How to Plan for Prospecting [Cheat Sheet]
How to Plan for Prospecting
[Cheat Sheet]
Sales Reps
5 Tips to Transition from Field to Inside Sales
There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it – virtual selling is here to stay, folks. That’s why the transition from field to inside sales is becoming more prevalent.
If you’ve spent years perfecting the art of in-person selling and are struggling (or resisting) the shift to virtual, it’s time to get on track and embrace it.
I get it – virtual selling is a whole different ball game where reaching contacts is harder, your sales cycle is longer, talk tracks are shorter, and a whole slew of other things you’re not used to.
That’s why I took 30 minutes on our recent Sales Shot to break down key virtual and hybrid work practices that will help you feel like a superstar again.
Whether you’ve been at it for a while or recently transitioned, these are tips you can start implementing RIGHT NOW to help you fill those holes in your pipeline.
DOWNLOAD: How to Sell to the CFO to Keep Deals Moving
Pick Up The Phone
Do you like baseball? (Even if you don’t, stick with me for a minute.)
Home base is closing the deal and having a happy client – but you can’t get to home base if you aren’t even on first! First base is getting someone on the phone.
Chances are, they’re not going to pick up on the first try. In fact, less than 20% will connect on that initial call. Even if it takes 12 attempts to connect – you keep calling!
Research shows that 30% of leads are never even contacted at all. That’s a ton of missed opportunity. Especially when you consider that 82% of buyers admit they bought something after a series of cold calls.
So, moral of the story: Pick. Up. The. Phone.
Always Leave a Voicemail
If you’re making all these calls, you’d absolutely better be leaving a voicemail – a GREAT voicemail. In fact, make voicemails your new BFF!
Voicemails have a few different goals. The most obvious one is getting a callback. Realistically, most of them are probably never going to get returned. But here’s what you CAN do: create a positive impression of yourself and your company, and guilt them into either picking up the phone or eventually calling back. So, get creative and make it fun!
The 4 most effective types of voicemails are:
- Lever – Drop their first name, reference one of their coworkers, mention a previous rep they worked with – something that’s going to get their attention! Whatever you do, make it about them!
- Mystery – Keeping the message short and vague can pique their interest.
- Urgency – Are you running a limited promo on a product or service? Are they losing money by the minute if they aren’t using your product? Give them a reason to JUMP!
- Value – There are 6 of them we teach (remember SWIIFT℠, everyone?), but remember that during economic challenges people tend to care most about saving money and mitigating risk.
Whatever you do, ALWAYS leave a voicemail. No voicemail = no touch. It’s like buying a billboard and leaving it blank. Yikes!
Quick Tip: Send an email right after you leave a voicemail. Your likelihood of getting a response is MUCH higher when you mix voicemail + email.
Embrace Smaller Goals
A year ago, your quota probably looked a whole lot different than today. So, take your goals and break them up into smaller, more achievable pieces!
The average successful call is now just 3.5 minutes!
Structure your calls around these 3 key questions:
- What do I need to learn?
- What do I want them to know?
- What commitment do I want to close?
Qualify Your Leads
Do NOT go through an alphabetical list of prospects and pick away at it until you get to Z.
Take the time to actually qualify your leads and call based on that score! You’ll have A,B, C, and D leads (and you can probably skip the D leads). Start with your A leads and work your way down the list until you finish the C leads.
As a general rule, here’s how often to call each lead:
- A leads = 10-12 dials
- B leads = 8 dials
- C leads = 6 dials
Build A Bridge to Call #2
If you got someone talking on the phone after a cold call, the hardest part is over. So make sure you’re taking advantage of it by ALWAYS scheduling the next step WHILE you’re on the call.
Can you schedule the follow-up call now? How about sending a calendar invite with the next meeting’s info? Have you given your cell number to get theirs?
Give yourself permission to call back by urging them to look at their calendar and confirming when you’ll be connecting again.
WATCH: Transitioning from Field to Virtual Selling
Keep in mind, the more you try out these tips, the easier it gets and the more success you’ll see. So get on the virtual train with the rest of us and start building that pipeline. You got this!
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Mastering the Transition from Field to Virtual Selling [“Sales Shot” Workshop]
Mastering the Transition from Field to Virtual Selling
[“Sales Shot” Workshop]
5 Things to Do Immediately After Being Laid off in Sales
Layoffs, Recessions, and RIFs (Ooooooh, my)
It’s a crap situation folks, no way around that. But if you’re in a revenue role and you smell it coming, or just got your notice, here are our top 5 tips to help you recover from a sales layoff:
- Attitude is everything. I don’t mean to not FEEL angry, sad, betrayed, and revenge-fueled! I just mean don’t show it. You’re in a fishbowl right now and everyone you rant to may actually be a prospective employer or referrer. And let’s face it, they’re all wondering if it was the company or it was you. We’ve heard that companies use uncertain economies to trim the fat, and telling the story of your betrayal may tip things in the direction of you being the problem.
