Luckily there are several proven strategies that can help businesses streamline their processes and optimize every step of their sales cycle, for a faster, more satisfying, and more efficient buying process for everyone involved. 

Before diving into our guide to the six best strategies, a quick caveat: one-size-fits-all doesn’t work for sales any more than it does for Levi’s. Your specific industry, your target audience, and your USPs will all play a part in determining the most effective for your particular business. So assess them all through that lens before you decide on the changes that will have the most impact on you and your business. Without further ado…

1. Talk about pricing early

Unqualified leads are the single biggest factor in elongating your sales cycle. One of the smartest strategies to shorten the sales cycle in B2B is to be transparent about pricing early in the conversation. Get that elephant in the room out there, front and center. 

By addressing the financial aspects upfront, you can quickly determine if your prospect has the budget and is a good fit for your product or service. This way, you’ll save time and resources while focusing on the most qualified leads. Don’t be afraid to qualify ‘out’ as diligently as you qualify ‘in.’ A sales pipeline choked with dud prospects is a false economy.

To make your pricing discussion more effective, break it down into digestible parts by using short paragraphs, bullet points, and tables, as necessary. Here are a few pointers on presenting your pricing information:

• Be clear and concise: Explain your pricing model in simple terms. Is it a fixed price, hourly rate, or subscription-based? Make sure your prospect understands the essence without getting overwhelmed by details.
• Showcase the value: Help your prospect see your offering’s worth by highlighting the benefits and competitive advantages, as well as any cost savings they might achieve.
• Offer flexibility: If possible, provide multiple pricing options or tiers, allowing prospects to choose the one that best fits their budget and requirements.

Obviously, there are instances where your salespeople will want to build and reinforce the value first before you talk numbers. But in many cases, everyone’s time is best served by talking about price early on. That way, you can establish if it’s an objection to be handled, or something more critical.

2. Automation

Introducing automation into your sales process can be a game-changer. 

Did you know a sales rep is 21x more likely to qualify a prospect if they respond to their initial request within five minutes? And while you can’t be perched by your computer morning, noon, and night, automation is the only real way to speed that process up.

Most initial emails contain broadly the same information, so they are ripe for automation. 

Modern CRMs allow you to personalize your responses too, so that you can get the best of both worlds.

With SDR’s spending nearly 21% of their time writing emails, these are far from marginal gains, they’re game-changers.

Once you have got to grips with the sales automation, you can look at streamlining other processes in your workflow, like updating deal information. 

Qwilr takes it a step further with proposal automation, where templates and asset libraries allow you to create sales material with the click of a button from your CRM. Proposals, sales quotes, pitch decks – all the cumbersome content your reps hate compiling is ready to go within minutes of speaking with a potential buyer.  

The more tasks you automate, the more time your sales team has to focus on higher-impact areas like relationship building, client research, and closing deals. 

Here are some ways sales automation can save you time and resources:

• Lead Generation: Automatically find potential clients based on set criteria, keeping your pipeline filled with high-quality leads.
• Lead Scoring: Rate and prioritize leads based on their likelihood to convert, ensuring your sales team focuses on the most promising prospects.
• Task and Follow-up Reminders: No more missed calls or forgotten emails, let automation keep your team on track and on time.
• Data Entry and CRM Updates: No one enjoys manual data entry, so let automation do the donkey work and free up time for other activities.

When it comes to shortening the sales cycle, working smarter – not harder – should be your mantra. 

3. High-converting sales proposals

The sooner your customers see the value in your product, the faster they are likely to sign on the dotted line. One key element of shortening the sales cycle is crafting high-converting sales proposals. 

Personalization goes a long way in establishing credibility and trust, and with Qwilr you can show your prospect that you’ve done your homework, with content tailored to address their specific needs and pain points. No more information overload in your customer’s journey – sales reps can create highly personalized, branded content with our easy drag-and-drop editor. Everything your customer needs to understand your value quickly, drive decisions and sell internally on your behalf. 

Remember, it’s not about bombarding your customers with information; it’s about presenting a coherent message that shows you understand their needs and that you have the ideal solution. 

4. Drive decision-making with mutual action plans

With a well-crafted Mutual Action Plan (MAP), you can simplify your sales process, engage your clients, and tighten those partnerships – everything that helps to drive a shorter sales cycle.

