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 THE


      9 1
 ULTIMATE
         411 2
13 16
  14 22
 REVENUE

19 2324
  2021
 ENGINE
 MAXIMIZING RESULTS THROUGH
 INSIDE SALES & MARKETING AUTOMATION
                                          By Jon Miller




                                          Ken Krogue
                                       insidesales.com
The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Maximizing Results Through Inside Sales and Marketing Automation             2




             How to get the right leads to sales
             at the right time & enable sales to
             contact that lead right away
                                             Jon Miller, VP of Marketing and co-Founder, Marketo
                                           Ken Krogue, President and co-Founder, InsideSales.com




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Contents                                                                                                            3




          chapter 1 | The Changing Nature of the Buyer
          World of Information Scarcity ����������������������������������������������������������������������6
          World of Information Abundance������������������������������������������������������������������ 7
          Today’s Buyer is a Highly Informed Buyer ��������������������������������������������������8
          The Impact of the Informed Buyer on Lead Generation �����������������������������9
                                                             �


          chapter 2 | Managing Your Leads
          Separating Leads������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 12
          Lead Nurturing ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������13
                        �
          The 3 Dimensions of Lead Relevance �������������������������������������������������������� 14
          Lead Scoring ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 16
          How to Score Leads ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������17
                            �
          An Alternative Method of Lead Scoring ���������������������������������������������������� 18
          Behavior Shows Interest������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 19
          Responding to Qualified Marketing Leads������������������������������������������������� 20




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Contents                                                                                                        4




          chapter 3 | The Inside Sales Perspective
          The Sales/Marketing Handoff��������������������������������������������������������������������� 22
          Growth of Inside Sales�������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 23
                                �
          Common Obstacles Facing Inside Sales Reps������������������������������������������� 24


          chapter 4 | 7 Rules to Increase Contact Ratios
          Rule 1: Immediacy ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 26
          Rule 2: Persistency������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 28
          Rule 3: Optimize Calls��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 30
          Rule 4: Time of Day��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������32
          Rule 5: Day of Week �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������33
                             �
          Rule 6: Direct Dial Numbers����������������������������������������������������������������������� 34
          Rule 7: Get the Right Technology��������������������������������������������������������������� 35


          chapter 5 | Those Are the Rules; Here’s the Reality
          Average Response Rates ����������������������������������������������������������������������������37
          Providing Sales With ‘Win Ready’ Leads��������������������������������������������������� 39




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chapter 1 |

        The Changing Nature
        of the Buyer

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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 1 – The Changing Nature of the Buyer                                         6




          World of Information Scarcity
          It wasn’t long ago that we lived in a world
          of information scarcity. If the buyer wanted
          to research any kind of complex purchase,                          SALES REP
          whether it was a car, a million dollar software


                                                               ?
          system or something in-between, the buyer
          had to get their information by talking to                                                   REFERRALS
          a sales rep. It was marketing’s job to focus
          on brand building by leveraging advertising,
          trade shows, PR, and print. As a result, all
          leads – hot or cold – got passed to sales.




                                                                                                    TRADE SHOWS
                                                             BUYERS GUIDE




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 1 – The Changing Nature of the Buyer                       7




          World of Information Abundance
          Today, there has been an explosion of
          readily available information on the
          web and other social channels. This is
          a relatively recent phenomenon in the
          careers of marketing and sales people
          and the amount of information being
          created is expanding.




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 1 – The Changing Nature of the Buyer                       8




          Today’s Buyer is a Highly
          Informed Buyer
          All this access to information is changing how we
          interact with each other and how we buy. According
          to SiriusDecisions, buyers today want to complete 70
          percent of their buying process before they ever engage
          with a sales person. This means that they want to do
          all the research and take advantage of this abundance
          of information before they interact. For example, think
          about when you bought your last car. You didn’t go into
          the dealer without knowledge of the purchase price that
          the dealer paid. You knew exactly how much the car was
          worth because you had done your research. This same
          thing is happening with buyers in your market today.
          This change in buying behavior is driving a fundamental
          shift in terms of how we generate our revenue.




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 1 – The Changing Nature of the Buyer                                                              9




          The Impact of the Informed
          Buyer on Lead Generation
          In today’s informed-buyer world, your
          marketing process starts with having            ONLINE MARKETING                                  SOLD


          a very large top-of-funnel lead pool.
          You need to generate as many leads                  TRY IT FREE
                                                              FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY


                                                                                        40%          SOLD
          as possible. That means running more                                          Off this
                                                                                        weekend


          programs like webinars, tradeshows,                                                                                    SOLD
          social campaigns, and online ads. It
                                                                                                                   SOLD
          also means leveraging your word-of-
          mouth and influence marketing. While
          advertising might influence a lot of
          people, it has a smaller impact on their        WORD OF MOUTH                                                   SOLD
          buying decision. On the flip side, word-of-
          mouth influences fewer people but has a
          larger impact; both types of promotions                                                                         SOLD
          work together to drive your funnel.
                                                                                                                          SOLD




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          The Impact of the Informed
          Buyer on Lead Generation
          However, most of these top-of-funnel
          buyers aren’t ready to buy when you first           TRACKING BUYERS
          meet them. You need to nurture, develop
          and track those relationships until you see
          buying signals. When this happens, fast
          track them to sales so that sales responds
          to that interest quickly and appropriately.
          Then close the loop and close the deal.
                                                             INTERESTED      LEARNING      READY




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chapter 2 |

        Managing Your Leads


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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 2 - Managing Your Leads                                                                        12




          Separating Leads
                                          The most important question all marketers should be asking themselves
                                          is, “What type of leads are we trying to get to sales?” The problem is
                                          the disconnect between what most marketing and sales departments
                                          call a lead. Here’s a secret: sales doesn’t just want names – they want
                                          “win ready” leads! If all they wanted were names, you could give them
                                          the white pages. Sales wants people who are ready to engage in an active
                                          buying cycle with a timeframe to buy. They want to be able to see a path
                                          to closure.

          Marketo has done research and discovered that less than 25
          percent of all respondents to marketing campaigns are ready to         Responsders to
          go to sales. 50 percent will need further nurturing and 25 percent
          may not have been an appropriate fit in the first place. At Marketo,
                                                                                 Marketing Campaign
          on average, prospects are nurtured for 123 days between when
          they first engage with the company and when they are sales ready.      Ready to Go                          25%
          Meaning, in any given month, almost two-thirds of all the leads that
          are passed to the Marketo inside sales team to qualify are people      Further Nurturing                      50%
          that have been around the system for more than a month and have
          been nurtured.
                                                                                 Service Not for Lead                   25%
                                                                                       Marketo research on own marketing campaigns




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 2 - Managing Your Leads                                    13




          Lead Nurturing
          There is a big gap between when a lead first engages with
          your company and when they are sales ready. Lead nurturing
          is the process of closing that gap; it’s the process of building
          relationships with qualified prospects that aren’t ready to buy
          with the goal of earning their business. The challenge is to
          remain top-of-mind when that lead is ready to buy. Nurturing
          is the method that helps achieve this top-of-mind state. By
          staying in touch and building relationships, you can guide your
          prospects through the education process.

