If I were to ask you, “what is your opinion of the technology sales process?” I am certain to receive many comments reaming with dissatisfaction, snarky comments, and a few gasps of exasperation.
Most of these comments will have something to do with the sales people we interact with.
Let’s be honest, most buyers, especially today, think of interacting with a sales rep with the same anticipation as a trip to the dentist. It’s a less-than-pleasant experience that we have to engage in, but at least we get a token treat at the end of the ordeal. I mean, let’s be real, some vendor swag is amazing, right?
But let’s also be real. Not all of the bad experiences we have in the sales process is sales’ fault. There’s a lot of room for improvement, but let’s not point the finger solely at your Account Executive or that SDR that bought a list and is spamming you.
Sales reps, when the RevOps supply chain within a company is working effectively, are a valuable resource to us as technologists, buyers, and marketers. They help us see the “art of the possible” and can be our best advocate for getting the tools we need to get our jobs done effectively.
Let’s remember that sales is a truly and deeply human profession that involves pressure, emotion, and psychology. The key to a seller’s success is the art of persuasion. A decision to invest in a solution is a decision to move away from an accepted status-quo to solve a problem that the buyer realizes that they have (which sometimes takes convincing, because problems aren’t evident and we are creatures of habit), and then choose the solution that the rep has in their “bag” (the mix of products they can sell) to solve that problem.
Meanwhile, they have the monthly/quarterly/yearly pressure of a very defined quota of sales they must reach to get paid their OTE (On-Target Earnings), or else their earnings will be limited, or worse, they’ll be put on PIP and terminated. Job security is very tenuous in this profession.
Oftentimes, the marketing to sales handoff in the RevOps supply chain does not help them in this regard, and many of what I will refer to as “Stupid Prospecting Tricks” (a throwback to the David Letterman Show bit) result from a mix of poor handoff practices between marketing and sales and/or a lack of sales skills/training. Here are a few examples in the beginning of the sales process we often see and how they can be addressed.
Stupid Prospecting Trick 1: Pull my list and spam.
We as Marketing Operations buyers see this often. We start to get emails from a person we are unfamiliar with, asking out of the blue for a meeting with increasingly aggressive subject lines, and we wonder “where the heck did they get my name?” and “of course, I’m not going to schedule a meeting after you ask “I’ve sent you five emails, do you want me to go away?” (Um, yes!)
With Google’s new spam policy, this type of practice is increasingly going to get companies in trouble, and for good reason. Cold outreach still “works” (meaning, sales do occur but at what cost?), but does this mean that it’s an efficient or effective way to work?
What could be the root cause of this issue? Generally, sales engage in these tactics when they are not getting a quality flow of actionable leads from their marketing team, which could be caused by a variety of factors such as too little marketing investment, stringent lead qualification standards that too stringently gate MQLs, and also poor Sales Enablement policies that allow sales to bypass consent best practices. In each case, Sales and Marketing are not aligned on lead workflow and sales is taking action into their own hands, often at the expense of the brand.
How to solve: First, align marketing and sales on shared revenue goals and resource your marketing teams effectively so that they can deliver an adequate quantity of quality leads for your sales stakeholders. Second, educate your sales team on outreach best practices and the rules of consent, as this will help them understand the concern you have about buying lists. Third, gain agreements across marketing and sales on a shared definition of lead quality and align marketing programs to deliver to that definition. Lead Quality, from our view, means that a person is likely to engage positively with sales and that sales has adequate information available to engage the prospect meaningfully.
Stupid Prospecting Trick 2: Is this an SDR or the DMV?
Has this ever happened to you? You engage with a meaningful and informative piece of content, and perhaps want to engage with someone at the vendor who can help you unpack the knowledge that you consumed. Perhaps you fill out a contact form and raise your hand? Then, a very uninformed SDR calls you and has the most generic “qualification” conversation with you in the history of uninformed generic conversations. It’s clear that they are reading from a script and have no clue why you wanted a call.
You then do whatever you need to do to get through this poor SDR to talk to someone who can actually address your question. Meanwhile, you are frustrated that you wasted 30 minutes of your life.
What could be the root cause of this issue? Lack of context and insights. SDR teams are tasked with sifting through hundreds of leads a year provided by their marketing team, and oftentimes all they have to work from is the data included on the Salesforce lead record, and a Campaign listed on a related list. If you don’t have a tool like Marketo Sales Insights (MSI) set up, configured, and usable by this team, this is generally all they have to work from. Add to this, the pressure from their marketing leaders to “follow up on every lead!” and this type of “mailing it in” behavior is a common response. Nobody is having a good experience here, the SDR or the person on the other end of the phone (or email). Many times, SDRs automate these communications to focus on hand-raisers, which can lead to Stupid Sales Human Trick 1. The lack of context means that SDRs, to achieve their goal of winning the meeting, go back to basics and assume everything is a cold-ish call.
How to solve: I haven’t met a Sales rep that actually likes cold calling, but they all have to do it, so giving Sales context and educating them on marketing activities is critical to giving them the tools they need to have meaningful, versus painful, conversations. Tools such as Marketo Sales Insight, with well-aligned interesting moments that matter to Sales, can provide SDRs with the context they need to engage with a prospect effectively. Intent tools help too, but remember that these tools only provide account-level insights, and buying conversations require person-level insights. Last but not least, do not just release MSI to the wild world of Sales. Spend time educating your sellers and SDRs on current campaigns, how to identify them in their Interesting Moments list, and how to have meaningful follow up with a responder to your campaigns. This is the internal marketing that will make the difference between a disqualified lead and a SQL.
Stupid Prospecting Trick 3: Chuck that crap back to marketing with no notes
Marketing wants dispositions, and Sales (I believe) actually wants to give it to them. A huge block of “recycles” with a generic rejection reason and now marketing has to re-nurture (or not) based on little information. So what happens? Marketing just opts them into the same campaigns as everyone else. Now, the buyer was not only engaged poorly by sales because of lack of context, but now marketing is back to “spray and pray” because the reason they didn’t convert was not documented by Sales. Meanwhile, the buyer thinks that your company is clueless and seeks out other vendors. Is that really “Disqualified” or could a better alignment between marketing and sales persuade them to your cause?
What could be the root cause of this issue? Certainly, scenarios 1 and 2 (with the pressure to “smile and dial”) can contribute, but the main cause is a lack of meaningful and straightforward feedback mechanism (such as a well-defined “Recycle Reason”) for sales to use, and the confidence that marketing will nurture the lead based on this information.
How to solve: Make the CRM easy to use, and remove any negative connotations from SDRs recycling a lead to marketing (as if continuing to hoard and pester a lead is good sales practice), including defining as a combined revenue team the reasons why leads don’t convert. Then, marketing needs to earn the trust of Sales by putting meaningful nurture streams into place that engage recycled leads based on their objections (aka - recycle reasons) with the goal of keeping your brand top of mind (versus getting them back to Sales ASAP). Buyers will engage when they are ready, and when they believe that you can and will solve their problem.
What is the punchline here? First, Revenue is a team sport, and while Sales professionals give us marketers (either as business partners or buyers) plenty of fodder from poor customer engagement, there are plenty of opportunities for GTM Operations to create environments that reduce the occurrences of these Stupid Prospecting Tricks that we often see. We can, and must, provide value through these three areas:
This blog were a compilation of thoughts that we contributed to the MOps Unplugged Series 3, and I plan a sequel where we'll address the bottom of the funnel. To view the insights, please watch the video below.