DEAL-CLOSER SECRETS

Sales don’t just fall in your lap. That would be just dumb luck. If you want to build a successful long-term business, you need to work and search for them. However, that is easier said than done. How do you go about sales pipeline-building?

The most important part of any cold call is how you open. This is the make it or break it moment when you either sound like any run-of-the-mill phone advertisement or catch them hook line and sinker. In other words, the first words you say matter!

A great opening could sound like this, “Hi Kate, this is Jonathan Costet with Gong. How’ve you been?”

This short opening packs a punch for several reasons including:

• It starts with the phrase “how’ve you been?” which is proven to perform 6.6 times higher than not saying it. However, why is that? Quite simply because of pattern interruption. Customers have been habituated to the normal phone cold call. Changing the regular pattern can “scramble” their brains making them more receptive.
  
  
• It controls the conversation. You have already answered the who and the what of the conversation.
  
  
• It doesn’t start with the question “Did I catch you at a bad time?” This automatically puts you in a hole that you have to dig yourself out of. If you start your cold call with this phrase, research shows that potential customers are 40% less likely to book a meeting with you.

Additionally, a successful sales call needs to be properly planned out. You will have to make hundreds if not thousands of calls. This puts you at an advantage, you can easily see patterns in conversations and direct the flow of the conversation to your desired outcome. Easy ways to do this include:

• Stating the reason for your call. It has been proven to be 2.1 times more effective when saying “the reason for my call is…”
  
  
• Talk a lot. The old saying that you should listen twice as much as you speak doesn’t apply to prospecting. In fact, the more you speak the better. According to research, the average successful call is 5:50sec vs. 3:14sec for an unsuccessful one. Additionally, reps on a successful phone call will talk for 55% of the time vs. 42% of the time for an unsuccessful one.

Lastly, once you have piqued the potential customer’s interest, you need to close the deal. The best ways to do this include:

• Using commanding language. Rather than asking them if they have their calendar ready, tell them to take out their planner and commit to a follow-up meeting right then and there.
  
  
• Don’t focus on the future meeting, but their interest. Time is a scarce resource. Asking them for more time doesn’t work. Rather, tap into their interest, which is an unlimited resource.
  
  
• Don’t focus on ROI language. It doesn’t work when it doesn’t relate to them personally. It has been proven to decrease success rates by 15%! Rather, focus on appealing to them emotionally. This means that you have to do your homework about your client. Know what they need and how you can help them.

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Growth is one of the most important parts of success for any company. If you aren’t growing, you are losing business to your competitors who are. In fact, according to Gartner’s 2020 CEO and Senior Executive Survey, 53% of respondents said growth is their top priority. Unfortunately, according to new research, 1 in 3 businesses don’t know how to grow! As a growing B2B company, what strategies can you use to maximize your growth?

According to the COM Council, security and privacy are the most important things for digital customers. Regrettably, only 57% of B2B companies are confident that they can meet these security and privacy needs… However, there are several things that you can do to improve your security including:

• Invest in a GDPR-ready CRM system with a dedicated Data Protection Officer
  
  
• Switch your website to an HTTPS certificate
  
  
• Remove any unnecessary personal contact information

It is also extremely important to invest in the customer experience. According to shocking research from Cisco, customers would not care if 74% of the brands disappeared. For SaaS companies this is particularly worrying as 70 – 95% of their revenue comes from upsells and renewals of existing customers. Needless to say, it is important to focus on the customer experience by resolving customer complaints quickly, being flexible, and delivering personalized service. According to research, the average customer support response time is 12 hours. However, your customers expect responses within the hour.

A great way to improve the customer experience is with real-time customer service using live chat. It has been proven to not only shorten response times but also increase sales and improve customer satisfaction! Additionally, 69% of buyers are willing to pay more money for a personalized experience! Great ways to personalize the experience include exclusive offers and services/products based on customer behavior.

Another important growth factor is aligning your sales and marketing teams. Research shows that doing so generates 32% higher revenue, 36% more customers, and a 38% higher win rate. The reason for this is that you won’t just be getting more leads, but higher-quality ones!

As society pushes forward into a full-scale digital revolution, a business needs to ride the wave to promote growth. Cloud-based tools or SaaS-powered systems can help improve your business’s efficiency and processes in things such as accounting, sales, marketing, and human resources.

Lastly, you must use data-driven decision-making to promote business growth. Unfortunately, most businesses use their gut instinct and a round table of opinions. However, rather than letting your own opinions drive decisions, it is important to use feedback based on customers’ experiences.

In conclusion, growth is difficult. There are innumerable competitors out there trying to achieve the same things. However, if you keep in mind the 3 combined elements of people, processes, and technology, you will give your company a competitive chance to grow and succeed.

It is often difficult to determine if the prospect you are talking to will pan out. You don’t want to waste either of your time. So how can you get the most bang for your buck when looking for new prospects? The easiest way is through lead scoring.

So what is lead scoring? Simply put, it is a way to rank leads based on different criteria. With this, you can optimize your sales and marketing efforts to generate higher-quality leads and most importantly turn those leads into paying customers. According to a study by Eloqua, B2B companies that used lead scoring were able to improve their close rate by 30%, revenue by 18%, and revenue-per-deal by 17%! Additionally, it also improves lead generation ROI by 77%.