          How do you nurture leads? Read the “Definitive Guide to Lead
          Nurturing” for some quick tips on this process. To summarize
          lead nurturing into one word: relevance. If your lead nurturing       Get this eBook
          is not relevant, your prospects will opt out, or more likely,
          emotionally opt out and stop paying attention.




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 2 - Managing Your Leads                                 14




          The 3 Dimensions of Lead Relevance
          At Marketo, relevance is defined across
          three dimensions: buying stage, persona and



                                                                1 Buying Stage
          customized messages. For early stage buyers,
          it is important that you don’t overwhelm them
          with product information right away. They
          don’t care. Yet. Early stage buyers are looking
          for more general thought leadership content.




                                                                2 Persona
          Conversely, mid stage buyers are more apt
          to search for more specific content such as a
          buying guide. Late stage buyers are the ones
          looking for your product specific content, such
          as data and pricing sheets.

          Persona, the second dimension, requires that
          you speak to the needs and issues of your
          buyer. At Marketo, for example, their different
          personas are Molly Marketer, Sam Sales and
          Jack Executive. It’s important that you define
                                                                3 Customized Messages
          the personas for your industry so that you can
          keep your nurturing relevant.




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 2 - Managing Your Leads                                                     15




          The 3 Dimensions of Lead Relevance
                                                                Within each track, Marketo delivers the third




             4-1-1
                                                                dimension: customized messages. They
                                                                customize specific messages, emails and
                                                                landing pages by industry, company size
                                                                and location to make sure the messages
                                                                are specifically relevant for each type of
                                                                lead. To ensure that the lead is receiving
                                                                content that keeps their attention, Marketo
                                                                uses something called the 4-1-1 cadence




             Cadence
                                                                for content. That means that for every soft
                                                                promotional and hard promotional message
                                                                they should have four messages that are
                                                                educational, informative or entertaining in
                                                                nature. This cadence builds the relationship
                                                                in an authentic way by sharing useful and
                                                                educational materials. It also ensures that the
                                                                buyer’s attention is high when they want to
                                                                send the soft or hard promotional message.




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          Lead Scoring
          Now that there are all these leads in the database
          and they’ve entered the nurturing process, the


                                                                      two Questions?
          question is when is a lead ready to go to the
          sales team. This is where lead scoring comes in.
          Lead scoring is a methodology that involves both
          marketing and sales. It requires that the two
          departments work together to rank leads from
          the most sales ready to the least. Lead scoring is
                                                                      Is this prospect
          the only way you can know where your individual
          leads are in the buying cycle. While there are many
          different ways you could score leads, it’s very
          important to score leads both on fit and interest. Fit
          questions should help determine if this prospect is
          a good “fit” for your solution. Are they a company
          your company wants to sell to? Interest questions,
          in contrast, should help determine if this prospect is
                                                                   a good Fit          Interested
          interested in or needs what your company delivers.
          Like any relationship in real life, you have to have
          that mutual interest on both sides to make for a
          good match.




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          How to Score Leads
          Marketo surveyed over 300 companies across all different
          company sizes and industries. The one common trait,
          they were all B2B. The industries included: technology,
          manufacturing, healthcare, and financial services. Among
          the questions they asked companies were: “How do you        significant
                                                                      revenue growth
          go about your lead scoring?”

          Marketo correlated responses with their performance
          across various revenue metrics. The interesting thing
          was that companies that use this multi-dimensional
                                                                      based on fit  interest
          lead scoring approach, based on fit and interest, had
          significantly higher revenue growth as compared to their
                                                                      lead scoring
          peers that used other methods of lead scoring. Plus,
          their sales teams spent more time on productive sales
          activities, like closing deals. Clearly, there’s value to
          having this multi-dimensional lead scoring.




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 2 - Managing Your Leads                                               18




          An Alternative Method of
          Lead Scoring
          The other way to think of lead scoring is to look at where the information    Inferred
          comes from. For example, there are two different types of information
                                                                                        Name:
          you can gather from a lead: explicit information and inferred information.
          Explicit information is what the prospect actually tells you by filling out
                                                                                        Email:
          a form. This type of information can’t always be trusted. People either
          don’t know the accurate information or don’t put accurate information
          on the form.
                                                                                        explicit
          Instead, focus on inferred information, which can be figured out from         Name:
          what the lead provides. For example, if you know the lead’s email address
          you should be able to figure out their company, how many employees            Email:
          their company has, what industry they are in, where they are located,
          among other useful information. Typically, this is a process your lead        Title:
          qualifier team needs to go through during the prospect nurture phase.
          This process helps your team determine if there really is a “fit.”            Direct Phone:

                                                                                        Company:
          Then make sure you are using the best practices that will be discussed
          in the following chapter.




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 2 - Managing Your Leads                                                                       19




          Behavior Shows Interest
          To determine lead interest, look at behavior. At
          Marketo, they break behavior into two types: latent   LATENT BEHAVIOR
          behavior and active behavior. Latent behavior
          expresses engagement with your company’s               LEAD INTO SALES-READY OPPORTUNITIES
                                                                 RAW INQUIRIES
                                                                               NURTURING
          content, while active behavior expresses sales
          readiness. An example of latent behavior might be
                                                                                                           ENGAGEMENT WITH
                                                                                                           YOUR COMPANY’S CONTENT
          attending a webinar or reading a blog. An example
          of active behavior might be watching a detailed
          product demo, visiting pricing pages or searching
          on the company’s name.

          To score a lead, combine the demographic fit score
                                                                ACTIVE BEHAVIOR
          with the two kinds of interest scores, such as the
          engagement score and the buying readiness score.
          Based on a lead’s score in these two different
          dimensions is how Marketo ultimately decides if a                                                SALES READINESS
          lead is a marketing qualified lead that gets passed
          to the inside sales team.




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 2 - Managing Your Leads                                                20




          Responding to Qualified
          Marketing Leads
          At Marketo, they use the InsideSales.com PowerDialer integrated within
          the Salesforce® CRM to make sure they are contacting their leads as
          soon as they identify them as being sales ready. They also get very good
          reporting and metrics in terms of call volume, call time, and number
          of live connections, to name a few, which they use to manage and
          optimize profit.

          The other tool that their sales development reps (SDR) rely on is
          Marketo’s sales insight product. This tool is inside the Salesforce CRM
          system. Their SDRs can see the lead score in a nice intuitive, stars and         Powerdialer for
          flames layout. Stars show the quality of the lead fit and flames show              salesforce
          the interest or urgency of the lead. An SDR can also go in and see all
          the behaviors this person has expressed that makes them sales ready.
          They can then drop that person into a predefined marketing campaign
          to further nurture them. This is the 101 version of how Marketo is using
          their own solution to enhance sales results.

                                                                                              Marketo
                                                                                            Sales insight




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chapter 3 |

        The Inside Sales
        Perspective

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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 3 – The Inside Sales Perspective                        22




          The Sales/Marketing Handoff
          In order to ensure all your leads are being contacted and
          the hard work of marketing does not go to waste, sales and
          marketing need to perfect a handoff process. This handoff
          is absolutely critical.

