Every sales rep is in a constant battle with their quota. Given the amount of stress heaped on sales people due to the pressure to meet all the necessary metrics, as well as the necessity to drive revenue that’s behind all that pressure, it’s worth it to take some time to understand the factors that lead to better performance and to put strategies in place that ensure that sales people have all the resources they need to succeed.
A good inside sales or development rep should strive to achieve a 35-40% reach rate. Reach rate is the metric that defines the percentage of conversations that are “meaningful”. Not all conversations are going to go anywhere, obviously, and having more dead-end conversations than meaningful ones can be frustrating, but unfortunately it’s the nature of the sales beast – lots of digging to find the gems. The goal, of course, is to spend as little time digging as possible.
35-40% reach rate might seem impossibly high for a lot of reps. That’s where the sales and marketing infrastructure becomes key. A strong strategy is needed to back up the reps and make sure they’re fed with enough warm leads to spend a majority of their time meeting end goals like appointment sets, closing meetings, or sales.
The first step in building this robust strategy is the target market or your “list”. This is the top-most level of your sales funnel and therefore will determine what you get out of the bottom. It’s important to make sure your list is inclusive in order to reach all the correct people. Does your list encompass the correct industries, titles, departments, company sizes, etc. that define your ideal customers?
The next step is to put in place a solid strategy for reaching out to all of the contacts on that list. Statistically, the most effective way to do that is by email marketing. Email marketing is faster, more efficient, and less intrusive than cold-calling, and email is the most preferred method of communication among B2B buyers and decision makers according to recent data.
Having a strong email marketing strategy in place allows your reps to spend less time slowly hammering their way through a list of unqualified prospect names and more time closing deals and meeting quotas.