What Is Sales Network Monetization?

Sales Network Monetization™ is a new business growth methodology that focuses your sales team's efforts around growing their own list of in-network prospects using multichannel sales. This business growth methodology uses network-led growth to target your addressable market, get as many prospects inside of your network as possible, then develop 1:1 relationships with them, at scale, for significantly lower costs than any other methodology.

Sales Network Monetization™

Noun (sālz net-wərk mä-nə-tə-zā-shən)

Synonyms

• Network-led growth (NLG)
• Relationship selling
• Social selling
• Go-To-Network Strategy™

Antonyms

• Sales-led growth (SLG)
• Cold calling
• Cold outreach
• Cold email
• Go-To-Market Strategy

How is Sales Network Monetization™ Different than Other Growth Methodologies?

Let's compare several popular business growth methodologies to better understand the differences:

Sales-led growth (SLG)

Often referred to as direct sales, and popularized by the stellar example set by IBM when they implemented SLG to skyrocket to the billion-dollar company they are today, sales-led growth uses brute force methods of contacting an addressable market directly, such as cold calling or cold email, to "generate demand" amongst an audience that had previously no interest in the product or service.

Sales-led growth is often executed by an in-house sales development team (aka "inside sales"), either offshore or onshore, whose primary compensation structure includes a low, barely liveable salary, with uncapped commissions to commensurate based on quota performance.

Given the high fixed costs of each additional inside sales team member, often referred to as "Sales Development Representatives" (SDRs), SLG works best when executed by companies who have products/services that are a higher ticket value and longer contractual commitments.

SDRs generate interest, gather contact information from the prospect, meet the prospect to qualify their ability to buy, and close the deal.

Marketing-led growth (MLG)

The most recent example of stellar marketing-led growth is TikTok as it expanded into the United States, backed by a $1 Billion dollar advertising campaign, primarily delivered through their competitor channels Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

Marketing-led growth is often executed by an in-house marketing team, who is primarily compensated by a high salary with no commission or responsibility to drive sales.

Leads generated from marketing-led growth campaigns are considered marketing-qualified leads (MQL) until a sales development representative can meet with them to further qualify their ability to buy, thereafter known as a sales-qualified lead (SQL).

Given the separation of duties inter-departmentally, with marketing in charge of generating demand and sales in charge of qualifying/closing deals, marketing-led growth will often lead to interdepartmental confusion and finger-pointing if quotas are not hit.

Marketing-led growth is often associated with a very high dropoff rate, also known as a "leaky funnel", given the low barrier to entering the sales pipeline and lack of personal relationship development at the top of funnel.

MLG is considered to be extremely expensive for enterprise-facing products/services and works best when implemented by well-funded companies who have a growth at all costs mentality.

Product-led growth (PLG)

Open AI is the most recent unicorn that benefited from a successful product-led growth campaign.

Product-led growth is often executed by product marketing teams in the software space where free trials can be granted without any human involvement to start the relationship with a prospective customer. Think Salesforce and their free trial for any enterprise looking to sign up.

There are some examples outside of the software industry of companies who sell products using PLG, such as Casper who offers a free 100-days risk-free trial of any new bed purchased, backed by a money-back guarantee.

Leads from product-led growth generally come from happy customer referrals who liked the free version of the product and distributed the news to their followers, which is why it works best when coupled with influencer marketing tactics.

PLG is rarely possible for companies selling services, but there are some exceptions such as Title Boxing and their "First Punch is Free" value proposition.

Product-led growth is often known for having the highest dropoff rate of any business growth methodology since the barrier to entry into a sales funnel is practically zero, and can come with large variable costs when maintaining large databases of free customers.

Since product-led growth takes a passive seat at growing a business, relying more on the customer to refer new customers, it is one of the slowest business growth methodologies to ramp up. Companies in need of rapid, consistent, and immediate growth are not good candidates for product-led growth.

‍

Sales Network Monetization™

Sales Network Monetization™ is executed by sales development representatives, either onshore or offshore, whose primary compensation structure includes a low salary with performance-based commissions or added forms of compensation based on their ability to achieve their primary objective of generating demand.

Unlike sales-led growth, companies using the Sales Network Monetization™ strategy do not attempt to close out-of-network prospects. Rather, sales development representatives attempt to introduce themselves to out-of-network prospects in order to start building the relationship first.

Sales Network Monetization™ involves multichannel outreach to find the proper inbox for each prospect, in an attempt to understand which channel is best for nurturing each individual relationship.

Once a relationship on the preferred channel has been established, sales development representatives rely on intent data, the prospect's Pitchit Score™, and other enriched data gathered from various channels in order to understand when the timing is right to ask the prospect if they're interested in buying their product or service.

Some of the benefits of using a Sales Network Monetization™ strategy is that multichannel outreach leads to significantly higher response rates, better qualified leads entering your sales pipeline, lower costs since it does not require advertising dollars.

All of the above leads to faster ramp times for each sales development representative and a higher probability of quota attainment.