Sales Models, Metrics, and Motions Blog

Inside Sales Executive Interview- Q2 '09

by Trish Bertuzzi on Thu, Apr 02, 2009

This is the 3rd in a series of interviews we are conducting with Inside Sales Executives on metrics, methods & strategies for inside sales teams.

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Featured Executive:

Bob Memmer is the Director of Sales for Jigsaw and has been with the company for 4 years. 

For those of you that aren't familiar, Jigsaw is an online directory of free, downloadable company information and more than 12 million business contacts. Every Jigsaw business contact is complete with hard-to-find direct dials and email addresses, while each company record gives the low down on company size, location, and industry.

Bob, how did you get into the sales game?

Right after college in the mid 90's I went to work for Cabletron.  They were very Inside Sales focused and, at that time, had 220 reps pounding the phones in the Northwest alone.  Cabletron was a great learning environment for me because they were very process and metrics focused and provided great training.  That, combined with my later experience in the field and management, laid the foundation for what we have built here at Jigsaw.

What does your current sales model look like?

We sell primarily through Inside Sales and are a direct sales organization although we do also use sales agents.  Our current structure is:

  • 5 Account Development Reps (ADRs) doing lead generation and qualification
  • 17 Account Executives (ISRs) in geography based territories
  • 4 Enterprise Reps focused on larger accounts
  • 2 Sales Managers

You are metrics focused, how have you integrated metrics into your strategy?

First let me lay the groundwork.  We get about 1500 signups a day from a variety of sources: webinars, Google SEO/SEM efforts, email campaigns, shows etc.  We use lead scoring to determine who is truly in the buying cycle and, based on their lead score determine who should go to the ADRs.  In addition to inbound leads, the AEs assign their ADR 20 target accounts.

We use salesforce.com and have customized it to accommodate our "Dirty Dozen" which is the qualification questions we would like the ADRs to answer.  Once they get most, if not all, of that information they set up an appointment for their AE or do a direct transfer of the lead.

Now, to answer your question about metrics...

Account Development Reps

  • ADRs are partnered with 3 AEs
  • Drive 50 dials a day
  • Minimum talk time 2 hours
  • Typically it takes 2 touches for us to convert a suspect to a prospect
  • Quota is 25 corporate leads per month but we are far exceeding that number as we don't cap their compensation.
  • 100% of the team makes goal

Account Executives

  • Drive 40 dials a day
  • Minimum talk time 2 hours
  • We evaluate Reps based on how well they respond to leads so based on lead scoring there are parameters for response time
  • We use LucidEra to manage pipeline velocity so we can track movement through the sales stages
  • We also track closing percentages by rep - target is 30%
  • Our rule of thumb for pipeline is 4x quota so if a rep needs to cold call to get there it happens
  • Quota is based on a simple formula - 10x target income. So if your target income is $100K, your quota is $1M
  • 65% of the team makes goal

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Note to readers: We will be publishing the 2nd Part of this interview next week.
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A note from Bob:
As a special offer for reading this post, you'll get 25% off any Jigsaw Enterprise Solution.  To learn more about Jigsaw or take advantage of this discount Click here.  Offer valid through April 30th.  Happy Selling!

Topics: inside sales management, ask the experts, executive interview

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