We have great news for you if you often ask yourself why your sales reps don’t close as many deals as you would like. You are not alone. It is an eternal question most companies are trying to answer.
While you are figuring out new sales strategies to increase closed deals, the problem may be not using sales engagement. Let’s dive deeper into this concept and see how its simple rules can boost your sales.
What is Sales Engagement?
Before we review the sales rules of engagement, let’s define the term itself. It covers all the interactions and touches occurring between a potential customer and a sales rep. The modern selling process and buyers’ characters and behaviors have nothing in common with the traditional concept of sales companies used ten years ago. With abundant interaction opportunities with a brand (both online and offline), businesses need to develop and implement a sales engagement strategy that will not make leads feel like they are being forced to buy.
Sales Rules of Engagement to Enhance Your Company’s Growth
Work with High-Performance Leads
Quality is always more important than quantity. You can use countless engagement channels, but you will not succeed. Your lead must get into the sales funnel only if they match your client’s profile and have high purchase intentions.
But how do you know that the people in your funnel are of the right quality?
Each purchase goes from one end of the funnel to the other for approximately the same time. It is important to calculate the average time of the sales cycle to understand whether the sales funnel is active and effective. A clearly defined sales cycle provides visibility for your sales reps. They need to know whether they spend their time in vain or not.
Follow Up
Most salespeople give up after two follow-ups with potential customers.
Follow-up is a recurring contact (email, text, call) or a chain of connections sent to a lead in response to the action performed or if there was no action on their part.
Many reps are afraid to send a follow-up message or make another call, not to be considered pushy. But this is business. You need to show a little diligence to close more deals. These actions are not as complex as you think. Just follow a few simple rules.
- Refer to the previous correspondence;
- Write a compelling subject that won’t leave anyone indifferent and will spark interest to respond;
- Keep your follow-ups not too pushy;
- Use a time-related trigger word: limited, about to end, now.
- Send follow-ups 3-5 days after the first touch, not sooner.
Just one follow-up action may bring you closer to closing the deal.
Communicate with Your Leads on Various Channels
Diversifying the channels of engagement and interaction with potential customers is important.
Single-channel sales involve communicating with customers only through one channel, email, phone, social media, or another. Many brands believe it’s more effective to use one communication channel. Perhaps they say so because it is more convenient and it worked earlier.
With a multi-channel approach to engagement, you find, engage, and interact with potential customers in every channel where they are present. This strategy does not bring success immediately. This long-term strategy and step-by-step process must be implemented in the framework of your entire business.
- Identify a few customer profiles for your brand. This information will help your marketing team determine which channels are best used and what content is more effective.
- keep the same brand identity on all channels. Your potential customer may be active in several channels, so your messages should be consistent across all platforms you use.
- Get a handle on your channels. Know what types of content correspond to which channel.
- Automate a multi-channel approach. Understandably, things can get a little confusing if you use a lot of channels at the same time. Sales engagement platforms can help you.
- Control and analyze your analytics. It is important to monitor your channels to reconsider which of them are still worth using. A CRM can analyze the channels on their effectiveness.
Equip Your Sales Reps with Tools
The right tools in the hands of your sales managers can increase the number of conversions.
Additional tools speed up and increase the efficiency of the entire sales process. They help to close deals faster and more. You will need a CRM system (Pipedrive, Zoho, HubSpot), video-conferencing tool (Whoosh, Zoom, Google Meet), and sales engagement platform (Groove, Salesloft).
Arm Your Sales Reps with Data
Hold regular meetings with teams for mutual understanding between the departments. Sales teams are your front line and need to be armed with as much information as possible. Look at your sales funnel and think about what marketing can do to break the ice. Listen to what the managers say about what functionality. Customer support service will tell you what the customers are dissatisfied with. Have a brainstorming session to find out how to close specific deals.
Following these simple five sales rules of engagement will boost your sales and help you establish a high-performing team.