11 tips to maximizeexceedsales.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/...helped companies avoid pitfalls,...

11 Tips to

Maximize

Focused Outreach With Your CRM

Content

About the Author .................................................................................................................. 3

11 Tips to Maximize Focused Outreach With Your CRM ................................................... 4

1. Automate Data Management ............................................................................................ 6

2. Provide All Information Needed to Call ............................................................................ 7

3. Encourage High Data Accuracy .......................................................................................... 8

4. Help SDRs Self-Check Progress .......................................................................................... 9

5. Give Users Easy Access to Data ....................................................................................... 10

6. Make Navigation Easy ...................................................................................................... 11

7. Minimize Data Entry for SDRs .......................................................................................... 12

8. Enable Quick Daily Reports ............................................................................................. 13

9. Keep it Simple .................................................................................................................. 13

10. Adjust Where Necessary ............................................................................................... 14

11. Use It Yourself ................................................................................................................ 14

Sign up for a FREE Personalized Action Plan ........................................................................ 15

© 2017 Exceed Sales, Inc. All rights reserved

About the Author

Elisa Ciarametaro is the Principal of Exceed Sales, a sales and inside sales consultancy. Elisa helps sales and marketing executives increase productivity and effectiveness. Her strategic insight and hands on implementation approach has helped companies avoid pitfalls, incorporate best practices and quickly realize sales results.

Elisa has been recognized by the SLMA as one of the 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management, was a Board Observer with the MIT Enterprise Forum and resides in NYC with her husband and son. Learn more at www.ExceedSales.com or at Elisa’s blog, www.ExceedSales.com/blog.

For more information contact Elisa at:[email protected] | Phone: 212.799.0777Exceed Sales, Inc.320 West 83rd Street, Suite 1HNew York, NY 10024

Elisa Ciarametaro, President and Founder of Exceed Sales

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11 Tips to Maximize Focused Outreach With Your CRM

L ike it or not, many sales relationships start out cold. A sales professional who can successfully warm up a cold prospect is essential to a company’s success. You have just a few seconds to

prove your value to a prospect. What stands in the way of effective focused outreach -- and how can you improve the process as a manager?

Many factors impact the number of times your inside sales representatives are productive reaching out, and whether they are able to produce the sales you need. It’s a big challenge to know what specific actions will improve your outbound prospecting results. With smart use of software technology, you can help your sales representatives be more productive.

By outbound prospecting we mean outreach to contacts derived from a number of sources. Your prospect sources may include:

• Inbound inquiries

• Outreach to new prospect lists

• Outreach into target accounts

• Outreach to customers

• Outreach to trade show leads

• Outreach to webinar attendees





These tips, while not exhaustive, will help you enable representatives to reach out more effectively.

Here are 11 key actions you can take as a manager, to improve your daily outbound numbers.

1. Automate data management.

2. Provide all information needed to make calls.

3. Encourage high data accuracy.

4. Help representatives self-check their progress.

5. Give users easy access to data.

6. Make navigation easy.

7. Minimize data entry for sales representatives.

8. Enable quick daily reports.

9. Keep it simple.

10. Adjust where necessary.

11. Use it yourself.





Before motivating your team to begin calling, the first question to ask is where is the call data stored. Are you using sales force automation (SFA) or a spreadsheet?

Believe it or not, some companies still rely on Excel spreadsheets to record company and contact information, which inside sales representatives must use to make and record calls.

SFA tools help sales representatives focus on selling, by making it easier to collect and manage prospect data and report information from sales calls. Your choice of SFA software makes your inside sales representative more efficient in carrying out their activities, and enables them to make more calls.

1. Automate Data Management





The second question to ask is what type of contact information for each contact is available. Is it name, title, email, and phone number? Does your system make all or some of the information available?

You can save a lot of time, depending on how much of the prospect’s information your system makes available.

2. Provide All Information Needed to Call





If you are using a CRM and have the correct information for the inside sales representatives to call, then the next logical question is, how accurate is the data?

Let’s face it; data is never 100% accurate. However, the more inaccurate the data, the more time inside sales must spend searching for correct basic information instead of reaching out to prospects and customers.