The result? Less time juggling multiple decision-makers, sifting through piles of data, and waiting for that ever-elusive nod of approval from the powers that be.

So, what exactly is a MAP?

Why, I’m glad you asked….

Think of a MAP as a shared roadmap (pun intended) between you and the decision-makers. 

It outlines the key goals, milestones, and responsibilities of both parties in a transparent manner. Plus, with Qwilr’s easy-to-use templates, you can create stunning MAPs to impress your clients effortlessly.

A MAP can help shorten the sales cycle by:

• Aligning your strategy with your client’s objectives.
• Providing clear action items and deadlines.
• Improving communication by setting expectations.

Ready to unleash their power? Here are four key steps to bring the magic of MAPs into your sales process:

1. Involve key decision-makers: Well, there’s no party without Punch, as the saying goes! Ensure relevant decision-makers and executives from both sides are included to foster buy-in and ensure the MAP’s success.
2. Define joint goals: Identify mutual objectives that benefit both you and your clients. Who doesn’t love a good win-win?
3. Assign responsibilities and deadlines: It’s time to get serious about accountability. By setting clear responsibilities for each action item and its deadlines, you can keep all parties engaged and on track.
4. Conduct timely reviews: Regularly review your MAP for progress, and don’t hesitate to adjust the course if necessary.

Remember, you’re not just selling a product or service, you’re establishing trust and credibility with your clients. Create a strategic MAP using Qwilr’s templates, drive decision-making efficiently, and watch your sales cycle shrink.

5. Respond to the needs of the buying committee

The decision-making process in your industry often involves multiple key stakeholders. To shorten the sales cycle, you’ll want to address their diverse needs and concerns. Here are a few strategies to help you respond effectively to the buying committee:

1. Identify the players: Understand who’s involved in the decision-making process and their individual roles. This may include executives, managers, or end-users, each with their own concerns and priorities. By recognizing everyone’s unique needs, you’ll be better equipped to create content that appeals to the entire audience.
2. Speak their language: When delivering your message, make sure it’s tailored to each stakeholder’s perspective. For example, an executive may be interested in the financial impact, while a manager might emphasize the operational benefits. You’ll be more persuasive when you can address their individual concerns on their own terms. Remember, a friendly tone and a touch of humor can go a long way!
3. Keep it concise: Short, engaging paragraphs make your content more accessible and digestible. Don’t lose your audience’s attention with long-winded explanations. Instead, focus on delivering key points and actionable insights.
4. Leverage multiple formats: Different stakeholders may prefer different formats for consuming information. Make sure your content is available in various formats, such as articles, videos, webinars, and infographics. This helps cater to diverse preferences, enhancing the overall effectiveness of your communication.
5. Provide evidence of success: Offer case studies, testimonials, or data-backed examples to demonstrate the value of your solution. Concrete evidence is much more convincing than abstract claims, helping to instil confidence in your prospects. By employing these strategies, you’ll be well on your way to addressing the needs of the buying committee and, with that, shortening your sales cycle. 

6. Make signing the deal seamless

By streamlining the entire proposal and signing process, you’re cutting down on time-consuming back-and-forth communications that can get lost over email. With Qwilr, multiple steps of a sales process become one seamless buyer’s journey. Pricing quote, agreement, e-signature and payment options – all in one interactive page

Qwilr’s secure e-signature feature allows you and your clients to sign proposals instantly, wherever you are in the world. We’ve removed the need for multiple documents, with an embedded e-signature within the quote itself. Using our legally-compliant e-signatures, you can get sign-off from multiple buyers, with instant notification as soon as they’ve signed on that (digital) dotted line. Giving both you and your prospect more time to focus on what truly matters – generating revenue. 

