Category: Sales

When it comes to structuring a successful B2B cold call, the first thing to remember is that there’s no silver bullet, golden ticket, or magic words to guarantee you’re going to make a sale with every call. The truth is that this is less of a science and more artistry, but like any art, preparation can be the difference between success and failure. 

Before delving any deeper into this topic, it’s important to define what a “successful” cold call is. Our findings indicate that the majority of cold calls end without a sale, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t successful. If your definition of success is a sale, then you’re going to spend a lot of your time disappointed. The point of a cold call is to identify a good fit for the product or service you’re selling, as identifying if the product or service doesn’t fit, is just as valuable. 

Ultimately, you’re there to create a conversation with the prospect and being too focused on the wrong outcome can cause the conversation to fail. 

Things that people tend to do well 

Now, this is complicated, as we’ve already said, it’s an art form and as such, your personality plays a big part in how this conversation forms. There are, however, some simple techniques that Sales Professionals use to help steer the conversation and prevent it from stalling before it gets started. 

Language and human behaviour: 

This is hugely influential in the conversation, so plan and prepare. Regardless of whether you are B2B or B2C, there is another person involved at the other end of the phone. The most human question of all is “What’s in it for me?” and, even if this isn’t said out loud, it will be at the front of the persons mind you’re speaking to. If, as a seller you can put yourself in the position of the prospect and answer this challenging question, there’s a good chance you can keep their attention long enough to have a conversation. 

Body language: 

Believe it or not, body language can also be a factor. Do what feels natural but make each person you talk to feel that they are the most important call you’ve had. And don’t forget to smile! It comes across in your voice, as does your posture. 

Scripts: 

It’s important to structure what you’re going to say. There is nothing wrong with a script but learn and test it – put yourself in the prospects’ position to see what your responses are. If you say the same thing as everyone else and the gatekeeper or prospect has heard it a thousand times, you will get the answer they have given a thousand times. 

Tone of voice: 

Your tone of voice can also help with the conversation along with the language you use. There are certain phrases that trigger the sales alarm in peoples’ heads and ways to say the same thing that elicits a different response. Low and slow is how people talk when they are relaxed and comfortable. If you turn into a children’s TV presenter and babble your way through, the prospect will disengage. 

Treat the prospect like an equal – you have a solution to a problem they’re likely to have. The key is to find out if this prospect has that problem now, or is likely to have it in the near future. 

Things that people tend to do wrong 

There is no such thing as the perfect structure, unless of course you know the prospect well. If we assume you don’t, then there are some general pit falls to avoid. 

A lack of honesty and transparency: 

Honesty is the best policy with the prospect, so let the prospect know from the outset what you’re calling for and how the conversation will go. If you can explain that you will only take a few minutes of the prospects’ time and if, after that the solution doesn’t fit, you’ll part friends with no hard feelings, and they’ll likely keep you in mind for the future. Framing the call in this way also helps people to relax, as they understand what is expected of them. 

Not drawing and keeping the prospect’s attention: 

Get the prospect’s attention, don’t just be the same salesperson they have previously hung up on. People buy from people, so don’t ask them something you don’t want an answer to. “How are you today?” can be a great question but is completely wasted if you then talk over their answer or fail to listen to what they say. Starting with something like, “I’m just looking at your website now” might just interrupt the usual sales call pattern, enough for them to take an interest in why you’re looking. 

Without teamwork, you can’t make the dream work: 

Try to get on the same team as the prospect. If you imagine you are having a conversation across the garden fence, you need to climb over the fence and remove the barrier, so you see things the same. This becomes essential when they have an objection. It’s never a good idea to argue or to dismiss their objection with something flippant like “We’re not like that”. Again, try and work from the same side of the fence, empathise and agree… “that’s terrible when that happens, I understand”. It’s basic human nature that when people tell you “You’re wrong”, you dig your heels in and the alarm bells start. Even if you know you’re wrong, you won’t agree with them. 

Focusing too much on the sales pitch and not the conversation: 

The importance of planning the call is crucial, so it’s vital that you have thought about all the possible reactions of your prospect and have a plan to bring the conversation back on track. This is a conversation, but you need to remain in control and steer it down a course that suits you. 

