Sales Training Courses
This category of our content is focussed on sales training courses
How to Build an Outbound Sales Team
How to Build an Outbound Sales Team – Top question from Google
What is outbound sales?
Outbound sales is the process of a sales team or salespeople initiating engagement with potential and existing customers. This could encapsulate trying to secure new customers, up selling to existing customers, or general account management. In contrast, inbound sales relies on a company’s marketing strategy to drive customer interest, and customers will contact the company to enquire about their services. This blog post will tell you how to build an outbound sales team.
Preparing to go Outbound
In the rush to go outbound many companies either overlook or pay little attention to the core foundation of every successful outbound sales campaign – their value proposition. Without this most campaigns will fail at best, at worst, they will fail you will lose market traction. you will lose your best sales people and you will also lose a lot of money.
A Proven Value Proposition
Many companies make the mistake of trying to scale their sales operations without a proven value proposition with disastrous effects. Whether you chose to build your own outbound team or to subcontract to a specialist you need a proven value proposition. The more time and money you invest on proving your value proposition will be returned ten fold in your results. This does not just apply to Startups. Those that believe they have already proven their value proposition can equally benefit by refining and fine tuning what they have.
Words Sell
Whilst most of us would accept the importance of words in the world of Business to consumer few people in B2B dedicate sufficient time and energy to finding the right words to describe our products and services. Ask and Pay per click specialist who is restricted to 30 characters for the headline and 90 for the description of the importance of word choice. That’s characters not words.
Technology
We are blessed in the modern sales world with lots of great outbound technologies which makes the outbound process both easier and more productive. From intent data, to auto diallers, to call recording and artificial intelligence there are a plethora of great tools to choose from that will help your outbound team be successful. Be sure to invest the time and budget to arm your sales team with the technology they need.
Sales Leadership
An often overlooked area of business is sales management. Many sales managers have come from a sales background and were at some stage a top sales rep. Unfortunately the skills required for modern sales management are very different to just selling and the position of sales manager is a key hire for any business. Without a great sales manager your best sales reps will leave and the worst reps will stay which is the exact opposite of what you want to happen. Company culture is hugely important in any business and no more so than in an inbound and outbound sales team.
In short, without a proven value proposition and good sales management, you will spend more money and take much longer to get where you want to go. These three areas are an essential component for a scalable outbound process.
Building an Inhouse Team or Outsourcing
When developing an outbound sales team, sales managers and company owners have two choices. They can build an in-house sales team or they can outsource the process to an external agency or group of salespeople.
Each option has its own positives and negatives, and sales managers and company owners should consider these carefully before making any changes.
Through outsourcing their outbound sales operations, companies can hire people with a proven track record of success that they might not otherwise be able to afford.
Outsourcing can be more economic for some companies, as they do not have to resource staff training or office space for them. It can also provide more cost flexibility, as the salespeople will not be tied down to long-scale contracts.
In-house sales teams are much more likely to develop excellent product knowledge over time, which they can convey to prospective clients. Outsourcing can also result in a lack of control of the sales process, and the company cannot guarantee that the leads generated are of a sufficient quality until much later.
There are also concerns that an outbound sales team may not be as “bought into” your product, company or company ethos, and this could be purveyed to prospective clients.
Remember, a poor outbound experience is the fastest way to destroy your brand. Badly executed outbound calls will have a negative impact on your brand and could lose you valuable market traction.
Outbound prospecting particularly cold calling, is very different to responding to inbound sales leads. Your sales team and lead generation strategy should be built with this in mind.
What are outbound sales activities?
Outbound sales requires salespeople to go to the potential clients. In contrast, inbound sales where potential clients come to the company, either for more information or to buy their product/service.
Therefore, traditionally outbound sales does not include any marketing or product development tasks.
Outbound selling can be very labour intensive, and in the case of cold calling it needs a high volume of calls to have a meaningful impact on sales. This is because:
80% of cold calls go straight to voice mail – Sales Intel
It takes an average of 18 attempts to reach a technology buyer – Gartner
In addition to being labour intensive, outbound sales has a high churn rate in terms of staff. Many companies struggle to retain the people they have, let alone build a high performing team of SDR’s.
Lead generation is the starting point of an outbound sales process. Some company’s will have a dedicated in-house lead generation team, whilst others leave it for their general salespeople to handle.
In most cases when outbound sales is left to general salespeople it simply doesn’t happen. Sales people have a skill of always finding something “more important” to do than lead generation.
Outbound sales is a contact sport, pure and simple and requires salespeople to contact prospective customers. This could be by telephone, email, LinkedIn or face to face, however predominantly this is done via phone and email.
From our own experience SDR’s who use a multichannel approach are much more successful than those who are only using the telephone or email.
Often as part of the outbound sales role SDR’s will undertake what is known as sales qualification process. This involves a salesperson determining whether or not the lead is likely to become a customer or not.
Once the leads have been qualified, leads are typically then passed to a Business Development Rep whose responsible for any form of product demo and closing the deal.
In more traditional sales organisations this may include setting appointments for the companies field sales reps. The length of the sales process will depend on the target market, the industry and the customer.
As an outbound sales person you will be expected to do the following:
- Research leads
- Generate new sales leads
- Qualifying inbound sales leads and build a sales pipeline
- Setting appointments with potential or existing customers and follow the sales process
- Follow up proposals
- Cold and warm calling
- Cold and warm emails
- Social Selling
- Customer service calls, with a view to upselling
- Product demos
- Account Management
Outbound prospecting is especially vital for companies with little or no marketing budget. This is this because in these circumstances, prospective customers are unlikely to come to the company in great numbers, and as such the company will have to go to the potential clients.
Outbound sales strategy
Having a great team of outbound sales reps important, but if they don’t have a good sales strategy to follow, they are unlikely to be successful. Creating a sales strategy should be one of your first tasks when establishing an outbound sales team.
A good outbound sales strategy requires the right sales playbook (script, methods etc.) and the right methods to measure success. Opinions on sales scripts vary, but if you develop a good sales script, it ensures a consistent approach and can help new sales reps get up to speed faster.
Our research here at Klozers, find that sales teams with playbooks are 33% more likely to be high performers. If a sales script is used, preparation should be used so the salesperson will appear to be talking as naturally as possible.
Different sales methods should be explored to see if they will result in more successful sales. For example, consultative selling could result in an increase in sales.
Preparation is key for a successful outbound sales strategy. Salespeople should have all of the data, scripts and tools they need before they start calling. They should also have an excellent knowledge of the products or services.
Whatever sales strategy is used, it is important that there are processes in place to monitor its success. If certain aspects of the strategy haven’t been successful, then either the sales strategy can be amended, or extra training and coaching should be organised.
Data can be used to monitor the most successful times to make outbound sales calls. For example, if the data shows that outbound calls are more successful on a Wednesday afternoon, then greater focus should be placed on this time, and team meetings should be avoided at that time.
Outbound and Inbound Sales Support
At Klozers the inbound and outbound sales process that we teach in our sales training is based on the success we have had in our own business. We will show you exactly the sales strategies and outbound methods that we use every day to target customers, qualifying leads, make a sales call, cold calling, cold emailing and drive customer engagement.
Furthermore, if you would like to optimise your inbound and outbound channels we can teach you how we use content marketing combined with search engine optimisation, to turn our website in to a lead generation machine.
We have a number of ways we support SaaS companies. From advice on recruitment and value proposition development, through to telesales, social selling training and strategy training, we can help you win more business, grow your business. and have more fun along the way.
Klozers has been selected among the Top Lead Generation Companies by Designrush
Consultative Sales Training | How Customers Want to Buy
Consultative Sales Training – Top question from Google
What is a Consultative Sales Approach?
Consultative selling is very different to more traditional forms of selling, as it doesn’t actually focus on selling. Instead, it focuses on building relationships with customers, listening to their problems and only then, offering them solutions to their problems.
Asking open-ended questions and active listening are key components of any consultative sales approach. This approach works because potential buyers are more motivated to buy products or services that meet their own needs, rather than the needs of the sales professional.
A consultative sales approach truly puts the buyer first. Instead of just selling any old product, or what happens to be on promotion that month, sales professionals using the consultative sales approach will look to sell products and services that match the exact needs of their buyers, which makes for more productive business development results and satisfied customers.
Instead of a scripted sales pitch, sales teams can use conversational skills and listen to their buyers personal and business needs. Only then do they provide advice and guidance, which includes being adaptable to the different challenges buyers may face.
The consultative sales approach is highly effective and can lead to far greater results for your business and better long term customer relations. Using other sales techniques typically results in salespeople chasing leads that are not a good match for the buyer. Whilst they may well win a first order, if the product isn’t right for the buyer and their customers, it is unlikely that they will build long term relationships.
However, using the consultative approach, the sales rep needs to listen to the customer needs and provide meaningful solutions, meaning your new customer can come back time and time again for your product or services.
It has become increasingly popular in recent years as sales reps and sales managers managers have realised that traditional sales techniques have become less effective, because buyers have become wary of sales pitches. Instead of being sold a product, people prefer their salespeople to take a genuine interest in them as a person and their business.
The key components of a consultative sales approach is as follows:
- Direct route to market
- Low volume of sales but high profit margins – less popular but still relevant with transactional sales
- Requires high level of industry knowledge with experienced sales people
- Higher cost to employers, with lots of training required
- Medium to long length sales cycles
Consultative selling requires a change in mindset. Instead of going out to sell, salespeople will need to go and have a conversation with potential buyers, in a structured and reputable manner. Building trust first with any potential buyer is a big aspect of consultative selling.
Initially a lot of sales people struggle to adapt to the consultative sales method, as they are almost hard wired to sell products and services via the traditional features and benefits method. However, if you choose to adapt a consultative sales approach, it is important to stick with it, as modern buyers have become more resistant to being sold products.
Steps involved in Consultative Selling
1. Research potential buyers thoroughly before contacting them
Before engaging with potential buyers, it is important that the salesperson researches the potential customer, thoroughly and effectively. If the salesperson is used to a more traditional fast-paced sales environment, taking the time at the onset of the sales process to research may seem like an alien process.
However, first impressions matter, and considering the consultative selling method prides itself on expert knowledge, you need to make sure that you have done enough research. Similarly, consultative selling involves asking probing questions, and without enough research it can be difficult or almost impossible for salespeople to ask probing questions.
2. Define the Symptoms – What are the symptoms of the problem the potential customer is facing?
During this first step the salesperson will try to get an understanding of the issue at hand. Here the salesperson will play a role of expert consultant, where their expertise of the industry can be used to discuss the issues.
It is likely that the buyer may only have a surface-level knowledge of the symptoms, therefore the expertise of a consultative salesperson is vital.
