Category: Sales Education

9 Sales methodologies: How to win buyers and influence sales

Posted on by vishal arora

TurborPower is a pack of fast charging devices from Motorola. You can power up your android smartphone quickly. A sales methodology is the TurboPower behind a sales process. Sales models can help your sales team shorten the sales cycle to win customers and close more deals.

Many individuals or organizations have developed multiple sales methodologies to empower sales reps to execute their plans. Notable names, like David Sandler, gave birth to robust selling approaches that sellers still use today. Discover how you can take advantage of these sales models in this ultimate guide to energize your sales process. 

It’s always a brilliant idea to start with a sales methodology definition to help you grasp the whole concept. Here it is.

What is a sales methodology?

A sales methodology is the practical way to win more customers at each stage of the sales process.  See it as a GPS that shows you how to arrive at your destination on the shortest and fastest route. 

Your salesforce may know all the steps in the sales cycle. But they also need a set of guiding principles or rules on influencing buyers to close. Enter the sales methodology.

Also called sales models, sales methodologies borrow principles from psychology to empower salespeople with a winning formula. However, are they similar to a sales process? No.

Sales methodology vs. sales process

A sales process involves several repeatable steps that your sellers take to make a sale. Typically, the sales cycle includes prospecting, preparation, approach, presentation, handling objections, closing, and follow-up. 

On the other hand, a sales model is the execution plan or strategy or the ‘how-to-guide’ behind the sales process.  These two sales systems work together to help your company improve sales. 

Want to refresh and reboot your memory about how to build a sales process from scratch? You can feast on the ultimate deal on the sales cycle.

Why is a sales methodology critical for your sales teams? 

sales methodology
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sales methodology
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With these thoughts, let’s jump into the nine sales methodologies for your business to explore.  

9 Types of sales methodologies

What are the sales methodologies? There are multiple sales methodologies but we shall zero in on the nine most popular ones.

1. Inbound selling

Inbound selling is a sales methodology that puts the potential customer front and center of the buying process. Instead of hunting for clients through cold emails, reps wait for buyers to make the first move. After interacting with the business via the website, chatbot, downloads, sellers reach out to prospects. 

It’s a marketing technique where your salesforce should understand the customers’ buying behavior from awareness to closing. The knowledge allows the sales representatives to craft the right messages to captivate buyers.  As a result, inbound selling is a data-driven sales approach.

Sellers analyze social media engagements, likes, views, comments, and conversions to personalize messages.

What are the four stages of the inbound sales methodology? Salespeople can use the following ways to persuade prospects to be buyers.

1. Identify-Reps sift through data to look for customers who’ve engaged with your company via sign-ups, social media, live chats, online community groups, etc. These are likely customers who’ve shown interest in your products or service.

2.  Connect-It’s time to initiate conversations with the active buyers through personalized messages. Sellers connect with potential customers around their likes, preferences, and needs. Blogging, holding online events, or commenting on Twitter are examples of connecting with prospects.

3. Explore-Inbound sales reps provide more valuable info on how their products/service can solve the prospect’s pain points. Representatives show buyers why the company’s offer is the perfect fit for their goals. 

4. Advise-Some customers have requested a product demo at this stage. So, reps use convincing sales pitches to win a sale. 

Pros: Inbound selling is less pushy and sales-sy. It’s budget-friendly because sellers focus on interested prospects.

When to use it: It’s effective when you blend it with an inbound marketing strategy, like web-based seminars (webinars), viral videos, etc.

2. SPIN selling

SPIN selling

Neil Rackham is the brainchild of this sales methodology after a 12-year research of 35, 000 sales calls. The behavioral psychologist founded SPIN Selling in 1998. It’s a method that emphasizes asking prospects the right questions to dig deeper into their goals and challenges.

SPIN is an acronym standing for situation, problem, implication, and need-payoff. And the following breakdown shows you what each element means for the seller.

Situation questions: First, the sales representative should understand the customer’s current environment by asking the right questions. Questions could be about the job, business climate, project, etc.

Examples include: How do you currently manage projects? What are your favorite tools? Have you used them for a long time?

Problem questions. You ask these questions to determine how the situation has led to the pain points. They help you uncover opportunities and highlight the product benefits that fix the problem.

You could say, “When working on a project, how well do you maintain communication channels?

Implication questions: You want to rub salt on the wound, as it were. Reps point out possible outcomes if the buyer fails to accept the solution.  What is the result of that problem? What will happen to the prospect if the situation isn’t resolved? How will they be affected?

Need-payoff: At this point, salespeople use need-payoff questions to guide the buyer in discovering the solution benefits themselves.  They could say: “Would X result in significant revenue, profit, or productivity changes?”

Pros: The SPIN Selling approach is handy for sales representatives to learn more about the likely buyer’s primary pain points. They can develop a genuine relationship with clients. It’s also ideal for complex B2B sales.

When to use it:  It’s an effective sales methodology where the customer isn’t aware of their problem and the effect of not fixing it. 

Sales discovery questions can empower your salesforce to uncover the customer’s challenges and desires.

3. The Challenger sales model

challenger sales model
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The sales model comes from the teachings of The Challenger Sale (2011) by Mathew Dixon and Brent Adamson. It’s a selling approach that puts the rep at the center of the buying process by playing the role of a tutor or teacher. They focus on educating the customer about what they’re not aware of or should know. 

The seller should understand the prospect’s industry and pain points as an expert. They set out to teach the potential client how to solve the problems and persuade them to take up the solution. The rep takes control of the situation and challenges the prospects with validated offers.

Also, the sales methodology groups the salesforce into five domains:

Relationship builder:  The seller emphasizes building relationships to win customers.

Hard worker:  They’re self-motivated and keen on personal development. They’ve got a never-give up-attitude. 

Problem solver: They are interested in solving the customer’s challenges by digging deeper into the prospect’s situation.

Lone wolf: As the name suggests, they value independence and prefer solo selling. They can deliver results but are challenging to monitor. 

Challenger: They have high motivation and ooze confidence due to their expert business knowledge. 

Pros: Reps can use the selling method to differentiate their solution from competitors.  With good coaching, anyone can learn to be a Challenger.

When to use it. It’s ideal for businesses that want to be experts or advisors to their customers. Sellers can use the Challenger sales model with prospects who need more practical solutions and advice in B2B selling environments. 

Sales meetings are a great way to train your salespeople to use the Challenger Sales Models.

4. Solution selling

solution selling

Developed by Max Bosworth, Solution Selling follows a straightforward principle. The sales representative should be aware of the prospect’s challenges and then present the company’s products as the solution.  It’s similar to SPIN Selling which seeks to uncover the pain points and then offer a solution.

The sales approach also concentrates on the product benefits and effectiveness in fixing the customer’s problems. Here are some ways reps can use this strategy.

Prepare: You unearth the main pain points that your customer is experiencing in their industry via research before you contact them.

Diagnose: Learn more about the prospect through discovery sales questions. You want to know their exact problems to let you diagnose the root causes. 

Qualify: Find out if the customer is ideal for your solution by asking qualifying questions. 

Educate: Now that you’ve remained with the perfect prospect teach them how your product can benefit them. Use customer testimonials, case studies, and numbers to strengthen your case.

Solve: This stage of the sales model presents insights to the client on how your offer can make them achieve their goals. 

Close: Respond to objections by restating the product benefits as you close. 

Pros: Solution Selling is empathetic because it wants to understand the customer’s problems and then shows why your product is the right solution. It makes the rep less pushy. 

When to use it:  Your company should have a library with case studies and data to help sellers validate their offers. It’s perfect for businesses with customized products and complex B2B sales. 

5. Customer-centric selling

customer centric selling

Mike Bosworth, Gary Walker, Frank Visgatis, and John Holland birthed the Customer-Centric Selling sales methodology. The selling approach makes the buyer the primary focus throughout the sales cycle. Before recommending a solution, reps need to appreciate the prospect’s challenges, context, needs, preferences, questions, and priorities.

You avoid imposing a solution or opinions, but you play the role of a consultant and trusted advisor. Sellers empower the customer with knowledge to make buying easy instead of persuasive and pushy selling.

Here are some things to consider with this sales model.

Customer’s situation

Understand the prospect’s background, their situation, and what they need. Have a conversation around these areas to help provide the customer’s solution. You should adapt your offer to match their experiences.  

Consultancy

The Customer-Centric Selling sales model requires you to be an active and empathetic listener by asking relevant questions.  You want to know the likely buyer’s interests.

Problem-solver

As a trusted advisor for the customer, you should provide a solution to fix the pain points. The offer needs to align with the prospect’s situation.

Decision-makers

The product’s use and how it can solve the potential customer’s present circumstances are the main focus of the customer-centric selling approach. Because of this, you should target the decision-makers and not the end-user with this method.

Product  usage vs. features

Sales reps also need to demonstrate how to improve the prospect’s life. Talking about product features isn’t helpful with this strategy.

Quality vs. quantity

Concentrate on a few customers to apply all your time, resources, and effort to be the best seller. The idea is not to chase quantity because you may fail to be customer-centric. 

The buyer’s timeline

Recall that the selling approach puts the prospect at the center of everything in the sales process. As a result, you ask for a sale at their time and schedule. Your role is to move according to the buyer’s timeline.

Empowerment vs. persuasion

Sell the product’s solution rather than the product itself. It means you say little about how great your product is. But you demonstrate how your offer is the right match for the problem. You become the client’s best advocate.

Pros:  The Customer-centric sales methodology makes the customer central in the buying process. Reps can build robust relationships by offering a solution that their clients want. Also, they can walk away if the customer rejects the offer.

When to use it: It’s perfect for any B2B with complex sales. 

A well-planned sales cadence can help sellers implement the Customer-centric approach successfully. 

6. The Sandler sales method

It’s a sales model named after David Sandler, who developed the selling approach to focus on long-term relationships with customers.  Salespeople zero in on qualifying prospects and build win-win relations with them. Also, reps become trusted advisors who’re more interested in solving their customers’ pain points.  Because of this, they avoid quick fixes and high-pressure selling tactics.

The Sandler sales methodology has several essential elements or steps:

  1. Form a bond and establish rapport 
  2. Identify roles and responsibilities 
  3. Identify the prospects’ needs and concerns 
  4. Determine the prospect’s budget and whether or not they can fix the issue 
  5. Learn how buyers make decisions 
  6. Provide a solution using your product 
  7. Close the deal

To understand the customer’s problems, sales representatives should listen more than talk non-stop. As a result, they can create a solution that suits their prospect.

Pros: Its strength lies in developing mutually beneficial relationships with prospects. Customers feel that they’re part of the solution as they decide to buy. 

When to use it:  It’s suitable for businesses with complex sales processes. You can adapt it for many selling situations.

7. N.E.A.T selling

NEAT

As a sales methodology, N.E.A.T. helps sellers qualify their potential buyers. It shows reps where they should spend their time and resources in the sales cycle to close a sale. The Harris Consulting Group and Sales Hacker Inc. developed the approach to improve the BANT sales system (budget, authority, need & timing).

N.E.A.T. represents:

Need: What is the prospect’s primary need. What is causing the potential customer the most pain? 

Economic impact: How does the prospect’s pain affect their finances? What benefits would they receive from finding a solution? 

Access to authority: Who is responsible for making decisions, and where can the rep find that person? 

Timeline: What is the realistic timeline to complete the deal. If the client wants the product live by a specific date, what is the anticipated timeline?

Pros: You can use it for straightforward and complex sales processes. It empowers salespeople to qualify how much they can assist the customer. 

When to use it: Qualifying prospects requires a process that addresses their concerns and prioritizes solutions based on their needs. 

8. SNAP selling

SNAP

SNAP Selling came out of a book by Jill Konrath entitled ‘SNAP Selling: Speed Up Sales and Win More Business With Today’s Frazzled Customers’. The selling model recognizes that people are busy and overwhelmed with information. Because of this, they’re distracted, confused, and have no time for a lengthy buying process. 

The seller can grab the prospect’s attention and close a sale by keeping things simple and providing essential information. Also, they can speed up the sales process and clinch a deal before the prospect slips through their fingers. 

SNAP is based on four principles:

S-Keeping it simple: Busy buyers appreciate you being straight to the point and supplying only the information they need.

N-Be iNvaluable: As a trusted expert for the customer, show how your product can make their lives better. 

A-Always align: Make your solution relevant by aligning it with the prospect’s goals and needs.

P-Elevate priorities: Clarify to the likely buyer why your offer is the top priority for their challenge. Develop a sense of urgency around your product.

Pros: The Salesperson can understand the customer and their situation. As a result, they can offer the right solution. 

When to use it:  It’s perfect for distracted, busy, and frazzled buyers.

9. MEDDIC sales methodology

MEDDIC Sales model is a strategy for customer qualification in complex sales. It comes in handy in helping sellers determine if it’s worthwhile to pursue specific leads. Parametric Technology Corporation developed the selling approach in the 1990s, and it stands for the following:

Metrics: Can you quantify the impact of the solution?

Economic buyer: Who’s the decision-maker in the company you’re interacting with?

Decision criteria: What requirements does the organization use to choose a vendor?

Decision process: How does the company make the decisions? What are the timelines? 

Identify pain: What are the customer’s problems that your offer can solve? What are the results of not fixing the pain point?

Champion: Who’s the key person in the organization who wants to achieve your goals?

Pros: MEDDIC sales reps can identify the ideal buyer for their products/services. Because of this, they can increase their chances of closing a sale.

When to use it:  The selling approach is perfect for finding the right people in B2B complex selling environments. 

What is the best way to implement a sales methodology? You can use the following six steps to launch your sales methodology.

How to implement your sales methodology in 6 steps

implement sales methodology

Step 1. Align all departments

Each leader in your organization should be clear on their role in the sales methodology you’ll implement. It means departmental heads from product marketing, sales training, customer success, marketing, sales enablement, and field sales reps must get involved and have a specific task. 

For example, someone will create the training materials, measure the results, etc.

Step 2. Obtain buy-in from front-line sales leaders

The salesforce should have confidence in the sales methodology that your company selects. That’s because salespeople are responsible for the plan’s execution. It makes sense to ask for feedback to hear their views about the selling approach.

Sales managers can use data to find gaps in the reps’ skills and then use a particular sales model to improve these weak areas.

Step 3. Develop a plan of action

Not everyone in the company is ready for a change in how they do things. Introducing a ‘new’ selling approach may scare some people or meet resistance. It’s crucial to prepare every staff for adjustment in the sales methodologies.

You can have group or individual meetings with all the primary stakeholders before the rollout of the sales model. Explain why there is a need for adjustments during the sessions.

Step 4: Identify activities for reinforcement

Launching the sales methodology is the first step, but you need to keep the momentum to avoid lapses. One way is for sales managers to activate coaching programs for frontline workers to ensure they get enough support. Sales coaching can also lead to skyrocketing performance.

Step 5: Develop a strategy for enabling sellers and managers

Salespeople and their managers should have training materials and tools to help them use the selling approach. CRM software, sales enablement apps, and training modules can enable employees to be productive.

Step 6: Decide what success looks like

Measuring the results of the sales model is vital. Business owners should decide on the metrics to assess the sales methodology’s effectiveness and ROI. They can consider revenue, but some factors can affect it.

You can use other supportive metrics, such as rep’s retention rate and effectiveness, deal sizes, effect on sales cycle times, etc. It would be helpful to collaborate with the operations to work out the metric’s parameters, the frequency, and the evaluation of the numbers.

Final thoughts

Sales methodologies are the how-to guides behind a sales cycle or the strategies for sellers on h0w to win prospects to close more deals.  Companies are different, so are their needs, situations, and sales models. The best selling approach is one that fits perfectly with what your sales team needs to excel and boost revenue. 

Turn your sales coaching into a high performing machine

Posted on by vishal arora

Are you one of the 75% of businesses that lose a slew of resources due to disorganized and informal coaching strategies – Brainshark.com? You can say goodbye to wasting your time, effort, and money. In this definitive guide, you’ll walk through everything you need to know about sales coaching. Want to up your game? Continue reading.

Let’s kick off with a sales coaching definition, shall we?

What is sales coaching?

According to several sales VIPs and directors who contribute to Quora, sales coaching is important.

[Sales] Coaching is helping someone do something better. 

A [sales] coach is someone who can help you achieve something beyond your imagination. 

And a more comprehensive sales coaching definition comes from Chris Orlob, Director of Sales at Gong.io and Start-up advisor.

sales coaching

Here’s the main takeaway.

