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Predictable revenue is what everybody wants but nobody wants to do the work to get. My guest today, Sean Burke is going to share with us some relevant strategies and principles you can implement to help you see predictability in your revenue.

Sean is the CEO of KiteDesk, a sales development platform that helps sales teams create a predictable pipeline.

Here are the highlights of my conversation with Sean:

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Strategies for creating a predictable pipeline:

1. Have an account target.

Identify the companies you want to sell to in the sense that they should meet a range of revenue you could earn by earning their business. Don’t sell for everybody. The more detailed you can get, the better you can determine the personas of the companies.

2. Send the right message to the right persona.

Any large B2B company usually has 6.8 decision makers so your message should be able to match each of those personas.

3. Use metrics.

Measure the emails you send and see which ones resonate. Measure the call scripts you use. Measure the tactics you use that get the best results.

4. Consistency is key.

Like a curve, it can go up and down and over time, the waves of results start to normalize out to almost like flat line. Do this regularly to your personas and this is your conversion rate into qualified opportunities. Then you start to get predictable and start raising your percentages, for instance, from 15 meetings to 17 meetings. Then you can fine tune all the knobs accordingly.

5. See the gaps in between and tweak as necessary to increase the outcomes.

Once you’ve figured the conversion, the average deal size, the average time, find the gaps in your processes that you can tweak to increase conversion, etc.

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How to get started with a new sales development team:

1. Marketing decides who to go after.

They define the criteria for an ideal client profile and load that into the system to be able to create a list every week.

2. Marketing starts the process of defining the messaging then translate it into sales language.

This is where marketing and sales start to come together. Marketing then has to take it from marketing language to sales language where they have to find a message that’s going to create action.

3. Marketing makes messaging sales-ready and tests it.

Have a baseline number and run a different messaging track for a different group (but same profile of the personas)

Important note: Create the bridge between marketing and sales to make it right. Marketing wants to control some of the messaging but sales can help refine it. The point where they come together is where real magic happens.

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Criteria for Hiring a Sales Development Rep:

• Sacrifice
• Confidence
• Likability
• History of sales (having a family with sales background)

KPI’s for building predictable revenue:

1. Lead conversion funnel

Number of meetings booked

2. Content

• Emails opened and replied to
• Phone scripts
• Entirety of the steps (number of actions it takes to get a meeting) –  If you can drive down the action from 8 steps to 4, you get more productivity and it means your messaging is working.

3. Lists created and number of qualified meetings

Comparing different lists and identifying which messaging works

4. Analytics

Other strategies for increasing productivity in your SDR team:

• Sense the feel of the SDR room and always make the room fun and positive.
• Focus on delivering value.

Sean’s Major Takeaway:

It’s a process. If you’re not willing to commit to excel and be disciplined in this, then it’s not worth starting. Look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself if you’re willing to commit to doing this and doing it well and be patient with it.

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Episode Resources:

Connect with Sean on Twitter @SeanHBurke and LinkedIn and check out www.KiteDesk.com.

If you have any questions for Sean about sales and sales development, post a question on Quora.

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