- Try a re-frame. Perhaps you were cut because you were the most expensive! It’s the most efficient way to cut costs, right? You may have not been as aligned with the new leadership or go-to-market strategy. It’s probably time to refresh your skills, sharpen the saw, and expand your horizons! What I’m talking about here is your internal self-talk AND your “packaging.” Are you a dejected, rejected, dime-a-dozen AE on the hunt? Or are you a senior-level, uber-expensive, in-demand revenue professional!? I thought so. 🙂
- Get clear on what you want. For decades I’ve made a hobby of helping great people find great companies, and every time I get an email requesting help, I reply asking them to detail their dream job. I don’t mean title and income (you DID think that didn’t you!?). I mean what industry, working with what kinds of customers? What will you be learning? What kind of product or service would make you proud? How will your boss treat you, how do sell, and how will you be led and fed? Go nuts on the wish list and ask questions about past peeves like work hours, development opportunities, bosses and mentors, facilities, friends at work, tools, and more! When we know exactly what we want, we can describe that for people and INSTANTLY get better referrals than a generic, “anything in SaaS.”
Try this: When I ask if you know someone who leads a new or growing sales team in the banking industry, runs an insurance house, or manages a team that sells into government, did your brain find someone? Could you feel it scanning deeper than, “Know anyone hiring?” When you help people picture someone they know, you’re more than halfway to a referral.I’m also a believer that putting it out there in the universe is necessary step #1 in bringing what we want to us!
- Brag a little. No, strike that. Brag a LOT. Your resume needs to be packed with results!
Numbers Are The Love Language Of All Sales Leaders!Get yours in order! What percent did you increase market share? Was there a spike in metrics under your leadership? How many quarters did you exceed quota? How about your team? Did you win any records? Awards? Listen, if the very best thing you did was reach quota consistently realize that is a WIN! If you’re still there, start running reports to shore up your data.
What else did you do? Customer satisfaction? Product development? Process documentation? Testimonial acquisition? New customer types? Lead with numbers and close with some voice of the customer. They’ll be lining up to talk to you!
- Call in the favors (by offering to help!) If you fear it’s coming but haven’t left yet, NOW is the time to work your network. Funny how our colleagues, customers, and friends lose our numbers when we leave (and listen, some actually do only know your work email). But a call from an employed friend calling to catch up and see how I am and how they can help me gets 10x the callbacks than my newly laid off buddy who wants to give me the Telenovela version of their unfair termination. So do as many favors as you can before you’re gone, so it’s easy to call up for the payback when you need it. Start your re-frame marketing campaign about where you’re headed and your desire to leave to move up or move on! Then find out how you can help THEM and do it. Reciprocity is real (and everyone will like you better.)
In short, approach this well-deserved break like the freaking diamond you are. There’s an international shortage of professional sellers – especially virtual sellers. Find an industry and company that’s thriving and package yourself as a FIND! I’m confident that YOU are something you can sell.
Good luck out there! If we can help you brush up on your selling skills at Factor 8 with free virtual sales BDR, AE, or Account Management training, please email us at info@factor8.com and mention this blog.
If you’re a woman in revenue leadership, please apply to join the #GirlsClub Sales Leadership Certification Program as a Protégé (new or aspiring manager) or Mentor (5+ years of leadership experience). Our amazing sponsors will help foot the bill.
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5 Tips for Reps to Keep Selling During a Recession
When the economy gets shaky and buyers get nervous, we see meetings fall off calendars, and deals go dark. It can feel scary for sure – especially when we see our new hire classmates cut from the team.
Here are some tips to keep on keeping on selling during a recession.
Confirm and reconfirm all your meetings.
That includes getting cell phone numbers. Start with everything currently booked. Call and email them today to confirm and leave your cell number. Ask them to text and leave theirs. It’s OK to be honest. Try something like:
“Hey Ted, LB here. Looking forward to Tuesday and just want to confirm we’re still on. I’ve had a few folks literally disappear in the past month with this uncertain economy. VERY glad that’s not you. Listen, I’m going to leave my cell. Will you please be kind enough to return my call or pop over a text to confirm Tuesday at 11 Central? Thanks! It’s xxx-xxx-xxxx. One more time: xxx-xxx-xxxx. Talk soon.”
This move helps you keep the connects you have, shows concern, and gets you cell numbers. Winner! Do it for meetings you are setting up this week as well.
