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© COPYRIGHT 2018 THE SALES DEVELOPERS 2
You’re about to find out how to get accurate data more efficiently.
Let’s dive in...
Your guide to gettingdreamy data.
Delivering world-class modern outbound sales.
© COPYRIGHT 2018 THE SALES DEVELOPERS 3
First, let’s start off with the basics...
What is your swimlane?
Your swimlane is a set of criteria you can use to know whether or not a company is an ideal target to focus on. Here are some examples:
How big is this slice of the market?
Your Total Addressable Market (TAM)• In order to properly plan your outbound sales campaigns including how much activity to do and how many sales reps you need, you must
first understand the potential size of your market. • Too small and you’ll run out before you’ve really begun.• Too big and you’re likely buying data you won’t be able to use, which can get outdated quickly and cost you significantly.
• For example, we use the rule that for every 100 daily dials we plan to make, we need 250 call validated, active contacts in our funnel.
Account-level targeting
• Size• Geography• Industry• Related technologies• Budget• News
Contact-level targeting
• Title• Job function• Reports to…• Current problem• Current interest• Available budget
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What critical information can be found using technology?
What will require human intervention?
Technology vs Human Research
ACCOUNT-LEVELSize (employee count globally)
Geography (locations; HQ)
Industry (based on NAICS or SIC codes)
Related technologies (hooked into the web)
CONTACT-LEVELTitle (if found online or in database)
Reports to (requires specialized database)
News (based on company or keyword)
Account-specific web research (raw data via web crawler)
Current interest(globally based on online activity)
SIZE• Revenue requires deep research or
a conversation with someone open to sharing (unless you’re targeting publicly traded companies).
• Number of employees in a specific team or department might be achievable through a LinkedIn search if everyone is on LinkedIn, but often requires a live conversation to fully validate.
RELATED TECHNOLOGIES• Non-web-facing technologies are often
not identifiable through technology. For example, marketing automation software connects to a prospect’s website so you can sometimes get this tool’s name. But you won’t be able to find out which design tools they’re using to create the assets for that automation. That takes a conversation.
GEOGRAPHY• Number of locations often requires
extra leg work or a specialized database.
BUDGET• This is a notoriously difficult data
point to acquire, and almost always requires a human-to-human conversation. DiscoverOrg is one of the only databases that identifies this sort of data through human research, which is why we’ve partnered with them to power some of our own work.
INDUSTRY• Niches that are not indexed or are
more judgment based like “brands targeting millennials” will not be found online or in a database. The closest is finding a published list of Top Brands with your specific criteria, but these lists are few and far between with little extra data.
NEWSRelevant news might require human intervention to weed through the press releases and news articles, or you might be able to leverage keyword algorithms. More likely than not, your sales reps are doing this manually today with their precious selling time.
Account - Level:
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What will require human intervention? (cont.)
ACCOUNT-SPECIFIC WEB RESEARCH• If you wanted to sell to recruiting agencies that specifically recruit in the IT space, you’d have a hard time getting that data through a
typical online tool or database. This is the kind of project we pass to our human researchers who can give us a link to the exact spot on the website that proves the agency recruits in the IT space. (If that sounded crazy specific it’s because we’ve done exactly that for a client of ours.) There are lots of these kinds of details that a web crawler doesn’t capture as precisely as a set of human eyes and a human brain!
Contact - Level:
TITLE• “Everybody’s on LinkedIn, right?”
You can find a lot of people through LinkedIn and other databases. But the entire world doesn’t fit neatly inside of these platforms. Plus, if you’re not a Boolean search guru, you might miss some of the exact right prospects with slightly different titles.
CURRENT INTEREST• If you want to know a specific
prospect’s current interest level in the problems you solve, global internet usage isn’t going to be enough. You’ll need a conversation (over any channel - phone, email, etc.) to get that kind of feedback.
JOB FUNCTION• Sometimes this information is found
on corporate websites, individual LinkedIn profiles, or news stories online. There are a few databases who include this information, but the sources aren’t often included so it should be taken with a grain of salt.
