In a virtual selling environment, rather, in any work environment, two basic elements that can help drive successful outcomes are discipline and skill, both of which can be improved upon day by day.
When it comes to B2B sales, introductory sales training programs for new sales reps and regular sales training and upskilling initiatives are essential to help boost the effectiveness of salespeople. But in addition to all of that it is also important to enhance core strategies and sales methods to ensure a consistent lead pipeline.
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Today’s marketplace is undergoing rapid changes, at the same time, needs of target buyers are also being redefined based on various business and other factors. Sales teams who are implementing stronger buyer-centric approaches during this time are experiencing better results.
What can help sales teams exceed quotas in 2020?
A few tips:
Staying Updated and Accurate on Target Account Information (Through your CRM)
Today’s customers feel like the experiences provided by a company they are talking to are as important to them as the actual products and services. This experience includes the digital journey, the overall sales and marketing positioning and the effectiveness or value in a sales or marketing conversation. Customers and prospects today expect sales and marketing to be familiar with their brand, their business, their history as well as their social and online interactions when they pitch their services. To cater well to these customer and prospect expectations, it is crucial to use your CRM to its full capacity.
When sales and marketing align to enter (in real-time) client data, notes, records and other relevant points from multiple interactions into one system, it serves as a single source of truth for multiple team members chasing after the same target account. In addition to providing a single viewpoint on the status and records of an account, this helps teams to also ensure consistent messaging in line with the buying stage the buyer is at.
Sales leaders can optimize how they access insights by further streamlining use of sales forecasting and sales insights features that are built into CRMs.
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Quantitative Proof of Product Success
Prospects are pressed for time. But what can peak their interest is when you sell them something that solves their own work problems. Sales and marketing teams are used to creating and sharing relevant case studies based on buyer personas when they prospect or run campaigns. Case studies that are quick-to-read and fact based and those that comprise of actual (valid) metrics will drive home a point faster than the use of fancy jargon and long winded sentences. Similarly, other quantitative proof of product success like mentions of recent awards won, critical or unique capabilities, emphasizing your subject matter expertise can positively impact a prospect’s desire to work with you.
Short video snippets of what customers have said about your product and service can always be used as a follow-up to continue sales conversations.
Talk (More!) About your Competition
Your prospects will always want to compare your product, its features and especially pricing to that of your key competitors. This can be a winning stage for salespeople, they can use this point in the conversation or sales cycle to speak about their own product differentiators while acknowledging what prospects feel or say about the competition in a healthy manner.
Talking a lot more about the competition and how your own capabilities are driving better results and outcomes (quantitative proof of product success!) will help peak prospect interest further.
Loop in Other Team Experts
If you have an existing conversation with a warm prospect and are trying to shorten the sales cycle, using the expertise of fellow team members can be a useful strategy to create impact. For instance, while talking about how your own services have outpaced the competition in terms of features or enhancements, loop in your CTO or Product Engineering Head to specially describe how and why. When multiple teams and members collaborate to run a prospect through a company’s products and service, the prospect also starts feeling like they belong to a team and can see how the brand approaches everything as one unit. This can help create a more memorable impact.
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Building a strong sales strategy is not a one-time effort. Every sales process has to be constantly updated, assessed, re-assessed and improved continually to drive growth and results.
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