Sales 2.0 – Leveraging Social Media In The Sales Process

The social-sphere is a critical component of any B2B sales team’s lead generation arsenal, however social norms can be difficult to determine. To that point, I’ve included some pointers to help sales drive maximum value from this relatively new channel.

I Love Social Media

1. Listen - It’s critical to know what’s going on in the social sphere, and Twitter is the most timely of all the social channels. In order to capture key information in real time, you can leverage tools like Twitter’s TweetDeck to constantly scour Twitter to provide feedback for terms like:

  • Your company name (Does anyone have feedback on Company A’s widget)
  • Industry keywords  (I’m considering using Marketing Automation)
  • Your competitors (Competitor X’s system is down…again).

2. Connect - If prospects are talking about your space / product / competitors on Twitter, LinkedIn Groups, etc…, it makes sense to connect with them. I’ve always felt like following the prospect on Twitter is extremely effective in providing another touchpoint, however I personally (and please feel free to disagree) don’t feel it’s appropriate to connect to someone on LinkedIn unless you truly are a colleague, friend or went to school with them (As of the time of this post, LinkedIn doesn’t provide a “I’m a sales rep mercilessly stalking this prospect” radio button option for “how do you know this person” in LinkedIn). If you have visibility into their Facebook profile (which Pardot provides as part of our “Social Insight” package), it’s never appropriate to friend request (or poke) the prospect on their personal Facebook page.

3. Understand - Almost all social media outlets allow the user to tell you a little about themselves. Does their Twitter bio identify that they are an avid golfer, poker player, PTA member, Florida State graduate (like your’s truly) – Use this information to better understand the prospect and build rapport.

4. Participate - This is the toughest part of the social world. It’s important to contribute to the conversation and not be a troll. If you respond to a LinkedIn discussion, don’t say something meaningless (“I agree”) or go into a product pitch (“Our product provides X”), but rather add something of value.  AUTHOR’S NOTE:  Even though I know this isn’t what most social media experts perceive as being the right move – Once I’ve reached out via their preferred channel (e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn Groups, etc…) I generally find that connecting via traditional methods (e.g., phone, email) is a much better way to communicate because those tools are still the de facto communication platforms in today’s enterprise and because traditional channels don’t limit your ability to communicate (e.g., they have to be following you to DM, 140 character limit, etc…).

Using these 4 simple steps can help sales professional drive both leads and prospect engagement by leveraging social media.

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Google Alerts Help Sales Reps Stay Up To Speed

One of the things that I gain a great deal of value from each morning are Google Alerts, which I’ve setup for competitors names and industry keywords.  This powerful free service delivers new content indexed by Google directly to your inbox on a schedule you define.  Some key considerations related to these alerts:
Google Alerts
1.  I get too much email already - You have the ability to define the frequency with which the alerts will be delivered.  Because I already get too much email, I’ve selected “Once a Day,” however if timeliness is important to you, you do have the option for “As It Happens” to get up to the minute information.  The pros and cons of “Once a Day”:
  • Pro - Less inbox clutter
  • Con - The information is less timely, meaning I generally get items like press releases the day after the news has broken
2.  Be specific in your terms – The alerts will capture the exact information you identify, sometimes to your detriment.  For example, I had an alert for the word “Manticore” because we occasionally compete with an organization called Manticore Technology.  Unfortunately, this term resulted in me getting information about mythical creatures, conspiracy theory nuts, and the occasional notification about a competitor.  I’ve since refined the search to “Manticore Technology” (in quotes to get an exact match) to refine the search term to get the desired information.

3.  Refine your scope -You have the ability to opt in to specific types of media, unfortunately, you have the option for “Everything” or specific channels (News, Blogs, Videos, Discussions), so selecting multiple types requires that you create multiple alerts (and get multiple email digests).In the end, Google Alerts allow sales people to have valuable sales insight delivered to your inbox, giving you the competitive advantage you need to succeed.
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Creating a Culture of Celebration

As I’ve discussed before, our sales team is quite young from a sales experience perspective, however they are amazingly smart, savvy, and hard working professionals.  In order to stay engaged with today’s new breed of rep, Pardot has a number of terrific benefits including:

  • Food - Fully Stocked break room, Free Breakfast Monday and Free Lunch Friday
  • Fun - Segway, ping pong room, Wii room, skee ball, Razor scooters
  • Attire - As one of our employees said “I don’t want to work anywhere I can’t wear my Atlanta Braves t-shirt and flip flops

Pardot has a culture of celebration

But to the new generation of sales professional, this is “normal,” so we’ve established what we call a culture of celebration at our organization.  Let me explain.

