How Can Busy Full-Cycle B2B Sales Reps. Make Time for Prospecting

In most organizations, sales groups are split into business development teams and sales teams. However, there is a growing trend, especially in smaller organizations, to utilize full-cycle (or full-desk) sales representatives. Full-cycle reps are responsible for the full sales cycle from prospecting to closing to account management.
This model works well in early-stage companies that have a smaller client base. But as the business grows, these sales reps take on more and more responsibility. Full-cycle reps end up taking on a lot of different responsibilities and managing existing accounts and their current pipelines takes up more and more time.

As a result, less time is spent on qualifying and prospecting. If a strong lead generation program isn’t in place, then these full-cycle reps can see their sales pipeline dry up really fast.

Read top advice for new sales reps. Read this blog.

Increasing Sales Without Adding Headcount

The first solution appears to be obvious, just hire more salespeople or hire business development representatives. If budgets are limited, this may not be possible or cost-effective. Are there ways to increase the sales pipeline without adding headcount? Below are a few tips to help your full-cycle sales reps to keep their pipelines full.

Organization – Sales reps can easily get distracted and do the activities they like to do instead of the activities that will make them more money. Sales managers can make daily calendars and set aside time for specific tasks. Designating one or two prospecting times per day keeps the reps focused. Using a calling automation technology makes this option cost-effective as dialing rates are 8 to 10 times that of manual dialing. We recommend creating an outbound calling playbook to set prospecting goals and keep track of voicemail scripts, sales positioning statements, campaigns, and new product information.

Technology – There are many software tools and applications that can help sales reps be more productive. The most important tool is the CRM which should be the center of your sales process. Integrating other sales productivity tools with your CRM will make it easier for your reps to use the tools.

Some of the technology tools and services we use at Koncert(formerly, ConnectLeader) (in addition to our own Team Dialer and Personal Dialer products) include Salesforce.com for our CRM, HubSpot for marketing automation, ZoomInfo, GotoMeeting for online meetings, and LinkedIn and Twitter for social media.

Coaching – When sales teams get busy, non-selling tasks need to be minimized. However, training and sales coaching time should not be reduced. As the speed of the sales cycle increases, sales teams need to be well-informed and capable of responding to a constantly changing market. Coaching inside sales reps can be challenging unless you have a way to monitor the sales calls and provide advise. Our products include a feature called Remote Coach offers the option to monitor the call or "whisper" to the rep. during the call. This feature really helps us speed up the onboarding process.

Prospecting Strategies – Uncovering new sales opportunities should not be an unpleasant task for salespeople since the benefit of their efforts will directly affect their success. If the well seems to be dry, try some different strategies. Here are a few ideas we find successful:

Target Account Profiling

Profiling People:  Identifying all of the parties in the sales cycle (for Koncert(formerly, ConnectLeader) we want to know everyone involved in the sales process including C-level, senior executives, group managers, sales operations, and marketing). Your account profiles will vary based on your product or service.

The purpose of target account profiling is to understand each person’s responsibilities, and involvement in the sales process. Essentially we want to know who is who.

• Profiling the account for existing technologies, processes, and methodologies.
• Understand issues or challenges in the selling process.
• Profiling the corporate process around budget cycles, purchasing, and technology evaluations.  This helps you understand what to expect when there is a buying event.

Obtaining Referrals

We often hear customers complain about bad data in their prospecting lists. Just to be clear, having an incorrect contact name or wrong title is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it is an opportunity to gain intelligence about your target account without the pressure of having to make a sales pitch. Most people strive to be helpful to other salespeople (especially if they are in sales themselves). They are often more than willing to pass you on to the person you are looking for.

Multi-Channel Prospecting

There seems to be an ongoing debate over whether inbound leads are better than outbound leads. We find a better strategy is to use a multi-channel strategy to reach out to our prospects. We use a combination of email, outbound calling, social media, and automated voicemail drops to touch our prospects in as many ways as possible.