The Power of Monitoring Sales Activity with Adam Wenhov, Sales Operations Manager at GetAccept

In this episode of the RevOps Demystified Podcast, Tom Hunt and Alex Freeman are joined by Adam Wenhov, Sales Operations Manager at GetAccept. They discuss how the central leads machine is helping the sales team book more deals, the importance of activity monitoring, and tips to optimize SDRs (sales development reps) and AEs (account executives) performance. 

• Adam Wenhov LinkedIn 
• GetAccept Website

Adam’s journey into sales ops 

Adam joined GetAccept in 2016 as an account executive (AE). As the company grew, Adam got the opportunity to become part of a sales team in Sweden. That’s how Adam started to strategise sales and build processes and structures. In 2018, due to his dedication and passion for strategizing processes, Adam got promoted as a Team Leader, Sales. 

After about a year of working as a Team Leader, Sales; the region grew to an extent that the company required a full-time resource dedicated to sales operations. Consequently, in 2019, Adam got promoted and appointed as the Sales Operations Manager. 

Currently, as of March 2022, Adam continues to work as a Sales Operations Manager at GetAccept. 

“GetAccept switched from a sales-outbound model to a marketing-inbound model, which helped the company to acquire more PLG (product-led growth) structure and approach.”

GetAccept’s biggest challenge 

The biggest challenge is always the classic ‘how to book more deals’. To achieve this, GetAccept is doing the following: 

• Hired an SDR (Sales Development Rep) Manager 
• Compiling historical figures for efficient data analysis to filter segment-wise resource (sales reps) requirements. This particularly helps the company in prospecting new markets
• Implementing a central leads system that will distribute leads to the entire sales team

How does the Central Leads Machine work?

The central leads machine (CLM) is meant to ease processes for both the SDRs and the AEs, since the latter has various things on their plate, such as booking meetings, negotiating, developing next steps, etc. The CLM for AE aims to save their time prospecting, making sure they focus on ICPs only (ideal customer profile). 

The operation of the central leads machine can be split into two parts; 

1. The first is the inbound machine, which automates and optimizes internal workflow such as MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead), etc. It then transfers the tasks/leads to the CRM (customer relationship management system) HubSpot, which further gets assigned to the right people at the right time. This inbound machine workflow helps the company process and analyze big data sets and different metrics throughout the funnel. 

2. The second is establishing a central perspective with the sales ops coordinator that uses the data from the CRM, improves it over time, and uses manual and automated processes along with various tools to push leads to different sales reps. 

The significance of activity monitoring 

“Activity is the key. And if a company lacks in automating activity baseline, no matter how automated the operations would be, it would lack the process flow of booking the meetings.” 

Identifying the result-oriented activities to monitor depends upon the stage of a lead in the sales funnel. If a company is starting off with activity monitoring, it is extremely important to have a lot of activities created because a deep insight and analysis into different activities over time derives quality, and as we know that in several setups quality supersedes quantity in the long term business and consistent sales goals. 

“It is important to create multiple activities, derive them into metrics and track them for each rep. Even a basic KPI like how many calls or emails each rep should be engaged with to feel the ownership is important to track.”    

Tips to improve performance and activity of SDRs and AEs

SDRs: Using gamification tools such as game mechanics into non-game environments to increase participation. Gamification can be used to achieve broad goals as well as specific wins, such as improved ICP. 

GetAccept creates several gamification avenues and methods to motivate, engage and teach sales reps including reward-system, monetary incentive, and sometimes a day at the spa, etc. 

For instance, for a number of calls or number of booked meetings; the reps can push and automate that to Slack or another company-wide platform. So when someone books a meeting it will be displayed in the specific Slack channel and everyone can cheer them on. The main aim is to create recognition, resulting in long-term and stable engagement and activity. 

AEs: GetAccept conducts a two-week onboarding program for the entire company, especially the sales team, where they explore, simulate and experience every stage of the sales process (prospects, cold-calls, conducting demos, negotiating, etc). 

‘It all starts with a well-structured onboarding plan and setting the right expectations from the beginning so that they completely understand what is anticipated from them.” 

Future of sales and operations 

Invest in sales reps/teams: Several sales and marketing firms over time have identified the importance of investing in sales teams and their potential to grow a company’s revenues. 

Create inter-department sync and data-driven processes: Over time we have seen the evolution in the sales-driven organizations, where different departments (example: marketing + sales) collaborate and plan to achieve mutual revenue goals and maximize profits. 

Develop Long-Term OKRs: Companies should focus on starting every year with planning how to achieve their end goals and monitoring the productivity of each AE and SDR. This helps evaluate how many sales reps are required for each region/segment. In addition, they should also focus on long-term OKRs (objectives and key results), which help prioritize performance driving milestones. 

Recommended Episodes 

• Sales Operations Best Practices: Kirsty Charlton of Signal AI
• Accelerate Sales and Rev Ops Efficiency Through Engaging Video Platform With Antoine Leprince, Revenue Operations Manager at EasyMovie
• Progression in a Sales Ops Role with Susan Metz, Senior Manager, Sales Operations at Turnitin

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