1.  Celebratory Email - Historically (e.g., before we started signing 2-3 clients per day),  whenever a new client is signed, we would send out a funny email to the entire company about the new client.  We always got great feedback from our engineers that they loved hearing about people adopting the technology they created.

Some examples of Pardot celebratory emails:  
Premise:  We wrote a MadLib in honor of our new client AdLib:

“One Summer evening, Mathew courted AdLib Software.  This company provides OCR and Document Conversion services and enjoys Backoffice Conversions.  Mathew’s tremendous singing abilities resulted in AdLib selecting a Professional Edition of Pardot.  Mathew yelled Repeat! and Orlando Bloom stopped by to say What’s Up.”

Premise:  The email uses repetition to celebrate that one of our reps closed Replay Software:

Please congratulate Kevin on his latest addition to the Pardot family – Replay. Also, when he wasn’t busy signing Replay, he was able to find the time to sign Replay.

Please don’t forget to congratulate KG for signing Replay…Did I mention he just signed Replay?

2.  Gong - Like most sales organizations, we ring a gong when a new client is added to the Pardot family.

3.  Quarterly Team Celebration - Our founders pay for each team to have a fun outing on the company’s dime, so we have done things like Whirly Ball, Rock Climbing, shooting machine guns at a local range, attending an Atlanta Hawks game and catching some rays at a catered pool party.

4.  YAMS Emails - All members of the team are kept up to speed when Pardot reaches “Yet Another Mile Stone,” allowing all team members to be alerted when their work helps the company surpass a milestone

5.  Kill Stickers  - We give our reps a sticker with our closest competitor’s logo covered with a red “X” over it when they beat this vendor in an opportunity.

6.  Theme Music? - This is my latest idea, which I’m still determining if it will work – When a rep closes a new client, we will play a 30 second clip of a song similar to when a relief pitcher enters a baseball game.

Whether you do some, any or none of these specific items, its important to celebrate every new client your reps bring in.

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Sales Metrics For Professionals

Numbers Sales Managers NeedEvery sales manager loves numbers. “You’ll need a 3x (or 4x) pipeline to make your number, or a 12% connect ratio, or a 6 demo to 2 opportunity ratio.”

Since I’m responsible for a professional sales organization rather than a call center, we review output levels (e.g., call volume) but we look at it in the context of more desirable traits:

 

  1. Successful Connections – We ask our sales team at Pardot to have a 45:6 ratio – 45 meaningful conversations during a week and 6 product demonstrations to qualified prospects. If you break it down, I’m only asking our team to have one meaningful conversation per hour over a week, however you’d be surprised how difficult that can be, since our ideal clients are marketers, who are under siege by vendors ranging from SEO advisors to social media strategists.
  2. Demonstrations Scheduled / Completed / Missed  - The obvious goal of making connections is to schedule (and complete) demonstrations.  We track the number scheduled vs. completed vs. missed because it allows us to know if the rep is (a) giving a compelling value proposition to get the demonstration scheduled and (b) making sure that the rep isn’t “arm twisting” the prospect to commit to a time, however the prospect will intentionally miss the demo.
  3. Opportunity Conversion – Since our sales reps are adept at “cold to close” selling, we don’t spend a great amount of time looking at the specific breakdown of activity types (from above) and focus more on a key item – Number of opportunities created during a given week. This truly is the one metric where we can gauge rep productivity. It doesn’t matter if the rep had 10 demonstrations, if she didn’t convert at least 30% of the demonstrations into opportunities in the CRM, we know that something is awry.
  • Under 30% conversion rates are a combination of (a) poor targeting, (b) not showing value, or (c) not asking qualifying questions to get 2 of the 4 BANT criteria.
  • Over 30% conversion rates make me ask – “Why the heck aren’t you talking to more people
  • Around 50% conversion rates make me suspicious because it’s likely that the rep is attempting to game the system by doing what I want (e.g., creating opportunities) but not having truly qualified opportunities.

