This week, Method hosted a webinar on how small businesses can make the most of their sales workflows.
The big takeaways were that to improve your sales strategy, you need to leverage:
- Data-driven customer profiles
- Workflow automation tools
In this post, we take a deeper dive into these topics and look at how small businesses can incorporate these tactics into their sales strategy. Let’s get started!
Use customer data to inform your sales strategy
To win more deals, you need to have an excellent understanding of your ideal customer profile (ICP) and embed this into your sales strategy. For those of you new to the concept of an ICP, it simply represents who your best customers are.
Your ICP will include things about your target audience like their:
- Demographic details
- Buying habits
- Communication preferences
- Personal values
To get this data, you’ll need to look at the information you have about your existing customers.
Your CRM is a great place to start as it will give you insights into the demographics, purchase history and shopping habits of your customer base.
Tools like FullContact and LinkedIn Sales Navigator provide you with additional ways to build up your customer knowledge.
Expand your customer profile with marketing insights
To make the most of your sales strategy, you’ll also need your sales and marketing teams to work together when it comes to identifying your target market.
Your sales team will need to connect with marketing to understand the market insights they’ve gained from:
- Pay-per-click advertising
- Customer surveys
- Social media
- Email campaigns
With this information, you’ll be able to reach out to prospects with personalized messaging, extend custom offerings, and create an enjoyable, frictionless buying process.
All of this will help you convert more sales opportunities to closed-won deals.
Automate your sales process to increase productivity
Every small business wants to be able to work faster and more efficiently. And you can, with the help of workflow automation tools.
From using automated lead generation forms to capture every lead to using dial automation software to streamline sales calls, technology is the backbone of any successful sales strategy in 2020.
Sales software not only reduces human errors like dialing the wrong number or making a typo when recording a qualified lead’s information, but it also puts time back into your sales team’s day.
When you consider that the average sales rep spends 25 hours a month leaving voicemails (a process that’s easily automated), it’s clear that a tech-enabled sales strategy will help your team’s productivity skyrocket.
“Sales reps spend 25 hours a month just leaving voicemails.”
There are also workflow automation solutions like customer portals that both increase your efficiency and help you serve your customers better.
By enabling 24/7 self-service, tools like portals allow your customers to:
- Pay invoices
- Check account balances
- Review their warranty
- Submit repair requests
- View support resources
All at their convenience.
Recap: Tips to Perfect Your Sales Strategy
Here’s a quick summary of tactics that will help you achieve your sales goals and maximize your conversion rate.
- Use data-driven customer profiles to determine your ideal customer profile (ICP).
- Build your sales process around the buying habits and preferences of your ICP.
- Leverage insights from marketing initiatives to inform your sales strategy.
- Personalize your sales pitch, product offering, and buying process to meet the needs of your potential customers.
- Take advantage of workflow automation tools to increase team productivity and improve your customer experience.
Enhance your sales strategy with a free trial of Method CRM.
Image Credit: Alexander Mils via Pexels
