It’s Not Who You Are, It’s What You Do - outreach.io
Transcript of It’s Not Who You Are, It’s What You Do - outreach.io
It’s Not Who You Are, It’s What You Do: From Roles to Workflows | 1
It’s Not Who You Are,It’s What You Do:From Roles to Workflows
L E A D E R S H I P G U I D E
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Table of Contents
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Executive Summary
Decoding Efficiency: The Advent of Outreach
Operationalizing Your Sales Team
Anatomy of a Playbook
Workflow Case Study: Outbound Prospecting
Benefits of a Workflow
Conclusion – From Roles to Workflows
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Executive Summary
Generalization = Imprecision
In a previous era, sales representatives often owned the customer
relationship from start to finish, doing their own prospecting and
closing. Overseeing a “full-cycle” sale for each customer, these
reps were tasked with knowing their product or service in its
entirety. While this gave customers a one-to-one experience, it
didn’t result in a better customer experience because the rep’s
knowledge was broad but not particularly deep.
But the generalist wasn’t long for the sales world.
As the digital transformation of sales took hold, products and
technologies became more sophisticated, and buyers and sellers
were forced to become more precise. Buyers could purchase
specific solutions for specific pain points, resulting in a new
tech stack and technology environment, while sellers struggled to
connect with prospects who were more informed and less likely to
come inbound to learn more about an offering.
The digital transformation led to:
B2B products and services advanced,
transitioning from one-time purchases to
cloud-based products and software as a
solution (SaaS) services
Buyers could purchase specific solutions
for specific pain points, resulting in a new
tech stack and technology environment
Customers and markets became more
segmented, with new markets and verticals
created altogether
Sales organizations created specialized
roles such as sales development
representatives, account executives,
customer success managers, client
engagement managers, and more to give
customers a better experience throughout
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Most recently, the sales engagement platform (SEP) has further
transformed the B2B landscape. Often thought of as a system of
action, Outreach brings CRM data to life by highlighting which
sales actions are most effective and generate the most revenue.
With real-time data tracking a team’s day-to-day performance,
sales orgs can measure what’s working and sharpen strategies
across the organization.
It’s Not Who You Are, It’s What You Do
With this new level of insights, sales organizations soon discover a
hard truth: the path to predictable revenue is outdated. It isn’t
about mastering your CRM, hiring enough people in specific roles,
or flooding the top of your funnel with prospects and hoping that
creates changes downstream.
Instead, efficiency unveiled a key truth: predictable revenue isn’t
about who you are, it’s what you do.
At Outreach, we have developed proven workflows as our own best
practice to make our sales teams as effective as possible.
Regardless if your team is filled with SDRs, BDRs, MDRs, or LDRs, the
focus shouldn’t be on their role but the sales motions that they are
responsible for: prospecting, closing, renewals, etc. While sales orgs
can get stuck in one-dimensional thinking, Outreach is here to help.
In this ebook, we will help sales orgs reframe their thinking by sharing
our own best practice of using workflows for sales motions. We
start by outlining how Outreach catalyzed sales rep efficiency, and
how this efficiency took the shape of workflows--a standardized and
repeatable pattern of activity that produces the best results in a sales
motion. We then highlight how workflows help operationalize sales
teams, and end with the value and benefits of adopting a workflow-
based approach for your own sales organization.
What is a Workflow?
Outreach defines a workflow as an orchestrated and repeatable pattern of activity that represents a team’s work to execute your sales and customer programs.
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“A lot of our customers ask us, how does Outreach use Outreach, or how are other customers using the platform? They want to know the best way to use our platform, so we started putting pen to paper to outline our own best practice of using workflows to help our customers be as successful as possible.”
-Brooke SimmonsDirector of Enterprise Strategy, Outreach
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With Outreach
All reps are aligned to best in class workflows
Before Outreach
If you have 15 reps, you have 15 inconsistent workflows
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Decoding Efficiency: The Advent of Outreach
Before adopting Outreach, sales reps were overwhelmed by
the amount of multitasking duties they had to do. Spanning
everything from setting reminders to follow-up with prospects,
to logging information into the CRM, reps were burdened with
manual tasks that were inefficient and time-consuming, and
managers were left with unpredictable outcomes because each
rep did their job differently.
