The situation
An inside sales team of six follows up website leads, calls after quotes and approaches old customers. Everyone is busy, but one person calls after a quote in two days, another in two weeks. Leads that do not respond at once disappear. The sales manager sees activity in the CRM but cannot say what a good week looks like.
The approach per building layer
- Building layer 2 · Sales process. Qualifying with fixed criteria, so every lead gets the same questions and the same outcome: continue, park or drop.
- Building layer 3 · Activity matrix. Lead follow-up within one working day, quote follow-up on day 3 and day 10, a re-contact rhythm of five attempts in three weeks, and call blocks in the meeting rhythm.
- Building layer 7 · Steering. KPIs per stage: leads followed up within a day, quotes called back, appointments per call block. With a norm and an owner.
The first 90 days
- Weeks 1 to 3. Capture the qualification questions and agree the outcomes (continue, park, drop) with the team.
- Weeks 4 to 7. Capture lead follow-up, quote follow-up and re-contact rhythm; call blocks in everyone's calendar.
- Weeks 8 to 12. Choose KPIs per stage, discuss the first numbers in the weekly meeting and adjust the norms where they do not hold.
What you have then
An inside sales team where "a good week" is a number, not a feeling. Leads are followed up within a day, quotes are called back on fixed days, and whoever does not respond comes back on the rhythm instead of disappearing. New colleagues onboard on the same agreements.
This is a scenario: a recognizable situation, not an account of a specific customer.