In order to review and capture these items, you’ll have to Standardize Your Input We created a “Task Action” field on the “Tasks” object within our CRM, and use that to run a report on the ratio of calls where no message was left (which I believe should be one of our highest totals), to conversations (first conversations and follow up conversations) to demonstrations completed (first demonstrations and follow up conversations). By standardizing the input, we can track key trends of our sales people and make sure we are achieving the most desirable outcomes.

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SWOT Analysis – How Well Do You Know Your Enemy

Sure your technology is awesome, no one disagrees with that.  In a vacuum, you are awesome.  But do your sales reps know – truly know – how your technology stacks up against that of a competitor?  If your business truly has a great idea, competitors are likely to:

  • Have that same idea, or
  • R&D (Rip-off and Duplicate) your idea
So it’s clear you are in a competitive industry, so how do you stack up against your closest 3 competitors.  Even if you know, you’ll have to be able to relay that information to sales in a way they will be able to relay so that you will be able to win the hyper competitive deal.
Do you know your opponents Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats?

Know Your Enemy

  • Strengths – They have some advantages, and it may not be technological (e.g., it could be solution delivery, innovation, marketing prowess or mindshare).  Understanding your competitor’s reach (global, local, regional), delivery mechanism (on premise v. cloud-based), pricing (many SaaS vendors publish their pricing), or feature description (“Demand Generation”, “Lead Management” or “Revenue Performance Management”)
  • Weaknesses – If you don’t know this, you won’t have to worry about being in sales for long, however it’s important to understand the weaknesses in relation to the target market (e.g., do they have more functionality, however that would be overkill for your target customer, or do are they great at implementation, but that has to be done via strategic partners at a premium price).  During the American Revolution, the British had the “better” (e.g., stronger) force, but they were at a disadvantage against the Americans who fought a guerilla war.
  • Opportunities – All conflicts provide opportunities for both parties, so it’s important to understand your advantages.  Do you have an advantage when the prospect is of a specific size, or when they have a limited budget?  Know and seize the opportunities you have against your “stronger” competitors.
  • Threats – Is your competitor moving into a new vertical or geographic region.  Although it’s clearly a Threat, it may also be an opportunity (e.g., their application is English-only, or their support hours do not complement a global organization).  Although the threats are the things that keep you up at night, it may give you the opportunity to realize new opportunities.

Know where they shine, and where you hold the proverbial high ground and plan your attack accordingly.  In the end, you don’t have to beat them on every front, but you do need to know how your solution will be the perfect fit for your target prospects.

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Can Your Reps Pass The Data.com Test?

Although most companies truly believe that their technology would be impactful for any sized organization, you inherently know that a more narrow strata of your marketplace is the most fertile ground for your sales efforts.  As you train your crosshairs on your target prospects I challenge you to take the Data.com test to properly focus your efforts.

 

What’s the ‘Data.com Test’” you ask?  It’s a simple exercise I’ve developed to make sure you are narrowly focusing your efforts on the best companies, and all the key information is free (e.g., it doesn’t require a data.com account).

 

  • Step 1.  Advanced Search - Visit Data.com’s Jigsaw service and select “Advanced Search > Find Companies
  • Step 2.  Refine your geographic scope- Do you sell regionally, nationally, or internationally? Select the appropriate geographic scope to narrow your result set
  • Step 3.  Refine your industry – Do you focus on software companies?  What specific sub industries (e-commerce, data storage?)
  • Step 4.  Refine your company size (employees, revenue, ownership, Fortune rank, etc…) – These items will refine your search to ensure that you’re not hunting elephants when your product is more suited to smaller prey.

I did a search with every option selected, and found over 3,000,000 companies (and many multiples of contacts at those companies), so it’s important to refine your search.  Our Jigsaw criteria for companies are:

Business Type: B2B
Market Segment: Technology (Software, Hardware, Services, SaaS, On Premise)
Company Size: $2M-500M, private ownership, or a division of a larger publicly traded company
Employee Size: Under 500 Employees
Geography: US, English Speaking Canadian Provinces, Australia (US Team)
UK, Ireland, Europe (EU Team)
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Sun Tzu’s Art of War for Sales

