You've done the hard bit.
Found the audience. Built the proposition. Created the campaign. Generated some interest.
Then what?
We spend huge amounts of time thinking about how to generate demand. But probably not enough thinking about the experience we give people once we've got their attention.
So, for this edition of Inside the Work, we're turning the spotlight on Sales Activation.
Inside the Work is where we share what we're learning from doing the work – the tactics that deliver, the approaches we believe in, and the ideas we think are worth trying.
The average SDR has a pretty difficult job
Recently, we compared our Sales Activation team's performance with benchmarks for the typical client-side SDR model.
The differences were pretty stark:
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95% average target achievement versus a 48% industry benchmark.
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Up to 14–16% conversion from target account to qualified meeting versus 5–8%.
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An average team tenure of 8.5 years, compared with 12–24 months.
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And around 95% of our team's time is spent actually selling.
Part of that comes down to specialism. Sales Activation has been part of tmp since 2002. Our team is experienced, dedicated to the campaigns they're working on and has spent years learning what works – and what absolutely doesn't.
But there's another reason we think the model works.
Giving a damn about the prospect experience
We care a lot about the experience our clients' prospects have with us.
That might sound fluffy in a conversation about sales performance.
But it really isn't.
Every interaction after someone engages with your marketing either adds to their perception of your brand or detracts from it.
So we try not to give prospects a job to do.
We don't drop a product proposition into someone's inbox and expect them to work out why it matters. We do the research and show up with a point of view.
We might share an article from a publication they actually read and connect it to a challenge we think they'll recognise.
If we send something, we'll explain why it's worth their time. If it's a three-minute read, we'll tell them.
And we don't “chase”, “bump this to the top of your inbox”, or end an email with “thoughts?”
They're small things. But together they create a fundamentally different experience.
The aim isn't to get an outreach activity logged. It's to make every interaction worth the prospect's time.
Good outbound is a craft
None of this happens overnight.
Good outbound means knowing when to call and when not to. How much research is enough. How to turn an account insight into an interesting conversation. How to multi-thread without annoying half the buying committee.
Those things are learned. And they get better with practice.
So whether the answer is to bring in specialist Sales Activation or invest in your existing team, invest in the craft.
And involve Sales early.
The strongest programmes don't just brief Sales before launch. They collaborate with them while the programme is being shaped – bringing their customer knowledge into GTM planning and creating buy-in from the beginning.
A takeaway for marketers
If you're investing in demand generation, don't treat the lead as the finish line, but protect the experience that comes next.
Give the people responsible for converting demand the time, skills and support to do it well. Bring them into the process early. And hold every interaction to a simple standard:
Is this actually useful for the person on the other end?
Because your prospects don't care about your MQL target.
They don't care about your SDR's activity target.
They care whether the person contacting them understands their world and has something worthwhile to say.
And, as it happens, that's pretty good for the numbers too.
