0With vacation time officially behind us, we ask you can a sales representative really disconnect during his or hers time off? Do you close the deals and answer your business related messages during vacation? Do you at least check your email?
In our eight Week In Sales, we explain what is Consultative Selling and Sales Cadence and why these methods are far better in closing the deals than a regular sales approach.
You may have neglected the power of emotion in your sales emails, but that is one of your strongest assets. Emotions drive people to make decisions, agree to a sale and become loyal costumers, so use it to your advantage.
Have You Tried Consultative Selling or Sales Cadence?
Consultative selling includes investigative approach into what it is that your customers need by helping them identify their own pain points. Eventually, by being empathetic and helpful, you will guide them into make the decision. By asking and listening more than speaking you are increasing the chances for the deal to be closed. Act like a therapist or a mentor, show your customers what they didn’t consider and explain that there is a solution to everything.
Carlos Monteiro explains in his HubSpot blog how Sales Cadence, usually used by bigger sales teams, helped him as an individual to grow sales in a new unknown market. Not only did he grow sales, but he scheduled 11 meetings with big eCommerce companies. Sales cadence can help you structure your effort so you know where you are at all times. This easy tracking will help you refine your approach the next time you do your sales outreach and see what works. This is especially valuable for those selling to five or more clients. With thorough preparation and developed sales cadence, Carlos easily reached 11 biggest players in the business.
Crafting Emails That Always Get Opened
Close.io gives you a checklist of things not to do when writing an email. They say you should never refer to generic salutations (such as “To whom it may concern“) and always personalize an email by using the name of a person you’re contacting. Then, be sure to follow recent major events inside the company (eg. losses and gains) and mention it in your email, but make sure it suits your message and your offer.
Avoid false „RE:“ and „FWD:“ in your email subject, as well as words „free“, „Cash“, „price“, etc.
Sujan Patel in his SalesHacker blog believes you will achieve even more success with your emails by using emotions. There are a few core emotions guiding sales success like greed, fear, envy, pride and shame. People pay attention to fonts as well, which is why nobody is using Comic Sans. Marketers should consider imagery and wording that can pry on the above mentioned emotions as well.
HubSpot researched what happens when you put an emoji in an email. Apparently, nothing good. Your wish to seem nice and approachable is usually translated as incompetence. Smiley emails were seen as not informative enough, suspiciously friendly for someone your prospects have never met and (wait for it) more likely to come from a woman. In general, smileys in an email should be avoided at all times, except when writing to a close co-worker or a friend.
Why Content Is Crucial For B2B Buyers?
According to the 2017 B2B Content Marketing Trends, 39% of companies are increasing investment in content marketing. However, making content needs to be well planned and targeted. First, you have to aim at your most profitable and loyal customers and leave all the others behind. Second, understand your audience – who will advocate your idea and what are the events helping you sell. Third, make sure your customers understand your true value and try looking at yourself through their eyes.
Storytelling is immensely important for B2B sales and studies show that people are more likely to buy from you if they connect on an emotional level. Emotions also increase trust, loyalty and, subsequently, the chances of them recommending you to someone else. The best way to convince your customers with storytelling is to listen to them and their problems or wishes. They will give you storytelling material themselves.
Swap Your Whitepaper For An Executive Summary
GetResponse advises you to reconsider preparing your whitepaper due to its time consuming nature on your and your prospects side who has to read it. Instead try the, so called, Executive Summary. It should consist of: project summary, background, process, findings and conclusions, as well as recommendations for action. Executive Summary takes less time to prepare and digest, it is much simpler and compact and it is easier to see the point.
Should Sales Reps Work During Holidays?
Even though research shows that unplugging from work during vacation can be beneficial to your productivity and health, some sales reps still choose to remain connected. HubSpot employees comment on working during time off. What happens when they’re about to close the deal, but their vacation is starting? It all depends on a type of person.
The Sales Survivor Handbook advises you to be irrationally optimistic in order to succeed in sales. You can recognize those people in the company by, well, doing better than others because they actually believe in it. Good news is you can become the crazy optimistic person. All you have to do is: focus on opportunities instead of obstacles, don’t dwell in your failures, appreciate the things you already have, learn from your mistakes, focus on the big picture and invest in yourself. Joking, none of that will help, but you can at least try.
Week In Sales No 8 – Wrap Up
This is what we found to be most interesting in sales during our second week of sales knowledge sharing.
Did you read or write anything that could help us learn something new?
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