memoryBlue Insights – 5/24/2021

Below is the memoryBlue weekly bulletin, delivering sales development insights every Monday to our entire slate of high-tech clients. The updates span all six memoryBlue offices, encompassing 100+ sales development campaigns and 200+ SDRs working relentlessly to generate net new revenue for these businesses.

Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch announced recently that they are banning trainee brokers from making cold calls. These new recruits will only be allowed to prospect via internal referrals and LinkedIn messaging moving forward. The trainee program shift appears to be triggered by mistakes their employees made in phone prospecting efforts in 2020, during the height of the pandemic.

From our vantage point, we would submit that perhaps they’re just doing it wrong. Across over 100 active client campaigns and better than 220+ SDRs, the phone channel consistently remains a top-performing channel in our prospecting arsenal (as you can see in the numbers section below). But one thing we probably can agree on with our brokerage peers – training professionals to prospect on the phone the right way takes a well-designed, dedicated approach.

Notable Numbers

• 72.3% of all scored leads occurred last week were surfaced via phone prospecting. As noted last week, we’re tracking towards a 75% rate for the month of May and a 70% overall rate year-to-date. There’s an ocean of opportunity if you’re willing to pick up the phone.

• The current client survey completion percentage is 81.4% in Q2. Our client survey program is one of the most important sources of direct client feedback that we gather, and clients are completing surveys at the highest rates we’ve seen in several years. This channel brings so many mutual benefits, it’s phenomenal to see such strong participation rates for the program.

• Phone connection rates jumped to 4.8% last week. Connection rates remain consistently strong in Q2 (averaging 4.7%), although we observed a slight dip two weeks go to 4.6%. Great to see things bounce back strong last week as we look to close May out riding this wave of momentum.

Highlight of the Week

Bethany and Joshua, both of whom are SDRs based out of our HQ office, delivered some massive results for one of our Federal clients recently. Over the course of the last eight months, they teamed up to surface 72 net opportunities and over $350,000 of closed new business! As their client point of contact stated:

“These are 72 companies that did not know about (us) and now do AS A RESULT of Bethany and Josh’s cold outbound efforts.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves! Making a direct, positive impact on the company’s bottom line is the absolute focus of all our sales development efforts, and we’re just as thrilled as our clients when we see these amazing results.

Spotlight on Training

Chris Corcoran, memoryBlue CoFounder + Managing Partner, led the entire company in a spirited training session last week focused on generating referrals during a phone conversation. It’s incredibly normal for an outbound prospecting conversation to occur with an individual who may not be the exact right person to speak with when it comes to the sales process. In those moments, SDRs can vastly improve their prospecting chances by executing a range of techniques designed to increase the chances of accessing a more appropriate contact.

The key to unlocking this gate is being prepared with a set of conversational tactics which create an easy atmosphere for the referral. Chris played multiple prospect call examples from our files to demonstrate SDRs putting these winning techniques into practice. He explained the principles each technique utilizes – highlighting exactly why the practice works so well – to make sure the lessons easily carry forward for everyone in attendance.

Lead Scores

Here are a few client lead scores that caught our attention last week:

5/20/2021 – 2:41PM – 10/10 – Olivia
“Awesome call. Olivia was very persistent and got us through the door on this meeting. The call went smooth and the prospect would like to see a demo. A++++/5 Stars all around!”

5/19/2021 – 7:24PM – 10/10 – Jorge
“Jorge did a great job introing the call and setting up from prior information he had gathered in discussion with Jacqueline!”

5/19/2021 – 6:07PM – 10/10 – Tara
“This was a great lead. They didn’t have an existing initiative but they definitely could benefit from a solution like (ours). The customer really liked Tara’s approach and gave her high praise as well.”

Why We Love Employee Referrals

The staff at memoryBlue has taken to social media this quarter in an effort to let their connected networks know about all of the sensational career opportunities available in professional sales. So many of our hard-charging sales professionals are connected to a wealth of other high-potential people who are actively searching for the right fit in their own professional pursuits. On our side, we absolutely love hiring individuals referred to us by our existing staff. “A” players in sales often know other “A” players (or potential “A” players) from other walks of life, and let’s face it – working with outstanding peers is incedibly motivating.

Because of that fact, we plan to continue to encourage our entire staff to send potential new hires our way. The best want to work with the best. And our clients end up as the primary beneficiary when this particular method of talent acquisition works well.