One very important part of the conversation that most people forget to plan, is the end of the call. You have outlined the conversation to the prospect and said if this isn’t a good fit you will part as friends and if that’s the case, as it will be most of the time, then do what you have said. For that small percentage of calls, which end with the prospect wanting more, it’s not good if you don’t know what to do next. Ensure that if the prospect wants you to go into more detail, you are prepared to or at least you can book an appointment for this to happen and move them into the discovery stage. The last thing a prospect wants is to be enthused about your offer and then find you are completely unprepared for the next step. 

Interested in learning more? Check out this insightful episode of ON AIR: With Owen where our Founder & CEO, Owen Richards, chats to 6th Door Founder, Chris Dawson, about this subject in more detail. 

To be successful in cold calling you need to understand your customer, their challenge and how your offer provides a solution. If you’d like guidance and support with structuring your next B2B cold call, we can help; get in touch today or download our FREE B2B Cold Call Script Template. 

Sales Technology has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry in the past decade. With so many tools out there, it’s hard to work out the essentials from the nice-to-haves. The phrase ‘building your sales tech stack’ implies you should be using layer upon layer of technology to enable your sales processes. We can tell you right now; it’s utterly dependent on your goals and your setup. Even the most tech-savvy sales leaders find it impossible to stay at the leading edge of sales technology; it’s a vast marketplace, and the options can be overwhelming. Who has time to review and analyse thousands of tools?

In our view, sales technology is there to empower salespeople, enhance their skills and make their lives easier. If you can automate a sales process and reduce administrative burden, therefore freeing up time for the vital relationship building that’s key to successful prospecting, then go for it! If you’ve heard from your network that you must buy this new market insight tool, even if your gut feel is you have a pretty good handle on your market research already, it’ll be three months before anyone in your team has time to own it, trust your instincts and park it for the time being.

How do we make the most of the sales technology available? How does a business decide what they need to adopt and when? Here’s our steer on the options available.

Understanding the options

CRM: Your CRM is the foundation of your tech stack, whether you choose a market leader like Salesforce or MS Dynamics or something more bespoke and focused on your specific industry. It’s ideal if you use a platform that supports collaboration with third-party apps, so your technology works together and delivers better overall visibility. Even the smaller providers offer integration across apps, supporting a better sales ecosystem.

Ideal for: everyone!

Sales and marketing automation: With systems like Marketo and HubSpot, you can drive a more valuable inbound experience and target campaigns at the right audiences, nurturing customer and prospect relationships in the right way, maximising your interactions and ensuring a better experience for everyone who interacts with your brand.

Ideal for: businesses that need to optimise their inbound efforts and drive better customer experience.

Sales engagement platforms: Products like Outreach, SalesLoft and Mailshake fall under this umbrella. Their value lies in automating sales processes and consolidating conversation intelligence from your CRM and Marketing Automation systems – streamlining processes, bridging gaps and ultimately saving your salespeople time.

Mailshake and SalesLoft support time-saving integrated dialers. Outreach allows users to manage all prospecting activities from one interface. And VanillaSoft offers queue-based lead routing saving, so your salespeople call the warmest lead next.

Ideal for: businesses with multiple campaigns who want to boost collaboration, improve productivity and hit rate.

Communication tools: If your sales strategy is outbound calling, there are many tools to support your agents, save time and some platforms, like Dialpad, provide feedback and learning as they go. Tools such as Aircall automate post-call processes and build better insights for teams directly from your CRM – reducing time spent on admin.

Ideal for: teams that make a high volume of calls, need to improve conversion rates, improve contact rates or want real-time feedback to support training.

Email management and integration: Suppose your sales teams preferred method of contact is email. In that case, there are thousands of tools available, from those that deliver and integrate insights from your CRM to your sales teams’ inboxes to those that measure email success rates and response times and even those that import email addresses from LinkedIn activity (like Contactout and Lusha). The aim is to bring intelligence and measurement to the familiar workflow of email.

Ideal for: sales teams that rely on email for outreach and need to optimise email engagement and data accuracy.

Lead generation and prospecting: There is a new wave of tools that help you identify and reach your ideal buyers. Powered by AI and machine learning, platforms such as Cognism and Growbots promise to automate the tedious and time-consuming parts of prospecting, leaving your teams to focus on closing warm leads that are more likely to buy.

Ideal for: sales teams stretched thin between premium accounts, managing existing relationships and pipeline building activities.

