Effective Inbound Response Management

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Operatix

Effective Inbound Response Management

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Effective Inbound Response Management

Lead Generation for B2B Software Companies

Operatix

Operatix Sales Methodology: Lead Qualification & Inside Sales

In a competitive industry like technology, companies spend millions of marketing dollars each year to drive inbound traffic and feed the funnel for the sales team. Once these leads are developed, the leads generated must be promptly identified and quickly categorized from the “hot” leads that need to be responded to by sales quickly to the “colder” leads that will be redirected to marketing for further nurturing.

There is a period of time between a prospective customer identifying themselves through different marketing channels and the sales team making contact and initiating the sales process. To ensure that the inbound sales team is quickly and efficiently managing the quantity of leads developed by the marketing activities, the team must implement a multi-channel integrated inbound response solution. This solution should ensure that each prospect enquiry is checked against the master database, contacted by experienced inside sales member, verified, and qualified. The lead must be characterized in the right way and distributed to the sales or marketing team to close the sale or nurture the prospect.

Time Frame to Call

The process of qualifying and characterizing leads begins with the first call attempt by the inbound sales team. Ideally, this process should start within the first 2 hours of a new inbound enquiry. One issue that surfaces within internal inbound sales teams is that they are not incentivize to deal with leads quickly, to that extent the team can become complacent with the time to contact a lead and wait 12 hours, days, or longer to call. At this point the lead could have moved on to a competitor or lost interested and momentum to purchase. Furthermore, this is bad from a customer experience perspective and in some instances could lead to the prospect refusing to do business with the company in the future.

What we see around clients programs is that our clients don’t tend to know in which timeframe their prospect inquiries are touched. When they do know, most of them will evaluate the timeframe between the lead appearing in their CRM queue, rather than looking at the timeframe from the actual prospect inquiry to the response. Often we have exposed a timeframe of 1 hour or more before the lead even make it to the CRM queue, because of the synchronization timeframe in between marketing tools (such as: website, marketing automation platforms, or outsourced lead generation) and the creation of the data into the CRM system.

Volume of Touches and Effectiveness

It is imperative to connect with a lead and make them feel valued and important. If the team is unable to reach the lead on the first attempt, every inbound lead in the technology industry must be reached out at least 5 to 8 times before labeling the lead as “non-reachable.”

Every lead should enter a multi-touch process (call and email follow up) if not reachable. The number of touches should depend on the volume of inquiries you receive as well as your average deal value that will substantiate, from a cost of sales perspective, the effort of going after a prospect. Based on the research we have conducted over the years, we realized that the average inbound response team will increase its chances to reach a prospect by at least 3 times more if it contacts him/her in a timeframe less than 2.5 hours from the actual inquiry.

Lead Qualification

Sales people pitching a product or service are calling your leads multiple times a day.   You need to be different and build a relationship with each lead. Developing a relationship will close more deals than the antiquated sales pitch approach of simply reading off a call script.

Make it a conversation! Take the time to get to know your leads needs wants and desires that would help you sell the product or service. The inbound lead qualification and response team must make a positive and a lasting impression on the leads, leaving them wanting to do business with your company. Begin each call striving to answer three questions to learn more about his/her needs and develop a relationship:

  • What is the need of this product or service to this individual, the team, and company?
  • What are the benefits that this individual, the team, and company will get from the product or service?
  • Who are/is the decision makers for purchasing this product?

The call is a time to collect the information you need to map out the decision making process. The Operatix Inbound response team has found that in about 37% of the cases or more the person making the inbound sales call are not the decision maker. They are individual task to look at solution for a problem, but may not be the ultimate decision maker. For more complex software solutions, we often face a multi-buyer type of environment, and understanding the decision making process as well as identifying the different stakeholders is key to improve conversion rate from inbound to close business.

Find out who the different stakeholders are that will benefit from the product or service is something that most inbound response team don’t tend to do. It can be argued that it is simply because it is easier to complain about the lead quality or argue that the lead was not generated at the right level rather than being pro-active and going the extra mile to make the most from the marketing investments and efforts.

Process for Lead Qualification

Operatix recommends a 3-step qualification process for the inbound sales team:

  1. Qualification at the Account Level –check the account and make sure it fits the necessary requirements and qualification criteria to do business before engaging time and effort in qualifying an opportunity
  2. Qualification at the Contact Level –speak with the individual (or the group of individuals) that can make a decision around the solutions. Once again from Operatix research, we see an average of around 60% of the Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) produced across the board originate from a different individual than the person who made the initial enquiry.
  3. Qualification at the Opportunity Level – Have a lead qualification method in place. Operatix qualifies each opportunity based on the BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and Timing)

Marketing Metric and ROI

Ones the process has gone full circle, each marketing channel’s effectiveness should be identified and ROI should be reported per lead source, from where the lead is coming through to sales being closed. This process gives the necessary statistics to reinvest smarter and more effectively in future marketing programs, building strength behind the marketing, lead generation, and sales long-term.

