Sales manager foundations checklist

Master the basics of leading sales teams using Outreach with your foundations checklist. Use your checklist to learn the Outreach workflows you can use to build quality pipeline, improve deal health, boost rep participation, and accurately forecast.

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3 days to complete

Account setup

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  1. Enable baseline settings in Outreach to configure your instance and utilize all Outreach has to offer.

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  2. Set up the Accounts tab to efficiently manage your team’s book of business and identify important insights to effectively monitor pipeline coverage.

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  3. Set up the Opportunities tab to improve visibility into your team’s pipeline and identify potential risk.
      • Deals set to close this quarter
      • Opportunities by rep to monitor rep-specific performance, prepare for 1:1s, and manage projections for the fiscal year
      • Accounts with open opportunities to increase engagement
      • Territory specific to understand the level of conversation reps are having within certain territories
      • Upcoming renewals to be proactive in driving renewal conversations one to two quarters out

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Days 1-90

Prospect and manage accounts

Ensure reps are growing, organizing, and managing their book of business and enable them to build quality pipeline by getting the right message to the right prospect at the right time.

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Prospecting strategy

  1. Increase conversion rates by implementing an account-based sales process and strategy that utilizes content within Outreach so reps can build quality pipeline at scale.

  2. Work with your Outreach Admin to create sequences for your team to drive deeper engagement.

    Consider creating and customizing the following sequences using Outreach Blueprints, which have best practices, tasks, timing intervals, variables (and more!) built in:

    • Nurture sequences for each of your priority personas to develop relationships with buyers
    • High-touch, persona based sequences that address each prospects pain points to deliver operational precision at scale
    • Low-touch, automated sequences for lower priority personas
    • Retention and expansion sequences to quickly onboard new customers, manage detractors, and expand accounts
    • Email reply follow-ups to ensure you follow up on time, every time
    • Meeting follow-up to keep prospects engaged
    • Meet no show to ensure you don’t lose touch with a prospect, even if they miss a meeting
    • Inbound request to respond to a prospect quickly
    • Event sequences to address large volumes of customers and streamline rep workflows

  3. Work with your Outreach Admin to create templates so reps have easy access to accurate, brand-approved emails that they frequently use.

    Consider creating and customizing the following templates using Outreach Blueprints:

    • Meeting recap with action items to keep prospects engaged
    • Meeting reminders to make sure prospects don’t fall through the cracks
    • Templates for your most common objections to proactively address concerns and reinforce value
    • Pricing requests for accurate follow-ups
    • Re-engagement templates to ensure you don’t lose touch with a prospect

  4. Work with your Outreach Admin to create snippets so reps can easily add accurate, brand-approved content into the emails they’re sending.

    Consider creating and customizing the following snippets using Outreach Blueprints:

    • Customer testimonials
    • Value proposition
    • Frequently used resources
    • Features

Account planning

  1. Encourage reps to use Smart Account Plans to build an effective and personalized account strategy and review their Smart Account Plans to understand the strategies they’re using.

  2. Help reps increase target account penetration and generate more pipeline using Account page insights.

      • Sequences: Are there enough prospects actively in sequence within your rep’s account?
      • Emails: Is your rep’s account actively being engaged over email?
      • Status: Do reps have any upcoming Meetings or Tasks? What is the Deal Health Score of the opportunity?
      • Last contact date: Has this account been engaged recently?

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Coach and improve

Enable every rep to sell like your best rep with data-backed coaching and real-time support.

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Deal inspection

See how a sales manager uses Outreach to inspect her team’s deals and coach her team back to success.

  1. Use the Opportunity Deal Grid to inspect your rep’s pipeline and identify at-risk deals.

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  2. Seamlessly conduct deal reviews with reps using the Opportunities Overview for clear and actionable insights you can use to provide reps with effective deal support.

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  3. Boost win rates by reviewing your rep’s Success Plans to ensure they’re aligning with buyers throughout the deal cycle.

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Activity inspection

See how Outreach sales manager Ariana Arcega uses activity reporting to coach her team.

  1. Help reps be more productive and ensure your team executes the right top-of-funnel activities using the Team Activity Report.

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  2. Improve prospecting efficacy and increase pipeline coverage using the Team Performance Report.

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  3. Help reps hit quota by using the Pipeline Generation Report to guide sellers on pipeline generating activities and use reporting insights to track progress and identify where their prospecting activities need improvement.

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Skills development

See how Outreach sales manager Ariana Arcega uses activity reporting to coach her team.

  1. Review Kaia recordings for insight into rep’s performance on calls and meetings and use Smart Kaia Coach to provide reps with feedback at scale.

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  2. Get visibility into what’s trending and where reps are struggling so you can identify where to provide additional support using Kaia Custom Topics and Topics Report.

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  3. Reduce the skill gap between sellers using data-backed insights from the Pipeline Summary to provide targeted coaching.

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Messaging and content

  1. See which activities are generating the most pipeline and revenue so you can focus your reps’ time on the activities that deliver results.

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  2. Improve reply rates by diagnosing and fixing weak sequence copy and measure the impact of content changes to ensure your message is resonating with customers.

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Ramping new reps

  1. Use Kaia to ramp sales reps faster and scale how you enable your team on processes.
60 days to complete

Resources for your first 90 days in Outreach

Use these resources to learn more about how to use Outreach to prospect and manage your accounts.


Strategy articles

  1. Outreach strategy

  2. Sales strategy

University courses and Office hours

  1. Office hours

  2. University courses
Days 1-180

Forecast and plan

Enable every rep to sell like your best rep with data-backed coaching and real-time support.

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See how an Outreach SVP uses Outreach to forecast and plan.

Pipeline inspection

  1. Assess pipeline risk and address gaps with clear insights on how your pipeline has changed over time using the Pipeline Movement Report.

Pipeline management

  1. Identify pipeline risk early and take action to improve coverage and forecast accuracy using analytics from the Pipeline Summary.

Forecasting

  1. Build confidence in your forecasting call by using the Scenario Planner to test how changes to revenue inputs would impact outcomes and identify what actions can influence your team’s quota.

  2. Increase forecast accuracy and reduce meeting prep using the Forecast Rollup.

Annual planning

  1. Use data in the Pipeline Summary to build stronger revenue plans and increase confidence that targets are attainable.

Resources for your first 180 days in Outreach

Use these resources to learn more about how to use Outreach to manage accounts, guide deals, and coach reps.


University courses and Office hours

  1. Office hours

  2. University courses