Recortes de "Predictable Revenue" (Aaron Ross, ex-Sales VP de Salesforce.com)

INTRO

Three Keys to Predictable Revenue

Building a Sales Machine that creates ongoing, predictable revenue takes:

1. Predictable Lead Generation, the most important thing for creating predictable revenue.

2. A Sales Development Team that bridges the chasm between marketing and sales.

3. Consistent Sales Systems, because without consistency you have no predictability.

 It's true that you need great salespeople to close customers, but the better your lead generation is, the less dependent you are on the quality of your salespeople and sales process. Better lead generation = more margin for sales error.

FUNDAMENTALS

The Four Core Sales Functions (Or 'Themes')

1. "Inbound" Lead Qualification: Commonly called Market Response Reps, they qualify marketing leads coming inbound through the website or 800-number. The sources of these leads are marketing programs, search engine marketing, or organic word-of-mouth.

2. "Outbound" Prospecting/Cold Calling 2.0: Commonly called Sales Development Reps or new business development reps, this function prospects into lists of target accounts to develop new sales opportunities from cold or inactive accounts. This is a team dedicated to proactive business development. Highly efficient outbound reps and teams do NOT close deals, but create and qualify new sales opportunities and then pass them to Account Executives to close.

3. "Account Executives" or "Sales": These are quota-carrying reps who close deals. They can be either inside or out in the field. As a best practice, even when a company has an Account Management/Customer Success function, Account Executives should stay in touch with new customers they close until the new customer is fully deployed and launched.

4. Account Management/Customer Success: Client deployment and success, ongoing client management, and renewals. In today's world of "frictionless karma, someone needs to be dedicated to making customers successful - and that is NOT the salesperson! 

The point is to focus your highest value people on the low-volume but high-value activities (building relationships at key accounts), and to specialize other roles and sales reps to take over low-value yet high-volume activities (prospecting into untargeted cold accounts).

EXAMPLE

What's expected of a prospector at Acquia Acquia expects each prospector to do:

• 300-500 outbound emails per month
• 100 "quick conversations"/"call connects" per month with all kinds of people
• 20 longer Discovery Calls with influencers/decision-makers
• 15 Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) passed to and accepted by salespeople

And they expect that activity funnel to produce, in pipeline and revenue, average outbound deal size of $50,000 in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR); 15 SQLs/month = $750K pipeline generated per month (This goal is lower than a more standard goal of 8-12 SQLs per month per prospector, because they're specifically going after large accounts); Expected $55k~65k ARR per month per prospector = $720,000

One Sales Development Rep typically can support a maximum of 2-5 quota- carrying Account Executives. If you sell very large deals, it's posible you could have even a 1-to-1 ratio or 2-to-1 Sales Development Reps per Account Executive and still be VERY profitable.

 A rule of thumb is that for every 400 leads per month that require human attention, a company needs one Market Response Representative.

THE PROCESS

Step 1: Get Clear on Your Ideal Customer Profile

What is the most important exercise you MUST do to get better results from marketing and sales? Answer: Get clear on your Ideal Customer Profile, including how to describe them and what their core challenges are. You'll need to revise it many times before you feel "clear" - this is not a one-time exercise.

 Step 4: Sell the Dream

Assuming you are talking with a prospect who is a good fit for your service, the goal of "Selling The Dream" is NOT to "sell." It is, rather, (1) to help the prospect create a vision of a dream solution that will solve their problems; and then (2) to connect your product to their key business issue(s) and their dream solution.

 Step 5

NEW MANTRA

Sell to Success

Selling the Predictable Revenue way is about "Selling To Success." It's about hiring and training salespeople who are totally committed to their company's vision and values. It's salespeople helping new prospects connect with that vision, and then helping these new customers succeed - and generating lots of revenue as a byproduct.

Two Steps to Help Your Team Sell to Success

• First: Include a SIMPLE "Success Plan" step before you close. This is a plan (almost a vision) that paints a picture of the basic steps beyond deployment to actual client success. It should include a definition of what success means to the client, a few key milestones, and some responsibilities of both your company and the client.
• Second: What is your plan for a client's ongoing success? Do you have a role in your company dedicated solely to helping customers become successful in using your product or service? It's easy to want to push all the responsibility for success onto the customer, but it is equally your responsibility to help them succeed, because happy customers will help your business. It's both the right and the profitable thing to do.

DISTINGUISHING LEADS

Seeds take a lot of time to cultivate and to ramp up, but once they get going they are unbeatable, with the highest conversion and close rates. Seeds are created by developing happy customers, organic internet search/SEO, public relations, local user groups, most social media, and publishing expert content.

Nets: Nets are classic marketing programs, in which you're trying to cast a wide net and see what you get, whether through email marketing, conferences, advertising, or some forms of Internet marketing (PPC).

Spears involve targeted outbound efforts (such your classic "hunting") that require some individual human efforts (such as business development, "Top 10 Targets" programs, and Cold Calling 2.0).

BONUS TRACK  

The best salespeople are more like consultants or business people who can sell. In addition, they are the ones who:

• Listen much more than they talk.
• Are problem-solvers.
• Understand their customers' industry/business/needs (key to both building trust with customers as well as understanding how to help solve their problems).
• Believe in their product and company.
• Demonstrate unquestionable integrity.
• Can get things done in their own company (via internal networks).