Operatix: Inbound Sales Success

Operatix has over 12 years of experience building, managing, and developing inside sales programs to delivers ‘C’ level lead generation, in-bound lead qualification, and market services. On average, across all programs, The Operatix team administers inbound response programs that have a record of fast-tracking the sales success of the world’s leading technology companies.

The company works within its clients’ CRM system and follows clients’ procedures in managing leads to sales quality leads (SQL), nurtures opportunities, and delivers leads when they are “sales ready.” The Operatix team has executed and delivered beyond clients’ expectations with ours lead qualification process by:

  • Increasing the return from your investment through demand creation
  • Increasing conversion of lead to pipeline by a minimum of 15%
  • Tracking ROI by source and optimize demand generation activity
  • Increasing revenue
  • Turning social media strategy into results

Operatix conversion rate from marketing qualified leads (MQL) to SQL is 63.4% and the average inbound enquiries characterized as qualified sales leads per sales represented per day are 23 leads. For more information: sales@operatix.net

About Operatix

Operatix is a Sales Acceleration company specialized in supporting B2B Software vendors to identify new revenue streams, increase qualified sales pipeline, and accelerate channel development across Europe and North America. Operatix has a wealth of experience in working with the biggest tech players worldwide as well as a multitude of emerging software vendors.

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Channel Transformation

Digital transformation is changing how companies buy and use business solutions, making vendors re-assess the capabilities of their channel ecosystem. With channel dynamics in constant flux, vendors need to be ready to cut ties with partners that don’t share their vision or have connections with the right B2B buyers.

 

Operatix has supported numerous vendors in their path to Channel transformation by assessing current partners and recruiting new partners that are more aligned with their new channel strategy. Once the right partners have been identified, Operatix built scalable outbound sales development programs that accelerated their routes to market.

Inbound Response Management

In a competitive industry like technology every lead counts. Operatix can help you maximize conversion from MQL to SQL and from lead to pipeline, increasing both your revenue and ROI on marketing activities.

Account Identification

Identifying the accounts that are more likely to buy from you is part of our expertise. We will research the market, identify verticals and industries that can benefit from your solution and set up qualified sales engagements for your teams to kick-off the sales process. 

Cold Prospecting

Our team will identify new sales opportunities within the strategic accounts that you haven’t been successful in penetrating through your sales & marketing efforts. By applying the ‘Challenger Sale’ methodology we use a tailored, multitouch approach to connect with prospects, generating qualified sales engagements for your team and ultimately increasing your pipeline.

Outbound Sales Development

Using a proactive outbound sales approach has been proven to be one of the most effective methods to engage with prospective customers. By applying the ‘Challenger Sale’ methodology we use a tailored, human approach to getting in touch with prospects to increase your qualified sales engagements and ultimately generate more pipeline.

Outbound Sales Development

Using a proactive outbound sales approach has been proven to be one of the most effective methods to engage with prospective customers. By applying the ‘Challenger Sale’ methodology we use a tailored, human approach to getting in touch with prospects to increase your qualified sales engagements and ultimately generate more pipeline.

Partner Concierge Service

Our Partner Concierge Service helps vendors accelerate their channel programs, by engaging and nurturing channel partners and supporting them to get to revenue quicker.

Demand Generation

Whether you need to implement a demand generation strategy or get more results out of your existing demand gen engine, Operatix can work alongside your marketing team to yield better results out of your demand generation programs.

Account-based Marketing

An Account-based Marketing strategy is only as successful as the revenue it generates. At Operatix we will support your 1:1, 1:few or 1:many approach to get your team in front of decision makers in the accounts that matter the most to you. 

Lead Qualification

If your marketing leads aren’t converting, it might be a lead qualification issue. Operatix can help sieve through leads that need further qualification, so they are ready for an AE or sales team member to engage with.

Account-based Selling

At Operatix we will support your 1:1, 1:few or 1:many approach to get your team in front of decision makers in the accounts that matter the most to you. 

Pipeline Generation

Generating Pipeline for our clients is our key-objective. And we do that by using a multi-touch, multi-channel approach to generate qualified sales engagements for our customers’ sales teams.   

Account Intelligence / Deep Dive

Understanding buying centres, hierarchies and relevant personas in strategic accounts is a fundamental step to increase conversion rates. By leveraging account intelligence in a sales conversation your team can tailor their message and provide value to their prospective customer. But sales & marketing teams often struggle to dedicate time and resources to do the deep research and this is where Operatix can help.

DMID – Decision Maker Identification

Finding quality data is an on-going challenge for B2B Tech vendors. The accuracy of data platforms is questionable and that is why Operatix developed a manual process to identify & verify contact details for decision makers within strategic target accounts.

Playbook design

Operatix can develop Sales Playbooks that enable teams to sell more effectively. Your Playbook will be fundamental to get your messaging right, accurately position your solution against competitors, and adapt the communication of your value proposition to different buyer personas.

