How To Separate Inbound And Outbound Sales To Create More Revenue, with Aaron Ross, Episode #109

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Most B2B companies receive both inbound and outbound sales leads. But in most cases, those leads are being handled by the same team. My guest on this episode of #SellingWithSocial insists that assigning your inbound and outbound sales leads to two distinct and specialized teams will produce an amazing increase in qualified B2B leads that translate into closed sales.

Aaron Ross is the author of two incredibly helpful books, “Predictable Revenue” and “From Impossible to Inevitable.” He’s been teaching companies how to double or triple new sales for many years and he’s got the track record to prove he knows what he’s talking about. When he worked as part of the Salesforce team, he helped the company grow from $5m to $100m.

Join us for this episode where we talk about common mistakes sales leaders and CEOs make when it comes to sales management, the biggest improvements you can make to your sales cadence, and how to separate your inbound and outbound sales teams to create higher closing ratios. Don’t miss it!

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The Most Common Mistakes Sales Leaders Make

Since Aaron has a great deal of experience working with highly successful sales organizations, I knew he’d be able to give us an overview of the mistakes most commonly seen among sales leaders. I asked him to highlight them for us.

SALES MISTAKE #1: Salespeople in most companies are required to do their own prospecting, manage their own accounts, follow up on leads, schedule sales conversations, and close the deal. Aaron says that’s too many jobs for one person and what winds up happening is that the salesperson does some of them well and others only marginally.

His solution? Create a sales team of specialists by creating specific roles that enable your team members to use their particular skills more effectively. Some examples of what he means…

• The people who are strong at prospecting should only prospect
• Those who are proven closers should only close
• Proven customer relationship managers should only manage accounts
• Those who are good at follow up should only follow up

Do you get the point? Aaron likens this mistake to a soccer coach who says, “Ok, everybody score and everybody defend.” It simply doesn’t work, yet sales leaders do the equivalent with their teams and expect them to win. Apply Aaron’s advice to set your team up for success.

Why Your Inbound And Outbound Sales Teams Shouldn’t Be Combined

As Aaron spoke about the mistakes sales leaders make that prevent their teams from closing more deals, he observed that most B2B sales organizations throw their inbound and outbound leads into the same bucket. This is what he characterizes as SALES MISTAKE #2.

When inbound and outbound leads are combined you’re forced into handling them as if they were the same thing, but they aren’t. Aaron explains that the expectations you have of each of those types of leads are vastly different, therefore the prospects and metrics from each need to be separated so you can handle them differently.

When you make it a point to organize your team around specialties, service and effectiveness rise throughout the buying cycle. Separating your inbound and outbound sales teams is part of how you do it.

How To Create Distinct Inbound And Outbound Teams

Aaron says the separation of inbound sales from outbound sales is just about as important as having a good CRM. As he walks through the explanation of what each of these distinct teams should be assigned to accomplish, I can see his point.

The inbound team should be designated to handle all the inbound leads that come from website forms, 800 numbers, etc. – and they have a very specific job. They review prospects, make contact with them, and do the important work of qualifying them. Once that’s done, they only pass the legitimate leads to the sales team. This can happen in a relatively short amount of time.

The outbound team has a very different job. They are expected to generate new incremental business through prospecting. This could be drumming up entirely new work for the company or discovering new ways to serve existing customers through additional products or services that complement what they are already doing. This team identifies targets, secures appointments, and passes the scheduled sales conversations to the sales team. This cycle takes 2 to 4 weeks to get a good appointment set up.

As you can see, inbound and outbound are doing two entirely different things, so they should be broken into two teams that function in unique and independent ways. In Aaron’s words, “The two don’t mix.”

Sales-Related Mistakes CEOs Often Make

There are a number of phases every company goes through, but in every phase sales is the life-blood of the business. Aaron says that in both start-up and established companies, CEOs bear a great responsibility to ensure that sales are happening. He sees a handful of mistakes that CEOs make when it comes to sales…

During the STARTUP PHASE, Aaron often witnesses CEOs who are not hands-on with sales cycles. This causes them to be unclear about what customers want, what they are buying, and how they are buying. When a top leader makes this mistake, it trickles down into the decisions they make about who to hire for sales roles.

Closely related to that is that many start-up CEOs hire a senior salesperson too soon. His suggestion is to go slow, hiring a junior person first. Train them, get a few things in your sales cycle working well, then expand from there. Take smaller steps to get the sales team built.

For LARGER COMPANIES, Aaron says that executives often fail to stay in touch with the metrics that inform them regarding how the sales process is working. One of the most important areas is that they often are not tracking whether a qualified pipeline is being created.

In the end, Aaron admits that the problems change as you grow, but in every stage, you need to ask yourself, “Do you have the right people in the right roles – and are you getting metrics on how things are working?”

Join us for this practical conversation. If you apply what Aaron shares you’ll experience positive changes in your sales organization.

This episode is brought to you by Zubtitle. Automatically add captions to any video in minutes. Don’t let your videos get passed over on social media. Visit https://zubtitle.com/vengreso to get started.

Outline of This Episode

• [1:53] Aaron Ross, CEO of Predictable Revenue, Inc.
• [7:20] How Aaron wound up at Salesforce and what he learned working there
• [10:38] The common mistakes sales leaders make
• [16:42] Why the customer success manager is becoming more and more important
• [20:45] The biggest mistakes CEOs make: Startup stage and Established companies
• [29:12] Why inbound and outbound need to be kept separate
• [35:02] When should your company create an SDR team?
• [39:08] Aaron’s homelife: 9 kids and another about to be adopted (and 4 dogs)

Resources Mentioned

• Predictable Revenue, Inc – where Aaron serves as CEO
• Aaron on LinkedIn
• BOOK: Predictable Revenue
• BOOK: From Impossible, to Inevitable
• Aaron’s all-time favorite movie: Memento
• Salesforce
• Modern Marketing Engine Podcast – Bernie Borges

Connect with Mario!

• www.vengreso.com
• On Facebook
• On Twitter
• On YouTube
• On LinkedIn

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