The Sales Handbook by Intercom
The Sales Handbook by Intercom
The Sales Handbook by Intercom
We’ll spare you the legal mumbo jumbo. But please don’t share
this book or rip off any content or imagery in it without giving
us appropriate credit and a link.
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51
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Jill Konrath, International Speaker, Sales Strategist and
Bestselling Author of SNAP Selling and More Sales, Less Time
The first rule of selling is always be crystal clear on I’ll admit, I took a long time to fully appreciate what
the value you’re adding. he said. But here’s the thing: Seeing things differently
is exactly what makes great salespeople so good at
When I started consulting, I thought my value was their jobs. There’s even data to support it. According
in all the tactical things I could help sales leaders to Forrester Research, you have a 74% chance of
do. I could help their sales teams focus on the right closing a deal if you’re the first vendor to create a
opportunities, rapidly create interest, get buy-in viable vision for the future.
from prospects – and, of course, close deals quicker.
Sounds pretty darn compelling, doesn’t it? That’s what I was really doing, and that’s what this
book will do for you – help you see things differently.
So one day, I decided to get confirmation directly from Featuring contributions from today’s leading
my client, a growing division of a Fortune 500 firm. I founders, investors and operators, this book gives
invited the VP of Sales to lunch, and when I finally got you an inside look at how they’ve approached the art
up the gumption, I asked him, “John, can you tell me and science of sales. Within its pages, you’ll find tried
what I’m doing that makes you keep hiring me?” and true advice for growing your team, pipeline and
business. Whether you’re fresh to sales or an industry
He responded, “That’s easy. You make me see things veteran, I guarantee you’ll learn something new.
differently.”
Good luck out there, and remember, it’s worth seeing
things differently.
Sales is the lifeblood of every business. Without it, Intercom. Front-to-back, you’ll hear from over 30 of
you have no way of acquiring customers, getting today’s top sales leaders.
to breakout revenue, or creating and accelerating
meaningful growth. But it’s also one of the hardest The book is designed to be read in any order. Each
functions to get right, especially today when buyers chapter is a self-contained exploration of one of four
have hundreds, if not thousands, of choices. The need themes we feel are critical to master at every stage of
to establish a strong foundation in sales – one that’ll your business: developing a sales strategy, growing
help ensure your success in this new era of selling – is your sales team, modern sales techniques and real-
what encouraged us to write this book. time sales.
From the very beginning, we realized the book could We’d like for you to think about this book as a jumping
only play out one way: by featuring real advice from off point. Its ideas, principles and frameworks are
real experts. Throughout the book, you’ll hear from intended to inspire, not prescribe, how you’ll practice
many voices, including founders and investors, sales sales to grow your business. In each section, you’ll find
trainers, and VPs and Directors of Sales. They provide links to read more from our contributors. We encourage
new perspectives on questions like, how do I create you to click on them and explore what else is out there.
an effective compensation plan? When should I move
upmarket? How can I use automation to make my sales Finally, we’d like to thank all of our contributors. We are
team more productive? deeply indebted to them for their willingness to share
their hard-earned wisdom and the valuable lessons
What follows are answers to those questions and they’ve learned.
actionable advice on many more. Along with excerpts
of our podcast, we interviewed our sales team and We hope you enjoy the book.
our colleagues in the industry for their insights. We’ve
also included samples from some of the best writing Courtney Chuang & Geoffrey Keating, Intercom
on sales that resonate with our own philosophies at
PART I
DEVELOPING
A SALES
STRATEGY
Crafting a sales strategy is one of the core activities every those few. It’s far too easy to say your initial sales team
business will have to undertake. You can delay it until you’ve will be both SMB and enterprise, inbound and outbound,
acquired your first 100 or 1,000 customers, but at some hunters and farmers. The reality is that without focus, doing
point you’ll need to find sustainable traction in the market. any of those effectively is nearly impossible. The key is to
experiment and iterate with discipline, so you can zero in
A well defined sales strategy is your path to meaningful on the sales strategy that’s right for your business.
growth. It’s how you’ll know who your target customers
are and how you’ll sell to them. Get it right and watch your Here, you’ll learn from top practitioners in the field about
company’s growth trajectory go up and to the right. Go their winning sales strategies and the lessons they’ve
without one and risk seeing your business flame out. learned scaling sales. Taken together, their advice is a
roadmap to identifying and navigating the crucial inputs to
The challenge for you is deciding which sales motions will long term sales success.
actually drive your strategy forward and leaning into just
Des Traynor,
Co-Founder, Intercom
High value
per account
Transactional Enterprise
High value
per account
Complex
Self-serve sales
process
Low value
per account
leave you dead before you even start building anything at all.
Here are some examples:
John Barrows,
Sales Trainer
If you’re selling something that has You can only automate and educate people so
a super low Average Contract Value (ACV), much before they want to talk to somebody.
say, $1,000 for the year, it’s hard to justify Maybe $5,000-$10,000 is when people get
having sales in that equation whatsoever. more uncomfortable putting their credit
But, if you’re in somewhat of a complex sale card online and buying without talking to
that involves a sales cycle longer than 20- people. But that threshold exists.
30 days, and at least two or three calls with
multiple people, sales is a critical part of that
to make sure it goes right.
Focus breeds
excellence in sales
LB Harvey,
VP of Sales, Intercom
Do you know
who your ideal
customer is?
Tomasz Tunguz,
Partner, Redpoint Ventures
Excerpt from “An Often Forgotten Characteristic About Your Startup’s Ideal Customer Profile.”
