🎙️Transcript: Sales Stack 2015

Sales Hacker: Sales Stack 2015
"How to Power the Top of the Funnel"
John Barrows, Bill Binch, Lesley Young, Andrea Austin, Ralph Barsi
November 10, 2015

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Summary

This dynamic Sales Hacker panel discussion brings together four sales development leaders to address the critical challenges facing top-of-funnel sales operations in an era of rapid technological change.

John Barrows sets the stage by acknowledging the paradox of modern sales: this is simultaneously the most exciting and most dangerous time to be in sales, citing Forrester predictions that 22% of the sales process will be fully automated by 2020 and a vast majority of sales roles may be replaced by technology.

As marketing automation comes upstream and consumers gain unprecedented access to information, the value proposition of sales reps is being squeezed, particularly at the top of the funnel where SDRs and BDRs operate alongside marketing lead generation efforts.

The central question becomes how sales professionals add value throughout the entire customer journey when traditional differentiation is disappearing.

Bill Binch provides historical context by tracing the evolution of sales leadership over three decades. Twenty to thirty years ago, VPs of sales asked basic questions about rep count, quotas, and average sale prices.

The introduction of technologies like Siebel and Salesforce added new dimensions around selling methodology and SFA systems.

But the past five to ten years have ushered in a fundamental shift where sales and marketing co-mingle and work together, forcing sales leaders to ask entirely new questions about marketing-sourced versus sales-sourced leads and combined spend across both functions.

This represents a departure from the old "eat what you kill" mentality to a partnership model where sales leaders must speak a different language and collaborate across organizational boundaries.

The panel explores how this integration actually happens in practice, with Lesley Young sharing Box's journey from reactive round-robin lead distribution to structured territory management and playbook-driven SDR operations.

The conversation reveals consistent themes across all four organizations: the critical importance of shared metrics between sales and marketing, the necessity of tight alignment between SDRs and AEs through pod models or defined ratios, and the strategic use of technology as an enabler rather than a solution in itself.

Andrea Austin introduces the framework from Tipping Point (message, messenger, context) as a way to cut through the noise that has made "content the new spam."

Ralph Barsi emphasizes that marketing and sales development at Achievers share the same incentives (pipeline created and revenue influenced) and collaborate weekly on pipeline reviews rather than working in silos.

The panel addresses measurement challenges, with participants discussing everything from basic activity metrics to sophisticated account-level tracking and funnel velocity monitoring.

Ralph introduces the memorable concept of "funnel constipation" (opportunities dumped into the top that never move), emphasizing the need to track how quickly deals progress rather than simply counting them.

The session concludes with actionable takeaways: think about others not yourself, apply Marketo's ABCs (as individuals, based on behavior, continuously, directed toward outcomes, everywhere they are), create operational frameworks for team clarity, and recognize that partnership with marketing is essential because pursuit alone is hard.

BIG Takeaways

• Sales and Marketing Co-Mingling Represents a Fundamental Generational Shift – Bill Binch traces three distinct eras in sales leadership evolution. Twenty to thirty years ago, VPs of sales asked basic operational questions: how many reps, what quotas, what average sale price, what's the direct-to-indirect split.

Fifteen to twenty years ago, technologies like Siebel and Salesforce introduced new considerations around selling methodology, selling systems to unite teams in common language, and SFA platforms.

But the past five to ten years represent a farther step forward where sales and marketing truly co-mingle and work together, fundamentally changing the conversation.

Modern VPs of sales now ask CEOs entirely different questions: What's the marketing-sourced lead percentage versus sales-sourced or channel-sourced? What percentage of total spend goes to sales and marketing combined? This represents a departure from the old school "eat what you kill" mentality where salespeople handled everything themselves.

Now sales leaders must partner within the business, and that partner is the marketing organization. This shift isn't cosmetic or tactical; it reflects recognition that in a world of marketing automation and informed buyers, sales cannot succeed in isolation.

The best sales leaders speak a new language that bridges both functions, measures combined contribution, and optimizes the entire revenue engine rather than just the sales component.

• Put Structure in Place Early So You Can Iterate (Even Imperfect Structure Beats Chaos) – Lesley Young shares Box's journey from chaos to structure, emphasizing a critical principle for growing companies: in the beginning, when demand is flooding in, you're just reacting.