At this stage, it is vitally important that the salesperson doesn’t revert to a more traditional techniques and try to sell products or services. This is because, it is very early in the process, and it is unlikely that the salesperson will have formed a fully rounded understanding of the issues at hand, and could recommend the wrong solution.
3. Root cause analysis – ask the buyer questions to understand and diagnose the underlying causes.
During this stage, the salesperson will need to dig deeper into the problem, and find out what is causing it.
By digging deeper into the problem, the salesperson can use their knowledge to generate powerful questions that will reassure the buyer that they are dealing with an expert in the field, and that they can use their expertise to offer solutions to their problem.
This step can be a really powerful tool to build the buyers confidence in the salesperson.
4. Business impact – Ask how the issue is impacting on the business. Does it impact on morale, performance, profitability or all three?
At this stage, the salesperson and the buyer have agreed on a diagnosis of the issue, and they will now begin to understand how this impacts on the business.
If the issue has very little impact on the business, in terms of profitability or revenue, then it is very unlikely that the buyer will look to make a significant contribution (either financially or with their time) to finding a solution.
If this is the case, or if the salesperson knows that their product or service isn’t the solution to the buyers problems, then the salesperson should cut their losses here.
5. Financial Impact – Find out how much the problem will cost the business if they do not fix it.
Identifying the financial impact of the issue is another major milestone in the consultative sales method. This can be easier to measure in objective measurements, such as monetary values, rather than subjective measurements such as staff morale or culture, which are far more difficult to monitor.
If the financial impact runs into the hundreds of thousands of pounds each year, and the solution only costs £10,000 then this could be a very attractive proposal for the buyer. Alternatively, if the solution costs £100,000, and it would only save the company £10,000 each year, it will be a much less attractive proposition to the buyer.
6. Personal Impact – Find out how the problem affects the buyer personally – how does it affect their day to day job?
Potential buyers are far more likely to be convinced by a solution, if the issue directly impacts upon them. This is why when using the consultative selling skills, it is vitally important to make sure that you are speaking to the right person.
If the salesperson and buyer are involved in a complex sales solution, it is likely that the 6 step process above may need to be repeated. It may also need to be repeated with different departments and stakeholders. Whilst this inevitably adds to the time taken to sell a product or service, patience is an important aspect of consultative sales.
What do you need to be a good consultative salesperson?
Consultative selling requires some key selling skills which aren’t necessarily associated with more traditional selling methods. This includes:
- Active Listening – traditionally salespeople aren’t renowned for their listening skills, but under the consultative selling method, using active listening is a key requirement. Not only does it help understand the buyers issues, it also helps you stand out from the crowd. As buyers are being turned off by hard sales pitches, if a buyer needs to choose between two similar products, they may choose for the one with the sales person that genuinely listened to their issues.
- Emotional intelligence – This covers peoples ability to evaluate, perceive and control emotions. Buying and selling remains an emotional process, and it is important for salespeople to respond to the buyers emotions.
- Expertise – Because consultative selling requires the salesperson to really delve deep into issues, it is important that sellers are experts in their field. However, no one wants to be overawed with information, so the salesperson will need to communicate their expertise efficiently.
- Domain knowledge – Similar to expertise, salespeople will need to have a specialised knowledge of the whole domain. Not only do salespeople need to know what their customers want, they need to know what their customers’ customer want.
- Self-awareness – Consultative salespeople will need to understand and manage our thoughts and the impact that can have on people.
What questions to ask?
Asking the right questions is probably the most important part of consultative selling. Asking aimless questions or having an unstructured conversation with a potential buyer, is unlikely to either build rapport or project confidence. Whilst consultative selling doesn’t involve hard selling, salespeople can still funnel a conversation one way by using structured and well designed questions. Using specialised questioning techniques when combined with active listening and the required expertise can be a winning combination.
There are several types of consultative selling questions. They are:
- Open ended questions – These are used to gather further information
- Closed questions – Should be used for confirmation
- Summary questions – Sales professionals should will summarise or paraphrase the prospective buyers statement and turn it into a question. These are used to confirm the correct understanding of issues.
- Funnelling questions – These channel the conversation through a particular area.
- Redirect questions – Sales Professionals should use these questions to control the conversation and move the sales process forward.
- Opposing redirect – These questions is answering a question with a question back to the buyer.
- Presumptive questions – Presumptive questions are questions when the salesperson knows or presume the prospective buyer does not know the answer.
Which Products and Services are best suited to Consultative Sales Techniques?
The great thing about Consultative sales techniques are that they can be used in almost any industry, or with any product or service. Our own clients sell a wide range of services from Waste Management through to Aircraft Manufacturing each using a consultative sales approach.
Furthermore, once you have mastered the system it can be as flexible as possible. We have clients using a consultative sales approach and closing deals on one inbound sales call, and we also have clients using the exact same consultative approach to close large enterprise deals through a six month sales cycle.
What is Consultative Sales Training?
Consultative selling requires a change in mindset and as such effective training is vitally important. As a specialist sales provider we offer training in consultative sales, and a range of courses from giving people a solid baseline understanding of the method through to those seeking to master the sales techniques.
As an international training provider we believe that sales teams learn better if they are doing the task, rather than reading text books or watching a presentation, and as such part of our training includes role place sessions. Consultative sales training also cover all aspects of the sales process, including social selling techniques.
It is also important to remember that consultative selling requires ongoing reinforcement training, so you should consider booking in several sessions, to ensure that your sales team do not revert to their natural selling habits.
Outside of training, under any sales technique it is important that sales professionals have enough support and encouragement. This is even more important under the consultative selling technique. Sales coaching from a sales manager between training sessions, can be a vitally important resource.
You can check out our course on consultative sales and book online here.
Sales Training and Consulting for B2B Companies
Why invest in Sales Training and Consulting?
There are normally two reasons companies invest in our Sales Training and Consulting services. Firstly, they are often in a hurry to find sales growth and are looking for a short cut, a growth hack.
Often these companies would eventually find the right strategies and tactics themselves, but they may be keen to capitalise on their first mover advantage or satisfy the needs of external investors.
For these companies we provide a shortcut, we help them avoid the pitfalls and roadblocks that every growing business experiences.
When you engage with Klozers your team has access to over 70 years experience in B2B sales and marketing.
Our sales training can help you get the best out of your team, alongside our consultancy services that will help you deploy the changes identified by our consultancy
Let’s take a closer look at why it makes so much sense to use sales training and consulting services together.
1. Why sales consulting compliments your sales training?
Many companies make the mistake of rushing into training as the solution to improving sales performance.
Indeed, training may be part of the solution, but it is never the whole solution. Before any training takes place it’s important to understand the root causes of the challenges within the sales department and only when we truly understand the problems can we prescribe the best possible solution.
By rushing into training we would be assuming that everything else that affects sales is 100% perfect, and that is simply never the case.
As with anything, the greater the investment upfront in terms of the diagnosis, the more effective the training will be.
This is because the training can then be customised to meet the exact needs of the business which makes it much more impactful.
2. Why is Sales Training so effective?
Sales training builds both skills and confidence, and those are simply unbeatable in front of a customer.
The best salespeople are like athletes and they are hungry to learn more and stay at the top of their game.
The reason they are so good is that they are constantly looking for an edge, an advantage, and this keeps driving them forward.
These are small but important things that make the difference and gets more deals over the line. Our training is designed to keep your team at the top of their game and help them benefit from the very latest insights and industry best practice.
Our sales trainers work hard to keep your team engaged and motivated during training sessions, using a range of mediums to maintain their attention and inspire them.
Your sales trainer will help your team sell more effectively whether that be over the phone, in-person or online.
They can help them improve their lead generation, closing and account management skills, and provide indispensable mentoring services.
3. What happens before training takes place?
Before your training sessions begin, it’s important to identify what you want to get from them. As a sales training provider we offer bespoke services that are based on your specific needs and challenges.
We can provide a full sales consultancy service in advance of any training. This would typically include an evaluation of your current sales unit in relation to sales maturity and best practice.
We can also provide full training needs analysis so you can gain a better understanding of your requirements before staring any training course.
For sales training to be effective, they need to be delivered in a way that maintains your teams’ attention, which means your sessions will include a great deal of interactivity.
Our sales training sessions include a range of demonstrations, exercises, games and roleplay.
4. What is the aim of Sales Training
Our goal as a provider is not to deliver sales training, but to deliver results.
Therefore we believe the goal of Sales training is to help you meet a range of sales goals faster than you would if you were to continue without any intervention.
Not every company’s needs are the same, but businesses often invest in sales training because they want to improve their staff’s sales skills, close more deals, create more conversions, make their staff feel more supported, improve morale and boost the average value of their sales.
However, ultimately all of these lead to one overall benefit – an improvement in results. Some companies invest in training because they have identified a particular problem that needs addressing which is being caused by a skills gaps within their businesses.
Training may also benefit your team if they seem to be lacking direction, or are feeling unmotivated. A lack of motivation can often occur because staff are unclear on what their roles are, or because the current strategies they are using are not working.
In many occasions this is why Sales consultancy is a perfect fit alongside sales training as it can also help you identify and deal with additional challenges.
5. How can a Sales Consultant help our business?
A sales consultant will help your business by taking a close look at your current situation, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and helping you make positive changes to drive revenue growth.
If you are not currently meeting your sales targets, our sales consultants can help you find out why this is happening and develop strategies to address the issues.
Our experienced consultants can help with optimising your sales processes and ensuring you get the maximum conversion ratios from the leads you are generating.
With our years of experience in B2B sales our sales consultants can introduce you to specific resources that will support your business.
These can include lead generation, marketing, sales tracking, and training programmes and software that will give you a better insight into how your sales team are performing.
6. Adding Sales Experience to your Leadership Team
When you are immersed in the day-to-day running of your company, it can be hard to assess your situation objectively.
It’s often impossible to find anyone around you who is not objective as your team all have a role which in some way will make them subjective.
Our sales consultants aren’t just there to identify problems that you weren’t previously aware of, we are completely hands on and happy to work alongside your team to implement any solutions.
Where applicable we will highlight your strengths and help you make the most of the resources that you currently have. In most cases this revolves around the creation of a sales plan, which we work with you to develop and if required are happy to help with executing against the plan.
Our consultants will work with you to help you improve relationships between departments and colleagues. For instance, we are often called upon for detailed advice on aligning sales and marketing departments so you’re delivering coherent messages to your customers.
Indeed aligning sales and marketing is one of our most popular services.
7. Which Companies benefit the most from Consulting Services
We typically have two types of customers of our consulting services. The first are larger organisations who already have a Sales Plan in place.
They need help executing and delivering against the plan as they simply lack the internal resources to do this themselves.
The second group are those looking for external and objective advice. In some cases they have seen a substantial decline in sales recently or aren’t meeting their targets they need to reach and hence are reaching out for support.
