Welcome to our new blog series, where we will be diving into the exciting world of emerging GTM technology. The community is constantly talking about the current shift in Sales, from the transformation of sales roles to the evolving preferences of buyers. As a result, GTM teams, on the whole, find themselves grappling with underperformance amidst these changing dynamics.
The current state of GTM technology is dynamic and multifaceted. From CRM platforms to predictive analytics and virtual assistants, businesses have a plethora of tools at their disposal to streamline processes, enhance productivity, and drive revenue growth. Sales Engagement platforms have set out to become the one stop-shop for reps, keeping them focused on one platform and prioritizing efficiency and streamlined processes. Have we overcompensated on efficiency, resulting in lack of creativity and being overly task driven?
Forrester noted that the average attainment for B2B sales is 47%. Adding more to the tech stack seems counterintuitive but teams must be open to change and iteration when underpformance remains a constant. Some folks are preaching back to basics but with advancements in technology, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI), how can teams leverage new technology to increase attainment?
In this series, we'll be sitting down with CEO’s behind these emerging sales technologies to gain a deeper understanding of their inspiration, vision, and the unique value they bring to the market.
For the first installment of this series, we sat down with Joel Rodriguez, Founder & CEO of ReferIn. ReferIn is a go-to-market tool for sales teams to coordinate warm introductions across their entire company.
Before founding ReferIn, Joel led sales teams at four marketing technology companies based in New York City, including Bluecore, Persado, SumAll and Rebel. ReferIn is his second venture-backed startup, after building the online dating site Acquaintable in the early 2010s. He is passionate about helping sales teams better leverage professional networks and enabling B2B buyers and sellers to connect in a more human way.
How do you see the future of sales technology evolving, and where does your product fit into that vision?
For over a decade, I’ve experienced the increasing difficulty, complexity and cost of generating new sales pipeline for B2B sales teams. With the influence of the Predicable Revenue methodology and the rise of the SDR model, we saw a new approach to generating pipeline take hold and subsequently explode in popularity over the last decade: cold outbound sales development.
With more SDRs hired at every growing sales team and more competition in almost every space, buyers have been inundated with cold outbound emails, calls and LinkedIn messages. Further, technological improvements in sales development have largely focused on making it easier for sellers to send more cold outreach. Unsurprisingly, email open rates and response rates have drastically and steadily declined for years.
I have always found that the most effective and dependable way to break through the noise of cold outbound was to leverage warm introductions to reach new customers. This is because executives pay attention to communications from people that they know, as relationships are the clearest indicator of trust. However, the arduous process for endlessly searching LinkedIn for mutual connections and writing manual, untracked emails to secure these valuable introductions is prohibitive to do at scale for the average SDR or AE.
ReferIn revolutionizes the traditional, manual approach to warm introductions by systematically enabling sales teams to identify all the warm introduction opportunities available in a company’s network. ReferIn then enables sales teams to more effectively scale warm outreach, making it easy for sellers to book new meetings through warm introductions.
What problem are you solving and what inspired you to develop this particular sales tool?
I noticed how difficult and manual it was for sellers to identify and execute on getting warm introductions to customers. However, warm introductions are typically the best way to get in touch with new prospects - boasting higher conversion rates, faster sales cycle times and higher LTVs. I was inspired by my experience driving warm introduction initiatives when leading sales teams, seeing how successful leveraging relationships was first-hand.
How does your technology solve this problem?
The first key to a successful warm introduction is a request to be introduced to a specific individual, as generic requests typically don’t result in successful introductions. So ReferIn first identifies all the potential introduction opportunities in the networks of executives, investors, advisors and employees. This enables sales teams to clearly and quickly understand the opportunity for more pipeline and gives them a road-map from which to execute. ReferIn also drastically simplifies the process of requesting and following through on warm introductions through automated workflows and templates.
How does your technology differentiate itself from existing solutions in the market?
The most popular and ubiquitous solution for getting warm introductions to customers is LinkedIn or LinkedIn Sales Navigator. However, LinkedIn requires sellers to individually search for potential prospects and click through pages of mutual connections to understand warm introduction opportunities.
ReferIn takes a much more automated and team-oriented approach to warm outreach. Instead of requiring individual SDRs or reps to manually search for potential warm introduction opportunities, ReferIn automatically delivers those opportunities directly to the seller. ReferIn also searches beyond just the network of the seller to uncover opportunities in the vast network of their company, yielding exponentially more opportunities to connect with their target accounts. Lastly, ReferIn enables sales teams to automate most aspects of outreach, fosters communications between sellers and referrers, and tracks outcomes. This enables sales teams to more effectively scale warm outreach and prove ROI.
Finally, what advice would you give to GTM teams or businesses considering adopting new technologies like yours to enhance their sales processes?
Sales teams need more ways to reach new customers at scale. The old way where sales teams rely on cold outbound to generate the majority of new pipeline isn’t working anymore. The answer is not to send more volume of cold outreach.
With so many sales technologies to choose from, I’d advise sales teams to explore different approaches to pipeline generation outside of the core sales development platforms. Sales teams should dig into their data to uncover what other methods of generating pipeline have already proven to be successful, even if not in large numbers. Technologies that allow sales teams to scale what already is working have the highest chances of success.
You can learn more at referin.com or get started with a free trial today.
