There are many aspects of sales that play into closing that next deal faster and better than the last. While sales technology, process, acceleration, and pricing all play a role, there are two key aspects that can work together in a harmonious deal-closing blend: optimization and data.
Optimizing your sales process
We live in the optimization era where we’re constantly improving, progressing, and perfecting. We’re building, measuring, and testing. Any sales process should be constantly optimizing in order to fit in with today’s environment. Optimization goes back to speed, it goes back to transparency, and it goes back to everything we do as salespeople.
Always be improving. In doing so, you can build an effective process.
Data and the sales process
Without data, you cannot measure. Without measuring, you can’t optimize. Data is what helps you determine how you can improve your process. Data is the reason why you would take meaningful action. There are two types of data that impact how you measure and optimize.
1. Internal data is information about you, your company and your employees’ behavior. This data enables you to take meaningful action on your goals. It likely lives in your CRM, might be expensive to house, and it’s harder to pull without the right tools.
2. External data is cheaper and more accessible than ever before. It’s all over the Internet, and anyone and everyone can uncover it. The more you can gather, the more targeted you can be in your approach.
A combination of internal and external data provides great insight for your salespeople. For example, if you work at a software company, external data can help you find complimentary products to your own, and determine who is using the competitive software (often available in the web code, email sends, etc.). With your internal data, you can see if your competitors’ customers were once your customers or prospects, and learn what occurred, and more. With this information, the outreach is more relevant to your existing (or non-existing) experience with these prospects.
From there, you can collect their contact information, such as email and phone numbers, with simple web scraping tools like Capture. Now, you have the insight, and the contact information, to reach out to your competitors’ customers at the right time, with the right message.
Data is cheaper and more accessible than ever before. Data is a salesperson’s best friend.
No matter how you set up your sales process, make sure all of your salespeople are doing the same thing, and rowing in the same direction. If you do that, you’re going to get somewhere.
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