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Sales Playbook Development

Operatix can develop Sales Playbooks that enable teams to sell more effectively. Your Playbook will be fundamental to implementing the correct messaging, accurately position your solution against competitors, and adapting the communication of your value proposition to different buyer personas.

Lead Qualification

If your leads aren’t converting, it might be a lead qualification issue. Operatix can help filter through leads that need further qualification, ensuring that they’re ready for an AE or sales team member to engage with and progress through the funnel. 

Partner Portal / Marketing Concierge Service

Vendors often spend thousands of dollars building multifunctional Partner Portals to help channel partners educate their teams, manage opportunities, and create marketing programs. Still, these portals are often underutilized due to lack of bandwidth and capacity from vendors to offer support in enabling their partner community. Operatix, through their Partner Development team, can support your partners to make the best use out of your partner portal, managing the relationship with your partners and helping them set up co-marketing campaigns to drive more revenue for both businesses. 

Marketing & Sales Alignment

The sales development function is often seen as the “glue” that brings sales & marketing teams together. By working as an extension of your teams, Operatix will be your predictable source of pipeline, sales & revenue.

Optimization of MDF

Market Development Funds are an important component of any channel ecosystem, though vendors believe they are not maximizing the return on investment they should be getting from their MDF programs. At Operatix, we build scalable outbound sales development programs that will give you the visibility of return over the invested spend and will provide clear value for your channel partners.

Increase Partner Productivity

The 80/20 rule is still very applicable to the channel, which means that investing in partner productivity should be a priority for vendors looking to grow their businesses. Operatix can increase partner productivity and shorten sales cycles, by identifying ready to engage sales opportunities for your most valued channel partners.

Virtual Channel Account managers

Our VCAM team is responsible for building, maintaining, and managing sound relationships with current and prospective channel partners. They can get involved in opening up new sales conversations as well as closing small businesses up to $ 10k.

Tier 1 & Tier 2 Activation

Whether your business decided for a Tier 1 or Tier 2 distribution model, Operatix can help your channel partners get to revenue quicker. By providing qualified sales engagements to your channel partners we can accelerate your route to market with tangible and easily measurable results.

Solution Selling Training

Far too often vendors insist on enabling their channel partners to talk about features and technical details of their solutions. Customers don’t buy features; they buy the benefits your solution can bring. Operatix will work with your partner community to train them in articulating your message from a high-level business perspective, enabling them to talk to prospects about the value your solution can bring to their company from a board-level perspective.

Channel Enablement

Enabling your channel partners have measurable wins for your business when done right. Operatix has a proven track record in enabling channel partners from a sales & marketing perspective, providing them the knowledge and tools to successfully pitch your solution and sell the value & benefits of it. 

Partner Recruitment

Recruiting the right Channel Partners is the first step for a successful channel program. Operatix has helped over 350 B2B Software vendors recruit suitable channel partners across EMEA and North America, supporting them to scale and expand their presence in different geographies and verticals. 

Risk/Reward Business Model

To truly work as an extension of our client’s sales & marketing teams, we have also adapted our business models to show how our clients operate, and how their success is measured. With our risk/reward business model your investment is proportional to the results our team delivers.

Sales Qualified Leads

On average, 52.5% of the sales engagements set up by our team progress into a next step in the sale process. That means that 5 out of 10 meetings will progress either into a POC, a Demo or a pipeline opportunity.

Geographical Scale

Trading in different geographical markets not only requires a knowledge of the native language, local rules & policies, but a deeper understanding of the local culture and habits. We have the ability to deliver campaigns in multiple countries with flexible resource allocation. This is through our team of international speakers, who have the ability to sell in 17 different languages across the globe.

Increase Revenue & Decrease Cost

Building an internal sales development team comes with many additional costs and challenges that aren’t always taken into account: recruiting resources, training and enabling them etc. You also need to take into account the need for having the data and tools to make them successful, which in turn requires time, capital and effort. By outsourcing your sales development to Operatix you will see your revenue increasing, while decreasing costs and business risk.

Predictable Pipeline Generation

On average, our clients see a 26X ROI on the programs we deliver. By understanding your revenue targets and sales pipeline gap, we will work on a sales & marketing plan that will deliver tangible results.

Vertical Growth

Entering new industries or launching new product lines? Operatix can accelerate your growth by supporting your go-to-market strategy, and getting your sales teams in front of decision makers in key target accounts.

Reduce Headcount

By outsourcing your sales development and partner programs to Operatix; we reduce headcount and the challenges that come with managing people, technologies, and processes. We take care of your sales development, so you can focus on what matters the most: growing your business.

Revenue Acceleration

Operatix helps your business get to revenue quicker. By providing qualified sales engagements for your direct sales team (to kick-off new sales cycles), or by accelerating the growth of your channel partners, our focus remains on delivering tangible results for your business. 

Persona-based Selling

Operatix team will design specifically tailored messages to influence the different levels of decision makers in the sales process, tailoring the communication according to each job function. Our focus is to sell the value of your solution from a business perspective, not its features.    

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