The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

At The Center for Sales Strategy (CSS), we’re big proponents of thinking like an owner — in other words, getting into the minds of the decision makers and decision influencers you call on. 

One of the many ways to do that is uncover and understand what financial challenges are top of mind for them, especially as we head into a new year.

Sometimes to be more productive and effective, you just need to take it back to the basics. But, often, that’s what takes the most time — and most days, we don’t have enough hours in the day.  

If you could invest now to save later, would you do it? Ask yourself, if you could make a change today to reap benefits in the future, would you be willing to give it a try?  

At The Center for Sales Strategy (CSS), we value sales and marketing alignment, and a lot of our efforts overlap; and therefore, we carry tips and strategies across departments. Why? Because they work.  

In this post, you’ll find three valuable non-innovative marketing tactics that we’ve seen support the sales process. We call them “non-innovative” because it’s nothing you haven’t heard before, but the question and challenge we have for you is, have you done these things, or are you committed to putting forth the effort to adopt these tactics to boost your sales process? 

Salespeople in different industries encounter different questions and objections, right? Wrong. Your products and services may affect the minor details of objections, but Google the phrase ‘most common sales objections’ and you’ll find most sellers face the same objections from their leads.

Whether it’s price objections, the prospect isn’t interested, or “now isn’t a good time,” sellers often encounter the same types of questions and objections during the sales process. Sales enablement resources help them anticipate and overcome these objections.

Creating talk tracks and related sales collateral material helps enable sellers to respond quickly — allowing them to move the sales process forward and close business sooner.

Are you one of the 63% of businesses that have problems getting traffic and leads? Or are your salespeople part of the 44% that give up after one rejection?

It happens to everyone in sales. You connect with a prospect, conduct a needs analysis, maybe even give a stellar presentation, but something happens along the way, and the prospect stalls. Do you know it takes six to eight follow-ups for sales leads to convert to paying customers?

Before moving forward after a stalled account, evaluate where you went wrong. How do you re-engage stalled accounts? Well, it all depends on where you’re at in the sales process.

The “old days” when we just showed up on someone’s doorstep or dropped into their inbox or voicemail weren’t really all that long ago, were they? 

The reality is these time-tested cold calling methods were already losing their effectiveness before the pandemic shutdown sent everyone home from the office. Still, changes in prospect behavior have accelerated, given the trials of the last six months.  And, those trends are likely to result in permanent changes in how B2B sales are conducted.

In a very short time, the sales process and a large portion of our life went entirely online.

It’s not that every time we contacted a client or prospect it was always in person, but the reliance on shared screen meetings is now the standard and is unlikely to change any time soon. New activities create new buzz words, and the most recent is “Zoom Fatigue.”

“CRMs are just another tracking tool.”

“I’ll spend more time trying to learn how to use it than actually using it.”

You’ve heard the complaints from your sales team about using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. And, chances are if you’ve considered implementing a sales enablement tool like a CRM into your strategic plan to drive revenue, you’ve read a lot of articles that discuss the various reasons why most sales CRM systems fail.

There’s even a strong possibility this is why you’re hesitant to commit purchasing a CRM. No one wants to invest in a tool that statistics show to fail (mostly) because a sales team is reluctant to use it. As a sales manager, what can you do to ensure your sales reps use a CRM to its full potential?

First, you must understand why they’re wary.

Remote selling, virtual selling, more communication via emails, and phone calls — it’s all the new normal. And these new normal tactics require a significant shift in skills to create a more engaging buyer experience.

Conducting business over Zoom is tricky. Rather than shaking hands and reading body language, salespeople must learn how to limit distractions, make virtual sales demos more like traditional presentations, and learn to communicate as effectively online as they do when they’re physically with prospects and clients.

Being a sales professional in 2020 is very different than it was just last year. Buyers, who used to prefer meeting face-to-face prior to making a purchasing decision, have changed too.

Google search data shows that in 2019 searches for “sales enablement” increased by 61.1% year over year, up from 51.2% in 2018.

What’s the reason behind the steady increase in interest around sales enablement? When implemented correctly, sales enablement moves the sales process faster and more efficently. It's the long-term solution that addresses each of the key priorities for sales productivity — to shorten the sales cycle, decrease onboarding time, and streamline the opportunity management process. Simply put, sales enablement provides a big impact on the bottom line. 

Still, there are several questions sales managers and salespeople want answered before investing in sales enablement. Let us help answer some of those questions.