Sales Intelligence from Sales Calls w/ David "Ledge" Ledgerwood

Outbound Sales Lift

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#85: Listen as David Ledgerwood, Managing Partner at Add One Zero, discusses gathering sales intelligence from the front lines in sales development.

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

Gathering Sales Intelligence (0:22)

David’s firm tracks the close ratio as one of their critical KPIs because it saves time and it gets more money for the client, which gets more money for them.

They pay attention to metrics from the call and annotate every recording. Those recordings flag four different things: a need, a question, an objection, or a positive response.

They record everything into a database before compressing and normalizing that data. Then communicate with marketing at the top of the funnel and give that information.

Interestingly, it became less about sales intelligence than it became about customer discovery meetings.

David wants to inform and grow a business because he works with service companies, premium marketing companies, professional services, consultants, etc. They’re not SAS.

Being Front and Center (7:35)

If everybody wants to know something, it’s critical to put it out front and center.

Enroll prospects in an email sequence to help them get everything they should know before the call.

Send them emails over the next few days before the call, and feed them information framed in a way to help save time behind the scenes.

If they didn’t book a meeting, send them the booking sequence, and enroll them in the pre-call sequence.

Expanding The Four Buckets (11:19)

Know what they’re looking for and what they want in every call. If you do it right and ask the right questions, you’ll elicit information. Almost every call is very need-heavy on the front.

There’s a difference between “I need more leads” and “I need more prospects to talk to.”

We exist to understand why a prospect might like your product and then action.

It doesn’t matter if you call it marketing or sales; it’s the commercial revenue engine we need to build.

David’s Bio:

Prior to starting Add1Zero, Ledge led Sales and Services for Gun.io, during which time he sold and managed more than 100,000 hours of development and 10x revenues to a mid-7-figure run rate.

Ledge’s 20-year business career began in professional services at PwC where he carved out a weird niche as a Bash developer and checked the Fortune 500 box with UPS, JPMorganChase, and Aetna. If you’ve received a package or deposited a check, there’s a pretty decent chance some piece of code he wrote was somehow involved.

He moved to a major publishing company right about when Web 2.0 started to eat newspapers and periodicals for lunch, giving him a front-row seat to disruption and honing his taste for entrepreneurial pursuits while learning how Sales and Operations must gel for customer success.

In 2007 he walked out of his stable job and moved from New Jersey to Nashville to start a company, which he grew to a $500K run rate before crashing and burning in the Great Recession. Without taking a day off, he joined an EdTech firm and ran efforts to drive $2M to $20M growth. Then he took a COO role while side hustling to coach, mentor, and build his network of founders and execs.

Important Links:

David’s LinkedIn Profile

Add1Zero’s Website