“OK, I’ll hit you back on Tuesday at 11. I’ll be ready to cover A, B, and especially C. Will you bring XYZ? I’m sending over a calendar invite to hold our place. It has a bridge, but I want you to have my mobile as well. My number is xxx-xxx-xxxx, can I grab yours?”
You won’t get it every time, but I’ll estimate 9 out of 10. Boom. No more going dark.
Reswizzle your value prop – in your messages, your posts, your pitches.
I stole this great tip from Doug Landis in our recent webinar, How To Build Pipeline And Keep Selling During A Recession. Nobody buys vitamins during a recession, they buy Advil. Truth is, my service of sales and leadership skills is definitely vitamins – the stuff that’s good for you we are supposed to take and tell our doctors we do…but isn’t usually prioritized. Yes, even though taking your vitamins helps you AVOID taking the hard stuff down the line, human nature is human nature. So if you’re normally plugging things like employee morale and retention, it’s time to restate.
Advil helps us avoid pain. Pain we’re already in. What does your product solve that fixes a pain? Uncertain times lead to fear buying (one word ya’ll: hand sanitizer. Wait, here’s another: toilet paper.) These memories are fresh. People stop buying anything that isn’t essential, doesn’t pull them out of pain, or won’t protect them from horrible recession-related risks. Find the Advil in your solution and lead with that.
(Watch LB’s tips on changing your value prop during a recession below)
Sort & call intelligently.
What industries aren’t suffering right now? Automotive is strong (have you SEEN prices!?), healthcare and insurance are always winners, banks are flush, who else? Buy a new list or pull the bottom of yours out and go long.
Remove risk however you can.
Can you highlight a cancellation clause? Payment terms? Low-cost trial? Nobody wants to be the guy who spent too much and trapped the company in a big spend if this whole situation gets worse. Help them see this purchase will deliver them from pain and not get them in trouble.
Talk longer.
Now is the time to build deeper relationships. When someone says they can’t buy now, don’t hang up the phone! Get to know them, their company, their situation, their partner! Sometimes the best you can do is build pipeline, so build the strongest damn pipe your manager has ever seen. That means rock-solid projections of how many, how much, when they can buy, and every step it will take in the purchasing process. Get it one step short of a signature and be best friends with everyone along the way so they can’t wait to sign.
We’re talking about asking more questions, building more rapport, showing more empathy, finding more contacts, going wide in the account. You should know every past competitor considered and why they failed, exactly how your solution will be used, the three purchases in line in front of you, the one guy who’s most doubtful. Getting the picture? About triple the info you normally have when you call it.
Remember…A recession or economic downturn is inevitable and also temporary. Do your future self a favor by staying positive and keeping momentum going so you’re ready to hit the ground running when things get back to “normal”!
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6 Tips to Improve Marketing-Sales Alignment in Your Organization
According to data from LinkedIn, 90 percent of sales and marketing professionals believe their strategy, processes, content, and culture are not aligned.
From our experience, that number isn’t hard to believe at all.
And it’s really frustrating to see because organizations that don’t align marketing and sales miss out on so much potential:
- 27% faster profit growth
- 36% higher customer retention
- Increased likelihood to meet (56%) and exceed (19%) revenue goals
So how do you get your marketing & sales teams in sync? Here are some tactics you can start implementing today to improve marketing-sales alignment.
What is marketing-sales alignment?
The best way to think about marketing-sales alignment is this:
Ultimately, Marketing and Sales aren’t two separate teams. They’re one team: the Revenue team.
At the end of the day, Marketing and Sales have the same goal. They simply use different tools and tactics to get there.
Marketing-sales alignment is just an intentional, strategic agreement to work with – not against – each other. There are a number of ways this can take shape, depending on the organization:
- Share common goals, priorities, & KPIs
- Use marketing tactics (e.g. buyer personas, automation) to improve sales effectiveness
- Use sales tactics (e.g. one-to-one connections, qualifying questions, pipeline automation) to improve marketing effectiveness
- Create a common lead-to-opportunity pipeline where qualification and handoff happen smoothly
- Engage in joint training sessions to help everyone improve and expand their skill sets
Because every organization is different, how to prioritize and apply these tactics will depend on your specific needs and your team structure. However, no matter which approach you take, the key is to focus on building cohesion and unity among your revenue generators.
Why does marketing-sales alignment matter?
We all know that Marketing and Sales don’t always get along. They have their territories and AORs and may not like it when the other steps on their toes.
