How do you know whether you're doing well as a sales leader? Generally, teams say it's by the bottom line - is the number going up or going down? 

However, this is a lagging indicator of success. To LEAD toward future success, a sales leader needs to track metrics and data that show early signs of future bottom line growth (think open rates, reply rates, # meetings set, rep activity across the board, conversion rates). 

Then, there's the added ability to say WHY numbers go up and down – now that's strategic leadership. Apollo's like your vehicle on the road to your own revenue destiny. As a data-first Sales Engagement Platform, you can track leading and lagging indicators of revenue growth and be able to point to specific data points that ultimately guide you toward your maximum revenue potential.

 Here's a master guide to standardizing your Sales Process.

Phase 1: Complete Basic Setup 

    Link Your Mailbox

   Setup Dialer

     Install Chrome Extension

Phase 2: Auto-Sync Data with your CRM

    Auto-sync Data with your CRM

Phase 3: Setup Your Team & Governance Rulesets: 

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 activities on emails sent to people located in the EU.
     
     

Phase 4: Build Your Go-To-Market Strategy from End-to-End

1. 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.
  
  

2. 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
  
  

Phase 5: Configure Apollo with Custom Statuses & Settings

1. 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
  
  

2. 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
  
  

Phase 6: Automate Custom Workflows Intelligently & Streamline Activities

1. 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.
  
  

Rinse & Repeat: Review Analytics Reports, Build Custom Reports or Dashboards, and Tweak Strategy

1. Use Analytics to create custom reports and dashboards to guide your strategy and enforce sales process

2. 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.
• Also, here's additional guidance for you to manage your Scoring Engine model as you learn what works and doesn’t work for your team with Analytics.

You did it! 

Related: 

Top Ways to Use Apollo

Prospect in Apollo Database

Prospect in LinkedIn

Auto-Sync Data with Your CRM

Email & Call Prospects at Scale

Gmail: Track, Template, Auto-Log and More

Top Ways to Use Apollo