Why salespeople
need to think like
consultants
Mark Roberge,
Senior Lecturer, Harvard Business
School, and former CRO, Hubspot
We need to do a
When folks ask, “What’s changing in sales;
better job, when we
how is it different?,” the common theme is that engage with someone,
it’s going more and more inside. Twenty years
to engage with them
ago, you had to actually talk to a salesperson just
to do your buying process. They had information in their context.
that you needed, and the best reps were very
skilled at withholding that information in
exchange for the information they wanted from Those of us in sales have to step up our game in
you – who’s the decision maker? How much order to add value to that whole ecosystem. We
budget do you have? What are your needs? need to be there as consultants and advisers to
our buyers. We need to do a better job, when
But today, I can be in my slippers on Saturday we engage with someone, to engage with
night, after I put the kids to bed, and I can find them in their context. We need to do a better
the top five vendors in a space. I can find out what job understanding their specific goals and the
they do, how they are different from one an- specific challenges they’re trying to solve, and
other, and how much they cost. I can try many of translating the generic marketing on our website
the products for free, and I can buy many of them to their business. We need to tell the story from
right on the site. Why we need sales becomes a their perspective. That’s the skill the best reps
huge question, right? now possess.
Excerpt from “Hubspot’s Mark Roberge Talks Inbound vs. Outbound Sales, Transparency and Big Data.”
Setting up a sales operations team is the market, then you need sales enablement to
absolutely paramount to your success as a sales train them on competitive positioning and to
leader. They’re a strategic arm that puts your sales curate external sales trainers. If you want to own
strategy into high gear. For all the talk about sales your pipeline and your forecast, then you need
hacks and magic, sales operations is really what sales analytics to identify high potential prospects,
helps you nail the right motions for your team. flag accounts at risk for churn and set the right
incentives to execute against those goals.
Let me put it this way: if your sales reps are race
car drivers, your sales ops team is the pit crew. Sales ops is incredibly powerful for your business,
They’re the ones ensuring your frontline sales and you can never invest in it early enough.
team gets deals to the finish line with precision
and consistency. And just like in auto racing,
you can’t have one without the other if you For all the talk about
want to put your business into hyperdrive.
sales hacks and magic,
That’s because sales ops is the collision point for sales operations is
so many crucial sales initiatives. If you want your
really what helps you
sales reps to spend more time selling and less time
doing administrative work, then you need sales nail the right motions
systems to optimize away the inefficiencies. If you for your team.
want your sales reps to be on the cutting edge of
From SaaS
startup to mature
SaaS business
Joel York,
CMO, Accellion
Selling up the value chain
st
new prospects and to expand product footprint
l
ica
ics
t yp
om ies
with current customers. The SaaS startup that Price
e co
n
at
eg
et
n str
er ive
enters the market with a customer self-service int tit
pe
m
co
SaaS sales model represents the origin of a Startup
Self-service
Graveyard
natural evolutionary path.
low cost
large scale
However, the straightforward tactics belie Maintaining the simplicity of the customer
the tectonic strategic, operational and cultural self-service model as a successful SaaS
shifts required for success. Underlying the startup introduces more complex products
Experiment with
your sales strategy
– before you pivot
Elizabeth Cain,
Partner, OpenView Venture Partners
fail and go again. Leadership teams need to Experimenting can 3. Run experiment
be made simple
create room for this and encourage creativity using these four steps.
4. Analyze result
without repercussions.
Excerpt from “The 3 mistakes every company makes building the outbound sales model.”
Be wary of
“happy ears”
with upmarket
customers
David Katz,
Director of North America Sales,
Intercom
to a mutual evaluation plan or meet shared If you don’t have it, you’re not good at it and
deadlines, then it’s time to walk away. The the plan isn’t for you ever to work on it, be
absolute worst thing you can do is waste your honest with your stakeholders. The right
time or theirs. early upmarket customer will ultimately be
sold on the vision you paint for them, not
Even if these early conversations do go well, on a checklist. People evaluating software
inevitably there will be things larger customers vendors, especially people evaluating lots
ask for that you simply don’t have yet. There of them, appreciate transparency. It means
are four critical questions you can ask to get you’ll hear “no” more often than not, but
ahead of their needs from the get-go: getting to “no” faster is preferable. And when
the time is right down the road, those same
• What are their must-haves from a current people will also remember you for it.
functionality perspective? And why? Often-
times, this will be things like administrative
capabilities, reporting functionality, security
protocols and integrations or APIs. The right early
upmarket
• What are their must-haves from a future
functionality perspective? And why? customer will
ultimately be sold
• What are the nice-to-haves they hope will
come in the not too distant future? And why?
on the vision you
paint for them,
• Lastly, what are your current differentiators
not on a checklist.
that get them really excited about taking a
bet on you and bringing your tool into their
stack? And why?
Sales channel
partners
accelerate growth,
not create it
Steli Efti,
CEO, Close.io
First, let’s get the basics out of the 2. They are only good at selling something that
way: If you’re trying to get your first 10 or already works. Their incentive is to keep
100 customers, resellers and sales channel their clients happy and make money. And if
partnerships aren’t the right channels for you. your product doesn’t help them do that – if
you can’t prove that your product brings
If you’ve only just built a minimum viable tremendous value to its users – then they’re
product that you’re trying to sell so you can not going to put in the effort.
learn from real customers, these aren’t the right
channels for you. However, if you’re six months to a year in;
have a product that already has traction and
If you don’t have a steady and stable stream of growth; have experimented with and found
customers and monthly income coming in, these success with content marketing, paid ads, and
aren’t the right channels for you. inbound and outbound sales; and are bringing
in hundreds of thousands or millions in reve-
Here’s why: nue, then it’s a different story.