Box initially used a round-robin approach to sales (no territories, just rotating lead assignment), which many in the audience acknowledged using themselves.

But this doesn't work for very long. As growth slows or becomes more intentional, companies must figure out territory strategy, decide how to capture the "shared part" of the sales cycle (which both sales and marketing touch), and start managing what people do with their day.

At Box, this meant creating playbooks to set expectations with field sales teams about what they should expect from SDRs calling on their behalf, with success based on the effort AEs put into focusing SDRs on key accounts.

This evolved into account pursuit strategies that pull insights and deliver information to people making calls, with marketing providing intelligence on what contacts have been doing and where (website, with AEs, with content).

The transformation was from scattershot to very planned and documented. John Barrows reinforces the key principle: when starting off, put some structure in place; it almost doesn't matter what it is, just put structure in place so you can iterate on it.

This challenges the perfectionist impulse to design the ideal system before implementing anything. Better to have imperfect structure you can refine than organic chaos that scales poorly.

• Message, Messenger, and Context (The Tipping Point Framework for Cutting Through Noise) – Andrea Austin addresses the overwhelming technology stack and communication clutter facing modern buyers by introducing a framework from Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point.

With sales reps making cold calls, blasting emails, and marketing adding to the noise until "content is the new spam," the Zen approach of silence obviously won't work in business. Instead, focus on three elements.

First, the message: understand what you're trying to say and be very simple, clean, crisp, and concise, helping declutter rather than adding to noise. Second, the messenger: if you're not unified with your sales team (SDR and AE really connected, working on joint account strategy, iterating and trusting each other), you'll fail.

Trust is essential on both sides (marketing to SDRs, AE to SDR), requiring honesty to say "that messaging didn't work, let's tweak it" rather than blaming. If you don't have the right message, don't understand what you're solving for customers, aren't getting intelligence from the field team, and don't trust the people delivering the message, you won't see results. Third, the context: all about data, insights, and timing.

Context has many layers, but timing exemplifies the principle. Deliver the right message with the right messenger at the exact perfect time when you're top of mind, and that's a winning recipe.

This framework provides practical guidance for evaluating every outbound effort: Is the message clear and valuable? Do we trust the people executing? Have we timed it appropriately based on data?

• Shared Metrics Between Sales and Marketing Eliminate Silos – Ralph Barsi identifies the foundation of Achievers' successful sales and marketing partnership: shared metrics. Marketing and sales development are both incentivized on the same metrics (pipeline created and revenue influenced).

When you have shared goals, it's much easier to work together versus working in silos. This goes beyond feel-good collaboration rhetoric to structural alignment through compensation.

If marketing is measured on leads generated while sales is measured on revenue closed, there's inevitable disconnect where marketing claims success generating volume while sales complains about quality. Shared metrics force both functions to care about the entire journey from lead to revenue.

Achievers reinforces this alignment through weekly pipeline meetings where marketing, sales development, and sales ops review what's in the pipeline, what's moving, what's not moving, and where to focus efforts.

Additionally, they create content together rather than marketing creating in a vacuum and throwing it over the fence. Marketing and sales development sit down together and ask: What challenges are you hearing from prospects? What objections are you getting?

Then marketing creates content specifically to address those challenges and objections, arming SDRs with valuable material for their conversations.

This collaborative approach ensures content actually serves sales needs rather than just filling a marketing calendar, and the shared metrics ensure both teams care equally about whether it works.

• Distinguish Between Inbound SDRs and Outbound BDRs (Different Skill Sets Required) – Bill Binch explains Marketo's organizational distinction between SDRs focused on inbound leads and BDRs focused on outbound prospecting, emphasizing these require very different skill sets.

The SDR working inbound leads needs to excel at qualifying, asking questions, and understanding what prospects are trying to accomplish and whether they're a good fit for Marketo.

The BDR doing outbound prospecting needs to excel at research, finding the right accounts and contacts, crafting personalized messaging, and being persistent without being annoying. Marketo hires for these different skill sets specifically.

For measurement, SDRs are evaluated on the number of qualified opportunities they create, while BDRs are evaluated on the number of qualified meetings they set. Ultimately both roles are measured on the pipeline they create and revenue that comes from that pipeline.

