Inbound Sales in 2019 — Beginners Guide for Inbound SDRs
What’s the burn-out rate for your SDRs? According to the market average, from the moment you hire a new SDR on your team, he/she has 15 months to make an impact before they move upwards or onwards. So how can you make those 15 months count? In this blog post, we are going to show you how to ensure your SDRs are driving effective conversations and how they can maximize their time to generate great leads.
We’ll cover both aspects of collecting data through self-research and through utilizing enriched data within your Salesforce. Next, we’ll discuss the best ways to incorporate that knowledge into your conversion, and lastly, we will give you top-notch tips on how to increase your lead to customer conversion rate.
Let’s dive in!
Inbound vs Outbound leads. What’s The Difference & Why Should You Care?
Inbound
An inbound lead is a marketing-influenced lead. Maybe they read your company’s blog, or downloaded material, but they became aware of you through your marketing team’s efforts.
Outbound
An outbound lead is one that YOU make the first contact with. The lead probably does not have prior knowledge of your company and might not even have an interest in your product.
Due to the difference between inbound and outbound leads, the reps approach to the prospect is absolutely different as well! Your time allocation of how to research and prepare for your call greatly contrasts.
Step 1- You just got your first lead. Now what? Double Check!
Wooho! Your first lead is in! The first step you want to take is to ensure the lead is actually qualified and worth your time. Start off with making sure this isn’t a duplicated contact that already appears in your database. Then, validate the data entry. It is not uncommon to come across inaccurate information from form submissions. If you’re using a lead scoring mechanism, poor quality data might impact the score and present a lead as qualified when in fact it really isn’t.
How to Tell Time Wasters Apart From Hot Prospects?
No matter what you sell or who to, buyers are usually in one of the three following stages:
- Searching for alternatives- according to CEB, 57% of the buying process is complete once prospects start independent research. The seller has a 17% chance of winning the business when they engage at this stage based on Aberdeen.
- Status Quo- the prospect is happy with the status quo and sees no reason to change.
- The Window of Dissatisfaction- the prospect is unhappy with the status quo but is too busy to change. The first salesperson to contact the prospect during this window has a chance of 74% of winning the business (Forrester Research).
Step 2- Gather prospect information from your CRM
Marketing activities
Most marketing teams these days are using a marketing automation platform that allows you to get full insight into your lead’s journey with your company from the first touch all the way to inbound lead. Looking into the full timeline of activities associated with the lead, will allow you to not only reference certain actions: “I saw you downloaded our white paper on camels in the middle east.. I can actually share with you a bunch of other ebooks we wrote on this topic”, but to also interpret which products is of his interest, and a gist about how readily does he seem to buy your product (usually based on the number of times he viewed your pricing page or specific product pages). All these factors are important to know before picking up the phone.
This insight gives you the power to generate more revenue by having a more effective phone call. Imagine the time and patience saved if you did not have to repeat the same information the lead has already read through on your website. It is just enough to give a quick brief and to ask him if he needs more elaborations. The key to success is by using the journey given to you to create a buyer-centric sales experience. The personalized phone call will increase interest and higher chances of the lead collaborating with you.
Enriched contact and firmographic data
Using sales intelligence tools, you’re able to get enriched leads profile that will allow you to prequalify the leads, and only leave the product-specific questions to the call itself. Tools like Lusha, allow you to auto-enrich your CRM with contact and firmographic data (up to 80 different data points!).
Step 3- Optimize for decision-makers.
So you’ve sifted through all that wonderful information from your marketing automation and CRM and clearly have a good grasp of the prospect you’re about to reach out to. It’s time to get into the nitty-gritty — can your lead actually pull the trigger on a purchase decision?
Your marketing team is eager for you to call every MQL that they generate. While we’re definitely in favor of world peace and marketing-sales peace consequently, we vouch for questioning the lead’s role in the organization, a second before picking up the phone. Reaching the decision-maker will often require you to call your inbound lead, ask to be introduced to X who will introduce you to Y who will introduce you to the decision maker, but before you start that journey, ask yourself the following question to ensure there’s value in your next conversation: “Historically, what role does your typical decision-maker hold?” and then: “based off your understanding of this inbound lead’s company org chart, how many potential intros will be needed for that person to connect you with the actual buyer?”. Clearly the answer to this question is depended on the ACV (Annual contract value) of the product you’re selling, but it’s safe to say that on average, 4–5 connections should be your limit.
Liked what you’ve read?
Check out the full blog post on Lusha’s blog.
Originally published at https://www.lusha.com on October 27, 2019.
