Prospecting
Do your direct salespeople have time to prospect? The answer is likely “no” if you’re a manufacturer with direct salespeople with a focus on supporting channel partners, they don’t have the bandwidth to perform rudimentary lead generation duties and commit to the level of persistence that prospects require in today’s competitive landscape. Wave Representatives developed WaveOutreach a Sales Development as a Service to address this, along with many other challenges that manufacturers within the technology sector face.The Numbers
The numbers are daunting for your direct sales representatives, trying to carve out time for prospecting requires juggling channel partners, project registrations, internal meetings, external meetings, and travel. A recent salesforce.com report entitled “state of sales 3rd generation” shows salespeople actively selling at 34% of the time, with 66% spent with everything else required in-between. The report shows both active prospecting and research also below 10%. Territories require consistent attention, and most salespeople only spend time with their top resellers, (typically around 20%). Key takeaways from the salesforce.com report regarding sales reps.- 57% expect to miss quota.
- Spend too little time researching customers.
- 76% say engaging at just the right time makes an extreme impact on converting prospects.
- 86% say acquiring new customers is gained by better customer data.
- 86% of top performers say qualified leads are essential for channel partners (we agree).
