Matt Sunshine, on July 9, 2020
You found someone's email address online. Someone you've been looking to get in touch with for a long time. Now, it's up to you to write an email that'll get opened.
A cold email can be effective depending on your target audience's communication preferences. Follow these four approaches and you'll increase your chances for success — and your open rate.
Kurt Sima, on June 9, 2020
As a sales manager, do you feel like some of your veteran sellers struggle with new business development? It’s no secret that the recent downturn in revenue has shifted the focus to new business sales initiatives. Unfortunately, many sellers are struggling in this area of new business development. They are showing signs of call reluctance—the fear of taking a step in the sales process, fear of rejection, and fear of the unknown.
Call reluctance is very common; in fact, studies show 40% of salespeople will experience episodes of call reluctance, despite their years of experience or product knowledge. And while this anxiety feels unbeatable, you can help sellers overcome it by determining its root case and building a strategy.
Routines, schedules, processes—they all make us more efficient, consistent, and accurate in our roles. A strong sales process helps the prospect along their journey but also acts as a roadmap for reps so that they can consistently close deals.
The strategic sales process that we teach at The Center for Sales Strategy is called Sales Accelerator. It's an updated look at the customer-focused sales process, addressing how the sales process has evolved, and more in-step with how real selling is done today.
There are six steps of the Sales Accelerator, each filled with several courses that goes deep enough to build an effective, tailored solution while moving fast enough to achieve acceleration. Sales managers take note; these are the things you don’t want your team to overlook in the first step—Identify—of the sales process.
Kurt Sima, on April 30, 2020
Before choosing which prospects to target, it’s best to generate a long list of leads so you can narrow down to the best leads. Using the categories you’ve identified as a good fit your business, decide which sources on this list are right for you to generate your own list of leads.
Craig Jones, on April 27, 2020
Email is a critical part of a prospecting strategy, as long as it’s used in the ways in which it’s intended for. HubSpot defines a prospecting email as an outreach email a salesperson sends to a potential customer to introduce themselves, their business, and how they can help their prospect.
Email prospecting is not for building relationships, communicating a strategy, sharing an idea, or conversation in general. Create your prospecting email the right way, integrate it into a sound prospecting plan, and then you can dramatically enhance the cold calling process by getting your first close—the appointment.
Craig Jones, on April 23, 2020
When you try to engage in a serious conversation via email, you will generally find the recipient calling you on the phone to have the conversation. If you meet other people for a living—aka work in sales—verbal communication is usually the best form of communication.
To people like us, we only prefer written text when confirming dates or answering 'yes' or 'no' questions. Most salespeople are more effective when they have a face-to-face opportunity than when they depend on their writing abilities. With those face-to-face meetings now temporarily on-hold, we need email to help us reach people we don’t know. You need to stand out from all the other emails, and here's how.
Shaye Smith, on March 9, 2020
LinkedIn is the most popular professional social networking site out there, which means if you have a B2B business or cater to other professionals in a specific industry, it could be the ideal platform for growing your business.
By now, you’ve updated your LinkedIn profile using the Ultimate LinkedIn Profile Checklist. Now you want more engagement, you want your LinkedIn posts to attract more viewers and increase shares—but where do you even start?
Kurt Sima, on March 4, 2020
While recently chatting with a new salesperson about setting appointments with new business target accounts, the seller said, “I never leave a message if my call goes into voicemail. I don’t want to waste time leaving a message.”
It’s no secret that leaving a good sales voicemail is hard. Even the most well-crafted messages often get ignored by prospects. However, leaving a voicemail is a wise investment and a critical part of the sales process that enables sellers to stand out and connect with prospects, and here are four reasons why.
Alysa Hinshaw, on February 25, 2020
As sales professionals, one of the biggest challenges we face is trying to connect with a new prospect. With so many different touchpoints, it’s easy for a prospect to avoid or ignore your voicemails, emails, texts, or LinkedIn request.
If you want your message to stand out, it’s critical that you have a solid valid business reason (VBR) that establishes you as trusted and valued. However, it’s equally important to ensure you have a strong email subject line. You can have the best valid business reason on the planet, but if the email is never opened by the intended recipient, what good is it?
Trey Morris, on February 17, 2020
If you fail two out of every three at-bats in the Major League, you'll end up in the Hall of Fame. If you fail 90% of the time as a venture capitalist, you'll end up being a multi-millionaire—possibly a billionaire.
So, why are salespeople afraid to fail? And why do sales managers often berate a salesperson when they fail? If you’re never failing, then you’re probably never winning either. We tell our team to take risks and explore new opportunities, but are we reiterating that embracing failure is actually good for business?
