After reading our article in the Washington Post, Lanham, MD based PR and communications software juggernaut Vocus invited us in to see how we could help them with lead generation sales training. During the conversation, they told us about an interesting process that they use to ensure that each of their inside sales reps are equally fed intro sales meetings by the separate lead generation team. I asked them if I could share it with our community and they said OK. Here are the details:
- Each member of the lead generation team calls into their territory of accounts to generate qualified sales meetings.
- Whereas most companies pair a lead generation rep with one or more sales reps, Vocus has no such pairings. Each lead generation rep is independent.
- When a lead generation rep schedules a phone meeting, it simply goes to the inside sales rep ‘closer’ who is next in line.
- The inside sales rep ‘closers’ are simply in a rotating queue ensuring that each rep is well fed with qualified opportunities from a rotation of lead generation reps.
- They use a snazzy implementation of salesforce.com to ensure that this rotation continues without a glitch.
So I sat back and thought about the pros and cons of this process:
+ Closers no longer feel short changed if they get a weaker lead gen rep. Everyone gets meetings from all of the lead gen reps.
+ Everyone gets the same number of meetings, so from closer to closer, every calendar is balanced with the same number of meetings showing the true sales skills of the rep.
+ Because of the rotation, the inside sales reps have no territory. This eliminates every issue and complaint commonly associated with sales reps and territories — It’s not possible to complain!
- Lead generation reps and inside sales closers never get the chance to develop that chemistry that, at its best, can make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
- In order to pull this off you need to be doing the sales meetings by phone or web (Webex, GoToMeeting, Glance, Adobe Connect, etc.). It will not work when lead gen reps schedule live face-to-face meetings. Why? How could you build out trips of three live meetings in a day without a sales territory?
- I could see the closers getting frustrated over the lack of continuity. For example I’d be willing to bet that the notes on how the meeting was scheduled vary wildly from rep A to rep B.
Have you seen any other unique ways that companies deal with the handoff between lead generation and the field sales, channel sales, or inside sales team? How would companies deploy sales training workshops to deal with the cons and make the process seamless?
I beleive the negatives outweigh the positives in this model.
This sounds like a model built for inbound so what are the reps in rotation doing when not on the phone? What is their outbound methodology? Is there one or do they sit and wait to be fed opportunities? How long do they have to close an account? What happens when they don’t close it? Also, I hope the leadgen reps are making more money than the inside sales reps because their job sounds harder!
I have seen this model before and there are pitfalls. Here is an example: A rep gets on the phone with a prospect and they don’t sound like they will buy right away. Okay.. bummer. Then, because of the rotation system, they dump the prospect as quickly as possible because they want to jump back into the rotation because they hope the next lead will be “HOT”. Hopefully the prospect will self identify again and not go off to talk to the competition.
This is an interesting model but the cons need to be evaluated before it is even considered. Sounds like it could work in a one-call-close environment but not sure beyone that.
Just MHO..interesting so thanks!
Next entry: Tone Matters
Previous entry: The "Ah Ha" Moment
1