These businesses hire us because we have a track record of turning companies around. Alternately you may need external support if you have experienced changes in your industry and you’re struggling to keep up with your competitors.
Companies also may hire us because they feel missed sales targets are starting to affect morale and staff retention rates.
By investing in training and consultancy services, you can show your team you’re determined to improve and start achieving more.
8. Build a Selling System
It’s also common for companies to invest in sales consultancy services because their sales processes are confused and unclear, with team members pulling in different directions.
We are a huge advocate of having a selling system. Finance has a system, operations have a system so why not sales. Building a repeatable scalable selling system is simply a must for any business.
By mapping this out we can help your salespeople to understand how and where they can influence buyers and sell to people on different parts of their journey, helping you secure more sales.
Our consultants can also help you gain a richer understanding of the data available to you, from both your marketing automation and CRM platforms.
In many cases our clients either don’t have enough data or they are overwhelmed by data, and miss out on the most important parts. Either way we can help.
In Conclusion
Sales is an ever changing environment and more and more businesses are improving their performance, staff retention rates and workplace morale.
For most of use this means competition is tough and by investing in our sales training and consultancy services we can give you that edge you need to not just compete, but win.
Sales consultants and trainers can provide invaluable mentorship, help you identify and eradicate weaknesses, and help you make the changes that you need to not only survive but prosper.
Our team can breathe new life into your organisation and inspire people throughout your company. Whether you’ve been missing your targets or are simply ready to build upon recent success and take your business to the next level, there are many great reasons for hiring sales training and consultancy professionals.
If you are ready to hire a sales trainer, sales consultant or both, come and talk with us.
Sales and Service Training Courses
If your business is typical, up to 80% of next years revenues will come from this years customers. Despite this many organisations give little or no thought to customer service, viewing it merely as a cost to the business.
In many cases customer service is a cost to the business, however, survey after survey shows customer service as a core component of your brand. In certain cases some brands who understand the commercial value of great customer service, use it as an opportunity to cross sell and upsell, thus driving additional revenue into the business.
There are so many great statistics for investing in sales and service training once you look into it, it’s difficult to ignore. As an example studies show that 82% of customers leave because of a poor experience and of those 73% leave because of a reaction to rude staff.
Structured and well supported training can help your team meet your customers expectations and even exceed them. The right sales and service training can make your team more adept at winning customers’ trust, whilst boosting your teams confidence.
The best sales and service training programmes are designed to help companies move away from customer service and towards customer experiences.
How can Sales and Service Training help my team?
Often the biggest challenge in business is winning new customers. Given that’s the case it surely makes sense to do everything possible to not only keep those customers, but to maximise the revenue from them.
Most service issues have a simple root problem, for example, 55% of customers are leaving because of delays in resolving a dispute and 51% are leaving because of poor staff training. What’s possibly most important to note, is that all these problems can be easily remedied.
Sales and service training can give your team a system to measure, track and consistently improve your customer service and sales. This will help change the mindset of your team, enabling them to make a real impact by being able to identify what matters most and take action to improve.
When done correctly training can enhance your workplace culture substantially and provide your sales team with additional skills that can benefit them personally throughout their careers.
Close More Deals and Learn New Skills
Most companies are unaware of the potential sales opportunities they have with existing customers. With repeat customer spending up to 67% more, sales and service training is more than just handling complaints and returns.
A big part of resolving customers problems should be finding new solutions to the problems customers encounter. In most cases the problems that customers experience are actually the best opportunities for cross selling and upselling.
Training can introduce your team to new strategies and tactics that they may simply never come across before. In addition to external input, there are often great lessons that can be shared internally, and these should be captured and documented for the benefit of others.
Training will help your team become more familiar with your own company’s best practices. In a well structured sales and service training programme, your staff will not only learn new techniques, but also find out why they are so effective and which situations they should be deployed in.
Benefit from External Sales Specialists
Often a key benefit of sales and service training is that it gives your team a chance to take onboard new ideas and strategies from outside the business. In many cases they are more open to learning from external facilitators with an in-depth knowledge than from internal colleagues.
Sales and service specialists can give your team more than just the skills they need to engage potential customers in meaningful conversations. They can help you explain on your customers terms why your products and service may be a good fit for them.
Sales and service training will help your team use the product knowledge and information that they have about your products and services, and turn this into powerful questions that make the buyer want to buy rather than them having to sell to them.
Retain the Best Staff
Many companies are now switched on to the fact that it’s easier to retain quality staff when you invest in training courses for them.
If your team members feel you aren’t investing in them, there’s a high possibility that they will move to a company that will. Investing in training shows your employees that you are eager to help them improve.
When staff receive quality training, they tend to feel more supported, which in turn boosts their confidence. Recruitment costs to replace team members can be incredibly expensive and take up an inordinate amount of management time.
It’s therefore important to try and keep hold of the employees that you have already invested in and continue to develop them.
Should Managers attend Sales and Service Training?
Your Managers set the bar in terms of what is acceptable performance and what is not. With this in mind, it’s important that sales managers attend every sales and service training along with their staff so they can hear the information first-hand.
When managers know exactly what’s covered and agreed during training, they can ensure their staff apply this knowledge to real-life scenarios and coach them if they are struggling.
Sales training often includes an element of goal-setting, which is yet another reason why it’s so important for managers to attend. It’s important for the managers to set realistic, yet achievable goals, rather than targets that are out of your team’s reach.
Failure to do this will simply harm the confidence of the team and demotivate them.
Increase your Customer Satisfaction Ratings
Training like everything else in your business needs to deliver a return on your investment. Whilst not everything should be judged by customer service scores, any service training should ultimately improve your customer satisfaction ratings.
Customer expectations are arguably higher than they have ever been and today’s customers expect to receive high-quality service more than ever before.
If they have a bad experience with a member of your team, they’re likely to make their opinions public and Social Media can amplify bad news like never before.
Customer Service training will not only teach your team to deliver the best customer experiences possible, but also turn your happy customers into advocates for your brand, thus generating new business referrals.
Omnichannel Customer Support
Modern customer service training often starts before your customers have even made a purchase. In most cases your customers first interaction with your brand is either your website or social media pages.
It’s important to include these as part of your wider customer experience strategy. This is supported by many statistics for example, using three channels instead of one for marketing campaigns results in a 287% higher purchase rate.
Providing Omnichannel customer support helps your team keep your clients happy across a range of channels and mediums. It can help them communicate with your customers better not only over traditional channels like the phone, but also via live chat, email, social media, SMS and other platforms.
The most successful customer service teams around today adopt an omnichannel approach with research showing that companies with an omnichannel approach experience a 23 fold increase in customer satisfaction.
We believe it’s really important to include these areas in your service programme. Many companies are failing to meet their customers’ expectations which makes it easier for you and your team to stand out from the crowd and win business from them.
Build Expert Product Knowledge
No matter the industry customers want to deal with experts and not agents who are simply following a call centre script.
If sales reps don’t have the knowledge that they require, they are more likely to leave customers feeling frustrated, with the customer going on to air their feedback publicly.
The more your reps know about your products and services, the better they can address customer pain points and explain why your solutions are the answer to their problems.
Enhance Customer Loyalty
Repeated studies show that customers tend to be much more loyal to companies that offer outstanding customer service. Many of today’s customers say that customer service is more important than price when they’re deciding who to do business with.
By investing in sales and service training, you can attract and retain more customers and gain a real edge over your competitors. Part of your overall programme should include how you plan to collect and share customer reviews.
With 70% of people taking action based on customer reviews this is an essential component of every sales and customer service training.
Resolve Disputes Quickly
Delays when resolving complaints can often be the straw that breaks the camels back with 55% of people leaving a brand because of delays in resolution.
Sales and service training can help your reps resolve complaints quickly which is important when dealing with angry and frustrated customers.
Training can help them show tactical empathy when they are dealing with an angry customer and enable them to steer the conversation in the right direction, no matter which medium they are communicating on.
Understanding active listening skills can turn your team into better, more helpful listeners that pay close attention to what your customers have to say and then use the skills and information they have to deliver the best outcome possible.
Customer Service Training
Unlike traditional customer service training courses, Klozers provides the latest in business simulation software, that allows your team to experience a 2 year customer experience transformation program in 1 day.
Our state of the art business simulation goes way beyond basic communication skills and helps your sales team understand customer expectations, sales process, and what truly drives sales performance across the organisation.
Designed specifically as a holistic cross departmental our customer service courses are designed to engage everyone from your front line sales team, product and services teams and company management.
The customer service training includes two options as follows:
Enterprise Customer Service Training
SaaS Customer Success Training
Please contact us for further information.
In Summary
How important is retaining your existing customers?
How valuable would the extra revenue be if your customer service team were actively cross selling and upselling throughout their day?
Investing in sales and service training will make your staff and customers much happier. If you look after your staff they will in turn look after your customers.
If you feel you need to make improvements in these areas, please give us a call. We would love to work with you and make the sales and service goals you have in mind a reality.
12 Critical Objectives of Sales Management
The Objectives of Sales Management
There are many objectives and goals for sales management and the importance of each will vary from business to business.
Business to business sales can be complex, with many variables and whilst the obvious objectives of revenue, profitability and growth are important it’s easy to argue a case for the plethora of other objectives such as customer satisfaction, team morale, employee retention.
Effective sales management is the key to running every successful sales team. When sales management is executed correctly, the rest of your enterprise benefits.
Sales managers are responsible for inspiring teams, leading by example, maximising profits and providing customers with the best experience to make sure they return for more.
We’ve resisted the urge to include the all to common piece around smart goals, because we assume your past all that and looking for something more meaningful.
So, we’ve listed below what we believe to be the main objectives of sales management, enjoy.
1. Sales Plan
We’ve listed sales plan at the very start because of it’s importance. Without a plan it’s difficult to track progress, meet or exceed your goals and align your sales team around those goals.
Quite simply, the sales plan ensures that not only is everyone on your company boat rowing in the same direction, it ensures that the boat itself is going in the right direction.
As with any objective or goal, the sales manager should be measured on the execution of the sales plan.
For some reason the majority of companies do not have a sales plan and miss out on the many benefits they bring.
2. Sales Strategy
Strategy is listed in the dictionary as “an approach” and although it sounds simple coming up with the best approach or strategy to how you gain maximum market penetration with the budget available to you is never easy.
At best if you nail your sales strategy sales will take off and at worst you will find that sales become like wading through treacle. An eternal hardship that consumes any profits you dreamed of as it sucks the life from your business.
Once you’ve agreed on a strategy you need to review this on a monthly basis and adjust as required.
Beware however, of changing your strategy before it has had a chance to mature or you might just end up going round in circles.
Once you’ve decided on your sales strategy the next challenge is aligning all your resources including the sales team and executing on that strategy.
