Few things are as important as nailing down your sales strategy during a go-to-market (GTM) planning exercise. And, yet, most companies get it wrong.
Building Your Contact Database
Demand generation starts with your contact database. Most companies have already messed up their contact database to the point where it will be a lot easier - and more effective - to re-build the contact database from scratch. In this post, I will explain how your contact database gets messed up and what to do about it.
Outsourcing Inside Sales
In a B2B technology sales context, the ISR (inside sales representative) is a highly specialized role tasked with sourcing prospects and converting them into sales appointments for outside sales. ISRs are not telesales or telemarketing people. That is, ISRs do not actually sell anything over the phone or online. There is no transaction or order processing. The ISR function is a critical one for startups but it is often a disappointment. In this post, I will discuss the reasons why this function is sub-optimal for most startups.
Losing Sleep Over B2B Tech Conversion Rates
Ask any VP of Sales or CEO to explain their pipeline conversion rates. Often, they will jump right to the win rate: “We win at least 50 percent of the opportunities we get!” Not so fast. We want to know the conversion rates (plural).
Many of the qualified opportunities that turn into closed deals quickly come from referrals. These, by definition, are very late stage opportunities in the pipeline. Your conversion rate for these types of opportunities probably needs to be at least 50 percent - otherwise, you do not have a scalable business.