We recently sat down with a prospect that is a director of sales at a very large market leading Software company that discussed how his Enterprise Sales Team was being supported by inside sales reps currently. Interestingly, he has two types of ISR’s (Inside Sales Reps). One that calls into existing customers proactively and one that helps by doing more inside administrative work and both reps support three enterprise reps directly. The senior guys get the administrative ISR and the junior reps get the outbound ISR who primarily focuses on working further into existing accounts. Keep in mind this company has a myriad of complex solutions and new products and acquired products and solutions that are constantly flowing in.
According to this director of sales he experiences a 40% increase in new revenue when he has a dedicated ISR supporting three enterprise reps at a time by calling into existing accounts. That is a great return! Now imagine if you had a seasoned ISR that worked with each enterprise rep on a 1 to 1 basis or 1 to 2 ratios as opposed to 1 to 3. Also if you included cold accounts to be called we believe you could be lifting new business at the same time, perhaps not at 40% but enough to notice and to gain long term recurring revenue clients.
Often we see that ISR’s are tasked with too many ‘administrative’ duties as well as learning too many products. Keep it clean and have a 50/50 split and test focused calling into existing and new customers around 2 to 3 product value propositions. How much revenue is being left on the table with new accounts that get no attention or accounts that can’t get reached due to the 80/20 rule within those existing accounts. Test this for sixty days and measure it closely. Work closely with your sales team to track SQL to SAL to close.
The other interesting side to this equation is the management aspect. Seems convoluted to have a different sales manager manage those ISR reps and have another manage the enterprise reps. We are not convinced that those are two different managers that collaborate and work closely together or more importantly how are those managers aligned with the right focus, measurements and Key Performance indicators? In large companies we see managers at odds or in different locations with different measurements and the ISR’s they manage lose focus and become tasked with multiple administrative tasks with little focus on outbound productivity quite often.
Our research and results show that you could dramatically affect the outcome of new business revenue by utilizing a better ratio of ISR to enterprise direct reps. You can also go after new accounts for new business and grow the base. We would challenge marketers to reconsider this model from a field marketing perspective as well. We think great return can be found in this model.
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