and this is not prediction for the future. This is how we used to work in the olden days before technology. This is the kinds of selling that I used to do in the 90s is that you have a core number of accounts that you go after and then you leverage those accounts via hyper personalization and everything else that maybe an extended universe of core accounts and even a third tier that you put against the technology like the technology vendors you were talking about that run in the background mode and only those accounts that bubble up to the top are worthy of conversation. Interviewer: Yup. It makes a lot of sense. It’s interesting because your viewpoint on the later stage stuff as well, we have an integration built up lots of times one of our customers and they’ve been using their tools more of an account executive tool. But because of what our software is able to do, we’re able to push alerts to their software system that allows a rep to call somebody or have a specific email based on the action that happened inside of a document. Marylou: That’s perfect, love that. My expertise stops at the opportunity, I’m still top of funnel. Marylou, my eyes glaze over, everything happens crazy when you talk about opportunity to close. That’s not my area of expertise but everything’s up to, doesn’t matter if the lead source either if it’s an inbound lead, if it’s a trade show lead, if it’s a workshop executive briefing, whatever the leads source is, referral, once it gets into the working status, that’s when you are applying and leveraging the data driven tools form more accurate databases that can help you have those intelligent conversations. What we’re trying to do at top of funnel is reduce the lag so we’re leveraging the technology to help us do that. Interviewer: I kind of watch the way things happened the last three to five years and what outreach looked like. There’s still living the world, I think you’re unique in the sense of what you were doing early on in your career and how you’re treating the accounts to where a lot of things that I know that were 15 years ago, 20 years ago that were reaching out for a SAAS based company, it was heavy, I’m going to hit as many companies as there is possibly to hit. They treat me like a call center. It’s so difficult for them to wrap their head around that ideal customer profile, it blows my mind. I always use a viewpoint, I play this game with our C-levels still when we start talking about outreach. Your expectations to have your SDR team to make 100 phone calls a day but you yourself don’t have your phone plugged in, things have changed. I think it’s a great methodology, I think it’s a great strategy, I’m very, very phone centered. You have to understand there’s different ways to do that now. Marylou: Yeah, definitely. When I work with clients, we have three different categories of sequences that we use depending their affinity or fear of the phone. Each one builds on the other and the response rates get better and better and better but the phone is a big part of that. I come from the call center background too. I had 150 call center that I owned and sold when I was in my 40s where we generated outbound appointments, that’s all we did using predictive dialing. That’s why I hit it off of with Aaron so well is because I came from the phone side and saw what he was doing with email was to essentially predictive dialing but for email. Interviewer: This is off of our original trend. Where do you think that heading now? I know you’re saying social’s not quite being quantitative but one of our predictions that there is going to be a fourth medium that emerges in 2017, outside of phone and emails and social, there’s something else that will emerge. Where do you think that world is going? Especially at scale. I know your expertise is really in the enterprise space, where do you think that’s going to go? Marylou: I love social from this standpoint, I’ve incorporate it to my daily rhythm, my daily habit. I borrowed this from real estate of all places. I do first in 10 where every morning I reach out into my network and I try to grow my referral network that way. I look at my first solo connection like on LinkedIn and I look to see who they’re connected to. If there is someone that’s in my sweet spot for the ideal the ideal account profile, I’ll ask for that connection. I do ten of those a day. And while yes, it’s not predictable yet, I think eventually you’ll be able to track that as a percentage of if I do 100 outreaches, I’ll get 3 or whatever. Just like the way we did with email. I think there’ll be some formula that’ll emerge, I’m not saying it’s going to replace anything but if it can supplement and if you can automate that part of it, that’s a great thing. Isn’t it? Interviewer: It is. If you look at where I’ve personally grown as a salesperson over the last two to three years, it’s been a lot in the social world. It’s funny. I had the conversation to rev it up. I feel like we’ve met before, but have we actually physically met in person before? Marylou: Me? Interviewer: We talked, we have so many mutual contacts, we interact in such a regular basis that we have a true relationship to where I think we’ve met one time but I feel like we have a lot stronger bond and connection that I do feel comfortable if I ever knew that there’s a mutual connection there. I will feel comfortable asking for it. Marylou: Sure. Interviewer: I think this top in the SDR world, you’re good at the networking part. I feel like we’re going to have to start training our SDRs on how to go out and build actual face to face relationships before we can actually teach them how to use social and use it well. When you tell an SDR typically that most companies, “Hey, go use social media, they’re blasting emails or inmail on LinkedIn and trying to hit them up with the same thing they’re writing in emails forms just to work. Marylou: With my troops, what I teach my SDR when I’m out there in