Updates On the Sales Development Space During The Coronavirus COVID-19 Crisis
- Wednesday, April 15, 2020. Today we launch a project we have been working on for some time now. One of the primary reasons we began this page was to provide our clients, prospective customers, and the sales development community with confidence surrounding prospect conversations. With thousands of data points collected every day from prospecting calls, we have a unique perspective from the varied and diverse set of industries and messaging we deploy every day for our clients. From January through March, 2020, we collected data from 70 accounts, 20 industries, 85k call activities, 11k conversations, and over 1200 sales appointments set. For the first time, we are providing an industry report on appointment setting rates from the first three months of the year. Access the report here.
- Tuesday, April 7, 2020. What does empathy look like during the crisis? So many sales people are “recrafting” their strategies to be more “empathetic”, but really, they are damaging the name of empathy by using pleasantries to get the same old pitch across. This is more hurtful than helpful. Rather, inject empathy in your process and pitch to adjust to the marketplace. What does that mean? Check out the full blog here and accompanying video where Ryan P gets a bit passionate about this topic.
- Friday, April 2, 2020. We finally have some industry data. Over the past couple weeks, we have been publishing sales development marketplace data from our team of sales development reps working for our clients across multiple industries. Here for the first time we are publishing to help sales professionals gain confidence through the conversations we are having. Whether an industry is booming or tanking, we want to share what we are experiencing. This is a sneak peek and doesn’t fully share what is happening in comparison to normal months such as January and February. Please look for the full report in the coming days. Please check out this video and image below to help you understand what is going on with appointment setting rates in different markets this March 2020:
- Monday, March 30, 2020 – Update 2. We have been receiving a lot of feedback from our clients on the data we’ve been sending. It has been great to hear and the first time we’ve been collecting this type of response. To be frank, this is the first time we have shared our sales data to the public and are configuring ways to present in a way that creates the most amount of transparency. First, we are seeing this as a huge opportunity to give insight into the sales development space. Secondly, we want to be as transparent as we can, so we will be working over the next couple weeks to give insight into multiple markets with various data points. We have received requests to hear about the lead generation and appointment setting results based on industry, company size, decision maker title, and more. We want to give you the great, the good, the bad, and the ugly. We are confident in our team and our process, so we know variable shifts are mostly fluctuations based on COVID-19. Our operations managers Juliana and Jeremy are working hard to dig into the data. So, please, stay tuned and stay safe at home!
- Monday, March 30, 2020. Uncertainty has seemed to be the theme over the last two weeks; however, last week we experience a little bit more confidence in the sales development space as a whole. Maybe not confidence in when we’ll be back to normalcy, but at least adjusting to the new normal. As a company, we did experience a little more confidence in the sales development market place ourselves. For one, our company onboarded new clients for the first time since the first week of March. To give you some context, we typically onboard several new clients per week. Since our schedule was set in preparation for a reduction in clients, we did reduce the number of call team member dials to adjust before we saw the uptick. For our clients, we saw relative consistency in appointment setting, with a full report coming out tomorrow. For those of you who didn’t see our appointment setting rates last week, here is an image of the results we hit one day last week:
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On Thursday, 3.26.20, we made 1013 on a reduced dial schedule and generated 17 appointments for our clients from multiple industries. This is a 1.68% appointment setting rate on dials. This number was higher than our weekly averages and higher than the week of the 16th-20th. What does this confirm for the sales development space? Prospects need confidence in how your product or service can help them right now, and they need to know through conversations from our team and you. Please let us know if you’d like to discuss these results further.
- Monday, March 23, 2020. What a week last week. I think we are all trying to recover emotionally and mentally…physically, financially, etc. We could go on. However, we have been working around the clock for our clients and for the industry. The sales development and B2B appointment setting space is even more priority for businesses as they try to grapple with the reality they face…the reality we face. Our team dug deep this weekend. We ran reports from last week and compared it to our appointment setting rates for our clients to the entire year so far in 2020. It’s crazy what we found. Different than what we expected and different from what we initially started writing about. To our surprise, last week (3.16-3.20.20), appointment setting rates were better than any average week we had from January thru March thus far in 2020. WHAT!? How can that be? It was so crazy. We did a blog with a video and for the first time ever publicly displayed our appointment setting rates company wide. Please check the video and table in the blog post out here via this link. Stay tuned for more in he coming days as we dig deeper on an industry level.
