No matter your profession or where you live, at some point you have been labeled "an inbound lead." Whether it was on a personal or professional level, as an inbound lead you probably have had an unpleasant encounter or two with a pushy sales professional. In case you tried to block out the latter experiences, let's recap a few of the common characteristics. Your phone constantly pings with new messages, your emails seem to be filled with new offers on a near constant basis, and your LinkedIn profile is suddenly bombarded with notifications. The latter experience occurs far too often when sales associates don't follow a few golden rules regarding communication and follow-ups with inbound leads. Fortunately, this blog post is here to help!
In sales, first impressions often play a critical role in helping the prospect begin his or her buyer's journey. However, far too often businesses fail to remember that a Sales Development Representative (SDR) plays an entirely different role than an appointment setter. Failing to understand the key differences between these two roles can lead to fewer conversions, a limited number of prospects in the beginning portions of the sales funnel, and inevitably fewer sales. The good news is that understanding the following four differences can help businesses maximize their approach to contacting new prospects and warm leads.
Like the missing cog that keeps the wheel from turning, or the GPS that keeps spouting "make a legal u-turn," a broken sales process is not only detrimental to your business, but it is often easy to spot. Unfortunately, far too many companies ignore the broken sales process as they cling to outdated processes or strategies. The good news is that 2019 can be the year that you not only identify areas where your sales process is breaking down, but also take the steps needed to fix it.
As a C-level sales executive a major component of your job is to lead. However, another major component of their job is to inspire their sales team. Being an effective leader is about more than giving a pep talk; it requires the understanding that training is not simply for onboarding new sales representatives. Instead, by embracing the benefits of sales training and sales coaching, leaders can not only inspire their team, but they can help them reach new levels of success.
When the average person thinks about the sales process, they picture a hard-core sales person cramming their product or service down an unwilling buyer's throat. If you are in the selling business, you know that in most scenarios, that's not the case.
While there are sales people and cold-calling and other components present in today's selling process, there are other, more strategic ways of accessing buyers and landing new, profitable business. We are talking about inbound sales as opposed to outbound sales. Both have merit and can produce results, but they are completely different animals.
Here's a quick test for you to do to determine if your sales playbook is truly modern in todays sales and marketing ecosystem.
To sum it up, you have a truly modern playbook if all of the below statements when applied to you and your playbook are considered to be TRUE...
I’ve been fortunate enough to attend Hubspots inbound conference for the last 4 years. There’s no doubt that hubspot has played a pivotal role in the way we look to generate leads. The entire inbound movement has really taken off and for us and our clients, it has proven to be a great way to generate leads as you can drive prospects to your business or website as a result of your content marketing efforts. So how does it really tie into sales? For starters, check out this video intro from last week at INBOUND…
No matter where you go or what you read, if you are in the sales and marketing profession, you have heard folks talking about sales and marketing alignment. While there are different levels of alignment and even different definitions of alignment, it is something demand generation teams are striving to achieve.
Did you know that highly-aligned organizations achieved an average of 32% year-over-year revenue growth – while their less aligned competitors saw a 7% decrease in revenue? (Source: Sales Enablement: Fulfilling the Last Frontier of Marketing-Sales Alignment, Aberdeen Group, September 2013).
One of the most important ways to keep your sales development reps (SDRs) focused on growing their pipeline is by using a sales cadence. Now, if you are not familiar with this term it simply means a defined schedule indicating when reps should reach out to the prospects that they are pursuing. Every sales organization has a slightly different approach depending on the tactics they are using but a typical cadence may include calls, emails, social media activities, webinars, or all of the above. The important thing is that a cadence exists. Defining your sales cadence and sharing it gives sales managers and executives a certain level of comfort knowing that the SDRs are taking the necessary steps to accelerate leads through the buying process.