But with Outreach, reps can take all of those manual tasks
and put them into a single workflow that strings each task
together into a standard order. For instance, within an outbound
prospecting workflow, Outreach unifies all of the steps needed to
book a meeting with a new prospect--sending emails, conducting
LinkedIn research, making calls, into a single workflow that can
then be scaled across the team so that all reps are prospecting
the same.
“Think about a workflow as the real work your team does every day to get their job done. They’re booking meetings, they’re making calls, they’re outbound prospecting, workflows represent the real work that they do.”
-Brooke SimmonsDirector of Enterprise Strategy, Outreach
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To truly maximize your teams’ selling time, Outreach’s best
practice is to use workflows for each sales motion (outbound
prospecting, renewals, closing, etc.) so that it’s the same across
all reps.
By uniforming the sales actions, teams can create a workflow that
presents a baseline and can then iterate and improve on it.
At Outreach, we use workflows to operationalize our own
sales teams.
Without standardized workflows, sales orgs are challenged by inefficient, individual, and isolated processes that are unable to benchmark data.
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Operationalizing Your Sales Teams
Operationalizing your sales team is a lot like operationalizing
the data in your CRM--teams need a framework to bring data to
life, and a plan to measure results and incorporate them into a
continuous feedback loop.
At Outreach, we define operationalizing sales as creating
and implementing standardized workflows so that the work
is both repeatable and scalable. We operationalized each of
our revenue teams with workflows—an orchestrated and
repeatable pattern of activity—to transition away from one-off,
inconsistent processes to a standard process that all reps follow
so that managers can assess the effectiveness of their workflows,
and make adjustments to it.
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Standard Actions = Standard Metrics to Iterate and Improve On
Under a workflow approach, sales organizations transition
away from fifteen reps with fifteen different workflows, to
fifteen reps with one workflow. Our best-in-class workflows
give individual teams a baseline of success to then scale
across the entire organization.
15 reps, 15 different workflows
?
Get reply
Asks for help
See objection
Writes rebuttal
Send email
? ? ? ?? ? ? ?? ? ?
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Watch clicks and opens to call if engagement
Use follow-upsequence
Send email
Personalize with case study snippet
Insert best performing template
Proper workflows with a clear order of operations enable teams to
transition to data-driven decision making and scalable processes,
plus the measurable results make it easier for sales teams to
iterate and improve.
15 reps, 1 seamless workflow
Get reply
See objection
Insert clickable dates to book meeting
+
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What is the difference between a Playbook and a Workflow?
Playbooks are sales strategies with a clear objective.
Workflows are an orchestrated and repeatable pattern of activity that represents a team’s work to reach your playbook’s objective. Example workflows are outbound, inbound, closing, renewals, etc.
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Playbooks are made up of different workflows that help complete a clear objective.
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Each workflow has four components:
Part I: Find the Contact/Prospect
Part II: Choose the Play (Sequence)
Part III: Take Action
Part IV: Measurement
Anatomy of a Playbook (Playbooks →
Workflows → Sequences)
In your overall sales strategy, workflows make up your sales
Playbook. Under this structure, Playbooks are comprised of
workflows that are meant to complete a clear objective.
Playbook is the umbrella term and workflows are the standardized
set of tasks and actions that complete a clear objective.
For example, the Playbook might be Land a Meeting with the VP
of Sales at a company. Within this Playbook are workflows for
each possible customer’s action or response, so that the rep is
equipped to know how to respond and can start executing the
relevant workflow.
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Now that we’ve defined workflows, and how they fit into your
sales playbook, let’s dig into their 1) anatomy and 2) benefits for
your revenue teams.