Sales insight and market intelligence: In a competitive marketplace bombarding decision-makers with broad sales messages won’t achieve cut-through. These tools arm salespeople with actionable insights that support intelligent sales conversations and provide accurate prospect info for your sales teams. Some tools can prioritise prospects who are ready to buy; others like UpLead act like enriched, searchable databases.

Ideal for: organisations looking to break new markets or struggling to get traction in their target market.

Never underestimate the human element of sales

Relationship building and making genuine connections is the key to successful outbound sales. No technology can replace the skills and experience of a talented and resilient sales expert. Still, it can bring you closer to your customers and help create an authentic experience that supports the excellent service you already deliver at every point in the sales cycle. Your sales tech stack has to reflect that and add value to your current setup. You can buy a billion tools, but with no process development or proper integration, there’s a fair chance you’ll create more work and unwanted distractions for your team. Equally, without an overarching sales strategy or direction, the tools won’t be worth the investment. They’ll undoubtedly connect you to more prospects, but it’s up to you to nail the qualification criteria and create value from those new audiences.

Weighing up the cost

Consider a new sales hire’s salary costs and the additional cost when you load them with sales technology that runs into thousands a month. Are they delivering higher productivity in line with the extra costs? This is all down to personal experience; some sales leaders believe the investment is worthwhile, provided you train the new hires on the technology, and the profitability will come. Others think it’s an overcomplication, and you need to give salespeople greater autonomy in this area, letting them adopt the tools they prefer, such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

In conclusion, sales technology can be incredible and often well worth the investment, but they’re not a cure-all for sales challenges. Any new tools you adopt must become a seamless part of your workflow, save time or deliver inherent value for your team. Trust your instincts. You know if a tool is likely to be welcomed and deemed valuable based on your culture.

If you need advice navigating the sales technology landscape, we can help; get in touch today.

Selecting your channels and designing your sales approach: the key to achieving cut-through in your market

We live in such a connected and always-on world, increasingly enriched with digital experiences, it’s hard to conceive that not everyone is just at the end of an email, phone, or WhatsApp message. Yet there are still people out there who don’t spend the highest proportion of their working day in a digital space. In other professions the lines are blurring, and research shows the pandemic has given rise to different channels and ways of connecting, even disrupting the sales cycles in some industries. In recent months, video and live chat have been the breakout stars. And research shows that 70% of B2B decision-makers say they are open to making new, fully self-serve or remote purchases over $50,000, and 27% would spend more than $500,000. That’s a significant shift from the perception of e-commerce as high volume, low-value sales.

Why is this important?

Choosing the right channels and tools is crucial to improving your sales numbers. In fact, understanding what your prospective buyer requires to make a decision about your products and services, empowers you to invest your time where it matters.

Keep your customers’ needs at the centre of your decisions

Imagine your primary buyers are busy hospitality professionals who spend minimal time at their desks and don’t have a wealth of time to peruse content online, they might really need the cut-through of a conversation to kick off any discussion around their buying decisions. Your plan will therefore look very different from one targeting CIOs in Fintech companies shopping for accounting software, or HR leaders procuring performance management software systems. For the latter examples, you may need to invest more time in your inbound strategy. For the former, a well-crafted script for an initial phone conversation, followed by links to engaging product information and an easy way to book a demo, might be just the ticket.

Find the parts of your sales cycle that need attention

This part can be tricky because it requires an honest assessment of how well your current strategy performs and forces you to examine undiscovered territory. Say you are limited to one or two channels, and there’s no formal funnel for your prospects; this leaves little room for optimisation and doesn’t give you much data visibility.

Where do you close most of your deals? And where do you find yourself fighting to stay in the game? If you’ve never diverged from the tried and tested phone call, how’s it working for you?

If your preferred outreach method is a phone call, are your sales team spending a lot of time aggregating follow-up content for the prospect before the conversation can proceed to the next stage? Do you find it difficult to get hold of senior decision-makers? Is it a challenge to articulate your offer over the phone?

The answers to these questions provide the insight you need to optimise and design your contact sequences. If the conversation with the key decision-maker is happening too early in the cycle, you could be squandering the opportunity to close the deal because you need to spend time generating awareness. It’s far more efficient to educate your prospects through outreach emails that give greater context to the problem you solve, or pose a challenge that sparks a conversation. Similarly, signposting to relevant video content could expedite your process, allowing your discussions to begin from a position of shared understanding.