the world is get in the mindset of your prospect persona. You’re a chameleon because you’re talking to different prospect personas depending on what you’re selling. Get in that mindset and produce content and produce relationships and work your network as if you are a CEO, if you’re calling the CEOs. And as if you are director of marketing or director of sales ops. It’s a little bit difficult for them to think through but it’s a mindset change. I think social and mindset go hand in hand. You have to believe that you are worthy of having conversations at that level. Interviewer: That’s great. I think my predictions for next year is exactly there where if we’re going to go into this ICP ideal customer profile world, we need to start teaching our very, very junior members of the team that have never been in a role, like a sales ops role or whatever role they’re selling to, they’ve never been in that role before so it’s hard for them to put that hat on. We’re going to need to start teaching them the acumen that they would need to know to have those types of conversations. Marylou: Yes. Interviewer: Anthony talks about it a little bit in this book, he talks about how he used to do it. He would actually just ask the question of, “Hey, you said these few things. Why did you say them that way? If I was trying to sell you my product or sell you a solution that would solve those issues, what would be the things that you care about? I think it’s funny, I’ve actually challenged SDRs of our team to do that where they have shut down the phone call to call the person right back and say, “Hey, listen. I’m trying to get myself to make myself better.” Marylou: Right. Interviewer: Said these few things like, what did and didn’t work with what I pitched you and told you. It’s funny because a lot of times you get these BPs of sales that are taken back. They are like, you know I wish my team would do this. Yeah, let me talk to you about that. Marylou: Right. Interviewer: They start to understand things on a different level, from a prospect level, what they care about, their conversations start to change. I really think if the world is needing to go to this ideal customer profile, account-based marketing approach, account-based sales approach, you’re going to need to start teaching the acumen that supports it. Marylou: And it’s one lever, not all SDRs are going to do account-based selling because the product and service may not warrant it. It’s just one other channel, it’s like a reseller channel or you know I have clients who do account-based selling and they also do the regular SDR type selling. I think one of the areas that I’m not an expert in but I think is going to change is the compensation plans now for SDRs in that roles. I work up market enterprise, I’m already seeing that the account-based SDRs they don’t even call them SDRs they call them something different account. ADR, account development rep, or a business developer. It immediately elevates them to a position with this mindset thing we’re talking about that they are a peer of who they’re trying to contact and develop business from. Interviewer: It’s funny that you and I have that conversation in Boston I think. I’ve written the job description for an ADR internally as well. I think a lot of companies are going to go to this very hybrid approach of very strategic, very targeted. Marylou: I agree. If you take Predictable Revenue, we talked about the separation of roles. The SDR role is now separating when it comes to account-base, which is really fun, it’s interesting and there’s a lot of conversation around account plans, what this person looks like, are they a junior, are they a fresh, are they a season and it’s really fun. I have experienced it because my clients are in the 50 million and up range so I’ve seen a lot of that now. Starting with talent, they’re the first client who attempted that in a multi-geography area in Europe as well as US. Interviewer: How long do they make that switch? If that was your first, was it a year and a half ago? Marylou: That was longer, Francois Moreau, he is an amazing sales director, just VP executive type. He is a visionary, and he had the splits at how these people were going to be organized and we helped him roll it out, but it was his vision and it’s just worked beautifully the way he set it up. Interviewer: I think if you get it right, it works extremely well. Marylou: And then they had a branch, the inside sales folks took a certain level of product up to a certain dollar value and then the outside folks direct worked with the ADR teams in generating that larger blueprint refresh replacement type of deals which were quite large. It was a great handshake. And then the marketing fed both, they had field marketing, they had regular internal marketing. It is an amazing thing. It was fun, they were a great account. Interviewer: We’re getting close to above the hour. I want to make sure you have some time to get back to your day. Is there anything else you have to add to your trend or anything else you want to put an exclamation on? Marylou: Other than the tools, I’m an engineer so I’m enamored with technology. I think the tools are getting more and more fun. The SDRs a lot of them but I think if we can weed through and work it backwards where we’re mapping our ideal account profile, we know our SWAT, we know our ideal prospect persona, we have that figured out, then the tools will map to those actual definitions and the planning of those definitions. Once you have that, you just pick the tool that’s the right fit for the job. Interviewer: Yeah. I love it. It’s a pleasure. I want you to have a few minutes back to your day. Marylou: Thank you. I appreciate the conversation and if there’s anything else you need, you know how to get a hold to me. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of this. I appreciate it. Interviewer: Yeah. It’s nice to have you on. Marylou: See you later. Interviewer: Later.