This distinction recognizes that responding to warm interest requires different capabilities than generating cold interest. Inbound SDRs need patience, listening skills, and qualification rigor to avoid wasting AE time on poor-fit opportunities.

Outbound BDRs need creativity, resilience, research skills, and the ability to create value in initial outreach. Companies that lump these together often get mediocre results in both functions because they're hiring for an impossible combination of traits and creating role confusion about whether the job is to qualify interest or create it.

• Pod Models Create Tight Collaboration Between SDRs, BDRs, and AEs – Andrea Austin describes InsideView's pod structure where an SDR, BDR, and AE work together on a specific set of accounts, finding that tight collaboration produces much better results.

When you have that alignment, SDRs and BDRs can work together to warm up accounts while AEs provide intelligence on what's happening in those accounts, with everybody working toward the same goal.

This produces much higher conversion rates and much faster sales cycles. Ralph Barsi describes Achievers' similar model with SDRs aligned to specific AEs at a ratio of typically one SDR to three or four AEs, ensuring really tight alignment where they work on the same accounts, have regular conversations about what's happening, and strategize together.

When you have that tight alignment, SDRs are much more successful because they have context and intelligence from the AE, while AEs are much more successful because SDRs are doing top-of-funnel work and warming up accounts for them.

Lesley Young emphasizes the importance of clear handoff criteria between SDRs and AEs, noting that without clarity you get friction. Box created specific criteria around what constitutes a qualified opportunity (not just "they raised their hand" but meeting criteria around company size, use case, budget, timeline).

They also created a feedback loop where AEs give feedback to SDRs on opportunity quality, helping SDRs understand what good and bad opportunities look like while creating accountability on both sides.

• Technology Is an Enabler, Not the Answer (Strategy Must Come First) – Ralph Barsi provides crucial perspective on technology's role: they use a combination of marketing automation, sales intelligence, and sales engagement platforms, but the key is not to get too caught up in the technology because technology is just an enabler.

What really matters is the strategy behind it. Achievers spends significant time thinking about ideal customer profile, who are the right people to target, what's the right message, what's the right cadence.

Then they use technology to execute that strategy at scale. But if you don't have the strategy right, no amount of technology is going to save you. This challenges the common pattern of buying tools hoping they'll solve problems without doing the hard work of defining strategy first.

Bill Binch explains technology's actual value: giving the ability to personalize at scale (creating templates with dynamic information insertion based on known data about person, company, and behavior, sending thousands of emails that all feel personalized because they are), and giving the ability to track and measure everything (knowing exactly what's working and what's not, which emails get opened, clicked, and drive conversions).

Lesley Young describes investing in sales intelligence tools giving SDRs and AEs information about target companies and people, allowing much more relevant and timely outreach, plus tools helping with outbound cadences that automate some outreach while keeping it personalized.

Andrea Austin emphasizes that sales intelligence helps you be more relevant because without intelligence you're guessing, but with information about what's happening in companies, what initiatives they're working on, what challenges they're facing, you can be much more relevant, potentially increasing response rates from 1-2% to 10-15%.

Transcript

John Barrows (00:00):
Please welcome John Barrows. Cool. So I just take it from there. All right, how's everybody doing today? So I'm fired up to be sitting here. I'm going to be moderating this panel with some of four of, first of all, my favorite people. I've worked with each one of these, so I'd like to bring them all up here if you guys don't mind.

Ralph, Bill, everybody else, Ralph Barsi. He actually is the VP of Operations at Achievers in San Francisco and runs the sales development and sales operations. We got Bill Binch, who has actually been with Marketo for a while and has helped lead their organization.

(00:52):
He runs the SMB side of the house, right?

Andrea Austin (00:52):
Yes.

John Barrows (00:52):
All right, fantastic. Then we got Lesley, SVP and GM of Commercial Sales at Box. She's been doing some awesome stuff over there. And Andrea, who is building high-performance sales teams at InsideView and leads the mid-market enterprise sales team.

So each one of these people I've actually worked with personally, worked with their teams, and know that they are pretty much on the forefront of where sales is going these days. And so today the panel discussion is really going to be focused on what's happening in sales, top of the funnel stuff, trying to get people tips and ideas and things that they can do.

