Ready, Set, SALES! Get Set to Revolutionise Your Business Sales Strategy
Every business needs a great sales strategy! Learn how to revolutionise yours in three easy stages.
Your Business Operating System
Ready, Set, SALES! Get Set to Revolutionise Your Business Sales Strategy
Welcome, welcome, welcome!
You’re here, you’re interested and I couldn’t be more excited to hear about your business levelling up!
As I shared in Getting Ready, if you’re looking for a strategy to turbocharge your business sales, I believe I’ve got one for you. I’m confident it’ll work, no matter how big or small your company is (even a company of 1!), no matter what market segment it works in.
Let’s continue our series
Series Overview
The series is divided into three articles and 15 steps. Each step is specific and concrete, containing real life processes you can work through to level up your business. Put them together and you’ll be well on your way to developing a sales process which will help your business prosper, flourish and grow.
- Ready. Part 1 explores how to get yourself and your sales team (if it exists) ready for your sales push.
- Set. Part 2 shares how you can set your approach and next steps into a repeatable process, giving you valuable insight into how it’s going.
- Sales. Part 3 finishes with how to maintain your momentum by looking at your leadership and outcomes.
As always, I hope this content is helpful! It means the absolute world to me when you take time to clap for an episode, subscribe to my stories or use my referral link to sign up for Medium. It lets me know that my stories are helping you ❤️.
Enjoy, and feel free to drop me a DM on twitter, connect on LinkedIn / Github with thoughts and comments 😃
Get Set 😃
This episode explores our actual sales process. I call it your Individual Execution plan. Getting this right will deliver some incredible benefits for your company:
- Consistent Execution. Your whole sales process will be incredibly consistent. As a result, you’ll find it much easier to gain actionable insight into what is working and not working in your sales pipeline — no matter how large you scale it!
- Consistent Data Funnel. We all know that data is the gold of the information age. Your sales process is no different. We also know that getting clear, consistent and accurate data is one of the biggest challenges facing business. By the end of this episode, you’ll have an incredibly effective approach ready to go — positioning to execute quickly, effectively and nimbly.
- Consistent Insight. Your super-powered data-funnel will give you laser accurate insight into what’s working and not working. Across the board, from 1 person to 1000, you’ll know exactly what’s working and what isn’t working, enabling you to fine tune your entire process.
Best of all, you won’t believe how easy it is!
1. Prospect Group Discovery
Standardise your prospect discovery process. It’s an often overlooked part of the plan — and yet it yields incredible insight.
For instance, if your prospect discovery process is through targeted research on LinkedIn, then templating this will give your a massive advantage. Here’s three reasons why:
- Scale. You’ll be able to scale your research base (and potentially even outsource it!)
- Insight. Templating your process will give you incredibly effective insight into what works and what doesn’t. For many people, it also provides insight into how to make the whole process more efficient. In turn, you can scale it further.
- Quality. Any process you can template and standardise gives you a higher quality outcome. More importantly, you’ll get a consistent level of quality which can tune to be the most effective mix of quality vs cost for your business. The result? You can scale and get greater insight into what you’re doing.
The best thing about this step is that you’ve already done most of the research work required. In Getting Ready, you spent a TON of time learning about your prospective prospects. You know all sorts of things about them — where they hang out, what they spend/invest money on, how they communicate.
All you need to now is convert that research into a templated process with two simple questions:
- How will we find them?
- How will we interact?
As you answer these questions, have a notepad (digital or paper) at hand. You’ll be amazed how the work you’ve already done makes this part of revolutionising your business sales simple, effective and powerful.
Well done!
As a side note, if you’re looking for a great online system, contact my company Creative Appnologies to see if we can help!
2. Discover A Key Decision Maker
To make a sale, you need a Key Decision Maker. The KDM (my made up term 😃). The one who will pay you.
It sounds like a Big Deal, but it’s nothing more than recognising that certain people have the authorisation to pay you money, and some don’t. Finding this person or persons helps you:
- Get an Answer Quickly.
