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About This Episode
Delegating roles within any organization is difficult.
Especially in a large company.
In order to make the most of every employee’s skill sets it is important to have great processes in place.
Additionally, it’s even more important that the company structure cater to helping employees learn the ropes and excel at the work that they do.
Stephanie Jenkins isn’t just the VP of Sales at Glassdoor, she is also the woman responsible for making sure that Glassdoor’s employees are equipped with the knowledge and tools to sell.
As the VP of Sales, her title calls on her to be the direct report for 150 people at Glassdoor in Chicago.
“You can learn something more thoroughly when you get to do it again and again.”
“Repetition creates clarity and facilitates better scheduling because you know where your attention should be directed.”
Being clear on what is needed to do a job well is important, it’s also key to how Glassdoor structures their sales roles.
Specialization Leads to Team Success
Glassdoor has split their inbound and outbound sales departments into two main teams: SDR and AE. Both teams help to make sure that they run a tight ship in terms of capitalizing on lead interest.
Specialization occurs in SDR and AE teams within the company.
The SDR team is split into inbound and outbound leads to help streamline those functions.
They intake new leads which come in through online channels and then perform mini-qualifications of the leads before passing the good ones off to an account executive for further customer outreach and nurturing.
The inbound team then passes off qualified leads to the AE team, who then reach out to unengaged prospects and try to get them to convert into paying customers.
The AE team set their own pipeline from an outbound perspective but they also generate about half of their leads from the inbound team who pass leads on to them.
One thing that I noticed from my conversation with Stephanie is how Glassdoor has decided to use their SDR team as an inbound lead generation team as opposed to how most companies function which is to use it as an outbound process.
A majority of their business is dependent on leads that sign up for free lead magnets through the Glassdoor B2B site or spend a lot of time researching on their web site.
These leads then look to get more information from dedicated account reps who try to provide enough information to close the sale.
Chatbots, attentive salespeople, and a highly-optimized sales process allows Glassdoor to make sure that lead followup runs like clockwork.
Customers who need to talk to sales reps will be put in touch with someone who can help walk them through the process. The best accounts get the best reps and the most attention.
Stephanie’s Tips For Optimizing Conversion Rates
Stephanie’s years of climbing up the ladder and overseeing employees in critical sales roles at Glassdoor has afforded her some amazing perspective on the overall sales process. In order to help convert leads into sales she suggestions the following tips.
- It’s all about speed when responding to leads
- Specializing roles increases speed
- Test which wording is the most successful, and find the open rates for each role and industry
- Make sure that leads don’t go stale by creating new messaging periodically
- Instantly chat with the customer as soon as they get on the site by integrating chatbots into your sales process
By breaking down sales roles into dedicated positions (specialization) Glassdoor has dedicated sales people who are able to interact with customers in real-time (speed) which has enhanced their conversation rates.
In fact, the entire sales team is structured in an incentivized way that breaks down roles into multiple levels to help employees learn and grow through multiple levels of proficiency in each stage of their career. Each role is incentivized to help them move through the ranks and eventually become an enterprise level sales representative.
Stephanie shared that entry level employees start as inbound SDR reps, then they go into outbound SDR. Next, there are three levels of AE, followed by three more levels of SAE. Once employees pass these levels, they reach Enterprise level positions, where there are also three more levels. 
About The Podcast
The Sales Engagement podcast is the #1 podcast focused on engaging your customers and prospects in the modern sales era. This show features real-life stories and best practices from revenue leaders doing the job day in and day out, in a casual, radio-like talk show.
Each episode features modern tactics, strategies, hacks, and tips to get the most out of your sales engagement strategy and help you navigate the next generation of sales. You’ll find energetic talks that will provide you with real actionable value around building meaningful connections and creating a better selling experience through authentic conversations that you can measure.
The Sales Engagement podcast is here to help B2B sales leaders, customer success leaders, and marketing leaders innovate and usher in the next era of modern sales by building pipeline, up-selling customers, and ultimately generating more revenue with more efficiency.
Hosted by Joe Vignolo, Senior Content Managing Editor at Outreach, and Mark Kosoglow, Vice President of Sales at Outreach.
