Cold Part 2 of 2

Calling 2.0
And how marketing can leverage an
outbound sales development team

Aaron Ross
PebbleStorm/CEOFlow: “Make money through enjoyment
aaron@pebblestorm.com
Part 1 Review
Review

In Part 1:
What it's like if you're “panning for gold with a
colander” (generating leads without an effective lead
management function), and what to do about it:

- Treat salespeople as internal customers

- Build an ‘Lead Management Machine’
- Choose and commit to a first step

[Slides available at www.salesmachine.blogspot.com,

or contact us for copies]
So you’ve nailed inbound lead management
and are making the most of the inbound leads
hitting your website...

Now how do you get MORE new large company

leads and MORE bang for your buck by
leveraging a Cold Calling 2.0 team?
Who this is intended for

Companies with direct sales (or use

channel partners with direct sales
models) selling a product worth more
than $10,000 in value.

(Although there are principles here anyone can appreciate)

The big picture
 The B2B leadgen problem
Few Buyers

$100M Defense Contract

High

Boeing
Lobbyist

$1,000,000 Order
Avg Sale Price

Oracle Apps, SAP

Gartner/Accenture

$100,000 Order
Many Buyers

Salesforce.com, Saas…
$100 Sale
?
Timex Watches
Low

Google, eBay

Low Specificity of Product HIGH

(Can I easily specify what I want?)
Too much noise, too little time

RSS feeds
Twitter
Email
Cold Calls
Print Ads

Online News LinkedIn

Microsite
Mail Campaigns

Wikis
Phone
Blogs
Webinars
Telemarketing
TV
Campaigns
Texting Radio
The business issue

How can your programs and

company break through the
noise to generate
measurable results?
Where you are

97% 3%
Other Cold calling

Sources of new customer revenue

Where you want to be

75% 25%+
Other Cold Calling
2.0

Sources of new customer revenue

Cold Call: A telephone call to someone
who is not expecting contact

Also known as…

­ flailing
­ waste of time
­ phone-spam
­ frustration
The irony of Cold Calling
2.0 is that it should never
involve making ‘cold calls’
Who are these guys?

We created, from scratch, a “Cold Calling 2.0” sales development team

that has sourced $100 million in recurring revenue for salesforce.com

(that’s an extra $1 Billion in market capitalization)

Why it should NOT have worked

Unlike today, Salesforce.com had little brand

recognition in large companies….“Who? Do you do
sales outsourcing?”

Below-market compensation for the role

Classic prospecting methods and cold calls didn’t work

No fancy tools or big budgets: we only used

salesforce.com, OneSource, Spoke/Jigsaw, &
telephones
Why it did work

§ Invested a year of preparation to nail it before scaling

§ A team 100% focused on outbound prospecting

§ A process that created PREDICTABLE results

§ Leveraged our tools every way possible

§ Committed to developing its people and expertise

§ Earned executive trust and commitment with audited,

proven results
Cold Calling

1.0 2.0
 What’s changed?

1.0 2.0
Field Sales = 90% of prospecting Sales Dev = 90% of prospecting
ABC / Always Be Closing Is there a mutual fit?
Dials per day, appointments Qualified opportunities / month
Cold calls Research, referral calls
Cheesy sales tricks work Authenticity works
“I hate this job” “I learned a lifetime skill”
Long letters & emails Short and sweet text emails
CRM hurts productivity CRM multiplies productivity
What is world class?

“Outbound Machine”

15-30%+ Growth of customer acquisition

8-10x+ Return on sales development reps

>20% Outbound close rates

90% Success rate for sales development reps

Building a world class machine

§ Effective process

§ High capacity

§ Sustainable growth
What’s your true potential?
What next?

So you want to take the first

steps to transform…
If you can only do 3 things…

New technologies and a search for shortcuts tend

to distract people from nailing the basics first.

After the basic and process are proven, then

accelerate them.

Three fundamentals to start with:

1. Smart targeting

Ideal industries

Ideal companies

Research functional teams

Find influence

Business Issues

Fit?
 Separate the core functions www.CEOFlow.com

Organic & Frontline Account

Marketing Leads Sales Sales Management

“Outbound”

Qualified New
“Inbound” Opportunities Customers
3. Develop your people

Product-pitching Problem-solving
“Salesperson” “Person Who Can Sell”

Selling Product, Build Trust Through

Doing Deals Transparency, Honesty

Presentations Conversations
Tactics?

A new email template will

not transform you.
Don’t let the search for tricks distract you
from getting the basics right
But, here are examples:
1.0: “More is better”
Subject: Improve sales effectiveness in Q2?

Chuck,

*Are you continually challenged to project accurate revenue?

