[6sense for 6sense] Process & SLAs

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Saima
Saima Posts: 60 6senser
edited February 2023 in 6th Street

Hi, Saima Rashid here, from the Revenue Analytics team 👋

As someone who’s lived in the Analytics and Ops world forever – there are a few things that warm my heart and those of my Ops peers. We love a good process, we love to automate wherever possible, and we love to have the data inform everything we do.

Let’s be honest, ideas are easy, but execution is everything. How do we make sure all of our teams are marching towards the same goals and executing effectively and consistently to provide our customers and prospects with the best possible experience? We do that by:

1.      Setting the right expectation of what good looks like. Ideally this is based on data and performance metrics we’ve seen the teams hit before, or tie directly into our annual plan.

2.      Next comes setting and formalizing the SLAs. We need buy-in from the teams on the SLA – in some cases these are stretch goals we’re putting in place and so they need to be clear on timing and how they can be met. Also, let's be clear on how we’ll support the team in achieving the SLAs (e.g. with automation, account scoring etc)

3.      And finally, inspection. We’ve all heard the mantra “Inspect what you Expect” – and that’s what it boils down to. How do we hold teams accountable to the SLAs? I’ve found a mix of automated report pushes (weekly, biweekly) along with a more in depth read out monthly or quarterly is helpful. Let’s be clear though, provide your teams with the tools to make inspection easy. This isn’t a name and shame game where we send out a naughty list each week. Let’s show where teams are meeting/not meeting the SLA but give them additional information on how to triage it. E.g. If there is a response time SLA we need BDRs to hit, let’s ensure we are supporting them with strong cadences, automated routing, chatbots to reduce friction in the buyer experience and a complete and engaged buying group on the account record before we ask them to start outreach. And let’s not forget to celebrate the wins along the way and recognize the teams and reps that are crushing it!  

Comments

  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 0 ✭✭

    Love this. Thank you, so much, for your contributions from the stage at Breakthrough 2022 yesterday. You are a super hero. Thank you for sharing your day to day approach. My favorite quote from you is "We know what good looks like." This is priceless. I realized this is what we're missing at my company. We don't know what good looks like. We're still searching and searching for the magic formula that will work for us, and we keep reinventing the wheel in search of the formula. We do not approach the funnel as ONE funnel. We metric a Sales funnel and a Marketing funnel separately. This is likely part of our pain. We spend too much time trying to apply marketing attribution to individual leads instead of up-leveling our focus to accounts that Marketing and Sales can engage, surround and penetrate together. Lot's to learn. Thank you for the gifts of your experience. Marina

  • brendahali
    brendahali Posts: 1 ✭✭

    Thank you so much for this information, Saima.

  • Saima
    Saima Posts: 60 6senser

    I'm so glad it was helpful @MarinaLemas, and thank you for your kind words. It's definitely a journey, but I promise you, you can get there with the right level of alignment. Start small (one metric, one report), and build upon it.

  • Leigh
    Leigh Posts: 13 ✭✭✭

    @Saima - Is there a way to automatically send the Intelligence Usage report on a scheduled basis to our BDR manager? (I don't want to have to give him 6sense admin rights to see this one report).

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  • Saima
    Saima Posts: 60 6senser

    @Leigh , thanks for your question. Unfortunately the reports cannot be automatically scheduled out. When I was on the customer side, I typically would download this each month and email to the BDR leadership directly vs. giving them access.

  • bboisier
    bboisier Posts: 2 ✭✭✭✭

    Hi @Saima, would you mind going into a little detail on what you think are the most important pieces of your SLA that help drive results?

  • Saima
    Saima Posts: 60 6senser

    Hi @bboisier - it's really the mix of setting expectations and then providing visibility to stakeholders regularly (for us, we inspect and share data up to the CMO/CRO level weekly). This drives accountability across the revenue organization. Some SLAs are always critical, always top of mind for us (e.g. response time), and others may become high priority based on what we're seeing in the data, or where trends might be moving in the wrong direction. Either way, this is a team effort with buy-in at the highest level.

  • @Will Vasquez here is a great post on the SLA's based on our discussion today!