Recently I was requested to develop a series of “best practices” for lead management from the cradle to the grave, including the service level agreement on a “what is a lead” from Marketing to Sales. I asked what “best practices” looked like to them, and they said they wanted to adopt the best practices of other successful companies to manage leads from anonymous to MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead).
They wanted to adopt BANT for the SDR (Sales Development Rep) to define the MQL at the account-level prospecting and adopt MEDDIC for Sales in the opportunity management process. The adoption of these, they consider as “best practices” for their Sales teams.
So I wanted to define “best practices” further, did a little research, and wanted to share what I found!
The definition of best practices from Wikipedia
“A best practice is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to any alternatives because it produces results that are superior to those achieved by other means or because it has become a standard way of doing things, e.g., a standard way of complying with legal or ethical requirements.”
When you read this, you understand how you can apply “best practices” to your Revenue engine? As I continued reading the definition, I found the following revealing.
“Sometimes a best practice is not applicable or is inappropriate for a particular organization’s needs. A key strategic talent required when applying best practice to organizations is the ability to balance the unique qualities of an organization with the practices that it has in common with others.”
So what does this mean?
In the Urban Dictionary, I read the following that has a different definition of best practice:
“This phrase is most commonly used by larger public institutions and corporations to describe what they believe to the best way of doing a particular task or providing a particular service. The phrase assumes that there is one best way to do something all the time and in any given situation. It is unclear if “Best Practices” is based on empirical research or if it is just some employee or middle-managers armchair theory of what works best. In short, ” Best Practices” is basically someone’s set of guidelines for doing something. However, the term “Best Practices” sounds more professional and has an air of authority and legitimacy to it that was lacking in the word “guidelines.”
As RevOps manager, we often get hung up on applying what we think is a best practice rather than what they are:
Best Practices are the baseline standards for skills, competency, and efficiency. We are developing a solid set of guidelines that lead to better practices unique to the company.
If you google Best Practices for Sales, you get over 650,000,000 results, where you have
- What Are The Top 12 Sales Best Practices You Should Follow
- 10 Sales Best Practices to Succeed in a Digital World
- The 5 Best Sales Practices
- 7 Data-Backed Sales Best Practices
So how many best practices are there, five, ten, twenty?
I hope you agree that there are no absolute best practices. Instead, a constant review of your process today and a continuous review of what other companies in your space are doing will provide a set of baselines to drive better and more efficient methods.
This continuous review and iteration of the four pillars of revenue operations will include you and your team designing, developing, and deploying a set of guidelines and better practices that will drive your Revenue Engine.
As you proceed, you should understand that a singular focus on “best practices” can and will stifle innovation. As RevOps, you will see the value in a standardized process, but this also leads to possible stagnation, which means that the Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success teams can feel locked into these steps.
When you apply rigid rules to follow throughout each buyer journey stage, you do not permit creativity to change the process. Just consider MEDDIC, which has evolved to MEDDPIC or even MEDDPICC.
As you look at deploying better practices, consider them as guidelines, not as best practices. You need to allow experimentation and innovation, not a locked process that does not adapt to your industry’s evolution.
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