1. Resellers and sales channel partners are You want to only engage with them when the
strategies to accelerate and speed up existing time is right and you’re ready for that type of
growth, not to create it from scratch. scale. Never before.
Excerpt from “When (and how) to scale your business with resellers and channel sales partners.”
managers on your
1. Expansion: Growing accounts that are spend-
sales team dedicated ing a low amount but have high potential.
to building 2. Retention: Maintaining accounts that are
spending a lot and are at the top for growth.
relationships with 3. Contraction, i.e. monthly spend stability:
customers. Fighting to keep customer spend at the same
level.
GROWING
YOUR SALES
TEAM
Growing a sales team isn’t as simple as putting a bunch of An efficient and profitable sales org is the product of many
A players in a room and getting them to start selling your strategic decisions – who you’ll hire, what you’ll pay them,
product. Sure, you might get a few more deals across the how you’ll onboard and train them and much more. When
finish line and maybe even score a lighthouse logo. But done right, your sales team won’t just accelerate your
this approach rarely succeeds in today’s environment. company’s growth; they’ll enrich your company’s culture
and help build a better product too.
If you want to build a revenue engine that’ll fuel long-term
growth, you need to scale your sales org with intention. Whether you’re scaling an existing team or creating a new
Only then will you have the foundation to consistently win team inside an existing sales org, here are the crucial
new customers, upsell existing ones and see the kind of things you should work through before any sales activity
predictable growth that’ll make, or break, your company. begins.
Karen Peacock,
COO, Intercom
The top-down
vs. bottom-up
approach to sales
Peter Levine,
General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
I’m often asked the question of is a view someone at the top, such as a Chief
“Why sales?” by entrepreneurs and technical Information Officer, is more likely to have).
founders. The “why sales” question becomes For example, a security or audit feature that is
even more pressing given the trend toward crucial to a CIO might be completely irrelevant
“bottom-up” product adoption – i.e. offering a to an individual user.
given product for free or without a formal top-
down sales motion, as is common with SaaS. A formal sales function promotes the value
Why not simply invest in hiring more engineers of a product to an organization in ways that
and let the targeted end-user virally adopt the individual adoption and usage can’t. Salespeople
product of their choice? can demonstrate the importance of features
across the board, including criteria-setting,
The answer is that unstructured, bottom-up, pricing, and packaging that unlocks more of the
user-generated sales do not unlock the full value the product is materially creating for an
value of a given product. If you build it, they may organization. The result is greater penetration
come…but they probably won’t discover – or into the enterprise, higher product appreciation
take advantage of – every feature you want them and more revenue from a given customer.
to. Most users view a product only through the
lens of their own use, not through the needs and This is not to say that bottom-up adoption is bad
habits of all the users in their enterprise (which strategy; quite the opposite. Many great products
Sales
Productivity
Gap
# of customers
The optimal
structure for your
SaaS sales team
Jason Lemkin,
CEO, SaaStr
The sales-driven SaaS companies that are very Buying sales isn’t bad. It works. If you can raise
capital-efficient generally end up at 5x or greater a ton of capital, it’s one strategy for winning and
as a ratio of average quota attainment / average crushing the competition. But whatever you do,
on-target earnings. make sure you know the game you are playing.
Where you burn a ton of cash is “buying” sales. Sales doesn’t need to be a cost center. It can be,
Shoving sales reps into segments where you and for at least most of the life of your company
don’t have enough leads or enough demand. should be, a profit center.
“Starving” reps with too few opportunities.
Brutal head-to-head competition in areas you
might not otherwise compete in.
Excerpt from “What is the optimal structure of a startup SaaS B2B sales team?”
A pod model for your sales team creates focused tight-knit groups,
or “pods” that comprise team members playing different roles. A pod-based
organization is customer centric.
Dave Gray, author of The Connected Company, provides this diagram of the
pod model:
You still utilize the specialist roles of SDRs, AEs and customer success
reps. But instead of having all of your SDRs or AEs compete against one
another, pods compete with other pods. Each pod works together to win
the customer, and keep the customer happy afterward. They’re more
fluid, and come up with ideas independently.
Pods are more modular and flexible than traditional sales teams.
Because success is measured by pod, each member of the sales force
has a larger, more holistic view of the entire company. Pods build more
meaningful connections between people who are working together. It’s
perfect for mature startups trying to optimize existing sales resources
to tap into new markets and verticals.
Aligning sales
and product • Justifiable – demonstrate its value as being
greater than its cost (time and money) to
Des Traynor, the customer.
Co-Founder, Intercom
However, a great product is more than some-
A great partnership between product thing that “the market accepts.” There are
and sales needs to be based on shared other hard requirements in building a suc-
definitions of success and an agreed upon cessful product business. The product must
process to collaborate. Without these things, also be:
the relationship retreats to the magnetic
stereotypes of both industries: Product • Secure – features must be added thought-
teams think sales teams will do, say and sell fully so as to not create new attack vectors.
anything to make money, while sales teams • Scalable – every new feature must work for
think product teams will build anything cool your largest customers and future largest
except things that actually make money. It’s customers.
not a good place to be. • Reliable – business critical software can’t
have features with bugs that go unresolved
First, for a product to truly be considered for years.
successful, among other things it has to be: • Usable – you can’t build features with no
cohesive vision that need layers of solution
• Valuable – solve a real problem people are consultants to walk every new customer
willing to pay for. through them.