Sales coaching involves improving a salesperson’s performance by considering their individual needs and skills. It’s a continuous activity. 

But you may wonder if there’s a difference between sales coaching and sales training.

sales training vs coaching

Sales coaching has many excellent pros. Dig in and enjoy!

Sales coaching benefits

Why is sales coaching important for your sales team? 

Turns moderate reps into five-star performers

Typically, your sales team has three groups of sales people-the high-flying reps (20%), the average group (60%), and the low performers (60%). 

The reps at the bottom can benefit from sales coaching, but the process can drag on. You need to spend your time, effort, and resources on the other SDRs. A practical sales coaching course can sharpen the moderate salespeople’s performance. 

These sales representatives are already motivated and have remarkable results. However, they’re falling behind the champs. As a result, a coaching program is necessary to fine-tune their selling tactics. 

You can turn the three-star reps into masters of selling through sales coaching. Your high-performers also need some polishing. Continuous sales coaching training programs can help them maintain their brilliant sales numbers.

Doubles your revenue

It makes sense to hone the sales force’s selling techniques because there’s a relationship between performance and sales. The more your reps improve their selling art, your company revenue can increase.

You’d want the sales team’s engine to be well-oiled and to fire from all cylinders. A proper sales coaching program can keep everyone on their toes.

A dynamic sales coaching program tends to have a 28% higher win rate than companies without such a program (LinkedIn).

Sales reps who get less than 30 minutes of sales coaching each week have a win rate of 43 percent. But those who get at least 2 hours have a win rate of 56% – Centerforsalesstrategy.com.

Boosts sales productivity

A personalized sales coaching course can inject a massive dose of confidence and motivation into your sales reps. That’s because they can perform tasks with excellence due to good coaching.  

A highly motivated sales force can boost productivity by becoming self-driven and independent. Also, sales coaching provides salespeople with well-defined steps that lead to efficiency and increased output. 

3 Types of sales coaching

sales coaching types

What are the types of sales coaching? There are three approaches to sales coaching you need to know. 

1. Tactical coaching or data-driven sales coaching

How can you initiate conversations with your sellers to highlight wrong behaviors they must change? You can use opinion-based assessments, but they fall short of addressing the root causes of underperformance.

Instead, use data or sales metrics to pinpoint improvement areas for your reps. For example, you may discover that your sales team’s closing rate is low due to weak product demo presentation skills. 

Or the number of scheduled meetings is dropping because of poor discovery call techniques. Once you’ve analyzed the key metrics or data, you can engage your reps to fix the challenges by suggesting specific tactics. 

Want to hone your sellers’ discovery call skills? Dig deeper into discovery questions to land meetings.

How can you go about collecting data to use tactical coaching? Mindtickle.com suggests the following:

Product knowledge

Do your sellers know your product like the back of their hands? Assess and score their knowledge through written tests, quizzes, checklists, multiple-choice questions. Use role-plays to test the reps’ product demo skills. Some enablement tools can help.

Selling behavior

What’s the rep’s tone, enthusiasm, and fluency like on a call or during a presentation? Also, check for the number of filler words they use to assess their confidence in your offer. 

Selling skills

How experienced is your salesforce in using a sales methodology on a product demo, call, dealing with objections, etc.? Sales managers can use real-time data to evaluate the messaging to close more deals.

Message consistency

 How competent are your reps during the selling process? You can use AI tools to assess sales calls and why deals aren’t closing. The metrics can help sales leaders launch tactical coaching to improve questioning techniques.

Technology skills

What is the sales team’s skills level regarding sales tools, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoom, LinkedIn Navigator, etc.?  Evaluate and document your reps’ performance as they use the platforms.

Competitive knowledge

How well do the salespeople understand the competition in their industry? Update them on the latest developments and test their knowledge through quizzes.  

Sales process

What’s the sales representatives’ grasp of your company’s sales process? Do they understand what they must do at each stage? A sales readiness tool can help assess this aspect through virtual role-plays. 

Want to coach your sales team on the sale cycle? The sales process master guide can help you achieve that in no time.

2. Strategic coaching

You also need data to make your sales coaching meaningful for this method. Earlier, I highlighted how you could gather sales numbers to drive conversations. Strategic coaching helps with fixing deal-breakers before they get out of hand. 

Festering deal-breakers can kill your sales. Here are some examples.

Non-responsive prospects

With many tech gadgets and online platforms, customers are becoming less responsive in today’s world. You can coach your reps on how to increase the reply rate through short videos in emails. Tools like Vidyard, Loom, etc., can be helpful in video prospecting.

Closing deals

Sales reps agree that closing deals are one of the biggest challenges. Declining win rates indicate that your representatives need strategic coaching on closing. Examples of fast closures include the ‘now’ or ‘never’ close, the ‘summary’ close, the ‘assumptive’ close, the ‘soft’ close, and the ‘question’ close. 

The now and never closing deal creates a sense of urgency to show that your product offer or price package is available for a limited time. You can also coach reps to highlight the product benefits through a summary close before asking for a sale.

The assumptive close involves acting as if the buyer has already decided to buy. Teach the salesforce to frame the right questions, such as “when would you start subscribing to XYZ?”

Sales managers can also equip their sellers with the soft close strategy. It involves asking low-level questions to get more information from the prospect. You may say, “Would you like to know more about this coaching course if it decreased turnover by 75% and increased productivity by the same percentage?”

The question close tactic aims to arouse interest in the potential customer for your product/service. It lets you resolve concerns or objections your buyer may have when you’re about to close the sale. An example could be: “Would you say this solution would resolve your challenge?”

3. Personal coaching

As the name suggests, this kind of coaching focuses on the sales representatives themselves. That’s because they’re primarily responsible for breaking or making sales. As a result, it makes more sense to deal with them one-on-one.

The coaching strategy is ideal for reps whose performance is going off the rails. You want them to reset to factory settings, as it were. Retool and reboot. 

But you need to find out what motivates them first to uncover the real causes. You could ask the following questions.

Source

Answers to the questions can reveal where each rep is struggling and what specific assistance they need from personal coaching.

Want to up your game in coaching your salesforce? Continue reading to learn more.

Top 5 sales coaching tips

sales coaching tips

How can you make your sales coaching successful?

1. Embrace a personalized approach

We talked about personal coaching earlier, and we’re now adding more meat. Remember that coaching emphasizes making salespeople do things much better.

Also, reps have different skills, aptitudes, motivation levels, personalities, and needs.  Because of this, it’d be self-defeating to apply the one-size-fits-all approach in coaching. 

Instead, a sales coaching program or session tailored for each rep has more benefits than a mass-kind of coaching.  You can understand each person’s strengths and weaknesses through individual sales coaching.

Before you begin coaching, have informal meetings with each sales rep to know who they are, their skills, and how they sell. You could also promote personal development by recommending podcasts, webinars, or books. 

2.  Consider the health of your team

The well-being of your team may seem an insignificant matter. But a study involving 200 participants shows that out of five reps, two have mental health challenges (Builtin.chttps://builtin.com/sales/sales-mental-health-strategiesom). As a result, it can affect performance.

Sales managers would do well to check in with their staff about their emotional well-being. Open-ended and straightforward questions can help you uncover underlying challenges. You can use your weekly one-on-one meetings where sales reps can freely share their concerns.

An example of a question could be something like, ‘what are your feelings about your workload?’ It can encourage sharing and discussions. 

3. Promote self-assessment

Sales coaching can be more effective if you encourage each salesperson to evaluate themselves. You can ask leading questions to guide reps to rate their work. 

Questions like ‘What challenges did you face last quarter?’ and ‘What can you learn from your wins and losses about how to interact with clients in the future?’ are perfect for self-evaluation. 

4. Ask sellers to create an action plan

Coaching is different from sales training because it’s less direct and not a one-person show. As a result, giving your salesforce independence in setting their goals can lead to a successful coaching program. It promotes buy-in from your team.

After each sales team member has set their targets, request them to develop an action plan. It shows how they intend to achieve their outcomes within a specific period. 

For example, an objective could be: ‘to make 40 calls per month.’ Suggested steps to meet the goal can range from identifying ideal customers to scheduling discovery calls with the prospects. A CRM tool can help the sellers visualize the action plan with this process.

To make reps accountable, you can ask them direct questions about progress concerning the sales plan. Or you can see the sales reps’ activities on the CRM platform and use the data for the sales coaching sessions.

5.  Take one step at a time

One of the things to avoid in sales coaching is chasing too many sales tactics at one time or dishing out excessive info.  It can lead to burnout. Instead, narrow your focus by concentrating on a few strategies one a time.

Say you observe that your sales reps have challenges with cold calling or product demos. You can develop sales scripts and coach the salesforce on perfecting the art in groups, role-plays, or one-on-one sales coaching. Focus on this skill until they master it.

Now let’s dive into the characteristics of an effective sales coaching program.

Sales coaching best practices

sales coaching best practices

Selling strategies

We dug deeper into varied selling strategies. However, companies are different, so are the selling approaches. For your sales coaching/training program to be unique and relevant to your salespeople, it must align with your specific techniques in your industry.

Products / services

The chances are that your sellers have some knowledge about your products/ services. Your coaching should zero in on demonstrating how the team can successfully sell your solution. It needs to educate the salesforce on the critical product features and benefits or aspects that make you stand out from the crowd.

Specific sales barriers

Every sales process encounters objections or setbacks, such as time. It’d be best to deal with the obstacles in the sales coaching course to empower reps with the proper solutions. They become prepared to clear the roadblocks.

Coach’s commitment

Who is the best sales coach for your reps? A committed sales coach who wants to see your reps succeed is a perfect choice. Recall that coaching is an ongoing process, so you need someone prepared to be with the team for the long haul.

Experience also counts. “Sales coaching should definitely be provided by someone with sales experience, and it’d involve a combination of Coaching & Mentoring,” says a contributor on Quora. 

Sales coaching plan templates

How can you launch your sales coaching plan?  Check out the following examples.

1. Sample templates

2. Hubspot

3. Going.io

Wrapping up

Sales coaching is a vital exercise for your salesforce. Companies with a well-defined sales coaching training program can raise their revenue by 8.4% annually. The increase is 95% more than businesses without a sales coaching plan (Aberdeen Research).  

Fast-track your sales strategy to crush sales with these 4 tips

Posted on by vishal arora

What would you do if you could stumble on a sales strategy that can rock your sales exponentially? I believe you’d waste no time grabbing the opportunity to use the sales plan to crush your revenue. You’ll discover a super easy sales strategy with a few sales metrics to boost your sales with little effort in this master guide. Read on to learn more about how your business can turn things around to maximize profits.

What is a sales strategy?

Before we can explore the definition, check out what the following three people have to say about a sales strategy.

1. @BowTiedFellow.btc

“At the recommendation of @BowTiedBull, I started a remote job in SaaS sales back in October. Within three months, I am already a top performer and well on track for moving up.

Aside from @BowTiedSalesGuy, how did I do it? By incorporating sales strategy from best in the game.”

How to sell effectively
Source

2. ???Δ?????.???

@thetitanborn

“Another thing @DecentarLabs has done is add a list of celebrities they hope to bring to the project.

This is a very smart sales strategy called “stacking.”

You attract attention, then build value.

Keep adding on top of that, and the audience comes.

Master this strategy!”

3.  IFundWomen

start up tip
Source

Did you notice that each individual or organization has a sales strategy to increase revenue? BowTiedFellow.btc. became a top sales performer due to a proven and tested sales approach. And Titanborn talks of stacking as a sales method for DecentarLabs. 

IFundWomen understands sales strategy as providing value to your existing and potential customers. 

These three examples show that every business or salesperson should have a specific method to crush sales. What is a sales strategy, then? 

Source

Every business must have a clear plan to boost revenue and profits. Your sales approach shows how you can attract, retain, and provide value to your customers. 

Some people also talk about a marketing strategy. Is it the same as a sales strategy?

A marketing strategy involves your entire marketing activities about your product/service and helps you stay ahead of your rivals. The marketing mix includes the 7Ps (price, product, promotion, place, physical proof, process, and people).

A sales approach is a specific plan to increase sales by winning, retaining, and building customer relationships.

You may also want to know the meaning of a B2B sales strategy. It’s finding effective ways of increasing sales from business to business.

In this guide, we’ll dig into several sales strategies to rock your sales with less time. But, do you need a sales strategy?

Why is a sales strategy important?

It’s a blueprint for sales success

“The sales strategy is a blueprint for success in developing sales,” says HBS. Think of someone who wants to sprint 100 meters. They need two things to achieve their goal; speed and direction. 

Similarly, your business needs a sales plan to channel everyone’s efforts towards one goal: hitting the numbers. Every employee will know the company’s direction and how it wants to get there.

Without a sales strategy, your business can’t grow. And HBS says, “not all roads lead to success.”

Fixes falling sales

A sales strategy is necessary to deal with declining revenue. Sluggish sales show that your business needs a reboot. 

Creates a unified purpose

A sales plan can synchronize your sales teams’ activities to have one objective. Research says, “Companies with aligned sales and marketing teams generated 208% more revenue from marketing,” says Leadg2.

Realizes the start-up’s goals

A sales strategy enables the founder(s) or investors to achieve their dreams of financial success. 

Facilitates new product launches

A sales approach is essential when you introduce new products.  Recent stats favor companies that launch products in line with consumers’ needs. 

Financeonline says, “56% of consumers prefer to buy from companies that consistently release new products and services based on their needs and new technology.”

Makes your business competitive

A sales strategy is a must to provide products/services that are better than your competitors.

Breaks into new markets

Your company can’t break into new markets without a sales strategy. Whether you want to expand into global markets or change from a solopreneur to a corporation, you need a sales strategy.

A sales plan should be a response to the challenges your business experiences. Continue reading to discover how you can boost your sales.

4 Super Easy Sales Strategy Tips To Rock Your Sales

Simon Severino is the Founder & CEO of Strategy Sprints. He has over 18 years of experience coaching entrepreneurs to crush sales with three simple sales strategies. Simon outlines the principles on “How to Double Your Sales in 90 Days or Less” in the Smallstarter Business Podcast hosted by John-Paul Iwuoha. 

A sales strategy is a sprint, not a marathon. It means that you should have small, daily activities, plans, or changes to boost your sales. Strategy Sprints is about performing a few crucial tasks one at a time, systemically. 

Doing too many things or chasing countless sales metrics or goals can limit your success. That’s why many companies or sales reps fail to achieve their quota. So, how do you launch sales sprints to double your sales in a short time?

Here’s the thing.

1. Create a workflow of your daily schedule

One observation by Strategy Sprints is that many business owners are in the weeds.  Too much work but zero sales results. These entrepreneurs work in the business rather than working on the company most of the time. 

Are you knee-deep into delivering projects, products, or services? You’re working in the business because your plate is full of too many things.  As a result, you lack time to focus on what matters-improving your primary KPIs and systems.

To get out of the weeds, you should list all your daily activities to create a schedule. They may include cold emails, scheduled meetings, spending time with family or friends, going to the gym, etc. 

Next, ask yourself this question: of all the things you did today, which tasks can you delegate or give up to free up more time? 

If you pack your daily schedule with too many non-essential activities, you won’t have time to hone your sales strategy. Your business is taking too much from you, and you’ve become your bottleneck in sales growth. 

Now you are left with the few critical tasks on your daily plan that helps you improve sales, marketing, and operational systems and numbers. Use the form below to diagnose your challenges and build a workflow.

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You can use an app to create a daily schedule for your tasks.

2. Increase the frequency of your sales by 25%

Frequency refers to the length of time it takes your potential customers to move from awareness to closing. Every prospect is a potential customer. For example, if you’re at the top of the funnel, aim at raising your leads by 25%. That’s because you need to overfill your sales pipeline with qualified prospects to have enough scheduled meetings or product demos.

 Here are practical ways to qualify prospects.

prospect qualification
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Let’s say you were successful in winning a sale. Use upselling to increase your revenue by encouraging your existing customer to buy other pricey products. 

Check out the following upselling tactics.

Offer your customers a discount: Reduced prices can motivate your buyers to upgrade or subscribe to a premium service, purchase more of your products, etc. 

Make your offer urgent: It can persuade customers to buy when you create a sense of urgency. For example, you can have a special offer on events, such as Black Friday, Easter, X-mass, and so on. 

Offer the right upsell: You can request your buyers to upgrade to the latest version of your product/service. Or ask customers to protect their product by extending a warranty. Another option is letting them customize the offer at a price.

