For those of you not dipping their feet in the sand at the moment or those who have already returned from their vacation a shade darker and relaxed – it’s time to get back in sales saddle with our Week in sales number 4.
Some of you may be in the summer sales rut, which is why we help you face your fear of under-performing at work and not meeting the sales quota.
Don’t worry, it happens to everybody.
What to do when you miss your sales quota?
Missing a sales quota in summer months is oh too common. Luckily, there are ways to recover and HubSpot suggests that you use those bad periods of sales to build your character and show that you are a hardworking person. Then you can look back at the big clients that you did close to keep your enthusiasm at the higher level and try to avoid negative thinking. Maybe you can ask for a mentor, someone who has been in the business for a while and knows how to deal with this kind of situation.
It’s tough, it’s unpleasant, but it is important that you do your best and keep a positive outlook on things.
Understanding Sales Technology Landscape
Sales tech is growing at the speed of light with over 700 of them existing at the moment and even more to come. SalesHacker is helping us understand the sales software a bit better.
This has had both some positive and some negative outcome.
Teams, especially marketing and sales, can now integrate the software into their company’s system and align their efforts in attracting new customers, but due to the high pricing, managers can’t decide themselves which one to buy.
Each software focuses on different aspect of sales (people, pipeline, engagement) and uses different methodology (Account Based or Artificial Intelligence).
However, don’t let software distract you from your sales strategy or become your necessity.
How to sell according to a buyer’s personality?
SalesLoft helps you sell more by using Myers-Briggs personality test that we’ve mentioned before when writing about hiring a sales rep.
Extrovert or Introvert, Sensing or Intuition, Judging or Perceiving can be crucial in determining your approach to prospects. For example, you will recognize an Extrovert in a phone call within few seconds or minutes in the conversation by how talkative and open they are. Introvert buyers, on the other hand, will probably need more time to reflect and think about their purchase. Naturally, should your approach differ from their behavior, you will most likely lose the sale and the buyer for good.
What is CQL?
SalesHacker introduces us to Conversation Qualified Lead (CQL) – a person that has expressed intent of buying your product or service in a conversation with your sales rep or through a chat bot. These are the leads that usually tell during conversation that they are interested in buying and why they want to purchase a product.
This is a huge plus for chat bots and leads gathered in this manner, since chat bots are able to work 24/7/365. This means they are available for buyers whenever and thus increasing the chances for sale.
Overcoming Your Sales Fears
HubSpot helps you overcome your sales fears by focusing on your inadequacies. Simply put, you need to determine what the points in sales process that cause fear or pressure for each person in your team are. Encourage your under-performing team members to ask themselves “What is the worst that can happen?” and do the reality check. This teaches a sales rep to reframe its fear and look at it from another perspective. For example, in prospecting you try to help a client instead of convincing him. After a sales rep does this once, he or she will remind themselves about the previously mentioned reality check and do it with next prospect as well.
Creating Attractive Contact Page
GetResponse advises you on how to craft contact page that converts. Author Catherine Garcia believes that you should use interesting contact form, humor, make sure the form is easy to fill out and that all relevant information is included. CTAs should be subtle but powerful and given information should build trust between you and your potential client.
However, make sure that the page remains simple and classy, so that it doesn’t overwhelm the visitor.
Writing Irresistible Sales Emails
Akoonu blog claims that you can write sharable emails as long as you make sure that your content has one of these characteristics – utility, entertainment or inspiration.
On the other hand, HubSpot brags about booking over 200 meetings with just one email. They experimented with putting a direct link to a landing page for registering with CTA inviting them to complete the form.
HubSpot also experimented with personalizing your emails to see if it will improve the campaign results. Naturally, they found out that personalization does increase the success of your sales efforts.
Email deliverability and spam
ClickBack educates us about what is email deliverability and what are the factors affecting it. Modern filters are managing to block 99,9% of spam and can be divided into header filters and content filters, but are usually combined to reach optimum results.
Keeping your data hygiene and regularly updating your CRM can easily keep you out of those spam folders.
Week In Sales No 4 – 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?
If so, feel free to contact us and send us interesting links, we’d be happy to share the article with the world.