Sales Talk: How to Organise Your Team for Repeatable Success

Sales are through the roof!

Your team’s killing it.

Your customers are happy.

Your boss is happy.

So, now what?

Well, you’ve got to look at what’s to come.

You’ve got to think about whether the same sales model you’ve used from the beginning is truly still viable as you scale.

And, if you find it’s not, you’ve got to look at the structure of your sales team.

But where do you start and what can you change?

We got Michael Hanson, Founder and CEO of Growth Genie, to fill us in!

Flick through 👇 the menu to see where you can better organise your team to ensure repeated success!

Where to start 

Processes that aren’t repeatable and scalable aren’t worth implementing.

So, focusing your energy on what’s going to work must become your priority.

How do you get there?

Michael says you’ve got to start with a shift in mindset.

Both you and your team need to rethink the outbound sales process.

“When you’re outbound focused, you’re going to get a lot more “no’s” than “yeses” and you need to determine how your salespeople are going to react to that. That’s really going to define you.”

You also need to rethink your investment in the outbound process.

Why?

Because avoiding this could really be hindering your trajectory of growth.

“It’s a common story. You hear of companies in funding round A, B, or C...and they’re predominantly inbound focused.” 

“They then realise that they want to get more enterprise customers and the best way to do that is through outbound prospecting because you can be more targeted about who you pick.”

This is where your sales team has the opportunity to create a very personalised experience.

Your team should create loads of messaging around:

• What your prospect’s company is doing.
• What your value proposition is that can enhance this.

You’ve then got to look outside of what your team is doing and evaluate 👇

The role of sales engagement tools 

Are the tools you’re using hindering or enhancing your team’s work?

Can they help you in building a predictable engine for revenue generation?

Or, are they making your reps lazy?

Michael thinks there’s a huge amount of value in your sales enablement tools.

But, you’ve got to deep dive into technology and look at three things:

1. Data

Are you using a sales intelligence tool like Cognism to improve how you generate leads?

2. How are your SDRs reaching out to people?

You can have the best tools out there but it comes down to how your reps are using them.

If your SDRs are using Saleloft for automated emails, for example, they’ve got to make their emails as personalised as possible on this platform.

This can be done by filtering lists and breaking them down into personas and industries.

And then they’ve got to think about...

3. Triggers

Reps need to research your prospects and see what they’re looking for.

If the prospect is looking to hire people and your solution helps with the onboarding process, your reps need to reach out and offer your solution to the prospect timeously.

These messages can look incredibly personalised while going out to 500 people.

The key is to make your automated messages look personalised.

Next, you’ll want to look at 👇

Fine-tuning your prospecting 

Often, early-stage companies haven’t yet defined their ideal customer profile. They don’t know who to prospect to.

Filling this information gap from the beginning is incredibly important.

The first thing you’ve got to do is get to know your market.

“If you have customers, you should interview them. You’ve got to ask ‘What were the things you were struggling with before you started with us?’ and ‘How have we helped you?’”

Have conversations to determine what’s working and what’s not working.

Take on their negative feedback as well. From there, you’ll have a clearer idea of what your ICP is.

And, you’ll want to target people with similar profiles.

If you don’t have many customers, Michael recommends finding people who could potentially be customers, but you don’t want to sell to them, you just want to interview them.

The idea is to find out whether they’d be interested in your solution and whether they could recommend others to you.

Essentially, you’re getting validation from your market.

This process does take a bit of time, but it’s always worth it.

Next, you’ll want to jump back into your team and evaluate how your SDRs and AEs work together.

How do you do this? By...

Having an ‘allbound’ team 

The SDR to AE handover process is widely used in SaaS sales, but does it have a place in the future?

Or, should you be looking to more of a full-cycle model?

Michael gives us his insight:

“The SDR model will always be around - there will always be a place for the SDR. Someone needs to pick up the phone and book a meeting for someone else. But, what really needs to improve is the process.”

“I’ve heard from other sales leaders and experienced it myself as a buyer - you wait for three or four calls to get to a demo because you get a sales call, have a discovery call, and so on.”

“So, when you go on a website and click “book a demo” you don’t get a demo. You get a whole process that is completely about the company and not about the buyer. It’s treated completely transactionally and they’re not thinking about the buyer’s time.”

This whole model is broken.

So, your reps really need to value your prospects’ time.

And, you need to make sure that your AEs and SDRs are working together.

They should see each other as partners and should be working as an ‘allbound’ team.

If you want to get your team working together and ensuring that they’re not wasting anyone’s time, they should:

1. Set expectations

If you’re promising a demo, the prospect should get a demo.

When you need to do a discovery prior to this, inform the prospect that it’s necessary to create a more tailored, relevant demo for them.

2. Have your SDRs go on the call that they book for the AEs

This allows for a smooth introduction between the AE and the prospect.

It’s also great from a training perspective - for both the SDRs and AEs who want to move up to more senior roles.

3. The AEs should check the SDR’s CRM notes

This might seem obvious, but more often than not, the AEs get on a call and ask the prospect the same questions the SDR ran through.

This frustrates both the SDR and the buyer.

So, make sure your AEs avoid this costly mistake!

And once you have this down, you’ll want to add a few more things to your list - those being 👇

Sales teams must-haves 

Michael let us in on what you and your team need in order to create repeatable success!

1. Look at your compensation model

Recently, there’s been a shift in sales compensation models and it really seems to be working.

The name?

Account-based compensation.

It’s a huge motivator in getting and retaining larger accounts which will grow your revenue.

But what exactly is account-based compensation and how does it work?

This commission structure involves rethinking the traditional sales structure to accommodate an account-based marketing approach.

It works by changing the metrics you’re monitoring from a sales perspective to an account-based marketing perspective.

It requires a shift in thinking from reps simply booking meetings with anyone to reps booking meetings with the right accounts.

For it to work, you’ll want to consider tracking metrics like:

• Opportunities created.
• Pipeline velocity.
• Annual contract value.
• Retention and expansion rates.

And then compensate your salespeople based on how they’re meeting these targets.

Team buy-in is huge here.

A great way to do this could be to “crowd-source” the targets for your year together with your team. Rather than having, say, your VP of Sales pulling out a number for everyone to chase.

This gets your team working towards a goal they’ve decided on together.

And is a great motivator in creating opportunities with more key accounts and upping account-based engagement rates.

2. Tracking metrics

There are certain metrics you need to track if you want to determine what’s working and what’s not.

From these metrics, you’ll see what you need to do more of in order to scale and succeed.

Michael recommends tracking the following lead generation metrics:

• Number of qualified opportunities.
• The pipeline coming from these opportunities.
• Number of conversions per channel (outbound email, cold calling, and so on).
• Closing metrics.

3. Have a sales ops team and provide coaching

You’ll want to invest in sales ops (also known as RevOps).

This vital team will source and interpret the data you need, meaning you’ll be able to identify your weakest salespeople and put in measures to help them.

The best way to help them?

Through coaching, of course.

“Don’t tell them what to do. If you see someone is struggling, ask them what their biggest obstacle is at the moment. Find out what’s stopping them from meeting target. Then, have a conversation about this to sort it out.”

More winning sales talk 

Listen to our full conversation with Michael here 👇