Playbook: Land a Meeting with the VP of Sales
↓
Workflows (Outbound Prospecting)
↓
Sequence(s) Selected
→ Customer Action/Response (or lack thereof)
← ↙ ↓ ↘ →
Play selected (based on response)
← ↙ ↓ ↘ →
Play selected (based on response)
← ↙ ↓ ↘ →
Play selected (based on response)
← ↙ ↓ ↘ →
Play selected (based on response)
← ↙ ↓ ↘ →
Objective Reached (booked meeting with VP of
sales)
↓
Measurement
Were the right Sequences selected for the objective?
Were the Sequences used in the best order?
What was the level of positive engagements for each workflow?
What was the level of positive engagements for each Sequence?
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Anatomy of a Playbook
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Workflow Case Study: Account-Based Prospecting
One of Outreach’s most popular workflows is for
account-based prospecting. While companies may
have different goals for their prospecting, let’s
assume that the goal here is to book a meeting with
the prospect.
First Meeting Booked
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Account-Based Prospecting
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Part I: Find the Contact
Every workflow starts at the same place: finding the person you
want to engage. Here, the rep finds the Account in Outreach that
they want to target, and then reviews the prospects associated
with the Account. Typically, reps will go after different prospects
based on the target persona, such as sales leader, ops leader, or
enablement leader.
Outreach easily facilitates account-based sales strategies for sales organizations of all sizes. With our Accounts tab, reps can easily view all of their accounts, and filter to see all prospects associated with that account. Reps can easily take action on select prospects and add them to a Sequence.
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Additional Ways to Action Prospects
If your sales team is using any of the data provider integrations in Outreach Galaxy, reps can find the lead or contact in the data provider and then push it directly into Outreach.
If your accounts in Outreach are already full of contacts, reps can select which contacts to engage. These might be prospects who have replied in the past but never resulted in a meeting, or prospects within the account who haven’t been contacted yet.
Part II: Choose the Play (Sequence)
The rep then selects the Play, or Sequence, to put the prospect
into. Some Sequences are more automated, while others are
more high-touch and personalized. As sales orgs build out their
workflows, they will find a lot of them will daisy chain together
based on how prospects engage with the previous workflow--
response, no response, etc.
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Part III: Take Action
Now, the rep can take action by executing tasks in the ways that
make them most efficient. Here, the rep is focused on choosing
the first action or Play for the prospect. For example, if a rep is
outbound prospecting to target accounts, they can sort their
tasks by Account or Sequence so the messaging is consistent
and can move through their tasks more quickly and thoughtfully.
This step can potentially be the longest, with the different Plays
selected based on the prospect’s response or action--or lack
thereof--until the objective is reached.
With Outreach workflows, reps are able to scale their work and have multiple prospects in different Sequences at once.
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Part IV: Outcomes
Workflows don’t just stop when reps get in touch with a
prospect. Sales managers need to help reps on how to handle
what happens next. With workflows, sales managers can set
up guidelines on how reps should handle booking meetings,
overcoming objections, handling referrals, and nurturing
unresponsive prospects as well.
Workflows ensure that your sales process doesn’t stop when the Sequence does.
For instance, if the prospect:
Responds positively: The rep can stop the Sequence and
book a meeting by phone or email.
Sends an objection: The rep can select the best Sequence
based on the objection reason—e.g.not interested, wrong
timing, or a competitor solution already in place—to keep
the discussion productive and tailored to each prospect.
Never engages: After the Sequence ends, the prospect
will be added to a nurture Sequence to let the rep
continue working toward booking a meeting but with
more educational information, such as the value of
Outreach, to keep them engaged.
Then, sales managers can assess the outcomes the workflow
is producing--or not producing--to determine if it needs to be
adjusted. Here are metrics to consider when viewing your Team
Performance Dashboard.
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Key Performance Indicator
Meetings Booked - What results are you driving?
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Leading Indicators
Prospects Added to Sequence - Are you adding enough to your funnel?
Prospects Active in Sequence - Is your funnel full enough?
Activities Completed - Are you executing on your activities to keep prospects moving?
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Benefits of a Workflow
With a workflow approach, sales teams can create a baseline
of the actions that must be completed to successfully meet an
objective. This transitions teams away from one-off processes
to a standard workflow that can be scalable across other
team members.