• Marketable – be attractive enough to dif- • Sustainable – the footprint of the product
ferentiate itself from competitors. can’t grow exponentially to accommodate
• Adoptable – have sufficient table-stakes every new feature request, which
requirements for features such that the jeopardizes all of the above.
majority of the market can adopt it. Product teams that don’t understand the first
list will never connect with sales. Sales teams has an abstract statement (“I can’t connect
that don’t understand the second list will conversations in Intercom with my user record
never connect with product. in my CRM”), a reason it’s a problem (“Using
Intercom would make my sales process too
Second, sales and product need a way to inefficient for SDRs who would have to copy
collaborate on the product roadmap. Sales and paste all day”) and then instance details
is usually the only team that has in-depth (“I need to see sales conversations in the
conversations with would-be customers who HubSpot CRM”).
couldn’t proceed due to a product problem.
In addition we capture things like:
If your product team isn’t taking roadmap
input from your sales team, you’re not • Stack rank.
listening to the potential market. You can go • Order of magnitude – often the gap between
deeper in your current niche, but you’ll never #1 and #2 in the list is substantial.
expand out of it, nor will you move upmarket. • Status – is it currently being worked on?
• Persona – who in the buying process speaks
At Intercom we take inputs into the product to this need?
roadmap written in the form of a “problem.” • Segment – what customer group does this
Each problem is an atomic unit that articulates first occur in?
why a deal can’t be completed. The problem
1 1
2 2
3 3
4 4
5 5
6 6
7 7
8 8
9 9
10 10
Candidate Summary
Candidate Name John Doe
Date of Interview 1/1/2012
Interviewer: Mark Roberge
Primary Criteria Score: 71%
Summary of Strengths: <Insert Strengths>
Summary of Weaknesses: <Insert Weaknesses>
Next Step Recommendation: <Insert Recommended Next Steps>
Coachability 8 9 72 90
Curiosity 9 9 81 90
Work Ethic 7 8 56 80
Intelligence 6 8 48 80
Prior Success 4 7 28 70
Passion 8 5 40 50
Preparation 8 3 24 30
Adaptability to Change 7 3 21 30
Competitiveness 8 3 24 30
Brevity 6 3 18 30
Total 412 580
71%
In sports, stacking your team with • They raise up fellow salespeople along the
all-star players doesn’t always lead to a champi- way and instinctively understand that the
onship. Similarly in sales, hiring prima don- whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
na salespeople rarely leads to a great sales
quarter. Great salespeople care deeply about While it’s hard to directly attribute those
reaching and exceeding their own personal things to helping hit quota, they’ll lead to
quota, but they care about the company too. a better customer experience and a better
How can you tell? product – which, ultimately, are easier to
sell. It’s a win-win.
• They go out of their way to deliver cus-
tomer feedback to product teams.
• They’re dedicated to protecting your
non-negotiables.
• They’re fired up to help the team create
best practices and scalable processes.
connect it to my
For instance, if I asked you that question, you
business so that could say, “I really like customers and I really want
you can bring a to do right by them and make sure our product’s
a good fit.” Or you could say, “Holy crap. Did
fraction of that you see what happened on Thursday night with
to the table when the Patriots? They got absolutely smoked. I’m rip
roaring pissed-off, but I think it’s a good thing,
you come work
because you know what? They needed to get
for me. knocked down a notch. I still think they’re going
17–1 this year!” I don’t care if football has nothing
to do with what you and I were talking about; if
you describe it in a passionate way, that means you
have some sort of fire in you. My job as a leader is
to take that passion and connect it to my business
so that you can bring a fraction of that to the table
when you come work for me.
Hire salespeople
who can blend
art and science
Stan Massueras,
Director of EMEA Sales, Intercom
Salary or
bonus-heavy
compensation:
which model is
best?
Devon McDonald,
Partner, OpenView Venture Partners
Align compensation
to how your buyer buys
Elizabeth Cain,
Partner, OpenView Partners
Excerpt from “Designing Effective Sales Comp Plans: The Dos and Don’ts for Every Sales Leader.”
How to determine
the base salary /
variable split
Michael Hanna,
Revenue Operations Lead, Shopify Plus
I recommend that you begin laying Next, determine the variable comp based on
out your compensation plans by ironing out your answers to the following questions:
the base salary and variable compensation for
each role. • How complex is your sales cycle?
• How much influence do reps have
First, determine the role’s base salary by on the buying decision?
assessing the following: • Is your model primarily inbound
or outbound?
• Level of difficulty. • Is the focus of the role primarily hunting
• Level of autonomy (how much (outbound), farming (growing existing
are they out on their own?). business) or catching (inbound)?
• Experience required.
Variable
(% of total target compensation)
What Determines Base Salary: ENTERPRISE SALES
Large deals, complex
Level of Difficulty 50% multi-year sales cycles
Level of Autonomy
INSIDE SALES
Experience Required
High volume, hunting, STRAT ACCT MGR
high influence, proactive Complex, large customer
hunt/farm/catch
What Determines Variable Comp: ACCOUNT MGR
O/B LEAD GEN Hunt/farm/catch, pro/
Complexity of Sales Cycle reactive
High volume,
Influence on Buying Decision simple, proactive
Excerpt from “Choosing the Best Sales Compensation Plan for Your Business.”
An onboarding
process that
will make sales
reps stay
Tonni Bennett,
VP of Sales, Terminus
sitting in a room alone reading over notes or times. Hearing, seeing and taking action on
talking out loud to the wall more effective? a concept over several days improves new
hires’ retention and long term understanding
Every time we onboard, we adjust parts of the material, instead of simply facilitating
of the onboarding based on feedback from regurgitation of the concept.
our new hires about how they best retain
information, giving them space to absorb To further reinforce the training, our follow-
the material and to practice in their own up materials include a written version of a
way. On top of that, we slowed down our concept, a video or audio recording of a talk
onboarding program, stretching it across a track by a leader, a couple of live examples
longer period of time to make sure that at from the field and then a requirement to
least the biggest topics and talk tracks are not execute a role-play or presentation of what
taught once, but repeated or recapped several the new hire has learned.
