As a sales leader, you are tasked with connecting the dots between your initiatives and your team. Breaking down outcomes into scalable and achievable goals that you can measure via KPIs, and reward performance.  Understanding who needs additional training, providing resources, or space for that is critical to hitting your numbers and curating a healthy inbound or outbound team. This line can be blurry at best most days. 

Qualified neatly folds into your Sales and Marketing tech stack, connecting your Salesforce Sales Cloud to your website. While this is a great first step, your journey has just begun. 

There are best practices every org must consider to keep your Pipeline Generation machine well-oiled. In this three-part blog series we dive into the main areas of focus in regard to refreshing your Qualified Org. This is something we recommend at the sales manager/lead level on a quarterly basis at the very least.  

Within this blog series we highlighted the executive and the admin roles, but today we talk to you, the Sales leader. Check out Part One and Part Two in the series!

Throughout this three-part series, we have focused on Company A, met their team, and walked through how each team member/role can play their part in refreshing their Qualified org, maximizing the platform, aligning teams, and smashing revenue goals.

We’ve met Sandy Jenkins, the CTO. Her focus is to condense their tech stack to tools that can do more than one thing and reduce overall cost. Working with their CMO, Randy Mandez, they uncover the need to increase pipeline generation more than ever before. Budgets are tight, resources are lean and new logos are harder and harder to attain–sound familiar? 

We also met Harry Stales, the admin and glue of the organization. Harry has a large list of tactical items to oversee, but with the support of his Qualified Success Architect, he is supported and confident in his guaranteed success. 

Today, we will focus on the Sales leaders. For Company A, this is their BDR Manager Joseph Stopher and VP of Sales Richter Jones. 

3 key ways to refresh your Qualified Org

While there are many features Joseph and Richter can use on the Pipeline Cloud platform, we need to step back and understand how they can empower their teams to be successful using these 3 key points to create a continuous loop of change and growth. These guidelines will carry throughout the roles in this series, but you will see the action items are very different for each team member. 

Let’s review what those guidelines are:

• Align your quarterly initiatives 
• Expand the use of Qualified 
• Triple pipeline generation with the Pipeline Cloud

Now that you know what they are, the next few paragraphs will break them down.

Align your quarterly Initiatives

Joseph and Richter are ultimately responsible for their team's performance on the Qualified platform, as well as clearly defining metrics, incentivization, and adoption. 

Richter has been debriefed by executives Sandy and Randy [See blog 1 in this Series] and has clear Initiatives set for this quarter. This first step is crucial so that Richter and Joseph receive support from leadership to use the resources needed to hit tactical goals and increase pipeline. 

Richter has been given the following Initiatives set for next quarter. 

Increase brand community and product awareness. 

• Since a recent acquisition, the team has struggled to seamlessly incorporate their new products and customers in a meaningful way.

Increase website traffic conversion and pipeline

• Since the launch of the newly branded website, traffic and conversion has decreased. 

Incorporate a scalable ABM program that makes sense, is not too tech heavy and has attainable goals set to each quarter. 

• In the past, ABM programs have fallen flat, either from being too cumbersome or information dispersed on multiple platforms. The team needs to be able to identify who they are targeting and how they are converting through the sales cycle. 

By clearly sharing these initiatives with their internal team, as well as their team at Qualified on a quarterly basis, it ensures focus. Tactics to support these initiatives through the Qualified Pipeline Cloud Platform can now be actioned by the larger team. This also guides reporting and metrics, so that the team can articulate progress on their next Quarterly review. They can be found in Salesforce, or on the Qualified app through reporting and dashboarding. For full transparency, these metrics are reported to Randy & Sandy along the way. 

Expand the use of Qualified

Now that the core team is aware of the company's quarterly initiatives, it is apparent we need to bring in more stakeholders. Enter in, BDR Manager Joseph Stopher and VP of Sales, Richter Jones into the conversation.  

Richter focuses on collaboration with Joseph and Harry to take the use of Qualified and the Pipeline Cloud Platform to the next level. This will require some delegation and coordination between platform configuration and additional channels that feed into Qualified. Richters focus is attaining overall metrics, incorporating an Outbound model and empowering Joseph to get his BDR team up and running on Qualified

Items for Richter and Joseph to consider executing this quarter are the following:

- Clearly communicating needs to new stakeholders based on the initiatives above

- Setting up New Users & Coordinating Training 

• This includes stakeholders as well as new team members on the BDR team

- Collaborate with Joseph Stopher, BDR Manager and Harry Stales, Admin

• Connect their outbound platform via Qualified for Outbound
• Understand which cadences or sequences are in place today
• Assign Qualified University resources to prep for further action items
• Collaborate with Harry to create Bespoke experiences and pouncing moments for the BDR team based on their outbound motion. 

- Use Qualified University Guides and Bootcamps to continuously optimize your changing team. 

• Staffing and Structuring Your Team
• Calculating Your Team KPIs
• Coaching and Incentivizing Your Team

- Inform updates to Segments and Streams to support initiatives and aid in training

- Inform updates to routing when adding the BDR team to the Qualified platform. 

- Create rep reporting and Dashboards on Qualified to monitor weekly performance

- Use the Salesforce Signals Dashboard to focus efforts across the entire team. 

- Use Qualified Signals to support the ABM Program by understanding aggregate account engagement, create Audiences for Outbounding, and help Sales understand where to spend their time.

Triple pipeline generation with the Pipeline Cloud platform of features

In every meeting this year Randy and Sandy have attended it has started or ended with pipeline and revenue. Randy has just met with their Qualified team and internal POC to review a Pipeline Cloud power boost they have yet to take advantage of: Qualified Meetings. 

This feature ties in nicely with the quarterly goal of website conversion and creating a sense of community by customizing the experience on the website based on what we know of that prospect across the connected tech stack and Qualified platform. With excitement, Randy passes this feature on for the VP of Sales, Richter Jones to own as a main focus for this quarter. 

Richter immediately pings Harry, and asks “Hey, where do I start?” Harry is able to send over a slide deck, a few Qualified University guides and a few plays other companies are using with Qualified Meetings. This is a great first step for Richter to get up to speed. Next week Harry has invited Richter to a call with Qualified to answer any questions and develop next steps. 

Richter works closely with Harry and Joseph to deploy Meetings, and create unique routing for pre-qualified web visitors via form fill or call to action buttons on the website. The launch of this feature and its results are monitored in both Qualified and Salesforce and are top of mind for executives. 

Staying on top of newly released features is like giving access to the entire toolbox to the team. As Qualified continues to innovate, it is imperative you take advantage of what the Pipeline Cloud platform continues to offer. 

What we have learned here is that Sales leaders and their teams drive the engine. Continuous optimization is key. With new features and strategic alliances, they need to be able to pivot and expand quickly. Qualified should be at least a 25% focus of their overall role, and could take more dedicated time based on the size of your team and initiatives underway.

The more your sales team uses Qualified, the more pipeline and revenue generated the more likely that percentage is to increase. Why spread yourself thin when you have one platform that connects the dots and delivers conversion? Qualified.com puts your prospects right in front of you, helping you qualify, nurture and engage when THEY are ready. 

If you are a Sales leader, step into your role, and participate in your quarterly refresh of Qualified–you will see big time results!

Make sure to check out the first two installments in this series to see how Company A executes their path from an admin and executive role while being supported by Qualified and the Pipeline Cloud. 

Or if you have questions today, and are new to Qualified, let’s chat, we would love to have you a part of our community!