What are the right sales resources ?

With the new sales approach and buyer behaviors, a well managed sales process requires a combination of Sales and Digital Marketing, even so the most appropriate term for Digital Marketing would be Digital Sales Operations, the ultimate purpose being engaging with a prospect in multiple ways, offering a valuable  customer journey, making the prospect move smoothly into the pipeline and closing the deal. It is also the right mix between Senior sales executives knowing how to handle a face to face meeting with a C-level buyer and Sales development representative, more techy, expert in the latest cutting edge technologies to empower the sales process. CRM, automation tools, AI to focus on the right deal.   Today, a performing sales team represents a minimum of 2 to 3 different profiles to be effective. All those profiles may not be running the same pace nor being utilized full time. As a key takeaway,  sales presence from skilled sales executives, Inbound and outbound marketing with tailored messages are key to build a trusted relationship with your prospect in regions and ultimately generate revenue.  

Inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is an absolute must in business today. It is part of the multichannel strategy where the prospect connect with the organization value proposition with multiple ways and channels. The buyer’s cycle has changed, putting the customer in the driver’s seat. The best way to thrive now and in the future is to adapt to the new sales process, which is exactly what inbound marketing allows you to do. Inbound relies heavily on the use of quality content to spread brand awareness, to reach your audience, to entice online visitors to check out your company, and eventually, to convince them to buy from you. When asked,  companies Marketing top priority is “converting leads to customers” by over 69%. It’s about pulling leads toward your company and products—instead of having your salespeople chase them down. This means each lead will be more qualified. Plus, nurturing your leads will allow for a shorter sales cycle. Don’t forget to have metrics in place to analyze your different campaigns. If you are targeting the right people and engaging them with messages that resonates with their pain points, you will get a qualification event – an active response to your message. This qualification event serves as the measurement of how effective your sales process actually is. Now that you have identified leads, make sure you engage the customer experience the right way.  Have it done at local level with your local team to start the discussion with the prospect.    

Outbound  marketing

Outbound marketing is primarily using multichannel tools to connect with the prospect, generate interest and explain how the value proposition will solve the pain. Outbound marketing activity are made usually by qualified SDR.  

The Sales Development Representative (SDR)

The SDR is an Inside Sales, that does not move to an appointment, and essentially focuses on prospecting (outbound sales). The Sales Development Representatives do not have sales objectives but aim to advance leads in the sales pipeline by qualifying prospects and making appointments to salespeople, the Account Executives. Generally, they must generate a list of prospects or work on a list provided by Marketing, contact and qualify these prospects to find out if there is interest for sales representatives to spend time on these prospects. This allows Account Executives to focus on the most hot prospects. Many companies like Salesforce or Hubspot have achieved strong growth thanks to this sales roles distribution. They can be experts in various fields.  

LinKedin Expert:

First, a LinKedin expert will connect with your prospect, with up to  200 LinKedin connections and send  more than 100 messages / day. Its area of expertise is the LinkedIn Advertising and content Generation. He will  connect with relevant stakeholders, send tailored LinkedIn messaging, and sometimes create relevant LinkedIn content.

Email marketing expert:

He has the ability to send 300 to 1,000 Email/week and A/B test the different localized messages to increase the return rate.  You don’t send the same message in Germany and in France. Of course in synch with the GPRD regulations.

Cold calling Expert:

With a good value selling methodology, companies can also request specific Cold calling actions generating up to 200 phone calls/day from a defined database.