It’s Not Who You Are, It’s What You Do - outreach.io

It’s Not Who You Are, It’s What You Do: From Roles to Workflows | 1

It’s Not Who You Are,It’s What You Do:From Roles to Workflows

L E A D E R S H I P G U I D E


Table of Contents

3

6

8

14

15

20

24

Executive Summary

Decoding Efficiency: The Advent of Outreach

Operationalizing Your Sales Team

Anatomy of a Playbook

Workflow Case Study: Outbound Prospecting

Benefits of a Workflow

Conclusion – From Roles to Workflows



Executive Summary

Generalization = Imprecision

In a previous era, sales representatives often owned the customer

relationship from start to finish, doing their own prospecting and

closing. Overseeing a “full-cycle” sale for each customer, these

reps were tasked with knowing their product or service in its

entirety. While this gave customers a one-to-one experience, it

didn’t result in a better customer experience because the rep’s

knowledge was broad but not particularly deep.

But the generalist wasn’t long for the sales world.

As the digital transformation of sales took hold, products and

technologies became more sophisticated, and buyers and sellers

were forced to become more precise. Buyers could purchase

specific solutions for specific pain points, resulting in a new

tech stack and technology environment, while sellers struggled to

connect with prospects who were more informed and less likely to

come inbound to learn more about an offering.

The digital transformation led to:

B2B products and services advanced,

transitioning from one-time purchases to

cloud-based products and software as a

solution (SaaS) services

Buyers could purchase specific solutions

for specific pain points, resulting in a new

tech stack and technology environment

Customers and markets became more

segmented, with new markets and verticals

created altogether

Sales organizations created specialized

roles such as sales development

representatives, account executives,

customer success managers, client

engagement managers, and more to give

customers a better experience throughout



Most recently, the sales engagement platform (SEP) has further

transformed the B2B landscape. Often thought of as a system of

action, Outreach brings CRM data to life by highlighting which

sales actions are most effective and generate the most revenue.

With real-time data tracking a team’s day-to-day performance,

sales orgs can measure what’s working and sharpen strategies

across the organization.

It’s Not Who You Are, It’s What You Do

With this new level of insights, sales organizations soon discover a

hard truth: the path to predictable revenue is outdated. It isn’t

about mastering your CRM, hiring enough people in specific roles,

or flooding the top of your funnel with prospects and hoping that

creates changes downstream.

Instead, efficiency unveiled a key truth: predictable revenue isn’t

about who you are, it’s what you do.

At Outreach, we have developed proven workflows as our own best

practice to make our sales teams as effective as possible.

Regardless if your team is filled with SDRs, BDRs, MDRs, or LDRs, the

focus shouldn’t be on their role but the sales motions that they are

responsible for: prospecting, closing, renewals, etc. While sales orgs

can get stuck in one-dimensional thinking, Outreach is here to help.

In this ebook, we will help sales orgs reframe their thinking by sharing

our own best practice of using workflows for sales motions. We

start by outlining how Outreach catalyzed sales rep efficiency, and

how this efficiency took the shape of workflows--a standardized and

repeatable pattern of activity that produces the best results in a sales

motion. We then highlight how workflows help operationalize sales

teams, and end with the value and benefits of adopting a workflow-

based approach for your own sales organization.

What is a Workflow?

Outreach defines a workflow as an orchestrated and repeatable pattern of activity that represents a team’s work to execute your sales and customer programs.


“A lot of our customers ask us, how does Outreach use Outreach, or how are other customers using the platform? They want to know the best way to use our platform, so we started putting pen to paper to outline our own best practice of using workflows to help our customers be as successful as possible.”

-Brooke SimmonsDirector of Enterprise Strategy, Outreach


With Outreach

All reps are aligned to best in class workflows

Before Outreach

If you have 15 reps, you have 15 inconsistent workflows


Decoding Efficiency: The Advent of Outreach

Before adopting Outreach, sales reps were overwhelmed by

the amount of multitasking duties they had to do. Spanning

everything from setting reminders to follow-up with prospects,

to logging information into the CRM, reps were burdened with

manual tasks that were inefficient and time-consuming, and

managers were left with unpredictable outcomes because each

rep did their job differently.