- Reduce the ‘I need to talk to my boss’ limbo (INTTTB Limbo)
- Understand the group dynamics.
There’s a ton of research (and opinions) about this topic. You can get into the influencing game, the targeted advertising game, the ‘pester them until they say yes’ game. I’m not really an expert on any of them — more on that shortly.
What you do need, regardless of your approach is to:
- Research the process
- Standardise the process
- Communicate the process
- Review the process
Here’s a real-world example. In most Australian government departments (federal and state), decision making levels are tied to the price and type of product. For instance, a Director may be able to sign off on any purchase below $100,000 but only an IT Director can sign off on an IT purchase. Therefore, if I am selling IT services less than $100k to government departments, I need to ensure that my decision makers are IT Directors. If I’m selling Employee Wellbeing plans, then any Director is fine.
Make sense?
3. Offer Your Peace
Let’s get into our sales approach. This is where all our previous work on strategy, target market development, messaging, expectations, resourcing and sales process hits the road. It can be quite the intense emotional road to send that first email, send your first LinkedIn Direct Message or dial that first number.
Start By Caring
But remember, at the other end of that email / message / phone call is a human being. A man or woman who doesn’t know the vast effort you’ve put in to get this far. Doesn’t know your business, your financial situation or even your name.
It’s not that they don’t care (although some don’t). It’s just that they too are on a journey. They have an infinity todo list and are searching for or living their purpose.
So start by caring
Care about who they are. Care about what they do. Care about what they’ve been called to do.
Your very first sentence will show this when you offer a genuine, heartfelt greeting. I call it ‘Offering your peace’. You’d be amazed at the difference in conversion rates when you start by genuinely caring about the person on the other end of the conversation.
Start by caring
Characteristics of Caring
If your method of reaching out is a phone call, think the contrast between these two approaches:
- Sales Person 1: ‘Hi there, my name is <insert name>, I’d like to offer you <product or service>, <launch into sales spiel>
- Sales Person 2: ‘Hi there, my name is <insert name>, I’d like to talk to you about <product or service>, would you have 3 minutes? (only do sales spiel if person is interested)
Which would you prefer?
Here’s the three characteristics you need to strive for:
- Being genuine
- Showing authentic care
- Demonstrating respect
4. Offer Your Up Front Contract
Your Up Front Contract frames your interaction with a prospect. It gives you immediate, actionable insight into your prospect and your next steps. It also reinforces your genuine respect for the person by allowing them to remain a co-equal participant to the conversation.
So what is an Up Front Contract?
An Up Front Contract provides information to other person about what to expect from you in this moment. If you’re on a sales call, it might be ‘Do you have 3 minutes to hear about <product or service>. If it’s a DM, it might be ‘I’d like to share about our <product or service>’ in the second sentence.
In both scenarios, you give the person at the receiving end of the communication an authentic choice to continue.
Characteristics of an Up Front Contract
There’s three characteristics of an Up Front Contract:
- Clear information
- Explicit time frames
- Respectful request
What Next?
You might be wondering: “What if my prospect says ‘No’ to my request?”
The answer is simple: You honour it.
Yes. Despite all the hard work you’ve put into it to get this far. Despite all the resources you’ve expended. Despite all the time and deep disappointment.
It does happen and it’s ok.
Moving on from that negative outcome, there’s typically three responses you’ll get from a prospect. Your Individual Execution plan should make sure you have clear responses ready for these:
- Yes. HUZZAH! Proceed to the next step and CONGRATULATIONS ❤️
- “I’m busy right now, but could you call back later?” This is also good. Arrange a time with your prospect and make a note in your CRM.
- No. Politely and respectfully thank the prospect and exit the call.
Above all: Honour Your Up Front Contract
5. Share The Message
Ha! We’re finally here!
Remember the message we developed in Get Ready?
If you prospect accepts your Up Front Contract it’s time to share.