          Your company needs to develop a process within the
          sales team where a rep takes a quick moment at the time
          of handoff to look over the lead record, check the lead
          score, investigate the interesting behaviors in the nurture
          process and all other relevant information available from
          the marketing lead tracking tool. Once the rep has done this
          research, he or she knows how to begin the conversation
          more effectively, with more relevance to each specific lead
          based on their past behavior.

          InsideSales.com advocates using what we call “immediate
          response” – a concept based on lead response research
          that indicates the ability to make contact with a lead decays
          rapidly over time.




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 3 – The Inside Sales Perspective                                                 23




          Growth of Inside Sales
          When talking about the
                         inside sales
          growth of inside sales, we’re
          talking about the entire inside

                         Growing 15x faster
          sales industry. According
          to a study conducted in
          conjunction with infoUSA, the
          inside sales model is growing           3.75 MIL
          15x faster than the traditional
          sales model. It is taking off          3.50 MIL
          and seems to be the optimal
                                                  3.25 MIL
          response     mechanism       to
          leads that have been scored            3.00 MIL
          and nurtured by marketing
                                                  2.75 MIL
          automation solutions.
                                                 2.50 MIL

                                                 2.25 MIL

                                                 2.00 MIL
                                                             2008(historical)   2009   2010       2011      2012
                                                 INSIDE SALES VS. OUTSIDE SALES PROJECTED GROWTH RATE (       /    )




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 3 – The Inside Sales Perspective                               24




          Common Obstacles Facing
          Inside Sales Reps
          In a recent national research study conducted by InsideSales.com,
          we asked salespeople the following question: “What are the top
          obstacles that you face in trying to respond to marketing qualified
          leads?”

          Not surprisingly, the number one response was “making contact
          with leads.” The number two response was “accessing the correct
          decision maker in the company.” Number three was “knowing who
          was the right person to contact and when to make contact.”

          All three of these top obstacles are related and come down to
          what we call “contact ratios.” So the big question is, how do you
          dramatically improve contact ratios so that your team can wring
          all the value possible out of the leads that have been generated
                                                                                  Download a free
          through your marketing teams? Begin by implementing the seven         Executive Summary
          rules to increase contact ratios.




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chapter 4 |

        7 Rules to Increase
        Contact Ratios

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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 4 - Seven Rules to Increase Contact Ratios                                                               26




          Rule 1: Immediacy
          The first rule is what we call “immediacy,” which
          means calling leads back as fast as you can. The           CONTACTS MADE FROM FIRST DIALS
          research that substantiates rule number one came                       10,000
          from our Lead Response Study conducted with
          Dr. James Oldroyd.
                                                                                 8,000

          What the research shows us is how fast a lead cools




                                                                      CONTACTS
                                                                                 6,000
          off. A lead that is contacted within five minutes has
          a contact rate that is 100x higher versus waiting
          even 30 minutes.                                                       4,000



          Even more interesting is the impact on the                             2,000

          qualification rate (the ability to set an appointment
          and move the lead into the sales funnel). The                              0
                                                                                          5 MIN   10 MIN   15 MIN   20 MIN   25 MIN   30 MIN
          qualification rate is 21x higher if you call back within
          five minutes versus 30 minutes.                                                              RESPONSE TIME




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 4 - Seven Rules to Increase Contact Ratios                                       27




          Rule 1: Immediacy
          Let’s think about this. If you call someone who has
          submitted a form within the past 5 minutes, you know
          they’re probably still sitting at their computer right next


                                                                               Call Back
          to their phone. Knowing this behavior, it makes sense that
          a person is more likely to answer a call and be impressed




                                                                               quickly
          by your swift response.

          Recently, at InsideSales.com, a client submitted a lead
          on our website. We called them back in nine seconds. The
          lead said: “Whatever it is you just did, I’m going to buy
          it!” We have found it is impressive when somebody calls
          back really quickly. It’s a sign of hustle and proactivity.
          That’s the kind of company people want to do business
          with. Besides the fact that there is top-of-mind awareness
          because you contacted them so fast, there seems to
                                                                                   How quick is your sales team?
          be an emotional response that says, “Wow, that was                Find out with a lead response assessment
          impressive.”

          To summarize rule number one: call back quickly. It’s
          really that simple.




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 4 - Seven Rules to Increase Contact Ratios                                       28




          Rule 2: Persistency
          The next rule is to call back persistently.
          Our research has found that the                      % OF POTENTIAL VALUE
          average sales rep only makes 1.3 phone
                                                        100%
          calls on a lead before giving up. This
          graph shows the percentage of value                                                        91%   92%   93%
                                                        80%                                    90%
                                                                                   82%   85%
          that could be wrung out of a lead based
                                                                             73%
          on the number of call attempts made.          60%
                                                                       61%
                                                        40%
          By making one phone call you get about
                                                                 37%
          37 percent of the value of your leads.        20%
          If you make two phone calls you gain
          61 percent of the value. The interesting       0%
          part of the graph is at call number six.               1ST   2ND   3RD   4TH   5TH   6TH   7TH   8TH   9TH
          That’s where you’re getting 90 percent                             NUMBER OF CALLS
          of the value from these leads.




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          Rule 2: Persistency
          At InsideSales.com, we encourage our reps to make at least
          nine phone calls on every inbound lead. On outbound calls
          we suggest six phone calls. These are the best practices.
                                                                             IF Contact ratio is 10%

                                                                            10
          We’ve proven from hundreds of different datasets that
          this seems to be the sweet spot. Think about it logically, if
          your contact ratio is at 10 percent then you need to make                phone calls
          10 phone calls to make one contact.

          The morale of this story is to be persistent and keep
                                                                                   = 1 contact
                                                                                    
          calling. People are giving up way too early in the process
          and leaving a lot of opportunity on the table.

          Find out how persistent your sales team is in
          following through to reach valuable leads

          Request A Lead Response Assessment




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          Rule 3: Optimize Calls
          The third rule is to optimize the calling process. This
          means that you need to find the optimal time to call a
          company or person. The research that comes to mind is a
          study conducted by FranklinCovey which discovered that,
          although pretty rare, in some instances it’s not good to
          call back immediately.

          The case in point was a situation where people who had
          been shopping on the FranklinCovey website opted out
          halfway through the shopping cart experience. These
          shoppers were actually quite frustrated if they got an
          immediate call from FranklinCovey. After some research,
          FranklinCovey found that the best time to call the shopper
          was the following day between 3:30 and 4:00 p.m. to


                                                                                   Best time
          encourage the shopper to continue their experience and
          check out.

          To understand this phenomenon, several of these
          shoppers were called and asked: “What was it that
          made you upset when we called you back immediately?”
                                                                                   to call

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          Rule 3: Optimize Calls
          What was found was really interesting. Many of the
          shoppers had not input their credit card information
          because they had misplaced their credit card. They exited            Simple way
          the sales process to begin looking for their misplaced
                                                                               to Optimize

                                                                                   Ask
          card with the thought they might try again another time.
          In that instance, it’s actually better to call back another
          time to encourage the shopper to finish their experience
          after they have found their credit card and are no longer
          worried about where they might have left it.