(01:39):
And so I wanted to start off really first by asking everybody in the room here, how many people in here work for companies under a hundred employees? All right, cool. How many are in some sort of sales or leadership position here? How about individual contributors?

All right, so a decent mix of people, but we're going to try to make this as relevant as possible to everybody here. And so as we go through this, I think we're going to save some time for questions at the end, but I'm going to just try to be as dynamic as possible here.

(02:10):
And what I want to start with is talking about the evolution of sales. And Max hit on it. He said, this is a really exciting time to be in sales right now. I also think it's a very dangerous time to be in sales right now.

Actually, if you're following Jamie, I actually haven't met you in person, but how's it going man? So if you're following Sales For Life, I'm not plugging, but he's got a great blog and he talks about social selling. And he put a post out there recently about how Forrester is saying that 22% of the sales process is going to disappear by the time... is going to be fully automated by what, 2020 it said. And how a vast majority of us in sales are going to be replaced through technology.

(02:34):
So because marketing automation and all that stuff is coming upstream so fast and consumers are having far more access to information than they ever had before in their lives. And so the value of a sales rep is really starting to get squeezed there, and especially at the top of the funnel because we still have all this marketing lead generation, but we still have SDRs, we still have BDRs.

So the question is how do we add that value at that top and then all the way through?

So with that, I'm actually going to start with Bill because I don't think there's a better person to ask about this based on what Bill's been doing over the years here with Marketo and to talk about the evolution of sales and marketing, right?

(03:10):
Because I think sales has kind of evolved slightly over the years with new methodologies, whatever, but nothing's really changed the game until about four or five years ago when technology just came in and just shattered everything. And Bill's been with Marketo for how many years now?

Bill Binch (03:23):
Yeah, seven years.

John Barrows (03:24):
Seven years. And seeing marketing automation and the impact that it has had on the top of the funnel. So I guess my big question to you, Bill, here is you still have SDRs and still have BDRs, right? You still are doing outbound even though your product does an amazing job at driving inbound.

So talk to us about what you've seen over the past five or six years and how the intersection between sales and marketing have changed and where it's going.

Bill Binch (03:45):
I'll step back, John, even farther than five or six years, and I'll go back probably 20 or 30 years where you have the quintessential VP of sales going into an organization to get a new job.

And that person's meeting with the CEO and that CEO is asking them a bunch of questions about their background. And then when it comes time to ask questions back, that VP of sales is probably asking some questions of how many reps do I have? What's the quota per rep? What's the average sale price? What's the direct to indirect split? Questions like that.

(03:57):
And what we saw was technologies like Siebel and then Salesforce came in and started changing that conversation to where the head of sales, the next generation, would come in and ask all those same questions, but they would also walk in and ask some more nuanced questions around what's the selling methodology that we use? Obviously what's the selling system to bring all the salespeople together to be able to talk the same language? What's the SFA system?

And that probably takes us back 15, 20 years from now and then brings us up to a new stage, which you referenced there about five, 10 years ago, which is even a farther step forward of sales and marketing really co-mingling and working together.

(04:55):
And that all of a sudden adds a new set of questions that VP of sales is now asking that CEO, which is tell me what the marketing source lead percentage is versus the sales source or the channel sourced type of things. Tell me what percentage of our spend is spent on sales and marketing combined.

They're now speaking a different language as opposed to the old school salesperson that just says, "I'm going to go handle this all by ourselves and go find a way to make that number and eat what you kill type mentality." Now I have to partner out there in the business and that partner is my marketing organization.

John Barrows (05:34):
And that partnership is because typically like sales and marketing, right? Sales is over here, sales is on the third floor, marketing is on the fourth floor. Marketing comes up with some cool stuff, gives it to sales, they don't like it and they say it doesn't work and whatever.

And I really want to talk about that integration. And Lesley, we were actually having a conversation about the challenges of integrating sales and marketing and putting structure in place early. And based on the fact that there's a lot of companies in here under a hundred employees, a lot of learning lessons along the way at Box.

(06:10):
Just to fill you in, we were having a conversation of as we grow as organizations, a lot of companies kind of grow despite themselves and then all of a sudden realize, "Ooh, in order to scale, I got to put some structure in place here."

