Do you ever wish that you could accelerate your sales and increase your pipeline? Well you’re in luck, as we are going to share with you our four pearls of wisdom to ensure that you can rise above your competition and easily meet your targets.
Shortening your sales cycle can make a huge impact on generating revenue and subsequently accelerating the company’s growth. Increasing pipeline and opening new business opportunities is what we are fighting for every single day, but how exactly can this be achieved? We advise a mixture of Account-Based Selling, Sales Automation Tools, Starting at C-Level and a Deep Dive Approach.
Account-Based Selling
A key approach that we recommend for our clients is the Account-Based Selling (ABS) approach, which is widely acknowledged within B2B sales and marketing for its level of efficiency. ABS is essentially a way of customising your sales approach and message to a specific range of accounts that have the greatest likelihood of purchasing.
Account-Based Selling can enhance your sales success by providing different sales strategies for each market level. Firstly, you must decide on the size of the business that you need to target, such as either SMB or an enterprise sized business and then tailor your sales approach to the specific issues of the company being targeted. You can then focus on the ways in which your product can directly benefit your clients by showing them why they need to help them solve the issues that they are experiencing. This is far more effective than simply talking solely about your product in isolation and what it can do, instead you must explain how you can help them with a personal and direct solution to their pain points.
Key points to remember when using the account based selling approach:
• Speak in their language
• Tailor your message
• Plan a segmented approach based on the seniority level of your audience
• Focus on the benefits to the client
• Don’t focus on your company
The Benefits of Outsourcing Account Based Selling:
There is huge value in outsourcing Account Based Selling, as an outside perspective can offer invaluable insight into how best to align your value proposition with your target market. In-house sales teams are often very well versed in the company and product that they are selling and are trained to focus on that as opposed to honing in on the benefits of the product to match the needs of each individual client. By analysing a product and its potential customers from an external perspective, outsourced teams can provide a unique approach to sales, which can accelerate sales engagement and pipeline. According to Gartner’s 2016 CMO spend survey, the ABS Approach is emerging as a ‘hot trend’ for companies to consider in order to remain competitive and adaptive, therefore is it essential to remain aware of this approach and consider the ways that your company can encompass it into your own sales agenda.
Sales Automation
Sales Automation tools can prove instrumental for helping inside sales teams to gain discipline in their strategy and follow the same strategy for every prospect client that they approach. There are thousands of products that provide sales automation, however selecting the right one for your business is time consuming and expensive if you get it wrong. This is particularly difficult when every automation company claims that their software is perfect for you. Therefore it is essential to remain knowledgeable of the best possible options for your company to ensure success.
How Investing in Custom Sales Automation Will Benefit Your Business:
By using an optimised Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, sales teams can use Sales Automation tools to structure communication with prospective leads and guarantee the discipline to follow-up prospects in a diligent manner. Sales automation essentially takes the thought away from wondering ‘what’s next’ and works wonders in increasing productivity and removing excuses related to ‘admin’ within sales teams.
Therefore it is essential that the outsourcing organisation you select are experts in B2B sales for technology and software companies, with a sales automation process tailored to your industry. Thus, it is key to look for a partner whose sales automation service can increase results by at least 20% and does not use bulk standard tools. Sales success requires tailored sequences based on the prospect company that are then monitored and analysed to ensure the approach’s effectiveness, something that most automation tools will not do.
Starting at C Level
Another key strategy that we would suggest, is to directly contact the C Level decision maker to accelerate the sales cycle and cut out the double handling as you are ultimately going straight to the top of the decision tree.
As well as shortening sales cycles, C Level prospects will have on average 5 times the budget to spend with you, if you convince them that your solution is worthy of investment. C Level prospects won’t go with anything in half measures which means you will increase the average value in your sales pipeline compared with targeting a less senior prospect within the same company. In their research, Gartner has emphasised that by investing time into engaging with C-Level executives, you can increase your ROI by more than 200%. Furthermore, from our own experience, we have seen that by engaging at the C-Level, you are able to improve your close ratio from 1:3 to 1:2:5, so it is therefore clear how essential it is to engage with executives and subsequently close more sales.
How Will Targeting C Level Prospects Increase Sales?
A specialist sales team with experience of successful C Level engagement can eliminate wasted time and win your company more business. More often than not, a lot of inside sales people have bad habits including speaking to the wrong prospect and waiting too long for a response. Salespeople also tend to be apprehensive about engaging with C level prospects, which is understandable as it can be daunting. So you must select a lead generation company that has invaluable experience of dealing with the C level and that carry out in-depth research on the client and really get to know the value of the proposition to be put forward to the individual company. Operatix’ unique approach to C Level sales increases sales productivity on average by 50%, so be sure to consider engaging with us as a potential step forward for your company.
Deep Dive Approach
Once C Level engagement has been achieved, the deep dive approach then needs to be applied, which is essentially getting every decision maker within the company on board with the C Level’s initial decision to go ahead. The more complex the solution proposed, the more people that will be involved in the decision.
Why is a Deep Dive Approach Important?
Getting everyone on board is extremely important for the new B2B relationship in terms of working in sync and ensuring the longevity of the relationship. When selling to a whole company within a meeting, convincing every single person in that room and addressing every issue should be done to ensure an agreed consensus and belief in the product you are selling. Once this has been achieved, the decision process will be considerably smoother and you will complete your sales cycle faster and more effectively than before.
The Benefits of Outsourcing the Deep Dive Approach:
Harvard Business School (HBS) suggests that the Deep Dive approach is effective as it enables the CEO to circumvent the bottom-up process that yields incremental business proposals in order to absorb risk that individual mid-level general managers will shun. In their research on the approach, HBS conclude that specific interventions with the personal involvement of a high-level executive is an effective way for top management to drive a shift of performance trajectory of the firm to new dimensions.
Therefore, by choosing a company with a proven track record of successfully using a deep dive approach can make the difference between losing the sale and building a lucrative, long term relationship. It is essential that your sales and marketing teams are on board with the new approach to lead generation, so only work with a lead generation partner that demands this internal ‘buy-in’ before they engage with you. This is to ensure a successful and truly effective working relationship with your new partner that will work and drive results without any barriers.
If your sales team experiencing any difficulty in getting all decision makers on board to invest in your technology/software, talk to us about how we can assist in closing sales.
We hope you have found this article informative and useful to move forward with a more successful sales acceleration plan. If you would like to discuss any points mentioned above with our team, please get in touch or request a call back.
