If you could build an SDR or inside sales team anywhere in the US, where would you choose?

Would you go for college graduate rich Massachusetts?
Tech mecca California? Or low tax, low cost of living Georgia?

 As companies struggle to hire talent in their local markets, this is becoming more than a theoretical exercise. Last week, I polled 54 sales leaders and asked them:

Here's how they responded:

ZipRecruiter’s VP of Inside Sales, Kevin Gaither, was tasked with hiring 25 inside sales reps in just three months. This is his story.

Kevin joined ZipRecruiter in the summer of 2013. By January 2014, he’d grown the inside sales organization to a dozen reps, proving out both the concept and model.

With greater than 8K inbound leads per month, it came time to scale.

Four months and 700 candidates later, Kevin hired 23 reps (and lived to tell the tale).

Kevin shared three things he did right.

1) Approach the hiring process like you would a sales process.

Kevin’s ‘hiring funnel’ included:

• 7 ‘stages’
• A 4.5 hour process per hire
• Starring roles for himself, his Managers, and Reps
• 3.5% conversion rate from candidate-to-hire

Last quarter is in the books. How did your team do?

If you're like most companies, you know a) your team's actual vs. goal and b) the number of reps at/above quota. But does that truly give a full picture of performance?

Sales Team Grader

I've been working on a benchmarking tool to fill in the gaps. (Big thanks to the folks who participated in beta testing!) The tool benchmarks your team against:

• Group performance vs. goal
• % of reps at 90%+ (of quota)
• Median rep performance
• Top and bottom 20%

By way of example, I ran analyses on two companies. Here are the results.

If you lead a Sales Development team, or are in Marketing and deliver them leads, I'm sure you've been involved in debates about how many times a rep should attempt to reach a prospect.

You have a process. But are you able to accurately track it in Salesforce?  

For years, I've been tweaking reports trying to get an accurate picture and I think I've finally buttoned it up. Here's how you can too: (you might want to involve your Salesforce Admin)

Step 1 - Choose the right report

For most orgs, Activities with Leads will be the best report type.

Step 2 – Focus on a subset of leads

If you include leads that your reps are currently calling, it will skew your numbers. Similarly, you don't want leads your SDRs have disqualified without ever attempting (competitors, students, cartoon characters, etc.).