So talk to us about some of the learning lessons of integrating the sales and marketing side of the house with Box that have kind of paid it forward as you are today.

Lesley Young (06:24):
Yeah, I think very good point. In the beginning, you're getting so much demand that you're just reacting. And we talked a little bit about, we used to have this round robin approach to sales. How many of you guys have that where you don't have territories, you have round robins, right? Yeah. So that doesn't work for very long.

So one of the things we had to do is figure out what was the strategy going to be as it relates to territories. And to what Bill said, one of the other things we had to think about is when that demand stopped coming at such a rapid rate, how do we co-mingle or how do we actually capture the shared part of the sales cycle?

(07:05):
And I say shared because it has now gone, whether it's sales or marketing owns it. One of the things you have to do is you have to start managing what people are doing with their day.

And one of the things that we were talking about earlier is if you have SDRs or business development reps, the folks who are going outbound, how do you measure their success and what they're doing?

In our case, we actually had to put together playbooks to set expectations with the field sales guys, and that really was the foundational piece of what they were doing. In other words, this is what you should expect from these folks when they're calling on your behalf and their success is going to be based on the effort you put in with regards to focusing them on key accounts.

(07:50):
To that end, just to take that one step further, that's evolved into how do we help those folks who are making those calls or responding to those calls be more effective when they're in front of the customer and not have them doing all the research and trying to pull all this information together.

So one of the things that we've done is actually created an account pursuit strategy, which is pulling insights and delivering that information to the folks who need to make calls.

And a lot of that comes from our marketing organization, the insights that they provide from what those contacts have been doing in the context of where they're doing it. In other words, is it through our website? Is it with an AE? Is it with our content? So that's sort of the evolution. Before it was a little bit scattershot, now it's very, very planned and documented.

John Barrows (08:20):
I think that's a key, right? When you're starting off is to at least put some structure in place. It almost doesn't matter what it is, but just put some structure in place so you can iterate on it.

And Andrea, over at InsideView, one of the things that Lesley talked about was, well, I read a tweet by somebody, I forget who it was, but they said, "content is the new spam." You got all this... the noise out there right now is just absolutely deafening with sales reps making cold calls, blasting out emails, marketing doing all that stuff.

(08:50):
So over at InsideView, I mean I know it's all about insights and being relevant there, but how do you align sales and marketing so that they're not bumping into each other and they're actually working with each other with a common goal of trying to contact the customer without just burying them with crap?

Andrea Austin (09:07):
So I don't know how many of you have seen, there's a technology stack infographic that's out there and it is absolutely just cluttered. So a way to make sense of the noise is the Zen way is to not speak at all, right? Silence. That's not going to work for us in a business context.

So really the way to approach it is in three simple fashions. Anyone who's read Tipping Point, it's a nice lesson to take from that book. It's the message, the messenger, and the context. And so you have to understand what is it you're trying to say and be very simple and clean and help declutter that message. Be very crisp and concise.

(09:45):
And then the messenger, I think to your point, if you're not unified with your sales team, so SDR and AE being really connected and working on a joint account strategy and iterating and trusting each other, trust is essential. Trust on both sides, meaning from the marketing folks to the SDRs and from the AE to the SDR. And really being honest and saying, "Hey, maybe that messaging didn't work. Let's tweak it. Let's shift it. Let's do something different."

But if you don't have the right message and you don't understand what you're trying to solve for the customer and you're not getting that intelligence from the field team, and if you don't trust those folks who are actually delivering that message, you're going to fail. You're not going to see the results.

(10:30):
And then the context is all about the data and the insights and the timing. All of that, there's so many different layers to that context, but let's take timing for example. You can deliver the right message with the right messenger at the exact perfect time that you're top of mind and that's going to be a winning recipe.

John Barrows (10:45):
Perfect. And Ralph, over at Achievers, you guys are selling into the enterprise. You've been there, I think seven years now. And you run the sales development team and you run the sales operations team. So you're kind of the glue between sales and marketing in a lot of ways.

And so you guys have a really great relationship between sales and marketing there. So talk to us about how you've helped kind of facilitate that conversation and that partnership.