Assess which channels and tools meet your needs:

There are numerous ways to integrate your user’s experience, from website transactions, payments processing, cross-selling, coupon codes, tracking, and maintenance, to name but a few. Whether your business sells products, services, or your sale is a more consultative, longer burn, you can create an experience that adds value at every stage of the pipeline.

Sales and Marketing integration is so important to your success in this area. When you work with your marketing department, you can use the content they create as a sales tool to attract potential buyers into the sales funnel. They can proactively help you find channels where potential customers search for answers your service provides, whether that’s through a more targeted social strategy or integrated live chat into your website. All of the above strengthens the quality of leads in the funnel, enabling you to establish strong business relationships with your buyers and gain their trust.

While this list isn’t exhaustive, it gives you an insight into which strategy might best serve your audience:

Social selling: through leveraging your networks and building relationships on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, you can start conversations, respond to comments and engage with broader discussions about the challenges affecting your prospects. On LinkedIn especially, dialogues can easily migrate from the comments sections into a more formal approach. It also makes sense to talk shop where your competitors are hanging out, conversations are already in-flight, and people expect a sales approach. Here, the relationship is central to the sale, so this channel is best-suited to longer sales cycles that require more nurturing and time investment. You can complete your entire sales cycle via social selling, but it works best when used in conjunction with other channels and you migrate to a video call or meeting.

Email: Email works best when it’s personal but not presumptuous; a well-written email with an attention-grabbing subject line can pique interest. Generic, catch-all email blasts will never have the desired effect. Still, if you can segment your audiences and trigger relevant email content based on their buyer behaviours, you boost your chances of conversion. Even innovative templates that allow for some degree of personalisation and offer a gift such as a guide or a download can nudge your prospect in the right direction and helps you earn the right to a more in-depth conversation.

Phone call or video chat: Conversation is undeniable; even the most introverted amongst us get value from human connection. Where the phone call punctuates the sales cycle is entirely up to you. For some organisations, it’s their only strategy. Without a vast pool of potential buyers or a killer elevator pitch, it’s easy to burn through a database without getting real traction. Sales are about persistence, but it’s also advisable to align your sales approach with your buyer’s needs. If your buyers prefer to research online, amp up your inbound and digital outreach ahead of making calls. If your audience is tech-savvy, deliver innovative video content and let their response drive the conversation forward.

Live chat:  Live chat is one of the most potent sales tools out there. It enables direct real-time interaction with visitors to your website, capturing their immediate needs. It’s a valuable touch-point, but it works best where there are definitive answers, or you have a mechanism to book a demo.

Every business can benefit from a solid inbound strategy: Ample opportunities for prospective customers to research marketing content, participate in live webinars to see how your products solve their problems and lead to better quality, which means more qualified leads for your sales team.

Build an integrated tech stack that supports your prospect’s journey: A data-driven sales culture means that your sales representatives and managers monitor essential information that drives your business, such as sales dates, sales cycles, customer satisfaction and outbound activities. Business intelligence tools that centralise and combine data from your CRM, LMS, telephony and VoIP systems (and integrate with marketing automation systems) offer the best opportunity to examine where you’re experiencing drop-offs in engagement. You can therefore fail fast and fix things quickly, so your approach evolves with your market.

Getting started:

Armed with a plethora of tools and insight, you can continually optimise your sales approach. But this is the real world, not everything happens in the correct order, and we understand that not every business has the resources or the time to invest in systems and software. Optimising your prospect’s experience and driving better data visibility starts with setting up some joined-up internal processes. Even simple things like well-crafted follow-up emails, customer surveys and regular communications can drive better retention and increase sales success.

If you need guidance designing your sales approach, we can help. Contact us…

In sales, data can make or break your campaign. If your list is too generic, you could burn through time having irrelevant conversations, too narrow and miss out on valuable opportunities that fall just outside your perceived ideal target.

Your data strategy matters; done well, it provides a blueprint and foundation for your organisation’s success. Your data strategy should determine who your business is talking to and where you drive awareness of your products and services. It’s a powerful driver for the direction of your business and where you want to be, so it’s worth investing time in it.

How you build your lists will depend on various factors, including your salespeople’s autonomy and experience, whether or not you use data insight or sales tools, and factors such as your deal sizes and target audiences.