Top tips to shorten sales cycles

Here are a few key points to keep in mind as you work on shortening your sales cycle:

• Target your audience effectively: Focus on understanding the needs and pain points of your target customers. This will allow you to tailor your messaging and value proposition- making your offering both more appealing and more relevant to potential clients.
• Leverage the power of content: High-quality, informative, and engaging content can be an essential tool in your sales strategy. Share thought leadership articles that demonstrate your expertise and credibility, making you the go-to resource in your industry. Assess whether your content addresses the customer’s need clearly, demonstrates your value/ROI (just as clearly!), and is easy for your champion to share with the buying committee.
• Streamline your sales process: Simplifying and optimizing your sales funnel and process will help you close deals faster. Look for bottlenecks and inefficiencies, and eliminate any unnecessary steps that might be causing delays.
• Examine your sales process: Look at your closed deals. Is there a pattern where they are exiting? Then look at the process itself. Is there anywhere else you could be automating? Keep that sense of urgency going with the customer!
• Use data-driven insights: Analyze your sales performance and collect data on wins and losses. Use these insights to fine-tune your approach and identify areas for improvement.
• Build strong relationships: Focus on forging long-lasting relationships with your clients. Be responsive, attentive, and always go the extra mile in addressing their needs.
• Embrace collaboration: Encourage cross-functional collaboration between your sales, marketing, and customer success teams. This facilitates more effective communication and a unified approach towards achieving your goals.

It’s safe to say that taking steps to shorten the length of your sales cycle is the number one metric to improve business performance. Even if your sales cycle is performing well, eliminating roadblocks to close deals means driving more revenue. Fast. 

Qwilr is an ideal platform for optimizing your B2B sales cycles because it provides everything you need to create beautiful yet powerful web-based proposals and sales collateral quickly and easily, saving your sales reps hours of admin. It makes it easier for your customer to buy and easier for you to sell.

Book a demo today and see for yourself.

The post How to Shorten a Sales Cycle: 6 Proven Strategies appeared first on Qwilr.

A map gives you the picture you need to find a path to your destination. The map doesn’t dictate the destination, or how to get there. Instead, it provides a guideline. It highlights the obstacles that you might encounter and presents potential paths forward. 

But it’s up to you to figure out the best route to take.

That’s a pretty good illustration of what it’s like to lead a sales team. You’ve got an end goal in mind: build pipeline, close deals, and drive revenue. But there are a lot of ways to get there. 

And that’s where picking a sales methodology comes in. 

Sales methodologies are structured approaches to selling that can help your sales reps reach your destination. Everyone might know where you’re going, but without a structured approach, you might have five different reps taking five different paths to get there. 

Picking a sales methodology helps your team stay on track and gives them the tools they need to reach their desired outcome—more closed deals—in a more reliable way. 

That’s why using a proven sales methodology is a simple way to train and level up your sales team. But choosing the right method makes all the difference. 

Why implement a sales methodology

80% of sales require five follow-up calls after the initial contact. 44% of sales reps give up after one “no.” 

Stats like these might encourage the negative perception that salespeople are far too persistent, but the numbers don’t lie. And as all sales leaders know, persistence is an absolute necessity. 

A sales methodology standardizes your selling process, driving adoption of best practices throughout your sales team. 

Let’s take a step back first. What’s a sales methodology look like in practice? 

It’s a framework used by a sales organization to guide the sales process. Most sales methodologies (or sales models) include a set of principles, strategies, and tactics designed to help sales reps effectively engage with prospects, ask the right questions, identify buyer’s needs, and close deals.

Sales methodologies are widespread—and with good reason. They make a massive difference to the effectiveness of your B2B sales strategy: 

• They provide a guideline for your sales reps to follow when preparing for conversations with prospects. 
• They empower your salespeople to present your solution in a way that’s tailored to each individual prospect. 
• They’re proven and repeatable, eliminating the guesswork that often comes with selling.
• They make it easy for your sales organization to be consistent and treat all prospects similarly, reducing the likelihood of missed deals or opportunities.
• They can save time and help your team become more efficient by qualifying prospects faster, reducing the sales cycle.
• They help you codify and learn from your team’s experience to shape what effective selling looks like at your sales organization.

How to choose the best sales methodology for you

Since there are so many different sales methodologies, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by choices.

But analysis paralysis doesn’t move your sales organization forward. 

Some methodologies are easy to disqualify based on your industry or the type of product you’re working with, but you’ll probably still end up with a fair number of options that could work for your team. 