          A simple way to optimize your calling time is to ask
          people when the best time to contact them is. This
          can be done by putting a field in your web form. If the
          prospect specifies afternoons, than that would be the
          optimal time to reach them vs. in the mornings. This
          concept of optimizing your call time is a combination of
          research and asking. It’s a very important best practice
          that seems obvious but is rarely done.




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 4 - Seven Rules to Increase Contact Ratios                                                         32




          Rule 4: Time of Day
          The research around best time of day
          actually comes from the original research                   BEST TIMES TO CONTACT 8-9 AND 4-5
          study by Dr. Oldroyd across many different          3,500

          types of businesses. In this study, the best        3,000
          time of day was found to be 8 to 9:00 a.m.
                                                              2,500
          or 4 to 5:00 p.m. to maximize contact. In
          fact, the research shows the lunch hour             2,000
          is the worst time of day to make contact.
                                                              1,500
          When you think about it the research makes
          sense. People are busy or gone and contact          1,000

          rates go down.                                       500

                                                                 0
          To optimize your contact rates, make sure                    7-8   8-9   9-10 10-11 11-12 12-1   1-2   2-3   3-4   4-5   5-6
          your reps are available during the best
          call times. For example, if you have a sales
                                                              CONTACTS MADE FROM FIRST DIALS
          department meeting at 8:00 a.m. and your
          research indicates that is your best call time,
          you probably ought to move the meeting to
          around lunchtime and free up that time for
          your sales reps to be more productive.




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 4 - Seven Rules to Increase Contact Ratios                                            33




          Rule 5: Day of Week
          When looking at which days of the week were better for
          making contact, it was a surprise that Tuesday was the
                                                                              Best Day of week to
          worst day of the week. In fact, Wednesday and Thursday              make contact
          are the two best days to be calling, based on the research
          study group. Dave Elkington, CEO of InsideSales.com,
                                                                              Wednesday 
                                                                              Thursday
          helped present this original research and asked audiences
          the question, “Why is it that Tuesday is so bad?” The
          funny thing is that they all said the same thing. The
          hypothesis is that people get slammed on Monday and dig
          themselves out all day Tuesday. By Wednesday they are
          free to start looking for new things to do. However, Friday          INITAL DIAL TO LEADS THAT BECOME CONTACTED
          is a fairly poor day of the week to reach out if you want            2.5
          to make contact. People are ready to go for the weekend
          and aren’t interested in starting new projects before the
                                                                               2.0
          weekend.

          We encourage buying sales tracking tools that capture                1.5
          the data necessary to enable you and your team to do
          research to determine what is the best day of week and               1.0
          time of day for your target clients.                                        M      T      W      TH      F




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 4 - Seven Rules to Increase Contact Ratios                                                        34




          Rule 6: Direct Dial Numbers
          A direct dial number is the desk line or cell phone number of the
          person you’re trying to reach. While there used to be a stigma against
          calling cell phone numbers because everyone had expensive, per-
          minute usage plans, for the most part everything is fine now thanks to            Average Meetings Per   % Direct Lines
                                                                                      Rep
          the introduction of unlimited calling plans. Sales reps using direct dial            Month (last 3)      on Contact List
          numbers have dramatically increased contact rates over sales reps
                                                                                      1             11                51%
          that don’t. This research was shared by Steve Richards of Vorsight.
          This chart features six reps who participated in the study. Notice rep      2             13                45%
          number six was able to set 33 appointments and of the records in his
                                                                                      3            20                 76%
          database, 97.6 percent included a direct dial line, showing a strong
          correlation of direct phone numbers and higher contact rates.               4            22                 74%
                                                                                      5            29                 87%
          If a sales rep really wants to contact somebody, he or she needs to use
          the prospect’s direct line. By using Google with a wild card search in
                                                                                      6            33               97.6%
                                                                                                                      Source Vorsight
          the phone number and the person’s name – for example, “Ken Krogue
          (801) ***-****” – Google will often return results with direct phone
          numbers. Other tools that can be used to find direct dial numbers
          include: LinkedIn, Zoominfo, InsideView and Data.com.

          By including a field on a web form that asks for a direct dial number,
          marketing can help double response probabilities for sales people.




insidesales.com                                                                        Share this eBook:
The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 4 - Seven Rules to Increase Contact Ratios                           35




          Rule 7: Get the Right Technology

                                                                                   57.8%
          When you’ve mastered all the best practices that
          consist of skill, you can continue improving by
                                                                    Best
          incorporating technology that aids in increasing
          contact ratios.




                                                                                   more likely to
          For example, LocalPresence™, an InsideSales.com
          product, increases the chances of a lead answering
          the phone. In fact, Marketo uses and loves this
          product because they have seen increased contact
          ratios with decision makers. The product is based                        answer phone
          on research that looked at Caller IDs. For example,
          if you’re busy at work and you get a call from a                         from a local number
          blocked number the odds of you answering are slim.
          You probably wouldn’t answer a toll-free number,                         Toll
          either. You would think it was a sales person trying
          to sell you something. If it’s a local number, however,                  Toll free
          our research shows that you’re 57.8 percent more
          likely to answer the phone. That’s exactly what
          LocalPresence™ does; it presents a local number
                                                                                   Blocked
          on the Caller ID.                                         Worst



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chapter 5 |

        Those Are the Rules;
        Here’s the Reality

insidesales.com         Share this eBook:
The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 5 – Those Are the Rules; Here’s the Reality                                                        37




           Average Response Rates
           If you aren’t fully convinced these seven basic
           rules will increase your contact ratios, here is                                                 Avg Response
                                                                                            Companies
                                                                                                                Time
           more research to back them up. This graph is
           a summary of the many lead response studies               Omniture Summit 2008     526                 54:06
           we have conducted across many companies.
           We call this our ResponseAudit.                           Dreamforce 2008           124                 44:31
                                                                     Dreamforce 2009          2,875                41:07
           A ResponseAudit starts with a secret shopper              Cloudforce 2010          472                 49:49
           web form submission. We have developed a
           system that automatically tracks how long                 Leads Con East 2010       57                 56:05
           it takes for a sales person to get back to the            Dreamforce 2011          3,051               57:28
           lead via a call or email, and how many attempts
                                                                     AA-ISP 2011               159                40:24
           are made. To begin the process, our business
           intelligence team submits the test lead. What             AA-ISP 2012              696                 39:20
           the data tells us is that it takes a sales rep on
                                                                                            Total Avg
           average 48 hours and 44 minutes to make
                                                                                              Hours           48:44
           their first contact attempt in response to a
                                                                                                        Internal InsideSales.com Study
           lead. That’s two days!

                                                                         What is your team’s response rate?
                                                                          Find out with a lead response assessment




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 5 – Those Are the Rules; Here’s the Reality                       38




           Average Response Rates
           Imagine going into Nordstrom on a Monday and



                                                                               only 27%
           asking to look at a pair of shoes. What if their shoe
           salesperson responded, “Why don’t you come back on
           Wednesday morning and I’d be happy to help you.”
           That doesn’t even make sense, but that’s how most
           sales teams are responding to Internet leads.
                                                                               of Internet
           InsideSales.com conducted studies that measure
           the percentage of leads that actually get contacted                 leads get
                                                                               contacted
           and found that only 27 percent of Internet leads
           get contacted. On average, 73 percent of Internet
           generated leads never get contacted by a sales rep.
           This study has been conducted on more than 10,000
           companies and consistently finds the same results.