However, this tension is detrimental to an organization’s ability to grow. Here are some stats to prove it:
- 60 to 70% of B2B content is never used because the subject topics are irrelevant to the buyer audience (Content Marketing Institute)
- 79% of marketing leads never convert due to a failure to nurture consumer connections (HubSpot)
- 55% greater increase in customer satisfaction rates for companies that align sales and marketing objectives (The Aberdeen Group)
- Companies have generated up to 208% more revenue after aligning sales and marketing (Wheelhouse Advisors)
- Marketing-sales alignment leads to 36% higher customer retention rates and 38% more sales conversions (MarketingProfs)
Why does marketing-sales alignment lead to these results? Some of the key benefits of marketing-sales alignment include the following:
Big vs. small picture
Generally, marketers look at large-scale audiences, and salespeople focus on individual prospects. Both are important for effective revenue generation. If you lose sight of the individual prospect, you’re going to start to seem out of touch. But if you focus only on a handful of people, you won’t be able to scale.
Data vs. anecdote
What do your customers want? This is a key question that every organization wants to answer, and marketers and salespeople generally use different approaches to arrive at one. Marketers rely on data, which reveals big-picture trends. Salespeople rely on individual anecdotes, which can reveal key information that may get lost in the data.
Focus your efforts
When you have Marketing and Sales working in tandem, each of them can focus their efforts on the same industries, verticals, and segments. For example, Marketing can create content that they deploy through paid ads, social media, and email. Sales can then see who engages with that content and follow up with personalized messages.
If they convert, Marketing gets attributed revenue. Sales gets warm leads. It’s a win-win for everyone!
Improve the customer experience
Marketing-sales alignment also results in a seamless experience for prospects and customers as they move from one stage of the buyer’s journey to another. You don’t want them to hear one message from marketing materials and another from a salesperson—that is jarring and reduces their trust in your organization.
How to measure marketing-sales alignment (or lack thereof)
So how do you know whether your marketing and sales practices are aligned (or misaligned)? What are some of the metrics you should be tracking?
Here are a few I’d recommend:
- Follow-up rate for marketing leads. If your reps don’t follow up on hot leads, it either means they’re not taking Marketing’s efforts seriously, or Marketing is doing a poor job attracting potential buyers.
- Use of marketing content in sales. If your marketing team is creating content that speaks to customers’ pain points and underlying needs, then salespeople naturally will want to use it. If not, then either the content is bad, or salespeople need to be educated on its value.
- Marketing lead-to-opportunity conversion rate. If salespeople are following up on marketing leads but nothing’s happening with them, usually that means that Marketing doesn’t understand a) what constitutes a quality lead, or b) hasn’t aligned their messaging with Sales.
- Average number of touches to convert marketing leads into customers. If marketing leads take a lot of effort to convert, the odds are Marketing doesn’t fully understand the ideal buyer profile.
Another thing to keep in mind: if you’re having vastly disproportionate success or failure in one team versus the other, then that’s a big misalignment red flag. If one team is dropping the ball, that’s the real opportunity you’re missing out on.
How to improve marketing-sales alignment in your organization
Now let’s get into the nitty-gritty: how do you improve marketing-sales alignment within your own organization? Here are six steps that will get you on the right track.
1. Get buy-in at all levels
Before everyone gets aligned, you need to get buy-in—from C-suite to marketing and sales leadership, to the salespeople on the ground.
The best way to do this is to communicate the value: how will marketing-sales alignment help them be more successful? You can reference the info shared above to help you make that case.
2. Maintain clear, open communication
Alignment doesn’t happen by accident. You need to clearly and proactively maintain open lines of communication so everyone stays on the same page:
- What does the marketing team need from the sales team?
- What does the sales team need from the marketing team?
- From start to finish, what does the standard sales cycle look like?
- What does our ideal customer profile look like for each product?
- What does a bad lead look like?
- Which content and campaigns tend to attract the most high-quality leads?
- What can each team do better?
This approach also allows you to quickly identify gaps and get ahead of any problems.
3. Share and translate respective goals
One of the reasons marketing and sales teams so often misalign is that they have separate goals and success metrics. The best way to combat this is to create shared goals.
For instance, hold Marketing accountable for the revenue they drive (not just the value of the opportunities). They’ll quickly take an interest in sales enablement.
For Sales, hold them accountable for what they do with Marketing leads. Even if they’re bad leads, they should follow up with them and then communicate the issues so that they can be fixed.
4. Establish service-level agreements (SLAs)
Now for this next tip, keep in mind that different organizations have different levels of formality. Whether a formal, contract-style service-level agreement (SLA) is right for you depends a lot on your culture, team size, and the current state of relations between your marketing and sales teams.
However, one thing is the same for all organizations: set clear expectations for both teams.