3. Reporting and Metrics
Before you start to implement and share your strategy and sales plan you will need to give some thought as to how you are going to measure your progress.
Data is the new oil and Sales reporting is an essential part of the modern sales managers day to day activities.
Your reporting system should tell you everything from how well your reps are performing on a daily basis, to the cost of customer acquisition on your latest sales campaign.
Reports will tell you which areas you are succeeding in and areas need your attention. You should draw up a list of baseline sales metrics and then from there you can measure progress towards your targets.
In almost every scenario, you will be asked to generate Management Reports for your board and these will include things like your current sales funnel/sales pipeline which will provide information such as how many live deals you currently have in your funnel, the average size of each deal and the average length of the journey through the funnel.
It’s critically important that you not only can generate the right reports, but that you can interpret the results in a meaningful way.
4. Sales Performance
There is no one individual who has as much influence over sales than the sales manager.
Every day the Manager sets the bar between what is acceptable and what is not, in terms performance from their team.
They are responsible for not just managing, but also the training, coaching and development of the sales team.
Every salesperson wants to sell, every salesperson wants to be part of a winning team and the sales managers that succeed are those that focus on 2 things:
- They do everything they can to help salespeople sell more
- They do everything they can to develop their salespeople.
Unfortunately, as the manager has the power to make everything a success, they can also be architects of their own failure.
5. Key duties of the Sales Manager
Sales managers are tasked with developing sales teams, coordinating all operations within sales departments and identifying and implement the right sales techniques to deliver success.
Although the aim is to meet sales targets, it’s not uncommon for these aims to be surpassed.
The right sales management processes can give you a substantial edge over your competitors and ensure your company is thriving rather than simply surviving.
As a minimum the sales manager should address the following areas in their plan. Strategy, Process, People, Channels, Technology, Customers and Leadership
6. Team Morale
Morale is extremely important when it comes to building a winning sales team. The more inspired and confident your team are, the more they will achieve.
This is why it’s so important to ensure each member of your team feels listened to and respected. The easiest way to do this is by including them in the sales planning wherever possible.
Provide real-time information on as much as possible including things like the exact costs to the business to employ them, the profitability of your sales and how many deals they need to close to breakeven in terms of their own cost to the company.
Transparency is essential, so make sure each member of your team knows how well you’re currently performing.
What’s also important in terms of morale is being completely fair and not having any personal favourites in the team.
It’s normally easy for managers not to have favourites, however, many find it more difficult to deal with disruptive sales reps and often ignore them rather than look to resolve the problem.
Often times the most disruptive sales reps can be a top performer but you will still need to let them go if you feel they are damaging the overall morale and productivity of the team.
It’s incredibly important to foster a positive workplace culture where workplace friction is addressed as soon as it arises.
7. Setting realistic but ambitious targets
When it comes to setting your sales targets it’s vital to strike a balance between being ambitious and being realistic.
If your targets are unrealistically high, your sales team and your sales team fall so far behind that they don’t believe they can hit those targets, they will quickly become demotivated.
We recommend that you include your sales team as part of the planning process to help you set your sales targets.
By doing this you are much more likely to get buy in from the sales team and as the manager, you can still guide the team to create targets that are challenging.
Unrealistic targets will only serve to damage morale substantially and in turn, this will lower the overall performance of the team.
Managers should guide and coach their team members through the entire period of the targets to help ensure they remain on track and re-motivate them if they begin to lose confidence.
Managers typically have lots of experiences and skills that they can draw on from when they were a salesperson that will support their sales reps.
8. Building a sales funnel
Creating a sales funnel that continually is topped up with new, high quality sales leads is one of the most important objectives of sales management.
A sales funnel, also known as a pipeline is used to outline each step a customer takes throughout their journey towards making a purchase.
In B2B sales the salespeople are responsible for moving the deals or opportunities through the sales funnel.
There is nothing more demotivating to sales reps than the struggle to fill the sales funnel with new leads. It’s therefore important that you work with your marketing team to ensure a continuous flow of good quality sales leads.
If you are using Sales Development Reps (SDRs) to generate their own sales leads then you must give them the strategies and tactics to generate those leads.
Tactics like cold calling and cold email campaigns do work but they on their own it is a slow way to scale your business. As the sales manager it’s your responsibility to break the entire sales process down into easy, manageable stages.
Sales funnels enable salespeople to remain organised and in control, especially when used in conjunction with a good CRM system.
With the right CRM dashboards in place Sales reps can easily see the progress they have already made towards their sales targets.
This in turn will inspire them to continue focussing on moving deals through the sales funnel.
9. When can I expect results?
In our experience every overnight success has taken years of hard work to get there. With that said, you should see early indications of success in months, not years.
It’s important to manage expectations and collectively agree what success looks like in the initial phases.
This is why we are such advocates of creating a sales plan that everyone can align themselves behind.
Your sales plan should identify what we call the lead indicators rather than the lag indicators for success and you can start tracking them immediately.
It’s unlikely your sales management will deliver exceptional results immediately but with planning, patience and persistence you will slowly turn the ship around.
Trial-and-error can play a big role in helping you create the right sales process for you.
Even when you start seeing the results that you’ve been aiming for, you should always be prepared to make amendments as customer behaviours and requirements, technology and markets change.
10. Motivating your Sales Team
As a sales manager, you will be tasked with overseeing things like data, technology, processes and sales pipelines which you may or may not find easy.
However, often the biggest challenge is people management and listening to your team is very important.
It’s essential to ask your team what drives them and what their personal goals are and then tie them into your own business objectives.
Not every member of your sales team will be motivated by money alone, so try to find out what else drives them and why they were interested in a career in sales in the first place.
It’s also essential to deliver additional support for those members working remotely during any lockdown period.
Some team members will be comfortable working from home, whilst others will prefer to be out in the field visiting customers and working in a busy office environment.
11. Do great salespeople make great sales managers?
One problem many companies encounter is that not all great salespeople make a fantastic sales manager.
Being a sales manager requires a whole host of different skills not required by salespeople, and it may take time to start seeing success once you’ve moved from making sales to overseeing them.
Most of the key tasks assigned to sales managers are strategic versus the tactical skills required by salespeople.
For example, data analysis is hugely important for every sales manager, as is planning, strategy and people management.
In addition, identifying realistic goals, hiring the right salespeople, creating incentives, arranging ongoing training and learning and matching the right kind of guidance to specific individuals in your team are all important.
12. Learning & Development
It’s easy to overlook training as a Sales Manager because there never seems to be any free time for developing your team or indeed yourself.
Training falls into the category of important/not urgent and because of this it often gets overlooked. In nearly every case the salespeople who don’t want training are those that need it the most.
Learning and development starts by hiring the right salespeople and only recruiting those who are driven and determined with great people skills.
The team that you inherit may be very different from this and it’s your objective as the sales manager to improve the team that you’re working with over the coming months or years.
It’s also important to seek out coachable people as these people are great learners and will continuously improve given the right support.
You will encounter people that already have good sales skills but seem unwilling to continue learning or taking feedback and this can become a problem.
These people not only don’t want to learn but they don’t want others to learn either and can sabotage and undermine your leadership.
Under these circumstances, as long as you have done everything possible to try and support these people if they still refuse then you will have no alternative to letting them go.
If you’re able to offer real-time information that you can display in the workplace, you should certainly do this as this creates incentives and keeps your salespeople’s eyes on the ball.
Transparency is essential, so make sure each member of your team knows how well you’re currently performing.
In conclusion
Sales managers are arguably the single most important part of your sales team and the right manager will help you achieve outstanding results when they build an exceptional and focussed team that they take the time to support.
They will ensure the organisation has the right people, structures, technology and sales processes in place progress which can be tracked and clearly visible for all the stakeholders.
By ensuring team members remain willing to learn and committing to learning more themselves, sales managers can deliver real success, even in the most competitive markets.
Sales Negotiation Training
Key Negotiation Skills – Introduction
There is a common misconception that sales negotiation skills are only required towards the end of the sales process. The part in every sales process where costs and terms are agreed. Whilst this is undoubtedly true, it’s also true that the best salespeople are negotiating all the way through the sales process. In fact every Professional salesperson negotiates, every single day which is why it’s an important part of any training programme.
From negotiating with their children on what to have for breakfast, to negotiating with a Partner on where to go for dinner. In between times they will negotiate workloads with their line managers, negotiate meeting times with co-workers, negotiate dates & times for appointments with prospects and lastly negotiating sales contracts, project delivery and aftercare contracts. In short, Negotiation is actually unavoidable, and the ability to Negotiate is a core skill for every Salesperson.
Planning for Sales Negotiations
Like most things in life when it comes to Negotiation knowledge is power. The more information you have and better prepared you are then the more likely you will achieve a successful negotiation. Follow the information below to discover how to research and plan your next negotiation.
Sales Negotiation Goals
These are the needs, wants and desires of the parties involved in the negotiation. In business this can be complicated as not only may both sides have differing goals, but parties within each side may have differing and even conflicting Goals.
Goals can be subjective for example “We need to increase the confidence of our people.” or they can be more objective like “We need to reduce our overheads by 10 this quarter”. Either way it’s important to know both your own Goals and that of the other side. Important questions you must ask are:
- Have we identified all the Goals?
- What are the Prioritised Goals?
- What are the Business Goals?
- What are the Personal Goals?
- Are there conflicting Goals?
| Business Goals Examples | Personal Goals Examples |
| Strategic | Security |
| Change | Satisfaction |
| Growth | Peer Pressure |
| Improvement | Financial Gain |
Please note Goals are NOT the same as outcomes.
Example:
Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal). In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital. Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest.
The Outcome is the Negotiated agreement that they come to.
Negotiation Options
These are all the possible solutions that satisfy the goals of both parties. They are all possibilities that both parties agree or say Yes to.
By investing time to explore all the Options then you are more likely to find:
- Alternative solutions
- Enable both parties to achieve their goals
- Reach the Best Possible Agreement (BPA)
Example:
Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal). In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital. Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest.
Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement.
Criteria for Negotiation
Criteria are the “terms” of any possible Option
Example:
Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal). In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital. Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest.
Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement.
Criteria – George needs to guarantee a minimum payment every month regardless of the profitability of that month. Mike needs to ensure ensure he will not be liable for any warranty, liability or compensations claims from the period before he take responsibility/ownership of the business.
Get expert Sales Negotiation Training from our Sales Coaches
CNA – Cost of No Agreement
Not all Negotiations end in an agreement, it is therefore vital before entering into any Negotiation that you first work out what the Cost of No Agreement is for both parties. The costs of no agreement can be both Objective and Subjective.
Example:
Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal). In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital. Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest.
Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement.