So how does it work? Usually, it gives different values depending on what a customer does at different stages of the sales funnel. Once a certain number of points is reached, a prospect turns into a “hot lead”.

Additionally, it allows you to best understand the stage that a potential prospect is at. For example, you don’t want to start bombarding them with call-to-action (CTA) before they are ready!

Not every company uses the same lead scoring model. However, in general, they all take into account several factors including:
• Demographics
• Online behavior
• Company information
• Engagement on social media
• Email engagement
• Spam detection

It is important to understand that lead scoring is important for every part of the customer journey from marketing to sales to customer support whether it be from Marketing qualified leads (MQL), Sales qualified leads (SQL), or other opportunities.

So how can you start lead scoring?

The first step is to create a lead scoring model where you:
• Define your buyer persona
• Analyze their online behavior
• Assign score attribute, putting more weight behind ones that bring more conversions
• Assign values to scores. An easy, clear method is the 1-5 scale

Next, you need to calculate lead scores. The three main ways you can do this are:

• Manual lead scoring where you compare your newly acquired customers vs. your generated leads vs. your former high-quality leads
• Logistic regression lead scoring to calculate the probability of conversion based on previous actions. This is much more precise as it uses data mining and analysis techniques
• Predictive lead scoring uses machine-learning to look through data to find leads

In addition, some important metrics that you might want to look at including:
• Video watch time
• Click-through rate
• Open rate
• Interactive actions
• On-page analytics

Third, once you have produced lead scores, you need to segment them. This allows you to personalize your strategy when approaching each customer.

Lastly, if you aren’t good at this or don’t have the time to do it yourself, consider automating the lead scoring process with things such as:
• CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software such as Salesforce, Hubspot CRM, and Microsoft Dynamics 365
• SMM (Social Media Marketing) tools such as Sprout Social, NapoleanCat, and Sendible
• Email marketing tools such as Salesforce Pardot and HubSpot

In conclusion, when using lead scoring, developing a proper strategy is extremely important. It will allow you properly analyze potential customers and utilize the correct strategies when pursuing them.

Cold emails are a great way to initiate contact with a potential customer and build a relationship. Additionally, it is a very profitable funnel of sales with cold emails bringing in around 5-7% of total sales, and companies that use it can generate 53% more leads than companies that don’t.

However, many B2B companies completely ignore or give less attention to this potentially profitable sales funnel. So how can you tap into this often overlooked source of sales?

First and foremost, use the classic copywriting formula AIDA which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action.

In more concrete terms, that first means you need to start your email with a strong subject line that quickly grabs your potential customer’s attention. To do this, your subject line needs to:

• Sound like a real person. This means avoid phrases that sound like spam, such as “Click Here”, “Best Price”, “Money Making”, etc…A great way to sound authentic is to write in a conversational tone.
  
  
• Keep it short. According to research by Leadium, subject lines with no more than 4 words perform the best.

In other words, your email subject line needs to be as short as possible, authentic, friendly, and personalized.

Once you have got them interested, you need to keep them engaged. To do this, focus on:

• Keeping it personalized.
  • A great way to do this is by tying your email into a recent event which shows that you are not just sending the same mass email to everyone, but paying attention to their needs and how your products or services can help them.
    
    
  • You can also talk about competitor’s products, but focus on your product’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and how it is better.
    
    
  • Another way to do this is with the Praise-Picture-Push (PPP) method. First, you “Praise” them for a recent achievement. Next, you show them the “Picture” of what they can achieve with your product. Lastly, you “Push” them into taking action.
    
    
• Telling them what is in it for them.
  • A great way to implement this is with the Before-After-Bridge (BAB). This formula first shows the “Before” or current issue. It is that followed by the “After” or how the situation looks after removing the problem. It is concluded with the “Bridge” which shows how your product or service gets you from “Before” to “After”.
    
    
  • Another formula you can follow is Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS). First, you start with the “Problem” by clearly highlighting the pain points. Next, you focus on “Agitate” by stirring the pot and showing what bad things can happen. Finally, you focus on the “Solution” by showing how your product can remove or avoid the original “Problem”.
    
    
• Watching your word count by focusing on being as direct as possible. As a rule of thumb, it is best if your email is shorter than a blog post but longer than a tweet.
  • One way to do this is with Sujan’s 3-Sentence Format Email. Simply put, in this email formula, you should have only 3 sentences – intro, description, and your ask.

Lastly, you need to track the performance of your cold call emails with testing and software such as Zendesk. This allows you to constantly refine your process to get back the best results.

Following these formulas and templates is a great tool to help make your cold call emails more effective. However, always remember personalization will always help increase conversation and response rates.

As inbound marketing has become more and more popular to generate leads, it has become more and more apparent about the importance of nurturing those leads. This is especially true as over 90% of inbound leads are ready to make an immediate purchase! Therefore, how can you implement an effective lead nurturing strategy?