*Do you know who your best reps are and what makes them successful?
*Do you know which marketing activities your company engages in are generating
closed deals?
*You know there are some big deals in the pipeline, but can you easily generate a
real-time report detailing their status?
*Do you know where your marketing dollars are best spent?
Does this sound familiar? You face the same challenges as many other companies.
Salesforce.com has proven to be successful at leading global companies such as
Adobe Systems, AOL Time Warner Communications, Putnam Lovell, Dow Jones
Newswires, Berlitz Global Net, Siemens, Microstrategy and Autodesk to name a few.

Salesforce.com is a web-based CRM service that can be rapidly rolled out and is
easy to use. Sales organizations use it to centralize and report on contacts,
accounts, historical activities and to track sales performance. Marketing can easily
measure the ROI of individual projects. Salesforce.com makes it very easy to
customize reports and gain visibility into your sales organization and individuals'
performance to get a better handle on your business.
Online demo:
salesforce.com/us/seminar.html

Could we schedule 20 minutes of time to discuss this? Or would someone else in

2.0: “Less is more”

For your own good, we’re not including an

example template here
If you use someone else’s language, it loses
authenticity (write real emails as if to a friend)
If everyone uses the same templates, they’ll stop
working

3 key points:
1. State simply and clearly why you are reaching out
2. Offer credibility (say, examples of customers)
3. Make the email easy to read and respond to on a
blackberry
Process 1.0: Big chunks, slow pace

1. Target marketing executives at 100 accounts

Cold calls, Fedex’d books…
Emails: 1% response rate

2. Take weeks or months to set up calls

3. Irrational persistence
When it’s just not a good fit (no budget, no pain, wrong time…)
doggedly keep trying to handle objections

RESULT: Slow feedback cycle – not sure if it’s working?

High effort, low results

Process 2.0: Smaller chunks, faster pace

1. Begin with a handful (5-10) “Ideal” targets

2. Email the CEO, C-level executives or call their assistants

“Research calls”, not cold calls
Emails: we achieved 9% response rates

3. Get C-level referrals within hours or days to your target contacts

4. Quickly discover if there is a fit or not, and move on

Not knowing one way or the other is a dead zone

5. Move on to the next batch of targets

RESULTS: Fast feedback cycle – it should work NOW

High effort, high results

The First Phone Call

1.0: ALWAYS BE CLOSING! 2.0: ARE WE A FIT?

First call: First call:
Discuss the pitch, “Value Prop” and Brief introduction for context, focus
how great your company is for most on learning about the prospect’s
of the call business for most of the call

Success = new Stage 1 Opportunity Success = enough understanding to

A call resulting in no new opportunity place them in one of 3 buckets:
is considered a failure 1.Good Fit Now (Set Next Step)
2.Good Fit Later (Build an Internal Champ)
3.Waste of Time

Next steps Next steps

in-depth demo or in-person sales Business Issues & Goals discussion
meeting to discuss purchasing that re-qualifies / confirms the
processes, competitors, etc. processes and mutual alignment of
both sides.
Top prospecting mistakes (besides making cold calls)

6. Expecting instant results

It can take 2-4+ weeks to develop a qualified opportunity

5. Long emails
Can someone read and respond on a BlackBerry?

4. Going wide, not deep

Hitting 100 accounts once instead of 10 accounts 10x each

3. Giving up too quickly at Ideal Targets

Don’t give up on working to understand if there is a fit or not until
you get a “no” from the real decision maker

2. Not giving up quickly enough at non-Ideal Targets

These wastes of time are a huge opportunity cost

1. Depending on activity metrics instead of a proven process

“Dials per day” is meaningless. What’s the ‘assembly line’ process?
Now, how can marketing
leverage a cold calling team?
How marketing can leverage sales development

Three ways marketing and sales can work

together to proactively generating more leads:

§ Tradeshows & conferences

§ Apply budget to tools that help generate pipeline…as

long as you hold sales to tracking & proving results
Examples: Demandbase, Genius, ConnectAndSell

§ Use your imagination on some other joint project…

-But keep it simple
-Reward them
-If they want budget for something, just try it! But hold them
to proving the results
A conference campaign

Phase 1: Preparation (Weeks)

Acquire a list of attending companies
The outbound sales team calls into the relevant accounts to:
- Prepare a conversational cheatsheet for the conference attendees
- Set up appointments

Phase 2: The Event

Send sales (not just marketing) to proactively work the event

Personal request: please resist indiscriminately scanning badges.

Only scan people who are actually interested in your offerings!