Train for
effectiveness,
not just efficiency
Richard Harris,
Founder, The Harris Consulting Group
Would your
team go into
battle for you? efficient team, instituting sales process and
rigor, which the team sorely needed. But there
Alyssa Merwin,
was a problem brewing and I had no idea.
VP Sales of Solutions Americas,
LinkedIn
After being in the role for six months, I
received my first 360-degree survey feedback.
At some point in our careers, all leaders I was devastated to learn that I was rated near
invariably switch roles, inherit new teams or the bottom among my peers.
change companies. These moves represent
huge opportunities, but they’re also fraught On top of that, Peter Kim, my manager at the
with potential land mines. I learned the hard time, shared feedback he had collected from
way that what made me successful in my last other leaders, leaders whom I thought I was
company would not necessarily guarantee working well with and who respected my
my success in my new organization. I know experience and input. The feedback revealed
this because my entry into LinkedIn was a that while I had focused in my first six months
rocky one. on having a huge and immediate operational
impact, I had underinvested in building
For some background, I left a company relationships and aligning with the company
where I’d established a strong track record culture. My survey results illustrated that I
over nine years to take a bet on building had not yet connected with my team.
part of LinkedIn’s sales team in New York.
I stepped into my new role wanting to Peter said, “Alyssa, people are describing
make an immediate impact and saw a ton of you as robotic, abrasive and difficult to work
opportunity for improvement. Based on my with.” But what stung the worst was when he
prior experience, I knew I could build a highly said, “There are leaders whose teams would
MODERN
SALES
TECHNIQUES
Whether you practice inbound or outbound sales, getting That’s why having the proper sales techniques in your
prospects into your pipeline is important, and hard, work. toolkit is so important. But let’s be clear, these aren’t silver
The math is simple: the more opportunities you have, the bullets or short term hacks. When built into a rigorous
more potential revenue for your business. But none of this sales process, these techniques are about skillfully and
matters if you can’t keep your prospects. consistently connecting your solution to your buyers’
needs. After all, nobody enjoys being sold to, and even
The plain truth is that the buyer’s journey is far from a less so when what they’re being sold won’t help them.
predictable path from awareness to purchase. There are
infinite ways prospects can get stuck in or even fall out of We’ve curated advice from some of today’s most
your pipeline – slow response time, confusing messaging, respected sales leaders on selling to modern buyers.
competitive offerings. You’ll find guiding principles and industry tested tactics
to inform your own sales process and, hopefully, help you
close more deals.
To replace
the status quo,
ask why
Trish Bertuzzi,
CEO, The Bridge Group
As we walk through The Five Whys, put Looking at the sales process this way, we can
yourself in your prospects’ shoes. appreciate just how much effort it takes to move
a company from prospect to customer. We can
Column two (Prospect Before) is where also appreciate what a journey prospects have
prospects start when you begin communicating to make from “unexpected sales call” to “this
with them. Column three (Prospect After) is is something I want to pursue” and finally to
where they end up if all goes according to plan. “replacing the status quo.”
The final column is how the Prospect After
stage aligns to a traditional sales process.
Entice prospects
with education, not Likely, I am simply trying to understand how to
product demos frame the problem I have. So why would I want
to see a product demo?
Mark Roberge,
Senior Lecturer, Harvard Business I am more interested in understanding the
School, and former CRO, HubSpot best practices to pursue my goal or address my
challenge. I am interested in the research, proven
“Hi Mark. This is John from Acme Inc. tactics and peer stories related to my problem. An
We help sales leaders like you gain visibility educational ebook, thought leadership webinar,
into your sales pipeline and improve the or even a free consultation would be far more
predictability of your revenue production. I appealing to me than a product demo.
would love to show you a demonstration of
our product. Would you be available Tuesday An educational offer not only yields a higher
at noon?” conversion rate to a conversation. The approach
also positions the salesperson more favorably
My voicemail is cluttered with messages like to help the buyer. Before salespeople pitch a
these on a daily basis. What I dislike most about product, they need to understand if they can
the message is that the offer is completely even help the buyer and, if so, how. Only then is
misaligned with my stage in the buying journey. the offer for a product demo appropriate.
Excerpt from “10 sales leadership lessons I learned from 10 years at HubSpot.”
One of the first rules of sales is you Instead, to create not just a touch point but
must learn, master and teach the art of the ultimately a sale, make sure your reps offer the
follow-up. Regardless of what you’re selling, prospect something new and personalized at
in today’s digitally inundated world it takes each and every engagement.
more than one or two touch points to gain
contact with a prospect. In fact, it takes an
average of 18 calls (according to TOPO’s Sales
It may be tempting
Development Technology report) merely to to release your sales
connect with a buyer.
team out into the
The takeaway here is that persistence is key. world with a “volume
However, there is a fine line between being is victory” mindset.
persistent and being labeled a nuisance; that’s
where technique comes in. It may be tempting
But resist that
to release your sales team out into the world temptation.
with a “volume is victory” mindset. But resist
that temptation.
Excerpt from “Hit ‘refresh’ on that stale sales cycle and never miss your numbers again.”
Steli Efti,
CEO, Close.io
to treat you well – if someone is abusive as a Then we can talk about it, and it’s always a
prospect – you should have the right to say no. funny scene.
This person isn’t going to help you; they’re
always going to create issues and be unhappy. If you qualify people correctly, it’s not just about
It’s not worth your energy and time to invest getting money, it’s about getting the right
in this relationship even if you think you can money – the type of money that multiplies. The
help them. type of money that’s much easier to sustain.
