A big part of my role is to interview potential business development representative candidates. One of my favorite questions to ask when interviewing is, “What would you do if you were struggling to hit your number?” I often get responses like “I would stay late to make more dials” or “I would ask a high performer to sit in with me on calls and make suggestions.” These are some great answers, and just recently when I asked this question to a candidate, I really got to thinking about how I would answer the similar question of, “What should I be doing to make sure the reps on my team aren’t struggling to hit their numbers?”
There are some obvious ways that you can make your reps better through one-on-one training and by tweaking messaging and so forth. Along with the training, however, I like to turn to our CRM as a tool to increase the number of opportunities our reps uncover. Here are some of the tips and tricks I recommend using to help your team go above and beyond their goals:
- Utilize your CRM system to generate “Interested” reports. Pull all prospects with the “Interested” or “Nurture” lead status and export them into an excel document to send to your reps. This way they can start calling back into these accounts, even if it might be a month or so earlier than when they had set up their original follow up task. You never know, the prospect may be looking to start their project earlier, and this way you won’t be too late!
- Take advantage of your CRM system’s ability to generate reports that pull prospects that don’t have a follow up task associated with them. You never know, there is a good chance that some of these prospects were interested when you last spoke with them, but due to human error, a follow up task wasn’t scheduled by your reps. This happens, nobody’s perfect - just make sure you are using the tools available to you to track these accounts so you don’t miss out on a potential opportunity!
- Use your mass email tool within your CRM system to get some quick hits. Whenever I help launch a new project, mass emailing is usually a great way to spark some interest right out of the gates. Typically, if I send a mass email to 100 prospects, I usually see a quick return of at least 5 responses. Sometimes prospects show interest and ask to schedule some time to talk further, and other times, prospects will suggest reaching out to a more appropriate contact within the organization. Either way, it builds confidence in your reps and shows that your messaging is working, you just need to continue cold calling to catch these folks live.
It’s the start of a new month; will your team hit their numbers by the end of it? Get an early start and try out the tips I shared above.
Laney Dowling is the Director of Customer Success at AG Salesworks. Laney's responsibilities include managing daily client engagements, inside sales team oversight, reporting, training, and ongoing contact list development and refinement. To read more of Laney's articles, click here.