Criteria – George needs to guarantee a minimum payment every month regardless of the profitability of that month. Mike needs to ensure ensure he will not be liable for any warranty, liability or compensations claims from the period before he take responsibility/ownership of the business.
CNA – George does not have the financial resources to retire (Objective) however he has been trying unsuccessfully to sell his business for three years and is now desperate (Subjective) for a solution. Mike is keen to buy a business (Objective) but knows there are hundreds of businesses for sale and he is pretty relaxed (Subjective) if this deal doesn’t go through another one will come along.
The Subjective Cost of No Agreement can be more powerful than the Objective ones as people make decisions emotionally and then justify their position intellectually afterwards.
BATNA – Best Alternative to No Agreement
Not all Negotiations end in an Agreement, it is therefore vital before entering into any Negotiations that you first work out what the Best Alternative to No Agreement is. In some cases you may well experience that the other party is so entrenched in their position that they have no desire to Negotiate. BATNA is typically but not always, an alternative course of action that can be taken if no agreement is reached.
BATNA helps you prepare for a Negotiation by:
- Helps prevent you from agreeing to something you will regret
- Defining your Minimum Possible Agreement (MPA)
- Provides you with a Plan B
- Helps prevent you from over or underestimating the your own and the other party’s position
- Helps you understand where the leverage is
- Identifying alternative Options
Example:
Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal). In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital. Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest.
Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement.
Criteria – George needs to guarantee a minimum payment every month regardless of the profitability of that month. Mike needs to ensure ensure he will not be liable for any warranty, liability or compensations claims from the period before he take responsibility/ownership of the business.
CNA – George does not have the financial resources to retire (CNA) and has been trying unsuccessfully to sell his business for three years and is now desperate for a solution. Mike is keen to buy a business and has spent £3,000 with Solicitors and Accountants thus far completing his due diligence on the company.
BATNA – George is in discussion with his Lawyers to explore the possibilities of a Management Buyout for the business. Mike knows there are hundreds of businesses for sale and he is pretty relaxed if this deal doesn’t go through another one will come along.
Concessions for Negotiation
A concession is something given to the other party in furtherance of the agreement. These concessions should be identified in advance and segmented for both parties in terms of:
High Value – High Cost
High Value – Low Cost
Remember – Never give anything away without receiving something of equal or greater value in return.
Example:
Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal). In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital. Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest.
Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement.
Criteria – George needs to guarantee a minimum payment every month regardless of the profitability of that month. Mike needs to ensure ensure he will not be liable for any warranty, liability or compensations claims from the period before he take responsibility/ownership of the business.
CNA – George does not have the financial resources to retire (CNA) and has been trying unsuccessfully to sell his business for three years and is now desperate for a solution. Mike is keen to buy a business and has spent £3,000 with Solicitors and Accountants thus far completing his due diligence on the company.
BATNA – George is in discussion with his Lawyers to explore the possibilities of a Management Buyout for the business. Mike knows there are hundreds of businesses for sale and he is pretty relaxed if this deal doesn’t go through another one will come along.
Concessions – George is prepared to spend 3 months of his time ensuring during the handover period which is Low Cost to him as he will be retired but High Value to Mike as he is new to the industry and recognises the benefit of George’s experience.
Mike is prepared to move quickly which has no cost to him however this is High Value to George as the last thing he wants is a long protracted sale.
Negotiation Strategies
Aggressive Tactics
- Shoot the hostage
- This strategy is extremely aggressive as it involves an immediate offer to walk away with no deal which is designed to throw and unsettle the other party. This is often delivered in a reluctant tone “we don’t want to do this but…”,
- Delaying tactics
- When time is clearly on one parties side the process can often be deliberately slowed which is extremely effective when there are cost implications if talks over run. This tactic also applies if the other party has another meeting or needs to leave. The negotiator deliberately talks around the subject to delay the real conversation and then uses time to put pressure on the other party to come to an agreement.
- Poor Me
- This strategy is used to play the false victim that needs rescued by the other party.
- Last Minute.com
- As the name suggests this strategy involves the Negotiator agreeing to a solution right up until they are required to sign and then withdrawing. The withdrawal is usually followed up quickly with a counter offer at dramatically reduced terms.
- Misleading/lying
- Often Negotiators will make exaggerated claims or even lie so without hard data to support them you should discount these. They may also issue warnings and threats or make matters personal to unbalance you.
- Missing People
- Everyone knows the importance of having all the Decision Makers in the room but Negotiators may even turn up with complete strangers. In sales some companies will remove Sales People from the final negotiations. If the Sales People have a relationship with the other party they could be more empathetic and weaker negotiators. Turning up without warning with complete strangers also unbalances the other party.
Co-operative Tactics
- Agree on the Process
- Spend time up front agreeing the process and format of the Negotiations including what’s in scope and what’s not.
- Win Win Agreements
- Most professional Negotiators accept that any final agreement must be fair and sustainable for the life of the time period. In most business scenarios it should never be win at all costs as this destroys relationships.
- Matching Rights
- Offer the other party the right to match any solution that you receive. For example if one of two business partners decides to sell their shares to another party they may have the agreement that the other party gets first refusal if they match the offer.
- Contingent Agreements
- These are simply agreements based on future events. Financial Bonus may be tied to Performance. Football transfer fees can be include Contingent Agreements that provides the selling club additional revenue if a player is sold on and or if a player is capped by their country or simply makes a certain number of appearances.
- Multiple Offers
- When multiple offers are placed on the table this allows both parties to indicate preferences and encourages creativity as a winning hybrid offer can be formed. Placing one offer on the table often leads to a refusal and a stall in the process.
Sales Negotiation Checklist
1. Be prepared to walk away. Sales Negotiation is 70% Mindset and 30% Strategy and unless you are prepared to walk away, no strategy will help you.
2. It’s not what you charge it’s what your worth. Thoroughly research the market and discuss with the buyer the Value you bring to the table?
3. Take council from colleagues and external advisors and agree a pre-meeting strategy for the negotiations then PRACTICE.
4. Never give anything away without receiving something of equal or greater value in return.
5. Never enter a Negotiation without first providing your price and outline terms in advance, to anchor the prospect to a higher number and terms.
6. Where possible in high value deals do not include your sales people in Negotiations, as they will be emotionally involved in the sale and not objective.
7. Ensure everyone in your team have agreed in advance your trade-offs, your concessions, and your best alternative to a negotiated settlement.
8. You must be comfortable with silence and at most only talk 30% of the time, as the more you talk the more information you are giving away.
9. If it’s not Win Win then you run the danger of the prospect backing out or failing to implement your agreement, then the lawyers are the only winners.
10. Negotiation is between human beings, you must therefore be familiar with Human Psychology, DiSC, Neuro Linguistic and Programming.
How to Build a SaaS Sales Funnel
1. What is a Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel is a sequence of actions, events or stages that a user goes through before purchasing a product or service. Sales funnels are designed to allow marketers to track, record and optimise the sales process to improve results.
2. How to build a SaaS Sales Funnel
Your SaaS sales funnel is an essential part of your Apps success. If you’re offering SaaS apps then creating a repeatable, scalable and trackable sales funnel is one of the important steps that you need to take.
Sounds easy? Then think again. The sales funnel is where many start-ups transitioning into revenue generation struggle, and in many cases fail.
Before starting to build your funnel it’s worth first considering where you are in your app journey.
There’s a new way to deliver sales growth…
Don’t buy Sales Training until you’ve watched this video…
3. The three main stage of SaaS development
Unfortunately, in sales there is never a one size fits all solution, and the starting point for how to build a SaaS sales funnel is dependent on where you are, in the terms of the three main stages of a SaaS business?
Are you at:
Phase 1: the start of the journey whereby the Founder and primary team are still trying to establish product/market fit.
Phase 2: where the founder and primary team members have proven product/market fit and are proving they can implement systems and processes that others can use to sell.
Phase 3, the final hurdle where you have a proven product market fit, you’ve identified and proven the right systems and processes for scaling and you are now ready to scale your sales, focus on client acquisition and build up your MRR.
The strategies you use for building a SaaS sales funnel will vary depending on exactly what you learned in Step 1 above.
So for the purposes of this exercise, I will assume you are at Step 1. If you are still struggling to build a sales funnel at steps 2 and 3 then either you missed something at step 1, or something has changed that has made everything you learned at step 1 stop working.
4. Build a marketing funnel before your sales funnel
With any business it’s important that you provide the optimal conditions for your sales team to be successful. In the SaaS world it’s not enough to have a great website, you need a website that:
a) can be found by your products and services in the major search engines – Google, Bing, Yahoo & YouTube
b) can be found by the problems you solve in the major search engines – Google, Bing, Yahoo & YouTube
c) can convert web traffic to marketing qualified leads
Many companies ignore this and rush to build an outbound sales team. The fact is that every potential prospect that your outbound Team gets interested will then go to your website to do further research.
Unless the web experience is equal to or greater than the prospects experience with your outbound team they will immediately switch off.
To build a marketing funnel you must create “compelling user first content”. This is content that the user is actively searching for not the content that your sales and marketing team want to push.
You SaaS marketing funnel is an essential part of your Inbound sales strategy. To do this successfully you will need to create high quality content at each stage of the buyer journey as shown below.
The content should subtly tell your brand story and the success you have brought to other users. Turn your early adopters into the Heroes not you.
TOFU – Top of funnel
The first part of your sales funnel otherwise known as TOFU is the awareness stage of the funnel. The prospect is aware of the problems they have and is investigating solutions.
Your website must have content that speaks to these problems and position your company as the Subject Matter Experts. The most popular content here would be:
How to guides
Explainer videos
Blog posts
Lead Magnets
At this stage, the prospect is in research mode, not buying mode and is simply gathering information.
Your prospect may not even be interested in solutions at this stage as they are still trying to accurately self-diagnose their own problems. It’s unlikely that your prospect will want to talk to sales at this stage.
We recommend you use marketing automation to track which articles/pages your prospects enter the site on as this is the problem that is top of mind for them. Knowing this can make it easier for sales to have a relevant conversation with them.
You may also have some success engaging the prospect with chatbots on your site, however many will want to remain anonymous at this stage.
Middle of Funnel
The middle of your sales funnel is when prospects start to evaluate specific solutions based on what they learned in stage 1. Middle of funnel content would include:
Presentations
Demonstrations
Case Studies
In practical terms they will have created some form of shortlist of potential suppliers, and they will then dig deeper into the details of each potential solution.
At this stage the prospect may still not engage with you as they are often simply researching on behalf of other people within their own organisation and their priority is still information gathering.
Bottom of Funnel
By the time your prospect has reached the bottom of your marketing funnel in many cases they have already “bought into” one particular supplier or solution.
They have made their decision largely on their web experience of the brand, your sales messaging and your ability to position yourself not only as a though leader but as a thought leader in that understands their problems.
