The science behind managing by numbers

When I started my management journey, I thought I had my candidate profile down to a Tideal hires were bold, aggressive, loud, and a little pushy. Come to think of it, they were everything we hate about salespeople.

And then I met a man named Sam Nelson.

If youve heard of Outreach youve probably heard of Sam. He leads our Agoge program here at Outreach, and hes got blue hair so you cant miss him. When Sam was an SDR, he was so different than what I was used to hiringhe was patient, thoughtful, strategic, and he was kicking everyones ass.

I said to myself, I have to get some more Sams on my team. As I expanded my candidate profile, I continued to look for people that had grit and were driven, but I opened up to what form that may come in.

When I hired people like me, I knew how to motivate them, I knew what buttons to push. But after watching Sam in action, it forced me to change my coaching methods and realize the tremendous benefit of building a diverse team. As I changed the dynamics of my team, I had to stop relying on my gut and start looking at the numbers in my coaching sessions.

The Science of Sales & The Art of Sales

Outreach makes it very easy to measure and analyze important metrics, which I call the Science of Sales. Outreach provides easily accessible data so I can keep my finger on the pulse of each rep and diagnose where s/he is getting stuck so I know what aspect of salesmanship to focus on with my reps, or which area in the Art of Sales.

Within Outreach, there are 5 key metrics that managers should be monitoring regularly. In the visual below, starting from the bottom, they are: Quota, Sales Accepted Lead rate, Meeting Hold rate, Call Conversion, and Connection. The numbers on the left are conversions, and the numbers on the right are daily and/or monthly expectations.

We should think about these stats in terms of leading indicators and lagging indicators. A leading indicator is the number of dials a rep makes per day, and a lagging indicator is their ability to reach quota.

Essentially, if all your leading indicators are in line with where they should be, your reps should be able to hit their quota. All the ratios in between are critical to monitor because if we have reps making 60 calls per day but not hitting quota, we know the funnel is broken.

Our job as managers is to identify those bottlenecks and coach our reps to reach the expected ratios, coach their reps with leading and lagging indicators, and track and improve each of these numbers in Outreach.

Begin with the End in Mind

One of my favorite parts of my job is talking shop with other sales development leaders. And its typical for us to discuss metrics. Often they start with how many dials does your team make in a day, or how many prospects should we have in sequence? In order to answer this, we have to channel our inner Franklin Covey and begin with the end in mind. So well start with my favorite number quota!

Quota

Coaching with Rep: This is a lagging number, the end result. The actions you take every day will determine whether or not you reach this number.

In our world, a Sales-Accepted Lead (SAL) is a meeting set by an SDR that occurs and successfully meets 5 clearly defined criteria: opportunity size, prospect role, compatible technology stack, relevant workflow, and business case. These 5 SAL areas are indicators of a viable opportunity, or how many meetings become real pipeline.

As a manager, I think 12 is a meaningless number to a rep. Its intimidating and if I got my first job as an SDR and my manager says, All right, your job is to get 12 sales-accepted leads, I would break that down into four weeks per month month, so three SALs per week, meaning I have to average 0.6 SALs a day. So, I might think that at the end of most days, I should get a SAL and Im good.

But I'm guessing that you realize that Im going to fail, and I'm going to fail because I broke down a lagging indicator on a daily basis. While mathematically true, it's kind of a terrible way to think because I can't control if I get a SAL.

However, I can control and influence the next four metrics.

Quota is a lagging number, which means at the end of the month, if you get to 12 it tells us that you did the right stuff. But when Im communicating with my reps about performance, I want to break this down with leading measures: things our reps can control on a daily or weekly basis that tell us that, more likely than not, if you do these things, then you'll hit your quota.

Here at Outreach, our quota is 12 Sales-Accepted Leads per month for fully ramped reps. Thats the number that works for us, but it may not be right for your company. In order to generate this number, consider factors like:

• How many Account Executives do our SDRs need to support? What is their quota?
• What’s our average deal size? What is our SAL-to-close ratio?
• How many SALs do we need to generate to create sufficient pipeline?
• What’s our SDR ramp time?
• What % of an AE’s pipeline are SDRs expected to drive? What % should be coming in through marketing channels?

Remember that compensation drives behavior, so we want to be sure we design SAL criteria that align with our company goals.