CURRENT PROBLEM• It’s one thing for a prospect to
be curious about or open to more information on the problem your product solves. It’s another thing entirely to feel the urgent need to solve that problem. Technically, finding that out still isn’t selling (and that’s why we classify it under data that humans can gather).
REPORTS TO...• Reporting structures can be difficult
to identify, and they change as often as people leave roles. If you’re selling into a complex buyer group, you may have the most luck with a database like DiscoverOrg, who utilize human researchers to map enterprise and even mid market companies, including reporting structures.
DO THE AVAILABLE PHONE NUMBERS REACH THE INTENDED PROSPECTS?• The average dial-to-connect rate is
3-5%, meaning you spend the vast majority of your time calling people who don’t pick up. If you can navigate the path to the prospect (direct dials, gatekeepers, extensions, etc.) then you shorten the amount of energy expended to earn the next conversation.
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Contact - Level (cont.):
DOES EACH EMAIL ADDRESS ACTUALLY DELIVER, OR ARE SOME OF THEM CATCHALLS?• As email deliverability becomes
increasingly challenging, you need to be certain that your prospect’s email is actually their email. This requires sending an email, not just pinging their server.
DOES EACH PROSPECT ACTUALLY PICK UP THE PHONE?• Did you know that only 40-50% of
people you target will ever pick up? The right data process can tell you whom sales reps should be calling with their precious time.
DOES EACH PROSPECT ACTUALLY OPEN EMAILS?• If you know your prospect opens
emails sent from strangers, you know you have a better justification for spending time crafting exactly the right message for them. That requires more than the average email checking software - it takes a human!
© COPYRIGHT 2018 THE SALES DEVELOPERS 7
Reccomendations
If you want to get your staff to do the human-required data crunching, here’s what we recommend:
1. Don’t mix process & project work.
A) Nothing drags down efficiencies in the workplace like mixing process work with project work. Sales professionals should be following a process of reaching out to prospects, engaging with them in meaningful discussion, following up, and closing sales. If you’re going to ask them (or any other person on your team) to step out of their flow and do project work (like find three customer logos on each of their prospects’ web pages) it should definitely be batched so they’re not doing it in between steps in their process work.
B) We’ve all seen the sales rep (or maybe been the sales rep) who searched on LinkedIn for 15-30 minutes to find a great target, did some research, sent an email that bounced, then rounded out the rest of their wasted hour with searching for the correct email address across several tools or databases. It’s just not the way great selling gets done.
Here’s a typical day in the life of a sales rep:
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2. Don’t pay your sales professionals to do anything other than professional selling.
A) We don’t recommend that highly paid sales professionals do research, period. If they can describe the information they need in order to make a deal happen, someone else can get it for them. Research is almost always low value work and should be handled by a lower cost staff member.
B) How are people doing this today?• Building an in-house research team• Hiring interns• Sourcing and managing freelancers via sites like Upwork• Outsourcing the whole process
In-House vs Outsourcing
If you’re building this in-house, remember that one single person can do all of this work, but their throughput will be extremely limited, so don’t expect it to be faster than your current process.
What does this cost annually per rep if you leave it up to your sales team?
Research In-HouseYou’ll need someone to pull records from your database or find leads online through the public web and manually extract contact info.
Email Validation In-HouseYou can have that same person or someone else run the data through email validation through a tool like LeadWash and then manually send emails to each prospect.
Call Validation In-HouseThat same person or someone else can individually call each number listed and document the path to the prospect (if it even reaches them).
Live Feedback In-HouseThe most value in this process comes from getting prospects who pick up the phone and give feedback. This can take up to 20 attempts per contact.
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What does this look like with The Sales Developers?
Don’t pay your sales professionals to do anything other than professional selling. To brainstorm how to make your team more efficient, pick a time to chat with one of our team members here.
[email protected] | thesalesdevelopers.com