Phase 3: Follow Through (Weeks)

The outbound team completes its follow up on the leads generated at
the tradeshow

Phase 4: Constant Improvement

Take some time to discuss what you would do differently next time.
Better list-building

- “ITunes” for sales contacts and marketing names

Search, filter and purchase
- Web 2.0 self-service interface
- Raises productivity for both marketing programs and cold
calling programs

- Business Model: Price per contact/name

Help sales leverage marketing tools

Increase results from marketing investments by

helping salespeople get more out of them
For Sales Reps, see in real-time…
- Who opens your e-mails
- Who visits your web site
- Which pages they visit and for how long
…and either call them while they’re at their desk, or present
personalized greetings and chat invitations

Business model: monthly subscription per user

Multiply sales conversations per day

Sales reps spend enormous amounts of time dialing, with no

connection to decision makers

ConnectAndSell deploys virtual sales agents to do the dialing (it’s like

a human autodialer, without the ‘click’)

Sales reps have a constant stream of live conversations

- 7 to 10 per hour, rather than 1 to 2

Business model: $275 per hour of usage (before volume discounts)

One more time

A great application is no
substitute for, and will not fix,
an ineffective process.

They accelerate processes

that already work.
Next moves

1. A dedicated outbound sales development

team multiplies effectiveness
- In fact, if they aren’t dedicated…they won’t be effective

2. Where are you going to start?

- Your next conference
- Try out a joint sales-marketing application around an
upcoming campaign

3. Be “Aggressively Patient”!
- Aggressive progress every day, patience for results
Now light the
fuse!
Thank you

Thank you!

Aaron Ross
PebbleStorm/CEOFlow
“Make money through enjoyment”

aaron@pebblestorm.com
(310) 751-0656
www.PebbleStorm.com
www.CEOFlow.com
www.BuildASalesMachine.com

Design: David Stychno (david@c2llc.com)

Special thanks to: Erythean Marttin, Ryan Martin, Mike O’Sullivan, Elizabeth Arnsdorf
Appendix
 Which level are you?
Level 1
CRAWLING
•Don’t measure ROI
•Fuzzy “Ideal Target” profile
•Not measuring close rates
of outbound pipeline
•Reps making “cold calls”
•Dependence on calls per
day metric
•No career path
•Quarterly metrics
•Advanced apps distract
Level 2 Level 3
BUILDING FLYING
•ROI between 200%-800% •“Outbound Machine”
•Have reps who are 100% •ROI of >800%
outbound •Perfect “Ideal Target” profile
•Repeatable process •Strict quality-control
•<20% outbound close rates standards
•Training program •>20% outbound close rates
•Clear career path •90% success rate of reps
•Monthly metrics •Promoted outbound reps
•Trying advanced apps outperform in sales
•High ROI on advanced apps
Getting to the next level

Level 1 Level 2 Level 3

•Weekly Coaching •Monthly Coaching •V2MOM

•Tools Training •Tools Refinement •Tools Generation
•We Build Your Dashboards •You Optimize Dashboards •You Build Own Dashboards
•Weekly Drumbeat •Monthly Drumbeat •Quarterly Drumbeat
•Activity Goals •Pipeline Goals •ROI Goals
•Basic CRM training •Advanced CRM •CRM + Apps
•Call training •Pitching •Consultative Discussion
Transformational timeline

First 90 Days
•Outbound-specific “Ideal Target Profile” defined
•First outbound reps ramped and seeing results
•Waterfall modeled
•Tracking dashboards and tools in place
•First “new process” qualified opportunities generated

@ 6 Months
•Onboarding process and tools defined
•Next set of outbound reps hired and ramped
•Quality audit process in place
•Waterfall improved
•First revenue from short-cycle opportunities

@ 18-24 Months
•Predictable, proven “Outbound Machine”
•15%+ outbound contribution to revenue
•Data-driven Waterfall
•Quantified ROI on the role
•Proven career path, upward mobility
Example prospecting waterfall

Define Ideal Target Profile

Prepare Add Target Accounts

Add Contacts

Send __ Cold Emails / Make __ Mapping Calls

Work Responses (9% Response Rate)

Prospect
__ Call Connects

__ Demos/Appointments

Begin Sales __ New Opportunities

Cycle
__ Closed Deals
Invest in training

•It’s a better investment to really train outbound reps before putting them on the
front lines (so they can have constructive conversations)
•Train them for 4-6 weeks in customer-oriented roles first

Call Cold
Executives
Call Fresh
Degree of Risk

Leads / Stale
Opptys
Call Stale (1-2 Weeks)
Leads
(1 Week)

Intern With Services or

Lead Qualification
(2-4 Weeks)

Time
Ingredients For Rep Success

1. Organization
You know exactly what you need to do every day,
and do it.

2. Passion
You truly care about the company you work for, the
product they sell, and in trying to help your prospects
solve problems.

3. Constant Improvement (Kaizen)

Expertise takes time and effort; perfection is a
journey, not a destination.
 Aaron Ross
PebbleStorm/CEOFlow
“Make money through enjoyment”

aaron@pebblestorm.com
(310) 751-0656
www.PebbleStorm.com
www.CEOFlow.com
www.BuildASalesMachine.com