An SLA should define the common goals for Marketing and Sales and include key deliverables:
- Marketing goals can include leads generated, qualified leads generated, opportunities created, and revenue produced.
- Sales goals can include follow-up time, frequency, and the percentage of leads that the sales team is expected to follow up with
SLAs can help establish mutual accountability and start to build trust with everyone.
5. Coordinate content marketing with sales
This is one that’s often overlooked but very important. Marketers often generate content without asking the key question: will this provide value to our target buyers? Or, is this something a buyer is even interested in?
That’s where salespeople can help. After all, they’re on the front lines with customers every day. Often, they can provide a gut check on content, provide potential topics, and, most importantly, share real-life questions prospects ask during the buying process—which can lead to some great topic ideas.
Additionally, salespeople with an active presence on social media can help promote key content and support your marketing efforts.
6. Invest in technology that supports alignment
Finally, it’s important to have the tools and technology in place to enable marketing-sales alignment. This is even more critical in a post-COVID, remote environment.
Some examples of these technologies include:
- Integrated marketing & sales CRMs
- Marketing automation tools
- Sales automation tools
- Conversation intelligence
- Asset management platforms
The more technology you have to align your team and the more ingrained that technology is in their workflows, the more aligned everyone will become.
Final thoughts: moving forward in unison
At the end of the day, Marketing and Sales aren’t separate teams. They’re one team: the revenue team. Get them aligned so you can manage and move forward together!
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How to Write Better Sales Emails: 12 Actionable Tips
Have you ever written a bland sales email that made you think: If I was the prospect, I’d delete this in a heartbeat?
Don’t lie. Because we’ve all done that.
Let’s face it: writing a sales email is HARD. In less than 100 words, you’ve got to do multiple things:
- Hook: Get the reader’s attention
- Add Value: Communicate your value prop clearly and concisely
- Rapport: Build trust with the prospect
- Drive to the Next Step: Convince the reader to follow your CTA
And worse: if you come across as trying too hard or being too sales-y, then you’ll end up in the trash.
Even if your organization has a solid sales process and your reps are great on the phone, sending an email to support your sales calls is an essential part of prospecting. So let’s walk through some tips to write better sales emails—and some templates that can get you started.
READ: Sales Outreach: How to Incorporate Emails and Phone Calls Into Your Sequences
What is the point of sales emails?
Before we dive into some stats, tactics, and strategies, let’s get one thing straight: sales outreach is simply a means to an end.
The end: getting the prospect to either hop on a call, or tell you they’re not interested.
If you aren’t achieving one of those two things, then you’re likely experiencing one of the following problems:
- You’re not targeting the right prospects
- You’re not capturing the prospect’s attention (either in the subject line or email opening)
- The prospect doesn’t trust you
- You’re not making your value prop clear
- There are no clear next steps for them to take
Here’s the thing: 72% of business professionals prefer email communication for back-and-forth interactions. So rather than write off email as a dead art form, let’s see about making those emails better and more effective.
Who should write sales emails: sales or marketing?
And this is where we get into an age-old debate: who should write sales emails? Sales or Marketing?
A lot of organizations prefer the marketing team to take care of this. But the main reason for this is that a lot of salespeople are bad at writing emails. Either because they aren’t gifted writers, or because they get so focused on a singular goal (e.g. pitching) that they come off as too aggressive or tunnel-visioned.
But although marketers typically have more experience writing emails, that doesn’t mean they can necessarily write one-to-one communications. Here are some of the reasons:
- Marketers struggle to write in the salesperson’s voice
- Marketing emails tend to lack one-to-one personalization and connection
- Marketers aren’t researching the individual prospects, so they don’t know how to tailor their message to the audience
So while salespeople should write their own emails, it’s a good idea to seek out advice from Marketing on how to do it well. Plus, this is a great way to generate more marketing-sales alignment.
Here are some ways your marketing team can help salespeople write better email outreach.
Buyer Personas & Prospect Psychology
A key part of any marketing strategy is creating buyer personas to better understand your target customer. These resources can help salespeople better understand how prospects think and tailor their message accordingly.
Data & Insights From Marketing Campaigns
Marketing campaigns create data. Sometimes this data shows that a campaign has worked well. Sometimes it shows that it’s flopped. Either way, this can be helpful in understanding which creative, copy, and other elements have been effective at drawing in your target buyer.
Key Messaging & Value Prop Statements
Remember how I said earlier that a sales email should clearly state your value prop?
Guess who’s spent months, perhaps years, researching and refining the best way to communicate that value? That’s right: the marketing team.
If something in your email isn’t hitting the right pain points, your marketing team can help you figure it out. Plus, if you’re wondering “what do I even say?” in your emails, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.
