“Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.” - Sheryl Sandberg
The ability to deliver the above is one, if not the, distinguishing characteristic of a great leader. Upon reading it, I began to think of what Sandberg’s definition of leadership meant for sales leaders.
“Sales leadership is making your sales team better by establishing best practices and the cadence for excellence in prospecting. It means guiding our teams to form habits that will enable them to be successful.”
Whether they’re experiencing a rough patch, or are simply striving to be better, I constantly receive questions from sales leaders on how exactly to do this.
Why do sales teams fall off of prospecting in the first place?
All sales folks recognize that the one-to-one executive prospecting is a hard and time-consuming process. The fact that prospecting is hard is not new, and calling people we don’t know usually isn’t very high on our lists of things we’d like to be doing. With that in mind, in order for sales reps to be successful in this type of prospecting, sales leaders need to establish best practices and build out a multi-tough program that enables their team to get prospecting done.
Where do you start?
Let’s talk about the best practices I mentioned above – what exactly should you be doing to establish healthy prospecting habits? (Please note that these numbers are targeted for account and territory managers. The numbers for your BDR team should be much higher).
Set expectations.This one starts with you, the sales leader. It’s important to set clear expectations for the group as it relates to time spent prospecting. Establish specific days and times for your sales reps to prospect, and send calendar invitations at the beginning of the quarter, so there’s no excuse for not showing up. I used to have mine on a Thursday or Friday every other week for the first 2 months of each quarter. That meant we would have 4 calling blitzes at a minimum. In addition, I would expect them to send out 8-10 researched emails every week.
Pro Tip: Try sending those emails to executives on the weekend. Save them up and send them on a Sunday morning – they’re much more likely to read them.
Update the CRM.Using the CRM can be very helpful for establishing accountability. I would have my sales reps set tasks for the day they would be calling, including who they were going to call and what their approach would be. This had to be completed by 6PM the night before, which allowed me to run a report on open tasks for that date and see who was prepared. It also enabled me to coach my reps and give feedback on their messaging. This worked wonders for my team. It left no ambiguity – they knew what they had to complete and when they had to complete it. It forced them to prepare, which in turn, made for more successful calls.
The results of implementing these two best practices will speak for themselves. If you have 10 sales reps and they all prepare 10 calls twice a month, that’s 200 calls per month of targeted prospecting. Add to that 8-10 emails per week, and your team can generate 80 executive emails and 400 calls per quarter. Not only will this leverage your team building, it will put deals in your pipeline.
For more on prospecting best practices, take Sales Gauge 1: Power Prospecting or contact Sales Gauge to develop your own plan.