Manuscripts written in the 6th century BC don’t contain any information any information about key SaaS metrics like CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value), CMRR (Committed Monthly Recurring Revenue) or CAC (Customer Acquisition Costs) – Refer to Bessmer for more information on these topics.
However Sun Tzu’s classic “The Art of War” provides a number of key sales strategies that help you realize success in SaaS sales.
Art of War for Socialites
  1. Qualify, Qualify, Qualify – Sun Tzu noted “He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious”.  Although we’d all love to count a G100 business among our clientele, is that your target market.  Make sure that you know when to compete, and more importantly, when to walk away from a deal because it is outside your target demographic.
  2. Know how you’ll win – Sun Tzu identified that you should know how you’ll win prior to engaging in battle.  ”Victorious warriors win first and then go to war
  3. Know your enemy – I harp on this topic because I firmly believe that understanding your enemy is one of the key precursors to defeating him, but Sun Tzu agrees – If you know your enemy and you know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself you will succumb in every battle.
  4. Be the First to help the Prospect Understand the Value – There are many sales metrics related to being the vendor to make the case for new technology.  MIT research indicates that being there first wins deals (e.g., 78% of inquires submitted on the web go to the first vendor to respond).  Sun Tzu noted – And therefore those skilled in war bring the enemy to the field of battle and are not brought there by him.  Don’t be part of a client’s “Due Diligence” but rather make sure you are the one helping them understand the value of your solution.
  5. Leave a route of escape – Although it may seem like a strange theory, Sun Tzu knew that an enemy with no route of escape would do more damage than one who had a route of retreat.  This is why we teach our reps to say “I don’t sell their product, however I understand from an industry analysts’ report that they don’t provide ______ (insert the killer differentiator here). “  Doing this is in line with Sun Tzu’s theory – Show him there is a road to safety, and so create in his mind the idea that there is an alternative to death. Then strike.  By doing so, you’ll be able to build rapport with your prospect while still allowing for the possibility that you may not completely understand a competitor’s weaknesses.

By heeding the advice of a 6th century Chinese general, you can be more adept at selling your cutting edge SaaS product.

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Getting Young Reps Up to Speed

My 4th Grade Class PhotoAs I’ve discussed prior, I use the word “Young” to identify reps with little or no experience, so please don’t call AARP on me.  One of the most important things that a young rep needs is guidance – lots and lots of guidance.  Unless you subscribe to a derivative of the “Sink or Swim” or “Only the Strong Survive “ school of sales management, onboarding will be the key indicator of success for a new rep.It’s cocky to say that at Pardot, we’ve figured out how to instruct these new reps, but we do have a specific schedule that has helped us bring on reps who have a greater than 90% chance at quota attainment in their first full quarter with limited attrition.
In our first week with a new rep, we provide and expect the following:

  1. Intensive, Playbook-based training – In future posts, I’ll discuss our sales playbook, but it’s important to note that we provide the academic instruction of how to sell Pardot
  2. Self-education on industry-specific resources – We expect our new reps to review no less than 20 resources including Pardot whitepapers, analyst reviews (Raab Guide, Gartner, Forrester), and competitors resources (yes…our competitors resources aren’t bad, and help them understand how others in our space position their solutions).
  3. Demo Training – By participating in prospect demonstrations with our senior reps, and by asking the new rep to practice a demonstration, we help drive home the benefit of Pardot’s solution for B2B marketers.  This step culminates with the new rep doing demonstrations for 1 Senior Rep, the Sales Manager (yours truly) and one of our founders.  This last step ensures that the rep invests the appropriate practice to hone the demonstration.
  4. Prospecting – We clearly help our reps understand the “Jigsaw Test” (e.g., the appropriate company size, industry, location, job title, etc…), and ask them to locate contacts at 30 target companies to contact.
  5. Smile and Dial with the Sales Manager – By the end of the first week, we have the rep on the phone, calling the 30 prospects identified in step 4.  Getting on the phone is the hardest part for a new rep, so we take the stigma away by making them call prospects within their first week.  It’s important to say that, in spite of our detailed instruction, their first calls will be train wreck terrible, but that would be the case whenever they first started calling, so we want that to occur sooner than later.

By implicitly (and explicitly) setting expectations, we are able to indoctrinate our new reps into our corporate culture of “Positive, Self Starting and Supportive

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Why The Closer is a waste in B2B Startup Sales

Brian Wilson at the ESPYs

Brian Wilson at the ESPYs

To start, I’m not saying that deal closers are not important, as the rainmaker is truly the most important asset any sales team has.  I’m talking about baseball pitchers like the San Francisco Giant’s Brian Wilson, who specialize in closing out baseball games.

