Irrespective of where your lead generation programme sits – does it work? Check-in here:
FOUR QUICK QUESTIONS:
- Are your KPIs below/above the industry average?
- Are team members motivated?
- Are workflows joined-up?
- Are QC audits in place?
Inbound lead follow-up activities – Here’s your benchmark:
The conversion rate from a marketing qualified lead to a sales accepted lead (SAL) or sales qualified lead (SQL) should be measured, using the source of the leads.
A knowledge of this conversion rate doesn’t just help you understand which of your marketing campaigns are bearing the most fruit, but also in managing your sales resources, as you can more accurately tell them what you expect from their inbound activity.
Whether it’s through LinkedIn campaigns, email campaigns form fills or events, you may often find that some sources will be more productive than others.
Benchmark statistics gathered from the pipelines of hundreds of companies show that your direct website-based leads are the most productive, averaging a 31.3% conversion rate, with referral leads in second place on 24.7%. It will be very tempting for your sales representatives to focus on these most productive sources.
The key, however, is to maintain a mixed-marketing approach — a balance between proactive and reactive activities. Do your utmost to make sure your sales team doesn’t get complacent with inbound activity. This can be done by setting the right level of expectations, incentivise them accordingly to broaden their approach, and ensure they work harder on MQLs that aren’t as qualified as they could be. An account penetration approach is key to good lead follow-up.
Outbound calling activities – Here’s your benchmark
Measure the conversion rate between meaningful conversation and a sales accepted engagement. If you’re focusing on demand creation, we would expect around a 20% to 30% conversion rate from meaningful conversation to sales accepted engagement. For project identification, this figure drops to between 5% and 8%.
Focusing on project identification is not wise; you should be conversing with clients, challenging their current way of operating, and creating projects, rather than relying on them being ready to simply buy your solution in the short term.
If you find that your conversion rate is below our suggested figure, one or a combination of three things may have gone wrong: you’re not speaking to the right profile of prospective companies, you’re not speaking to the right level of persona in the organisations, or you don’t have a compelling enough message that resonates with your target prospects.
Appointment Attendance – Here’s your benchmark
Maximise your conversion rate between a meeting being arranged and a meeting actually occurring with a client. If a prospect has agreed to meet with one of your sales resources but cancels at the last minute, it can point to two signs: you are not a priority to them, or the client doesn’t understand the value of the meeting.
The first action to take is to agree on a proper time and date with the prospect, rather than an ambiguous slot such as “some time before lunch on Wednesday”. You should also ensure that the objective of the meeting is clearly articulated in advance.
Ask some key questions of yourself: what is the value of spending one hour with your organisation? Do you have an understanding of issues that similar organisations may be facing? What solutions can you offer to their issues? The answers to these questions should be organised into an agenda.
In summary:
We’ve seen businesses hugely successful in outsourcing their sales activities, and we’ve also seen businesses very successful in building their own sales teams. Whichever path you choose to take, it’s important to remember that you need a clear SLA defining what success is, as well as having the right KPIs in place to monitor performance — so that if something goes wrong, you can zero in on the issue and solve it efficiently.
Regardless of whether your BDR function is in-house or outsourced, the team should be treated as an extension of your own business. An outsourced salesperson must be considered, scrutinised and supported just as much as an in-house counterpart would be.
Getting it wrong when you set up your own team might lose you between 6 months to a year of full productivity if the resources you’ve recruited are not the best fit for your organisation, or even if the right kinds of people are making mistakes and not learning from them within this bedding-in period. Outsourcing this function to a professional, external body saves this time, but be wary of these bodies overselling what they do, or promoting a ‘pay-per-performance’ model.
Many of these organisations build their teams with under-qualified or non-experienced sales staff such as students and offshore or temporary workers. They also have a tendency to push the fault of any issues that may arise back towards the client, or simply not deliver any results.
Regardless of which path you decide to take, effectiveness, time to results, productivity, scalability and experience should be the elements that you prioritise for a successful BDR function.
We’re here if you’re ready to benchmark our outsourced sales options.