You may have a well-defined ideal client profile, or you might still be trying to figure it out. Wherever you are on that journey, and while perfect data doesn’t exist, there are key approaches you can take to make sure you’re eliminating who you can’t sell to, and you’re fishing in the right pond.

Think about your total addressable market. What does that look like? It might be broader than you’ve considered, or you may have plans to break new markets. Are you successful in the demographic where you currently expend time and effort, or has the success been organic rather than based on any market insight?

There are simple surface-level observations you can make; if you’ve failed to gain traction in a particular market or with a specific group of decision-makers, there may be reasons. Say you have aspirations to land contracts with large corporates, if you regularly encounter objections to sale or periodically lose out to larger competitors, it could be as something as simple as you’re not on the preferred supplier list or don’t fit a procurement profile. Perhaps it’s more challenging to engage your services, so regardless of the quality of your pitch, you’ll struggle to get a foot in the door. But in smaller or mid-sized companies with different buying behaviours and traits, you’d have far more success.

When you’re buying data, some nuances can completely skew the entire focus of your dataset, especially when selecting the right decision-makers. It’s wise to think laterally and consider the minor but significant differentiators. It’s the difference between targeting IT management in mid-sized pharmaceutical companies but not including business owners where no IT leader exists: you could be missing out on vital conversations with founders and owners with a requirement for your services or misjudging where the buying power sits. Similarly, suppose you’re running a programme targeting major financial services companies and don’t specify head office / corporate HQ. In that case, you could contact branches with large numbers of staff but have to defer to the main group for purchasing decisions.

Being too niche

Every business has reasons for being very targeted. Some are justified, some haven’t thought too deeply about why and some don’t know! If you focus solely on large enterprises, you may be reaching (on average) one-two relevant decision-makers a day. Again, how do you judge company size on revenue or number of employees? Some start-ups have incredible profitability per employee and actual buying power thanks to investment; it’s not worth passing up those conversations just because they might not fit into a narrow paradigm of ideal client profile.

Accessing quality data

It’s a fact that data ages quickly, with senior leadership changes, mergers and thanks to the pandemic, more businesses going remote and keeping on fewer offices. You can expect some data dilution; even the most reputable data providers cannot guarantee perfect data.

You can empower your sales teams with tools that can enhance their research ability, which helps them build compliant, accurate and integrated lists in real-time. Many powerful tools on the market, like Lusha, Cognism and HubSpot, can accelerate prospecting efforts and drive a better culture around data. Especially in businesses where sales teams have greater autonomy and ownership overbuilding their prospect lists.

Equally, there is an argument that sales teams that are researching and refining their client lists are spending less time at the coalface, actually selling to and speaking to prospects. If your product is high volume and a relatively straightforward sale, spending vast amounts of time researching and gathering insight might not be the right approach.

Finding the balance

Sales leaders should own and drive data strategy. How you build your data lists centrally helps you set a strong direction for your team. You can churn data and fail fast, using data analytics to help you shape and improve your targeting, or instead use a centrally built list as a foundation and refine using sales tools and desk-based research. There’s no right or wrong approach. Some of this preference is driven by your sales culture and your own experiences but provided you’ve invested time and consideration into your data strategy and how you build your prospect lists, you’re in a great starting place.

If you’d like to discuss your data strategy, we’d be happy to help. Call our Client Operations Director, Shaun Weston, on 0345 241 3038 or email shaunw@air-marketing.co.uk.

We hosted our second roundtable as part of our NEW annual content series, around setting up an outbound sales function. Get ideas, inspiration and advice from our panel of experts, who share and discuss their own experiences and open the floor to questions from the live audience.

We’ll be going live every month until March 2022, chatting about all topics relating to outbound sales and the stages of building a team.

Agenda

We answered questions around (but not limited to):

1. Training

2. Mentoring

3. Culture

4. Setting targets & expectations

5. Communicating your business’ vision

6. Embracing ‘ready to go’ attitudes

Host

Owen Richards – Founder & CEO at Air Marketing

Speakers

Neil Clarke – Commercial Director at Air Marketing

Shabri Lakhani – Founder & CEO at SalesWorks

Georgina Aspden – Sales Development Manager at Perkbox

Who is it for?

Founders, sales leaders, SDR Managers and revenue leaders.