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 5 – Those Are the Rules; Here’s the Reality                       39




           Providing Sales With
           ‘Win Ready’ Leads
           To summarize the key takeaways from this eBook:

           •	 Sales people don’t want campaign responders; they want
              “win ready” leads.

           •	 The reality is that only 25 percent of people who respond
              to a campaign fit that profile.

           •	 A discipline process needs to be in place for finding and
              scoring leads, so sales-ready leads can be fast tracked to
              the sales reps.

           •	 Best practices can be followed to make sure sales-ready
              leads get contacted – quickly – before their value degrades!




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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | View a Demo                                                              40




           Demo Marketo and get $50                            Demo Insidesales.com
           See how fast you can be successful                  Receive a sweatshirt, a $55 value.
           with Marketo’s easy and powerful                    Learn how to double contact rates
           marketing automation.                               and drive higer revenue.


                     Demo Now                                              Demo Now


                     Start a Free Trial of InsideSales.com solution with LocalPresence™ included



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The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Credits                                                          41




          Credits
          Content                              Writer
          Jon Miller |                         Alex Orton |
          http://marketo.com
          Ken Krogue |
          http://kenkrogue.com                 Designer
                                               Scott Humphries |
                                               Stephen Gashler |
          Copy Editors
          Dayna Rothman |
          Jan Johnson |




                                        Copyright © 2012 InsideSales.com


insidesales.com                                                            Share this eBook:
How to Build a High Velocity Sales Team | Webinar                                                               42




          Learn more




                                              Part 1:	 Strategic Positioning

                                              Part 2:	 Recruiting, Hiring, Managing
           View Webinar                       Part 3:	 Campaign Design and Evaluation

                                              Part 4:	 Technology  Tools for Sales Teams

                                              Part 5:	 Metrics for Results




insidesales.com                                                                             Share this eBook:

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Ultimate Revenue Engine: Maximizing Results Through Inside Sales and Marketing Automation

