A Sales Strategy is comprehensive and uses a methodological approach to make sure you get your products and services in front of the people who need them. It becomes your operating plan for your sales organization. These posts can aid you.
It was the worst of times – and now sales professionals need to bounce back.
Recovering after a stall – or outright stop – in the sales cycle has never been easy. It might be especially hard after a pandemic and near shutdown of the world economy.
But it’s never impossible.
Almost every salesperson has had to dig out of a rut or bounce back from setbacks to fill the pipeline and generate revenue again.
Selling is tough enough. Selling through a crisis – when no one is buying anything – is treacherous.
But it’s not impossible.
Yes, crisis – especially on the scale of COVID-19 – will be the toughest selling situation nearly all sales professionals ever face.
Customers and prospects feel paralyzed by fear, reality, demand, lack of demand or even government lock down. It drastically impacts how they buy and how salespeople must sell.
Selling is tough work. Selling in hard times can be a nightmare.
But it’s a reality.
You’ve faced it. You will face it.
Whether it’s a once-in-a-century pandemic, once-in-a-lifetime natural disaster, once-in-a-decade recession or an annual industry downturn, every sales professional will need to forge through hard times.
“I actually go back a long way in economic history and I can confirm that whilst downturns are inevitable, so are the upturns that follow them. It never rains forever,” says Jonathan Farrington, CEO of Top Sales World and Editor of Top Sales Magazine.
Accept the hard times with optimism – and overcome them with these eight proven tactics and strategies.
In sales, you can expect ups and downs – from groundbreaking goals to crippling crises.
And while no one has ever seen a crises on the scale of COVID-19, one thing is not unprecedented: Sales professionals have and always will need to help their customers through many kinds of emergencies and difficult times.
How can you help customers in times of turmoil – whether it’s financial troubles, natural disasters, health or personal setbacks, market turbulence or worldwide issues?
There’s a “need for a behavior shift, so it’s even more critical … to get it right,” says Mike Kunkle, VP Sales Enablement Services, SPARXiQ. “If you’re not already thinking about sales in a buyer-centric way to create ‘human differentiation,’ this is the time to start.”
Here are nine factors and strategies to help customers in trying times:
If there ever was a soft side to selling, it’s consultative selling. And salespeople need to have it in their repertoire.
And now salespeople will want to do more than understand customers’ challenges and needs and offer personalized solutions.
Consultative selling today is about getting prospects to see their needs in a different light, showing them new ideas and driving change that improves their work and/or lives.
Pull up more chairs. Sales meetings are seldom one-on-one these days. Multiple decision-makers are destined to show up.
Even worse, their roles won’t always be obvious.
You can expect about seven people to be involved in the decision to buy from you – or not, according to researchers. So you need to make more than one contact, friend and impression.
Selling to multiple decision-makers is the game now.
Forget New Year’s Resolutions.
Seriously, why set yourself up to fail as most people do?
Instead, read on for practical advice on how to achieve sales success in the coming year.
We have a panel of experts sharing what’s worked for them, plus insight on the best practices they’ve seen with individuals and teams.
Try one. Try a few. Try them all.
Drop that “lone wolf” mentality. You’ll win more sales with the pack.
Team selling – working with two or more people from any unit within your organization – wins business.
With team selling, you’re 200% more likely to close deals, according to Gong.io research. And get this: The entire team doesn’t have to convene at every step in the sales journey. Just one group meeting with prospects boosts the chances your team will win.
Don’t think of team selling as strictly a sales and marketing function either. Yes, you want to involve sales leadership on bigger or complex deals. And yes, you need marketing to support sales efforts.
But it in some deals, it might make sense for your team to include an in-house attorney who can relate to your big prospect’s legal team. For another deal, you might need an engineer on the team to bang out technical details. In another deal, the customer success executive might be the key.
Sales professionals work hard all the time. So why does it still feel like you aren’t productive enough?
Interruptions, distractions and useless meetings are some of the biggest reasons you can’t get sh*t done.
Forty percent of professionals say interruptions present the biggest challenge to productivity, a recent SmartBrief’s poll found. Another 40% say too much email or too many meetings are the problem.
For many sales pros, no matter how hard or long you work, you seldom feel like you have enough time to do it all. Yet you want to be more productive when you work, so you can be more relaxed when you don’t.
Praise be the sales objection!
It means prospects are interested enough to engage more. They’re trying to wrap their heads around the possibility of your solution in their control. They haven’t dismissed you.
There’s so much sales potential in objections … as long as salespeople handle them well.
Here are six of the most common objections, the most effective ways to respond to each and six best practices for handling any objection.