Automation Expertise
Like it or not, your marketing team has (or should have) a ton of experience marketing key communications and messages. They know the pitfalls of batch sending a thousand emails a day (don’t do this) and how to avoid getting your email account suspended.
Don’t hesitate to rely on them for key insights and to help get started, especially if automation tools are new to you or your team.
Avoiding Tunnel Vision
Here’s the thing: salespeople can be aggressive. All we care about is selling product and getting people on calls, which is great.
But that often means that we have tunnel vision: we go into sales emails just focused on talking up the product and pushing people to get on a call. For prospects who’ve just heard about the company for the first time, this can be a bit concerning.
Having the marketing team (or anyone, really) look over the email can help you avoid some common pitfalls:
- Are you talking about the value, or features and functionality?
- Are you making your company the center of the email, or the prospect?
- Are you talking about what the prospect needs/wants, or what you want them to need/want?
Remember to keep your messaging SWIIFT℠. New to SWIIFT℠? Check it out here.
Getting an outside perspective can help you break out of the tunnel vision and craft a message that’s more likely to convert.
12 Actionable Tips to Craft Better Sales Emails
So although Marketing can help you improve your sales emails, you still have to sit down and write the darn things yourself. Here are 12 actionable tips that you can implement fairly easily, and will take your emails to the next level.
1. Target the Right Leads
This is the most important, but most people skip over it. Before you sit down to write an email, know exactly who you’re targeting, and make sure they’re actually a good fit. Otherwise, your stellar emails will fall on deaf ears.
2. Don’t Just “Set It and Forget It”
Automation enables salespeople to do outreach at scale. However, that doesn’t mean you should “set it and forget it.” Make sure you’re constantly reviewing your data, and making adjustments based on prospect responses (or lack thereof).
3. Keep Your Sales Emails Short and Sweet
Great sales emails are shorter than you probably think. Stick to 100 words or less (125 max). That seems daunting, but people aren’t going to read much more than that. So you may as well pack all your key info into that space!
4. Personalize Your Emails
Don’t just copy and paste and change the first name. Research the buyer and try to understand their situation and how you can help them do their job better. There’s no turn-off like a lazy salesperson!
5. Make Your Value Prop Clear
Always picture your prospect asking the question: why shouldn’t I delete this email? Because, let’s face it, that’s the default setting. Make the value you offer them crystal clear. Better yet, write in a way that makes it irresistible.
WATCH: Fast And Easy Ways To Speak Value With Your Prospects
6. Reference Your Competitors
This may seem counterintuitive, but remember that buyers today are more informed than ever. They know who your competitors are. So you may as well own the conversation and clearly state why you’re better than them.
7. Write a Catchy—but Not Gimmicky—-Subject Line
Your subject line is make or break. Including things like questions, curiosity-invoking statements, value props, and more. Of course, keep it short—60 characters or less. But avoid the gimmicks (e.g. “alert,” first name tags, etc.). Buyers today see right through those.
8. Craft an Irresistible Hook
The first five words determine whether the prospect reads your email. Are you hooking them and enticing them to keep reading? If not, write it again.
9. Use Video in a Smart Way
Emails that use video get a 96% higher CTR than those that don’t. Add in a personalized video to engage the prospect, build credibility, and even show off some of your personality.
WATCH: 7 Phone & Video Prospecting Tips for Sales Reps to Crush It
10. Close With a Question
The goal of an email is to keep the conversation going. So make sure your email is open-ended. Closing with a question is a great way to do this.
11. Include Important Links in Your Email Signature
Rather than load the body of your email with links to press articles, webinar recordings, case studies, social media, etc., use your email signature. That way, if the prospect wants to learn more, they’re in a non-intrusive place.
12. Make Incremental Improvements Based on Data
Without data, you really don’t know what’s working and what isn’t. Look at which subject lines, hooks, CTAs, etc. are getting the best responses. Then optimize all your emails to match.
Final Thoughts on Writing Effective Sales Emails
Writing effective sales emails isn’t a skill that reps develop overnight. It requires continual practice, and perhaps additional training and coaching. Keep at it, and remember – it’s all part of the process.
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Top Pipeline-Building and Recession Selling Tips
Regardless of the industry you’re in, there’s no escaping the dreaded R-word: Recession.
Some industries might be struggling more than others (over 58,000 tech workers have been laid off since 2023), and those ‘other’ industries might not even be feeling the effects at all. But the bottom line is: you never know when you might be impacted by a recession or by the mitigating factors in a nervous and challenging economy.
Whether you’re in the thick of it or preparing for the worst, if you’re in sales the good news is you’ve got plenty of ways to protect the pipeline you’ve built and keep building on strong momentum.