  • 1. 123 56 7 15 17 8 10 18 THE 9 1 ULTIMATE 411 2 13 16 14 22 REVENUE 19 2324 2021 ENGINE MAXIMIZING RESULTS THROUGH INSIDE SALES & MARKETING AUTOMATION By Jon Miller Ken Krogue insidesales.com
  • 2. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Maximizing Results Through Inside Sales and Marketing Automation 2 How to get the right leads to sales at the right time & enable sales to contact that lead right away Jon Miller, VP of Marketing and co-Founder, Marketo Ken Krogue, President and co-Founder, InsideSales.com insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 3. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Contents 3 chapter 1 | The Changing Nature of the Buyer World of Information Scarcity ����������������������������������������������������������������������6 World of Information Abundance������������������������������������������������������������������ 7 Today’s Buyer is a Highly Informed Buyer ��������������������������������������������������8 The Impact of the Informed Buyer on Lead Generation �����������������������������9 � chapter 2 | Managing Your Leads Separating Leads������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 12 Lead Nurturing ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������13 � The 3 Dimensions of Lead Relevance �������������������������������������������������������� 14 Lead Scoring ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 16 How to Score Leads ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������17 � An Alternative Method of Lead Scoring ���������������������������������������������������� 18 Behavior Shows Interest������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 19 Responding to Qualified Marketing Leads������������������������������������������������� 20 insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 4. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Contents 4 chapter 3 | The Inside Sales Perspective The Sales/Marketing Handoff��������������������������������������������������������������������� 22 Growth of Inside Sales�������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 23 � Common Obstacles Facing Inside Sales Reps������������������������������������������� 24 chapter 4 | 7 Rules to Increase Contact Ratios Rule 1: Immediacy ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 26 Rule 2: Persistency������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 28 Rule 3: Optimize Calls��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 30 Rule 4: Time of Day��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������32 Rule 5: Day of Week �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������33 � Rule 6: Direct Dial Numbers����������������������������������������������������������������������� 34 Rule 7: Get the Right Technology��������������������������������������������������������������� 35 chapter 5 | Those Are the Rules; Here’s the Reality Average Response Rates ����������������������������������������������������������������������������37 Providing Sales With ‘Win Ready’ Leads��������������������������������������������������� 39 insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 5. chapter 1 | The Changing Nature of the Buyer insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 6. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 1 – The Changing Nature of the Buyer 6 World of Information Scarcity It wasn’t long ago that we lived in a world of information scarcity. If the buyer wanted to research any kind of complex purchase, SALES REP whether it was a car, a million dollar software ? system or something in-between, the buyer had to get their information by talking to REFERRALS a sales rep. It was marketing’s job to focus on brand building by leveraging advertising, trade shows, PR, and print. As a result, all leads – hot or cold – got passed to sales. TRADE SHOWS BUYERS GUIDE insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 7. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 1 – The Changing Nature of the Buyer 7 World of Information Abundance Today, there has been an explosion of readily available information on the web and other social channels. This is a relatively recent phenomenon in the careers of marketing and sales people and the amount of information being created is expanding. insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 8. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 1 – The Changing Nature of the Buyer 8 Today’s Buyer is a Highly Informed Buyer All this access to information is changing how we interact with each other and how we buy. According to SiriusDecisions, buyers today want to complete 70 percent of their buying process before they ever engage with a sales person. This means that they want to do all the research and take advantage of this abundance of information before they interact. For example, think about when you bought your last car. You didn’t go into the dealer without knowledge of the purchase price that the dealer paid. You knew exactly how much the car was worth because you had done your research. This same thing is happening with buyers in your market today. This change in buying behavior is driving a fundamental shift in terms of how we generate our revenue. insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 9. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 1 – The Changing Nature of the Buyer 9 The Impact of the Informed Buyer on Lead Generation In today’s informed-buyer world, your marketing process starts with having ONLINE MARKETING SOLD a very large top-of-funnel lead pool. You need to generate as many leads TRY IT FREE FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY 40% SOLD as possible. That means running more Off this weekend programs like webinars, tradeshows, SOLD social campaigns, and online ads. It SOLD also means leveraging your word-of- mouth and influence marketing. While advertising might influence a lot of people, it has a smaller impact on their WORD OF MOUTH SOLD buying decision. On the flip side, word-of- mouth influences fewer people but has a larger impact; both types of promotions SOLD work together to drive your funnel. SOLD insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 10. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 1 – The Changing Nature of the Buyer 10 The Impact of the Informed Buyer on Lead Generation However, most of these top-of-funnel buyers aren’t ready to buy when you first TRACKING BUYERS meet them. You need to nurture, develop and track those relationships until you see buying signals. When this happens, fast track them to sales so that sales responds to that interest quickly and appropriately. Then close the loop and close the deal. INTERESTED LEARNING READY insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 11. chapter 2 | Managing Your Leads insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 12. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 2 - Managing Your Leads 12 Separating Leads The most important question all marketers should be asking themselves is, “What type of leads are we trying to get to sales?” The problem is the disconnect between what most marketing and sales departments call a lead. Here’s a secret: sales doesn’t just want names – they want “win ready” leads! If all they wanted were names, you could give them the white pages. Sales wants people who are ready to engage in an active buying cycle with a timeframe to buy. They want to be able to see a path to closure. Marketo has done research and discovered that less than 25 percent of all respondents to marketing campaigns are ready to Responsders to go to sales. 50 percent will need further nurturing and 25 percent may not have been an appropriate fit in the first place. At Marketo, Marketing Campaign on average, prospects are nurtured for 123 days between when they first engage with the company and when they are sales ready. Ready to Go 25% Meaning, in any given month, almost two-thirds of all the leads that are passed to the Marketo inside sales team to qualify are people Further Nurturing 50% that have been around the system for more than a month and have been nurtured. Service Not for Lead 25% Marketo research on own marketing campaigns insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 13. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 2 - Managing Your Leads 13 Lead Nurturing There is a big gap between when a lead first engages with your company and when they are sales ready. Lead nurturing is the process of closing that gap; it’s the process of building relationships with qualified prospects that aren’t ready to buy with the goal of earning their business. The challenge is to remain top-of-mind when that lead is ready to buy. Nurturing is the method that helps achieve this top-of-mind state. By staying in touch and building relationships, you can guide your prospects through the education process. How do you nurture leads? Read the “Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing” for some quick tips on this process. To summarize lead nurturing into one word: relevance. If your lead nurturing Get this eBook is not relevant, your prospects will opt out, or more likely, emotionally opt out and stop paying attention. insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 14. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 2 - Managing Your Leads 14 The 3 Dimensions of Lead Relevance At Marketo, relevance is defined across three dimensions: buying stage, persona and 1 Buying Stage customized messages. For early stage buyers, it is important that you don’t overwhelm them with product information right away. They don’t care. Yet. Early stage buyers are looking for more general thought leadership content. 2 Persona Conversely, mid stage buyers are more apt to search for more specific content such as a buying guide. Late stage buyers are the ones looking for your product specific content, such as data and pricing sheets. Persona, the second dimension, requires that you speak to the needs and issues of your buyer. At Marketo, for example, their different personas are Molly Marketer, Sam Sales and Jack Executive. It’s important that you define 3 Customized Messages the personas for your industry so that you can keep your nurturing relevant. insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 15. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 2 - Managing Your Leads 15 The 3 Dimensions of Lead Relevance Within each track, Marketo delivers the third 4-1-1 dimension: customized messages. They customize specific messages, emails and landing pages by industry, company size and location to make sure the messages are specifically relevant for each type of lead. To ensure that the lead is receiving content that keeps their attention, Marketo uses something called the 4-1-1 cadence Cadence for content. That means that for every soft promotional and hard promotional message they should have four messages that are educational, informative or entertaining in nature. This cadence builds the relationship in an authentic way by sharing useful and educational materials. It also ensures that the buyer’s attention is high when they want to send the soft or hard promotional message. insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 16. