Tag Archives: Filter

When Should You Bring in External Resources? Four Suggestions

Situation: A company provides market research, technical assistance, and related services for clients. It receives most of its work from proposals. Both writing successful proposals and carrying out the work of accepted proposals are critical capabilities. Should they bring in external resources to increase the number of proposals submitted? Where should these resources be focused?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Identify the most critical tasks that contributed to proposals that have been awarded.
    • Determine, between writing and editing, which tasks are most critical. Focus internal resources on these tasks and seek outside resources to assist with the less critical tasks.
    • Provide incentives to those who write grants that are awarded.
  • What portions of the proposals could be written using external resources?
    • Background information, including corporate history, tends to be repetitive between proposals. However, this material is also difficult for an outsider to master.
    • One option is to secure outside resources that will commit to the company for a long time. These resources would have the time to learn and master the historical data.
    • Another option is to use the company’s database to store and code historical data. These data could then be managed by a less expensive internal resource and collected with appropriate filters for each new proposal that arises.
  • Codify the repetitive source material in a database. Secure software that makes it easy to filter and recall selected data for the writers of new proposals.
  • An alternative to using outside resources is to develop an internal coordinator who is master of this database and who is responsible for gathering appropriately filtered data to support the efforts of the company’s proposal writers.
    • By taking care of this portion of the proposal writing task, it will be easier to find enthusiastic project leaders to take on the more creative aspects of new proposals.

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What are the Strategic Components of a Sales Model?

Interview with Sanjay Sathe, President & CEO, RiseSmart.com

Situation: RiseSmart is in the process of building an inside sales program to complement their outside sales capabilities. What are the most important strategic components of an effective sales model?

Advice:

  • In a marketing and sales system, marketing is the precursor to everything. If you can’t effectively deliver your message to your audience, you have no lead generation machine and sales must resort to cold calls.
    • In an online world, one of the key components of a marketing system is the email campaign, combined with tools for rapid and responsive follow-up.
  • In RiseSmart’s system, the inside sales team is primarily responsible for following up on leads.  The team’s role is:
    • To qualify the prospect responding to our marketing efforts. Is this person the right buyer for their company? If not, who is?
    • Does the company have a budget for our services? If not, when will they?
    • Is this the right time? Do they have a current contract in place? Are they actively looking?
  • The most critical aspect of the inside sales rep’s role is to be an effective filter in collecting and passing data to the field sales force.
  • Many inside sales reps fail because their performance is measured on the number of calls made, not the quality of the calls or information gathered.
  • Our incentives for inside sales are based on the quality of data gathered and on the success of field sales in closing the leads they receive.
  • The effectiveness of outside sales really comes down to choosing the right people.
    • The 80/20 rule applies here.  One out of five field sales reps hired is truly successful, one is marginal, and three don’t make it.
    • We hire based on experience selling to our target customer groups, subjective elements, and careful reference checks.
  • As CEO, I consider hiring good people the most important thing I do.

You can contact Sanjay Sathe at [email protected]

Key Words: Inside Sales, Field Sales, Qualify, Filter, Performance, Measurement, Incentive, Selection  [like]