Cold calling a prospect, getting into a meeting with the prospect – if you even get one – and closing a transaction are all things of the past. These days, the potential wields a lot of power.
Before working with a salesman or, for that matter, an organization, a prospect has the option to investigate the firm, products, and even the salespeople.
The sales paradigm is shifting.
In reality, the majority of the deal is completed before you even meet with the client. Before agreeing to meet, your prospect has most likely cut down his or her options to two or three vendors.
As Inbound Marketing advances, successful salespeople are shifting away from conventional hard-sell approaches and into a ‘trusted advisor’ role, according to this year’s State of Inbound Report.
Sales personnel must communicate with clients on their chosen platforms in order to keep up with altering consumer emotions, which are now highly impacted by technology. In addition, their messaging and approach must be genuine and helpful.
The following are the most common issues that sales reps face:
1.Obtaining a reaction from potential customers
When compared to 2–3 years ago, sales reps now concur that the most common issue they experience is receiving a response from prospects. People today are less receptive than ever before, despite all of the devices at our disposal and all of the communication technologies at our fingers. This could be the result of an overabundance of channels or simple communication overload.
Sales professionals must stand out from the pack and establish themselves as trusted advisors to their consumers.
Solution: Use video to set yourself apart. Sending a video in an email to a lead is a great way to connect with them. This is referred to as ‘video prospecting.’ You can accomplish this using tools like HubSpot, Loom, and Vidyard.
2. Negotiating and closing deals
In comparison to recent years, closing a deal is the second most difficult component of sales. People don’t want to be marketed in an increasingly competitive market.
Instead, today’s shoppers prefer to do their own research. Obtaining expert knowledge on a company, product or service, or even the sales rep is a simple effort with resources like search engines readily available!
The salesperson must become fully acquainted with the issues that his or her prospect has in order to tailor a solution to those needs.
Solution: What is the most common question your prospects ask you? We’ve all been asked that one question, and we all know just how to respond. Create a blog post about your response, or have someone ask you a question and record you answering it. All you’ll need is an iPhone to complete this task. Put the article on your company blog and post it widely on social media, particularly LinkedIn. You’re welcome to share it once a month! Don’t be afraid to speak up.
3.Identifying good leads
Quality leads are getting increasingly difficult to come by. One of the most common concerns we hear from salespeople is that the leads they receive are of low quality.
Consumers find it simple to interact with brands and businesses, but how do salespeople separate the wheat from the chaff? The answer rests in the alignment of marketing and sales teams, as well as a service level agreement (SLA) between them.
Using a robust CRM that can automatically score leads, integrates into LinkedIn for prospect info, and only passes on leads that are ready to buy today, aligning marketing and sales teams with a SLA can assist in qualifying quality leads before they are passed on to sales.
An SLA also works the opposite way, with the sales team routinely informing the marketing team about which leads were successful so that more can be generated.
Solution: Send a daily report to the marketing team detailing the status of the prospects they’ve passed on. Make the report simple to comprehend. If they know you’re following up on leads, they’ll send you more. They’ll send you the good leads as well. Marketing departments are in desperate need of feedback on their leads, as well as prompt follow-up. When they report at the end of the month, it makes them appear excellent. With the marketing team, establish a regular feedback schedule (SLA). They’re going to be blown away.
4. Involving a company’s multiple decision-makers
In-house links should be three wide and three deep, according to salespeople. This means that a salesman should have at least three contacts at the company’s front door, and these relationships should be able to open an inroad into the organization three levels deep, to important decision-makers.
Engaging numerous decision-makers and influencers is becoming increasingly difficult for salespeople. This problem can be overcome by developing meaningful content that is tailored to the organization and its many personas (decision-makers and influencers), and then sharing it with colleagues.
Solution: Do you recall the question you’re frequently asked? Expand it now, print it on letterhead, and label it as a “Special Report.”
Two new sections have been added. One for decision-makers (maybe the CEO, CFO, or Head of XYZ…), and one for influencers (maybe the IT manager, administrator, or accountant…).
If you were sitting in front of that persona, answer the question in the same way you would explain it to them. Send it to your contacts at the prospect as a PDF. ‘I composed this in the hopes that it will assist you in making a decision.’ If it’s a hit, have the marketing staff turn it into a branded sales document.
5.Refrain from depreciating
No company likes to go into a price war because it’s always a race to the bottom, and no one wins. Salespeople may consider reducing their pricing in order to attract new business, but this eventually becomes a client expectation, and there is no going back.
Instead of reducing on price, sales agents should explore delivering value as a way to reach out to new business prospects.
Solution: With the PDF above, you’ve added value during the sales process. Now seek for something you’re confident you can deliver at a low price. It ought to be something that the prospect will find extremely useful and that your competitors will either not conceive of or just not be able to include in the sale. When we’re finalizing a new CRM transaction, I usually throw in an SEO analysis. This is a big hit with my clients.
6. Using the phone to connect
How is it that salesmen are finding it increasingly harder to reach people on the phone as our mobile devices have become a vital part of our everyday lives? With so many options for communication, it’s understandable that people would rather send an email or text than have a phone discussion. People’s hectic schedules make it even more difficult to reach them.
Alternative communication methods that do not require two individuals to be accessible at the same time can be considered by salespeople. However, I believe that talking over the phone is still an important part of the sales process. So much is communicated in the space between a call’s purpose and its conclusion. There are a plethora of small cues that can help you increase your transaction chances.
Solution: You link your emails with a software like HubSpot CRM so that when a prospect views your email or quotes, you can phone them to follow up. Because you aren’t disrupting another activity, meeting, or procedure, they are much than likely to respond. Connecting becomes more relevant as a result of this. Also, if a deal falls through and your quote is reopened six months later, you have a live one…
7.Using social media as part of the sales process
Understanding how to leverage social media tools in the selling process is a huge difficulty for sales professionals today. It all boils down to knowing where your leads are and reaching out to them through their chosen methods.
Sales should collaborate with marketing to learn where customers are disseminating information online and to determine the best-fit business strategy for connecting with their target audience. The best prospects can then be found and targeted using suitable social channels such as the B2B network – LinkedIn.
Solution: Sponsored LinkedIn InMail campaigns are a fantastic way to reach out to new people in specific industries and areas. If you don’t have the technological know-how or marketing staff to pull this off, one-to-one InMails are a good alternative that requires a little more effort because they must be delivered one by one.
