Article

How to Increase Rep Efficiency By Expecting Less: Why Quality Should be Your TOF Metric

3 April 2023

Jake Dunlap

“Just because something isn’t fully automated does not mean it’s not scalable.”

I’m going to start off with one of the best ways I’ve heard to describe this phenomenon and quest to do more and more in sales, and I’m going to credit it to Richard Harris. It goes like this: The mindset problem is that people are too focused on efficiency versus effectiveness.

From the 100s of teams we work with a year on optimizing their outbound performance, and this goes for teams with 10 to 100+, teams with a mix of SDRs and AEs doing outbound, companies that sell to enterprise, and companies that have a more transactional sale. From these hundreds of teams, the ones that are performing today are those that do not have a significant number of steps in their sequences as send-all and do not just customize the first touchpoint.

Automation and dumping 100s of people into a single sequence is efficient, but it is not effective. If this sounds like you – keep reading – we have to change this mindset.

I’ll break it down like this:

- Why quality conversations should be your #1 top-of-funnel metric
- What are quality/meaningful conversations?
- How do we make this scalable?

Recap: How to Increase Rep Efficiency By Expecting Less: Why Quality Should be Your TOF Metric

The important bits

- 1:22 – The mindset problem is that people are too focused on efficiency versus effectiveness (shoutout to Richard Harris).
- 4:07 – The teams that are performing today are the teams that don’t have a significant number of steps in their sequences as send all. They also don’t only customize the first step.
- 6:09 – One of the biggest shifts I’ve seen is that we changed the goal from trying to get a meeting with the one person we are reaching out to. And this is a natural consequence of tools that allow us to send in bulk.
- 7:18 – Instead of focusing on I want to get a meeting with John Smith, we’re more concerned with I want to do a certain number of activities.
- 9:42 – Q&A: How do you convince management that quantity is BS versus being a sniper trying to get to the right person?
- 10:55 – How to get leadership to buy in to this mindset change.
- 14:47 – If you’re a leader, make the goal meaningful or quality conversations. I define that in two ways…
- 16:38 – How do we make this scalable? Just because something isn’t fully automated does not mean it’s not scalable.
- 17:42 – Everything I’m talking about IS 100% trackable.
- 19:48 – Q&A: Can you recommend a fantastic SDR/outbound agency?
- 21:05 – Activity should be in the mix, but not what we default managing people to that are top performers.
- 22:15 – Q&A: What content has worked best on LinkedIn for new creators or new salespeople to get interaction?
- 23:50 – Q&A: How do you find time to create content if your calendar is packed?
- 25:53 – Q&A: Should you build or buy talent? What has worked for you? What mistakes have you learned?

Why quality conversations should be your #1 top-of-funnel metric

Let me convince you why this should be your top metric. You can obviously see it in the results, but I’ll try to connect why we moved away from the goal (booking a meeting) in the first place.

Before we had tools that helped us to do more activities by sending to multiple prospects at once, to make us more efficient, we’d naturally customize emails because we had to send them 1-to-1. This is because when you have to send an email 1-to-1, you’re thinking more about trying to meet with a single person.

This is the biggest shift I’ve seen. Forget the sequence. You’re trying to get a meeting with John Smith. We’ve lost track that the goal is to book with an individual, whether it’s 1-to-1 or 200 in a sequence. A best practice people we are also constantly asking about is how long a sequence should be. Well, if John Smith is the right person, you shouldn’t stop until you get a talk to somebody else, not interested, or let’s book a meeting.

This is why I call this a mindset change. Instead of focusing on hitting a number of activities (quantity), we should be focusing on getting a meeting with Mr. Smith (quality).

What are quality/meaningful conversations?

What are quality or meaningful conversations? Technically, it’s not a booked meeting. This is one step above and a very accurate way to determine or forecast booked meetings over quantity metrics like emails sent or calls made.

I define these conversations in two ways:

1. Someone who is getting me to the right person
2. Someone that I’m having a back-and-forth with and we’re trying to book a meeting

What this looks like in terms of tracking is instead of 75 activities a day, it’s 4 quality conversations a day. This means we’re now tracking the first outcome.

This is the quality metric we have to move to. I’m not suggesting that the first metric be pipeline generated but the first outcome of our sales actions (or activities).

What this allows us to do as an organization is let our reps play to their strengths to get to this first outcome. For example, some people are great copywriters, some reps are great at video or on the phone, etc. By switching to a first outcome metric, you’re allowing reps to do what they need to do while also ensuring your team gets the outcomes you need to hit revenue.

How do we make this scalable?

Just because something isn’t fully automated does not mean it’s not scalable.

There are two reasons why switching to quality and outcome metrics is hard for leadership. First, they don’t believe it’s scalable, and second, they don’t believe it’s trackable.

There is a limitation on how many custom emails or DMs a person can send in a day – I’ll give you that – but cold outbound in a send-all-fashion does not work, and there is not a day in the future when it will work again. So here’s how to make it scalable and trackable.

If you have a sales engagement platform like Outreach or Salesloft, you can set up a sequence that says Day 1: Connect on LinkedIn, Day 2: Find a Post and Interact, Day 4: Custom Email (and you can have templates you’re pulling from but customizing for the person), Day 5: Comment/Like another Post, Day 6: Personalized Video Email, etc.

You can set all of this up, track each step’s results, and report on it. The same way you would do it if it were an automated sequence, you’re just sending fewer people through while also increasing your effectiveness rate.

You can set all of this up and track the results for each step and report on it. The same way you would do it if it was an automated sequence, you’re just sending less people through while also increasing your effectiveness rate.

Wrap-up – Here’s the playbook

All right, you’re ready to put this into action and start making quality conversations (first outcome) your top-of-funnel metric. Here’s how to get started:

1. Start tracking quality conversations
2. Figure out how many does it take to get to a meeting and how many meetings does it take to get to an opp (this may change from what you think it is now since these will also be higher quality prospects)
3. Make this your new forecasting metrics
4. Let reps play to their strengths to get to these #s
  1. For first-time reps, it is OK to give them set activities to start
5. Assess the results – adjust as needed