But with Outreach, reps can take all of those manual tasks

and put them into a single workflow that strings each task

together into a standard order. For instance, within an outbound

prospecting workflow, Outreach unifies all of the steps needed to

book a meeting with a new prospect--sending emails, conducting

LinkedIn research, making calls, into a single workflow that can

then be scaled across the team so that all reps are prospecting

the same.

“Think about a workflow as the real work your team does every day to get their job done. They’re booking meetings, they’re making calls, they’re outbound prospecting, workflows represent the real work that they do.”




To truly maximize your teams’ selling time, Outreach’s best

practice is to use workflows for each sales motion (outbound

prospecting, renewals, closing, etc.) so that it’s the same across

all reps.

By uniforming the sales actions, teams can create a workflow that

presents a baseline and can then iterate and improve on it.

At Outreach, we use workflows to operationalize our own

sales teams.

Without standardized workflows, sales orgs are challenged by inefficient, individual, and isolated processes that are unable to benchmark data.



Operationalizing Your Sales Teams

Operationalizing your sales team is a lot like operationalizing

the data in your CRM--teams need a framework to bring data to

life, and a plan to measure results and incorporate them into a

continuous feedback loop.

At Outreach, we define operationalizing sales as creating

and implementing standardized workflows so that the work

is both repeatable and scalable. We operationalized each of

our revenue teams with workflows—an orchestrated and

repeatable pattern of activity—to transition away from one-off,

inconsistent processes to a standard process that all reps follow

so that managers can assess the effectiveness of their workflows,

and make adjustments to it.


Standard Actions = Standard Metrics to Iterate and Improve On

Under a workflow approach, sales organizations transition

away from fifteen reps with fifteen different workflows, to

fifteen reps with one workflow. Our best-in-class workflows

give individual teams a baseline of success to then scale

across the entire organization.

15 reps, 15 different workflows

?

Get reply

Asks for help

See objection

Writes rebuttal

Send email

? ? ? ?? ? ? ?? ? ?


Watch clicks and opens to call if engagement

Use follow-upsequence

Send email

Personalize with case study snippet

Insert best performing template

Proper workflows with a clear order of operations enable teams to

transition to data-driven decision making and scalable processes,

plus the measurable results make it easier for sales teams to

iterate and improve.

15 reps, 1 seamless workflow

Get reply

See objection

Insert clickable dates to book meeting

+


What is the difference between a Playbook and a Workflow?

Playbooks are sales strategies with a clear objective.

Workflows are an orchestrated and repeatable pattern of activity that represents a team’s work to reach your playbook’s objective. Example workflows are outbound, inbound, closing, renewals, etc.


Playbooks are made up of different workflows that help complete a clear objective.


Each workflow has four components:

Part I: Find the Contact/Prospect

Part II: Choose the Play (Sequence)

Part III: Take Action

Part IV: Measurement

Anatomy of a Playbook (Playbooks →

Workflows → Sequences)

In your overall sales strategy, workflows make up your sales

Playbook. Under this structure, Playbooks are comprised of

workflows that are meant to complete a clear objective.

Playbook is the umbrella term and workflows are the standardized

set of tasks and actions that complete a clear objective.

For example, the Playbook might be Land a Meeting with the VP

of Sales at a company. Within this Playbook are workflows for

each possible customer’s action or response, so that the rep is

equipped to know how to respond and can start executing the

relevant workflow.



Now that we’ve defined workflows, and how they fit into your

sales playbook, let’s dig into their 1) anatomy and 2) benefits for

your revenue teams.

Playbook: Land a Meeting with the VP of Sales

↓

Workflows (Outbound Prospecting)

↓

Sequence(s) Selected

→ Customer Action/Response (or lack thereof)

← ↙ ↓ ↘ →

Play selected (based on response)

← ↙ ↓ ↘ →


← ↙ ↓ ↘ →


← ↙ ↓ ↘ →


← ↙ ↓ ↘ →

Objective Reached (booked meeting with VP of

sales)

↓

Measurement

Were the right Sequences selected for the objective?