Money that doesn’t churn, create bad support
Some people will try to test me. They’ll come tickets or feel like a burden on your team
up to me, point their finger in my face and say, because it was never the right fit. Attracting
“All right Steli, if you’re that great at sales, sell good money is so much more important to me
me Close.io right now.” And I always tell them than just getting people’s money.
the same thing: “I know nothing about you,
nothing about your needs, nothing about what
you’re currently using. I’m not just going to
sell you on my product; you have to sell me.”
People buy software to solve problems but in order for your solution
to be compelling, they need to know what metric they want to impact.
“How are you measuring your goals?” is one of the most important questions
you can ask in a discovery call. The answer will show you how serious the
prospect is about solving the problem. Let’s say your prospect replies:
You can use that answer to drive urgency for the deal, especially if it starts
to stall. You can point back to the data and highlight how every month they
wait will cost them $50,000 in lost revenue.
Not having clear, measurable goals is a big red flag. If they expect to increase
revenue but don’t know their lead conversion rate, it’s hard to establish
realistic expectations for implementing your solution and doesn’t aid the
handover to your customer success team.
Excerpt from “6 discovery call questions to help you prioritize your pipeline.”
Closed assumptions are bad for business, and they’re bad for the
pitch. Yet asking more open-ended questions at the end of the presentation is
more or less useless, emptying them of any real meaning or intent. The heat,
the energy, the opportunity to truly connect and make magic together is gone.
So, if you are attentive and listening during the pitch, you’ll start a true,
productive dialogue – one that will bring you and your customer together and
help earn you the right to their business. Open questions – those questions
where you clearly have not already made your mind up about the answer or
your opinion on the customers’ plan – signal that you invite feedback during
the presentation. It’s really signaling the desire to learn as well as to put their
priorities first, to work toward their goals, to make all the information you give
them relevant.
Finally, not only do these openings create moments to re-engage and to redirect
toward those actual priorities (stated or unstated) that your target customers
have, they also provide invaluable nuggets of information. And those nuggets
can help you develop (if you’re early to product-market fit) or hone (if you’re
further along) your own overall business.
To identify the gap requires a solid under- math: FS (future state) – ES (existing state) = Gap.
standing of where the customer is today: Once you know the gap, measure it:
• How do they want to do things tomorrow? If the gap is small yet the cost is expensive, the
• Why do they want to do them that way? change is complex or the risk is high, the sale
• What are the new expected outcomes? isn’t going happen. If the gap is large yet the
• What will the new solution be connected to? cost is inexpensive, the change simple or the
• What’s the new impact to the organization? risk low, the sale will fly. If the gap is small
• Who is affected? and the cost is inexpensive, the change simple
and the risk low, you’re on track. It’s a good
Once the existing state is compared with future deal. Stay focused, point out the benefits and
or desired state a gap should occur. It’s simple move the deal. If the gap is big and the deal
is expensive, the change complex or the risk
high, you’re still on the right track, but it’s
going to be a long sale. Work to minimize the
risk, simplify the effort and keep the customer
focused on the vision.
No one knows more about your solution than you do, so you
should be the one helpfully consulting with your target customer to craft
what success looks like.
This is also the best time to prepare messaging, metrics and marketing
to address three audiences: (1) enterprise level (C-suite, senior vice
presidents); (2) workgroup level (vice presidents, directors, managers);
and (3) user level (groups of individual contributors and their direct
managers). Since most startups – and big companies for that matter –
spend most of their messaging effort on the first or third level, forcing
your company to constantly see its prospects and customers through
this three-level lens will be crucial to your company’s win/loss ratio.
• Simplified operational
control of apps System admin,
System admin,
Functional • Consistent user network engineer
network engineer,
criteria interaction models Task automation,
managers, users
• Automatic update productivity
of policies
At this point of the sales cycle, there are many subprocesses and activities that have
to be quarterbacked by the sales rep, sales engineering and sales management. The
salesperson’s ability to coordinate and drive the right resource, action or message
– at the right level and at the right time – will determine overall success or failure.
Excerpt from “If SaaS Products Sell Themselves, Why Do We Need Sales?”
And, before you do that, you need to figure out what you’re going to
say. You might even need to experiment with different versions before
you find a response that works.
For example: pricing. If it’s always a sales objection, then you’ll want
to address it early on. Ask your prospects if it’s the key factor in their
decision. They’ll probably say it’s important but not the only thing.
That’s when you say, “That’s good because we’re not the lowest cost
provider and there’s a good reason for it.” Of course, you’ll need to be
able to clearly articulate your value too.
There are benefits of being small. It’s your job to convey them.
So what are the elephants in the room that you’re tiptoeing around?
There are no
closing techniques
Alice Heiman,
Sales Trainer
Closing is just another part of the sales cycle. Closing a deal becomes hard
only when the prospect is not ready to buy. That sounds simple enough,
so why do sales that were supposed to close stall? Why do salespeople
think prospects are ready to buy when they are not? How do salespeople
get all the way to the end of the sales cycle with a prospect and not know
whether or not the deal will close? It is because the salesperson has
moved forward in the sales cycle but the prospect has not.
• “I’ve done everything I can, given you all the information I have,
answered all of your questions and provided for all of your requests.
Why won’t you buy now?”
The prospect may be thinking one of the • “Although I understand your product’s
following: bells and whistles I still don’t really
know if your product is the best solution
• “I am not ready to buy so I don’t know for my needs.”
why you expect me to.” • “Our priorities have changed and I don’t
• “You have overwhelmed me with infor- have time to call you back or I feel bad
mation that I now have to explain to the so I don’t want to call and tell you our
others involved in the purchase and they decision.”
are all too busy.”
