Your reps are under siege from your mar-tech and rev-tech stacks.
With all these tools keeping them busy, how do you know if they are prospecting at all? What kind of results are they getting?
There is a tipping point when all the tools we provide our reps turn from helpful to harmful. Our reps are spending so much time with tools like ABM, CRM & LinkedIn that keep them busy but don’t provide a prospecting process let alone results. Important questions are being left unanswered like: Are our reps getting to VITO, the Economic Buyer or Tohoom’s Hoom? What about the influencing committee? And if we are talking to the right person, what stage of the prospecting process are they in?
Attributing marketing and prospecting outcomes to the originating source is difficult. But, that shouldn’t prevent us from capturing the actual outcome of your reps prospecting efforts. Did the Hoom accept our next step? Did the Hoom even respond? The outcome is actually very easy to capture and is a critical step in the prospecting process.
So, as sales leaders, we agree that prospecting is important but how do we support these efforts by our sales reps over time? There are three things sales leaders must do:
- Ensure the rep is trying to prospect to the right people
- Review prospecting outcomes with the rep
- Set prospecting expectations periodically
Let’s leave the “selling to plankton” method to others, and instead see how Tohoom can help your team manage their prospecting efforts for maximum revenue growth.
Connect with decision makers
We previously explored your sales org’s Plankton vs. Hoom challenge in the “Find” phase of Tohoom’s Stakeholder Lifecycle Management software (Target – Find – Connect – Collaborate) TM. The Find phase is a critical first step to ensure your reps are trying to get to the correct decision makers for your solution / product.
Now it is time to connect with the Hoom and the influencing committee. There are so many sources and opinions in sales about how to prospect & connect it can be overwhelming. Using a process guiding tool simplifies the efforts. Instead of focusing on activities, it ensures connecting with the right person and capturing the results from that connection.
Even when reps aren’t getting immediate responses from their prospecting effort, it is important to avoid categorizing the efforts as ineffective. Your rep’s efforts are likely building up the attribution and will lead to the eventual interaction with the Hoom and the influencing committee.
Track your connection outcomes
At this point, sales leaders using Tohoom know that their reps are prospecting to the correct people, the Hoom and Influencers. So, the next question for sale leaders to ask their reps is: Did you connect with these people? And what outcome did your efforts achieve?
Tohoom captures the outcome of these connection efforts for each Hoom and will even analyze the rep’s connections with all their Hooms over time. This analysis is called the Tohoom Relationship Score, an aggregate of relationship outcomes by persona type by rep. Wouldn’t it be nice if your sales managers could have a coaching opportunity based on real rep data?
In addition, Hooms will be tracked for as long as your solution will be sold to a persona. So, Tohoom automatically self-cleans connection statuses! Over time Tohoom will move connection statuses to “Stale” during a period of inactivity.
Lastly, Tohoom has a special connection outcome status called “Loyal Customer” for existing customer relationships with a Hoom. This special status will be used in the “Collaborate” phase of Tohoom’s Stakeholder Lifecycle Management software (Target – Find – Connect – Collaborate) TM to create “durable” stakeholder relationships.
Relationship nurturing expectations:
Now, we know that your sales reps are prospecting to key decision makers and the status of their connection efforts is being captured. With all the potential Hooms the sales org could be selling to, how do you make sure that the reps are nurturing relationships with all the Hooms they should be selling to? This is where Tohoom eliminates chaos from the sale rep’s day and provides the support to accomplish the prospecting strategy over a long period of time.
The Nurture this Period phase identifies the subset of Hooms that a rep agrees to connect with over the next period. This subset of Hooms your reps will be nurturing relationships with synchronizes the rep’s efforts and builds a shared understanding with sales leadership that will act as a forcing function to prospect on a regular basis. Tohoom software takes care of setting and tracking prospecting expectations for both the rep and the first line sales manager.
A significant benefit of knowing the sales org’s selling universe, is that Tohoom tracks the percent of Hooms that your reps haven’t connected with! And, Tohoom tracks over time how your rep’s percentage Connected is changing. You want the percentage of Hooms Connected to be increasing over time, right? With Tohoom, this insight is tracked real time.
Conclusion
Most companies today don’t have systematic capabilities to understand if their reps are prospecting or not to key decision makers. Tohoom provides these capabilities and in addition it supports the sales team to manage connecting efforts and capture outcomes over a long period of time.
When companies use Tohoom’s platform and follow our strategic prospecting advice, they can expect the following outcomes:
- Reps are prospecting to key decision makers (Hooms and their Influencers).
- Connection outcomes are captured by persona and by rep to provide analytics on the rep’s “Tohoom Relationship Score.” Hooms are self-cleaned to move inactive relationships to stale.
- All levels of the sales organization understand the Hoom connecting mission and prospecting efforts are synchronized in a timely manner during the Nurture this Period phase.
Ready to take the next step to see Tohoom in action and talk about your strategic prospecting goals? Visit www.tohoom.com, call us at 949-864-6660 or email: connect@tohoom.com