Ralph Barsi (11:10):
Sure. Well, I think it starts by having shared metrics. So marketing and sales development are both incentivized on the same metrics, which are pipeline created and revenue influenced. And so when you have those shared goals, it's a lot easier to work together versus working in silos.

The other thing that we do is we have weekly pipeline meetings where marketing, sales development, and sales ops all get together and we review what's in the pipeline, what's moving, what's not moving, where we need to focus our efforts.

(11:45):
And then the third thing I would say is we've created content together. So marketing doesn't just go create content in a vacuum and then throw it over the fence to sales development. We actually sit down together and we say, "What are the challenges that you're hearing from prospects? What are the objections that you're getting?"

And then marketing creates content specifically to address those challenges and objections. And then we arm our SDRs with that content so that when they're having those conversations, they have something really valuable to share.

John Barrows (12:15):
I love that. And I think one of the things that's really important there is the shared metrics piece because I think a lot of times marketing is measured on leads and sales is measured on revenue. And there's this disconnect where marketing is like, "We're generating all these leads" and sales is like, "Yeah, but they're crap."

And so when you have those shared metrics, you're both working toward the same goal. And I think that's really powerful.

(12:40):
So let's talk a little bit about SDRs and BDRs because I think there's a lot of confusion out there about what the role is, what the expectations are, how you measure success.

Bill, at Marketo, talk to us about how you guys structure your SDR team and what you look for when you're hiring SDRs and how you measure their success.

Bill Binch (12:58):
Yeah, so we have SDRs that are focused on inbound leads and we have BDRs that are focused on outbound prospecting. And the reason we make that distinction is because they're very different skill sets.

The SDR who's working inbound leads needs to be really good at qualifying, at asking questions, at understanding what the prospect is trying to accomplish and whether or not they're a good fit for Marketo.

(13:30):
The BDR who's doing outbound prospecting needs to be really good at research, at finding the right accounts, the right contacts, crafting personalized messaging, being persistent without being annoying.

And so we hire for those different skill sets. And then in terms of how we measure success, for our SDRs, we're looking at the number of qualified opportunities that they create. For our BDRs, we're looking at the number of qualified meetings that they set.

And then ultimately, both of those roles are measured on the pipeline that they create and the revenue that comes from that pipeline.

John Barrows (14:05):
Perfect. And Lesley, at Box, talk to us about how you guys structure your SDR team and what you've learned along the way.

Lesley Young (14:12):
Yeah, I think one of the things that we've learned is that you have to be really clear about what the handoff looks like between the SDR and the AE. Because if you're not clear about that, you're going to have a lot of friction.

And so we've created very specific criteria around what constitutes a qualified opportunity. And it's not just, "Oh, they raised their hand and they want to talk to us." It's, "Have they met these specific criteria around company size, use case, budget, timeline, all of those things?"

(14:45):
And so the SDRs are responsible for qualifying against those criteria. And then once they've qualified the opportunity, they hand it off to the AE.

And the other thing that we've done is we've created a feedback loop where the AEs are giving feedback to the SDRs on the quality of the opportunities. And that's been really important because it helps the SDRs understand, "Okay, this is what a good opportunity looks like. This is what a bad opportunity looks like."

And it also creates accountability on both sides.

John Barrows (15:15):
I love that. And Andrea, at InsideView, talk to us about your SDR team and how you guys structure it.

Andrea Austin (15:22):
Yeah, so we have a very similar model to what Bill described. We have SDRs that are focused on inbound and we have BDRs that are focused on outbound.

But one of the things that we've done differently is we've created pods where we have an SDR, a BDR, and an AE all working together on a specific set of accounts.

(15:45):
And the reason we've done that is because we found that when you have that tight collaboration, you get much better results. Because the SDR and the BDR can work together to warm up accounts, the AE can provide intelligence on what's happening in those accounts, and everybody's working toward the same goal.

And so we've seen much higher conversion rates and much faster sales cycles with that model.

John Barrows (16:10):
I love that pod model. I think that's really powerful. And Ralph, at Achievers, how do you guys structure your SDR team?

Ralph Barsi (16:17):
Yeah, so we have a similar model where we have SDRs that are aligned to specific AEs. And the ratio is typically one SDR to three or four AEs.

And the reason we do that is because we want to make sure that there's really tight alignment between the SDR and the AE. So they're working on the same accounts, they're having regular conversations about what's happening in those accounts, they're strategizing together.