In SaaS sales teams, specialists like Brian Wilson are not optimal, since they can only be successful in a narrow set of circumstances, for example:  They must be playing from ahead (which requires a successful team effort to occur prior to them taking the mound), they are impactful for a limited number of innings, and they are not well rounded to have other skills (e.g., hitting skills).

AUTHOR’S NOTE:  Since It may sound like I’m being hard on Brian, I want to say clearly that he is awesome.  Brian is a key component in the championship run of the Giants, he’s baseball’s Dennis Rodman, and I loved the wetsuit tuxedo he wore to the ESPY’s.

To be clear, I’m fine with specialists in two-tiered sales teams where the specialist sets appointments for your rainmaker, but I don’t have a great deal of use for non-quota carrying, one trick ponies outside of that.

Great startup sales people need to understand the sales process from all angles.

  • Lead Qualification / Inside Sales – If your lead qualification / cold calling teammate were hit by a bus, downsized, or had an extended absence due to a medical condition, would you be able to find your own prospects, or would you starve?
  • Sales Engineers – Be honest with yourself for a moment – If your SE missed her flight, would you be able to show your product’s capabilities, or would your prospects be subjected to “Death by PowerPoint”?
  • Sales Managers  / Senior Management – Apologies to car salespeople, but do you always require your sales manager to collaborate on even the simplest of deals (“let me check with my sales manager”)?   While this is understandable early in your time with any new technology, you shouldn’t need your sales manager to “approve” (and effectively close) every deal you identify.

In the end, the most successful sales people are the perfect storm of a rep who isn’t afraid to hunt for leads, is technically proficient with your platform, and doesn’t require upper management to play “Good cop.  Bad cop” to close a deal.

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Moneyball as it Relates to Your Sales Hiring Profile

MoneyballAlthough many people may think of Moneyball, a story about Billy Beane and his unique team staffing as a baseball book, I like to think of it as a business book about finding undervalued talent and helping them maximize their potential.

In the book, Billy eschews the traditional model of player evaluation in favor of the more statistically-driven Sabremetrics.  While other general managers used the subjective “eye test” to determine if the player had attributes like “Wheels” (speed on the base paths), a “Stick” (hitting prowess) and a “Hose” (rifle arm to throw out baserunners), the A’s were using stats to find players who had a high OBPS (On Base Plus Slugging) percentage, which effectively gave those players more chances on the base paths.  Although the team he assembled was considered by many to be the “island of misfit toys,” the A’s were able to compete with the Yankees on a fraction of the payroll.

Moneyball relates to Pardot’s hiring profile in several key ways:

  • Commodity Sales experience – Our team consists of members who sold commodity items, including cell phones (push the green button to talk), copiers (it makes an exact duplicate) and knives, door to door (hello, I’d like to come into your home with this bag of sharp knives).   By being able to differentiate features with such similar-sounding benefits, our reps are able to identify subtle items in our (and our competitors’) solutions that make a huge difference to our customers.
  • Avoid Leaving Voicemails – Doubters often said that Billy Beane expected his player to “walk their way to the pros” (rather than hit their way) by being patient at the plate, working deep into the pitch count on opposing pitchers, and having a high OBPS (On Base Plus Slugging) percentage which allowed them to safely walk to first after a 10+ pitch battle with the pitcher.  We believe that our reps aren’t going to “Leave voicemails to generate conversations”.  We ask our reps to not “cop out” and leave a voicemail on the first attempt, but rather attempt contact several times prior to leaving a message.  As with most sales teams, our callback rate is not staggeringly high, so it makes sense to strive for live contact with the prospect.
  • Not Overvalue traditional metrics – Because of statistics, Billy understood that things like the RBI were overvalued because it was not an individual feat, but rather a team feat (e.g., at least one player batting higher in the order must have success prior to make conditions appropriate for an RBI to occur).  Similarly,  we don’t overvalue traditional markers of success like “president’s club”  because this could simply be the product of inheriting a strong territory.  We would rather see a history of achievement than a single statistical outlier.

In the end, although the crafty A’s never won a world series under Billy’s control, they were able to amass a great win total every year, make the playoffs consistently, and win by non-traditional methods.

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