Continue upselling: Your website should have upsells at the right places. Examples include product and checkout pages. Also, consider upselling when your clients achieve a specific milestone. 

It would also help to have a systematic and automated system for upselling. A CRM platform can help you with this process. 

3.  Increase the conversion rate by 25%

The conversion rate is a significant metric because it tells you how successfully you convert leads into buyers. Say a specific group of people are ready to buy. How many should you close? According to Strategy Sprints, you should aim to win 25% of the potential customers.

Your company can use the following sales techniques to raise the conversation rate.

Obtain the right leads and not leeches: These are people that your marketing department has identified as the right fit via marketing campaigns, surveys, customer feedback, etc.

Blend your offer with the guaranteed result: People want to see that your product can solve their pain points. Take this example by Strategy Sprints: “Double Your Sales in 90 Days or Less.” It’s the signature coaching program for the business and looks like an irresistible offer.  The company also says you can receive your money back if you fail to hit sales during that time.

Use video: Videos are so powerful that they can boost your conversion rate. A well-created video on your landing page or website can help connect with your business.

Strong CTAs: A call to action nudges the prospective customer to perform specific actions. You can place killer CTAs at strategic places in your content. See an example by HubSpot.

Hubspot CTA
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How many CTAs did you notice? One is immediately below the headline, another in the center, and yet another asking for your name. As a reader, you can’t help but end up clicking one of the CTAs.

4. Increase the price by 25%

The last sales strategy applies to a SaaS company. For this sales approach, you raise the price with every new user of your product by 5%. You continue increasing the cost until half of your clients say no. You’ve found the maximum price you can charge your buyers when this happens.

You may wonder what the logic behind this sales strategy is. Strategy Sprints explains that you need to lose half of the customers who’re not prepared to buy from you. It’s pointless to obtain high revenue from hundreds of subscribers without making reasonable profits.

Raising the price enables you to remain with the ideal buyer. However, you should have a solid case to support your price increments. That’s because the higher the product/service cost, the more persuasive you should be. 

Here are some sales tactics you can use to validate your offer.

  • Create authoritative content on a specific niche or industry to educate your potential customers about your products
  • Include social proof on your website, such as testimonials, proven product results, etc.

Here’s an excellent example of a landing page with testimonials.

strategy sprints
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You might have realized that Strategy Sprints has convincing testimonials from business CEOs/Founders.  The company focuses on the primary decision-makers-the company directors. And when other CEOs see these case studies, they become persuaded to try Strategy Sprints.

In the same way, you can ask for feedback from people who’re happy about your service or product.  It instills a sense of trust and credibility about your offer. Because of this, you can price your products confidently to inject substantial cash flow into your business.

Final Thoughts

A sales strategy is a sales plan to win qualified prospects and retain and develop relationships for more upselling opportunities. We zeroed in on a sales approach to boost revenue by adopting sprints in four elements. The most critical numbers are increasing the frequency of sales by 25%, the conversion rate by 25%, and the price by the same percentage

These key sales metrics can lead to skyrocketing sales if you implement the suggested sales tactics. As a sales manager or company director, you need to spend more time working on the business for the sales strategy to bear results. 

How to build a failure-proof sales funnel to win customers

Posted on by vishal arora

You’ve heard about the marketing funnel, ads funnel, sales funnel, and many more funnels.  Do these funnels still work to boost your sales? Or they’re dead. Is there a new sales system to help you scale up your business? In this master guide, you’ll get all the answers about the sales funnel, why it’s vital for your business, and how you can build a robust sales process. 

Let’s dive into the sales funnel definition to help you appreciate what this sales system is all about.

What is a sales funnel?

A sales funnel is a customer’s journey to purchase your products or service. 

You can also think about the sales funnel as a way to turn a curious buyer into a returning customer.  It walks the customer through a series of steps to build the know, like, and trust factor until they decide to buy your product, program, or course. 

That’s a mouthful, and it may seem like a super overwhelming exercise. But it’s fun and simple. 

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Is the sales funnel relevant in the sales cycle?

Read the following life-changing story to discover if the sales funnel can help your business boost revenue.

Lyfe Marketing

Is the sales funnel necessary? Yes. The online course provider had a sales funnel that guided Sherman in clear steps until he became a client.

Kara Cahill is an Instagram Sales Specialist and Online Marketing Strategist. In her podcast ‘The Virtual Visionary Podcast’-How to convert your audience with a sales funnel-she says a sales funnel guides your customers strategically and adds clarity to a buyer’s journey.

 It’d have been impossible to convert Sherman into a buyer without a clear sales funnel. And Sherman ended up talking about the company on his YouTube channel because he liked its service. He was now an advocate of the online course. 

Wondering how you can build and make your sales funnel rock? Dig in and enjoy!

Your business is interested in one primary thing: sales. And yet some companies don’t have a clearly defined process to double revenue due to lack of a sales funnel. Those companies with a well-planned sales system can increase their income.

 One study says businesses with a well-defined buying process are 62% more likely to have a good sale (via Khrisdigital.com). 

sales funnel definition

Why are sales funnels important?

Leads customers through clear steps

Remember you want sales. And to obtain high revenue and reasonable profits, you need to direct your potential buyers to perform specific actions.

A sales funnel can channel your customers through a sequence of steps in a specific order.  It guides your new leads. Likely buyers can be confused and overwhelmed when you leave them on their own.

Builds the know, like, and trust factor

Today’s customers are tech-savvy and tend to value relationships more than the products they buy. Because of this, trust is a significant factor in sales.  A sales funnel comes in handy in building trust when you provide resources to improve their lives.

Provides customer insights

A sales funnel reveals some insights about your customers as you study their buying behavior during the sales process. You get to understand their actions and thoughts at each stage of their journey.  As a result, you can personalize messages and use proper marketing channels to engage them.

Now that you’re clear on the importance of a sales funnel, let’s dig more into the stages.

What are the sales funnel stages?

So, it’s called a sales funnel. Why? Because it stole its shape from a funnel-wide at the top and narrow at the bottom.

What’s the logic? The sales funnel is broad at the top because of the higher number of people initially interested in your product/service. But as you move down the sales funnel, the numbers get smaller and smaller. 

That’s why the middle of the funnel is narrow. Not everyone you encourage to enter the sales process will buy your product/service. The fewer closures than the number of interested prospects lead to a thinner funnel bottom.

With this in mind, your sales funnel may look like this.

sales funnel stages
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These are the five stages of your sales funnel.

1. Awareness

Your sales funnel is based on the assumption that people aren’t aware of your specific offering. For instance, an individual who needs dark chocolate might not know that the local grocery store supplies his/her favorite brand.

You can look for this person and many others by raising awareness about your product, company, and more. And you can do this at the top of the sales funnel (ToFu) through:

  • Content marketing, blogging about your products & their benefits
  • Online ads
  • Social media campaigns
  • SEO and local SEO, e.g., Google My Business

2. Interest

Always remember that people have plenty of things that compete for their attention. As a chocolate supplier, you need to captivate your audience about your products. You could:

  • Share historical facts, inspiring stories, or anything unique that improves customers’ lives.
  • Create YouTube videos showing customers how to use your product
  • Emphasize products benefits to help buyers solve their pain points

3. Consideration

It may take time for customers to consider your business. As a result, you need to continue interacting with them. You can use the ideas below to strengthen your case at the middle of the sales funnel (MoFu).

  • Invite them to webinars
  • Share testimonials and case studies from your top customers

4. Decision

You’re now at the bottom of the sales funnel (BoFu). It’s narrower because many people who appeared interested in your chocolates have left the sales process. You remain with a few potential customers whom you can persuade by offering:

  • Customer discounts
  • Free trials if it’s subscription-based
  • Demos if applicable to your product

5. Purchase/advocacy/follow-up

You’ve people who’ve bought your product/service at this stage.  And it’s not the end of the story because you should continue engaging with them. It’ll help you sell more products through upselling or customer referrals. 

You can:

  • Thank them for buying from your business via an automated email campaign
  • Create consistent newsletters
  • Offer excellent customer service, for example, responding to complaints & queries pronto
  • Devise reward-based and engaging challenges
  • Offer customer loyalty programs

Of course, the sales process looks linear when you look at the sale funnel. It suggests that all customers are the same, so they’ll start at the awareness stage. The sales funnel ignores that some customers may right away buy your chocolate without the need for many touchpoints.

But the sales funnel remains a valuable tool to map out your buying process. Some sales experts suggest looking at the same thing via a flywheel. 

Funnel vs Flywheel
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One similarity between the two sales systems is that they’re tools for converting leads into buyers. However, the sales funnel tries to push the customer down the channel. As a result, your business does most of the work in the process.

On the other hand, the flywheel puts the client at the center of the marketing activities. You zero in your efforts on making the customer satisfied and happy. It’s more relationship-based and leaves the buyer to decide without pressure.

But our focus in this guide is on the sales funnel. Let’s dive into some sales funnel examples to give you brilliant ideas from the real world.

Sales funnel templates

You can use a sales funnel to channel prospects into buying customers. But how do sales funnels work? The following templates will inspire your business to build its successful sales funnel.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is one of the most go-to companies for email marketing service and marketing automation.  Businesses of all sizes can build and run marketing campaigns and manage email lists.

The company markets itself as a freemium email marketing platform. And that’s why it has over 11 million active users. 

Mailchimp Sales Funnel

Its homepage functions as the first stage of the sales funnel. And there’s a clear message packed with potent benefits: “Get down to business and grow sales.”

And there’s a sign-up button and a link to compare plans. They’re not wasting time because the CTA is concise and specific. 

Mailchimp creates awareness through blogging, word of mouth and obtains traffic via emails and content creation.

The pricing page shows you different subscription plans with their benefits. And the company also offers a complimentary program with multi-channel tools that you can use indefinitely. It’s an irresistible offer.

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Mailchimp knows you’ll be an advocate for its free service. 

Leadpages

It’s one of the leading companies that help businesses build landing pages for their sales funnels. Leadpages has over 40 000 active users.

Leadpages sales funnel

Leadpages’ homepage displays the product tutorial, giving you an instant idea of how it can benefit your business. Additionally, it offers an enticing free trial offer.

Leadpages has a powerful message on the homepage: “Turn Clicks into Customers.” Like most companies, the free trials help Leadpages in generating leads. Its homepage also highlights its value proposition – ‘Turn Clicks into Customers.’

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The company creates content on its blog to make potential customers aware of its products. It’s the first step of the sales funnel. 

Its pricing page provides you with two price ranges, including monthly and yearly subscriptions. You’ve got a standard and a pro payment plan.

Here are the takeaways:

  • Mailchimp and Leadpages have sales funnels but use them differently. 
  • Leadpages has a video to educate potential customers on its homepage. Also, it relies on free trial offers to generate leads. 
  • Mailchimp offers an endless free trial that helps attract more users through word-of-mouth. The homepage has a link to payment plans.

From these two sale funnel examples, you can use the below strategies to build a sales funnel to increase sales.

How to create a sales funnel to double sales?

Consider your customers’ journey

Understanding your customers’ buying process is the first step in building a failure-proof sales funnel. Are they interested in your product/service? What possible objections do the prospects have? How much time does it take for your likely buyers to overcome those obstacles? 

You can use regular-pulse surveys to learn more about your potential customers. The feedback helps you understand what’s going on in your customer’s mind at every stage of the sales funnel. 

Mapping

Your sales funnel leads your potential customers through specific steps until they purchase your products/service.  Because of this, you need a tool to map out every step of your sales process.

You can use a pen and paper. But you’re better off with a tech tool, like Funnelytics.  The software lets you map out landing pages, emails, sales pages, ads, upsells, and more. 

Create landing pages

You’ve got a website. But do you need a landing page for your sales funnel? A big Yes. A website is for showcasing your brand on the homepage. The homepage helps the browser navigate your site and explore many offers. 

Its traffic has many sources. As a result, it may not be effective for your sales funnel. However, a landing page is a separate web page with no navigation. 

Your landing page has one clear goal – to encourage potential buyers to perform a specific set of tasks that could eventually lead to a sale. And ads are the source of traffic for your landing page. 

Landing pages are essential for your sales funnel because they have concise and specific CTAs.  See an example below.

Lyft add
Via HubSpot

Lyft’s effective landing page has the following vital features:

  • A headline that grabs attention “Make up to $35/hr. Driving Your Car”
  • Crisp and concise CTAs like “Apply Now” and “BECOME A DRIVER” are featured at the bottom
  • Opt-in form
  • Promised value-you can calculate how much you can make before you apply

You can add a thank you page and an anti-spam policy for your landing pages. And you can use some platforms to build them, such as ClickFunnel, Leadpages, and many more.

And research says businesses “that create 30 or more landing pages get 7 times more leads than those that use fewer than 10,” via Khrisdigital.com.

When creating your landing pages, focus on improving pricing, case study, tutorials, features, and comparison pages.

Create content

‘It is often said that ‘Content is King’. Targeted content is the key to moving potential clients down the sales funnel. You can publicize your content on various channels like social media campaigns, blogs, landing pages, webinars, emails, videos, podcasts, ads, Facebook posts, etc. 

“95% of buyers choose a vendor who provides them with sufficient content which helps them navigate each stage of the buying process,” says Khrisdigital.com.

Generate traffic

You need to generate lots of traffic to get in front of the right people. Digital advertising, social media campaigns, SEO, and email marketing can build your traffic.  

Upsell

Sumo.com says upselling can lead to a skyrocketing revenue of 10-30% on average. You can persuade existing customers to purchase other products as they check out. It triples your top-line sales and bottom-line profits. You can do this through a free trial, a discounted price, or a product demo. 

Keep the communications lines open

Once you make a sale, you should continue regular interactions in the form of product/service feedback or updates. It helps with customer retention and facilitates cross-selling.

Some leads may take longer to close than others. They require constant engagement via follow-up calls and drip campaigns.

Here are key points to remember about your sales funnel. 

  • The higher people are in your sales funnel, the less likely they’ll buy from you. 
  • The lower people are in your sales funnel, the more likely they’ll purchase from you. 
  • That’s why the sales funnel is wider at the top and narrow at the bottom. 
  • It means a small percentage of people who enter your sales funnel will end up buying your product or service. 
  • The more people you’ve inside the sales funnel, the more likely you’ll convert customers.  Hence it would be helpful to have a few additional prospects in your kitty to maintain a complete sales funnel at all times.

Use the following additional list-building activities to rock your sales funnel.

Newsletter opt-in inbox: Your website needs to have an opt-in box to collect people’s addresses and names. It allows you to send them newsletters.

Nudge them to sign up by offering them a reason to do so. Use a checklist, tip sheets, audio download, or a free report.

Consider audio & video production: Use a short video to welcome customers to your website. Podcasts can also be powerful.

Offer an affiliate program: You can encourage your clients to spread the word about your products/service or even sell them at a commission. 

The last crucial point about sales funnels is that they’re different in execution. Your sales funnel methods may not be the same as other companies. That’s because building a sales funnel depends on:

Business type

The businesses type affects how you customize the specific steps to move people down the sales funnel. As a result, you may have a sales funnel for e-commerce, professional services, and brick & mortar businesses.

Pricing

Typically, the more expensive your products are, the fewer steps you need to convince people to buy your products. And the higher the price of your products, the more value you should create to persuade people to purchase them. 

The value can be in terms of high-quality or high-quantity. You need to decide on the appropriate value to motivate potential customers to do business with you. 

The sales cycle

Your sales cycle and average lead conversion time greatly influence your sales funnel. Simplify the process by ideating a prompt lead engagement system that shortens your sales cycle. Provide concise and precise content to accelerate your lead to deal conversion time.

Your sales funnel is up and running. But you should measure its results to see if you’re hitting your revenue targets.

How to measure your sales funnel results?

You can track the progress of your sales funnel by measuring the conversion rate. It calculates the percentage of leads that you’ve converted into customers. 

sales funnel conversion rate
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Your conversion rate could be for email sign-ups or subscriptions, downloads, an event registration, such as a webinar, or any desired goal. 

Why is the conversion rate critical? It helps you develop strategies to convert your prospects into customers. For example, you can boost your conversion rate with the following sales techniques:

  • Create an easy buying process by removing bottlenecks from your payment procedure
  • Develop an onboarding system to follow up on your buyers via emails
  • Ask for customer feedback
  • Engage with customers on social media to build relationships
  • Ask for referrals from satisfied customers

Wrapping Up

A sales funnel is a predictable system to increase your sales. Without a well-defined sales process, you lack a clear and strategic way to grow and scale your business. Maintaining a steady inflow of leads in your pipeline increases your odds of success. Your sales funnel isn’t static. You need to tweak it periodically and measure its efficacy.

