The following is an advisory we sent to all of the Storm portfolio companies just before the new year. It was written by Jacco van der Kooij.

To portfolio CEOs/VPS of Storm,

What is prompting this sales advisory is an accelerated decline in performance of inside sales teams that use outbound call and email sequencing.

I am seeing a significant increase in number of companies missing their sales targets, not to mention that the gap with which they are missing their targets is growing.

Metrics to self-diagnose:

• Number of SQLs/SDR/month dropping below 14 SQLs/SDR/month we have seen as low as 5 SQLs/SDR/month.
• SQL to Win ratio dropping below 1:4 — we see as low as 1:10

The following actions are commonplace but can be counter productive:

• Constant firing and hiring of individual performers
• Relocation of sales teams to areas with lower wages
• Activity driven quota increases such as phone calls, talk time, emails sent, disco/demo meetings held, proposals submitted etc.

Root cause:

• SDRS: Using outdated prospecting processes
• Industry wide use of tools that enable mass-personalized outbound (by phone or email) without education on how to use those tools. We now see companies touching clients as much as 20 times over 2 weeks (that’s bad!)
• Use of “Predictable Revenue” as a model — in particular this approach mistakes email personalization with being relevant to a prospect.
• AE’s: Unable to properly execute sales calls
• Executing calls without structure
• Not asking for follow-up
• Not knowing what to do when clients “go dark”

In addition:

• LinkedIn is changing its policies this will impact EVERY sales organization
• Many sales organization are dependent on LinkedIn
• LinkedIn is going to curb the free use of its service for sales
• LinkedIn will (re)launch sales navigator at a lower price point
• All your customer facing staff is likely going to need a paid license to do their job

Recommendation

Keep doing this:

• Word of Mouth — continues to be the most effective and efficient way of doing business
• Events — focus on small / localized events with 30'ish attendees mixing customers and prospects
• Content — Lead with your insights, consider fewer more detailed/sophisticated articles over clickbait

Consider increased focus on this:

• Persistently record sales calls
• Establish sales call review with the entire sales team present — picking 1 call/day or worst case/week
• The use of these recorded sales calls + recorded review calls to train new team members
• Invest in programs that enable your current customers to become your evangelist
• Leverage influencers
• Target new accounts that are identified to be relevant in relationship to recent new customers (a concept known as sprints)
• Leverage Account Based Prospecting techniques where you address multiple people in a targeted organization with insights, use your inside sales organizations to gather intelligence to make them more relevant
• Use your insights (in the form of content) as the cold outbound call — then follow-up with those who engage in a super relevant way
• Become a thought leader with more PODcasts, Blog posts etc.