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Kathy Lord (Intacct), Kyle Porter (SalesLoft), John Barrows ... - SaaStr
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Kathy: We had a similar situation, only they both roll up to the sales organization. We try to expect the inbound team to do outbound. “Frankly, it’s a different skill set.” We have three roles in sales development of sales associate which is, they’re building lists. They’re doing white spacing, those kinds of activities. They learn the systems. They learn the processes. They’re hearing the people on the phone all day.
Then we get young, fresh people in for inbound. That’s their training ground, because there’s no better training than having thousands of conversations every month. You’re going to have way more conversations with inbound than you are with outbound, and then we transition them into outbound. “We’ve found that that’s a little more comfortable. It’s a little warmer. It starts to build up muscle memory, so that as they transition into a pure outbound role, they’re much more successful.” John: I was going to ask, what do you look for? I actually think the inbound role is going to evolve drastically over the next few years here. I wrote a post about how I think the death of the average sales rep and all of this automation’s coming into play.
Kyle: I think for most companies it’s absolutely immediately. Every so often, someone will come up to me, a CEO or a leader and they’ll brag about how they only have inbound leads. “We don’t even have to worry about outbound. We just have inbounds. That’s all we have.” “outbound plus inbound is better than inbound alone or outbound alone.” Outbound might mean different things. Really, outbound, to me, is an attitude. I just spent some time with a company called DigitalOcean who has recently surpassed the $100 million dollar mark in a very short period of time.
Kathy: I think it comes back to really early on having an understanding of, “Who is our ideal profile and customer? What are their sizes? What are their water coolers they’re hanging out at?” and say, “We’re going to segment these types of accounts we think we can get to with an inbound marketing approach.” “We’re going to start from day one of this mindset of the 1 + 1 = 3 by having inbound, having outbound, and really being thoughtful about how those two work together, so that as you’re building out your systems, you’re building out your processes, you’re contemplating that.” Just as a good example for us, people only buy one accounting system, so we have one shot to sell a company, and frankly, people don’t want to do that anymore often than they have to. For us, it’s a matter of getting the name out there, and when the timing’s right, making sure they call us.
If you believe that the buyer is doing, seeing anywhere from 50 to 80 percent of their research before they’re willing to have a live conversation, that’s not going to change magically with outbound. “It’s not just a matter of live conversations, but measuring what’s inside engagement.” That starts to build that sales funnel, if you will, at the very top before it’s even an opportunity. Tracking that engagement level, I think, is really important, whether it’s an SDR or a sales rep doing that outbound prospecting.
In Metrics
It doesn’t have to be like you researched for an hour and write a 30 minute long email to them, but you’ve got to show them that you care, that you’re paying attention, that you are like them, and that you’re there to help. “If you are able to solve their problems, that’s what this thing’s all about, and so the right types of emails, the right types of phone calls, and the right type of social touch points, but doing them at scale with process, with tools that help you accelerate those connections.” There’s an analogy that I like to use. It’s based on Terminator versus Iron Man. Terminator, he’s a robot. He’s just turned on. “Go, go, go, go, go.”
Kyle: We didn’t do it well. We ended up splitting it out. It started that way, but it was quick to where, “OK, inbound and outbound,” and it became totally different functions. “Today, inbound sales development reports to Marketing at SalesLoft, and outbound sales development reports to Sales at SalesLoft. They’re two different functions for us.” Kathy: We had a similar situation, only they both roll up to the sales organization. We try to expect the inbound team to do outbound.
“I understand you, I’m connected to you, I understand your problems.” Connect with them, then qualify them, then move them along, and you do that through personalized communications. “It doesn’t have to be like you researched for an hour and write a 30 minute long email to them, but you’ve got to show them that you care, that you’re paying attention, that you are like them, and that you’re there to help.” If you are able to solve their problems, that’s what this thing’s all about, and so the right types of emails, the right types of phone calls, and the right type of social touch points, but doing them at scale with process, with tools that help you accelerate those connections.
Usually, they’re higher qualified. The other is, by getting five meetings out of 1,000, even though you got the same thing here, you probably pissed off 995 people, that when you try to go back at them, they’re going to be like, “Yeah, take me off your list, you psycho.” “I really, really recommend tiering out your accounts, getting the logos, treating them separately than the tier twos and the tier threes and maybe if you want to automate a lot of that stuff.” The last point I’ll make on this before we open it up for questions is really a recommendation for everybody here, split test everything you do. Literally split test everything you do.