Webinar: What’s missing in your sales and marketing mix?

Most successful sales people use storytelling in their customer conversations. Yet this technique is often not used as effectively as it might in sales proposals and pitches. Join us to hear some of the storytelling techniques that you can use on your next proposal or pitch to make them more persuasive and compelling.

“Hiring from the competitor means the salesperson will hit the ground running with no training.” Some of the attraction to the competitors’ salespeople is sheer laziness. Hire a salesperson from the competitor today … instant revenue tomorrow. No need to train them; they already know everything. Needless to say, this is flawed thinking. Salespeople always need training and development regardless of who their former employer was. That said, every once in a while, lightning will strike and you will hire a rainmaker. More often than not, this approach is a recipe for a making a bad hire. A thought: What salespeople do you really think are available from the competition? Rarely is it the top performers. It’s the bottom 20% that, truth be told, the company is glad to see leave.

The moment you lose a big deal can be a whirlwind of emotion. You’re confused and disappointed. Anger or resentment aren’t uncommon.
The truth is, losing deals is a good thing. You’ll never get a better opportunity to analyse your own behavior, learn what mistakes you’ve made, and increase sales efficiency moving forward.
Losing deals is part of the game. As a sales manager, you need to ensure that your reps continue to improve their ability to manage their emotions. Even if it was their shortcomings that cost the sale, the best way to move forward is to do some self-examination. Only through this approach will they do a better job selling to new prospects. If they didn’t answer questions as thoroughly as you wanted, tell them to hit the product modules and ensure they take that to heart. This way, they’ll be confident and able to answer prospects’ questions about the product in future calls.
For the person most accountable for the lost deal, ask them to think about how to build new relationships with new key decision makers, applying what they’ve learned in this particular loss. That said, it’s important to always teach and remind them to think as a team. Watch out for bad behaviour that might come out of the woodwork during this tough time. Ill-mannered acts like blaming others don’t have a place in a sales organization. Helping others recognize their weaknesses and help them improve them is the key to healthy team life.
Dust off your shoulders and walk into the next opportunity. This is what you have to make your reps understand: The only way to recover from the heartbreak of a lost deal is to sell more.

Do you know the majority of times what is responsible for zapping your business into losses? It’s your dawdling and rambling sales function. So what can be done to secure profits and achieve success in sales generation? Consider sales outsourcing.
It has been observed that most businesses generate sales and marketing shifts with in-house solutions. They either employ a dedicated team of sales and marketing professionals or burden the existing employees by asking them to perform multiple roles. However, in both cases, if the acquired team results in inconsistent sales generation, the direct loss bearer is the organisation. In such a case, businesses tend to fall silently, despite ongoing efforts. But with sales outsourcing, this effort can be targeted in the right direction. Sales outsourcing is an excellent medium for companies to attract high volumes of sales for their products and services using a third party. It helps you collaborate with a sales expert who works as an outsourced interlocutor for your company and services. With the market getting more and more competitive, sales outsourcing can be a proven success weapon for your business.

A fail-safe sales hiring strategy requires a well-thought-out recruitment process. That’s how you attract the right sales talent while making the most of recruiting time and resources. Top sales representatives are in high demand and companies are constantly competing to hire and retain them. Why is hiring the top sales talent important—asked no one ever. With a market that’s more competitive than ever, it is harder for companies to land the right sales talent. Add the increasing job-hopping trend, and you’ve got yourself in a hiring fix. To help you through these challenges, here are some secrets to recruiting top sales talent.
• What makes your organization different from your competitors?
• Why should a candidate apply to your company?
• What is your vision and mission?
• What is your company ideology?
Such questions can help create a holistic image of your company and help candidates better understand your brand, products, and overall business.

Prospecting is one of the key stages of the sales process. And, yet, it is also one of the more difficult ones. In fact, 42% of sales reps named prospecting as the most challenging stage of the sale process, a report says. So, why is it so challenging? Well, let’s admit – prospecting is not as exciting as closing a deal. Therefore, it is often postponed for when all the “important things” are done.
But without a sales pipeline full of good quality leads, no other new sales are going to happen. That’s why it’s crucial to understand that prospecting kick-starts the entire sale and determines, to a great extent, whether or not the deal is going to be sealed. The math is simple: the more prospects you generate, the more chances to close a sale you have, as every prospect equals an opportunity. And even though traditionally it’s the marketing department that has been tasked with generating leads for sales, it doesn’t mean that sales should stop their own prospecting efforts and wait for the leads to come pouring in. Salespeople still have to embrace the traditional way of prospecting and self-generate leads. But before we move on to discussing the smart ways to prospect, let’s take a look how the prospecting game has changed.

Companies will define what they do in the crucible of COVID-19 response—or be defined by it. Here’s how to frame the challenge. What should a company’s purpose be when the purpose of so many, right now, is survival? In a world where trust in corporations is evaporating and inequality rising at an alarming rate, customers are demanding where brands stand on social justice issues and the common good. Moreover, climate change is threatening businesses small and large – compounded by COVID-19 disruptions. In this challenging economic environment, which kinds of firms are thriving? The clear answer is: purpose-driven organizations. They are winning and will keep on thriving in the decades to come.

