{"id":6549,"date":"2019-10-03T12:00:46","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T10:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodpecker.co\/blog\/?p=6549"},"modified":"2025-01-21T10:25:20","modified_gmt":"2025-01-21T09:25:20","slug":"predictable-prospecting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodpecker.co\/blog\/predictable-prospecting\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Manage a Sales Team to Make Prospecting Predictable?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Outbound emailing<\/span> requires a lot of research into a target group<\/a> and A\/B testing<\/a> before it can\u00a0take off and become truly predictable. It’s not\u00a0unusual\u00a0that a sales team (ours included) loses its motivation before that happens. Either that or they lose focus and target prospects ad hoc, just to get their numbers right.\u00a0There is something that\u00a0helped us. It is\u00a0a proper goal setting.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of team management frameworks available online.\u00a0Quick research made me learn something about AOR<\/a>, agile sales management<\/a>, and some general management advice<\/a>. Nonetheless, I’d love to introduce you to something that works here, at Woodpecker<\/span>, and that thing is OKR.<\/p>\n

What\u00a0are OKRs?<\/h2>\n

OKR is a goal setting and tracking technique that is applied\u00a0in many popular organizations like Google<\/a>\u00a0(which popularized the use of OKRs), Dropbox<\/a>, Zalando<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Capgemini<\/a>. It’s an abbreviation that stands for O<\/strong>bjectives\u00a0K<\/strong>ey R<\/strong>esults. The name encompasses two concepts — the first one is Objectives (what\u00a0a team wants to accomplish), the other is Key Results (how\u00a0a team will achieve that).<\/p>\n

Why is it a great method of organizing your sales team?<\/h3>\n

OKR can be a great\u00a0management tool for a couple of reason. First of all, OKRs build a collaborative relationship across the team. Your entire outbound team\u00a0works together on achieving a common objective.\u00a0Such alignment\u00a0makes\u00a0a goal easier to accomplish. Secondly, every member of your\u00a0sales<\/span> team is involved in strategic decisions, so they don’t\u00a0lose the motivation to work in sales<\/span>. They also feel that they can grow together with the company.<\/p>\n

But the most important benefit goes as follows. Generally, sales<\/span> teams\u00a0thrive on\u00a0going over the numbers. It is what drives them and makes them strive for more. I think that choosing an organizational system that focuses on getting quantifiable results is a great fit for an outbound sales<\/span> team.<\/p>\n

How to apply OKRs to manage\u00a0outbound sales<\/h2>\n

We’ve\u00a0started implementing OKRs\u00a0by setting up a two-hour-long meeting to write down objectives and key results for this quarter.<\/p>\n

Objectives<\/strong> need to be clearly defined, provide direction and focus on quality. What does it mean exactly? Suppose that you want to make your prospecting predictable, your objective can be, having\u00a0a\u00a0predictable way of sourcing quality prospects<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Now, you need to\u00a0come up with key results<\/strong> that will allow you to\u00a0tell whether you\u00a0got to\u00a0your objective.\u00a0Define\u00a0about 1 to 4 key results per objective.\u00a0Each of them needs to be specific, inspiring or hard to achieve, and measurable (either numerical or show an increase or reduction or that something has been generated). Yet, they shouldn’t be based on vanity metrics.<\/p>\n

To accomplish our OKR,\u00a0having a\u00a0predictable\u00a0way of sourcing quality\u00a0prospects<\/em>, our key results could be:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Determine a new reliable\u00a0prospect source\u00a0every\u00a0week.<\/li>\n
  2. Find 50 qualified prospects with validated email<\/span> addresses a week.<\/li>\n
  3. Interview 5 ICPs a week to\u00a0gain insight that will help you target better.<\/li>\n
  4. Reduce\u00a0dependence on ready-made\u00a0list, make 85% of contacts found manually.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Those are just examples from the top of my head. What do you think? Are you ready to start?<\/p>\n

    Bring\u00a0OKRs to your team<\/h2>\n

    Does it sound like your sales<\/span> team could create a predictable prospecting process with this goal-setting method? If so, I have a few resources and\u00a0tips to share with you.<\/p>\n

    A\u00a0bucket of resources<\/h3>\n

    First, there’s a great book by John Doerr<\/a>\u00a0who helped implement OKRs in Google. I recommend you also watch\u00a0his TED talk.<\/p>\n