Lead response time is a hot topic lately.

Companies have published research highlighting findings such as ‘calling inbound leads in under a minute delivers 3-4X conversion rates’ and ‘calling within 5 minutes vs. 30 minutes drops the odds of qualifying by 21X.’

I believe those studies are well done and their findings are true. But the question remains: for those of us with fairly complex B2B sales processes, do they matter? 

My hypothesis is that contact and conversion rates rarely equal quality of conversation (and ultimately revenue). I see two big problems in our rush to make contact.

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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:

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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

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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.

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