Sales Tuners

Now displaying: March, 2018

Mar 27, 2018

Takeaways

Buyers Can be Miseducated: While a lot of research can be, and is being, done prior to your first conversation with a buyer, it doesn’t mean they know exactly what they’ve made the right assumptions. While they’re clearly looking for something, it’s your job to be a helpful expert and advisor to the process.
Dig Deeper: It’s very important to understand the existing state of a prospect’s business. Where are they? What do they already have to work with? What can you leverage? Buyers aren’t looking for you to tell them everything they want to hear, they’re looking to you for understanding. But how can you understand, if you haven’t asked enough questions?
Don’t Leave a Mess for Delivery: Just because you’ve got ink on a contract, doesn’t mean your job is done. Help yourself by making the client handoff to fulfillment as smooth as possible. As a salesperson, every once in a while you're going to have to do something where you are pitted between meeting a prospect's demands and meeting or working within your companies structure and constraints. Taking care of delivery assures you can ask for favors when needed.

Costello-What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.

Mar 20, 2018

Do the Boring Work: The best salespeople I’ve ever met run the same process every single time. I know how boring that sounds to most of you, but the truth is you don’t have to get fancy in sales to win. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Focus on the little things — those foundational elements that you know actually move the needle.
Control the Signal vs the Noise: With the volume of email being sent by sales reps today, combined with the number of calls being logged, you have to stand out from the crowd. Think about your own life — how many emails do you delete without opening? How many calls do you screen with caller ID and wait for the voicemail transcription to see if it’s worth your time? If you sound like every other sales rep out there, why would any buyer think differently of you?
Vanity Metrics are Worthless: I’ll admit when personal email open tracking first came out I was thrilled. Until I started having prospects open the message 37 times and never hit reply. You know you’re in sales to close deals, so if you’re going to track numbers, don’t track things that are meaningless. When you send an email track whether or not it got a reply. Track whether the reply led to a scheduled meeting or an opportunity. Until you get to that level, you’re really just playing a guessing game.

People are Creatures of Habit: Quit spending your mental energy trying to figure out when your prospects are more apt to respond or engage with you. Just like you have a routine, so do they. They likely get out of bed around the same time, commute into the office at the same time, and guess what — respond to emails and phone calls at the same time of day. Look for those patterns and learn to strike while the iron is hot.
Practice Genuine Empathy: A lot of people talk about empathy, but most don’t practice it. What does it mean to truly understand a prospect's challenges? Without trying to sell anything, sit down with a few of your ideal prospects and let them teach you. Ask them what industry struggles they’re having right now? Ask them how they are personally measured on initiatives. Ask them how they are compensated for success. These small nuggets can turn into a pile of gold.
Be Willing to Walk Away: As excited as you are about what you sell, it’s not for everyone — at least not right away. Give your prospect the space to say “no,” but make sure you get permission to say “no” yourself if it’s the right thing to do. “No” doesn’t mean never and by leaning into that notion, you’ll create a level of trust most reps never get.

Know What to do Next: You just made the investment in acquiring data, hashing out your target accounts and cold prospecting, but what happens when you actually get someone on the phone? Make sure you build out at least the basic infrastructure to know how to handle responses both positive and negative. If your goal is a meeting, make sure you’re not getting stuck in a 20-message email thread or look silly when your prospect ends up on your website talking to your chatbot.
Put Your Hands on the Keyboard: Building from the last takeaway, when you work with smaller numbers, you have the opportunity to get more personal in your messaging. Instead of letting your sales automation do all the work, put your hands on the keyboard and customize your outreach. Make it obvious that your message could not have been meant for anyone else other than the person you’re sending it to. As Adam said,, you can only deliver your first impression once.
Leverage Messaging from Paid Advertising: If your company has invested in PPC or any other forms of paid advertising, sit with them to understand what’s working. What headlines are getting the best click-through rate? Which messages are getting the best conversion rate? These tests make for great email subject lines as well as quick notes. But remember, the best messages don’t look like the came from sales or marketing — they look like they came from another human.