I was once speaking with a group of local technology vendors, some start-ups and established businesses about how sales intelligence. They mentioned that a key priority was getting more quality appointments with influencers to help build more productive and higher-convertible pipelines. That their sales pressure is omnipresent quarter by quarter, resources are low, and better pipeline velocity would have a substantial positive impact on their revenues, and cash flow. They wanted the typical Enterprise standard of 3X working opportunities to an Account Executive’s quota. What they were getting, however, was something else. There was plenty of activity, but the percentage of viable pipeline to column fodder was always a concern.
Glen Garry Glen Ross
These sales leaders were being told by sales that leads had to be more plentiful and better qualified coming from an influence or decision maker. They appreciated Marketing’s efforts but they struggled with messaging and content to drive higher quality and faster prospect interest and engagement.
“The average sales person makes 8 dials per hour and prospects for 6.25 hours to set 1 appointment”.
[Source: Ovation Sales Group]
Start with The End in Mind
The topic evolved into “was there a way to improve, and quickly, the attention of target account executives to secure greater numbers of qualified appointments?” The thought was more leads are great, but rep driven creation of latent opportunities with a new account prospect (hopefully a decision influencer or maker) would yield the stronger, more predictable results with the highest quality.
The System of Systems
Everyone agreed cold calling by itself is a difficult scenario and comes with a giant caveat; how can Sales teams quickly acquire powerful messaging and value props aligned to their target accounts to improve meeting rates? How can they develop value propositions that resonate with senior executives for greater results? Even the most skilled sales person still spends 25%+ of their time in account research and social media strategies to catch the attention of a volatile, moving target: the new account.
Where to begin? What would they have to build or improve on to get those meetings with the right people?
VITO ™ letters – who can help write them?
Better messaging – using compelling account “financial” trigger events?
Top down prospecting – who can help write 1:1 Business outcome messaging?
Be a Trusted Adviser – who understands Accounts corporate goals & initiatives?
The list goes on, and includes effective coordination with ABM, Marketing, Lead Development Reps, Inside Sales, Sales Ops, etc.
Answers were within our reach
I suggested to the group to move to Business Outcome Sales Intelligence, which would help their sales teams acquire the confidence and effectiveness to influence and engage with decision makers and even the C Suite. It would support greater outbound and response rates, across the AE, LDR, and ABM as well. That account-specific 1:1 executive business outcome messaging will quickly lay the groundwork for stronger meeting rates and pipeline velocity.
After discussing each vendor’s Product-to-Financial Value delivered potential and inventory, the group quickly saw how a Value Alignment Workshop could fix the problem. We ran a couple, and in 30 days, each Vendor had the tools and data to message and prospect into more financial and executive buyers. They now had the ability to answer: (1) Why customers buy their solutions (2) The impact those solutions have financially (3) How target executives benefit financially from their solutions (4) How much value it brings to the target company (5) Why the C Suite agreed to meet with them.
This brought a sense of renewal for the sales teams, and made them more receptive in supporting the company’s account-based selling model. A slight change like this translated into 30% improvement in appointment rates. The accelerated sales resulted in an ROI that was off the charts.
Revenue AcceleratorsTM is the ONLY provider empowering Vendor Sales & Marketing teams to easily and more rapidly acquire high-performing opportunities from accessing and engaging Decision Makers and C-Suite. By defining the Vendors solution’s financial value, aligning it into Target Account objectives and business initiatives and using 1:1 ABM value messaging in SPEED SHEETSTM; we transform Product to Value selling overnight for faster and easier selling. www.revenueaccelerators.com