Ramping reps faster is top of mind for all inside sales managersbecause it can shorten sales cycles, accelerate revenue growth, and help launch products more quickly.
Trish Bertuzzi, President and Chief Strategist of The Bridge Group, Inc covered 10 Tips for Inside Sales to ramp productivity in a video titled “10 Tips towards Inside Sales Productivity.”
Inside Sales Tip #1. 10 by 10 Rule
The 10 by 10 rule means that you make 10 calls by 10AM. What we see is that reps often come into their offices in the morning and waste a lot of time on email, most of which have got nothing to do with your profession. So next time you come to your office, open up your email, respond to not more than 3 or 4, and save the rest for later. And really focus on making those 10 calls by 10AM. It is really going to set your day up for productivity. An average Inside Sales repmakes roughly 50 calls a day. If you make 10 of them before 10AM, you’ve achieved 20% of that metric before most of your peers are out of neutral.
Inside Sales Tip #2. 4×4 Strategy
What we are seeing inside sales reps do today is sort of a high-level qualification of an account. They pick one or two functional areas to target and they go after them. When you implement a 4×4 strategy, it means you pick 4 functional areas with an account and you target each one of them 4 times within 10 business days.”Call, Call, Email and Call”. People typically respond to touches 3 or 4. But you do this for 4 contacts until you have either qualified or disqualified the account. This 4×4 methodology takes you deep into an account and ensures that you are talking to all the people possibly can and will yield you the best results.
Inside Sales Tip #3. Voicemail is your friend
There is a raging debate about whether or not leaving a voicemail is an effective tactic. Trish Bertuzzi gives a simple analogy about not leaving a voicemail “You go to a party all dressed-up, you drive to the location, you walk up to the front door, you stand there and don't ring the doorbell. Nobody is going to let you in. If you do leave a voicemail, you are going to ring the doorbell, they’re going to let you in, and you get to join the party”. In short, voicemail is your friend, make it interesting and relevant to your buyer, and it will give you those conversations you are looking for.
Inside Sales Tip #4. Pre-call Plan - Once
Quite often when we discuss with inside sales reps on their productivity challenges they mention that they spend a lot of time pre-call planning. “Do pre-call planning once.” What that means is you create a system that works for you. That system means you identify 10, 11, or 12 pieces of data you need to know about a prospect before you pick up the phone and deliver the unique message to them. Put those pieces of data in a word document or in the CRM. You collect them once and use them many times. This negates the need to do pre-call planning every time you pick up the phone to call the same prospect. “7 Things you need to know about your leads Before Calling” will give you a better idea on the essentials that you need to arm yourselves for an effective conversation.
Inside Sales Tip #5. Bunch like calls together
If you have to make 50 calls in a day, in order to stay organized and to stay on message, bunch like calls together. So if you are doing introductory calls do your pre-call planning and make that first call. If you are doing follow-up calls to a campaign bunch those calls together. This helps in ensuring your messaging is cohesive.
Inside Sales Tip #6. Power Hours
We live in a highly interruptive society; email, instant message, internal meeting, field partners, etc. You get interrupted multiple times a day and that impacts your productivity. Dedicate two solid one-hour sessions a day to nothing but outbound calling. It will increase your productivity and if you do one of those power hours before 10 am, you’ve killed two birds in one stone.
Inside Sales Tip #7. Qualify the Company, not the Contact
Inside sales reps receive a significant number of inbound leads, but we see them making a common mistake and that mistake is to qualify the contact and not the company. If you know your decision maker is the VP of Information systems, and yet you get a lead from the network administrator. Don't call the network administrator, assume it's a signal that something is going on and call your decision maker. That way when you actually have a conversation with the network administrator you no longer have to bargain for access to authority.
Inside Sales Tip #8. Do the math to get to NO
Figure out how many ‘No's’ you have to hear to get to ‘Yes’. And if you setup No’s as your goals, they become milestones on your way to success, as opposed to milestones that make you feel rejected. Implement the strategy and walk away having a better day. Walk back to the 4×4 strategy, a lead comes in, the CMO says ‘No’, the Director of Demand Generation says ‘No’, the VP of says ‘No’, but the Director of Sales Enablement says ‘Tell me more’, and your sales process is launched.
Inside Sales Tip #9. It’s not the arrow, it’s the Indian
You can have all the technologies (marketing and sales automation software, sales acceleration tools, sales enablement technology etc,) and the shiniest toys at your disposal, but if you don’t have an effective process in place for how you run your day, you are not going to achieve your goals. Even before technology advancements struck sales, sales people were solid.
Inside Sales Tip #10. Stand up and be Counted
Inside sales is an amazing career nowadays. It’s the fastest growing profession and has been proved to be a great way to generate pipeline and revenue. And somewhere down the line Inside sales will replace Outside Sales. According to a study, Inside sales teams continue to grow at 15% each year and are growing 3 times faster than traditional field sales.
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