A sharp sales video can serve you at every stage, from cold prospects to leads, and when you’re trying to upsell and get referrals from customers.
As a sales rep, you need to remember to add a personalised touch, give a human element, build trust, and ensure you save time. Once you start creating sales videos, the process will get simpler, communicating on the camera will become more natural, and you’ll get better at using them to close deals. Using video conferencing as a means for landing clients goes beyond creating an account on Zoom or Google Meet and sending out meeting invites. While there’s a lot of scope for closing more sales deals through Zoom and Google Meet, you need to work on getting the approach right by taking the necessary measures. So don’t make the mistake of taking COVID-19 as a break. You can still enhance your sales efforts by responding to leads and sending better proposals. Things won’t go back to normal, which is why you figure out online alternatives to connect and maintain relationships with clients.

Sales triggers are often most associated with the last touch points; the final push that gets the sale over the line; landing page elements that increase conversions or a fine-tuned product page that closes the sale. However the reality is that emotional triggers need to be woven into the very fabric of your brand; from your social media and email, to ad copy, blog posts and web content.
- Take a look at your marketing communications and sales funnel. Can you identify or include an emotional trigger at each step in the customer journey?
- Do you understand the values that drive your customers? Or do you understand what values potential customers would associate with your company, brand, product or service?
Fear, belonging, guilt, gratification and trust are triggers that resonate with the majority of consumers. But to become a global leader you need to know the ‘why’ behind your brand and the values of your target audience.

Also known as customer retention, repeat business is when a customer shops with your company repeatedly. In the best-case scenarios, these customers become loyal supporters of the brand and shop with you regularly over time.
An increase in customer retention has the same effect on a company's profits. The more times a customer comes back and has a positive experience purchasing a product from you, the more likely it is that they'll return in the future and tell their friends.
To earn repeat business, you need to make sure you're doing the right things. The techniques discussed on this webinar is a great place to start

Want to know what new capabilities are being introduced to sales performance management? Join Neil Whitney, COO, Nicole Kent, SVP Product Strategy and Customer Success, Matt Blanchard, Vice President of Sales for the EMEA, at Varicent as they unveil their latest roadmap of new capabilities.

Some deals that are lost on price shouldn’t be lost at all. Some salespeople mistakenly believe that they are supposed to price a deal according to some standard pricing or some national pricing model, without giving it any more thought than that. Without sharing all of the information that they have collected with their internal team, these salespeople make pricing mistakes.
By including your operations team and your management team in the sales process, the information you share may mean that other factors have to be taken into consideration. Your price may need to be increased to deliver what your dream client really needs, and your internal team can help you share this information in a way that helps to demonstrate to your dream client how much lower their costs will be at a higher price.
Alternatively, you may be pricing a deal too high, and sharing all of the information with your team may result in you delivering a lower price based on factors of which you have no knowledge or little understanding.
- How much better might your results be if you leveraged all of the resources available to you?
- How does it benefit you to involve your delivery team early in the sales process?
- How does it benefit you and your dream client to involve your management team in the sales process?
- How do you ensure your solution is going to deliver the results your dream client needs?

Sales automation may just be the answer to all your selling woes. No, really. Have you ever:
- Lost a deal because you forgot to follow up?
- Spent precious minutes adding opportunities or leads to your CRM?
- Overlooked an issue in your sales process for a dangerously long time?
- Called leads in alphabetical order rather than best fit?
- Went back and forth with a prospect figuring out a good time to meet?
- Wasted half an hour digging through your files to find the specific deck or customer testimonial you needed?
If you can relate to any — or all — of the above, you need sales automation. This webinar will walk you through sales automation and the different sales automation tools that might benefit your team.

Retaining your existing clients is more crucial then ever before and yet many organisations leave this to chance by not having effective renewal and retention strategies in place. Join us to hear how Strategic Proposals is helping organisations to maximise their retention rates.

Sales is critical to success. By motivating the right behaviors, creating operational efficiencies, and providing actionable information, you can set your sales team up for success. Attend this session to meet Varicent and learn why our ambition is to be the trusted partner for your sales and revenue organizations, and how we use our science and technology to help you drive growth.

Learn what are the top ten characteristics of high quality and compelling sales proposals, based on insights from Strategic Proposals - the leading proposal and pitch company and their research done with buyers from across multiple industries. So if you want to get an edge on your proposals, drop in to this short webinar to pick up some easy to apply tips.

Presenter: Graham Ablett

Good design makes you money. It tells customers that your product is a cut above the rest. Humans are visual beings and design has the power to make an immediate emotional connection.

Simon Hutchings from design studio Visualise shares his expertise on how
design can make strong first impressions, build customer relationships, help execute successful campaigns, and make your business more profitable.