When choosing the right sales methodology for your team, you should consider your: 

• Company goals and objectives
• Customer preferences and buying behavior
• Sales team strengths and weaknesses
• Market conditions and competition
• Product or service complexity

Company goals and objectives

Your sales team is the key driver of your company’s future growth. 

The sales methodology you choose has to be aligned with your company goals. If you need to increase market share in the short term, you may need to choose a sales methodology that emphasizes aggressive prospecting and lead generation, like Challenger selling. 

When resources are extra tight, it might also be worth working with a methodology like MEDDIC that allows you to disqualify prospects early on—enabling your to focus your attention on deals that have a higher likelihood of success. 

But if your objective is to increase long-term customer loyalty, you might choose something that helps build long-term relationships with customers, like Gap selling or Sandler Sales. 

Customer preferences and buying behavior

Most customers prefer personalization. In fact, 64% of buyers look for personalized materials and 25% dismiss generic collateral.

This would suggest that using a sales methodology to build rapport and offer tailored solutions might be ideal, such as SPIN selling. That said, some customers value convenience and efficiency more, highlighting how the right choice really depends on your customer base.

Sales team strengths and weaknesses

Fact is, some sales methodologies just may not mesh with your sales team. 

Sales representatives often develop an individual style and approach to selling, using tips and tricks that each individual is confident they can effectively implement.  

That doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying them out and seeing which approach drives the best results. There’s always room for training and development, and with the right sales enablement you can help anyone get better at applying a specific methodology.

But sometimes the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze.

Giving your team tools to approach their sales conversations in a better way is a win for all. 

Market conditions and competition

The market often dictates what’s successful and what isn’t. 

If your competitors are using a particular sales methodology with success, you may want to consider adopting a similar approach—or a contrasting one. A contrasting approach can differentiate your brand, attracting prospects who have different needs than those of your competition.

Product or service complexity

Highly-complex products and services require a different touch. 

There’s a huge difference between selling products where the value proposition is straightforward, simple, and obvious and a product geared towards enterprise customers with a team of decision-makers. 

More complex products benefit from an involved selling strategy, such as Gap Selling or presenting your solution with a proof of concept template. 

6 sales methodologies to consider

Sales methodologies are widely different. 

Some, like the MEDDPICC methodology, define specific steps for the entire B2B sales process. Others are more suitable during one or more parts of the sales process. These types of methodologies don’t usually include steps to follow but rather suggest a general sales approach (like consultative selling) or questions to ask (such as SPIN selling).

You can mix and match different sales models based on your prospects, customers, industry, and sales strategy.

Here are some examples of different selling methodologies to consider (discover more pro’s and con’s of popular sales methodologies here).

Transactional Selling

Transactional selling is often seen as a little old-school. 

This is how people have envisioned sales to work forever: You’re aiming to make a transaction as quickly and efficiently as possible. The goal isn’t to build a long-term relationship or establish rapport with your prospects. It’s to make the sale. 

Although it gets a bad rap sometimes, transactional selling does have some benefits. In other words, it works for some situations—usually when you’re aiming for high sales volume and sales efficiency. It’s not typically a good fit for high-value products or for SaaS businesses. 

Suitable for: Industries such as retail, where customers make frequent, low-value purchases.

Solution Selling

Solution selling, or customer-centric selling, is a big jump upwards. 

The focus here isn’t simply on selling your product (such as in transactional selling), but in identifying the customer’s pain points and presenting your product as a solution to that problem. It’s a great way to make sure you’re selling to the right prospects, encouraging long-term customer loyalty and higher retention.

Suitable for: Industries such as IT, healthcare, and finance, where customers have specific business challenges that require personalized solutions.

Consultative Selling

Consultative selling, or value selling, starts with collaboration. In some ways, it’s the next step up from solution selling. 

What do buyers want from sales professionals in the first call? 69% of survey respondents say it’s, “Listen to my needs.” Consultative selling is an ideal sales method to achieve that.

The salesperson and the prospect work together to identify the customer’s needs, before the salesperson provides a tailored solution that’s uniquely effective for them. The goal here—as you’d expect—is to position your sales reps as consultants. Prospects should see them as people who are deeply knowledgeable about the industry and equipped to help solve their potential problems.

