Inside Sales Lead Management Featured Article

Every successful sales organization is concerned with the quantity and quality of sales leads. It makes sense – all sales start as leads, and the more an organization has, and the better quality they are – the more likely the organization is to rack up a lot of sales.

Many organizations turn to technology today for sales lead management. Solutions providers such as VanillaSoft bring together a robust feature set that includes next-best-lead routing, progressive dialing, on-board intelligent messaging, integrated email, real-time lead distribution, live dashboard and digital call recording. It helps to have all these features in one platform, natively integrated with customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, which are where customer and lead information is stored.

Before a sales manager can begin building an effective team, however, he or she needs to be sure the right people are hired. All the lead management solutions in the world won’t help a person ill-suited for sales to succeed, according to a recent article by Nick Hedges, president and CEO of Velocify, writing for Destination CRM. Hedges identifies five principles that help companies build great sales teams.

One of the most critical is finding the right balance between inside and outside sales.

“The first step should be to assess your sales team's makeup (inside versus field) and determine where to aim each group,” writes Hedges. “Questions to ask include: ‘What is needed to convert the majority of your leads?’ ‘Are there clear thresholds for deal size or product where either inside or field sales work is better?’ ‘How important is a face-to-face meeting to closing a deal?’”

Once you’ve identified the correct balance, it’s also critical to ensuring you are compensating sales people fairly. Great sales people won’t take a job, or won’t stick around in that job, if they feel they are being skimped on in compensation.

“A plan to attract the best salespeople has a moderate base salary and an unlimited upside on commissions,” writes Hedges. “If a salesperson says he needs a ‘decent’ (read ‘above average’) base salary to ‘sustain his lifestyle,’ I know there is something he doesn't believe in. Whether it's the market, the product, or his own abilities doesn't really matter, because a hesitant salesperson is probably not going to bring home the bacon. Belief is reality in sales.”

Other considerations include setting realistic quotas that are aggressive but not unobtainable, having a culture that celebrates success and recognizes the sales team members who perform the best, and those who can maintain a competitive spirit in a constructive (and not toxic) way.