- Sunday, March 22, 2020. We currently sit on 5 days of crisis level experience. We were 100% remote & operational from 3.16-3.20. The learning curve was high but so was adaptation. Because 100% of our operational work can be done remotely, we were able to make prospecting calls to our clients prospects at normal levels. We are compiling the data from last week to prepare in a report, but we set approximately 100 appointment level sales development opportunities for our clients last week.
- Monday. March 16, 2020. Official company stance letter. Please see below letter sent to our clients.
March 16, 2020
RE: Our Stance on Current Market Impacts
To Our Current & Prospective Clients,
Our team has come together several times over the past few days to analyze, interpret, and develop strategies and plans to help our team, current clients, and prospective clients. We understand and do not have to express the issues we all face in the market when many businesses will not be able to physically staff locations across the nation.
In light of the impacts, our team has united in our mission to help provide human-to-human conversations to connect people to value. I’d like to lay out a few short bullets on our status, and then provide guidance for current and prospective clients on their sales development efforts.
SHP and RPMC have been working for several months to develop a remote program within the United States with the mission of finding a larger pool of talent and providing greater timezone coverage for our clients. Because we have already been adapting our technology strategy, this has enabled us to smoothly transition into our current operational position:
- Our team is now 100% remote. We are fully operational with hardware, VOIP and dialing systems, conferencing capabilities, and internet connectivity.
- We have all 34 team members working in their respective positions. They are executing on current campaigns and onboarding new ones. We are currently outbound and inbound prospecting via phone calls, creating and executing client email marketing campaigns, managing client prospects via Linkedin, and researching, generating, cleansing, and fulfilling marketing lists for our clients.
From research, analyzing our campaigns last week, and keeping our ear to the ground, we have found opportunity in the marketplace for providing value to your potential clients with the goal to grow your business. Whether you are deciding to use our service, are currently using it, or are looking for insight for your own team, here are the recommendations based on recent FAQs we are making as professionals in sales development:
- I am uncertain what is going to happen with my prospects. We have found some of our clients are giving themselves more time to prepare and strategize, even if campaigns don’t start for 30 days or more. Our typical ramp up time before live calling from engaging is 2.5 weeks. Whether you are with us or on your own, plan a start date to execute — build up to it with the proper team, messaging, and pace for ultimate results. However, don’t stall!
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- I need face-to-face meetings only as a call-to-action. Unfortunately, this is probably not going to be an option for a couple weeks, so our recommendation is if you must meet face to face, be creative and establish health and safety rules prior to visiting. If this is not feasible, there are several detours our clients are choosing to continue building trust and relationships with others:
- Zoom or web conference meetings with video
- Customized educational webinars
- Virtual events
- Brand awareness and communication updates
- I need face-to-face meetings only as a call-to-action. Unfortunately, this is probably not going to be an option for a couple weeks, so our recommendation is if you must meet face to face, be creative and establish health and safety rules prior to visiting. If this is not feasible, there are several detours our clients are choosing to continue building trust and relationships with others:
- I am overloaded with work and am too busy right now. Great problem. Consider hiring a support line for inbound or other ongoing outbound prospecting and have us or someone manage your calendar for days and weeks to come.
In light of what is happening, what is of most importance and priority is building relationships doesn’t stop. This too shall pass – and when it does, we can’t expect business to flood back in. We have to prepare, strategize, and rebuild as humans have for ages. Resilience is one of our timeless traits. Practice resilience, and our businesses will thrive, not die.
In leads and appointments,
Ryan S. Pereus
CEO & Founder
Superhuman Prospecting
Pereus Marketing