Data-Driven
With a baseline of actions, teams can assess the health of the
workflow with data. For instance, if reps have a high no-show
meeting rate, sales managers can add a task to have the rep
reach out to confirm the prospect can still attend the meeting an
hour or two before the meeting time to minimize no-shows.
Faster Onboarding
With workflows for outbound, inbound, closing, and renewal
sales motions, new reps can be immediately onboarded into
using the workflows that have been proven successful. Reps are
set up to succeed from Day One, and are able to master multiple
workflows at once.
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“Think of a workflow as a user’s guide--if I’m bringing a new rep onto the team, I can show them exactly how to create a prospect, add them to the right Sequence, where to do their tasks, and what to do next based on the outcome--if they get a yes, we train them how to book the meeting, if they get a no, we train them how to work that objection from their inbox, and so on--in any situation, the rep knows exactly what to do, and sales orgs can use this to scale consistently across their teams.”
-Brooke SimmonsDirector of Enterprise Strategy, Outreach
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Without Workflows With Workflows
Isolated and
individualized
sales actions
Standardized and
scalable sales actions
Driven by individuals Driven by data
No foundation to
build on
Ability to iterate and
onboard faster
FixedEasily integrates new
products or strategies
Unpredictable and
varied customer
experience
Better customer
experience
Easily Integrate New Strategies and
Outreach Products
With clear steps within each workflow, teams can add or revise
steps as your strategy evolves or changes without starting over
or creating something from scratch. Workflows are customizable
and flexible, and give sales teams the same agility that Outreach
depends on to integrate new technologies without disrupting the
objective or data to understand what’s working.
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Provide a Better Customer Experience
When sales people are able to hone in on a specific product
or service area, they become experts and can better describe
your product’s value to a diverse set of business needs or tech
stack maturity levels. Think of it like a book review-- instead of
asking people to present on the entire book, people only need to
understand one chapter in depth. In either scenario, people still
need to read the whole book to understand the story, challenges
and triumphs, but the people who are able to focus on one
chapter can become experts, noting deeper details and how the
chapter relates to the story as a whole.
The same is true for your reps: if they are able to focus on one
aspect of your product, they can better provide prospects with
a targeted understanding of that specific area and the solution
it provides. On the other hand, if your sales team is filled with
generalists who are responsible for an end-to-end summary of
your product, prospects who want a deep-dive into a specific
area will be mismatched with reps who can only provide a
broad overview.
“We have customers who are in their third or fourth year using Outreach, and typically their businesses have changed significantly in that time. Additionally, Outreach is also constantly evolving because we’re adding new features to meet new needs from new customers. With workflows, our own sales teams can easily adjust their strategies and integrate new products and features without starting from scratch or disrupting the sales team.”
-Brooke SimmonsDirector of Enterprise Strategy, Outreach
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Workflows are Scalable to your Entire
Revenue Team
While many sales orgs have made big strides in standardizing
their inbound and outbound sales workflows, workflows can
be developed and implemented for all customer-facing teams.
This allows all revenue teams to address and improve the
effectiveness of the customer journey at every step.
Think about it: customer success managers are largely
responsible for renewing and expanding some of your biggest
and most valuable customers, yet these teams are often
overlooked. Some orgs may think that as long as the customer is
renewed, it doesn’t matter how the team got there, even if the
process changes every time.
But Outreach thinks differently. We give workflows and standard
metrics to each revenue-facing team--customer success, client
engagement, professional services, etc-- to maximize every
customer and renewal opportunity. While this is less common,
using clear benchmarks and having success metrics is needed to
maximize your revenue teams.
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By implementing workflows at each stage of the funnel, revenue orgs will be able to affect the velocity and integrity of the buyer’s journey throughout your sales process. With standardized workflows and key metrics that function as a feedback loop on a team’s effectiveness, sales orgs have the potential to positively impact and shape your sales funnel from top to bottom.
Increase the effectiveness of your sales organization by implementing world-class workflows with Outreach that are tailored to your strategies today, and can take you where you want to be in the future. Learn more at outreach.io.
Conclusion: From Roles to Workflows
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