Bottom of Funnel content would included things like:
Pricing
Comparison tables
Testimonials
Reviews
For simpler lower priced solutions you will find they are now ready to take a trial if you offer a strong Call to Action (CTA), whilst for the more expensive and complex solutions they will now engage with sales.
The image below shows where a simple marketing funnel transitions into a shopping cart and the more complex B2B sale transitions into a lead for sales.
Success lies not in choosing the right model, but building your own model based on data and trial and error.
Most marketing software now tracks user behaviour on your website and may use lead scoring to alert salespeople when the best time to pro-actively reach out to prospects.
From our own experience the timing is nearly always to early and a well-defined lead nurturing programme is equally effective.
In order to do this you should build into your marketing an at least three different lead magnets that will help you turn your web visitors into a subscriber so you can keep in touch.
5. Advertising to fill your Sales Funnel
Many companies successfully fill their sales funnel via advertising. Digital advertising has matured to a level that allows significant tracking and reporting allowing you to within a matter of weeks understand what your Conversion Ratio and CAC will be.
In the first instance we would advocate “Re-targeting Campaigns”. This is simply the process of placing adds in front of people who have already visited your website.
Studies show retargeting is seven times more effective than new campaigns which is why we advocate this as a starting point.
This strategy works extremely well with a strong content marketing campaign. The most popular add channel for B2B would be LinkedIn, however, many companies have also done well with Facebook and Instagram.
Needless to say this would be defined by your audience. Advertising can be used in simple funnels to drive sales and more complex ones to drive new enquiries for sales reps.
More complex sales may need a defined sequence whereby users click on and advert to receive a lead magnet with each lead costing $3.
If you subsequently manage to convert 5% of these new leads you can then attribute $60 per sale from advertising to your CAC.
You can build a trackable sequence or model from any activity not just advertising. For example, events, webinars and telesales allowing you to understand which activities are the most cost effective not only at filling your funnel, but actually converting into orders.
6. How to Build a SaaS Sales Funnel
Your sales funnel will vary depending on your sales strategy. Are you selling your App direct or are you selling through partners? Which channels have you decided to focus on initially?
1. Identify your Perfect Prospect Profile. This is the sales reps version of a marketing persona. It includes everything that a marketing persona would include, plus some additional information that helps sales understand and communicate at a deeper level with the prospect.
2. Build your sales messaging. Part of the product/market fit is understanding what business and or personal problem your product solves.
In our experience the most successful SaaS services are business solutions that solve business problems.
Once you understand how this relates to your own product/service at a deep level you can start to build your sales messaging.
This is the words and nuanced language you have proven that prospects connect with. It’s not enough to know about your own business and solutions, you should know about your customers.
You should know exactly how your solution helps your customer save money, make money and make their life easier.
3. Lead Generation Campaign.
Once you have identified your target prospects and built your sales messaging you will need to start work on a Lead Generation campaign.
There are two main approaches to Lead Generation as follows:
a) Inbound Lead Generation. Inbound lead generation campaigns are where the prospect contacts you first. The may fill out a form on your web page, telephone you or email you. In order to generate inbound sales leads you will need to do some form of content creation, ad campaigns, webinars, referral programmes or SEO.
b) Outbound lead generation. Outbound lead generation campaigns are where you reach out to prospects via telephone, email, direct mail, events or account based marketing. Outbound campaigns invariably means you will have to build an outbound says team which can be expensive.
The majority of SaaS companies use a combination of inbound and outbound, however, they nearly always have an emphasis on one more than the other.
As a very rough guide, SaaS services that are lower cost and targeting SMEs, are marketing led and have a predominantly Inbound focus.
SaaS services that are more expensing and targeting Mid-Market to Enterprise organisations will have a more sales led approach via Account Based Marketing.
7. What are the Stages of a SaaS Sales Funnel?
The stages of your sales funnel are simply a series of steps that your prospects move through to place an order.
These stages can vary greatly and there is no one funnel that you can apply to every app. Even if the stages are the same the method by which you move prospects through the funnel may vary.
Your sales funnel is a great place to start collecting data in order to measure performance and make improvements over time.
In general, prospects should move through the sales funnel as quickly as possible – this is called the sales cycle or pipe speed.
Measuring the speed that prospects move through the cycle allows you to identify blockages in your funnel and areas where prospects slow down.
These “sticking” points are where you should look to make improvements.
8. When do I demo my SaaS product to customers?
The timing of SaaS app demos within the sales process has been the subject of discussion for many companies.
The answer unfortunately to the question is “it depends”. Many companies successfully demo their app at the start of the sales process, however, there are equally many who demo at the start and then have their prospects disappear into the black hole of voice mail and unanswered emails.
In short the cheaper and simpler the solution, then the earlier in the process you can demo and the more expensive and complex the solution the demo should be pushed as far back in the selling process as possible.
The reality is that there is a tendency for Entrepreneurs and salespeople to rush to demo their app, hoping the demo will convince the prospect to sign up.
Even if the prospect is qualified and a good fit, a demo without any form of diagnosis of the prospects pain is in danger of losing the prospect.
Your prospect needs to know that you know and that you understand their world. This can only be achieved via intelligent and targeted questioning. If you want to speed the sale up, slow the sale down.
The demo is usually the salespersons greatest point of leverage and if you give it away to soon you will lose the leverage and in all likelihood the prospect.
As a general rule of thumb – push the app demo as far back in your sales process as possible.
Demos cost time and money especially for complex sales where more often than not a bespoke demo is required.
Any bespoke demo must only be delivered to the senior decision makers on the prospects buying team. If appropriate you can even have two demos within the sales process – there are no rules other than if it works do it.
Most sales reps make the mistake of using this part of the sales process to explain the benefits of the product in more detail.
When you’re telling you’re not selling. Use intelligent probing questions to get the prospect to tell you how the solution will solve their business pain.
You should avoid talking about features that you believe to be relevant to them. If you didn’t uncover this in the discovery stage of the sales process it’s inherently risky to introduce anything new further down the process.
For simpler lower priced solutions you will find they are now ready to take a trial, whilst for the more expensive and complex solutions they will now engage with a sales rep.
In order to demonstrate they have undertaken due diligence they will always speak to two or three potential suppliers.
This isn’t necessarily to beat a supplier down on price, but sometimes they need to validate to the wider purchasing group within their organisation why they have a preference.
App trials are also a good way to get users to sign up, however, the conversion ratio of trials to close is usually poor in most SaaS cases.
Depending on the pricing you could offer a managed trial, so they can evaluate your software while you manage them further down the sales process.
During a trial, the prospect can see how the product will work for them in practice. It’s important to time the trial wisely and ensure you have agreed in advance what happens if the trial is successful.
We’ve created the graphic above to try to explain visually how this might work for your organisation.
It’s worth noting in the example, the majority of your CAC will be marketing, whereas in the more complex funnel your costs will include marketing, sales + customer onboarding.
9. SaaS Sales Funnel examples
The sales funnels below are examples. You should NOT replicate these unless they fit with your sales process.
They are designed to be a starting point for those looking to develop a sales funnel.
As you can see from the graphic, there are many alternatives to the stages that go to make up your sales funnel depending on the type of funnel you are creating.
For purely digital funnels you could have:
Lead Magnet Landing page – where prospects arrive after clicking on your advert
Confirmation Page – confirming your free offer, trial or purchase
Upsell page – where prospects have an opportunity to add additional services or upgrade
Checkout page – where prospects pay for the service
Congrats or Thank You page – where you can sign post prospects with the appropriate next steps.
10. SaaS sales funnel metrics
When it comes to metrics we believe these are the common sales operations metrics and KPIs that most people are familiar with. Needless to say these metrics are important and you should be recording and reporting on them.
LTT – Lead to trial conversion
This is the number of leads who have converted to a trial.
DCR – Demo conversion ratio
The number of demos that successfully convert to the next stage in the sales process.
TTS – Trial to sale conversion
This is the number of prospects on the free trial who have converted to paying customers.
LTV – Lifetime Value of the customer
This is the average total value a customer will spend before leaving the service. Ironically this can be more difficult to measure the better your product is because, without customers leaving you will not know how long they stay and their total value to the business.
Churn – Number of customers leaving
Customers will leave and that’s not always a bad thing. If the customers who leave fit your ICP (Ideal Client Profile) then you have a problem. Customers who leave that don’t fit your ICP may be freeing up valuable resource that can be spent on your ICP.
MRR – Monthly recurring revenue
The monthly recurring revenue gives you an overview of your success, however, it’s only an overview and you need to look at the details within the data to gain a more accurate picture.
ARR – Annual recurring revenue
The annual recurring revenue gives a good overview of the business, but like the MRR you should study all the data to obtain a more accurate picture on the health of your venture.
Sales Cycle – The time from initial contact through to a closed order
This is typically short for lower value simpler solutions and longer for complex Enterprise sales. For example a sales to a Tier 1 bank may take 18 months from initial contact to close.
CAC – Customer Acquisition Cost
It’s important to understand how much it costs you to acquire a single customer. In an ideal world you would discover this in the initial phases of the business when you are proving the value proposition. Without this figure it’s impossible to put in the systems and processes to scale the business as you won’t know how much you can spend on the front end marketing and sales.
Negative Churn –
Negative churn is a powerful growth metric which indicates that the revenue from upselling and cross selling existing customers out strips the revenue lost when customers leave.
11. SaaS Proposal submissions
After the final demo, you should never offer to send a proposal.
Proposals cost time and money and if your prospect is interested they will ask you for a proposal.
If your prospect doesn’t ask you for a proposal then it tells you that they aren’t interested in working with you and you need to move back up the sales process to understand where you have gone wrong.
When the sales process stalls it’s rarely because of something you have done wrong at that moment – more often, it’s something you missed earlier on in the sales process.
Make sure you’re confident all the benefits of the software have been clearly explained to them and mapped out against their stated needs.
Where possible, always get your White Knight to help you co-create the proposal and sense check a draft version with them in advance of sending the official copy.
Before sending your proposal you must have a clear understanding of what the next steps are if you win or lose.
Without this you are most likely to spend the next three months chasing ghosts in voice mail.
12. Pricing your SaaS contracts
Many companies provide limited or no pricing at all on their website because they don’t want their competitors to see their pricing, or they think it will scare away potential customers.
You should be proud of your price and the value you bring. Let the competition undercut you and tie up all their resources on unprofitable deals.
People rarely buy the cheapest solution, so allow your prospects to undercut you.
If you’re still anxious about having your pricing on your website then think about how you feel when you are researching a solution you are interested in only to find the pricing page is littered with POA.
If you’re like most people you find this really annoying and quickly move on to the next potential supplier.
Lastly, another advantage of proudly displaying your pricing is that it qualifies out anyone who is not prepared to invest at that level.