(16:45):
And one of the things that we've found is that when you have that tight alignment, the SDRs are much more successful because they have that context and that intelligence from the AE.

And the AEs are much more successful because they have the SDRs doing a lot of that top of funnel work and warming up accounts for them.

John Barrows (17:05):
Perfect. So let's talk a little bit about technology because I think this is where things are really changing quickly.

And Bill, I want to start with you because obviously Marketo is a marketing automation platform. So you're living and breathing this stuff every day.

Talk to us about how technology is changing the game at the top of the funnel.

Bill Binch (17:25):
Yeah, I think the biggest thing that technology has done is it's given us the ability to personalize at scale. So in the old days, if you wanted to send a personalized email, you had to literally write that email one by one.

Now with marketing automation, we can create templates and we can dynamically insert information based on what we know about that person, what we know about their company, what we know about their behavior.

(17:55):
And so we can send thousands of emails that all feel personalized because they are personalized based on the data that we have.

The other thing that technology has done is it's given us the ability to track and measure everything. So we know exactly what's working and what's not working. We know which emails are getting opened, which ones are getting clicked, which ones are driving conversions.

And so we can be much more strategic about where we invest our time and our resources.

John Barrows (18:25):
And Lesley, at Box, how are you guys using technology to improve your top of funnel efforts?

Lesley Young (18:32):
Yeah, I think one of the things that we've done is we've invested heavily in sales intelligence tools. So tools that give our SDRs and our AEs information about the companies that they're targeting, the people that they're targeting, what's happening in those companies.

And that's been really powerful because it allows our team to be much more relevant and much more timely in their outreach.

(18:58):
The other thing that we've done is we've invested in tools that help us with our outbound cadences. So tools that allow us to automate some of that outreach but still keep it personalized.

And that's been really important because it allows our SDRs to be much more productive. They can reach out to more people in a day, but they're still being personalized and relevant in their outreach.

John Barrows (19:25):
Perfect. And Andrea, at InsideView, obviously you guys are a sales intelligence platform, so talk to us about how that's changing the game.

Andrea Austin (19:33):
Yeah, I think the biggest thing that sales intelligence does is it helps you be more relevant. Because if you're reaching out to somebody and you don't know anything about them or their company, you're just guessing.

But if you have intelligence about what's happening in their company, what initiatives they're working on, what challenges they're facing, you can be much more relevant in your outreach.

(20:00):
And we've found that when you're relevant, your response rates go up dramatically. So instead of getting a 1% or 2% response rate, you might get a 10% or 15% response rate just by being more relevant.

And that makes a huge difference in terms of the productivity of your SDRs and the quality of the opportunities that you're creating.

John Barrows (20:25):
And Ralph, at Achievers, how are you guys using technology to improve your SDR efforts?

Ralph Barsi (20:31):
Yeah, so we use a combination of tools. We use marketing automation, we use sales intelligence, we use sales engagement platforms.

But I think the key is not to get too caught up in the technology. The technology is just an enabler. What really matters is the strategy behind it.

(20:50):
And so we spend a lot of time thinking about what's our ideal customer profile? Who are the right people to target? What's the right message? What's the right cadence?

And then we use technology to execute on that strategy at scale. But if you don't have the strategy right, no amount of technology is going to save you.

John Barrows (21:10):
I love that. I think that's a really important point. Technology is an enabler, but it's not the answer.

So let's talk a little bit about metrics and measurement because I think this is where a lot of companies struggle.

Bill, what metrics do you guys look at to measure the success of your SDR and BDR teams?

Bill Binch (21:28):
Yeah, so we look at a few different metrics. Obviously, we look at the number of opportunities created and the number of meetings set. We look at the quality of those opportunities and meetings.

We look at conversion rates. So what percentage of the opportunities that are created actually turn into closed won deals?

(21:50):
We look at velocity. So how long does it take from the time an SDR creates an opportunity to the time that deal closes?

And then we look at the revenue that's generated from those opportunities. Because at the end of the day, that's what really matters.

John Barrows (22:10):
And Lesley, at Box, what metrics do you guys focus on?