• “This was a priority for others in my Effective closing starts with getting commit-
company so I rushed to get everything ment. Commitments need to be made in each
they needed and now it is on the back step of the sales cycle by the prospect as well as
burner and I don’t know what to tell you.” the salesperson.
REAL-TIME
SALES
The next generation of B2B buyers will shop for software If you think modern buyers are happy to buy software by
in an entirely different way than most decision-makers filling out a form, waiting for an email follow-up, waiting
do now. to get qualified, waiting for a phone call … it’s time for a
reality check.
Why? Put simply, times are changing. With the rise of
1:1 messaging and the on-demand economy, just about At Intercom, we’ve been pioneering a different approach
everything seems to be one click away these days. – real-time sales. In a world where buyers expect their
Customers are used to things happening instantaneously. questions to be answered right there and then, while
So why are so many sales teams making people wait they’re live on your website, we believe that real-time
hours, days or even weeks before responding to sales conversations will power the future of sales, not forms, cold
inquiries? emails or any other clunky form of sales communication.
Real-Time Sales
Part IV
How real-time
sales is
disrupting the
traditional
sales funnel
Jeffrey Serlin,
Senior Director of Sales &
Support Operations, Intercom
71 Real-Time Sales
Part IV
With live chat, our sales reps can connect with to establish mutual fit. With live chat, you’re
and qualify inbound leads within a couple of connecting with prospects in real-time and
minutes. That’s because they’re able to do qualifying them on the spot. Your team is
high-impact discovery and quickly find out now talking to leads who previously would’ve
things like: had to fill out a form and sit in a multi-week
queue. Real-time interactions compress
• Why are you interested in our solution? your funnel, leading to higher win rates and
• How are you solving this problem today? happier customers.
• What are your goals and objectives?
• What are your concerns and questions?
Live chat
Vistors, prospects,
leads, MQLs
SQLs
Opportunity
Customer
Excerpt from “From first touch to qualified lead: how to build a live chat sales funnel.”
72 Real-Time Sales
Part IV
How chatbots
are augmenting
the SDR role
for the better
Stan Massueras,
Director of EMEA Sales, Intercom
Historically, the role of the SDR or them. That means providing prospects with
BDR has been to collect qualification criteria educational content and jumping on demo
to see if a prospect is promising enough to be calls to make sure that initial intent is carried
introduced to an account executive. However, through. Whereas before, our SDR team was
SDRs today, especially at Intercom, are doing incentivized to identify and pass along stage
much more than that – they’re accelerating one opportunities (i.e. leads who have met
the sale by providing prospects with value qualification criteria), now we’re incentivizing
early on. them to move into the stage two opportunities,
by having conversations and confirming
Thanks to automation and chatbots, SDRs can customers’ use cases.
automate so much of what used to be manual,
repetitive tasks. Nowadays, SDR teams can Ultimately, we try to have our chatbot do
still collect information from leads and the stuff that bots are good at (capturing a
answer basic product questions in the middle lead’s details, asking some simple qualifying
of the night while they’re sleeping soundly in questions) and leave the stuff humans are
their beds. It frees up their time when they’re good at (understanding customer pain
awake to focus on higher impact work further points, solving their problems and building
down the funnel. relationships) to the humans. The effect
of this is that SDR teams are shifting from
Right now, our SDRs spend most of their repetitively posing questions to being seen as
time keeping pre-qualified prospects’ intent an increasingly strategic assets. In the years to
on using Intercom high by identifying come, we’re betting that chatbots will make
which problems Intercom will solve for sales teams even more important, not less.
73 Real-Time Sales
Part IV
Staying personal
at scale
Tonni Bennett,
VP of Sales, Terminus
74 Real-Time Sales
Part IV
75 Real-Time Sales
Part IV
Drive growth
and scale through
automation
Karen Peacock,
COO, Intercom
76 Real-Time Sales
Part IV
The thing you’ll need to decide is, is it a person Third, use your bots to ensure that the right
chatting with them or a bot? The answer is that prospect or customer gets to the right person
it should be a combination. The mix and how it quickly. Your highest value prospects should
works should depend on three things: go to the right folks on your sales team. Your
most valuable customers should go to their
First, high-growth businesses (and even account manager or whoever can best answer
businesses that aren’t growing quickly but their question. If your business is built around
who care about efficiency) should have bots a lower touch and lower cost model, use a bot
handle all of their basic, repetitive sales tasks to get customers to the best self-serve solution.
like answering commonly asked questions or
scheduling meetings with the right people. The The future of sales will happen in real time. If
goal is to get customers the information they you want to unlock massive growth for your
need fast – ideally, in real time – and whenever business, now is the time to start combining
a bot can do that, it’s a better experience for the brilliance of humans with the scale of bots.
the customer, because it’s faster and more
efficient for the business.
77 Real-Time Sales
Part IV
The
consumerization
of B2B sales
Mathew Sweezey,
Principal of Marketing Insights,
Salesforce
There has long been a debate among Salesforce Research, “State of the Connected
businesses as to how their buyers buy, largely Customer,” validates this idea, proving all
expressed in the terms of B2B (business to buyers have the same fundamental expectations
business) and B2C (business to consumer). A regardless of the type of purchase.
business purchase, such as selecting a blog
software, is very different from a consumer This research surveyed more than 7,000
shopping for a road bike. consumers and business buyers globally.