This can save you lots of time and resources with prospects who simply have a different budget level.
There are numerous pricing strategies available to you, however, from our experience the only thing that is guaranteed, is that you will change your pricing.
As a basic rule of thumb if your prices are set too high for a short-term contract or paid trial, the prospect may fail to experience the full benefits of the software before the contract comes to an end, and they may decide not to renew.
Where possible you should reward prospects during the trial period for adding information and using the service.
For example, offer a shorter trial and incentivise users if they complete their profile/account set up.
Offer a further free period encourage them to use the product for example if they upload data into the system.
The idea is to “onboard” your new users step by step and make your product as sticky as possible.
If the prospect does want to go ahead you should use contracts with digital signature to speed up the sales process.
Never send contracts in emails or links to digital contracts as these can be easily ignored.
Arrange to get the prospect on the phone and talk through the contract with them. Once they have agreed to everything in the contract simply ask them to sign while you have them on the phone.
This way you retain control of the sales process.
13. Why the sales funnel is so important for SaaS providers
Many businesses have failed after struggling to implement a sales funnel. Marketing and selling SaaS products can be incredibly challenging, and chances are your target customers are already overwhelmed with offers from competing software vendors.
Think about which part of the buyers existing budget you are going to win revenue from. What direct or indirect competitors will you take budget away from?
You may be competing with some of the biggest and most powerful brands in the world that are providing generic solutions to the same problems you solve.
This means you need to offer something distinctive that your customers actually require.
A CB Insights study said 42% of SaaS start-ups fail because they’re offering products their target customers don’t need.
Convincing potential customers your software offers genuine value is essential.
14. Managing prospects expectations
Creating a sales funnel is all about building a journey all the way from web visitor, to subscriber and through demos and trails and ending with the contract being signed.
Your sales funnel should emphasise each of the key stages your prospects will travel through on their way to an agreement being made.
Be open, upfront and share the stages of the process in advance with your prospects.
You should pay close attention to any points of friction that might occur as your prospects travel through your sales pipeline.
This will give you the opportunity to make improvements to your funnel moving forward.
What’s most important is that you record all the data points in your sales funnel.
This will help you make decisions on facts rather than your gut feelings. It can take time for your sales funnel to become fully effective, and you may need to make several refinements before you have a truly optimised sales funnel.
Many customers don’t have a rich understanding of what they need when they first encounter you. Provide solutions not just products by helping prospects make the connection between the two.
What’s also true is users often buy what they want not what they need.
This is why it’s so important to ask targeted questions in order that you can accurately determine what their needs are so you can position your software in the most favourable way.
These questions will also tell you how near or far away they are to making a decision.
15. The Rise of SaaS solutions
It seems like everything in the world is now powered online by SaaS Applications. From Netflix and Amazon Prime to LinkedIn and Microsoft M365 we are now surrounded by SaaS solutions of one description or another.
Financially SaaS makes sense as it avoids heavy capital expenditure up front and de-risks the solution.
After all if it doesn’t work you are typically only ever locked in to a maximum of 12 months. Other advantages of SaaS include the way that it is normally quick to deploy and requires no maintenance on the part of the client.
Upgrades are normally delivered automatically, with clients generally being offered guaranteed levels of service.
Backups and data recovery are usually carried out on behalf of the client, so they can focus on what they do best, safe in the knowledge that everything’s being handled by the software developers themselves.
Lockdown has turbo charged SaaS
Remote working was on the rise even before the pandemic, so the fact that SaaS products allow individuals to work and collaborate from anywhere has only served to embed SaaS even deeper in our every day lives.
There are thousands of new products SaaS products being developed in every country around the world so competition is fierce, however, there is no apparent end to the appetite of consumers and business to SaaS solutions.
A coherent sales funnel could be the difference between your product being a viral success and being forced to return to the drawing board.
How to Sell to BIG Companies
How to Sell to Big Companies
Discover how to Find, Kloze and Grow Large Enterprise Accounts
Next FREE session – Tuesday 2nd Feb 2021
We’ve got all the templates & tools to make it easy for you
How to Sell to Big Companies. In order to sell to big companies you need to first create a shortlist of targets that meet your perfect prospect profile. Next, focus all your sales and marketing resources to research and create a unique sales approach for multiple contacts within the big company you are selling to.
What’s Inside
SESSION 1
The WHO
Introduction to Enterprise Selling
Selecting the right targets
Segmenting your accounts
Mastering the complex sale
Prep for Session 2
Get this session FREE
SESSION 2
The WHAT
The Door Opener
Right content, right contact, right time
How to write persuasive copy
The cadence of big account selling
The profitable, easy to deliver and replicate offer
SESSION 3
The HOW
What to say to Big Companies
How to control the sales conversation
The Contact Plan
Listen & Learn LIVE over the coaches shoulder
Your personal Action Plan
Course Author
Iain Swanston
Founder, Klozers
After 35 years in B2B sales Iain just loves solving sales problems.
If you’ve ever attended one of his live events you’ll know, even during the breaks and after the event he always likes talking about sales. Iain is an Author, Speaker & our Lead Sales Coach.
Iain is on a mission to make sales easier for B2B companies and their salespeople.
“In the short time I’ve been working with Klozers I’ve used his guidance to develop positive new sales activities, techniques and a mindset that has significantly helped my sales confidence. As a results I’ve already seen excellent performance benefits that are directly attributable to working to the coaching.”
Alan Wood
Scotland Director
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
“This was my first ever sales training and genuinely still the most pertinent in my sales career. Iain taught us how to take leads through the sales journey from lead to opportunity to closure, I still use these skills today and encourage my colleagues to do the same. My earnings have more than doubled since Iain gave that pertinent training and his latest blogs have been shared internally between our sales and marketing teams as the advice rings true to what we are currently working on as a department”
Lynne Hall
Strategic Accounts Manager
E-On Energy
“My coach was really flexible and was happy to talk in between my scheduled coaching slots, especially when I had burning questions and needed support fast. The debriefing calls we had after my sales meetings not only helped me understand where I could improve, they also gave me the right words to say, in the right sequence and at the right time.“
Elliott Boll
Enterprise Learning Consultant
Docebo
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Get the coaching you want, when you want it, at your desktop
“The first session was full of useful and practical sales information. I took so many notes and have come away with exercises I will carry out to help further clarify our approach to sales. I would highly recommend”
Rebecca Pick
Founder
Pick Protection
“Great training session with so much information packed into an hour. Looking forward to completing sessions 2 and 3. “
Max Anderson
Director
SuperBot Experts
Very insightful content from Klozers this afternoon. Thank you Iain Swanston for the invite to attend. This shall be hugely beneficial for our business moving forward and I am looking forward to putting my learning into practice
Laurie Wilson
Regional Sales Manager
CMP Products
Learn How to Sell to Big Companies
If you are new to sales at some stage you will want to learn how to sell to big companies. It’s common for most ambitious sales people and businesses, yet this can be a challenging or even, a near impossible experience.
For example, finding the right people to talk with (yes there will also be more than one decision maker) can be like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack, and then trying to coordinate all these decision makers can be like herding cats.
The longer sales cycles that inevitably arise from having multiple decision makers in a complex sale, then frustrate most sales people as time drags on.
The large revenues that Enterprise sales can deliver, more often than not, prove so elusive that the salespeople give up and focus on smaller opportunities, they know they can convert.
However, in some circumstances it can take the same amount of sales resources to convert a small opportunity as it does when selling the same product or service to a big company, so don’t give up just yet.
Learn More, Sell More, Earn More
How to Sell an Idea to a Big Company
Maybe you don’t have a product or service but instead you have an idea that you want to sell. It’s the sames process and the fact is, it is possible to sell to big companies and large enterprise organisations, although it does need a slightly different approach.
The first FREE 60 minute session in this course walks you through the preparation and planning required before you approach big companies.
When you sell to big companies you may also need some additional sales resources that are not as commonly used when selling to smaller organisations, such as a Business Case, a Cost Benefit Analysis – don’t worry we’ve got templates you can use for all of these.
If this sounds like lots of work, then Yes it is, and because of this many companies will not rely on any one individual, instead they will work as a team to win large accounts. Part of that team should include Marketing in order that you can target the right people in the buying organisation, with the right messaging, at the right time.
Run the sales campaign as a mini project with scope, roles and responsibilities, costings, objectives and milestones. Needless to say that it usually makes sense to be targeting more than one big company if you are going to do this professionally, but don’t make the mistake of having too many, as the campaign can then turn into a marketing initiative which by their very nature are more generic.
The key to success is that all the messaging must be bespoke and relevant to every target which takes time, which is time that you won’t have if you have too many targets. Again this course covers everything you need.
Before you start selling to big companies there are however two important considerations you should address as follows:
1) Does your company have the capability to successfully deliver a project on the scale that a big company will require?
In most cases you will only get one chance to sell to a big company and delivering success for your first big company will also give you a reference point that will help you sell to other big companies.
2) Does your company have the financial resources required to sell to a big company?
If you buy materials in January to create stock for February and have agreed 90 day payment terms this means you have to run 150 days without being paid. Some small businesses are not sufficiently funded to do this, so be careful what you wish for.
Selling to big companies can transform your business, but like most things in life that are worthwhile it’s usually not easy and doesn’t happen overnight, but it certainly can be worth it.
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The Best SaaS Sales Training & Coaching for SDR’s & AE’s
1. SaaS Sales Training: Before you Start
How do you grow SaaS sales? How do you grow sales in your software or technology business?
Sadly most companies are doing the same generic marketing and getting the same generic results.
Growing monthly and annual recurring revenues isn’t easy for any organisation.
Behind every overnight success there is nearly always years of hardwork and maybe even some failures from which they learn and move forward.
B2B SaaS sales training can differ depending on the stage of the startup. The strategy and skills required in stage 1 Product/market fit, will vary from stage 3 Scaling.
Many companies make the mistake of jumping to stage 3 immediately and this can kill their growth. If you try and ramp up sales before you have a firm grip on the systems and processes that drive profitability, every customer you add will drive you further away from your profits.
Related content on SaaS sales:
HOW TO TAKE THE GUESS WORK OUT OF GROWING YOUR ARR
Before starting any SaaS or software sales training here are a few boxes we suggest you tick so that you get the most from your investment in sales training. Sales Training can differ hugely depending on the stage of the startup.
The strategy and skills required in stage 1 Product/market fit will vary from stage 3 Scaling. Many companies make the mistake of jumping to stage 3 immediately and this can kill their growth.
Stage 1 – Ensure you have a proven product/market fit.
Many start-ups rush to employ salespeople and try to scale up before they have proven their product/markit fit.
Product/market fit is simply the process have taking your value proposition and proving you can sell it to someone. As you would expec,t one sale doesn’t mean you have a viable business model,but it’s a starting point.