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 2 - Managing Your Leads 16 Lead Scoring Now that there are all these leads in the database and they’ve entered the nurturing process, the two Questions? question is when is a lead ready to go to the sales team. This is where lead scoring comes in. Lead scoring is a methodology that involves both marketing and sales. It requires that the two departments work together to rank leads from the most sales ready to the least. Lead scoring is Is this prospect the only way you can know where your individual leads are in the buying cycle. While there are many different ways you could score leads, it’s very important to score leads both on fit and interest. Fit questions should help determine if this prospect is a good “fit” for your solution. Are they a company your company wants to sell to? Interest questions, in contrast, should help determine if this prospect is a good Fit Interested interested in or needs what your company delivers. Like any relationship in real life, you have to have that mutual interest on both sides to make for a good match. insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 17. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 2 - Managing Your Leads 17 How to Score Leads Marketo surveyed over 300 companies across all different company sizes and industries. The one common trait, they were all B2B. The industries included: technology, manufacturing, healthcare, and financial services. Among the questions they asked companies were: “How do you significant revenue growth go about your lead scoring?” Marketo correlated responses with their performance across various revenue metrics. The interesting thing was that companies that use this multi-dimensional based on fit interest lead scoring approach, based on fit and interest, had significantly higher revenue growth as compared to their lead scoring peers that used other methods of lead scoring. Plus, their sales teams spent more time on productive sales activities, like closing deals. Clearly, there’s value to having this multi-dimensional lead scoring. insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 18. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 2 - Managing Your Leads 18 An Alternative Method of Lead Scoring The other way to think of lead scoring is to look at where the information Inferred comes from. For example, there are two different types of information Name: you can gather from a lead: explicit information and inferred information. Explicit information is what the prospect actually tells you by filling out Email: a form. This type of information can’t always be trusted. People either don’t know the accurate information or don’t put accurate information on the form. explicit Instead, focus on inferred information, which can be figured out from Name: what the lead provides. For example, if you know the lead’s email address you should be able to figure out their company, how many employees Email: their company has, what industry they are in, where they are located, among other useful information. Typically, this is a process your lead Title: qualifier team needs to go through during the prospect nurture phase. This process helps your team determine if there really is a “fit.” Direct Phone: Company: Then make sure you are using the best practices that will be discussed in the following chapter. insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 19. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 2 - Managing Your Leads 19 Behavior Shows Interest To determine lead interest, look at behavior. At Marketo, they break behavior into two types: latent LATENT BEHAVIOR behavior and active behavior. Latent behavior expresses engagement with your company’s LEAD INTO SALES-READY OPPORTUNITIES RAW INQUIRIES NURTURING content, while active behavior expresses sales readiness. An example of latent behavior might be ENGAGEMENT WITH YOUR COMPANY’S CONTENT attending a webinar or reading a blog. An example of active behavior might be watching a detailed product demo, visiting pricing pages or searching on the company’s name. To score a lead, combine the demographic fit score ACTIVE BEHAVIOR with the two kinds of interest scores, such as the engagement score and the buying readiness score. Based on a lead’s score in these two different dimensions is how Marketo ultimately decides if a SALES READINESS lead is a marketing qualified lead that gets passed to the inside sales team. insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 20. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 2 - Managing Your Leads 20 Responding to Qualified Marketing Leads At Marketo, they use the InsideSales.com PowerDialer integrated within the Salesforce® CRM to make sure they are contacting their leads as soon as they identify them as being sales ready. They also get very good reporting and metrics in terms of call volume, call time, and number of live connections, to name a few, which they use to manage and optimize profit. The other tool that their sales development reps (SDR) rely on is Marketo’s sales insight product. This tool is inside the Salesforce CRM system. Their SDRs can see the lead score in a nice intuitive, stars and Powerdialer for flames layout. Stars show the quality of the lead fit and flames show salesforce the interest or urgency of the lead. An SDR can also go in and see all the behaviors this person has expressed that makes them sales ready. They can then drop that person into a predefined marketing campaign to further nurture them. This is the 101 version of how Marketo is using their own solution to enhance sales results. Marketo Sales insight insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 21. chapter 3 | The Inside Sales Perspective insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 22. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 3 – The Inside Sales Perspective 22 The Sales/Marketing Handoff In order to ensure all your leads are being contacted and the hard work of marketing does not go to waste, sales and marketing need to perfect a handoff process. This handoff is absolutely critical. Your company needs to develop a process within the sales team where a rep takes a quick moment at the time of handoff to look over the lead record, check the lead score, investigate the interesting behaviors in the nurture process and all other relevant information available from the marketing lead tracking tool. Once the rep has done this research, he or she knows how to begin the conversation more effectively, with more relevance to each specific lead based on their past behavior. InsideSales.com advocates using what we call “immediate response” – a concept based on lead response research that indicates the ability to make contact with a lead decays rapidly over time. insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 23. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 3 – The Inside Sales Perspective 23 Growth of Inside Sales When talking about the inside sales growth of inside sales, we’re talking about the entire inside Growing 15x faster sales industry. According to a study conducted in conjunction with infoUSA, the inside sales model is growing 3.75 MIL 15x faster than the traditional sales model. It is taking off 3.50 MIL and seems to be the optimal 3.25 MIL response mechanism to leads that have been scored 3.00 MIL and nurtured by marketing 2.75 MIL automation solutions. 2.50 MIL 2.25 MIL 2.00 MIL 2008(historical) 2009 2010 2011 2012 INSIDE SALES VS. OUTSIDE SALES PROJECTED GROWTH RATE ( / ) insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 24. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 3 – The Inside Sales Perspective 24 Common Obstacles Facing Inside Sales Reps In a recent national research study conducted by InsideSales.com, we asked salespeople the following question: “What are the top obstacles that you face in trying to respond to marketing qualified leads?” Not surprisingly, the number one response was “making contact with leads.” The number two response was “accessing the correct decision maker in the company.” Number three was “knowing who was the right person to contact and when to make contact.” All three of these top obstacles are related and come down to what we call “contact ratios.” So the big question is, how do you dramatically improve contact ratios so that your team can wring all the value possible out of the leads that have been generated Download a free through your marketing teams? Begin by implementing the seven Executive Summary rules to increase contact ratios. insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 25. chapter 4 | 7 Rules to Increase Contact Ratios insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 26. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 4 - Seven Rules to Increase Contact Ratios 26 Rule 1: Immediacy The first rule is what we call “immediacy,” which means calling leads back as fast as you can. The CONTACTS MADE FROM FIRST DIALS research that substantiates rule number one came 10,000 from our Lead Response Study conducted with Dr. James Oldroyd. 8,000 What the research shows us is how fast a lead cools CONTACTS 6,000 off. A lead that is contacted within five minutes has a contact rate that is 100x higher versus waiting even 30 minutes. 4,000 Even more interesting is the impact on the 2,000 qualification rate (the ability to set an appointment and move the lead into the sales funnel). The 0 5 MIN 10 MIN 15 MIN 20 MIN 25 MIN 30 MIN qualification rate is 21x higher if you call back within five minutes versus 30 minutes. RESPONSE TIME insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 27. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 4 - Seven Rules to Increase Contact Ratios 27 Rule 1: Immediacy Let’s think about this. If you call someone who has submitted a form within the past 5 minutes, you know they’re probably still sitting at their computer right next Call Back to their phone. Knowing this behavior, it makes sense that a person is more likely to answer a call and be impressed quickly by your swift response. Recently, at InsideSales.com, a client submitted a lead on our website. We called them back in nine seconds. The lead said: “Whatever it is you just did, I’m going to buy it!” We have found it is impressive when somebody calls back really quickly. It’s a sign of hustle and proactivity. That’s the kind of company people want to do business with. Besides the fact that there is top-of-mind awareness because you contacted them so fast, there seems to How quick is your sales team? be an emotional response that says, “Wow, that was Find out with a lead response assessment impressive.” To summarize rule number one: call back quickly. It’s really that simple. insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 28. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 4 - Seven Rules to Increase Contact Ratios 28 Rule 2: Persistency The next rule is to call back persistently. Our research has found that the % OF POTENTIAL VALUE average sales rep only makes 1.3 phone 100% calls on a lead before giving up. This graph shows the percentage of value 91% 92% 93% 80% 90% 82% 85% that could be wrung out of a lead based 73% on the number of call attempts made. 60% 61% 40% By making one phone call you get about 37% 37 percent of the value of your leads. 20% If you make two phone calls you gain 61 percent of the value. The interesting 0% part of the graph is at call number six. 1ST 2ND 3RD 4TH 5TH 6TH 7TH 8TH 9TH That’s where you’re getting 90 percent NUMBER OF CALLS of the value from these leads. insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 29. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 4 - Seven Rules to Increase Contact Ratios 29 Rule 2: Persistency At InsideSales.com, we encourage our reps to make at least nine phone calls on every inbound lead. On outbound calls we suggest six phone calls. These are the best practices. IF Contact ratio is 10% 10 We’ve proven from hundreds of different datasets that this seems to be the sweet spot. Think about it logically, if your contact ratio is at 10 percent then you need to make phone calls 10 phone calls to make one contact. The morale of this story is to be persistent and keep = 1 contact   calling. People are giving up way too early in the process and leaving a lot of opportunity on the table. Find out how persistent your sales team is in following through to reach valuable leads Request A Lead Response Assessment insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 30. