Kathy Lord (Intacct), Kyle Porter (SalesLoft), John Barrows ... - SaaStr

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1. 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

2. 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.

   In Tier-based coverage

3. John:  SDR comp, SalesLoft, put it in there. It’ll probably map it out for you. “And highly variable, based on geography.” Audience Member:  OK, last question over here.

   In SDR compensation benchmarks

4. 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.

   In Inbound and outbound development roles

5. 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.

   In Inbound and outbound development roles

6. 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.

   In Sales development team structure

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