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Doing More With Less: The 2023 B2B Tech Sales Edition

Because for many, 2023 is about doing more with less, we present strategies to build more pipeline.
If you’re like the 153 sales leaders we surveyed

for our 2023 B2B Technology Sales Climate trend report, 2023 will be about doing more with less. First, we’ll cover the numbers. Then we’ll share some options to squeeze more out of the resources you do have so you can meet your revenue goals without burning out your team in the process.

More is needed on two fronts

About two-thirds of sales leaders—65%—told us that their 2023 revenue targets have increased over 2022. Of course, it’s far from remarkable that revenue expectations grow year over year.

There is, however, something a little different in 2023, which is that 61% of sales leaders are planning to build more top-of-the-funnel pipeline than usual. This is because they believe the economic climate will cause more deals to drop out of the funnel.

Even if their revenue goals remained flat (which, incidentally, is the case for 20% of survey respondents), they’d need to get more deals into the pipeline to tread water. So, those with higher revenue expectations need to further increase the number of deals in the top of the funnel.

Less of everything

It’s a similar story when it comes to resources, with 61% reporting that they will have to do more with less, and more than one-third of that group says it will be significantly less.

It’s not just budgets curtailing the systems and other assets you need to invest in to get the “more” done—human resources are also feeling the pinch. Organizations are planning to hire, with half expanding their inside sales/sales development teams and 42% adding field reps. But more than half—53%—believe that the ongoing talent shortage will make hiring difficult.

This means that open reqs may stay open longer than anticipated, or worse aren’t filled at all. Organizations may end up without enough people to build the pipeline they need and then work it to successfully close deals.

Strategies for building more top-of-the funnel pipeline with the resources you have

At BAO, we know more about building top-of-the-funnel pipeline in B2B tech than just about anyone. In the more than quarter century we’ve been partnering with sales and marketing teams, we’ve created a range of programs to solve some of their biggest problems. If the challenges highlighted in our trend report reflect what you’re currently facing, here are three ways to address them.

1. Make your existing teams more productive
Prospecting is a critical step in the pipeline-building process. There are a couple of things your reps need to accomplish during the prospecting phase. First, they need to find prospects who are willing to talk about your solution. Then they need to engage with those prospects to convert them into potential opportunities (or disqualify them so no further time and effort is spent when there is no sales potential). There are only so many hours in the day, so the more time your reps spend on the first part of the process, the less time they have for the second.
BAO’s SmartLeads service addresses this by delivering your reps warm introductions to priority accounts. Because we take on the heavy lifting of the first step, your reps can focus on kicking off the sales process by engaging with prospects who have expressed interest in your solution. This enables you to scale your existing inside team to reach more viable prospects and efficiently cover more ground.
Learn more about SmartLeads
2. Find more opportunities faster in the leads you generate
Lead generation is another essential piece of the pipeline puzzle. Marketing leaders are facing the same pressures as their sales counterparts. Just like everyone else, marketing teams are struggling with resource and hiring shortfalls, and that squeeze may be even tighter as marketing is often—rightly or wrongly—one of the first budgets to be cut. On top of that, many businesses are starting to assign revenue targets to marketing, so teams have even more incentive to ensure a greater number of leads convert to pipeline opportunities.
The challenge is that not all leads are created equal. When a program or event generates a large number of leads, it takes time for the inside/SDR team to follow up on them. How do you prioritize them? And how do you contact every lead in a timely manner to find the ones with pipeline potential? This is exactly the problem that BAO’s Lead Qualification service was built to address. With Lead Qualification, our reps call all your leads and qualify them based on your ideal customer profile (ICP). We then deliver you detailed lead records that are scored and segmented. Your reps can focus on those deemed qualified based on the criteria you specify, and use the account-specific intelligence we collect to have more relevant conversations with those prospects.
Learn more about Lead Qualification
3. Help new reps start generating pipeline faster
When you do hire new reps, you want them to start contributing to pipeline as quickly as possible. The reality, however, is that it takes time for them to ramp up. In the B2B tech industry, that’s typically 90 days. Chances are, you don’t want to wait an extra three months after hire to start seeing tangible results, especially if it’s taken longer than desired to bring the new rep on board. BAO’s Fast Ramp service is designed to reduce that ramp-up time. With appointments delivered quickly out of the gate, they’ll spend less time prospecting around to get the lay of the land and instead hit the ground running with contacts in their territories that meet your ICP. And having a program in place to help new reps sell earlier can give you a competitive hiring edge, which is crucial in the current labor market
Learn more about Fast Ramp

And because all of our programs are performance-based, you’ll know exactly what results to expect from your investment.

Ready to start doing more with less?

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