Over the years, FullFunnel has worked with hundreds of organizations to evaluate, build, design, and run outbound sales programs. You could say we’ve learned a thing or two about what makes for a successful strategy, and how to distinguish the winners from the losers. While measuring success may seem easy (revenue is almost always the end goal), we’ve found that, in order to get to revenue, there are multiple metrics and markers that need to be tracked along the way.
Let’s dive into the critical factors and metrics you should be looking at to evaluate your outbound sales strategy.
Efficiency
A hallmark of any strong outbound sales program is efficiency. Time is money, so you’ll want to be certain that your time is being used wisely. We recommend implementing a comprehensive time-tracking system. This allows you to measure how your time is being used, which types of tasks are taking up the most time, and make adjustments according to real-time data. The ratio of admin to execution time is a particularly important metric for determining how well your outbound sales program is performing. If your SDRs are spending all of their time on administrative tasks, they’ll have no time for actual outreach. Conversely, if they spend too much time on outreach, they can find themselves falling behind in record maintenance and other critical administrative sectors.
Time tracking and hours spent per activity is also crucial for determining the efficacy of individual inbound and outbound channels. Ideally, you’d be able to see how much time is being spent on teleprospecting, email, and social media prospecting, and how that time is translating into conversations and sales. It’s equally important to know how much time you’re spending within specific sales channels. This will help you allocate your time better across channels and be more strategic.
The reason efficiency is so critical for any outbound sales program is because it is a prerequisite for scaling effectively. If you try to scale with an inefficient, unoptimized sales program, you’re almost guaranteed to run into problems and have to adjust your program on the fly.
Demand Productivity
Demand productivity is the first milestone on the long and winding road to financial productivity. Even if your sales funnel is working as it should, with strong conversion rates from consultation or demo to opportunity and closed-won, you’ll never be able to hit your goals if your SDRs can’t bring in meetings at the volume you need. A steady flow of leads at the top of the funnel indicates that your message is resonating with prospects and that there is an addressable market with a distinct need for the services you are offering.
To measure your demand productivity, look for strong open rates, connect rates, reply rates, and conversion rates. At the end of the day, any demand program is a math problem. If only 10% of leads open an email, or only 2% of leads pick up the phone, what activity volume and conversion rate do you need to hit your goals?
If you’re hitting a bottleneck at the very top of the funnel, you have a lot of thinking to do. Are you targeting the right people? Is your target addressable market large enough? Is your value proposition resonating? Do you have a product-market fit? Are you reaching out to prospects on the right channel? There are many tests to be made in order to determine where the bottleneck is originating.
Productivity Down the Funnel
Although it's great to have a steady flow of leads coming in at the top of the funnel, that won’t do very much unless they progress down the funnel and turn into high-quality opportunities. It’s important to dig into your funnel metrics to ensure you are performing at benchmark at every stage. If your SAL to Opportunity conversion rate is low, the quality of your leads should come into question, which means your outbound strategy should pivot. If your Demo to Opportunity conversion is low, take a look at your demo and how you could improve it in order to generate more interest and urgency. Similarly, if your Opportunity to Close is low, it’s time to really evaluate your competitive positioning and closing strategies.
A truly successful outbound sales program will provide you with a return on your investment, and if this is not the case, you need to keep testing and trying new things, whether that be outreach methods, messaging, or targeting, until you reach that goal. It’s also pivotal that you keep your Customer Acquisition Cost in mind when determining if you are receiving a return on your investment. To truly understand your return, you’ll need to know what metrics within your sales funnel will get you to your target CAC.
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If your organization is struggling to build a productive outbound sales program, or is not sure where to begin, schedule a free consultation to learn more about FullFunnel’s approach and how we’ve built successful outbound sales campaigns for hundreds of organizations across the globe.