How to build a sales pipeline in 2022

Posted on by vishal arora

If you are a seasoned sales rep, you would understand the significance of the sales pipeline. A Sales Pipeline is a visual representation of the activities which help a salesperson convert a prospect into a customer. A well-envisioned sales pipeline can act as your North Star in an otherwise dynamic business environment. To learn more about the importance of a sales pipeline, check out our comprehensive blog on  The Sales Pipeline Master Guide. This article will focus solely on the actionable insights for building your sales pipeline in 2022.

Before we dive deep into the technicalities, enjoy this hilarious yet motivating video by Social Sales Evangelist, Tom Boston from SalesLoft and recover from your holiday hangover!

Building your sales pipeline in 2022

So you had a great time over Christmas and New Year,  made your resolutions, and are back at work. It’s time to re-evaluate your pipeline and set your targets for a brand new year. Are you looking at an empty pipeline because you exhausted your opportunities last year? Could you have done something to avoid this? Go through the below checklist before you learn the fundamentals of building your sales pipeline in 2022.

Pre-holiday season prep for sales pipeline

Unlike your colleagues from other departments, being in sales does not offer you the luxury of enjoying the relaxed working hours of the holiday season. To ensure you start strong in the new year, you can try out the following steps.

  • Build up next year’s sales pipeline with the leads who have promised you a sale or pushed discussions until next year. These contacts are quite likely to sign up in the new year.
  • Many companies plan the following year’s budgets at year-end meetings. A quick check-in with your prospects before the holidays may help you lock in a few sales in the new year. 
  • Start your territory planning for next year. Once you make a list of the target accounts in your assigned territory, you will need to spend time in lead qualification. Completing this time-consuming process before the year starts will help accelerate your pipeline next year.
  • Review your closed deals from the year and also examine the differences between opportunities won and lost. This will help you conceptualize your ideal customer and you can follow this pattern when you target leads next year.

6 Steps to build a successful sales pipeline

steps to build sales pipeline

It helps to know what you could have done last year to enjoy a comfortable first quarter in the new year. However, since we have crossed that bridge, let’s talk about what you can do this year to secure a stellar sales pipeline.

1. Target research

To build an ideal pipeline, you need to conduct an extensive target market analysis. 

  • Figure out your potential customer demographic – their age, gender, education, job description, income,  location, etc.
  • Make sure you procure accurate and updated contact information. This list is your Bible, it will save you a lot of dead-end Google searches and cold calls. Hence, you can not underestimate the value of an efficient database provider.
  • Study your target market’s buying behavior. This information can be obtained by conducting customer pulse surveys or reaching out to companies that offer such services.
  • Run a competitive analysis. Know your competitors,  and their strengths and weaknesses. It will help you determine your USPs.
  • Finally, keep your assigned revenue targets in mind while collating this list.

2. Review your sales pipeline

  • Go back to your 2021 sales pipeline and measure the conversion rate per stage.  For instance, your opportunities in the negotiation stage might have a 70% chance of closing and those in the proposal stage might have a 40% chance for the same. This gives you the ideal customer profile to focus on from your sales pipeline for 2022.
  • If you have already prepared your pipeline for 2022 before wrapping up for the holidays, it is crucial to review it carefully at the start of the new year. It is possible that customer priorities or even territories may have changed in the new year. So revisit your plan and customize it accordingly.

3. Refresh your prospect’s memory

Don’t jump straight into the ‘sales chase’ when you get back to work in the new year and start your sales follow-ups (whether with an old prospect or a new lead). Some of your customers may be getting back from an extended holiday and need some time to catch up with work. Instead, approach with an educative mindset and start by sharing information like product/service manuals, informative videos or invite them to a live webinar.

Here are some email templates you could use. You can modify them based on your offerings.

Old Prospect

Hi Gary,

Happy New Year! Hope you had a wonderful time with your family.

I know you are probably just getting back to work and settling in. In the meanwhile, why don’t you go through this quick ppt/join our live webinar at [insert time, date, and topic]? 

This material will refresh our conversation from last year. I will reach out to you in a few days to discuss the same or you can give me a call when you are ready. 

Hope you have a great start to the year.

[Insert your signature]

New Prospect

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

Here’s wishing you a very happy new year!

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce [insert your company name + expand on product/service]. I know you probably are just back from the holidays and taking the time to find your bearings. While you do so, kindly go through this ppt?/would you have time to listen in on this webinar on [insert time, date, and topic]?

Once you have settled in, I would like to discuss your [insert product/service needs].

Wishing you tremendous success in the new year!

[Insert your signature]

4. Prioritize the low-hanging fruit

While you analyze your ToFu (Top of the Sales Funnel) from last year, watch out for the easy wins. Below are a few such examples, along with the email scripts you could use.

A prospect who asked you to connect next year.

Dear Mark,

Here’s wishing you a happy and successful new year.

I thought to connect with you early this year to revisit our discussion on [insert your product/service details]. Let’s start this year by addressing [insert the pain points or prospect’s business needs] and strengthening your relationship with [insert your company name]

Do let me know a good time to speak.

[Insert your signature] 

A prospect who had regretted because they exhausted their budget last year.

Hey Mark,

Hope you had a fantastic holiday season.

I just wanted to circle back to our discussion from last November. As I can recall, you were quite interested in utilizing us for your [insert their business needs]. It would be great if we can catch up soon so you can pencil us in your budget for the year.

[Insert your signature]

A prospect whose company operates on a fiscal calendar. This might be a good time to persuade them before the financial year-end.

Hello Mark,

Hope you are well and starting the year more energized than ever!

I recall you were quite impressed with our [insert your product/service] at our last meeting. It would be great if we could revisit our discussion before you wrap up your business priorities for the financial year.

Could we slot a quick call in the coming days?

[Insert your signature]

A prospect who decided to go with a competitor. Find out about their experience. This may be your chance to approach them if things didn’t go as they had planned.

Hey Mark,

Happy new year! It’s been a while since we spoke.

I just wanted to quickly revisit your [insert your product/service] needs for this year. I am aware that you signed up with [insert competitor’s name] last year. Should you feel any gap in their service, I would be happy to try and address the same with our product/service.

Feel free to reach me at the same number.

[Insert your signature]

5. Build multiple sales pipelines

You may need more than one pipeline based on certain factors.

  • Since your pipeline summarizes your prospect’s journey through various stages, you may require more than one pipeline depending on your prospect’s company size. Your client from an MSME may go through a different buyer journey compared to the one from a Fortune 500 firm. So it’s better to create separate pipelines for each company type.
  • If you sell more than one product or service, once again each product/service may necessitate a different customer journey. Hence, it is important to have different sales pipelines for each product/service category.

6. Embrace social selling 

For decades, cold calls and emails have been the go-to method for salespeople to connect with prospects. However, social selling has now become an indispensable strategy for businesses, especially since Covid-19. According to Spotio, 84% CXOs rely on social media to make buying decisions. LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index reports that 78% of social sellers outsell the sales professionals who don’t use social media. 

Some of the social selling practices that you could implement are-

  • Invest in building your professional brand. It will attract more responses as well as inquiries from your prospects.
  • Follow your target companies on social media and watch out for buying signs like new acquisitions, launches, or hiring announcements for marketers. 
  • Share relevant solutions to common pain points or your opinion on current topics. This will help you establish yourself as a subject matter expert in your industry. Devise your content strategy in line with your potential customer’s needs and interests.

Best practices in sales pipeline management

best practices

Once you have designed your customized sales pipeline for 2022, it is time to organize, strategize and track those opportunities in your pipeline. This process is known as  Sales Pipeline Management. A well-managed sales pipeline will give you a clear picture of your company’s health, facilitating business analysis and planning. The following are some of the best practices in sales pipeline management, which should help streamline your sales process if followed meticulously.

Track your sales pipeline metrics

To manage your sales pipeline effectively, define the sales metrics to help you reach your revenue targets. These metrics may differ from company to company depending on the business type and size. Some of the most common metrics used by organizations are-

  • The number of deals in your pipeline – This gives you a snapshot of the number of leads generated per month from various sources.
  • MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) – SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) conversion rate – This number will identify if your marketing and sales teams are in sync with each other.
  • Average deal value – Dividing the sum of the value of all deals by the number of total deals gives you an approximate deal value which helps predict the revenue.
  • Win rate – It can predict the number of qualified leads that turned into customers.
  • Sales Cycle – It denotes the average time taken by a sales rep to convert a lead into a sale.
  • Pipeline velocity – This measures the rate at which high-value opportunities move from one end of the funnel to another.

Actively engage in pipeline review meetings

After all the time and effort you spent building your sales pipeline, you may feel like you have complete control over it. And you may do. However,  a third-party perspective always helps, and going through your pipeline with your manager and team members will help you identify any missing links you may have overlooked. Depending on the duration and frequency of your pipeline review meetings, here are a few things you could do to maximize your takeaways from such discussions.

  • Present a quick overview of each deal along with your closing timelines so it helps your manager with sales forecasting.
  • Highlight the areas/stages in the pipeline you struggle with and note down any insights from your manager and team members. For instance, if you often grapple with the lead qualification stage, check with your manager for action items to identify the right prospects.
  • Request your reporting head for tips on how to expedite the decision-making timelines for the slow-moving prospects.
  • Share your competitor analysis in the meeting and seek suggestions on how to strengthen your USPs.
  • Share your success stories as well. This will encourage your team members and help them overcome similar objections in the future. Additionally, it educates your manager about your strengths which should help in annual review meetings.

Clean up the sales pipeline 

A well-stocked pipeline may not always be the answer to achieving your year-end goals if it is filled with cold leads. From time and again, it is essential to examine your sales pipeline and clean up opportunities that show no promise of closure. Here are a few steps to follow.

  • Review your sales pipeline and conduct regular pipeline health checks. Look out for non-responsive leads or prospects who are stuck in certain stages. Use your judgment and ramp up your follow-ups or eliminate them from your list. Additionally, to make up for the number of leads eliminated, ensure your pipeline does not dry up. Maintain a regular inflow of fresh leads with consistent prospecting.
  • List out the prospects with longer than your average sales cycle. Evaluate the actual reason behind the lag- is it their complex approval process or is the prospect just non-responsive?  Eliminate prospects from your pipeline if you don’t find a valid reason for the delay in closure.
  • Use the insights gained from pipeline review meetings to decide whether a lead qualifies to be included in your pipeline. Your manager or team members might have faced similar prospects and you could learn from their experience.
  • Keep your contact database accurate. Update opportunities regularly. This should help clean up dead-end opportunities from your pipeline.
  • Lastly, before you remove a prospect from your pipeline, send a reminder email summarizing your last conversation, your USPs, and check for a workable timeline on their decision. You can use something similar to the email format below.

Hello Tim,

It’s unfortunate that we haven’t connected in a while. I feel we could have helped you with [insert prospect’s business needs] and wanted to give it one last shot.

Do let me know if we can connect for a quick discussion? If I don’t hear from you, I will assume this wasn’t the right time and conclude my follow-ups.

Irrespective of your decision, I look forward to your response.

[Insert your signature]

Accelerate your sales cycle

Even though the probability of deal closure ultimately depends on the prospects’ needs and interests, there are a few things you can do to expedite this process. It will either encourage your target to make faster decisions, block the sale or worse case regret the opportunity, which ultimately saves you follow-up time. 

  • Identifying the key decision-maker is the first step that can substantially shorten or lengthen the sales cycle. It will save you endless cold calls and follow-up emails.
  • If you are offering a free period, ensure it is properly utilized.  Check if your prospect has logged in to the platform. Follow-up if the trial has not been used or check with them if you can answer any technical questions they may have.
  • Whenever possible, pin down bottlenecks and find a solution. For example, if your prospect is indecisive, increase your follow-ups and offer to help him reach a decision any way you can. If it is a pricing issue, draw a comparison between your competitors and highlight the benefits of prioritizing quality over budget. You could also check with your boss for a limited period discount.
  • Avoid manual work by automating your sales process wherever possible. Make use of sales management tools or CRMs so you spend more time on making money and less on record keeping.

Utilize sales pipeline management tools

CRM logos

To further your sales process and thereby build an efficient pipeline, you would need the help of a few pipeline management tools. The best sales pipeline management software or CRM will reduce manual work by managing your database and offering AI-powered deal insights. Such CRMs can also generate effective pipeline reports that enable pipeline forecasting, automate deal tracking, and encourage collaboration between various teams by incorporating visibility into the sales process. Some of the most sought-after CRM tools are listed below. However, before choosing a CRM partner, review the features carefully and choose one that fits your business requirement.

Focus on the end game 

Implementing strategies like target market and sales pipeline analysis, focusing on the quick wins, customizing your pipelines (based on what you sell/who you sell to), and adapting social media are crucial to building your sales pipeline in 2022. However, it is equally important to respect your customer’s time and ease them into the process after a long break from work. Ultimately, your prospect is not just a name in your CRM but an actual human being. According to Marketing Sherpa, 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales, and lack of lead nurturing is the most common reason. Take the time to know your customer, build a personal connect and show that you care about their business needs. That will go a long way in building a successful sales career and longstanding business relationship. Furthermore, consistently achieving your revenue targets year on year is not a sprint but a marathon.

Sales process: The simplest ways to build your sales process

Posted on by Pranav Dalal

According to some studies, closing deals is one of the challenges that sales reps face. Lack of practical strategies for closing a sale is one reason for a low win rate. However, a well-defined sales process can empower your sales team with clear steps from prospecting to closing deals. Read on to discover how to build your sales process from scratch to help your reps hit their quota.

What is a sales process?  

A sales process is a chain of repeatable steps your sales reps take to obtain leads and turn prospects into customers. It provides your sales team with a clear framework to guide your customers from the awareness stage to closing more deals.

Jason Jordan is a partner of Vantage Point Performance & co-author of Cracking the Sales Management Code (McGraw-Hill, 2012). His company’s research showed that businesses that created a formal sales process had an 18% jump in revenue.

He insists that sales managers must have a formal sales process based on the study. 

It must have:

sales process quote

In this guide, you’ll see how you can be part of the best companies with skyrocketing revenue due to a sales process. Check out the incredible stats below.

correlating sales process and performance by the sales management association
Source

Your business can reap massive benefits by creating sales stages to have an effective sales process.

Improve reps’ skills of qualifying leads

You know the saying, time is money. As a result, you would want your sales team to zero in on prospects that matter to boost your chances of success.

A well-defined sale process will do just that. It helps your sales reps to fine-tune their skills for qualifying leads. They can comb through the hundreds of leads to select profitable ones. Qualifying leads also saves the sales team’s time, effort, and bottom line as it weeds out unwanted deals.

Salespeople can also determine if the prospect matches their buyer persona, territory, and industry.

sales process

Speeds up your sales cycles

What makes ants achieve so much, and yet they are tiny? It’s a unified purpose. 

When you create your sales process with input from your sales team, everyone will be on the same page. Each person will know the company’s steps to move leads down the sales funnel. Because of this, closing deals becomes faster.

It becomes easy to measure results

A data-driven sales process is the way to go in sales prospecting. You can use metrics to adjust your approach. Also, the data can be helpful for coaching individuals on performance. 

Say, for example, the closing ratio for each sales professional is low. You can train the sales team on strategies for closing sales. 

Boosts customer relationships

Through a robust sales process, sales reps can address customers’ concerns. They’ll give their clients maximum attention and support throughout the sales cycle. Customer relationships will improve, resulting in brand loyalty and booming sales.

Building your robust sales cycle: The 7-step sales process

Let’s continue on the journey of creating a failure-proof sales process. Here’s the sequence of the sale process.

Before everything else….

Do the following to lay a strong foundation and have buy-in from your reps.

Part A: Discuss with your sales reps to find out about their current sales steps

It’s tempting for sales managers to build a sales process without roping their sales reps in. That’s something you need to avoid. 

Sales leaders need to understand what their sales reps are doing to convert leads into customers. The idea here is to align the sales process with the current activities of each sales rep.

