Four (4) Inside Sales Solutions to Hit Quota
Your Inside Sales Team Missed Quota, Again?
Did your inside sales team miss quota again? Here are four areas that have proven to help Sales VPs, Directors, and Managers hit their sales goals consistently:
Four (4) Inside Sales Solutions to Hit Quota
Inside Sales Solution #1:
Defined ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)
Defining your ICP is step one. Your reps have to know which prospects give them the most chances for success. It’s the secret to successful cold-calling. Here is a blog post to show you how to define your ICP.
Inside Sales Solution #2:
The Lead List
How many leads should each outbound business development rep have? Let’s bring in some math.
There are 261 working days in a year. Divide that by 12, and you average 21 working days per month. The magic number of dials per day is 60 (more on this in a minute)
How many contact attempts per lead do you want your team to make each month?
There’s no right or wrong answer; plus, we must define a “contact attempt.”
A contact attempt can be a phone call, voicemail, email, LinkedIn Message, and a Text message.
I’ve always have had the best results following this process when making a First Time Attempt: Phone, VM, Email.
I have recently included Text immediately following my Phone, VM, Email.
So it looks like this: Phone, Voicemail, Email + Text.
I usually do not include a LinkedIn Message outreach as part of my initial outreach because the Phone, Voicemail, Email, + Text options get better return rates. Your experience may be different, but the Phone, Voicemail, Email play has worked for me consistently for decades and still does today. Adding a text message now that many prospects are using their cell phones for work or using a VOIP system that accepts Text messages is working for me as well.
I would not use the “Phone, Voicemail, Email + Text” play on each call attempt to the same prospect. That would annoy prospects and waste a sales rep’s valuable time.
One inside sales solution/strategy I like is:
Day 1: Phone, Voicemail, Email + Text
Day 2: Phone
Day 3: Email
If you have a solid lead list that matches your ICP, and you have six touches within 72 Hours, and your prospect has not responded, chances are your message is off (you can fix that here) or the timing isn’t right.
If you’re getting at least a 10% or above response rate, we know your message is at the very least adequate, and your lead list is on point. Therefore, that particular prospect doesn’t have a need or requires further nurturing.
Old school outreach is to call them once a month after the initial blitz attempt (The 72-hour outreach I mentioned above)
The once-a-month outreach has worked since the beginning of outbound phone sales, and it still works today.
It’s a simple strategy that works. There are other cadences, and there will always be a blog post claiming the best sales cadence has x amount of attempts, etc. Find what works for you without having paralysis by over-analysis.
So, if you have 21 days in a month, and you will have three scheduled actions per lead, and the goal is 60-dials per day, you will need X amount of leads.
21 days x 60 dials per day = 1260 attempts ÷ 3 = 420 leads in the bucket.
Adjust the numbers accordingly if you want your team to reach out more than three times.
For example, maybe you want your team to follow this sales cadence:
Week 1:
Day 1: Phone, Voicemail, Email + Text
Day 2: Phone
Day 3: Email
Week 2:
Day 10: Phone
Week 3:
Day 14: Phone
Week 4:
Day 21: Phone
Those numbers would look like this:
21 days x 60 dials per day = 1260 attempts ÷ 6 = 210 leads in the bucket.
After one month of this output type, the pipeline starts to grow.
Once you cycle through your lead list, it’s time to determine to fish or cut bait, decide which leads will get at least one phone call per month, and which leads will be removed from the list.
There’s always natural attrition to a lead list. So it’s important to schedule time to replenish the leads that were removed from your list.
One strategy is to use early Friday mornings to prospect fresh new leads to replace those released during that week.
All in all, I believe 250 leads is a good starting number per rep.
Inside Sales Solution #3:
Number of Sales Dials Per Day
I’ve written about this subject before, and you can find more information here on why 60-dials a day and or 3-hours of talk time gets excellent results.
There are other metrics such as:
- Number of Qualifications per Day
- Number of Appointments per Day
- Number of Presentations per Day
- Number of Proposals per Day
- Number of Closes / Attempts per Day
However, none of those metrics are in your control.
What we can control is:
- Defining your ICP
- Building your Lead List to Match Your ICP
- Craft Your Message
- Number of Dials Per Day
And now the final piece:
Inside Sales Solution #4:
Record your reps making sales calls.
You want to hear if your sales reps follow a proven talk track. Are they sounding confident and asking the right questions, or are they flying by the seat of their pants?
If it’s the latter, you will never consistently hit quota when the low-hanging fruit starts to run out.
You can determine what phone skills they need to work on and get your team and your numbers back on track by recording their calls.
– Michael Pedone
Michael Pedone is the founder of SalesBuzz.com: Phone Sales Training Course that Reduces Turnover, Increases Pipeline and Shortens Sales Cycles.