Factor 8 Founder Lauren Bailey recently chatted with Doug Landis – advisor to the biggest and brightest SaaS startups and current Growth Partner at Emergence Capital, and Zach Miller – a 20-year enterprise-selling veteran and Vice President of Sales at Highspot. Together they compiled essential tips for both reps and managers to keep building pipeline, continue selling, and boost company culture and morale during an economic downturn.
WATCH: How To Build Pipeline And Keep Selling During A Recession
Spoiler alert: DON’T wait to implement these or fall into the analysis paralysis trap! Vigorous execution of these strategies ASAP is the best way to get ahead.
Top 3 Tips for Sales Reps
- Get Used to Selling to New Personalities
If you’re a rep, the likelihood of the CFO getting involved in your sale just got higher. They\’re often now the ones making the final decisions when it comes to implementing new tools and products and adding it to their existing budget. You may also want to get comfortable selling to procurement.
- Own Your Own Mindset
Don’t wait around for your managers to offer you more development, ask for it! If you’ve got goals you want to accomplish or skills you want to learn, do some of your own research first. Find the people who know what you want to know and utilize existing resources. Don’t make excuses for your own success – get out there and make it happen!
DOWNLOAD: Essential Virtual Selling Tips Guide
- Emphasize Loss, Not Gains
It might sound counterintuitive – but how many times do you think a decision maker has heard about all the money they’ll save if they just invest in [x] product? Probably about over a billion dollars worth! Finding ways to surpass the ROI and value your product adds by highlighting what they’re missing is the A+ solution right now.
Example: If you don’t buy today, you risk losing out on $100,000 a quarter.
(Looking for more tips on virtual selling? Factor 8 can provide the training and resources you need to excel. Learn more about our training and coaching services here. )
Top 3 Tips for Sales Managers + Leaders
- Get Involved Now
As a leader, it’s important you have a pulse on your reps’ activity without micromanaging. Both of you are in a critical atmosphere right now when it comes to sales – so make sure you aren’t waiting until there’s a problem or all hands are needed on deck before getting involved. Mitigating risk is important on both sides of the transaction!
- Protect Your Time
What’s the one thing you still have full control over? Your time! This is your best resource to utilize and protect. You may be inundated with “fire drills” from your reps – but making sure to prioritize and block off your schedule is still a crucial part of ensuring responsibilities are front and center.
READ MORE: Top 8 Sales Management Productivity Hacks
- Celebrate Wins
Quota is probably not the best way to motivate your reps right now if things are tight. So what can you do to keep culture motivated and morale high? Rethink your incentive structures! Shift from focusing on closed business to most leads, highest number of calls, or celebrate the smaller wins that might have previously been overlooked. When employees feel successful, they’ll also feel good about going back to work.
READ: Creative Tips for Rewarding Top-Performing Sales Reps
Remember: the economy is cyclical, so this downward turn isn’t forever. If you’re having a tough time adjusting to the new normal, take a deep breath and remind yourself this is a great opportunity to invest time into your personal training, building pipeline, and preparing for when business is back to booming. You’ll be ready!
Struggling to maintain your schedule? Do you want to take your team to the next level? Contact us today to learn about our available sales manager training programs.
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How to Build Pipeline and Keep Selling During a Recession [“Sales Shot” Workshop]
How to Build Pipeline and Keep Selling During a Recession
[“Sales Shot” Workshop]
How to Use Sales Intelligence to Close Deals and Boost Profits
The buyer’s journey is evolving quicker than ever before. Prospects want personalization at every level of the sales cycle, yet customization is impossible without accurate and relevant data, as every salesperson knows. This is where sales intelligence comes into play.
Sales intelligence is a word used to describe collecting and analyzing customer data to enhance lead generation, boost conversions, close extra transactions, and offer you a much larger and more precise picture of the sales process.
Finally, the primary purpose of sales intelligence is to improve your understanding of present and future consumers. Any information you acquire will be unique to your company.
Sales intelligence data goes far deeper than traditional customer data, allowing you to get customer insights such as demand data, buyer journey duration, source of acquisition, and improved customer persona profiles.
This article explains why and how sales intelligence is crucial for your business to close more deals and boost profitability.
Why is Sales Intelligence Important?
The sales intelligence platform can provide new ways to obtain new sales. Here are a few reasons why sales intelligence is so important for your business.
Discover Your Market Potential
You can access diverse prospects within your target market.
During talks with their target audience, many businesses merely nudge the tip of the iceberg.
The good news is that sales intelligence provides a highly complete, comprehensive perspective of your industry, guaranteeing that you don’t miss any prospective possibilities today or in the near future.
