Sales and marketing is perhaps one of the most critical components of any business. Most organizations consider these teams as the sole ‘profit centers’ since they bring in the money necessary to fund the rest of the business.
However, Sales can be a tough nut to crack. According to one study published by TOPO, it takes an average of 18 calls to connect with a buyer. Email outreach is not optimal either. The same report found that only 24% of emails are ever opened by prospects.
This is the reason why a number of organizations consider sales to be a numbers game — reaching out to more people increases the absolute number of prospects who respond and this helps organizations meet their revenue goals. What this strategy overlooks is the fact that your prospecting pool is not infinite. Once you exhaust your pool, finding new prospects to keep business growing can be a daunting challenge.
It is thus highly recommended to focus on the quality of your outreach rather than quantity. Although SDRs (Sales Development Representatives) may end up spending more time on each outreach through personalized outreaches, they help in improving conversion rates. This way, your organization may still meet your revenue goals without exhausting your prospecting pool.
Here is a step by step guide to building an effective sales team with this strategy.
Synchronize with marketing
One very common mistake a lot of organizations commit is failing to build a synergy between the sales and marketing teams. While marketing teams deliver inbound leads, they are often not congruent with the strategies delivered by sales. As a result, there is a disconnect between the prospect’s expectation and what they receive.
For example, take the example of a networking company where SDRs are being incentivized to sign up more broadband connections. In the absence of a congruence, the marketing team might run a promotional campaign for mobile connections. As a result, the marketing team might be delivering leads for mobile connections while the SDRs focus on broadband. This pushes sales teams to upsell even when the customer may not be a target for broadband connections. With the right synergy between the two teams, it is possible to build promotional campaigns that deliver maximum ROI.
Another factor to consider here is the friction that exists between marketing and sales. This is especially true for ATL (Above The Line) campaigns like TV/Radio advertising, billboards, etc. While sharing your website address may be a good way to track and remarket to these prospects, it is not possible for interested customers to express interest. A better idea would be to promote a toll-free number since they are easier to remember. More importantly, keeping the number toll-free ensures that there is no friction in the calling process itself since the customer is not being charged for the call.
Optimize your outreach
According to a HubSpot Research report, prospecting is considered the most challenging part of the sales process by nearly 40% of SDRs. This is because your outreach is only seen by a small percentage of people you reach out to. An even lesser number of people choose to respond.
There are several reasons why this happens. Firstly, you may fail to reach the right person at the organization. If you are using email for your outreach, messages often tend to end up in the Spam or Promotional folders and never get seen. Depending on your language and pitch, even messages that get seen or heard are viewed as spam and the prospect may decide to not respond.
It is a good idea to identify the most profitable sales outreach process and stick to it. For instance, you may choose to send your initial outreach solely via email or LinkedIn and switch to a telephonic conversation post that. Once you stick with a process, it is easier to optimize the process and make it more effective for your organization.
Create a follow up plan
As we pointed out earlier in this article, just a quarter of sales emails ever get seen by the targeted prospects. While following up helps, it is important to know whether your email did not elicit a response solely because the prospect did not notice your email or because they did not find your proposal interesting enough. You could look at installing email tracking tools that tell you whether or not the prospect opened your email, the time they spent reading your email and if they clicked on links within your message. A failure to elicit any of these responses could be an indication that your message is landing in the spam folder.
Once you have the right inputs, you may consider tweaking your campaign. Consider sending emails at the right time of the day, tweaking your message, and also reworking the frequency of your follow up emails. All these impact the way your prospects respond to your outreach.
The same goes for telephone outreach as well. Consider investing in tools that help record your conversations (provided that it is legal in your jurisdiction) and helping analyze why conversation are not heading in the direction you want them to.
Invest in a CRM
The importance of this step cannot be overemphasized. As a small business, you may be tempted to handle all your engagements with free tools like Google Spreadsheets. CRMs, however, help you automate a lot of stuff that enables you to be more efficient in your job. When it comes to sales, time is money, and CRMs help businesses automate repetitive tasks and improve productivity.
Hiring is everything
All said and done, the success of a sales process is incomplete without a competent sales team. Sales is an art that cannot always be taught. It is thus important to hire people who can perform their jobs effectively. At the same time, the inherent qualities in a sales person is only one part of what makes them successful. Hire a consultant who can help you build a comprehensive onboarding and training program for your SDRs so that they are well-prepared to take on their role and execute them flawlessly.
Do you have a tip to what makes a sales team effective? Share them with us in the comments.
