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8 things you need to build a scalable sales system
do you have a plan for all of them?
Jacob Vandenbark
December 14, 2023
If you're looking to build a sales driven organization with consistent and scalable sales, here are some things you need:
1) Data - This has two parts. You want a broad list of accounts and prospects who you can sell to in an automated or semi-automated manner and you also want a hit-list of a couple hundred accounts that would be dream clients. 80/20 rule applies here.
80% of data is what you win at NOW | 20% of data focused on whales or where you want to be |
2) Segmentation of prospects by outbound approach - After getting the data, you need to decide on the outbound focus you'll use. The strategy take depends on your business, resources, and goals. If you are trying to keep sales owner only, you have no sales reps, and you are extremely busy - setting up a process with a lot of manual calls and emails probably isn’t a great strategy.
Whatever approach you use, you MUST be consistent with it.
3) Simple outreach plan by segment - work where your prospects are. There are hundreds of different types of cadences, but choose one that lines up with your approach. If you have a mobile number, call that a few times first, then if no answer and if they aren't on LinkedIn, migrate to email. Build some simple structure.
4) Quality reports for sales to see/work the segments and allow coaching/management - You don't want 47 one-off reports. You want a handful of reports, and sales should be able to clearly explain the intent and action plan for each one.
If sales doesn't know exactly where to go each day to start their work, you will lose.
5) Focus on the prospect’s experience (not the sales reps) -this applies to the tech utilized (zoom/Webex/calendaring process) and also the sales call structure.
6) Redefine the Goal - if you are selling something reasonably expensive, sales shouldn’t exclusively focus on booking meetings. Gathering intel, curiosity, piquing their interest, or learning that they plan to buy in a few months count too. Your SDRs attempt to generate more than just "book a meeting", then your closers follow up to seal the deal.
7) Very clear and binary Opportunity Stages - this allows for simple and clear management for the reps and managers. Binary is operative word. Did {X} happen, yes or no? Did the Demo Happen translates to an Opportunity Stage of "Demo Complete". Stay away from wishy washy stages like "Interested" or "Discovery".
8) Support from Marketing along the way. - You need good case studies, you’d like to see some solid social content being produced. The reason why is that prospects DO RESEARCH. Your sales guy leaves a VM, they don’t know that what the prospect does is Google you to read about your business before deciding to call back. If it looks like amateur hour, the game is over. You need to build enough great content that you look credible and polished.
Tools and Technology are a byproduct of what you need. It isn't smart to find a cool tool and try to jam it into your process. Find what your process needs, then go hunt down a tool that will fix a specific problem.