What does good 6QA follow-up look like?

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Carla Whyte
Carla Whyte Posts: 11 ✭✭✭
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Hi all,

I'm Carla from Blackhawk - I had the pleasure of meeting some great people at Breakthrough last week. You may remember me as the person who bombarded you with questions!

I'm looking for some advice on sales follow-up of 6QAs. We've been live about 10 weeks now, so very early days, and we have a number of challenges around monitoring sales activity due to not having everything set up quite as it should be....yet.

That said, we know that our SDR team is working approx 60 accounts, mostly from 6QAs, but we haven't had any conversions yet. This is a very new way of working in our business and I anticipate that the 6QAs may not be receiving the prioritisation needed. Contacts are being added into cadences but there is no sense of urgency.

Does anyone have an approach they would be willing to share? I want to be really explicit with the team but I also want to understand what best/good practice looks like.

Thanks

Carla

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  • Ernest Owusu
    Ernest Owusu Posts: 15 6senser

    Hey Carla!

    I can jump in here. Speed is critical with 6QA's. If your team is getting up and running, I'd encourage establishing an SLA of 2-3 days with a goal of getting to 24 hours. Ideally, the team looks at their dashboard first thing in the morning and actions on their newest 6QA's before doing anything else!

    In addition, I'd also take a look at how much the team is multithreading with their cadences. Depending on the size of the company, BDR teams typically pursue anywhere from 3-10 contacts per account.

  • Carla Whyte
    Carla Whyte Posts: 11 ✭✭✭

    Thanks @Kristen Mendenhall - do you mind if I ask if 6QAs have the highest priority within your sales activities?

  • Carla Whyte
    Carla Whyte Posts: 11 ✭✭✭

    Thanks @Ernest Owusu , I really enjoyed the final session at Breakthrough. What does outreach look like for your team when following up? Is it emails + calls + other and do you have a format that works really well?

  • Kristen Mendenhall
    Kristen Mendenhall Posts: 17 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Great questions, @Carla Whyte! Yes, but it did take a while to get it that way.

    I needed my sales team to shift the thinking from lead level to account level.

    We see individual leads coming in, and the team gets excited about them; however, they aren't always in-market (sometimes the accounts are sitting in target or awareness buying stages) and leads usually have a very low conversion rate. On the other hand, when tagged as 6QAs, accounts are in-market based on activities the entire account has been engaging in. When adding multiple decision makers to multi-threaded sequences (email, phone, LinkedIn, sometimes direct mail, etc.) my team sees a huge uptick in conversations and opportunities created compared to chasing leads.

    There is no secret sauce for shifting from lead to accounts. I found success when starting with the sales leaders and getting them to stand behind and trust me. Once the BDRs and AEs saw results, they truly believed in this approach.

    I hope this helps!

  • Ernest Owusu
    Ernest Owusu Posts: 15 6senser

    @Carla Whyte Great question! It generally follows a format known as "agoge". If your team uses cadences/sequences in this format (multichannel with manual/automated steps) towards the 3-10 contacts per account, they should have a good foundation for success!

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