Inside Sales & Account Executive

The best SDR / AE combos are well-oiled sales partnerships that qualify and sign-up prospects in a continual flow, carefully and efficiently sidelining those who aren’t the right fit. That’s not everybody, though. Teams are blighted by everything from poor qualification processes to inconsistent workflows, and the result can be too much tail-chasing and not enough contract signing.From our experience working with SDRs and AEs across SaaS companies in MarTech, FinTech and other high-growth verticals, here are some thoughts on four simple things that help build a quota-busting partnership.  Let’s kick it off with the SDRs – here are the two most frequent comments we hear from Account Executives on what their top SDRs do that others don’t.1. Push on budget. The most important thing an AE needs to know before scheduling time for a prospect call is whether the customer is serious about spending money on a solution.Many SDRs will go through the motions of asking about budget but will take whatever answer comes first, and then move on in their vetting process. Often customers will explain that they don’t have a fixed budget or are just exploring the market, giving SDRs little to work with. That lack of info then moves upstream, and the AE then has to commit to a call without much sense of financial potential or fit.Feedback from the AE side is that while it’s important not to scare a prospect off, it’s helpful for SDRs to have a few follow-up questions lined up when customers don’t offer a firm budget. This could mean determining whether the prospect is themselves the budget-holder, getting an idea of their overall marketing budget or learning how much they currently spend on other related tools.2. Establish context. Aside from budget, an SDRs function is to help figure out whether a customer’s needs are met adequately by the solution.AEs still have a long road ahead of them if they jump on a prospect call knowing little more about the prospect than they would have been able to find out on line with a simple LinkedIn search, so simply providing this basic data isn’t setting the AE up for a win. SDRs can be very valuable here in asking detailed questions such as what the customer’s team hierarchy and structure looks like, what their current workflow is, whose initiative the potential purchase is etc. This can generate more useful information than simply asking the prospect how many users they think they’ll need – something many customers either don’t know or won’t want to commit to.A strong SDR should be able to present their AE counterpart with a helpful inside look at the customer scenario, allowing for a productive second call focused on a solution.OK AEs, your turn next.Hey, it’s a partnership, right? Gotta go both ways…1. Help your SDR help you. SDRs love working with AEs who are pro-active in coaching them towards delivering higher-quality leads. Although SDRs are typically targeted and compensated on volume of appointment-setting, the majority are also hoping to graduate to a closing role in future, so learning about the full sales cycle and not just throwing dead-end meetings into their AE’s calendar is in everyone’s interest. AEs that work closely with their SDRs by providing feedback on preliminary prospect notes, scheduling regular internal meetings to analyze calls and sharing their own pre-call notes not only help the SDR along their career path, but also fine-tune the lead service they receive from them. Win-win.2. Bring business knowledge to the table, not just product. AEs add a new level of sales experience when they join prospect discussions, but it’s not just the ability to demo a product in depth or drive a conversation towards pricing that SDRs benefit from exposure to. A frequent observation on what makes a top AE is their ability to quickly understand the customer’s problem from a broader business angle. This can actually mean less initial time spent talking about the product and more time discussing the customer’s workflow, goals, clients, competition and current technology setup. Expertise in fluidly creating a 360 snapshot of the customer’s on-the-ground situation then creates a platform to bring technical and closing skills to bear.* * * You can check out all Adaptive Tech’s SaaS sales vacancies here.

Adaptive Content & Analytics is pleased to announce that we have formally rebranded to Adaptive Tech to better reflect the company’s expanded capabilities and focus.From an initial concentration exclusively on Marketing and Advertising technology companies, Adaptive's ability to connect fast-growing SaaS vendors within niche verticals of the IT space with top-achieving sales professionals will now extend across areas such as Financial, Healthcare, Human Resources, Education and Analytics.Together with our new name, we're also delighted to unveil our redesigned website, which provides our candidates with an improved job search experience.The decision to rename comes chiefly in response to market demand, with both clients and candidates from industries beyond MarTech referred into Adaptive to receive the same high levels of service in their hiring and career searches respectively. Our team is also excited to offer clients a broader talent pool from which to recruit and candidates a more diversified selection of career options.Though we will be offering our service to new market verticals, we will retain our specialism in MarTech and AdTech - last year Adaptive filled sales roles with more than fifty software clients in fields covering Social Analytics, Personalization, CXM, WCM, Video, Programmatic, Content Marketing, E-Commerce and more.Adaptive Tech's growth does not only take the form of an expanded client base - we are also continuing to build our international team. With growing office hubs in San Diego and New York, we are actively recruiting to better support our European clients from permanent offices in Berlin and London.We're excited to begin life as Adaptive Tech, and to support the global SaaS sales community with the highest quality of recruitment services.You can view a full list of Adaptive Tech's current jobs here.

It has always been a salesperson’s dream to know exactly who they are reaching out to and exactly how to convert them into a sale.The rise of account-based marketing, along with the development of Marketing Automation and CRM systems, has made huge strides to make this dream accessible for more businesses and their teams. Implementing predictive analytics into their stacks has only created further impact in their success.But there are plenty of marketers out there feeling it’s time for sales teams to move beyond account-based marketing and adapt people-based marketing instead.Why the change now?A step beyond predictive segmentation, people-based marketing is essentially allowing companies to target users based on their ‘true intent’. Research after research shows that consumers are reacting even more strongly towards disruptive advertising than ever before. Today’s consumers don’t want brands to aggressively target them, but to provide them the ability to learn about products and services in their own time. With so many options out there, if the consumer feels that a brand’s message is too forceful they can just simply walk away.On the other hand, business owners and ad tech professionals want a higher level of transparency from the industry. They want to see just how much they’re spending and whether it’s actually driving their company significant revenue. Facebook’s repeated apologies about overstating video metrics over the past few years come to mind as one of several flaws in this bid for transparency. Ad clients want to make sure they’re getting the best bang for their buck, and this hasn’t always been easy.People-based marketing shows a shift in the marketing technology landscape. It’s no longer about targeting devices based on unreliable cookies or unverified destinations where your ads might be running. It is now about knowing the face behind the account. It allows marketing and sales to consider insights about the individual, as well as their buying intent, across all devices. This means less time spent working with accounts that won’t convert. But it also means providing huge value to the customer who is trying to reach a purchasing decision.Imagine being able to prioritize the right contact, in the right place during their journey, with a product and message that will resonate with them.Some of you might be thinking “but we already have buyer personas”. Although “persona-based” marketing can be accurate to some degree, it’s just not the same as identifying who your right customer is via quantifiable data.Think about it.Using people-based marketing means that from the data that’s collected, you can learn your customer’s affinities, as well as their attitudes towards brands and offline behaviors.It can seem impersonal and cold, but there is a universally human aspect of actually taking the time to learn more about your customer’s real needs before reaching out to them.In ConclusionMoving forward, reaching your target contacts and successfully converting them is going to be dependent entirely on how much you know about the person behind the account. It’s all about personalization and segmentation.Predictive analytics and machine learning are only going to assist us in gaining a deeper understanding of the psychology of consumers than we’ve ever had before – and the more data we collect, the better sales teams will be able to provide highly personalized experiences to their target contacts in a critical moment when the outreach will have the most impact. The rest of the marketing stack will allow salespeople to measure the success of their outreach across all devices and prove revenue generated within those accounts.