To achieve this, talk one-on-one to understand how each sales team member moves a customer through the funnel. The questions below can set the ball rolling.

sales process steps
  • How did the sales rep get a lead?
  • How did they assign the lead? 
  • How did the sales rep initiate the first communication with the lead? Was it through the phone or email?
  • How many times did the sales rep try to contact the lead?
  • Did the rep use a cadence or a schedule in their prospecting activities? 
  • What questions did the rep ask the lead after the contact?
  • How did the sales rep keep a record of the answers?
  • Are there any documents or files that the reps sent to the lead?
  • When did the sales rep send the resources to the lead?
  • How did the rep show the lead your company’s solution? Did they call, use a Zoom meeting, or present a demo?
  • What preps did the sales rep do for the presentation?
  • How and when did the sales rep deliver your business proposal?
  • What challenges did the rep face during the negotiations?
  • If the rep lost the lead, what could be the reasons?

You may not have the answers to all these questions if you’re starting with new sales reps. No worries, you can follow the seven-step sales process you’ll see in a moment.

Part B: Understand the phases in your customer’s decision-making process

Another critical element in the preliminary stages of your sales process is reviewing your customers’ journey.

Here’s the thing.

One way of developing a standardized sales process is to consider the customer’s journey. Let’s review the sales funnel and the sales pipeline stages.

sales funnel vs pipeline

After reviewing the sales funnel, the other crucial step is considering the sales stages in your sales process. You should create a list of sales activities together with your sales team/reps at each stage.

Let’s see what your stages may look like.

Part C: Create your 7-step sales process with specific tasks 

1. Dive into prospecting  

At the top of your sales funnel, there’s lead generation through prospecting. Your goal is to identify potential customers. These are people who’ve shown interest in your product or service. Or, because of your buyer persona, they may fit your profile.

Here are some essential sales activities for this stage:

  • Contact your current customers to find out what they need. Dig deeper into their challenges and figure out how your company can solve their pain points.
  • Encourage your buyers to refer their friends or others to your product or service. Also, make a list of new customer referrals.
  • Take advantage of industry events, trade shows, or networking events. Collect business cards and feed your CRM. 
  • Source leads from your website assets (blogs, forms, downloads).
  • Use social media sites, like LinkedIn, to search for executives in your target industry.
  • Collect email addresses and contact details from a company’s website. Or use a reputable email finder to collect emails from decision-makers.

You can now create a customer persona to include in your sales process with all this relevant info. It’ll help you avoid chasing after leads that won’t serve your goals.

Your customer profile should consider the age, location, income, turnover, challenges, and purchase habits of the prospect. 

See an example below.

sales process customer profile

Here’s a second example.

ideal client or customer profile
Source

Remember that your sales prospects are individuals with goals and dreams. Some want to thrive in their jobs or make their companies profitable. As a result, creating relationships between your prospects and your business is vital.

Your conversion rate of prospects to buyers can increase if you also focus on strengthening relationships. Show your potential customers that you want to help them. 

Sales reps need to go beyond the sales funnel and be as personal as possible. It’ll help create trust in your brand and boost the chances of a demo presentation.

2. Qualify your sales leads 

Now, your sales rep has a list of prospects. At this stage, they should find out if each sales prospect is worth pursuing. Is the potential customer likely to buy your product or service?

Reps can do this by sending an email or making a phone call. Or they may follow the BANT system to qualify leads. BANT stands for budget, authority, need, and timeline. 

To break down the framework, consider these questions.

  • Does the lead want the product or service you’re offering?
  • Do they have the money and decision-making power to purchase the product?
  • Will they buy your product or service soon? 

Alternatively, the sales rep can ask the lead the questions below.

  • What’s your position in your organization?
  • What daily activities do you do at your job?
  • What problems are you trying to fix?
  • Why does your business see this as your top priority?
  • What other ways are you evaluating to solve your problem?

The biggest takeaways are that you need to identify the right target market and the right people in a company. They must have the pain points your product/service is trying to solve.

3. Dig deeper into the company through research

For this step, you want to understand the company better to help you align your products/service with its challenges. Your goal is to see how you can solve the prospect’s pain better than your rivals.

Find out more details about the company’s objectives to help you create personalized messages. Get as much info as possible about the prospect’s needs and concerns. The details you’ll gather will become handy in the following stage.

4. Make a killer presentation 

You now have a clear idea of your prospects, pain points, and challenges. It’s time to make a convincing and personalized presentation. You should show the prospect 

how your company can help them improve their lives.

Also, see the tasks your sales rep can do during this stage.

  • Set up a meeting for the presentation
  • If necessary, you might carry out more research on the stakeholders.
  • Also, consider inviting a product/service expert to your meeting to show how your solution is the right one for the prospect.
  • The specialist can also deal with the technical part of your product/service.
  • Create market materials that suit the company’s needs.

Your presentation could also respond to a request for proposal (RFP) or a product demo. Whatever the case, use a benefit-packed sales pitch as your greatest weapon. 

Here’s an example of a sales pitch from Automate WordPress Development & Hosting.

5. Address objections & concerns

Objections to your product or service demo can happen. Your prospect may have the sales objections below, according to David Finkel, Author, ‘The Freedom Formula: How to Succeed in Business Without Sacrificing Your Family, Health, or Life.”

financial by prospectly.com
timing issues by prospectly.com
credibility issues by prospectly.com
lack of urgency by prospectly.com
another selection
higher authority
status quo comfortable
attention challenge
time challenge
decision delay
poor experience
lack of connection
trust issue
delivery issue
quality issue
cost of change
feel risky
feel obligated to current vendor
confusion
fear changes
Going out to bid

Look at each objection and try to find ways of overcoming it. David suggests that if the prospect isn’t committing because of time, you can:

  • Tie your offer with an expiration date. Show the prospect the product is valid up to a specific date. 
  • Give the potential customer a once-off price break to encourage them to buy.
  • Demonstrate to them the pain it would cause if they postponed their purchase.
  • Ask the prospect to take the offer, and repeat the sale to help them overcome the objection.

Matthew Poland also suggests using your clients’ success stories to handle objections.

You can use a competitor matrix if an objection relates to your competitors. You put your company side by side with your rivals and show your strengths and weaknesses.

Here’s an example of an SEO company comparing its price with other competitors.

ubersuggest marketing example by niel patel

Create your competitor matrix using the template below. Do this before you prospect. Kit Needham of Carnegie Mellon University recommends the features below for your competitor analysis.

competitor analysis recommendation by kit needham of carnegie mellon university

Competition Matrix Template

competition matrix template

It’s better to deal with one competitor when you’re presenting to your potential client. You should show that your company is better based on your strong points.

Now let’s look at how you can close deals.

6. Closing deals 

After removing the roadblocks, you move on to closing deals. You also respond to your customers’ concerns that arose in your demo. 

It’s the last stage where you want your prospect to become a customer by signing an agreement.

You may also send a proposal or a quote, negotiate the terms, or get the company’s buy-in from the decision-makers.

Below are examples of sales activities in this stage.

  • Negotiation of terms
  • Proposal delivery 
  • The signing of sales agreements

There are several techniques you can use to close deals. 

1. Close with a time limit 

The technique is suitable when your prospect isn’t yet fully decided. You want to encourage your potential customers to choose an installation or delivery date without delay. 

You might say:

“The 50% discount on the Prospecting Tool is valid until Friday next week.”

 or

“The free membership sign-up for the gym is open to new numbers until Tuesday. Why don’t you become a member and take advantage of the free offer?”

2. Close with a basic package  

Sometimes a prospect is hesitant to commit to your proposal. In this case, use the basic package close that may involve a different product version. 

Make your customer understand that the substitute can still meet their needs. But they could be better off with the first offer.

You could say:

“Perhaps we can offer you a one-month trial of the Prospecting Tool. You’ll have basic features. We also have clients who enjoy the full benefits of the tool because they’re premium members. What do you say about this deal?”

3. Assisted close  

With this technique, you can help your qualified lead who attended your demo decide to buy. 

You could say:

“It appears you’re okay with our discussion about the product/service. How about sending you the agreement via email?”

or

“What else do you want from me to sign the doc and send it back to you today?”

One critical thing you need to keep in mind is that companies are different. And so, following a rigid sales process may not work, according to Mareo Mccracken, Revenue Leader of Movemedical.

Mareo insists that sales reps shouldn’t get stuck in a sales process, especially when dealing with a complex B2B sales process.  

Barret Riggleberger, the CEO of xPotential Selling, proposes the following closing deal strategies for a buyer who can’t commit to delivery date.

4. Work backward from the end of the sales process 

Tell the prospect about your delivery or installation date. Explain what your timeline looks like, your processes, and when the client can expect the delivery. “Your goal is to establish a firm date for delivery, and then, working backward, to determine when the buyer will need to sign a contract.”

According to Barrett, you should encourage the customer to pick up a date and show them the right time for signing the agreement.

5. Understand and consider the customer’s personality style  

It’s crucial to understand a customer’s personality style because if your reps master it, they’ll perfect their selling craft. An indecisive customer needs more personal guarantees that your solution can solve their pain points. But a decisive prospect is looking for extra facts that your product is the perfect fit. 

Some customers are emotional buyers who seek a relationship with your business. They want a reliable brand that they can trust. With these types of customers, focus on building relationships. 

Others are analytical customers looking for unbiased info to help them assess your solution.

6. Establish a specific date for signing the contract 

Set a precise delivery date if you’re dealing with a qualified prospect who wants your product/service.

Make the prospect understand that the meeting isn’t for another presentation. Also, re-emphasize that all the relevant stakeholders should be present in your demo.

You might say:

“I want to deliver/install the product in three weeks. To make this possible, I’ll need you to sign the form/doc by next Friday to fit you into our program. What’s the best time for you-Wednesday or Thursday? 

Before the appointment date, remind the prospect 24 hours in advance. 

As Barret notes: “Defining a buyer’s urgency to buy is critical to qualifying and closing sales. If the prospect is unsure about his or her time frame for signing a contract, simply reverse the process. Start from the end and work backward to help the prospect understand your process for delivering the right solution on time.”

7. Follow-up and Nurture 

Follow-up is vital to ensure that you boost your chances of closing deals. Research says that it takes five follow-ups to close 80% of sales. It means that your success hinges on the activities you do after you’ve presented your solution. 

Here are some practical things you can do as a follow-up.

Adopt a multichannel approach 

sales process multichannel approach

Your prospect could be hanging out on multiple social media sites, like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. As a result, you should use several channels to connect with them. Think of email, social media, phone, live chats, and one-on-one meetings.

Send valuable resources  

Here, you can share anything with potential customers to bolster your proposal. 

Here are some examples.

  • Suggest a tool, an app, or software that can improve the customer’s life
  • Keep them updated with trends or other exciting stories in your industry.
  • Connect your potential client with an influencer

Automate your schedules  

There are a lot of tools that you can rely on. Google calendar is best for scheduling your meetings and calls. To speed up your follow-ups and make them manageable, you can use market automation.

Find out more about other nifty marketing automation tools to help you with follow-ups.

Nurturing your new customers is also crucial in your sales process. Your customers can only continue doing business with you if they’re excited about your brand. Nurturing keeps the momentum. It’s like oxygen.

You can also take advantage of upselling to find more sales opportunities through nurturing. Happy customers can refer your business to others, resulting in many leads.

Check out the activities below you can do in this stage.

  • Use drip campaigns together with promotional materials to keep your leads updated
  • Call your leads to ask if you can present a demo or offer them a free trial
  • Encourage new customers to sign up for your newsletter
  • Ask buyers for referrals and constructive reviews

Measure Your Sales Process Results  

Another essential part of your sales process is to measure the results to see how your sales reps perform against set standards. It also helps you make changes if your methods aren’t working well. 

See the table below to get you started.

sales rep's performance

You can add other sales pipeline stages in your sales process and use the results to:

  • See how your sales team is progressing
  • Identify areas where you need to improve
  • Change the sales process steps to make them more efficient
  • Add new sales tactics
  • Train and coach your reps to better their goals

Create a Structure for Your Sales Process

For your sales reps to follow the sales process and repeat it, they need a structure. 

A recent study says:

resourcefullselling quote

As a sales leader, you can create a sales process flowchart.

Sales Process Flowchart

Your sales process flowchart shows specific stages that your sales reps need to go through in moving the lead down the sales funnel. It helps them visualize the sales process as the chart contains colors and shapes. 

The sales process flowchart is perfect for training new salespeople. 

sales process flowchart

The sales process with a clear flowchart can help sales managers train and coach their sales reps to close more deals. However, Mareo says that in challenging B2B sales, avoid being rigid to the sales cycle. 

Your reps should focus more on the key areas below.

  • Engage and talk to the relevant people
  • Understand the prospect’s pain points and goals
  • Show potential customers why your solution is worth buying and its value better than your competitor’s
  • Get buy-in

Final thoughts

A sales process is a failure-proof system with clear steps to help your reps move prospects down the sales funnel to close more deals. You should start the 7-step sales process by reviewing what your reps are doing right now to convert opportunities into buyers. Also, you need to align the sales cycle to the customer buying process to identify the crucial activities your salespeople should focus on. B2B sales are complex. As a result, be flexible and adjust the sales process to suit your industry’s needs.

Sales cadence: How to create the best cadence that lands meetings

Posted on by Pranav Dalal


How many times must your sales reps call their prospects? How often can they send emails? What are the best times to build relationships with potential customers? A sales cadence in outbound prospecting is the answer to these questions. In this guide, you’ll learn various sales cadences that you can tweak to suit your industry and customer profiles.

Read on…

What is sales cadence?

Sales cadence is a smooth flow of touchpoints leading to an engagement with your potential buyer or prospect. The primary goal of any cadence is to turn an online conversation into an offline conversation.

Or you may picture cadence as several steps you take to engage your sales leads. It may include emailing, phoning, and connecting with your prospect on social media. 

Your prospecting cadence answers the following questions.

  • How many emails should you send?
  • How many times should you call?
  • How many voicemails should you leave?

A sales cadence shows the flow of your call attempts and varied ways to reach out to your prospect. Your goal is to win that meeting with your prospect to establish a win-win relationship that’ll lead to a sale. For this to happen, your cadence should follow a systematic framework.

However, does a sales cadence matter for your sales reps?

Why does sales cadence matter for your sales reps?

Several studies by marketing experts say that sales reps abandon their sales prospecting too early. Maybe one of the reasons is a lack of understanding of why they need a connecting system with their prospects.

“92% of sales pros give up after the 4th call, but 80% of prospects say no four times before they say yes,” (MarketingDonut) via Zety.com.

Here’s the thing.

As a sales manager, you can benefit from a straightforward sales process. Cadence helps your sales reps and business in many ways.

  • You can reach out to sales leads across many channels & test which ones bear fruit.
  • It lets you engage with your prospect multiple times to have an insiders’ knowledge of their interests.
  • Sales reps can follow up on every prospect entered in your CRM based on a sequence.
  • It makes your sales team consistent and their work predictable. There’s no guesswork.
  • Your outbound sales strategy becomes easy to roll into action with a sales cadence. It improves your sales engagement.
  • You can measure your sales team’s performance with ease. Sales cadence can be your primary metric.

The next super exciting part is building a successful sales cadence. Check out the rhythm below and catch the melody.

7 ways of building a sales cadence that works

building sales cadence
  • Understand your potential customers & create their profiles

    Understanding your prospect is vital for your success. Art Sobczak, keynote speaker, sales trainer, and author of Smart Calling, says:

    “Smart Calling is simply knowing something about the individuals, the companies, and the situations that we’re calling into… People today are inundated with thousands of messages every day, and therefore they have to become professional ignorers.”

    In a nutshell, you need a clear idea of who your customers are, their buyer persona, and industry.

    To get you started with your customer profiles, consider the features below.

    The target company’s industry:
    – Company size: large enterprise (250+ employees); medium-sized enterprises (50-249); small enterprise (10-49) & micro-enterprises (1-9)
    – Company’s revenue/profit
    – Number of employees
    – Company location and time zone
    – Company’s department with potential to use your product/ service
    – Challenges the company is trying to fix
    – Current company’s solutions for their problem(s)
    – Let’s admit that building individual personas of hundreds of prospects could be an uphill task. A shortcut to this is batching your research and studying your potential customers as a whole.
    – Gather similar info about each of your sales prospects. Next, you tabulate the details according to their standard features. The last step is crafting your emails based on the prospect’s characteristics.
    – Say you kick off your research with five prospects. Look for the same details about each potential customer, maybe ten features. Use the info on buyer personas to help with this process.
    – Go ahead and create a spreadsheet to have a clear view of your sales prospects.

    Here’s an example of batching your research.
research batching
Source

You can personalize email templates for several likely customers with this summarized info. Continue reading to get inspiration from email templates at the end of the blog.