In the report, consumers reported “their
Or is it? The business strategist Jay Baer has personal purchasing, service, technology,
said, “Our personal and commercial lives have and engagement preferences,” while business
collided in unprecedented ways.” The behaviors buyers self-identified as “employees having
and attitudes we’ve adopted in recent years— purchasing power on behalf of B2B companies.”
thanks to our daily exposure to smartphones,
social channels, and other tech advancements— The study shows that B2B marketers can
are blending into our business lives. no longer afford to tell themselves that B2C
marketing trends don’t apply to them. It’s not
In other words, our expectations of companies that B2B and B2C audiences are the same, but
when we’re in the role of “business buyer” rather, the research reveals that consumers’
are advancing along a similar path as our expectations of companies are very similar for
expectations as consumers. A recent study by both B2B and B2C buyers.
78 Real-Time Sales
Part IV
While “real-time interactions” in the B2C world may point to social channels,
the ability for B2B companies to respond immediately is no less important.
In fact, 80 percent of business buyers expect companies to respond and
interact with them in real time.
64% 80%
The implications of this are simple but immense: Your business buyers
expect the same level (if not higher) of real-time attention and personalized
interactions as consumers. If they don’t see B2B marketers making strides
toward delivering that, they’re well positioned to find another provider
who will.
Excerpt from “80 Percent of B2B Buyers Expect Real-Time Interaction” and Salesforce Research “State of the Connected Customer.”
79 Real-Time Sales
Part IV
Reaching your
invisible pipeline
Richard Harris,
Founder, The Harris Consulting Group
This invisible This invisible sales pipeline is made up all of those people visiting
your site who are never going to fill out a form. The challenge then
sales pipeline becomes how you can get visibility of buyers in the invisible sales
is made up pipeline, find the ones worth talking to, and then connect with them?
all of those
Existing CRM and marketing tools only have visibility into your real
people visiting pipeline, hence the value of products like Intercom’s. You can shine a
your site who light on a visitor’s IP, and you can use that data to try to generate more
inbound and outbound leads. Through technology, you could start
are never doing more ABM and targeted ads based on tracking mechanisms,
going to fill and you could then turn that data over to your SDR team and have
them do outbound to generate a constant stream of sales ready leads.
out a form.
But until businesses identify this as something to focus on, these
people are just invisible, and you’re leaving cash on the table.
80 Real-Time Sales
Part IV
Excerpt from “Your Direct Conversions are Bringing in the Wrong Customers.”
81 Real-Time Sales
Part IV
25
20
SQLs / month 15
10
That said, we still need to grow our companies. The big question is how we
will compensate for that loss of lead generation potential. Where are those
new untapped gold mines? We’ve seen SDRs achieve great results prospecting
through video. Other teams are having more luck finding fresh leads through
review platforms such G2 Crowd and Capterra. The craziest one I’ve seen
recently was the SaaS company Intuo quite successfully reverting back to
personalized print mail campaigns. Oh yes, print!
82 Real-Time Sales
Part IV
But one way of finding leads is too often him in the hopes of booking a call or a demo.
overlooked: inbound via website chat. These That’s when the process becomes lengthy
leads are already there but are just not being and difficult, because the prospect has left his
converted. engaged mindset. Prospects are much more
willing to start a conversation during a website
First and foremost, conversing through chat visit, when their mind is open to discovering
shortens your sales cycle. The moment a the product. That key moment needs to be
prospect leaves your website after entering leveraged right then and there to start a guiding
his email address in a form, his focus goes to conversation leading to a demo.
the next problem of the day. In a traditional
process it’s now up to the SDRs to reach out to
Website Discovery
Email Email Qualification
visit demo
capture outreach call
meeting
Email outreach
days to weeks
Online chat
minutes
Website Disco/
visit Chat demo
meeting
Excerpt from “How To Leverage Live Chat & Chatbots For Lead Generation.”
83 Real-Time Sales
Part IV
High value
interactions
Low friction
transactions
84 Real-Time Sales
Part IV
If at all possible, she wants to go right to her car … or to click one button.
These are low friction transactions that the buyer wants to perform
as quickly and easily as possible. Translation: she doesn’t need a sales
professional’s help.
By the way, if you are skeptical of this, GE is already selling motors on eBay.
But most sales professionals do not operate in the opportunity rich space
at the top of my drawing. Instead, they dwell in No Man’s Land, which
is what I call that middle wasteland filled with high friction, low value
transactions.
I can tell you with absolute certainty that countless tech companies
and startups will relentlessly target and ultimately erase the middle
wasteland space; in fact, Salesforce is making big bets on AI with its
machine learning enabled technology, called “Einstein,” which will
allow salespeople to work faster and know the best move to make next.
Ten years from now, my diagram will look very different: the bottom
section will be twice as large, and No Man’s Land will be tiny.
85 Real-Time Sales
Part IV
86 Real-Time Sales
Part IV
Giving salespeople
time to focus on
what they do best
Sujan Patel,
Co-founder, Mailshake
and VoilaNorbert.com
87 Real-Time Sales
Part IV
Sales Hacker reports that the average sales rep spends six hours each week
prospecting on LinkedIn alone. Throw other social media platforms and
channels like blogging, cold calling, and cold emailing into the mix, and it
starts to add up.
12%
Connecting with clients
or prospects virtually
25%
Administrative
tasks
36%
24% Non-selling
Connecting with
clients or 64% 16%
prospects in person Selling Service tasks
7% 7%
Down time Traveling
6% 4%
Internal
Training
company meetings
If you removed those dreary tasks from your plate, how much more time
would you have for real engagement and personal attention with qualified
leads and existing customers? Hint: plenty.
Excerpt from “How Automation Can Open You Up to the Human Side of Sales.”
88 Real-Time Sales
intercom.com/sales