Why salespeople shouldn’t prospect
Predictable revenue
Most businesses are around to generate revenue, some are really good at it, some learn over time, others fail miserably. How predictable is our revenue? How are we sourcing our clients?
Sales can be outbound or inbound. Outbound if done right, can be a tremendous source of predictable revenue, but quite often sales teams/ companies approach this the wrong way.
So, what could be the way?
More often than not, it’s observed that sales teams have one person handling all the stages of customer acquisition, right from lead generation, to prospecting, qualifying, conversation, negotiating and closing. At times even handle the customer success/ nurturing post deal close.
Are we prospecting right?
Prospecting can make or break sales teams, and more often than not, we do not give it, it’s fair share of attention. Prospecting can help narrow the gap, and help sales folks focus on the leads that really make sense for the unique crowd/audience that your service/ product can best serve, rather than reaching out to a mixed crowd with a lot of leads that would not convert.
In your sales organisation, who does the prospecting? If the answer is ‘the sales-person’, chances are, your sales process could do even better if you let the sales folks focus on what they do best — nurturing and closing an opportunity.
This could be worked out another way. For every quota carrying salesperson [AE], we could have 1 /several SDR [sales development rep(s)], who generates leads, prospects, opens discussions and widens the funnel, increasing the possibilities for the Account Executive [salesperson] to produce more closed deals.
AE’s who have more time to spend on executing discussions and closing deals, tend to be more effective, than if they were instead executing the full spectra of the sales process. Studies show that 33% of all salespeoples’ time is spent on actual selling — they spend the rest prospecting, doing research, and data entry. If we could narrow this gap it could in turn transform the revenue of several companies.
Who should prospect
Prospecting is best left to SDR’s [Sales development Rep’s], who, understanding what works best for the AE’s, spend quality time prospecting and disqualifying those leads that do not strictly meet ideal customer persona for that business, and bringing in more qualified prospects, that do actually make sense, to possibly have a conversation with, discuss and add value.
They would open conversations with the prospects, and hand over prospects who are interested to explore, to the Account Executive, who then build relationship, demonstrate the product, and subsequently close the deal.
Why
- Sales people can focus on nurturing & closing
- More time spent on sales activities
- More predictable revenue
- SDR’s can specialise, be a consistent source of warm prospects
- Account Executives who are really good at closing might be highly distracted, and carried away and in turn close fewer deals than what they could if it’s left to an SDR team/person.
This let’s each member do what they’re best at, saving more time, leaving more resources available to close more deals & more revenue.
This could lead to a more predictable sales process, where otherwise the salesperson would have to split time between sales discussions and prospecting once the sales funnel widens up considerably.
Salespeople should not prospect
Prospecting is important, and an integral part of the sales process, but best left to sales development folks, or even outsourced, just not handled by an Account Executive.
Once we follow this, we are on our way to more meetings and in turn more consistent flow of customers & more predictable revenue
There are few companies out there who do a fairly good job of developing warm prospects for you.
I handle Partnerships & Sales @ Leadlytics, an outbound sales development company, where we help B2B companies get connected to more ideal-warm prospects - helping them focus, on closing more deals — and generating a ton of revenue.
Feel free to reach us if you have any thoughts or questions about outbound sales development or predictable revenue.
-This was originally written for Leadlytics Blog.