  • Clarify your cadence goals

    The first step of creating customer profiles can be successful if your sales cadence goals are clear from the beginning. You might be aware of the SMART principle in creating your objectives and follow it when you make your goals.

    Let your goals be clear and specific. Are you looking to present a demo? Or will you offer a free trial or ask your prospect to complete a survey?

    Answers to these questions and others will give you a solid footing in your sales cadence strategy.
  • Decide on the channels

    At this stage, you’ve compiled your sales prospects list. Also, you know who to contact. Your next task is figuring out the best and effective communication channels. The most common ones are emails, voice mails, phone calls, text messages, and social media.

    Note that you should use a multichannel approach to have a balanced cadence. It also boosts your chances of receiving positive responses.

    Also, the time of reaching out to your prospects in your outbound sales cadence is crucial. That’s because your goal is to grab your potential customer’s attention.

    Think about the days and times they’re available to respond to your messages. Check out the times below.
best time for sales calls
Source

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are the best days to call. Your sales call should be between 4-5 pm in the prospect’s local time. Other times like 10-11 am can do, too. 

  • Map out several touchpoints

    It’s important to remember that one phone call or an email may not yield the results you want in sales prospecting. Giving up too early because of non-responsive prospects isn’t the solution.

    You should have several touchpoints to have a consistent sales cadence. For your sales process to be meaningful, 8 to 12 touchpoints are the way to go. You’ll need several tries before a prospect warms up to your messaging.

    Tim Conkle, CEO of The 20, recommends between 10-12 touches for initiating meaningful conversations in B2B sales. But managed services may need 14-18 touches.

    A sales cadence may stretch for two to four weeks. As you create your sales cadence, decide on the minimum touchpoints. And then stick to your method for consistent results. 
  • Create a robust value proposition

    Your prospects can only opt for your product or service if they see value in your proposition. It has to speak the language of your target audience and solve their pressing needs.

    To understand if your product is the perfect fit for your potential customer, try testing it with your current customer. They must have similar features to your prospect for this experiment to work.

    Find out the positive and constructive things about your product. Of course, you need to focus on what makes your existing customers like what you offer.

    A survey can be handy in this situation. After the study, jot down all the best product features that solve your buyers’ problems.

    Consider measurable aspects like productivity, sales, and other specific outcomes. How well has your product helped your customers improve in these areas? Your answers will become your selling points to your prospects.

    A value proposition of a product or service might look like this. The quotes are from Technologyadvice.com.
kayako vs feng office

Each productivity software has its unique name, and it also spells out what the tool does and how customers can benefit from it. Your value proposition should highlight how your product can improve people’s lives.

  • Messaging your prospects

    How you craft a message is also essential. Your goal is to boost your prospects’ chances of getting positive feedback.

    Here are some vital considerations to include in your copy.
  • Personalize the subject line by including the company’s or prospect’s name
  • Personalize the email’s body by highlighting the prospect’s pain points and present needs
  • Reasons for contacting them
  • Your specific help; what you’re offering to fix their problem
  • How the prospect will benefit from your business relationship
  • Other companies that find your product helpful

    Check out below a cold email template for B2B sales from Snov.io.com based on the AIDA principle. You can tweak it to suit your situation.

    Headline: Save Time. Get Leads
AIDA email
Source 

The email is brief to the point and has a high chance of being read.

Jess Pingrey, a sales expert and a contributor to Fitsmallbusiness.com, shares two examples below of cold calling scripts.

Example 1: Setting up an appointment with a prospect

Hi ____________, this is____________ from [your organization name]. We haven’t had a chance to talk directly yet, but I saw that your company is one of the top providers of [specific product/service your prospect offers], and I wanted to quickly share ways we’ve

helped other businesses similar to yours. Is this an OK time to chat for a few minutes?

[Client agrees to chat]

Excellent. So we are a [product/service] business that specializes in [market niche or specific solutions], which is why I wanted to reach out to you directly. Our [product/service attribute] solution allows you to [benefit of using product/service].

I’d love to show you more with a 15-minute [demo or presentation]. Are you free early next week so I can show you the [features or services] that may help you reach your goals?

  • Scenario 1: [Prospect agrees]

Great, if I can get your email address, I will send you an invite to my calendar portal so you can pick a time that works for you.

  • Scenario 2: [Prospect rejects]

OK, no worries. I can email you some additional information for reference, so if you find you need our services later, you’ll have it and my contact information. What’s a good email address for you?

Example 2: Qualifying a lead to see if prospects are worth pursuing

The template is perfect for lead generation.

Hi ____________, this is____________ from [your organization name]. I was hoping to make a brief introduction and learn a little more about your business. Is this an OK time to talk?

[Client agrees to chat]

Awesome. I know you are busy, so I will keep this brief. We are a [product/service] business that focuses on [market niche or specific solutions], which allows our clients to [benefit from using product/service].

Do mind sharing which [product/service] provider you are currently using?

[Prospect answers]

Great. And is there anything in particular you dislike or would like to improve about using [prospect’s current provider]?

[Prospect answers]

Terrific. And how about some aspects you like most about using [prospect’s current provider]?

[Prospect answers]

Excellent. So I think we could be a good fit based on some of the [product/service] attributes you want to prioritize. I’d love to continue this conversation with a 15-minute [demo or presentation] so I can show you how the [product/service attributes] can [how attributes can help with what they like about the current provider], as well as how the [product/service attributes] can help you [how attributes can help with what they dislike about current provider].

Is this something we can get scheduled for next week?

  • Test and Optimize Your Cadence

    Why is this step also crucial? No cadence is one-size-fits-all, and businesses, industries, and situations vary. As a result, one sales cadence may produce the desired outcomes in a different environment. Or it might not work at all.

    By checking your open and click rates, you can tell if your emails are effective. Lower response rates mean that your sales cadence needs tweaking. Perhaps, adding testimonials or case studies can add more credibility to your claims.

    You may also notice that phone calls at lunchtime are workable. The issue here is testing and optimizing your sales cadence to give you the expected results.

    Use these metrics below to measure and adjust your sales cadence.
sales cadence metrics

Email and open click rate: Have your prospects opened your emails or clicked your attachments? 

Email open to reply ratio: A good reply rate shows that your prospects find your content relevant.

Call to appointments ratio: The metric lets you know if you’re reaching out to the right audience, what industries, markets, and geographies you should concentrate on.

Bounce rate: The higher the bounce rate, the more you need to analyze your email list to remove uninterested prospects.

In summary, the critical elements of your sales cadence include:

  • Timing
  • Channel
  • Phone calls
  • Email
  • Social media

Here’s another juicy part. Below is a list of examples of sales cadence.

Let’s dive in.

Six sales cadence examples

Another issue that can break or make your sales cadence is the time gap between your touchpoints. You wouldn’t want to receive endless messages if you were a prospect.

In the same way, your prospect may be annoyed or put off by the never-ending calls or emails. It’s wiser to space out your touchpoints to give them a breather to digest the info you sent them.

Doing between 8-10 touches over a month is advisable. Also, some sales reps allow for two days between each outreach. Or you can do 1-2 contacts a week as you wrap up your sales cadence.   

The principle here is to separate your touchpoints in your outreach.

Example 1

Day 1: Emails 1 and 2

Day 2: Email 3

Day 3: Call 1, Voice Mail 1

Day 4: Social Media 1, Email 4

Day 5: Call 2, Email 5, Social Media 2

Creator: InsideSales.com’s customers, now called XANT™

Example 2

Day 1: Email/InMail

Day 3: Email in the morning, Call in the afternoon

Day 5: Call in the morning, Call with a voicemail in the afternoon

Day 7:  Email in the morning, Call in the afternoon with a voicemail

Day 10: Email and call in the morning

Creator: Sales Hub CEO Max Altschuler

Example 3

Day 1:  Email 1

Day 2:  Call 1, Voice mail 1, Email 2

Day 7:  Call 2, Voice mail 2, Email 3

Day 14: Call 3, Voice mail 3, Email 4

Day 21: Call 4, Voice mail 4, Email 5

Day 35: Call 5, Voice mail 5, Email 6

Day 49: Call 6, Voice mail 6, Email 7

Day 63: Call 7, Voice mail 7, Email 8

Day 77: Call 8, Voice mail 8, Email 9

Creator: InsideSales.com’s clients, now called XANT™

Example 4

Day 1: Prospect Research

Day 2: InMail

Day 3: Follow-up InMail

Day 4: Email

Day 5: Follow-up Email

Day 6: Phone

Day 7: Social Media (share an article and tag the prospect)

Day 8: Video Email

Day 9: Social Media (engage prospect on LinkedIn)

Day 10: Voice Mail

Day 11: Email

Day 12: Phone or Email

Creator: Carlos Montero, CEO at digital marketing consulting firm Biassa

Example 5

Trent Diamond @sales_nuggests on Twitter has a different cadence.

https://publish.twitter.com/?query=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fsales_nuggets%2Fstatus%2F1455681131408416771&widget=Tweet

You might have noticed that the cadences are different. That’s because various industries and companies call for varied approaches. What’s critical is testing and optimizing until you get what satisfies your prospects.

Remember that a sales cadence can be either two or four weeks long or even more like this one below.

Example 6

cadence example
Source

In the first week, you send an email and make multiple calls without leaving a voice mail message. 

Week 2: Call, send an email follow-up, and then pause. Include value propositions in your messages.

Week 3. Repeat week 1, but include the prospect’s pain points/

Week 4: Repeat week 2; also include pain points.

Week 5: Repeat week 3, including name dropping; people you could be working with within your company.

Week 6. Repeat week 4

Week 7: Repeat week 5, but talk about your product/service.

Week 8: Repeat week 6. Emphasize how your product can help the prospect.

Some sales experts suggest including a 30-second video welcoming your prospects after sending several emails.

What do you think?

The biggest takeaway is that a sales cadence injects consistency into your sales prospecting. Also, you supercharge your chances of getting positive responses from your prospects.

However, see your outbound sales cadence as a process that needs adjusting to match your potential customer’s needs. Blending your sales process with market automation also improves your outreach.

Tell us what your cadence is like in the comments below. We’d love to hear from you.

19 Best sales discovery questions to close more deals

Posted on by Pranav Dalal

Ever heard of “talkaholism” or compulsive talking? (Etymologeek.com). Health experts say that it’s a condition where you talk more than everyone else in most situations. You can’t help but talk and talk. In sales prospecting, talking a lot about yourself and how good your company is or your products are can bore prospects to death. You’ll make yourself unlikeable and a lousy candidate for business.

talkaholism

However, you can avoid talkaholism by using proper sales discovery questions. As a  sales leader or rep, discovery call questions can help you open wide doors and close bigger deals. The potential customer is the center of the sales conversation during the discovery call. Read on to learn more.

What are sales discovery questions?

Sales discovery questions are like an individual on a fact-finding mission. You set out to ask your prospects questions during your discovery call to know them better. Your primary goal is understanding their goals, challenges, and needs during the sales delivery process.

B2B buyers say that two-thirds of salespeople are underperformers or weak (Harvard Review). Those are discouraging stats. However, it shows that reps try to sell to people with no interest in their products.

What’s the solution? Discovery questions blended with deep research about the prospect before calls are the way to go. Let’s look at why sales managers should emphasize discovery call questions to their sales professionals. 

Why do you need sales discovery call questions?

sales discovery call questions
  • People buy from people they like

    Jeb Blount is the author of Fanatical Prospecting and the producer of Sales Gravy Podcast. He has over 30 years of selling experience.

    In one of his podcasts, Jeb says that technology changes. But there’s one thing that remains the same. People buy from people they like. 

    It means you should show you’re more interested in the prospect’s pain points than selling your product. Proper discovery questions you ask the potential customer at the right time during your sales call can create trust. Trust leads to a relationship and increased chances of success.
  • Crosses the barrier of “Do I like you?”

    A prospect has one question in their mind when you call. Do I like this person? The first few seconds during your discovery call can make or break you. 

    Many sales professionals make one problem of talking more about themselves, their company, and their product. It makes you unlikeable to the potential buyer. As a result, they switch off and lose interest.

    But right discovery call questions will make the qualified prospect tick the checklist box. Do you like me? Do you make me feel important? Do you listen to me? 

    Once you cross the hurdle, it’ll be easy to do business with the prospect. 
  • Personalized messaging

    Asking questions makes you understand the potential customer’s lingo and what matters to them. In the scheduled meeting, you can use the prospect’s language and pain points during your product demo. 
  • Every person you sell to has a story

    Every individual that you want to sell to has a story. They’ve got something to tell. Your prospect’s job could be on the line, their company might be facing challenges, or the future could be bleak.

    When you ask questions, you show that you understand the person’s story. The more you let the buyer tell their story, the more you uncover their pain points.

How to make your discovery questions work?

Discovery calls on their own aren’t enough to close bigger deals. There are several principles you must follow.

Here’s the thing.

  •  Activate the Self-Disclosure Loophole

    It’s a technique that Jeb of Sales Gravy Podcast uses.  Think of a time when you said personal stuff about yourself to some people you wouldn’t have talked about in any situation.

    Why did you continue on the path of self-disclosure? Your listeners let you talk. 

    Jeb says that when you start talking, you’ll begin to self-disclose. And when you self-reveal, the pleasure senses of the brain begin to light up like a Christmas tree. 

    While you’re on a discovery call, stay out of the way. Let the prospect talk about themselves.  Allow the likely buyer 30 mins or more to chat after asking about their challenges. 
  • Ask the best questions

    The best questions that a salesperson can ask anyone are ‘tell me more,’ ‘how so,’ ‘why so,’ and saying ‘um that’s interesting,’ to show that you’re in tune with the conversation. 

    Saying ‘um, that’s interesting’ also indicates to the prospect that you want to learn more. The prospect will get encouraged to reveal more about their problems and dreams.
  • Learn the art of silence

    The most effective SDRs know when they must be quiet. Some reps lose prospects because they plunge into questions and rush through the discovery call. 

    After asking a prospect a question, let there be silence. Let them absorb the question and respond before you bombard the potential buyer with another one. You can pause for five seconds or more.

    The potential customer will see that they’re important in the conversation. You’re not on the discovery call to sell but to empathize. 
  • Do your homework upfront

    Discovery calls can be successful if you research before you call the prospect. Know the person you’ll talk to, their industry, work, job roles, interests, or anything that’ll reduce communication barriers. 

    Jeb gives an example about a prospect whose children went to the same college as his. According to Jeb, he got the customer’s Facebook profile info to learn more about the person.  During the discovery call, Jeb talked about the college. To his surprise, the prospect said more about the school. As a result, the conversation was now like a friend talking to another friend.

    The rest is history. As a sales leader, you should stress the importance of deep research about prospects to your team.
  • Ask open-ended questions

    Earlier, we said it’s critical to say things like, ‘how so’ to encourage the potential client to open up. Yes or no questions can limit the conversation to basic info.  Saying, “tell me about the structure of your team,” is better than “is your team made up of SDRs and AEs?” See more examples below.
close ended and open ended questions
Source

Open-ended questions are great because they encourage the prospect to open up. They also show the potential buyer you’re paying attention to them. The more they talk, the more the prospect reveals crucial info.

Also, the questions should move the needle. It means that every question you ask should take you to the next step to qualify or disqualify the prospect. 

Explain to the prospect the purpose of the sales discovery call. Then say, “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to learn a little bit more about you. After this, we can talk about XYZ in a few minutes.”

You’re giving the person an option to yes or no to your request to converse with them. While it’s a brilliant idea to have a list of questions, you’re not a police officer. You’re not on the discovery call to interrogate the prospect. 

Be conversational and organic. Let the buyer’s emotions be your guide in asking the right questions. You’ll have a great discovery call. 

Here are more examples of open-ended questions for your discovery call.

19 best sales discovery questions to open more doors and close bigger deals to rock your commission cheque

Now let’s get to the what part of the discovery questions. How can you set the ball rolling to have a successful discovery call?

  • Nailing the beginning of the discovery call
    @BowTiedSalesGuy recommends the following techniques for opening your discovery call after you’ve made an intro.
Question and Answer
Source

You: So, it’s good to connect, John. Can you tell me what you were hoping to get out of this meeting?

Prospect: Uhh, just wanted to learn more.

You: Ok. Can you be more specific?

Prospect: Yeah, was interested to see how you’re different than X and to see how your product works.

You: Cool. So, before we get started, can we agree on a couple of things? By the end of this meeting, one of two things will happen. Either of us can say it’s not a good fit, or we both agree to move to the next steps to see a live demo. Works for you?