Identify Your Target Audience
Wouldn’t it be nice to get rid of most (or maybe all) of that significant research you have to do to find out what your target audience is looking for? It’s possible with sales intelligence. Static data and dynamic data are combined to make it easy for you to identify your ideal customer.
Monitor Your Competitors
Sales intelligence platforms can assist you in identifying your competition. It can also assist you in keeping track of what they’re up to.
Sure, you definitely know who some of your rivals are, but can you honestly say that you know who every one of them is?
Sales intelligence can assist you in locating each competition and monitoring their market performance.
Find Out Decision-Makers
When reaching out to your prospects, you must know the decision maker or the right person to help you reach the decision maker. It simplifies the procedure and helps you appear more professional.
Sales intelligence tools assist you in determining who the best point of contact at a firm is. You may search and filter by position titles and hierarchical levels to choose who to contact directly.
How to Use Sales Intelligence Tools to Boost Revenue
Build Your Ideal Customer Profile
One of the most critical and early phases in lead generation, qualifying, and nurturing is creating your ideal customer profile (ICP). However, because business is so fast-paced, the typical ideal consumer profile will not suffice. This is where sales intelligence can help.
By understanding more about your customers, sales intelligence data can increase the overall accuracy of your ICP. Insights such as intent drivers, content consumed, purchase triggers, region of operations, company size, and more may be obtained.
Enhance Sales Prospecting
Getting straight into the minds of your buyers and knowing what drives their buying decisions is one of the most important sales intelligence strategies. You may contact them more effectively if you understand their goal and are confident in your facts.
When intent data is integrated into sales intelligence software, you may begin to get notifications with specific purchasing signals when a prospect has the potential to convert into a client. These are hot leads on which your sales staff may zero in and provide modest nudges to persuade them to convert.
Assume a potential customer has had a fundraiser and is looking for expertise in your sector. What does this have to do with you? It signifies they are in need of and have the money to spend on the goods or services you are offering.
These insights might serve as a trigger for your sales team to contact the most relevant individual in the organization for a quick talk.
Better Lead Quality
The goal of the sales game is to obtain more leads. Many rookie salespeople believe that the goal of click funnels is to get more individuals into the funnel. In reality, the sales funnel assists in filtering out folks who aren’t yet ready to buy! When a customer becomes a possible qualified lead, sales intelligence tools alert you. This is due to the solution’s ability to track prior sales. It will also assist you in forecasting their future requirements.
You may also use website analytics with sales intelligence tools. This allows you to see what goods consumers are interested in rather than what they’ve purchased. This information can then be entered into your CRM.
These analytics can function in two ways. The first is to gather cookies and use them to reverse engineer where the user has visited. The second method is to utilize cursor trackers, which detect a user’s location and correlate it with what’s on the webpage. To process this raw data, both current methods employ AI.
Acquire Key Competitor Insights
While one of your company goals may be to sell a significant quantity of products or meet particular revenue targets, the truth remains that success depends on a variety of things other than how much you sell and how much income you generate. You must keep an eye on your opponent to stay ahead of the game.
Your competitive intelligence program can provide you with critical information. One crucial piece of intelligence you may get is the expiration date of contracts with your competition. This information is important since it allows you to create a sound strategy to entice them away from your rival and toward your brand.
You may accomplish this by demonstrating the benefits of your unique selling proposition, addressing their issues more efficiently, or simply providing a better value. With the correct tools, you can detect new competitors in real-time, monitor their campaigns and behaviors, and evaluate past data from your competitors.
Boost Revenue
When working with customers or clients, you must guarantee that your company remains relevant in the marketplace. This implies you’ll have to keep working on your brand. You’ll also need to expose your company to as many customers as possible continually. In short, you must continue to prod people with the brand to remember it.
Unfortunately, a company’s marketing budget is limited. You may increase your income by using sales intelligence technologies. They aid in determining whether or not a person has previously dealt with your firm. Following that, they choose the optimum moment to give them promotions.
It’s also a good idea to develop a filtering procedure for your customer list. Self-exporting is a big deal in the market. This may upset them and drive them away from your rival.
Final Thoughts
In the B2B arena, sales intelligence and sales intelligence tools are crucial not just for businesses because they help complete more transactions. Still, they are also vital for consumers who want to acquire a product or service that adds value to their business and alleviates their pain points. While several sales intelligence firms provide various sorts of sales intelligence tools and sales intelligence software, you must choose the one that is best for you.
The litmus test you should use is to look at how they can assist you in completing more business with less effort. Suppose they do not provide reliable information on prospects, their interests, and insights into their behavior patterns to help you plan your follow-up activities. In that case, such tools may not be the best fit for you.