Many B2B start ups aren’t sure how to prove their product market fit so here are some questions you should ask your team:
1a. Do we have repeat business? Although they have value one off sales don’t actually prove much becasue they won’t help you grow recurring revenues. Locking clients into an annual contract of 12 monthly payments doesn’t equal 12 sets of repeat business.
It’s not until the annual contract renews that you can get a feel for how valuable they see your product.
1b. Are your customers in the same verticals? It’s usually a good sign if you are having repeat success within the same vertical.
That’s not to say that selling across different industries is a bad thing far from it, but in the early days it’s easier when you can be hyperfocussed and branch out as part of your growth strategy.
1c. Is you product solving the same problem? Again it’s not a bad thing if your product solves multiple problems, it’s just in the early stages this can lead to generic marketing and confused sales messaging.
1d. Are you receiving a regular flow of referrals? Most people will happily recommend a product or service if they feel it will of benefit. Whilst a lack of referrals may simply be because you haven’t asked – in this case what is your Net Promoter Score? Improving both of these before you start to scale your business will only make selling easier.
Product/market fit is a journey, not one single event and takes time, customer feedback and usually many iterations from the initial concept. Each iteration should be defined, measured and tested by the user base before being accepted.
1e. Lastly, you should never under estimated the feedback loop from your early adopters. This isn’t just about changing your MVP, it’s about listening and understanding the problems from the prospects perspective.
Seemingly small changes in the sales messaging and sales process based on feedback can have a huge impact in the results you will achieve.
The same feedback loop is invaluable for tech based businesses as they can use this to develop the product roadmap post MVP.
Stage 2 – Systemise Sales
Once Product/market fit is achieved the next stage for Startups is to systemise sales. This can vary greatly, however, the general rules of thumb are, higher prices will mean more man hours are required to sell, and the larger the target customer the less automated the sales process.
Lower priced solutions targeting SME’s is more likely to be a marketing led sale and higher priced solutions to Enterprise organisations are predominantly sales led.
Systemising your B2B sales includes six main areas as follows:
- creating a measurable and repeatable sales process
- using automation technology where appropriate
- segmenting markets and accounts
- turning proven sales plays into repeatable sales process
- Volume on-boarding process for new hires
- gathering relevant KPI’s and metrics – closing ratios, pipeline coverage, average deal size, cost of customer acquisition, customer lifetime value and Sales Rep scorecards
Without these metrics you should not move to the next stage. The metrics should form a solid business case to investors and if they don’t you simply need to make some changes before moving forward.
Having one loss making sales rep and then adding 10 more as you scale, all the time hoping you will turn the corner of profitability isn’t recommended. Sales performance is therefore an important part of stage 2, both in terms of how you will measure it and how you will manage it.
Stage 3 – Scaling Sales
The last and final stage is scaling sales. In many cases start-ups rush to this stage due to pressure from investors or they are running out of cash. The reality is that the more time and effort you put into stages 1 and 2, makes stage 3 so much easier.
When you are ready we recommend you read “How to Build a SaaS Sales Funnel”.
Stage 3 creates huge changes in the business as you move from a small, mostly development based team, to hiring multiple sales, marketing, operations and HR staff.
Costs are huge however it shouldn’t be a concern because you have a proven product/market fit (stage 1) and the right systems & processes in place that are following proven KPI’s (stage 2).
Another challenge here is the mindset of the leadership team. In most cases they have gone for years focussing on saving money, and now they need to start spending money on more sales and marketing hires.
Often this rapid growth can decrease profitability even further as new customers are onboarded.
Moving from a mindset of survival to one of growth shouldn’t be underestimated.
2. Going Outbound
Starting any Outbound sales campaign is a dangerous thing, because when Outbound is done badly it leaves a scorched earth behind.
A scorched earth approach will not only limit future growth, it will dramatically increase the churn in your sales team.
Salespeople like winning and when they aren’t winning and earning commission they will quickly look elsewhere.
This will add cost to your recruitment, management and training budgets, in addition to the missed market opportunities.
Going Outbound is difficult and most businesses make the mistake of simply sending a generic email (including a first name and the company name is no longer classed as personalising) and following up with a nuisance cold call.
This approach will get you some sales, but you will be leaving thousands on the table. The best outbound strategies are one to few, not one to many and they are highly coordinated campaigns that deliver higher opportunity creation rates.
This involves sales and marketing working together to come up with the right target audience, the right sales messaging, the right initial approach and the right sales plays. All of which needs to be supported by content, collateral and campaign material.
There are two primary drivers for B2B success as follows that you should be aware of:
1. The initial approach from the sales development reps need to provide a “gift”. No one likes receiving cold calls and most sales people don’t like making them. What gift can you provide that delivers value to the user that will encourage the salespeople to pick up the phone?
What is of high value to the user, but low value/cost for you to deliver?
2. The faster the user receives value from the product/service, then the more likely they are to use the service, stay engaged and complete the on boarding process.
Instant gratification motivates users so use this to your advantage. Invest heavily in your on boarding and customer success programmes, because this will reduce your churn down the line.
3. Understanding Sales Training: The Basics
To train your B2B sales team to be the best that they can and bring in the most sales that they can, you have to use the science of learning. Just like students in a classroom, your sales team is going to study and work hard to try to bring about the best results.
For any student, whether they’re in a traditional classroom or not, there is a general 70:20:10 rule of learning. This is a widely-adopted rule that applies to nearly all scenarios of teaching and learning.
To train your sales team to their maximum level of efficiency, follow this:
70% on-the-job training
20% coaching based on performance
10% in-classroom learning
If you follow this basic guideline, you’ll see that your sales team will respond better to training and be able to do more with what they’ve learned from their time in training.
Another rule that you should pay attention to in regards to training your team is the idea of repetition. You can’t expect that every member of your team remember every rule, procedure, and policy that you’ve told them for the rest of their lives.
In fact, most people can only retain about 20% of what they’ve learned over a month. To reduce the amount of information forgotten (and ensure that your team is up to speed), you have to train everyone on your team continually.
In terms of sales training content, whilst every business is different we would advise you include topics like how to engage buyers, selling skills, building a sales pipeline, consultative selling skills, reducing sales cycles and account growth.
This means that you need to train even the most senior employees of your team continuously.
TREATING YOUR SALES TEAM AS STUDENTS
Whether you’re training a new group of salespeople, or repeating an old lesson to a group of executives, you should keep a classroom-like state in mind. All of your sales representatives are students when they’re in training. Therefore, you have to act like a teacher to perform effective sales coaching.
Think about some of the best strategies that teachers in traditional classrooms use. For example: “See. Do. Teach.” This is a phrase that’s widely adopted by teachers who are looking to make effective students.
What this means is that if you want your salespeople to be as effective as possible, you have to show them what to do, ask them to do it, and then require that they teach someone else how to do it. Not only is this repetitive. It also requires your team to show their skills in three different ways.
After a student (or salesperson) achieves this line of practice, they are said to have mastered the material. However, we all know that one listen-in and two practice calls aren’t enough to make effective salespeople.
REACTING TO PROGRESS MADE AS A COACH
When you’re teaching a new or old group of salespeople, you should see the act more as a way of coaching them, rather than training them. We’re sure you know, your role as a coach for the sales team is to give individuals feedback based on what they do.
Rather than dictating how they should conduct sales calls, you should give the salesperson feedback based on what they could improve on. Don’t forget to highlight things they’ve done correctly as this will enforce them to do those things correctly again.
As you’re acting as a coach, it’s also essential to focus on one performance indicator at a time. Think about the one quality that you think would send this salesperson above and beyond as they’re conducting sales calls and conferences.
Don’t overwhelm your sales team by picking too many areas of focus at once. Let them ease their way into making sales by fixing one attribute at a time. You’ll also find that coaching and teaching them this way is more manageable as their focus remains on one thing rather than several things.
SALES MANAGERS
Often the most neglected but important role in sales is that of sales managers and sales leaders. These are the people who set the bar for sales performance and what is acceptable or not. In many cases sales managers were either the top sales rep or simply a manager with little or no sales experience.
Whether you buy in experienced sales managers or develop your own sales leaders this investment in talent will repay itself many times over.
SALES PERFORMANCE
It’s worthwhile noting that Sales Coaching and Sales Management are very different skills but both play an important part in building and increasing sales performance. Where possible you should separate the roles as a coach cannot make a coachee do anything where as Sales Managers can.
SELLING RESOURCES
Your SaaS team will inevitably need resources to help them make sales. These resources will range from research tools, to prospecting tools, through to klozing tools like online presentation and digital sign off tools.
Other than mentioning Microsoft which everybody has anyway, we deliberately don’t provide a list of resources in order that this blog can remain vendor neutral, however, we’re more than happy to talk through the resources that we have found to work best.
DOCUMENT EVERYTHING
When you’re training salespeople most companies default to the traditional model whereby they hire a trainer for a day or two days in house training. This may work for some but from experience we have found that at least one member of your sales team will leave. It then becomes financially impossible to have a trainer return to train the one new hire.
We recommend documenting all the training in an electronic B2B Sales Playbook which is living, working document that can be updated and refined as your sales team matures.
Our Playbooks provide a single point of reference and storage for everything a sales person would need in order to be successful selling tech based solutions.
The Playbooks are built in Microsoft OneNote and work across both Windows and Mac devices.
WORKING TOWARDS LONG-TERM SUCCESS
Don’t assume that your sales force can be taught in just a week or even a couple of weeks. The coaching process should be viewed as a multi-year process that is made to bring salespeople from amateurs to coaches themselves.
As you’re conducting your sales coaching program, you should never assume that someone doesn’t need training. No matter how much previous training and experience they have, you should be prepared to put them through a sales program. Even with these ‘experts,’ you should work to build their strengths.
While your sales representatives are succeeding and learning more about their role in the sales process, you should note how they could fill higher positions in the future. For example, you may have a sales representative who is showing great promise for a leadership role. Take note of this and encourage the representative to work towards a higher position like this.
Working towards long-term success means that you should consistently be working to better your sales representatives so that they can bring more business to your company.
ONLINE SALES COACHING
Traditional tech based sales training focuses on what we call the tactical part of sales training. Whilst this is hugely important, there is an inevitable ceiling that is created once you have optimised this part of you sales.
Klozers will work with your leadership team and ensure we deliver a holistic solution that maximises the market opportunity.
If you’re looking for a program to complement your on-the-job SaaS sales training, look no further than our online sales coaching. Our sales experts will coach your sales team to be the best they can be by highlighting strengths and building upon any perceived weak points.
We know that you’re looking for a strong sales force. The only way to get this is to invest in quality tech focused sales coaching like ours.
Klozers provides training for SaaS companies via our offices in United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Germany, Australia and the USA.