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 4 - Seven Rules to Increase Contact Ratios 30 Rule 3: Optimize Calls The third rule is to optimize the calling process. This means that you need to find the optimal time to call a company or person. The research that comes to mind is a study conducted by FranklinCovey which discovered that, although pretty rare, in some instances it’s not good to call back immediately. The case in point was a situation where people who had been shopping on the FranklinCovey website opted out halfway through the shopping cart experience. These shoppers were actually quite frustrated if they got an immediate call from FranklinCovey. After some research, FranklinCovey found that the best time to call the shopper was the following day between 3:30 and 4:00 p.m. to Best time encourage the shopper to continue their experience and check out. To understand this phenomenon, several of these shoppers were called and asked: “What was it that made you upset when we called you back immediately?” to call insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 31. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 4 - Seven Rules to Increase Contact Ratios 31 Rule 3: Optimize Calls What was found was really interesting. Many of the shoppers had not input their credit card information because they had misplaced their credit card. They exited Simple way the sales process to begin looking for their misplaced to Optimize Ask card with the thought they might try again another time. In that instance, it’s actually better to call back another time to encourage the shopper to finish their experience after they have found their credit card and are no longer worried about where they might have left it. A simple way to optimize your calling time is to ask people when the best time to contact them is. This can be done by putting a field in your web form. If the prospect specifies afternoons, than that would be the optimal time to reach them vs. in the mornings. This concept of optimizing your call time is a combination of research and asking. It’s a very important best practice that seems obvious but is rarely done. insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 32. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 4 - Seven Rules to Increase Contact Ratios 32 Rule 4: Time of Day The research around best time of day actually comes from the original research BEST TIMES TO CONTACT 8-9 AND 4-5 study by Dr. Oldroyd across many different 3,500 types of businesses. In this study, the best 3,000 time of day was found to be 8 to 9:00 a.m. 2,500 or 4 to 5:00 p.m. to maximize contact. In fact, the research shows the lunch hour 2,000 is the worst time of day to make contact. 1,500 When you think about it the research makes sense. People are busy or gone and contact 1,000 rates go down. 500 0 To optimize your contact rates, make sure 7-8 8-9 9-10 10-11 11-12 12-1 1-2 2-3 3-4 4-5 5-6 your reps are available during the best call times. For example, if you have a sales CONTACTS MADE FROM FIRST DIALS department meeting at 8:00 a.m. and your research indicates that is your best call time, you probably ought to move the meeting to around lunchtime and free up that time for your sales reps to be more productive. insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 33. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 4 - Seven Rules to Increase Contact Ratios 33 Rule 5: Day of Week When looking at which days of the week were better for making contact, it was a surprise that Tuesday was the Best Day of week to worst day of the week. In fact, Wednesday and Thursday make contact are the two best days to be calling, based on the research study group. Dave Elkington, CEO of InsideSales.com, Wednesday Thursday helped present this original research and asked audiences the question, “Why is it that Tuesday is so bad?” The funny thing is that they all said the same thing. The hypothesis is that people get slammed on Monday and dig themselves out all day Tuesday. By Wednesday they are free to start looking for new things to do. However, Friday INITAL DIAL TO LEADS THAT BECOME CONTACTED is a fairly poor day of the week to reach out if you want 2.5 to make contact. People are ready to go for the weekend and aren’t interested in starting new projects before the 2.0 weekend. We encourage buying sales tracking tools that capture 1.5 the data necessary to enable you and your team to do research to determine what is the best day of week and 1.0 time of day for your target clients. M T W TH F insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 34. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 4 - Seven Rules to Increase Contact Ratios 34 Rule 6: Direct Dial Numbers A direct dial number is the desk line or cell phone number of the person you’re trying to reach. While there used to be a stigma against calling cell phone numbers because everyone had expensive, per- minute usage plans, for the most part everything is fine now thanks to Average Meetings Per % Direct Lines Rep the introduction of unlimited calling plans. Sales reps using direct dial Month (last 3) on Contact List numbers have dramatically increased contact rates over sales reps 1 11 51% that don’t. This research was shared by Steve Richards of Vorsight. This chart features six reps who participated in the study. Notice rep 2 13 45% number six was able to set 33 appointments and of the records in his 3 20 76% database, 97.6 percent included a direct dial line, showing a strong correlation of direct phone numbers and higher contact rates. 4 22 74% 5 29 87% If a sales rep really wants to contact somebody, he or she needs to use the prospect’s direct line. By using Google with a wild card search in 6 33 97.6% Source Vorsight the phone number and the person’s name – for example, “Ken Krogue (801) ***-****” – Google will often return results with direct phone numbers. Other tools that can be used to find direct dial numbers include: LinkedIn, Zoominfo, InsideView and Data.com. By including a field on a web form that asks for a direct dial number, marketing can help double response probabilities for sales people. insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 35. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 4 - Seven Rules to Increase Contact Ratios 35 Rule 7: Get the Right Technology 57.8% When you’ve mastered all the best practices that consist of skill, you can continue improving by Best incorporating technology that aids in increasing contact ratios. more likely to For example, LocalPresence™, an InsideSales.com product, increases the chances of a lead answering the phone. In fact, Marketo uses and loves this product because they have seen increased contact ratios with decision makers. The product is based answer phone on research that looked at Caller IDs. For example, if you’re busy at work and you get a call from a from a local number blocked number the odds of you answering are slim. You probably wouldn’t answer a toll-free number, Toll either. You would think it was a sales person trying to sell you something. If it’s a local number, however, Toll free our research shows that you’re 57.8 percent more likely to answer the phone. That’s exactly what LocalPresence™ does; it presents a local number Blocked on the Caller ID. Worst insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 36. chapter 5 | Those Are the Rules; Here’s the Reality insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 37. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 5 – Those Are the Rules; Here’s the Reality 37 Average Response Rates If you aren’t fully convinced these seven basic rules will increase your contact ratios, here is Avg Response Companies Time more research to back them up. This graph is a summary of the many lead response studies Omniture Summit 2008 526 54:06 we have conducted across many companies. We call this our ResponseAudit. Dreamforce 2008 124 44:31 Dreamforce 2009 2,875 41:07 A ResponseAudit starts with a secret shopper Cloudforce 2010 472 49:49 web form submission. We have developed a system that automatically tracks how long Leads Con East 2010 57 56:05 it takes for a sales person to get back to the Dreamforce 2011 3,051 57:28 lead via a call or email, and how many attempts AA-ISP 2011 159 40:24 are made. To begin the process, our business intelligence team submits the test lead. What AA-ISP 2012 696 39:20 the data tells us is that it takes a sales rep on Total Avg average 48 hours and 44 minutes to make Hours 48:44 their first contact attempt in response to a Internal InsideSales.com Study lead. That’s two days! What is your team’s response rate? Find out with a lead response assessment insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 38. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 5 – Those Are the Rules; Here’s the Reality 38 Average Response Rates Imagine going into Nordstrom on a Monday and only 27% asking to look at a pair of shoes. What if their shoe salesperson responded, “Why don’t you come back on Wednesday morning and I’d be happy to help you.” That doesn’t even make sense, but that’s how most sales teams are responding to Internet leads. of Internet InsideSales.com conducted studies that measure the percentage of leads that actually get contacted leads get contacted and found that only 27 percent of Internet leads get contacted. On average, 73 percent of Internet generated leads never get contacted by a sales rep. This study has been conducted on more than 10,000 companies and consistently finds the same results. insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 39. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Chapter 5 – Those Are the Rules; Here’s the Reality 39 Providing Sales With ‘Win Ready’ Leads To summarize the key takeaways from this eBook: • Sales people don’t want campaign responders; they want “win ready” leads. • The reality is that only 25 percent of people who respond to a campaign fit that profile. • A discipline process needs to be in place for finding and scoring leads, so sales-ready leads can be fast tracked to the sales reps. • Best practices can be followed to make sure sales-ready leads get contacted – quickly – before their value degrades! insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 40. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | View a Demo 40 Demo Marketo and get $50 Demo Insidesales.com See how fast you can be successful Receive a sweatshirt, a $55 value. with Marketo’s easy and powerful Learn how to double contact rates marketing automation. and drive higer revenue. Demo Now Demo Now Start a Free Trial of InsideSales.com solution with LocalPresence™ included insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 41. The Ultimate Revenue Engine | Credits 41 Credits Content Writer Jon Miller | Alex Orton | http://marketo.com Ken Krogue | http://kenkrogue.com Designer Scott Humphries | Stephen Gashler | Copy Editors Dayna Rothman | Jan Johnson | Copyright © 2012 InsideSales.com insidesales.com Share this eBook:
  • 42. How to Build a High Velocity Sales Team | Webinar 42 Learn more Part 1: Strategic Positioning Part 2: Recruiting, Hiring, Managing View Webinar Part 3: Campaign Design and Evaluation Part 4: Technology Tools for Sales Teams Part 5: Metrics for Results insidesales.com Share this eBook: