Sales Operations Get Started Guide

As a Sales Operations Specialist with Apollo You Can:

• Standardize and enforce sales process
  • Sales Reps use your best messaging consistently with Templates, Sequences, and Account Playbooks
• Automate repeatable sales processes with custom rules in the Rules Engine
  • Support efficient Sales Rep workflows and automate administrative chores
  • Automatically log emails with the chrome extension
  • Automatically log phone calls with call recordings
• Reps can prioritize activities for top Accounts and Contacts
  • Execute the highest priority tasks to complete at the right time with scoring engine and rules engine
  • Keep your CRM accurate and up-to-date
• Enforce Best Practices across your sales org
  • Increased transparency improves sales process and messaging
  • Catch all previously dropped Opportunities with Transparency into pipeline through Analytics reporting
  • Use science to identify your ICP and Best Messaging to increase win rate
  • Report on your team’s activities in relation to revenue

Getting Started

• Install the Google Chrome Extension and access Apollo across Gmail, Salesforce, and Your Accounts’ Website

• Customize Contact and Account Stages in Apollo to work with your CRM statuses

• Connect your Salesforce or HubSpot CRM and map your contact and account statuses.

• Don't have one of these CRMs? Import your Contacts and Accounts.

• Watch These Tutorial Videos to break the ice with the Apollo App

If You’re Using Apollo Yourself:

• Connect your Mailbox to start sending emails

• Setup Your Dialer and record each sales call

After Connecting Your CRM or Importing Your Records, Follow These Next Steps: 

1. Create Permission Profiles to manage access for different members of your team
• Navigate to Settings > Permission Profiles > Click Add Profile
  Name it something easy to recognize, “Account Executive” / “AEs” - whatever clearly indicates the role intended for this permission profile.
• Also, here are Recommended permission profiles by Role
  
  
2. Add your team members as Users to Apollo
   
   
3. Organize Your Users into teams
   Organize your users by:
   • Geographical location (New York office, San Francisco Office)
   • Role (SDRs, AEs, Sales Operations, Execs)
   • Account Executive / Sales Leader and Assigned BDR team (Jacky, the team lead + AE, and her 3 supporting BDRs, Jack, Janice, and Jaime)
   • etc…
     
     
4. Setup Territories to keep your team members from stepping on each other's toes.
   • You can also use the GDPR features to:
     - Block prospecting in the EU
     - Block emailing those in the EU
     - Or, block tracking activitie on emails sent to people located in the EU.
     
     
5. Setup Targeting to start prospecting
• Create Buyer Personas
  Pro tip: Permissions determine whether or not another user can edit these personas, so you can let your team edit and create personas or not in Settings > Permissions
• Also, ensure your Account Stages are synced and indicate who can and can not be prospected. Ideally, your team would use the Prospect filters to exclude Current Clients and Active Opportunities, as well as any other account that may be the stage Do Not Prospect, like any bad fit company you’ve blacklisted.
  Again, refer to this guide on how to Customize Contact and Account Stages & Recommended Stages to learn some most commonly used stages.
  
  
6. Build Your Messaging
   • Ideally you want to build sequences for specific personas customized to address needs in specific types of companies you want to sell to, so get targeted.
   • For guidance on how to customize messaging, here is a guide on sequence content.
   • And, here is a guide on hyper personalizing emails with custom snippets.
• Create your team’s most used email messaging in templates and sequences to ensure your best messaging is being used by your team.
• Create your first sequence
  
  
7. Setup your Playbook (this may be covered by the above)
   
   
8. Activity Logging
   • Customize Call Dispositions
   • Customize Call Purposes
   • Customize Activity Push Settings to Salesforce
   • Call Add-ons to better train and maximize value for your team
   • Conversation Intelligence for Calls
   • Calling from Local Phone Numbers
• Customize Call Activities
  
  
9. Create custom fields to support your custom workflows / sync significant custom information
   • Create and Map Custom Fields to Salesforce if SFDC is your CRM
   • Use Salesforce Views to Sort Contacts and Accounts
• Salesforce Customizations
  
  
10. Use the Rules Engine to automate workflows and enforce process, creating custom triggers in Apollo
• Here’s a guide on common rules that teams use in Apollo for your inspiration.
  
  
11. Use Analytics to create custom reports and dashboards for your sales team to refer to on a regular basis. Create standard guides for sales leaders to review your sales strategy and enforce sales process across your team of reps. And, create custom dashboards for reps to measure their own success against their quota and prioritize their efforts to the right people and companies. 
    
    
12. Use the Scoring Engine to prioritize your outreach to Contacts and Accounts in Apollo
• You can also follow this guide to create a Scoring Engine model.

And, another guide to help manage your Scoring Engine model as you learn what works and doesn’t work for your team with Analytics.