Lesley Young (22:14):
Yeah, I think we focus on similar metrics. But one thing that we've added is we look at the activity metrics as well. So how many calls are our SDRs making? How many emails are they sending?

Because we've found that there's a correlation between activity and results. And so we want to make sure that our SDRs are being productive and they're doing the right activities.

(22:40):
But we don't just look at activity in isolation. We look at activity in the context of results. So we're looking at, "Okay, you made 100 calls. How many of those turned into conversations? How many of those conversations turned into meetings? How many of those meetings turned into opportunities?"

And so we're tracking the entire funnel from activity all the way through to closed won.

John Barrows (23:05):
And Andrea, at InsideView, what metrics do you guys focus on?

Andrea Austin (23:10):
Yeah, I think we focus on similar metrics. But one thing that we've added is we actually track the metrics at the account level as well.

So we're not just looking at how many opportunities did we create, but which accounts did we create opportunities in? And are those the right accounts?

(23:30):
Because we've found that not all opportunities are created equal. An opportunity in a Fortune 500 company is very different than an opportunity in a 50-person company.

And so we want to make sure that our SDRs are focused on the right accounts and creating opportunities in accounts that are actually going to turn into meaningful revenue for us.

John Barrows (23:55):
And Ralph, at Achievers, what metrics do you guys focus on?

Ralph Barsi (24:00):
Yeah, so we look at pipeline created and revenue influenced. Those are our two main metrics.

But we also look at what we call funnel velocity. So how quickly are opportunities moving through the funnel?

Because we sell to the enterprise, and to Bill's point, it's really focused on quality versus at bats. And what we don't want to see, and I'm sure no one here does, is funnel constipation. You don't want to dump everything into the top of the funnel and it just sits there forever.

Lesley Young (24:32):
That's a new one.

Ralph Barsi (24:33):
We're tracking funnel velocity all the time. And you did not set this up, but we use your scorecard, John, to make sure that we're tracking throughout the process the number of gives versus the number of gets. And we've found that that streamlines the process.

John Barrows (24:50):
Awesome, thanks. All right, so we're up on time. Just one more thing before we get out of here and then we'll open it up for questions.

But one nugget that everybody can take away from today that they should either do... walking out of here is a lot of them, again, sales leadership, under a hundred employees, a lot of them, any nugget that they could walk away with?

Ralph Barsi (25:10):
Yeah. Again, start thinking about others versus yourself. If you're calling into Kansas City, congratulate them on the Royals just winning the World Series. Think about them.

Bill Binch (25:20):
Cool. At Marketo, we think of something that we call the ABCs of marketing. We say that you have to market and reach out to your potential buyer A, as individuals, B, based on what they do, their behavior, C, continuously over time.

It's not just about making that first call because like you said, we all don't pick up our phone a lot, so you got to build... D, directed towards an outcome because as sellers, we all want to close a deal at some point. And E, everywhere that they are, every device, every location that they are.

John Barrows (25:50):
I love it. A, B, C, D, E. Nice.

Lesley Young (25:55):
Wow. Mine's not so formulaic. Going back to what I originally said, it's very important to create a framework for how you operate and what that means is for every new person who comes into the organization, they should have an understanding of what are the team players and what those people do and how they play together.

I think one of the things that you said, Andrea, about, it's about the expansion. It's not about the first sale, it's about the network you create with that customer and the network you create with the team.

(26:30):
So making sure that you have a good understanding of where you're focusing. And then I will say relevance, context, and curiosity.

Relevance for what's the conversation you're having and who are you talking to? Context, make sure that you've done the homework and the context in which you're speaking is the industry, the things that are going on in their industry.

And curiosity is when you're doing hiring, you can't get those other two if the person that you're hiring isn't curious about business.

Andrea Austin (27:00):
And mine is that partnership with marketing is essential to be successful. We can do all that we can to push deals through the pipeline, but we need those deals. And sometimes it does come from the awareness that's out there. Otherwise, it's all about the pursuit. And the pursuit is hard.

So I think that marketing relationship is vital.

John Barrows (27:20):
I love it. Mine's the reason for your call. Take that one. Do whatever you... all right.

Are we good? All right. Anybody have any questions or are we good? All right, if you want to see us, we'll be walking around. So if anybody has any questions, thank you all very much. Hope we got some value.