Sales-Accepted Lead Rate

Coaching with Rep: This number ensures that you are booking quality meetings that convert to pipeline opportunities.

The Sales Accepted Lead Rate, or SAL Rate is the ratio of meetings held that convert to SALs. At Outreach, our SAL Rate is 84%. In order to reach our quota of 12 SALs, our reps need to have 17.28 meetings hold or occur on average per month.

If this number is low for a certain rep, I look for any existing patterns, like prospects showing up to their meetings, but not converting to pipeline. Theyre not qualified. After a meeting holds, if its not a SAL, our Account Executive will indicate which of the 5 SAL criteria is missing.

Below I'll share an example of a rep on my team, Andy. Andy is a great worker and has a positive attitude and strong work ethic. He listens to training and implements feedback from our coaching sessions. Hes actually booking plenty of meetings, and prospects are showing up but hes still missing his number.

Here are some issues that Outreach helped me identify when I knew which number to focus on:

Targeting the Wrong Titles

There are 5 main personas we target at Outreach, but titles can be tough because they vary at each company. I can use Outreach to see all the titles of all the prospects Andy has scheduled meetings with, as well as those he is actively reaching out to in order to check that hes aligned with our targeted personas. For example, there are Business Development Managers at some companies that may manage a team of reps, but at other companies, theyre individual contributors. We do have a strategy for reaching out to people in the latter case, but this is not a prospect we should target heavily. In Andys case, I was able to see that from the meetings that he booked but did not convert to SAL, 37.5% of them were with the wrong person, telling me that I needed to revisit any questions he had about how to find and reach our targeted personas.

Business Case

The second largest category was Business Case. At Outreach we identify business case as the ability to work, nurture, or win over the next 6 months. When this criteria is missing, we usually find that the SDR is scheduling a meeting before identifying any pain or an opportunity where Outreach can come in and add value.

I thought Andy was strong on the phones, but what I found was that he was so focused on getting the prospect over to the AE that he wasnt taking the time to understand their business needs and how Outreach could fill it. The science of sales identified the problem, and the art of sales can help him fix it.

Meeting Hold Rate

Coaching with Rep: Are you piquing enough interest and adding value on the call?

The meeting hold rate is the ratio of meetings scheduled against those that actually show up. Our team average is 83%. We know to reach that 17.23 meetings held each month, we need to scheduled 0.8 meetings per day. My own team jokes, A meeting a day keeps the manager away.

Sometimes this number can be luck of the draw, but more often its an indicator of two things:

Is the rep driving enough value on the cold call, either through discovering a pain point or presenting a use case that peaks enough interest, and second, is the rep minimizing gaps in the handoff process by confirming the meeting? Sales is a people business, and we know that we can only control our own side of the fence--so sometimes our reps take all the appropriate steps to be sure the prospects show, but they still dont. Lets focus on those variables that we can control and those steps we can take:

1. We use Outreach Meetings which makes it very easy to track my team’s meeting conversions. Outreach gives me visibility into each of my reps’ meetings so I can ensure they’ve taken the correct steps.
2. Immediately after the IM is scheduled, we use an Initial Meeting Confirmation Sequence, which is a simple two-step sequence, but has driven a significant increase in Hold Rate for our team. The first step is a manual email that we personalize based on the context of the conversation, reiterating the pain-points discussed on the call and confirm that we have a solution for them, and introducing the prospect to the AE. If an SDR has a lower Hold %, the first thing I check is whether or not they’re using this sequence, and the quality of this initial email, which is a good indication on the quality of the cold call. If the SDR is unable to communicate the pain point, I know this is an area I can coach during a call review session, which we will cover in a few minutes. The second step is a text message that we send to the prospect the morning of the meeting. Keep these short & sweet. Make sure you include your company name and the time of the meeting.
3. We can do all the right things within our control and, yet, sometimes a prospect doesn’t attend a meeting. Our AEs let the SDR know the prospect did not attend through Meetings No-Show Tracking. This automatically triggers a no-show sequence for the SDR to ensure they are taking the appropriate steps to reschedule the meeting: 11 steps (calls, emails, social) over the next 10 days.

Call Conversion Rate

Coaching with Rep: Indicates the quality of conversation on your calls and the strength of your call to action.

The call conversion rate is the ratio of conversations with prospects against actual meetings scheduled. Our Outreach SDRs should have 3.6 conversations per day and turn 24% of those into meetings.

