Why don't AEs consistently prospect and built their own pipeline?
Before we get into lets set aside the debate of "should they," or "shouldn't they"
Some should, some shouldn't. If you have a million hot inbound leads and your calendar is full it doesn't make much sense to hit the phones does it? If that's the case and you still do, more power to you. You're part of the minority of people that understand larger deals come from outbound than inbound.
Another fact: I've seen some posts suggesting a KPI should be "% of pipe self-generated"
Dumb idea. You should hire people that want to win and don't care what it takes. If that's self-gen pipeline, that should be something they know in the interview process. Doesn't matter where the bus is going, only who's on it. This is largely a hiring problem that is very pervasive in sales. Most people don't know what a good sales rep looks like on paper.
So... My belief based on my own experience is not that AE's dont hit the phones because they're lazy, though probably some are. I believe it's a confidence thing.
Most sales reps in any industry lack a few things:
• Upper management that doesn't know how to cold call
• Very poor data quality - phone numbers, emails etc
• A CRM that is less user friendly than a rolodex
Add all that up and you have a sales team that has very low connect rates, doesn't understand how to do anything other than spam blast, and even if they DID have those two down, they don't have historical data on their orgs POV, as seen through sfdc notes from calls, emails etc, on how we can help them and what kind of current state their prospects might have.
I would propose the solution start here - stop relying on Apollo or Zoominfo data exclusively. Waterfall enrich from any of the tools out there. Clay, Fullenrich, Leadmagic. There's a bunch to choose from. Go pick one.
And yes I start in Apollo to build lead lists but these days I'm trying to double verify emails so I'm not hurting my companies domain health or wasting my time. That's another reason AE's don't prospect and just spam blast, why write a personalized email if it's going straight to spam?
To me cold calling is like playing the guitar. If you KNEW you were good at it and that it produced results - wouldn't you do it? I would. I do. That's WHY I do it. If I sucked at it, yeah I'd probably focus more on Linkedin or emails or something.
It's a massive confidence problem that can't be solved by spiffs for pipe gen.
Spiffs don't work anyway. The people at the top don't care about them.
The CRM issue I'm not sure how to solve but I suspect there's probably an AI tool that can do it's own research as well as read your CRM data to come up with a holistic POV on the people you're reaching out to. Would be curious if someone tagged such a tool in the comments.
P.S. - Pic is where I was cold calling from yesterday on the 4th floor of the Grand Cypress Hyatt in Orlando.
#sales #outbount #AE