Data quality matters. Poor data quality costs companies an average of $8.2M annually; many companies report costs of $20M and up to $100M annually, according to Gartner Group.

3. Encourage High Data Accuracy




http://blogs.trilliumsoftware.com/trilliuminsights/2016/10/trillium-quality-for-salesforce-12.html


It is important for inside sales representatives to monitor their progress throughout the day.

What do I mean by that?

Doing outreach all day can be difficult, draining, and demanding. I know because I’ve done it. Checking your status throughout the day helps you see your progress making calls and connections at a given point in time.

You want to quickly pull up a report to see your progress at the push of a button. This feedback brings a much-needed spark of fun throughout the day, and maintains motivation to keep up the hard work of outreach.

4. Help SDRs Self-Check Progress





No one likes to search for information before making a call. This is frustrating and a time waster. So, in configuring your CRM or SFA system, it’s important to give users easy access to the information they are looking for.

In many cases automation makes it easy to present the data in custom views -- provided the information is recorded.

Here’s a case in point. I used to prefer call data arranged in the following format: Company, Contact, Contact Title, State, Phone and Email. But that’s a personal preference. Each BDR or SDR should have access to create a view of their own.

Help them access, review and see data in the format that is most productive and effective for them.

5. Give Users Easy Access to Data





The ease of going from one screen to the next is a big part of productivity, especially during a call. I’m a firm believer in including SDRs in the design of your SFA.

More than any other group, your SDRs use the system most heavily. Easy navigation reduces frustration and increases productivity.

Make it one click at most to go from call list to the call recording screen and back again. While it might sound nit-picky, such simple navigation can keep an SDR in the groove and moving forward with their calls.

6. Make Navigation Easy





The struggle continues. Management wants and needs critical information to make decisions, and SDRs strive to enter as little information as possible. Representatives will reasonably:

1. Update current information about a prospect

2. Enter new prospects with contact information

3. Enter notes and comments and a few pieces of additional information, e.g. lead source

Any drop-down options for data collection need to be accurate. Create an “other” option to allow representatives to provide accurate data and proceed to the next task. The more accurate the choices are, the less likely your representative will choose “other.”

Ask yourself, why does management need this information? Who is “Management?” Management could be a variety of departments: Sales, Marketing, Product Development, or Finance to name a few. Sales managers may need the data to determine which territories produce the most leads. Marketing may want to know which source produces the most inbound leads. Product Development may want to know which solutions sell better than others. Finance may want to know ROI for sales and marketing.

As manager, you will need to help balance the cost of having SDRs collect data, and the benefit to management for decision-making.

7. Minimize Data Entry for SDRs





Make it easy to create reports, like a quick screenshot of the SDR’s daily stats, calls, connections, and leads.

Quick reports are helpful to the SDR and to get management the information they need to manage their team. SDR teams -- especially larger ones -- can generate voluminous amounts of data.

It’s imperative that analytics tools give managers access to visual information about critical data. They need daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly numeric data and the ability to quickly drill down.

9. Keep it SimpleKISS (“Keep it simple, stupid”) is a motto linked with the U.S. Navy in 1960. Other versions include “Keep it simple and smart.” KISS is always the best motto. The easier it is for SDRs to use the SFA the more likely they will use it.

8. Enable Quick Daily Reports




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle


Too many customization requests from SDRs can become the full time job of the technology department. However, as a manager, you can advocate that IT take requests seriously while protecting company security.

If you need a formalized change request process, put one in place. Get a biweekly review of the status and implementation of changes. Close the gap between sales and technology. This will go a long way to help SDRs better utilize the SFA and allow management to get what they need from your software.

11. Use It YourselfAs a sales manager, nothing will drive home the value of your improvements -- and help you talk about them -- better than firsthand experience.

You don’t need to be an IT guru to help everyone benefit from the SDR’s hard work reaching out to prospects and customers. These 11 simple management actions can improve your SDR’s ability to improve outreach. And they improve data quality for everyone’s decision-making company-wide.

10. Adjust Where Necessary





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• Which key metrics to measure and monitor to uncover best lead quality

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