This is actually my favorite number to coach toward because it involves call coaching and how skillful an SDR is on the phone. When Im working with a rep, I explain that this number tells me if they are having quality conversation and shows me the strength of their call to action, or closing skills.

Ive also found that this number can be inversely related with Hold Rate. For example, one newer SDR came out guns blazing. She scheduled about 40 meetings/month which is extremely high in our world, averaging about two meetings every day, and with 3.6 conversation/day, her call conversion rate was off the charts. However, her Hold Rate was very low. She was booking a ton of meetings, but prospects werent actually showing up. This opened up a ton of opportunities for call coaching.

1. First is live listen. During my team’s call blocks, I’m plugged into the live listen feature in Outreach. Once an SDR has connected with a prospect, I tap into the call through Outreach and I can send the SDR helpful hints on how to handle the call.
2. While I love live call coaching, managers can’t possibly hear every call. Thankfully, we have another option — call recordings through Outreach. We leverage a self-evaluation form that SDRs complete weekly on a call of their choice. The reps choose a call to review and they send me their observations, and I also review the call. During our 1:1, we share our findings.
3. We have four wonderful conversation intelligence partners that integrate with Outreach. If you’re looking for ways to elevate your call coaching game to the next level, you should check out these companies.

Connection Rate

Communication with Rep: Am I reaching out how and when my buyer wants me to?

The number were going to look at here is call connection rate. It should be around 6% the number of calls it takes to speak with a prospect. This only includes connections with qualified prospects, and excludes gatekeepers or unqualified prospects. But can we control (or influence) the number of people that pick up the phone?

One of my reps came to me last month and said No one is picking up the phone. Well, all of my reps tell me that no one is picking up the phone, so Im able to use the data in Outreach to see if in fact, no one is picking up. So this particular rep came to me and I said, Well, lets take a look at the data. It turns out his was 3%. Sounds like pure bad luck, right? Not quite. Lets take a look.

1. First thing that Outreach does to help is through Contact Info Validity. Let’s say I have a new prospect I’ve never called, and I have several phone numbers for her. As I call each number,, I can indicate whether or not the phone number is correct. That way, the next time I go to call the prospect I know which numbers are valid and never waste time calling the same bad number twice. So why don’t we just delete the bad number? Glad you asked! That number came from somewhere — a database, a website, something – and if you delete the number and then two months from now you say ”hey, just found this number for this prospect, I should give it a ring.” You’ve spent the time calling a number again that you’ve already identified isn’t a valid number for that prospect.
2. This second piece of connection rates was actually the “no-answer” issue I just mentioned. Outreach can show you the best times to call, according to when prospects are most likely to pick up the phone, through Activity-Based Analytics. We have two call blocks a day – one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Of course reps can make calls outside of these hours, but the call blocks are designed to be hyper-focused periods where reps should be on the phones, not writing emails, doing research, etc. We’ve all seen the studies on multitasking, it’s one of the worst things you can do for productivity. It’s critical that we have everyone on the phones at the same time. In addition to reaching our buyers at the best times, it’s also a good practice for office culture.
3. Outreach also has wonderful partners for data intelligence. Leveraging resources like Zoominfo, DiscoverOrg, leadIQ, and SalesIntel can increase your call connection rate by providing the right phone numbers to call, all of which integrate with Outreach so you can get the data you need quickly.

Leading and lagging indicators

So our reps make 60 calls a day with a 6% connection rate, they talk to 3.6 prospects each day and schedule a meeting with 24% of them. This should give us a little less than a meeting a day (0.8). With an 83% hold rate, about 17 meetings will run, 84% of those will convert to Sales Accepted Leads (or pipeline opportunities), which will get them to quota.

If you are a quota-carrying SDR, I challenge you to generate your own conversion funnel for yourself. Begin with the end in mind start with your quota, and determine how many meetings need to occur for you to reach it. How many meetings do you have to schedule for that number to occur? How many conversations do you need to have to schedule that many meetings? How many calls do you need to make to have that many conversations? Boom! Youve built your own KPIs (or leading indicators).

If you are a manager, I challenge you to generate a funnel with averages for your team in the same manner. To take it one step further, compare each of your reps to the average conversions. Mandating KPIs becomes a much easier conversation if the reps understand exactly how it will help them reach their quota and make them money. Need help? Outreach has your back! Reach out to your CSM.