Prospect: Yeah, sure.

You:  Cool. Let’s say our product does exactly what we say it could. Fast forward a few months from now, what would need to happen for you to feel it was the right decision working with us? 

Prospect: XYZ (Desired outcome)

You: Interesting. Why is (desired outcome) important? 

The first two questions put the prospect at ease and give them the freedom to drop the call or not.  Asking the potential customer about their outcome helps you associate your solution with the prospect’s needs. 

You’ll know the exact problems the person wants to solve. Use the below framework to pause more questions about outcomes and create a good rapport with the prospect.

outcome example
Source

Example of Outcome Questions

  • What are you hoping to accomplish?
  • Tell me more about your specific goals.
  • What would you like to see happen in the next quarter/year?
  • Why is that goal important?
Outcome questions

Discovery calls questions to gauge whether their needs are urgent and qualify the prospect

  • What’s your priority regarding this need?

    You want to probe further to know what the prospect’s priorities are. Do they want the solution now?
  • How does your whole company see this as a top priority?

    Also, find out if the prospect has buy-in from the company’s key decision-makers.
  • Talk to me about your company’s objectives in the coming year.

    Take a step further to discover if your solution is a good fit for the company’s goals.
  • Can you tell me about the roadblocks related to (what your product intends to do) that can be a challenge in achieving your goals?

    You can also ask questions to see if your product or service can remove the roadblocks to the company’s success.
  • If your company didn’t opt for the product, what plan does it have to deal with the problem?

    The answer to the question will let you know whether the company has any strategy to solve its challenge.

    You can use the Chad Questioning Framework to qualify the prospect.
chad questioning framework
Source

Facts: Get specific details.

Process: Understand how they do things.

Pain: Where does it hurt, and how much does it hurt?

Outcome: What are their goals/desired outcomes?

Budget: Can they and are they willing to invest in relieving pain?

Decision: Decision-making process/Timelines

Discovery questions to disqualify the prospect

Another critical step is to ask questions to disqualify the prospect.

  • What’s your timeframe in implementing the solution?

    You ask the question to know if your timeline for implementing the potential solution matches your prospect’s schedule.  If the timelines are different, the prospect is outside your plan. 
  • What would you do to get a budge approval for the solution?

    Here, you want to know if the company’s funds are enough.

Discovery questions to strengthen the value proposition of your solution

  • What are the likely results if the problem isn’t solved?

    It’s a good question you can direct to a decision-maker to emphasize the risks of not resolving the problem.  You want to rub more salt on the wound.
  • What impact will it have on others?

    It helps the prospect see how the unresolved problem will affect the other team members.
  • What primary metric does your team use to measure progress? If your team got the right solution, how will it affect the metric? 

    The sales discovery call question helps the potential client realize the connection between the solution and the metric.
  • If your key metric increases by [percentage], how will it impact your overall performance? 

    E.g., If your revenue increases by 20%, how will it impact your overall performance?

    Your prospect will visualize an improvement in their key metric.
  • How would your team’s success look with the new solution?

    The potential buyer will see themselves using the solution.

Discovery questions to understand the purchasing process in the company

  • Looking at the solution, what are the crucial features that influence your choice for the product?

    It shows the product features the prospect sees as essential. The product aspects could include its functions, ease of use, price, etc.
  • How often has your company bought the same solution?

    The answer will make you aware of the number of times the company purchases a solution like yours. You’ll also know the prospect’s buying process. 
  • Tell me about other people in your company who’re looking for a solution to the problem.

    You ask this question to be clear about other crucial decision-makers who’ll influence the purchase of the solution. 
  • How do you go about determining your vendor for the solution?

    It lets you know the likely questions the key decision-makers can ask you in the following sales process. The info can hone your sales pitch in your product demo. 
  • If I could offer you the perfect solution to solve your problems, what other people would become part of the process?

    The prospect will tell you the exact people in charge of the buying process.
  • Which are other team members could benefit from the solution?

    There could be other influential people who should also be persuaded about the solution.

Wrapping up

Sales discovery questions can open wide doors and help you close more deals. However, sales professionals should try to be organic as far as possible to make the discovery call conversational. The questions aren’t for interrogating the prospect but for leading them to self-disclosure.  Avoid bombarding them with question after question. Give the prospect time to respond and let them do the most talking to close more deals. 

The sales pipeline master guide: How to build, manage, and measure

Posted on by Pranav Dalal

In this sales pipeline master guide, you’ll learn about three crucial things: building and managing a healthy sales pipeline and tracking its relevant metrics. Continue reading to discover how you can hit your quota by creating, managing, and measuring your sales pipeline.

What is a sales pipeline?

A sales pipeline is several stages showing the movement of a prospect from being a lead to a buyer. Each sales stage gives your business a visual representation of where your prospect is in the buying process. The sales pipeline structure also reveals the sales activities in each step your reps need to concentrate on to close more deals and hit their quota.

In a nutshell, it answers the question: how can your business lead potential customers to enter the sales process and convert them into buyers?

Let’s consider two sales pipeline definitions to understand the concept fully.

Sales pipeline definition

The sales pipeline is a tool for converting leads into sales. It provides sales leaders with a visual representation of the different stages of the sales process (such as when a prospect becomes a qualified lead or when salespeople should follow up with a lead).

Via Gartner

The total VALUE of potential deals from customers that your business could close. Also referred to as “Pipeline Value,” This shows a potential investor how much revenue your business could potentially book in the near future.

@AliTheCFO

The last sales definition emphasizes the value of your forecasted deals. And that’s what your sales pipeline also shows you.

Some sales reps use a sales pipeline and sales funnel interchangeably. Are they the same? 

Sales pipeline vs. sales funnel

The main difference between a sales pipeline and a sales funnel is the focus of each system in the sales process. While the sales pipeline concentrates on the seller’s activities, the funnel shows you the prospects’ number and conversion rates.

The sales funnel deals with how many prospects you have in each sales stage of your pipeline and the conversion percentage. It also looks at the sales process from the customer’s point of view; the buyer’s journey. 

See a great example below.

sales funnel vs pipeline

The sales funnel and sales pipeline are also similar because of aligned stages and the same funnel-like structure. They both have a wider funnel at the top showing the prospect’s movement from the awareness to the purchasing decision stage.

Now let’s dive into more details about the sales pipeline stages and their sales activities. We’ll also look at how you can build a strong sales pipeline.

Sales pipeline stages and sales techniques

The sales pipeline stages show your sales reps where your prospects are in the purchasing process. Sales reps become aware of the sales techniques to move their potential customers down the sales pipeline.

Before you start feeding your pipeline, consider these critical points. 

  • Determine your sales goal or quota

    As a sales manager, your reps must understand their sales goals. They’ll know what your company expects from them. Depending on what your business does, here are some examples of activity goals within a rep’s control.
  • Knock five doors per day
  • Schedule four appointments per week
  • Send three proposals per week 

    Goals can also focus on boosting revenue monthly or annually. An example could be increasing month-on-month revenue by 5%. Or you can set up an objective to reduce customer churn by XY percentage.

    Have one-on-one meetings with your salespeople to discuss their sales goals.
  • Work out your closing ratio

    According to your set sales objectives, the next step in building your pipeline is calculating your closing ratio.

    A closing ratio “measures the number of business proposals and presentations by salespeople that are converted into actual sales. It also measures the number of business deals that sales experts close, which is used to evaluate how effective the salespersons are.”

    You can work out your closing ratio with this formula:

    Actual sales made by sales representatives ÷ sales proposals sent out (×100) 

    Here’s an example:

    James sent out 20 business proposals and converted 5 into actual sales. So, his closing ratio is 5/20 × (100), which is 25 percent. 

    Why is it crucial to determine your closing ratio before building your pipeline? Danielle Cumbee, the director of sales integration at Spectrum Automotive Holdings, states that: “There is a level of skill and personality that contributes to sales success, but the main ingredient to success is in the numbers. Many of the best salespeople you will meet found their success because they understood the equation, which in its most basic form is: You need to put enough into the funnel to get something back out.”

    After figuring out your closing ratio, you’ll know what you must do to close more deals. In the above example, James’ closing ratio is 25 %. As a result, he needs to make not less than four presentations per month. And to schedule those presentations, James will need to organize first-time meetings with 16 prospects. 

Break up your sales pipeline into stages

Once you’ve identified your sales goals and closing ratio, focus on the numbers to achieve your sales targets. Also, create sales stages showing your metrics. Here’s an example.

bottom of funnel
Source

James can visualize his pipeline and know what he must do to close more deals. With this in mind, let’s jump into the sales pipeline stages and see how James can build a healthy pipeline.

Prospecting

All SDRs agree that prospecting is the feeder to have a healthy pipeline. Prospecting is hunting qualified prospects to feed your pipeline to close more sales for your company. There are several ways of prospecting, ranging from email, cold calling, social selling, video, text messages, to social media and more. 

Like Trent Dressel, an account executive, would you like to make over $12 million of pipeline sales? He has made 40 000 cold calls. Here are some sales prospecting techniques that Trent recommends that have worked for him at his company.

Warm prospecting

Warming conversations create relationships with your prospects first to gain trust and recognition. Sales reps can warm-up conversations through lost opportunities, cross-selling, and interesting moments.

  • Find lost opportunities

    The first thing is to run a list in your Customer Relationship Management software. Your goal is to uncover all the prospects that your business has spoken to in the last year. You can also do this at the end of each year or even monthly.

    Look for those potential customers your sales reps have engaged with in the past. Or those prospects you tried to sell a product to, but it didn’t work out. Once you’ve all the prospects’ contact details, start cold calling.

    When you call, let them know that you appreciate that they once interacted with your company. Explain that you have made comprehensive reviews of your products and would like to share the latest developments that can help their business. Ask for a scheduled meeting on a specific date and their availability. 
  • Cross-selling

    Reps can also use cross-selling to warm-up conversations. Cross-selling involves selling an existing customer a different product line of your business. The approach only works if your organization has varied multiple products. 

    In this method, let’s say you’ve got product line A and product line B. The first step is going through a list of customers currently spending on product A. After this, get as much info as possible on that group, company, or buyer persona. With all the contact details in place, you can reach out to the decision-makers.

    First, thank them for purchasing product line A and tell them that you’ve another relevant product that can solve their problems. Ask for a meeting to make a presentation.
  • Interesting moments

    Interesting moments occur when potential customers engage with your company’s materials. The prospects could read your blog, download a resource, attend a webinar, listen to a podcast, request sales contact, and more. To strike while the iron is still hot, make follow-ups to the likely buyers soonest. 

    Run a report for the last six months of all prospects interacting with your business via its assets. Create your sales cadence to initiate communication with them.

General prospecting or headhunting

For this technique, you’re dealing with clients who’ve made bookings with your business. To organize these bookings, you should prioritize them according to industry, revenue, and employee account.  You want to determine potential companies since not everyone will turn out to be a buyer for your products.

Before contacting relevant people in those businesses, understand how your solution can help a specific industry deal with its pain points. Let’s take industry, for example. Check for the top performers in that industry in terms of revenue. Do the following to connect with your potential buyers: 

  • Have a list of the top-performing sectors fitting your buyer persona
  • Go through the list one by one to identify likely customers
  • Check your records to see if each company’s salesforce has spent on your products
  • If there’s no previous sales activity, it shows that you’ve got a blank canvas. You can now start prospecting the company’s relevant stakeholders.
  • Find the top buyer persona for each organization on LinkedIn Navigator
  • Cross-check with Zoominfo to verify if the personas are genuine
  • Add all verified buyer personas into your sales cadence or sequence
  • Warm-up your prospects through a multiple channel approach

Prospecting is like gas to your car. “Sales is entrepreneurship, and your pipeline is your business — you should be reviewing and analyzing this on a regular basis to grow your business,” Danielle says.

Qualifying leads

Earlier, we mentioned that it’s critical to qualify your leads to concentrate your effort, time, and resources on those that match your buyer persona. You want to remove prospects from your list that lack the pain points your product solves or those without a purchasing need.

You can do the following to gauge the likelihood of prospects buying your product.

  • Offer them a free resource, a whitepaper, an eBook, or a case study to see if they’re interested
  • Start an initial discovery call to learn more about the prospect
  • Find out if the prospect is influential in the buying decision in their company 
  • Use lead scoring to determine prospects with a high possibility of buying customers. 

Engagement/relationship

Your pipeline is getting narrower as it becomes clear which prospects are highly likely to engage with you. The primary goal is to build a relationship with your prospect because it’s possible not to have a sale even after an excellent presentation. You also want to understand your prospect’s problems to align your product with their pressing needs.

Before meeting with your potential clients, let them know what your session will be about. It’s critical to highlight how your product is a perfect fit for your prospect during your engagement. When you’re clear about what the potential buyer needs, you can make a demo.

Also, include these aspects below.

  • Weave in your knowledge about the prospect’s industry and business into the discussion
  • Focus on building a long-lasting relationship instead of a sale

Proposal

Your prospect may have indicated that they’re interested in your product at this stage. It’s time to offer a sale. Here are some things you can do to strengthen your proposal.

  • Reemphasize how your company can fix your prospect’s pain points
  • Repeat the pricing info and show how the product’s benefits weigh more than its cost
  • Show how your product is different from the competition in terms of ease of use, price, pros, etc.
  • Keeping mentioning the prospect’s name now and then to personalize your sales pitch
  • Offer the potential buyer validation proof, such as testimonials, third-party references, and case studies
  • Incorporate a video to demonstrate the strengths of your product
  • Avoid exaggerating what your product can do; rather be transparent and honest

Another crucial thing is ensuring that your meetings have the key decision-makers to get buy-in from everyone. 

Negotiation

After presenting your proposal, there’s a possibility that your prospect can have objections. You may need to relook into your offer by adjusting the price, tweaking the proposal, and more. 

Closing the deal/signing the contract

Assuming the prospect accepted your final proposal, the last pipeline stage is signing the contract. If this happens, you would have won the deal. But it’s not the end of the story. 

You can continue interacting with existing customers to ask for referrals, renewals, cross-sells, and upsells. These activities will constantly keep your pipeline healthy.

A lost deal occurs when there’s no sale. However, a no sale doesn’t mean it’s over with the client. You can add these clients to your CRM for your future warm prospecting.

The other critical sales activity is pipeline management. Let’s consider how you can be effective in managing your pipeline.

How to be more effective in managing your sales pipeline

Pipeline management is crucial. Here’s why. “Proper sales pipeline management is imperative for business growth,” Forbes expert. And for a sales rep to hit their quota, they need to understand that “maintaining a pipeline is akin to running a business: it takes focus, strategy, discipline, and execution,” according to John Rampton, Entrepreneur, and Investor.

There are multiple tips for managing your pipeline to ensure that your sales team hits its quota. Check them out below.

managing sales pipeline
  • Concentrate

    To build and manage your pipeline requires getting rid of all distractions. You need to focus your mind, time, effort, and resources on knowing the right audience you should target. You can check how you’re spending your time each day by examining your daily activities after prospecting. 

    One way of using your time wisely and efficiently is to block time for inbound and outbound prospecting, doing follow-ups, and other sales activities.
  • See your pipeline as a supply chain

    Each of the sales stages is interconnected. To close more deals, you’ll need plenty of proposals, which in turn depend on scheduled meetings and demos. Presentations also rely on the number of qualified leads who end up being your prospects.

    Seeing your pipeline as a supply chain makes you discover clogs in the sales system that block you from hitting your quota. Qualify your prospects to remove those that aren’t likely to close. Eliminating time wasters to remain with significant opportunities and high-value prospects should be daily.
  • Understand your buyer’s journey

    Knowing where your prospects are on the customer’s journey is vital. You’ll know what sales techniques or prospecting methods to use to reach out to your potential customer.

    If you’re dealing with existing customers, you can straightaway ask for another meeting to demonstrate a new product. But new customers who’ve never had an engagement with your business require plenty of warm-up in the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey.

    Your CRM software should come in handy to help you understand where your clients are in the buying process. 
  • Keep tabs on inactive customers

    Your sales pipeline should always contain prospects and not suspects. That’s because it’s time-consuming to zero in on suspects. If a prospect remains in one sales stage and can’t move on to the next step, you need to remove them. 

    However, create a drip campaign for inactive prospects. Also, continue with follow-ups and personalized messaging for active potential buyers.
  • Produce a sales pipeline report

    As a sales leader, it’s also essential to know the value and the number of your leads. A sales report can show your deals’ worth in each sales pipeline stage. Reps can also monitor every deal status and know whether they’ve got enough deals to reach their sales targets. 