Were the Sequences used in the best order?

What was the level of positive engagements for each workflow?

What was the level of positive engagements for each Sequence?


Anatomy of a Playbook


Workflow Case Study: Account-Based Prospecting

One of Outreach’s most popular workflows is for

account-based prospecting. While companies may

have different goals for their prospecting, let’s

assume that the goal here is to book a meeting with

the prospect.

First Meeting Booked


Account-Based Prospecting


Part I: Find the Contact

Every workflow starts at the same place: finding the person you

want to engage. Here, the rep finds the Account in Outreach that

they want to target, and then reviews the prospects associated

with the Account. Typically, reps will go after different prospects

based on the target persona, such as sales leader, ops leader, or

enablement leader.

Outreach easily facilitates account-based sales strategies for sales organizations of all sizes. With our Accounts tab, reps can easily view all of their accounts, and filter to see all prospects associated with that account. Reps can easily take action on select prospects and add them to a Sequence.



Additional Ways to Action Prospects

If your sales team is using any of the data provider integrations in Outreach Galaxy, reps can find the lead or contact in the data provider and then push it directly into Outreach.

If your accounts in Outreach are already full of contacts, reps can select which contacts to engage. These might be prospects who have replied in the past but never resulted in a meeting, or prospects within the account who haven’t been contacted yet.

Part II: Choose the Play (Sequence)

The rep then selects the Play, or Sequence, to put the prospect

into. Some Sequences are more automated, while others are

more high-touch and personalized. As sales orgs build out their

workflows, they will find a lot of them will daisy chain together

based on how prospects engage with the previous workflow--

response, no response, etc.



Part III: Take Action

Now, the rep can take action by executing tasks in the ways that

make them most efficient. Here, the rep is focused on choosing

the first action or Play for the prospect. For example, if a rep is

outbound prospecting to target accounts, they can sort their

tasks by Account or Sequence so the messaging is consistent

and can move through their tasks more quickly and thoughtfully.

This step can potentially be the longest, with the different Plays

selected based on the prospect’s response or action--or lack

thereof--until the objective is reached.

With Outreach workflows, reps are able to scale their work and have multiple prospects in different Sequences at once.



Part IV: Outcomes

Workflows don’t just stop when reps get in touch with a

prospect. Sales managers need to help reps on how to handle

what happens next. With workflows, sales managers can set

up guidelines on how reps should handle booking meetings,

overcoming objections, handling referrals, and nurturing

unresponsive prospects as well.

Workflows ensure that your sales process doesn’t stop when the Sequence does.

For instance, if the prospect:

Responds positively: The rep can stop the Sequence and

book a meeting by phone or email.

Sends an objection: The rep can select the best Sequence

based on the objection reason—e.g.not interested, wrong

timing, or a competitor solution already in place—to keep

the discussion productive and tailored to each prospect.

Never engages: After the Sequence ends, the prospect

will be added to a nurture Sequence to let the rep

continue working toward booking a meeting but with

more educational information, such as the value of

Outreach, to keep them engaged.

Then, sales managers can assess the outcomes the workflow

is producing--or not producing--to determine if it needs to be

adjusted. Here are metrics to consider when viewing your Team

Performance Dashboard.


https://www.outreach.io/blog/how-to-write-a-killer-sales-follow-up-email-examples-for-every-occasion

https://www.outreach.io/blog/how-to-write-a-killer-sales-follow-up-email-examples-for-every-occasion

https://www.outreach.io/lp/forrester-total-economic-impact-outreach

https://www.outreach.io/lp/forrester-total-economic-impact-outreach


Key Performance Indicator

Meetings Booked - What results are you driving?


Leading Indicators

Prospects Added to Sequence - Are you adding enough to your funnel?

Prospects Active in Sequence - Is your funnel full enough?

Activities Completed - Are you executing on your activities to keep prospects moving?



Benefits of a Workflow

With a workflow approach, sales teams can create a baseline

of the actions that must be completed to successfully meet an

objective. This transitions teams away from one-off processes

to a standard workflow that can be scalable across other

team members.

