12 best thoughts from Hubspot Sales Conference!
On 6 June there was Inbound Sales Day organized by Hubspot and Wistia. Many experts, dozens of podcasts and hundreds of brilliant thoughts. The purpose of this virtual conference was to share the best sales tips by salespeople. For good transaction stories and for better business.
I was wondering what was the main thought that prevailed. And across various topics I found the main one — the understanding of human nature.
Along with the difficulties in leading the business (high awareness of the clients, clutter of marketing news and high intensity of workload) there is one thing that can give us an advantage: knowledge of cognitive processes. Sales largely depends on the soft skills level, knowledge of psychology and personalization of the message. The way we approach our team, audience or customer directly translates to the outcomes. As Brian Tracy often underlines: all things depend on the law of cause and effect.
If you haven’t seen the conference, I will give you 12 most valuable thoughts:
- Heather Morgan, SalesFolk CEO — Cold mailing. Cold mailing. The temptation to make communication in an egocentric manner is huge. You want the customer to know your skills, benefits, achievements, features and offer. But the only right way to reach your recipient is to focus on them. Try to answer the question about their needs and respond to them using one of three ways: fear, desire, intrigue. Do not mumble about your company, say why your company matters to your recipient.
- Chris Savage, Wistia CEO — Video in mailing. We use lot of automated solutions. Dehumanisation of mailing reduces efficiency of it. With the need of giving a distinguishing factor, showing one’s own personality is the best differentiator. People work with people, so corporate speech is not relevant. Showing authenticity (not perfection) is solution to reach the interest.
- Mark Hunter, The Sales Hunter Founder — Phone prospecting. To some extent, the number of missed opportunities depends on the width of the sales funnel. If you target everybody, you won’t get many transactions done. There is no point in wasting time for not active buyers. Narrowing the sales funnel can increase sales activities efficiency.
- Matt Cameron, Sales Ops Central Managing Partner — technology in the sales. There is the unthinking way of sending emails. Customers don’t want to receive automated messages, they want to speak with people. The motivation to start conversation appears when sender has valuable information — he knows something the prospect needs to know. Audience insight, customized messaging and diligence are the most important factors of results we get.
- Jill Konrath Sales speaker — time management. We lose a lot of time distracting ourselves with bouncing from one thing to another. We distract ourselves every 2,5 to 3 minutes. Our brain is not designed to switch over, so it absorbs additional energy. A California study shows that 72% of emails are opened in the first 6 seconds. The solution is to analyze our behavior (by e.g. Rescue time app) and to correct bad habits. Checking emails once per hour can be one of the solutions.
- Keenan, A Sales Guy CEO — meetings arrangement. Your clients are flooded with phone calls from sales guys. Their time IS VALUABLE, so you have to convince them to give up their asset. The crucial question is — why should they do that? What is the reason? One solution can be referring to the knowledge they don’t have — a trend, consumer behavior, finding, discovery, which correspond to their business.
- Sam Parr, The Hustle CEO and Co-founder — content creation. Each day companies and individuals create a vast amount of content and each day it fades without a notice. The clue of resolving it is to MAKE PEOPLE FEEL SOMETHING. Information has to induce excitement, or engagement, be simple, short, clear and personal. When the user doesn’t care about it, it is not worth the effort.
- Colleen Stanley, Sales Leadership Inc. Founder and President- Emotional intelligence in sales. Empathy is something that helps to change the conversation. When you step in the prospective’s shoes, you make an emotional connection. Thanks to that, you can find the objection and bring it up to the table. That can be the turning point: you don’t waste the time any more or you uncover the real reason of deadlock.
- Marc Wayshak, Game Plan Selling™ Creator — withdrawing from negotiations. The common and undesirable situation is when your customer steps back and and tells you “I want to think it over”. The question is not what to do with that, the question is: what to do upfront to prevent such a situation. To break the pattern, you must to act different.
- Jared Fuller, PandaDoc VP of Sales and Business Development — reply rate. The usual open rate stays between 5 -15% of outreach. The main problem of engagement is the way salespeople shape the message. They usually pitch, while they should start a CONVERSATION.
- Julie Hansen, Performance Sales and Training President — compelling presentations. To give an appealing presentation, the author should follow a few rules: inspire, break bigger message into chunks, start strong, tailor it for the company, limit the amount of information and plan to engage the audience.
- Jonah Silberg, Wistia Account Executive, Margot de Cunha, Wistia Customer Success Manager — video in sales. The data shows that video is a good way of getting an attention. For example, putting a video in subject increases open rate by 19%. An interesting way of standing out from the crowd is the voicemails, or video in signature.
Ok — I cannot say these are objectively the best 12 thoughts. I haven’t seen all the sessions, and what is most important — I do not believe in objectivism. But, these are the tips I remember the most, and in my opinion: this is because for the reason.
I wish you continuous improvement on valuable areas for you.
There is no mastery without a motion. ;)
