Prospecting, Connecting, Evaluating, Presenting and Closing are the general terms discussed in a Sales Process. In this blog, I will focus on Sales Automation using in-house and Field Sales Executives.
Sales Executives/Employees are the most expensive employees for any organization who take home huge salaries, bonuses, OTE due to the nature of work and aggressive targets.
Sales reps spend only 28% of their week selling, down from 34% in 2018. Now, imagine the amount of time a field Sales Employee spends on an average generating leads on a daily basis, whereas he/she should invest their time in visiting potential customers or existing customers instead. According to Salesforce, a leading research survey reveals that more than 68% time of a Sales Executive is not spent on selling.
For a Small Business, this could hit the Sales Funnel quite hard. 65% of marketers feel generating leads is their top challenge (HubSpot). To have better Sales Pipeline, a small and medium business needs to have a robust Sales Process comprising of Sales Development Representatives (SDR) and Account Executives (Field Reps).
It is easier to build a less expensive Team of SDRs who could sit out of an office and work their way building and converting leads rather than having your most expensive resource do that inside the office. SDRs can work on volume, profile their targets and do a quick research before contacting them using the right channels. In a given day, on an average, an SDR emails more than 100 leads and calls more than 30 of them. Good lead lists cost 5-10% of the labor costs of SDRs and can increase results by up to 1300%. It is important to acquire leads through the right channel or get good quality leads from leading Big Data Companies.
Having said that a quick re-cap on what we discussed so far:
- Sales reps are not their time fully on selling
- Sales reps shouldn’t be generating leads
- SDRs should generate leads and have it passed through the funnel
Account Executives (sales reps) should focus on building Alliance relationships, staying at par with what is happening in the market, going behind the big bucks. Lets say they target approximately 20 big customers a year – this number depends on the type of business you are in though.
Sales Development Representatives will work on leads and nurture them using Social Channels, Emails, Cold/Warm calls, Ads and Campaigns. They will work their way with each of the leads and warm transfer the Leads to Account Executives who can then meet the customer, build relationships, showcase your Organization’s capabilities and close the deal.
SDR & Account executives are a deadly combination which has worked for Small and Medium Business and Enterprises as well. It is critical to empower the field Sales Team with the right tool and team to make sure their time and energy are focused on the right things.
Given the age of AI (Artificial Intelligence), quite a number of SDR tasks have been automated too, only the targetable leads get passed on to the SDR queue, making it far easier to reach out. More on these lines will be covered in a different article.
Be it Products or Services Business, before you spend your big bucks on the Software tools that are available, it is best to consult with a Digital Agency like Zivoke to understand what could be the ideal CRM for your startup. How you could utilize the power of social media and all other Marketing channels to help your business grow with the help of Marketing Automation tools. Then set the path for your in-house and field executives enabling them with the right marketing (Pardot) and Sales Tools (Salesforce). Constantly monitor and tweak your processes to see spikes in revenue.
