[PDF] Rules of Engagement for Inbound and Outbound
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Rules of Engagement for Inbound and Outbound Gradient Works 1 “This is particularly important if you have reps focused on inbound leads and others focused on outbound prospecting.” When done well, effective RoE makes productive, happier teams, smoother customer interactions, and improved close rates. But bad RoE will destroy your team’s morale and efficiency. It will slow down your revenue velocity, confuse customers, and generate internal conflict. Rules of Engagement for Inbound and Outbound Gradient Works 2
5.4. Conflict. What happens in case of conflict? Where do reps go to resolve disputes? This is extremely important. Who will be the final decision maker? What are the expectations for how a case is made and resolved? 5.5. Changes. How do you change the rules later? What’s the process for deciding when a change needs to be made? Who needs to be involved? Is there a regular review process? 6. WHERE. This section helps you decide where you document your rules of engagement. 6.1. CRM guidelines, requirements. What do you codify in your CRM? What fields and workflows do you need to update? 6.2. Visualizations. Do you create visualizations of your RoE? For example, do you have flowcharts to show how an account moves through the customer lifecycle and ownership stages? 6.3. Accessibility. Is there a central document anyone can access? How do you share it? How do you ensure it’s kept up-to-date? 7. LAST THINGS. Just a few more questions to make sure you didn’t miss anything. 7.1. Outliers. What other edge cases should you document? Have you missed any outliers or unusual situations? 7.2. Objectives. Do you have any overarching guidelines or objectives that can guide teams when something is unclear? 7.3. What else? Is there anything else to discuss? Should you talk to anyone else? At the end of this exercise, you should be able to clearly — though probably not concisely yet — explain what criteria you use to assign account ownership. Next, you need to start to clean them up, and start revising. Help on that in the next sections. Rules of Engagement for Inbound and Outbound Gradient Works 7 “Some companies split this up and BDRs handle inbound lead qualification while SDRs are responsible for outbound prospect identification.” It can be hard to account for every possible market segment. Even if you’re dealing with geographic territories, how do you distribute those territories evenly among reps? Finding the right market segmentation — one that both is and feels fair — is hard. Further, you likely have to tweak this regularly, causing confusion about who’s supposed to work which segment. Rules of Engagement for Inbound and Outbound Gradient Works 8
It can be hard to account for every possible market segment. Even if you’re dealing with geographic territories, how do you distribute those territories evenly among reps? Finding the right market segmentation — one that both is and feels fair — is hard. Further, you likely have to tweak this regularly, causing confusion about who’s supposed to work which segment. Rules of Engagement for Inbound and Outbound Gradient Works 8 “Attribution requires accurate lead-to-account matching to be sure inbound leads are always matched to existing accounts when appropriate.” ROE TEMPLATE Use this template to start a clean version of your rules of engagement. Keep them as clear and simple as you can. Any ambiguity could be an issue later. Here is a basic outline for some of the more common RoE components. You can fill it in with your specific guidelines, edit as you need, and share with your team. Section 1 Definitions 1. Territories: [Territories are defined as…] 2. Customer Lifecycle Stages and Account Types a. Leads: i. Inbound: ii. Outbound: b. Opportunities: i. Qualified Opps: ii. Disqualified Opps: iii. Lost Opps: c. Accounts: i. Active ii. Inactive 3. Reps a. New Business: i. Sales Development Rep (SDR ii. Account Executive (AE iii. Enterprise Account Executive (EAE iv. Sales Engineer (SE b. Customer Success: i. Onboarding/Implementation Specialist: ii. Customer Success Manager: iii. Account Manager: Section 2 Rules of Engagement 4. General Guidelines Rules of Engagement for Inbound and Outbound Gradient Works 10