How Marketing and Sales Development Work Together

Let’s face it: work, regardless of what you do, is tough.

Producing day after day, month after month, and quarter after quarter (I could go on, but you get the point), will grind even the strongest amongst us down. This isn’t a criticism of the modern psyche – far from it, in fact.

It’s a realization, one we’ve been coming to collectively for years now, that good mental health is a pillar to good performance. Meeting those quotas, shipping those products – whatever it is you do – is best done from a place of clarity, rest, and, ultimately, happiness.

It’s a big task, to be sure. Saying you should rest, take time for yourself, and maintain a positive outlook are all easy sentiments to share, but much harder to execute when you’re in the trenches.

Mike Radocchia, Marketing and Business Development Lead at Big Health, knows this first hand – that’s why he, and his company, are on a mission to help millions get back to good mental health.

It’s also why he makes sure he gets enough sleep.

“I get between 7 and 8 hours per night,” says Radocchia.

“The National Sleep Foundation actually recommends adults get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep, so I’m getting enough, even if it is on the lower end.”

Mike’s role at Big Health

To help Big Health succeed in its admirable, and ambitious, mental health goal, Radocchia leads the companies growth department, which consists of sales development, marketing, and partnerships.

The intertwined nature of the department, says Radocchia, has been a “great experiment” because it’s helped align the three departments involved, and makes supporting each other in their quest to produce qualified meetings a consistent piece of their daily routines.

“The thinking behind that grouping is to have alignment between functions to extend the role of marketing to the top of the sales funnel and beyond. We’re all working for the same goal – new qualified opportunities,” says Radocchia.

“So, working together helps us get there, and provide support wherever we can, and close deals. It’s been a great experiment because we’re always iterating and learning.”

Big Health’s growth team reports to the company’s Chief Commercial Officer, who also oversees sales and customer success as well. This is an important point to consider – because Radocchia’s growth team reports directly to a C-level executive, it gives sales development a seat at the leadership table.

(Editor’s note: we had an in-depth interview with Lars Nilsson, CEO of renowned Bay Area sales consultancy SalesSource, a while back about getting sales development a seat at the leadership table. You can listen to our chat here, or read about it here).

How Big Health focuses on the right accounts

Big Health, typically, sells to big companies – the Fortune 500, and the like. In the company’s early days, they hadn’t yet solidified their Ideal Customer Profile. They had a couple big companies under their belt, and they knew they wanted more, but that was about it.

Big Health needed to hone in on the right accounts.

“We wanted to make sure we were focusing on the right companies,” says Radocchia.

“So we really went down that path, because everything flows from that point. Everything we do is trying to break into accounts, so we better be sure we’re breaking into the right ones.”

To make sure the Big Health growth teams have a clear picture of the spectrum of accounts, the company has built an intricate grading system of accounts, directly into Salesforce. The grading system is based on a host of different data points – from the roles and titles employed at the company, to its performance in the markets (assuming it is a public company), and whether or not they’ve been recognized for the wellness or mental health efforts in the past.

In total, Big Health assigns it’s accounts between 10 and 15 points, depending on the applicable attributes an account possesses. The higher the point total, the better fit that account is.

Here’s a breakdown of just some of the aspects Big Health considers when evaluating accounts:

Award Winner: 2 to 3 points (whether they have been recognized as a healthy company)
Trade organization: 1 to 3 points (are they a member of a health-focused trade organization)
Works with a partner: 1 to 3 points
Works with a comparable vendor: 2 to 3 points (have they partnered with a vendor for diabetes, or s
Works with competitor: 2 to 3 points
Industry: -1 to 1 point
Stock performance: -2 to 2 points

“How we found this information initially was very manual. I started doing it, then another team member joined, then we had an intern help. The information came from press releases, websites, or our competitor’s websites,” says Radocchia.

“It was not very sophisticated – just good old Googling a lot of the time.”

Constant refinement

After designing a rating system to help them interpret which accounts they should focus on pursuing, Big Health decided to build that method right into Salesforce.

Why not have the CRM they use everyday reflect this critical data?

“I have heard from people in marketing that there is often a ton of time spent on defining these type of workflows, but they aren’t integrated into people’s workflows. So, we really wanted to make sure we made this as part of our workflows, and made sure it was part of our day to day It became part of our system,” says Radocchia.

“Marketing did a lot of the heavy lifting to get this information in there. But, the entire company knows about this. And they know why it is important.”

Once an account is graded by Big Health, it is assigned a grade. Currently, those grades range from A+ to D accounts. The higher the grade, the more attention Big Health put to working those accounts.

For example, if an account has an A+ grade, the company gives its BDRs more time to personalize to the individual. And, they offering higher-value marketing offers. Accounts with lower grades get more traditional outbound – what Radocchia calls outbound “at scale.”

That segmentation is paying dividends for them. According to Radocchia, Big Health is able to get a qualified meeting with 73% of its A+ accounts.

“There is pretty much a linear relationship between the grade on the account, and how likely we are to get a meeting with them. That told us that our account grading is a good indicator if someone is willing to spend time with us,” says Radocchia.

“And, as a result, we spend more time and effort into those accounts”

Micro-events…and the direct mail renaissance

Of course, outbound sales isn’t the only method of outreach Big Health engages in (might as well take full advantage of those skilled marketing and partnerships people, right?). Two particularly effective initiatives Big Health runs are direct mail, and hosting mini-events, educational events for both current clients and prospects.

Big Health’s direct mail program started about 4 years ago, when the company started mailing a copy of Scientific American magazine, with a feature about the importance of sleep, to its prospects.

They started small, with about 100 copies, and made sure not to be too “sales-y,” as Radocchia puts it. It was a simple envelope with a magazine and a handwritten note mentioning how important sleep is.

And, sure enough, they got a response.

Since, Big Health has evolved the direct mail program – they have added more designed marketing collateral, as well as more automated processes like printed labels on the front. But, the handwritten note has remained because forging a human connection is the centerpiece of a project like this.

People love getting stuff in the mail. They just want that stuff to come from other people, says Radocchia.

“We wanted to make sure we are providing something of value, and why this is an important area to consider for companies. Sleep solutions are new, and we’re building the market. So, we need to educate,” says Radocchia.

“We wanted to humanize ourselves. We are passionate about this space, and that was the thinking behind. We’re passionate, and we want to be humans.”

These days, Big Health is sending about 200 direct mail packages out per month, with a killer response rate of between 30% – 40% (a 2x – 3x increase over their typical outbound outreach).

“In one case, our BDR hadn’t called back as yet, but we had a prospect call us and let us know how excited they were to get the mailer,” adds Radocchia.

“Which is awesome, we are banging our heads against the wall to get in touch, and then they call us.”

As for their mini-events, Big Health invites select clients and prospects to dinners across the United States, typically times around industry conferences. At these dinners, they also invite a sleep or wellness expert to facilitate a discussion on the importance of rest.

Again, like their direct email program, these dinners aren’t explicit sales events, but a chance to connect on shared topics, and for peers in the industry to discuss how they implement wellness and health programs.

But that isn’t to say that these dinners don’t have an effect on prospects – they absolutely do. Prospects convert into opportunities 90% of the time after attending one of these events, and, anecdotally, about 50% of those opportunities are more likely to close says Radocchia.

For more Radocchia’s thoughts on sales development, account segmentation, or hosting dinner meetings, check out the rest of his interview on The Predictable Revenue Podcast.