If you have a thirst for competition and welcome the challenge of beating sales records and the thrill of closing deals, then the world of sales may be the right place for you. But much like competitive sport, a career in sales requires tactics and stamina.
You have to be on top of your game. Every day. You need to be agile and consistent in your approach, resilitent, have the ability to plan your steps in advance and be willing to ask for the order when the time is right.
If you don’t follow these steps, the probability of success is much lower than if you trusted the process and worked your plan.
The marketplace is brutal – but you don’t need us to tell you that. What you do need is our handy guide to being a top dog. Only for us, it’s more top cheetah. Cheetahs are fast on their feet, just like the best salespeople are.
Some advice on how to take your sales game to the next level.
1. Keep Your Eyes On The Market
Competition for business is tough. You need to know what forces are shaping your market so you can best meet the expectations of your prospect.
This requires continual research, particularly in what your competitors are offering and how they’re interacting with your potential customer base. If there’s something you’re offering that your competitors aren’t, you need to make this a point to be emaphasized during the sales process. It’s your USP – Unique Selling Proposition-champion it! Make sure to tailor your USP to the prospects who are scoping out what your competitors are offering.
How do you find them in the first place?
Our handy prospecting tools can listen in to your prospects and get the lowdown on how they’re interacting with your competitors online. We rustle up these real time signals and deliver them to your Zymplify dashboard, complete with contact profiles, so you act fast and put your content in front of hot leads who are on the hunt for what you’re selling. Click here to watch our webinar 'Fill Your Funnel – Fast'.
2. Think Like Your Prospects Do
The consumer market is forever shifting and purchasing decisions are ever-evolving in line with the needs, wants and desires of your prospects. To target effectively, you need to think like your prospects do.
For starters, your prospects are encountering numerous content marketing narratives in any given day on any given platform. What are you offering that sets you apart? Are you responding to what your prospects’ thinking?
After you identify your prospects with detailed personas, the Zymplify platform can send them an automated email tailored to their persona and buying signals that have been captured.
Our platform not only thinks like you do, but gathers information so you can act on your prospects’ online behaviour. This information can be used to retarget digital advertising and generate lead scores automatically, helping you target those who are the furthest along in the buying cycle.
3. The Economic Cycle
Wider economic narratives directly feed into your prospects’ drive to find solutions to help them grow revenue and you need to be mindful of their pain points.
At times like these, when the economy is feeling the pinch, you can bet that your prospects are as well. Its at times like these that generating prospects ready to buy is even more critical
Zymplify nurtures your prospects by automating touch points across email and social media, sending the right message, at the right time, to the right audiences, so you can respond exactly to the existing need with your potential customer base – exactly as it arises.
4. Multi-platform Thinking
We could say this until we’re blue in the face: multi-channel, multi-channel, multi-channel! We like to throw the word “integrated” into the mix, too.
What exactly does multi-channel mean and why is it important?
It means not to provide content and buying messages on single methods of marketing such as email or social media. You can't expect to share your content in one way and expect it to resonate with your target market! Your market will exist in a multitude of digital spaces and their interactions on each will be incredibly different. You need to meet them where they hangout!
You have to remain versatile in how you repackage your tailored content in order to be seen on the platform through which your prospects are engaging.
You have to keep your ears to the ground when it comes to engaging with your prospects on social media, like Facebook and Twitter, or networking tools like LinkedIn.
Be smart with your approach. How can you use these platforms to increase your chances of being in front of the prospect at the right time?. One way is by retargeting to those prospects who have already engaged and who are familiar with your brand.
For finding new prospects at scale, our Buyer Intent tools can scan the web to search for where your prospects are engaging with similar products and services.
5. Appeal to Buying Mode and Buying Mode Only
Putting relevant content in front of them when they are in buying mode.
If you’re hitting your prospects with a detailed product list when they first visit your website, you’re going to kill any opportunity to build a relationship.
Before you put your sales pitch hat on, are you confident that your leads are hot, generated by a strong content narrative that has helped bring them to you?
You need to put relevant content in front of your prospects in their journey towards buying mode, so you can respond to their individual needs once they get there.
If you don’t, your prospects will drop straight out of your funnel and into the hands of competitors who will be delivering content that better appeals to their needs.
6. Be A Trusted Advisor
If you’re following your prospects down your buyer journey, then you’re likely to know what their next question will be.
Be one step ahead of the game, by targeting your marketing messages to address your prospects’ needs.
One way to do that is by personalising your message. People enjoy hearing their own names. When you personalise the message, you go from being just any generic company to one that looks like a trusted advisor appealing to their specific needs.
Hold your prospects’ hands as they research what suits them. Respond to their needs as they lay them out for you. Cultivate their curiosity for what your product can do for them, and above all, offer key insights as an expert. Wise advice is a great way to stand out against your competition, so be armed to flex your know-how and insider knowledge to inform to show them what their world would look like in a future with your product.
7. Appeal to Your Prospects’ Needs
The best way to appeal to your prospects is to show them you understand how your product will fit in how they do business, helping make their current operations more efficient.
Through active questioning on what their needs are, you can then tailor the demonstration of how your product offers a solution to these needs.
If it’s to grow leads and revenue, show case studies of how your product has helped existing customers. Offer demos or trial periods to introduce your prospects to how your product can be implemented. Offer insight and expert opinion at every step of their journey, so you can inform their understanding of how they can accomplish their objectives by using your product.
8. Understand The Buying Criteria
Do you understand your prospects’ buying criteria? Are you checking off the boxes on their buying list?
Criteria to consider: Fit of product features to propsect needs. ability to deliver a solution that succeeds in the customer's environment, , price, support, references and speed of delivering results.
You increase your odds of winning the business by engaging with the prospect at the right point in their buyer journey and being 100% aligned to their needs and wants. If you’re not, you risk pushing a hot lead directly into the hands of your competitors.
9. Be Receptive To Feedback
Asking what it will take to get your prospect's business is the hallmark of any successful sales team.
This requires collaboration between marketing and sales, at every step of your prospects’ journey down your buying funnel.
At the bottom end of the funnel, when you’re directly engaging with your leads with a sales pitch, are you offering open-ended questions to gauge what’s stopping them from committing to a purchase?
Is it accessibility? Price? Time? Do they fully understand how your product will serve their needs? Do they have a tight time scale for implementation?
When you’re receptive to feedback, you’ll be surprised at how candid your potential customers can be. Your job is to feed this information back to your marketing team so you can better adjust your content in the earlier stages of the funnel so you can address these pinch points head on.
When a sales team encourages feedback from the prospect, even if they are not ready to buy, then can still sit in the sales funnel ready to be moved further down the path to sale at the right time.
10. Close When The Time Is Right
The best sales teams strike when the iron is hot. They recognize the buying signals that their prospect is throwing off.
The timing is critical.
If you’re too early, you risk putting your leads off by being too aggressive when the prospect is not ready to buy. Prospects understand that a salesperson can earn the right to ask for the order and if you time that right, they'll have no issue with responding. If you strike too late, then chances are your competitors have beaten you to the close.
Are you sure your sales team are aligned in how – and when – to close a deal? Help them by giving them a full view of the buying funnel, so you can clearly see when a red-hot lead is coming down the pipeline so you can act at the right moment.
How?
That’s where Zymplify sets in – book a demo and see.
Get Real Leads Real Fast.
Did you know that Zymplify’s one stop system can find prospects for you and warm them up ready for sales. Find out how.