Data-Driven

With a baseline of actions, teams can assess the health of the

workflow with data. For instance, if reps have a high no-show

meeting rate, sales managers can add a task to have the rep

reach out to confirm the prospect can still attend the meeting an

hour or two before the meeting time to minimize no-shows.

Faster Onboarding

With workflows for outbound, inbound, closing, and renewal

sales motions, new reps can be immediately onboarded into

using the workflows that have been proven successful. Reps are

set up to succeed from Day One, and are able to master multiple

workflows at once.

Transforming Your Sales Team for Success | 20

“Think of a workflow as a user’s guide--if I’m bringing a new rep onto the team, I can show them exactly how to create a prospect, add them to the right Sequence, where to do their tasks, and what to do next based on the outcome--if they get a yes, we train them how to book the meeting, if they get a no, we train them how to work that objection from their inbox, and so on--in any situation, the rep knows exactly what to do, and sales orgs can use this to scale consistently across their teams.”




Without Workflows With Workflows

Isolated and

individualized

sales actions

Standardized and

scalable sales actions

Driven by individuals Driven by data

No foundation to

build on

Ability to iterate and

onboard faster

FixedEasily integrates new

products or strategies

Unpredictable and

varied customer

experience

Better customer

experience

Easily Integrate New Strategies and

Outreach Products

With clear steps within each workflow, teams can add or revise

steps as your strategy evolves or changes without starting over

or creating something from scratch. Workflows are customizable

and flexible, and give sales teams the same agility that Outreach

depends on to integrate new technologies without disrupting the

objective or data to understand what’s working.



Provide a Better Customer Experience

When sales people are able to hone in on a specific product

or service area, they become experts and can better describe

your product’s value to a diverse set of business needs or tech

stack maturity levels. Think of it like a book review-- instead of

asking people to present on the entire book, people only need to

understand one chapter in depth. In either scenario, people still

need to read the whole book to understand the story, challenges

and triumphs, but the people who are able to focus on one

chapter can become experts, noting deeper details and how the

chapter relates to the story as a whole.

The same is true for your reps: if they are able to focus on one

aspect of your product, they can better provide prospects with

a targeted understanding of that specific area and the solution

it provides. On the other hand, if your sales team is filled with

generalists who are responsible for an end-to-end summary of

your product, prospects who want a deep-dive into a specific

area will be mismatched with reps who can only provide a

broad overview.

“We have customers who are in their third or fourth year using Outreach, and typically their businesses have changed significantly in that time. Additionally, Outreach is also constantly evolving because we’re adding new features to meet new needs from new customers. With workflows, our own sales teams can easily adjust their strategies and integrate new products and features without starting from scratch or disrupting the sales team.”



Workflows are Scalable to your Entire

Revenue Team

While many sales orgs have made big strides in standardizing

their inbound and outbound sales workflows, workflows can

be developed and implemented for all customer-facing teams.

This allows all revenue teams to address and improve the

effectiveness of the customer journey at every step.

Think about it: customer success managers are largely

responsible for renewing and expanding some of your biggest

and most valuable customers, yet these teams are often

overlooked. Some orgs may think that as long as the customer is

renewed, it doesn’t matter how the team got there, even if the

process changes every time.

But Outreach thinks differently. We give workflows and standard

metrics to each revenue-facing team--customer success, client

engagement, professional services, etc-- to maximize every

customer and renewal opportunity. While this is less common,

using clear benchmarks and having success metrics is needed to

maximize your revenue teams.



By implementing workflows at each stage of the funnel, revenue orgs will be able to affect the velocity and integrity of the buyer’s journey throughout your sales process. With standardized workflows and key metrics that function as a feedback loop on a team’s effectiveness, sales orgs have the potential to positively impact and shape your sales funnel from top to bottom.

Increase the effectiveness of your sales organization by implementing world-class workflows with Outreach that are tailored to your strategies today, and can take you where you want to be in the future. Learn more at outreach.io.

Conclusion: From Roles to Workflows


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