memoryBlue Insights – 9/20/2021

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 150+ sales development campaigns and 275+ SDRs working relentlessly to generate net new revenue for these businesses.

memoryBlue recognizes outstanding alumni through two signature programs each year – the Alumni of the Year Award and the Phenom Award. The Alumni of the Year Award goes to the alum who achieved “highlight reel” professional accomplishments the prior year and is open annually to our entire alumni base.

But the Phenom Award, getting ready to kick off once again this Fall, honors the former employee who is off to the hottest career start. This program is only open to alumni who elevated out of our company over the last two years and we anticipate this year will be the most competitive edition in the three year history of the program. We love seeing former stand-out memoryBlue SDRs waste no time making a major difference in the high-tech industry.

Notable Numbers

• Prospect conversion rate topped 9.5% last week to set a new weekly high in 2021. We’ve pushed this core metric higher consistently throughout the year as our Academy Prospecting Principles program continues to teach and reinforce sales tactics that produce real results.

• Leads sourced by email are averaging a sensational 8.05 lead score in Q3. That tops the 7.77 average score for all channels in the same time frame. Crafting strong emails and using it as a strategic sales development tool is an important part of our work, so it’s fantastic to see the quality results we’re producing in this channel right now.

• 78.8% of all leads scored last week earned a 7 or better for lead quality. That’s better than the 75.6% total seen across the last 1,000 scored leads and it shows a strong, continuing incline in lead quality as reported by our clients.

Highlight of the Week

Scott, an SDR based out of our HQ office, posted a series of wins on behalf of his healthcare technology solutions client that are positively stunning. Our client informed us that he has personally created $2.3M in pipeline opportunities for them including a sourced deal that closed not long ago for $295K.

Sales development is often an exercise in playing the long game. SDRs produce qualified next steps meetings (filling the top of the funnel) to generate a long-term positive outcome. But those outcomes can take time to come to fruition depending on the sales cycle involved. It’s fantastic to see such a tangible, bottom-line result traced back to the direct effort and hustle of Scott.

Spotlight on Training

Caroline Myers, a Client Delivery Manager based out of our Denver office, led a spirited training program last week focused on the prospect pain funnel and best practices for SDRs digging to uncover opportunities born out of that pain. At its core, the pain funnel seeks a consultative approach to sales prospecting – the goal is to understand if a potential solution is even necessary for a given prospect.

Caroline walked our whole team through a methodology for constructing open-ended questions that ultimately help sales reps discover a real need from the prospect. Once that need is established, the sales process can suitably move on to a viable next step that has an actual chance of resulting in a deal. The team walked away with a wealth of knowledge and a range of practical strategies for daily use.

Lead Scores

The following client-based lead scores stood out last week:

9/14/2021 – 4:22PM – 10/10 – Maria
“Will be able to get 3 locations from this customer right away and have potential as the start up grows…great lead!”

9/15/2021 – 5:55PM – 10/10 – Mallory
“This was a great call. Mallory brought some key stakeholders onto the line who directly report to the CEO and who should be able to get leadership buy-in quickly. I also appreciated Mallory’s proactiveness in pinging the provider when they didn’t show up on time.”

9/13/2021 – 5:35PM – 10/10 – Rane
“Great title. Active project and looking for next steps from beginning of call. Good fit for our solution. More like this please!”

Taking the Pulse of a Campaign

Asking clients for direct feedback on our sales development work is baked in to every aspect of a memoryBlue engagement. The importance of this habit cannot be overstated. When we are continuously on the same page with everything from weekly lead quality to prospect list building activity, campaigns maintain a level of proactive management that benefits everyone involved.

As one example, we are fanatical about collecting honest insights and measuring precisely what our clients think of us through our client survey program. The survey is substantial and features multiple questions with free response areas seeking feedback about everything from our engagement kick-off process to our reporting methodology, our weekly meeting effectiveness, our lead write-ups and much more.

Responses to these surveys are reviewed immediately at the highest levels within the company, and no detail surfaced is too small for immediate action by the team. We love getting honest insights directly from our clients and we use this information every single day to keep campaigns humming.