    There are several tools you can use for sales pipeline tracking and reporting. They also have sales pipeline dashboards to give you a visual representation of your opportunities.
  • Monitor your metrics

    Another critical point about your pipeline is that it must be “three times your quota.” For this to happen, you should track your metrics to enable you to reach your goals.

    A rep should start by considering the number of leads they’re receiving from their company and the ones they’re creating themselves.  Examine which leads are qualified or closing. Ensure that you’ve got the right leads that satisfy your customer profile.

    Low-value leads mean that you’ve to check the number of calls you’ve made to qualify leads. Did you make enough calls to the right people? Also, if you’ve made many calls, you should focus on improving your messaging. 

    A sales rep could also be good at engaging but weak in qualifying. In this case, the sales manager should train the representative to qualify leads. A low closing ratio requires that you perfect your demos or presentations and closing techniques.

    There are more sales pipeline metrics you can monitor for sales pipeline management.

Critical sales pipeline metrics to track

sales pipeline metrics to track quote by Laurel mintz, founder and ceo of elevate my brand
  • The number of pipeline deals

    As a sales leader, you should know how many deals your salesforce is chasing. It’ll give you an idea of the qualified pipeline opportunities for your company. 

    Quantity of pipeline deals = Number of qualified pipeline opportunities.
sales pipeline by close date
Source
  • Average win rate

    The average win rate tells you the percentage of sales funnel opportunities your reps can convert into sales. You can use the metric to improve areas where your representatives are lacking or to try different sales strategies.

    Average win rate= Closed leads➗ Opportunities, Number of leads, or meetings

    Example: 200 leads and 5 closed leads = 2,5 % win rate

    50 opportunities and 2 closed deals = 4 %-win rate
average win rate
  • Pipeline value

    Pipeline value is the total value of your sales pipeline deals. It shows your forecasted revenue and helps you develop suitable strategies to reach your revenue goals.

    The total value of pipeline deals= Pipeline value

    Example: Sum up the value of every deal to get your total pipeline value.
pipeline by stage and close date
Source
  • Conversion rate or lead opportunity ratio

    The sales pipeline metric looks at the number of opportunities your sales team can turn into leads. It’s an important metric, too, as it shows the amount of effort your reps must put into converting the opportunities into more leads. However, it would be best to be cautious because it reveals not much about what your SDRs should do to generate sales opportunities.

    Conversion rate = number of leads (converted to opportunities) ➗ total pipeline deals or closed deals

    Example:  100 leads and 10 of these leads converted into leads 

                  10➗100= 10 % conversion rate

conversion rate

Sales pipeline templates

To know the status of every deal, you can also use a sales pipeline template. HubSpot’s sales pipeline CRM allows you to engage with your prospects and track every deal. 

Managing your pipeline also requires intelligent sales pipeline software to automate your sales processes and hit your goals faster. See some examples below.

HubSpot Sales

HubSpot Sales is ideal for:

  • Automatically sending follow-up emails to your potential customers
  • Checking the open rate of your emails
  • Tracking your whole pipeline effortlessly
  • Monitoring all the personal emails that you send to customers

Pricing model: Paid subscription

See how HubSpot Sales works.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Navigator is best for:

  • searching the correct contact details and email addresses
  • prospecting top decision-makers for Fortune 500 companies
  • Connecting you with prospects through InMail

Pricing model: Paid subscription

See the demo of the tool.


Liverscribe

Liverscribe is a perfect tool for: 

  • taking down notes during your scheduled meetings or demo or cold calling
  • creating a digital copy of your notes
  • syncing all the notes with your iPhone, iPad, and Android devices
  • accessing your info by sending it as a PDF to Microsoft Word or other compatible note-making tools.

Pricing model: Once-off purchase

See Liverscribe pen in action.

Prezi

Prezi allows you to:

  • make visual, interactive, and stimulating presentations to grab your prospect’s attention. 
  • create logical and simple demos that your customers can follow. 
  • highlight crucial points during the presentation by zooming them in

Pricing model: Paid subscription & Free trial

See Prezi in action.

Wrap up

Prospecting is the most critical sales activity to build and feed your sales pipeline. You also need to chase good leads and not leeches that fit your customer profile. Qualifying prospects is also vital to close more deals.  High-value prospects and not suspects are the ingredients for your success in hitting your quota. Sales metrics, such as your closing ratio, are crucial to driving the stages of your sales in your pipeline. Sales pipeline management involves monitoring your incoming sales opportunities throughout the customer’s journey. 

Sales prospecting: Definition, techniques, process & tools

Posted on by Pranav Dalal

A recent survey by the RAIN Group shows that many sales reps engage in sales prospecting without research. As a result, their success rate drops, including their motivation. But the good news of the study is that 82% of customers accept meetings if sales reps reach out to them.

In this guide, you’ll learn sales prospecting techniques to up your game and close more deals. Read on.

What is sales prospecting?

First things first, let’s look at the sales prospecting definition. Sales prospecting is finding and reaching out to potential customers or buyers for your product or service. Your primary goal is to guide your prospect through the sales funnel and convert them into a buyer.

What is prospecting in sales?

Prospecting in sales means that you should research to identify new prospects. Once you’re clear about your customer(s), you need to start a conversation to understand their pain points. And the last thing is to offer them solutions (product/service) to solve their problems.

You’ll have achieved your sales goal if your customer ends up buying your product or service. But is there any difference between a sales lead and a sales prospect

What is the difference between a sales lead and a sales prospect?

You may think a sales lead and a sales prospect mean the same thing. That’s not the case; you can’t use them as synonyms.

sales lead vs prospect

You can also split your prospects into two groups. They include cold prospects and warm prospects.

cold and warm prospects

At this stage, it’s also critical that you understand the importance of sales prospecting. Let’s dive in.

Why is prospecting important?

Sales prospecting boosts your productivity

A team of sales professionals can increase your productivity. Sales leaders can use CRM to get first-hand info about their team’s field activities. They’ll know what’s working or not going according to plan.

Sales managers can also:

  • Remedy any problem or issue affecting their sales reps’ performance at an early stage
  • Create ways of measuring results, for example, a spreadsheet
  • Get sales opportunities from their team to achieve a good ROI

Prospecting in sales makes you a trusted expert for your company

Through sales prospecting, you can represent your business interests, brand, and reputation. The more you interact with different people about your company’s products, the more you become an authority.

Prospecting benefits your business in that it:

  • Encourages your team to find the best ways to represent your brand
  • Improves customer service that leads to brand loyalty
  • Improves relationship between your company and your clients

Sales prospecting ensures your pipeline is full

As gas is to your car, so is prospecting sales to your business. Without gas, your automobile can’t move. Likewise, without sales prospecting, your pipeline will be empty. As a result, there won’t be any business to talk about.

Your pipeline is vital because it:

  • Shows you what goals you achieved, your sales process, and your target audience
  • Makes every sales rep or team accountable for sales forecasts
  • Motivates you to document your processes and targets to measure KPIs

Your business can snoop on your competitors

Another pro about sales prospecting is that you can gain competitor insights. Conversations with your prospects can give you an insider’s knowledge about what your rivals are offering.

The insights help you:

  • Understand the strengths and weaknesses of your competitor’s products/services
  • Sharpen your sales techniques to position your brand to your prospects
  • Create effective marketing campaigns

But note, avoid saying negative things about your rivals to your prospects

The next juicy part about prospecting efforts is the sales prospecting techniques. Before that, let’s jump into the challenges of sales prospecting.

Let’s face it. Sales prospecting isn’t a stroll in the park. It’s hard.

Sales prospecting challenges

Mike Shultz, the president of RAIN Group, presents the below issues as challenges facing sales reps.

challenges faced by sales reps by RAIN group

The group’s research reveals the following:

  • Prospecting motivation is very low-66% of respondents lack motivation
  • Weak targeting-48% reported that they don’t know how to work with gatekeepers; 41% don’t reach out to the right audience
  • Limited outreach and abandoning sale prospecting too early-51%; 49% use limited media to prospect
  • No research and customization-42% prospect without research; 41% avoid personalizing messages for each buyer

The survey also concludes that only 17% of businesses have reached the Top Performing status. And the good news out of the RAIN Group study is that 82% of customers accept sales meetings with reps.

What does it mean for your sales prospecting? You need to up your game with the following sales prospecting process.

How to prospect

sales prospecting process

1. First things first, research your prospect.

Here is the thing.

The most important activity in sales prospecting is researching your prospects. Here’s why

  • It lets you know if the prospect is worth pursuing.
  • It allows you to qualify and prioritize your prospects.
  • You can uncover sales opportunities, initiate conversations and build win-win relationships with your sales prospects

2. Classify your prospects according to their ability to turn into a customer.

The next step is grouping your prospects according to their potential of being buyers. It allows you to zero in your time, effort, and resources on the right target audience. You avoid wasting time on prospects who don’t fit your buyer persona.

You also boost your chances of hitting your goals. To make the process easy, you can opt for lead management software for successful sales prospecting.

3. Create a customized pitch for each of your prospects.

For this step, you need to gather information about your prospect to understand them. The details will help you create a razor-sharp and personalized pitch. You’ll tailor your outreach to specific promising clients.

To learn more about your potential customer, do the following:

  • Check their website for blogs to have an idea of what topics interests them.
  • Sift through their social media profiles to check for their newest blog posts.
  • Read the “About Us” page on the prospect’s website.

After these steps, find ways of connecting with your prospect. Think about reasons that can help you strike a conversation. For example, it’s easy to initiate a dialogue if you’ve got a mutual connection, say on LinkedIn.

4. Make a memorable first impression by crafting a killer pitch.

Now it’s time for the perfect pitch. Note that your main goal is to show the prospect that you want to help solve their problem. Because of this, consider the ideas below.

To learn more about your potential customer, do the following:

  • Make it personal. Point out the prospect’s particular problems. Also, include your product/service as the solution without being salesy.
  • Offer a relevant solution. Your solution should address the present needs of your potential customer.
  • Connect through emotions. Your outreach needs to connect with the prospect emotionally. Say something positive about their product or company.
  • Be a helper. At first, you want to establish a relationship. So, it may be unwise to start by selling your product/service. Instead, offer some help without expecting anything in return.
  • Keep the pitch friendly. Keep in mind that sales prospecting isn’t selling. Your chief goal is to decide if the prospect and yourself can have a win-win relationship.

5. Take a moment to assess your engagement with your prospect.

Sales prospecting is a process that you can improve. As a result, you should review how you engaged with each prospect. Here are some issues you may consider.

To learn more about your potential customer, do the following:

  • Challenges arising from your interaction
  • Whether or not your goals were SMART
  • The prospect’s buying ability
  • How well you were guiding your potential customer in decision-making
  • Any opportunities for achieving your targets

How do I make sales prospecting the right way? There are various sales prospecting techniques you can use to boost your chances of success. Check them out below.

8 Sales prospecting techniques

1. Schedule your sales prospecting time

Well, you might have heard the expression time is money. It’s a vital principle that you can apply in sales prospecting. To make the most of your sales outreach, you should block out time each day to focus on your prospecting.

Setting aside specific time for sales prospecting ensures that you put all your energy into one activity at a time. As a result, you’re likely to clinch more deals.

Here’s an example.

sales prospecting schedule

Brooker Harper, who works in Sales at Tenfold, says:

Make a list of activities that you need to perform for the day. I recommend assigning specific time for each activity to keep yourself on track and to make sure that you do your tasks in a timely manner. Also, highlight the ones that are critical versus those that don’t require too much of your attention. In time-lining your tasks, make sure to perform them when your prospects/clients are most likely available.

2. Establish a sales prospecting cadence

A sales prospecting sequence is several communications leading to a meeting. You may kickstart with a cold call, followed by a voice message, an email, a text message, and a connection on a social media site.

Your sequence can use any channel of communication. The pro side of this is that it helps you grab a prospect’s attention faster. You also look professional.

3. Make sure your proposition has value

Your potential customer can agree to a meeting if they see value in your proposal. First, try to understand what their objections could be. And then offer something valuable in exchange for the meeting.

4. Use your existing network as your feeder

Your existing network offers you plenty of sales prospecting opportunities. You can strike gold if you ask for referrals from your customer. Their colleagues, relatives, friends, and many others are potential customers.

Research says that referral customers are highly likely to buy your product/service.

5. Maximize events to prospect

Event marketing can also be handy in your sales prospecting. It works better for B2B sales. Its greatest pro is providing your sales reps with a large pool of likely customers or buyers.

However, it’s not every event that can lead to a good ROI. Take note of the below issues to maximize event marketing benefits.

To learn more about your potential customer, do the following:

  • Consider events with a large group of people with a high potential to become your prospects.
  • Identify relevant meet-ups and sessions that you’ll attend.
  • Decide how you’ll market yourself. Will you use a booth, for example?
  • Think about how you’ll make yourself different from the rest.

6. Sign up for your prospect’s blog

Another proven way of sales prospecting is subscribing to your prospect’s blogs. Choose companies’ blogs you think will yield five-star prospects. And do the following to improve your outreach.

To learn more about your potential customer, do the following:

  • Identify a relevant post and open it in a new tab.
  • Go through each post quickly to get its gist.
  • Read posts that meet your interests.
  • Choose the final list of posts that you like. Look for the prospect’s pain points in each post.

7. Cash in on social media prospecting

Twitter is one of the social media sites that can give you brilliant results in sales prospecting. You can set up a list of potential prospects that you can keep tabs on. As you follow their chats, you’ll discover their interests and trigger points.

8. Follow a tried and tested sales script

Once you’ve identified prospects that align with your buyer persona, you should use a proven sales script. If something works, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.


The RAIN Group Chief Marketing Officer, Erica Shultz, gives one example of a proven cold calling script.

cold calling script example

Sales prospecting email templates

First sales contact email

sales prospecting template

Cold call sales email

sales prospecting template

Keeping in touch sales email

sales prospecting template

Source: Wil Schroter, CEO & Founder of Startups.com.

Sales prospecting tools can supercharge your performance. Here are some examples that can come in handy.

Sales prospecting tools

sales prospecting tools

Let’s start with tools to build your prospect list.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn is the behemoth site for professional social networks. Salespeople can use it to find prospects. Its LinkedIn Sales Navigator has InMail credit, advanced search filters and offers more info about each prospect. It also saves and suggests leads.

Leadfeeder

Leadfeeder helps you uncover potential leads and prospects from businesses that have visited your site. One pro about this tool is that you can follow the prospects even if they don’t fill out a form or make any contact. You’ll need to install the Leadfeeder Tracker Script and link your Google Analytics account.

You also need a prospecting tool to find contact details.

Voila Norbert

With Voila Norbert, you can find your prospect’s contact details by entering their name and company. In no time, it’ll provide you with the email address. The tool has a Gmail plugin to let you schedule emails, automate your follow-up messages, and create reminders or notes.

Tools for qualifying prospects are crucial.

Zoominfo

The tool has a huge database providing sales reps with plenty of info to qualify prospects. Zoominfo offers you a company’s general info and its employees’ contact details.

CrystalKnows

CrystalKnows is a perfect tool in sales prospecting that lets you understand a person’s behavior. It examines public data and then creates a profile of an individual using its advanced algorithms. You can use the info to create a customized sales pitch. The tool has a Gmail plugin to update you about the individual’s commutation style.

Tools for meetings are also necessary for prospecting.

Calendly

Scheduling calls, demos, and meetings become easy for you and your prospects with Calendly. You can sync the tool with your Google Calendar to set up appointments according to available times. Calendly also has a Gmail plugin to let you set up ad-hoc meetings.

Here are some tools for engaging your prospect.

Bananatag

Bananatag is a perfect sales prospecting tool to schedule emails. You can integrate the tool with Outlook, Gmail, and Android devices. The app lets you see if your prospect or customer has opened your email. Also, it shows you all the clicked attachments or links.

HubSpot Sales

HubSpot Sales is HubSpot’s email tracking and management tool. You can use the tool to set up email sequences and check for clicked and opened emails. HubSpot Sales also allows you to create automated regular sales activities, such as repetitive leads.

The sales prospecting tool makes it possible to find prospects and start conversations with them through its live chat.

Final Thoughts

Your sales pipeline is the lifeblood of your business. The only proven way of ensuring that it’s full is to go for broke in your sales prospecting. As oxygen is to your body, so is sales prospecting to your marketing strategy and goals. Sales prospecting methods and marketing automation can set you up for success.