With passion, conviction and integrity, share your message. Share how it’ll help improve, advance or assist. If you’ve got a product demo, demonstrate it in action. Share customer stories.
This part of the sales process needs to come from the heart of your business. From your purpose.
All I can advise to help you is the following:
- Keep to your Up Front Contract. If you said 3 minutes, then at the 3 minute mark, acknowledge that the time is up and ask for permission to continue.
- Respond to questions appropriately. If you know the answer, then share it, otherwise, acknowledge that you don’t know and offer to respond later.
- Have an explicit Call to Action. Having a talk track (basically a process to develop and respond to questions) will really help you stay focused, aligned and helpful.
6. Template Your Sales Teams Next Steps
Somewhere along steps 8–10, you’ll arrive at a decision point. Your prospect will do one of three things:
- Agree to the sale (naturally our preferred outcome)
- Request a later time
- Say No
You and your sales team need to have a process in place for your next steps in each scenario. This might include:
- A link to your website for the next step in your sales process
- A CRM set up in the background to record a ‘later date’ request
- A polite thank you if the answer is No
You should also include a very clear way of recording your outcomes (as this will improve your entire sales pipeline).
I realise this may take a bit of time to set up, but it’ll really help.
3 Minute Sales Pitch
Talking about your next steps, if you’ve got 3 minutes, I’d love to share about how I feel my company could help you.
My company specialises in helping businesses just like yours be incredibly more effective, and I’d like to share how this could help you.
In the three minutes, I’ll use the example of CRM’s to show this to you.
If you feel this isn’t relevant for you, we’ll finalise this episode in step 7 below ❤️
Have Your Considered Implementing a CRM for Your Company?
The acronym CRM stands for a Customer Relationship Management. Every business, including yours, has a CRM. Sometimes it’s happening by accident (like that receptionist who is amazing at following up with customers) or you’ve got the Excel Spreadsheet of Doom which is indispensable for your business.
Your CRM (deliberate or accidental) determines how you manage, care for and serve your customers.
Creative Appnologies
My company specialises in helping our customers implement an efficient and effective CRM solution which works for them.
This typically means three things:
- Automating manual processes, saving you time, money and the impact of lost data
- Standardising your reporting processes, enabling you to have immediate and actionable insight into what is working (or not) within your business
- Connecting your many different data systems together, so that they all work together as part of a seamless whole
If you think we can help you, we’d love to hear from you. Fill out our contact form so we can get in touch ❤️
7. Have a Great Exit Strategy
Let’s face it. Rejection sucks. It’s tough, painful, and can often be hurtful.
I’m sure that it’s no surprise to learn that sales people experience WAY more rejections than successful sales. These rejections can span the whole range from soft and gentle, through to rude, thoughtless and cruel. Sometimes, the rejection can be downright brutal.
Your Individual Execution plan needs to take this into account. You and your sales team need a way to contextualise and deal with this rejection which doesn’t result in a build up of pain, anger, hurt or resentment.
Some of the ways you which have worked for me:
- Return to your organisation values. This might be wording such as ‘Follow our process and if the sale doesn’t work out, that’s ok. Our main concern is staying respectful and treat people with dignity’. It might be things like having pep-talk sessions through the day, or celebrating wins. Whatever it is, prioritise taking care of your sales peoples (and your own!) hearts.
- Setting expectations. Being clear about expectations around conversion rates really helps. If your people know that historically only 1 in 20 approaches using your system convert into sales, they won’t feel like failures.
- Offer Assistance. Sometimes people just need help. Maybe it’s been a particularly rough rejection, or maybe they’re just having a bad day. Make sure your people know that you’re there for them. If it’s just you doing sales, make sure you’ve developed your self-care regime. You’ll be doing everyone and your business a favour by investing into yourself and others.
Whatever it is, prioritise taking care of your sales teams (and your own!) hearts.
Get Set Conclusion
As quick as a flash, in the blink of an eye, we’ve reached our conclusion. Wow. We’ve covered so much in this article, and I’m so excited to hear about your progress!