Many organizations see the value of building an inside sales team. Managing a small inside sales team can be done in an informal fashion by a competent sales manager. A larger inside sales team requires more rigorous management. The complexity of managing the inside sales team will increase along with the size of the team, breadth of products or services sold by the team and geographic distribution of the team. This presentation focuses on an approach to building scalable inside sales teams.

1. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
Inside Sales
Building a Scalable Business Development Engine
1

2. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
Agenda
➔ Introduction
➔ Approach
➔ Conclusions
2

3. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
Introduction
3

4. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
Introduction
➔ Many organizations see the value of building an inside sales team
➔ Managing a small inside sales team can be done in an informal fashion by
a competent sales manager
➔ A larger inside sales team requires more rigorous management. The
complexity of managing the inside sales team will increase along with the
◆ Size of the team
◆ Breadth of products or services sold by the team and
◆ Geographic distribution of the team
➔ This presentation focuses on an approach to building scalable inside sales
teams
4

5. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
Approach
5

6. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
Approach
This exercise assumes that a core inside sales team already exists and the
organization wants to grow the team.
Step 1 Establish common understanding of the go to market strategy
Step 2 Analyze processes for Marketing/Sales Intersection
Step 3 Analyze processes for Sales Model/Management
Step 4 Identify bottlenecks that will limit sale team’s ability to scale
Step 5 Establish baseline KPI’s for sales and marketing operations
Step 6
Define targeted process changes to address bottlenecks and prioritize changes by a) magnitude of projected
impact and b) time to value
Step 7
Progressively implement changes and continuously revisit KPI’s to validate that changes are having measurable
impact
6

7. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
Relevance in this Context Impact of Poor Execution
Organizations bringing products or services to market
generally have internal thought leaders with a very rich
understanding of the company’s value proposition and ideal
target customer. However, these individuals cannot be
everywhere at once.
As companies allocate more resources to identifying target
customers, engaging prospective customers and servicing
existing customers, it becomes increasingly important to
define the company’s offerings to the marketplace in a clear
and consistent way.
● Poor understanding of target customer profile leads to
marketing activities that are not effective for reaching
target customers
● Shortage of well qualified opportunities as sales team
struggles to locate target customers and articulate the
company’s value proposition
● Lack of focus as opportunities are brought into the
pipeline that only partially align with the company’s
capabilities and priorities
● Slower ramp up as new hires to the sales team learn
the company’s core competencies through trial and
error
Step 1: Establish Common Understanding of Go To Market Strategy
7

8. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
No. Specific Areas of Inquiry for Go To Market Strategy
1
Answer the following as concisely as possible: What are the company’s product or service offerings? What are the
characteristics of the target audiences that map to these offerings? What are their pain points? What are the
alternative solutions available to target customers?
2
What business or technology concepts need to be understood by the inside sales team in order to effectively
communicate the value proposition to the target audience? Will target customers be more receptive to the
messaging in the form of business concepts or technology concepts?
3
Is there a central repository or other point of reference for ensuring consistent messaging during development of
sales and marketing materials?
4 How is the go to market playbook different for existing customers relative to net new prospects?
5
To what extent is the organization leveraging channel partners or other partnerships to increase the reach of the
inside sales and marketing organization?
Step 1: Establish Common Understanding of Go To Market Strategy
8

9. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
Relevance in this Context Impact of Poor Execution
Corporate marketing may perform a wide variety of
functions, only some of which involve direct participation
from the inside sales team. It is important that inside sales
team members understand their role in the marketing
process and the downstream impacts.
If the vision for the inside sales function involves direct
outbound prospecting in addition to receiving leads from
marketing, it is also necessary to have marketing
participation to support the outbound prospecting activities.
● Lack of education about the strategic and tactical
goals of marketing initiatives can result in mixed
messages to the marketplace.
● Poor understanding of inside sales’ role within
marketing efforts can result in lack of follow through
on marketing leads.
● Failure to align marketing resources to support
outbound prospecting activities has the potential to
undermine the productivity of the inside sales team as
they may lack the tools needed to be effective.
● Lack of clear points of contact within marketing can
reduce the velocity of sales cycles as salespeople use
tribal knowledge to find the materials they need.
Step 2: Analyze Processes for Marketing/Sales Intersection
9

10. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
No. Specific Areas of Inquiry for Marketing-Sales Intersection
1
What marketing activities are leveraged that depend on inside sales to generate opportunities? For example, social
media marketing, advertising, conferences, webinars. What initiatives and events have been scheduled?
2
How does does the sales organization participate in those activities? How well do the sales team members
understand their role in the marketing process?
3
Does the inside sales team have all the marketing materials needed to support scheduled prospecting activities? Is
there a core tool kit of materials that marketing will provide for each sales push?
4 What role does marketing play in training the inside sales team, both on an ongoing basis and for new hires?
5 What are the personnel mappings between marketing and inside sales?
Step 2: Analyze Processes for Marketing/Sales Intersection
10

11. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
Relevance in this Context Impact of Poor Execution
Some companies choose to pair off inside sales and field
sales team members. This could require inside sales to
provide lead generation only. Or, both teams could work
within the same accounts in a coordinated fashion, with the
inside sales team managing transactional opportunities
while field sales manages more strategic pursuits.
For companies that have multiple distinct product or service
offerings, decisions needs to be made about whether the
inside sales teams are specialists in one offering or
generalists that cover all the company’s offerings. The
trade off is balancing the desire to have a deeper level of
subject matter expertise and sustained focus vs. the desire
to cross-sell.
● Poor alignment between field sales and inside sales
team can result in conflict as the teams pursue the
same opportunities.
● Excessive specialization can cause frustration as the
inside salespeople struggle to find a specific target
customer profile.
● Excessive reliance on sales generalists can result in a
lack of focus on newer service lines with which the
sales team has a lower comfort level.
● Lack of definition for what constitutes a qualified lead
can result in quality control issues. As inside sales
continues to pass weak leads to the field sales team,
confidence in the inside sales team is eroded.
Step 3: Analyze Processes for Sales Model/Management
11

12. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
No. Specific Areas of Inquiry for Sales Model and Management
1 How is the inside sales team organized (generalist/specialist, geography)?
2 How does inside sales team map to the field sales team?
3 How are qualified leads defined and how do hand-offs from inside sales to field sales work?
4 Does the inside sales team manage opportunities, or turn them over to field sales?
5 Are pre-sales resources expended to support the inside sales team?
6 How does incentive compensation drive desired behavior?
7 How do pipeline meetings and forecasts work?
8 What is the format for performance reviews?
9 What is the career path within inside sales?
Step 3: Analyze Processes for Sales Model/Management
12

13. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
Step 4: Identify Bottlenecks
Examples of Bottlenecks:
➔ “Inside Sales is only following up on about half of the leads that marketing sends them. When
we looked into it, marketing had an outdated understanding of which sales team covers each
product, so they were sending leads to the wrong teams. Rather than asking for assistance, the
inside sales team just ignored the leads that didn’t apply to them.”
➔ “We don’t understand why we don’t have any pipeline for our newest product, despite a strong
marketing effort and training all of the sales teams. After having discussions with the inside
sales team, we learned that they don’t make as much money on those deals because of the
way their incentives are currently structured.”
13

14. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
Step 5: Establish Baseline KPI’s for Sales and Marketing Operations
Sample Sales KPI’s
What are the steps in the sales process and what is the
conversion ratio at each stage?
Looking at historical win/loss ratios, what pipeline multiple is
required for the sales team to meet quota?
What sales activities are the strongest predictor of generating
new pipeline?
If the sales team sells multiple offerings, what are the different
win ratios for each offering?
Of all the new pipeline created by inside sales this quarter, how
does this break down across each offering?
Sample Marketing KPI’s
(Inside Sales Context)
What percentage of inside sales team pipeline was the direct
result of marketing activities?
What is the current SLA for sales to follow up on a marketing
lead? How is the sales team performing against that SLA?
14

15. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
Additional Sales and Marketing Operations Topics
➔ How strong is the data in the CRM system and is it adequate to support future
sales and marketing initiatives?
➔ If inside sales is responsible for both outbound prospecting and marketing
lead follow up, how do we balance time between these two activities?
➔ Do we have the operational agility to programmatically drive prospecting and
measure results?
➔ Do we have learning platforms to automate onboarding and train the sales
team on new products and services?
➔ What operational reporting is needed for sales and marketing management?
➔ What reporting do we need to provide for executives and other stakeholders?
15

16. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
Step 6: Define Process Changes to Address Bottlenecks
Prioritize Changes by Projected Impact and Time to Value
Example of Bottleneck Remedy Analysis
“Inside Sales is only following up on about half
of the leads that marketing sends them. When
we looked into it, marketing had an outdated
understanding of which sales team covers
each product, so they were sending leads to
the wrong teams. Rather than asking for
assistance, the inside sales team just ignored
the leads that didn’t apply to them.”
Provide update to marketing and sales
teams on alignment. Schedule ongoing
activities to preserve alignment. Ensure
that sales is aware of SLA’s regarding
follow up on marketing leads. Provide
mechanism for visibility and accountability
with lead follow up.
The impact of the change is measurable -
the value of each lead can be measured
by analyzing the lead to cash funnel. The
proposed changes do not require a
significant time investment. This change
should be prioritized.
“We don’t understand why we don’t have any
pipeline for our newest product, despite a
strong marketing effort and training all of the
sales teams. After having discussions with the
inside sales team, we learned that they don’t
make as much money on those deals because
of the way their incentives are currently
structured.”
Multiple potential solutions- create a short
term incentive for the targeted offering,
reengineer the incentive compensation
plan to drive the desired behavior, or
possibly create a new sales specialist role
to increase focus on the targeted offering.
Although this is clearly an issue of
importance, the most effective remedy
may not be immediately obvious. Finding
and executing the solution will likely take
longer to implement than the fix for the
first bottleneck.
16

17. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
Step 7: Progressively Implement Changes and Revisit KPI’s
Bottleneck Relevant KPI Remedy Revisit KPI
Inside sales is only
following up on 50% of
leads assigned to them
by marketing.
Percentage of leads
never addressed in Q1
= 50%
Provided update to
marketing and sales
teams on alignment.
Trained sales teams on
SLA’s regarding
marketing lead follow
up. Created an ongoing
report on lead status.
After changes,
percentage of leads
never addressed in Q2
still = 20%. Additional
investigation. New
issue identified where
inside sales staff cannot
see some leads in
system.
Example
17

18. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
Conclusions
18

19. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
Conclusions
➔ As the inside sales team grows larger, it becomes increasingly important
to provide clear and concise information regarding the company’s value
proposition and target audience.
➔ Inside sales often works more closely with marketing than field sales and
as a result, alignment with marketing is critical.
➔ Creating a high performing inside sales team requires a strong
understanding of the day to day activities and relevant KPI’s.
➔ With consistent management focus and process discipline, inside sales
can provide organizational agility, scalability and a powerful business
development engine.
19

20. Building a Scalable Business Development Engine Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
Conclusions
➔ I hope you find this information useful in your sales pursuits.
➔ Bill Moorehouse, February 2016
20