First and foremost, you must leverage targeted content. In other words, you need to tailor intriguing content to a targeted audience so that you can identify the most qualified leads. To scale this strategy, you should also implement a marketing automation platform to help you.

Additionally, you need to focus on multi-channel lead techniques. Previously, most strategies involve simple, generic drip email. However, now that is not enough. You need to focus on a combination of tactics such as direct sales outreach, dynamic website content, paid retargeting, social media, as well as email marketing. This is because the average prospect requires at least 10 marketing touches before they convert into a paying customer.

This also includes following up on leads promptly. Converting a lead is exponentially higher if they are contacted immediately after they have interacted with your website. A great way to do this is with personalized emails. In fact, according to research by Accenture, 41% of customers switched their business to another company due to a lack of personalization! There are a variety of ways to personalize your emails including sending emails when they:
• Download gated content
• Click on links in your emails
• Visit specific web pages on your website
• Show a high level of engagement

It is also important to objectively score the value of each potential customer through the method of lead scoring. You can quickly and easily do this by assigning numeric values to certain customer behaviors such as social media interactions, conversion events, and website browsing behaviors.

Lastly, your sales and marketing teams must work together to best understand where the transition between these two teams takes place. A great way to outline the shared goals, responsibilities, and expectations is in a sales and marketing service level agreement (SLA). This will only help you improve your lead nurturing strategy and boost your customer retention.

In conclusion, if you invest the time upfront in a proper lead nurturing strategy, you will reap the rewards in the backend with greater customer loyalty and most importantly, higher revenue!

A sales call is one of the first and most important touch points that you can have with a prospective customer. Needless to say, it is not something that you want to mess up. With that in mind, what can you do to properly prepare so that you can get better results?

First, you should spend a minute listing down the objectives for the call. This can vary greatly depending on who you are talking to and what stage in the sales funnel they are in. However, some common objectives include:
• Understanding which other competitors your prospect is looking at
• Discovering their pain points
• Uncover who is the decision-maker

Next, you should spend around 4 minutes doing some research on your prospect. Knowing a little bit about them will go a long way. It will help you earn their trust because it shows you are genuinely interested in them. Some great tools to use to learn more include social media, Google alerts, etc…

After, you should spend 30 seconds confirming the call. This can be as simple as a quick email or direct message. In addition, this is a great time to tell them that you are looking forward to the meeting!

Before you start your call, spend 1.5 minutes making sure that you look presentable. You don’t want to look like that person who has just gotten out of bed! A well-groomed salesperson will give a much better impression. This is as simple as keeping a portable grooming kit at your desk and checking how you look on your webcam before calling.

Additionally, spend 2 minutes making sure that your prospect has everything they need. This includes personalized documentation and pitch decks. This gives you a greater chance that they will read what you sent them as well as provide a great conversation starter.

Lastly, get to the meeting at least 1 minute ahead of schedule! Being tardy looks unprofessional and like you don’t care about them. In addition, it gives you a great chance to make sure everything such as the microphone and camera are working so that the call goes smoothly.

In conclusion, with this quick 10-minute sales call checklist you will improve your prospective customer’s experience, thus making it much more likely that you will convert them into a paying customer.

Sales enablement is a function that helps a sales representative perform their job better from the moment they are brought on board to the time they leave the company. Previously, this wasn’t a dedicated job at a company. However, modern, successful sales organizations now dedicate entire teams to this. With this in mind, how can you implement a successful sales enablement strategy?

First, it is critical to put into place a best-in-class onboarding program. Simply put, you need to reduce the time it takes for new sales reps to get their first, second, and 100th sales. You can do this by:

• Creating an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). In other words, you need to be consistently be training your reps on not only what a “good” customer looks like but also what a “bad” one looks like.
  
  
• Provide email, call, and demo scripts for your reps. These help keep them on point. However, you need to remember that no sales situation is ever the same. Therefore, scripts shouldn’t be followed verbatim but used as a guideline.
  
  
• Include detailed sales process documentation. This should provide detailed answers and A+ examples with charts, one-pagers, call recordings, scripts, etc…that should answer any situation that they might encounter.

Second, you have to provide mechanisms to boost sales effectiveness. This includes things such as:

• Objection handling training to be prepared to “fight back” against anything potential customers throw at you.
  
  
• Battle cards and documentation to quickly and easily provide vital details such as name, pricing, unique differentiators, etc…
  
  
• Specific, winning talk tracks.

Third, your sales enablement strategy must accelerate your GTM (go-to-market) strategic initiatives. This means that your talk tracks need to be constantly updated with regards to:

• The specific verticals or products offered
  
  
• The changes in sales methodology
  
  
• Updates in sales territories

Fourth, it is important to foster a peer-to-peer learning culture. A strong company should be a mix of employees from entry-level to years of experience. Everyone has something to share. However, how can you make sure that you don’t lose the knowledge base in your company? Simply put, call libraries. This empowers reps in your company to listen, learn, and replicate best practices even long after your most experienced reps retire.

Fifth, you need to remember that data is sales enablement’s best friend. It helps you understand where your team is struggling so that you know what to focus on in your training. Additionally, it can help measure the effectiveness of your training as well as quantify the ROI of your sales enablement strategy.