What mistakes to sales leaders most often encounter when building outbound sales teams and models? Liz Cain, Partner at OpenView, and former sales leader at NetSuite, explains.
I’m going to take you back, way way back. The year is 1999. Salesforce is founded and Marc Benioff and his team demonstrated consistent ability to scale with an outbound sales team
Companies were investing massive amounts in building high-touch teams that operated in far-flung offices. We broke that mold—mostly because we couldn’t afford to follow it in the traditional way—and proved that telesales could win a high close rate at one-third the cost and in one-third the amount of the time as the traditional selling model.”
I want to give you an example of a company that has segmented a massive market really effectively. You all use LinkedIn, and you’ve watched the features change and price increase, but have you thought about the use cases? LinkedIn is targeting 4 distinct segments – each with a different product feature set and message. Professionals, Job searchers, sales teams and recruiters.
Every new idea is a GREAT idea, but more importantly they want the entire company to chase it. I believe a culture of experimentation needs to be established at the top and pushed down into an organization. It takes guts to test things, fail and go again. Leadership teams need to create room for this and encourage creativity without repercussions. And then, you need to allocate budget, time and establish a process by which you do this.
Let me take you through an example of how to do this at your own company. When you decide to start an outbound team, you don’t just START. You narrow in on a particular segment and make a hypotheses around what persona to target, what messaging to use, how to procure the targets, and prioritize outreach. Each of these small decisions is a variable to be tested.
I’m going to take you back, way way back. The year is 1999. Salesforce is founded and Marc Benioff and his team demonstrated consistent ability to scale with an outbound sales team
Companies were investing massive amounts in building high-touch teams that operated in far-flung offices. We broke that mold—mostly because we couldn’t afford to follow it in the traditional way—and proved that telesales could win a high close rate at one-third the cost and in one-third the amount of the time as the traditional selling model.”
At the most basic level a Buyer goes through 3 stages in buying:
Awareness where the prospect identifies a problem or opportunity in their business
Consideration where the prospect has clearly defined their problem or opportunity, and commits to researching and understanding all of the availability approaches/methods to solving it
Decision where the prospect compiles a long list of all of the available vendors and products, and narrows in on a short list before making a final purchase decision
At the most basic level a Buyer goes through 3 stages in buying:
Awareness where the prospect identifies a problem or opportunity in their business
Consideration where the prospect has clearly defined their problem or opportunity, and commits to researching and understanding all of the availability approaches/methods to solving it
Decision where the prospect compiles a long list of all of the available vendors and products, and narrows in on a short list before making a final purchase decision
At the most basic level a Buyer goes through 3 stages in buying:
Awareness where the prospect identifies a problem or opportunity in their business
Consideration where the prospect has clearly defined their problem or opportunity, and commits to researching and understanding all of the availability approaches/methods to solving it
Decision where the prospect compiles a long list of all of the available vendors and products, and narrows in on a short list before making a final purchase decision