Consultative selling is a great way to build trust and rapport with customers, identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities, and improve the buying process. But it requires highly skilled salespeople, who are experts of their industry. 

Suitable for: Industries with complex or technical products or services, such as software or technology.

Challenger Selling

Challenger selling (as documented in best-selling The Challenger Sale) is effective, but it can be one of the harder approaches to get right. It involves challenging the customer’s assumptions and offering new insights to solve their pain points and business challenges. 

It’s great during economic downturns or when you’re working with established companies that move slowly, because it encourages you to provoke your prospects and convince them that not spending is missing out on opportunities. Challenger sale methodology emphasizes the importance of building credibility and trust with customers by providing value and insight—often making them think about things in a new way or questioning the status quo —and when done well, it can help differentiate you from your competition. 

Suitable for: Industries such as technology, healthcare, and finance, where customers have complex business challenges that require new solutions.

SPIN Selling

SPIN is a sales model that can be used in both a consultative or solution-based approach. It focuses on asking open-ended questions to identify the prospect’s:

• Situation 
• Problems 
• Implications
• Needs 

The goal is to understand the prospect’s needs and decision criteria before making a sales pitch. It’s ideal for building credibility with prospects and discovering unmet needs.

Suitable for: Industries such as consulting, professional services, and software.

Conceptual Selling

In conceptual selling, you sell the concept or idea your project is based on, rather than your product or service.

This means deeply understanding the prospect’s business goals and pain points before presenting a solution. An effective sale depends on positioning your product in a way that appeals to that individual customer needs. Conducting research, asking questions, actively listening, and personalizing solutions are all essential components of conceptual selling. 

Suitable for: Industries such as marketing, advertising, and media.

Learn more about the pros and cons of Enterprise Sales, Gap Selling, MEDDIC, MEDDPICC, BANT, Spin Selling, Sandler Sales and Proof of Concept sales methodologies here >>

How to implement a sales methodology

Once you’ve selected a sales methodology, implementing it doesn’t have to be complicated. 

1. Develop a training plan for the sales team. Sales methodologies are a tool to help your sales team. This is especially important for the more complex methodologies, as it’ll help make sure everyone adopts the new approach. 
2. Define metrics for success. Choose the most important KPIs that you’re targeting and set goals for the team, so you can easily measure how effective the methodology you chose is. 
3. Create collateral for your sales team. It’s much easier to make a new methodology part of your sales process when the team has everything they need for it. This may involve creating new sales scripts, qualifying questions, and objection-handling strategies that align with the methodology.
4. Explore aligning sales and marketing strategies. Create a more targeted and effective lead generation and conversion process by getting your sales and marketing teams on the same page. Marketing can provide qualified leads to the sales team, who can then use their expertise to convert those leads into customers.
5. Monitor and adjust based on long-term performance. If the methodology isn’t as successful as you’d like, you might need to make adjustments or offer additional training to your sales team. 

Bring all of these together and you’ll be working towards a much more optimized sales process —one that helps you close deals faster. 

Enable and empower your sales team

Virtual selling has seen a meteoric rise over the last few years, largely driven by the COVID pandemic. One of the best tools in your toolkit for virtual selling is sending great proposals that win over your customers.

The question is how.

If you’re implementing any of these sales methodologies and want an effortless way to fold them into your sales process, try out Qwilr’s sales methodology templates. These templates make it easy for you to unlock revenue by creating a sales experience that impresses and engages your prospective customers.

The post Unlocking sales success: choosing the right sales methodology for your team appeared first on Qwilr.

Here’s what we learned.

Before we dive into the full list though, hear directly from one of Qwilr’s talented Account Executives where they share five elements every proposal must contain to improve your odds of winning the deal:

View the full presentation deck

Your sales proposal is more important than ever

Gartner predicts that 80% of B2B sales interactions will shift to digital channels by 2025, even with travel and social interactions back to pre-pandemic levels. 

It’s easy to see why this might make reps uneasy – according to conventional wisdom (and logic), it’s harder to sell when your buying committee isn’t there in person.

Prospects may cancel on your meeting more easily.

And when they do join your call, they may be:

Distracted by a budget. 

Replying to team messages. 

Looking at the clock, ready to “jump out” (and then into their sixth meet for the day.) 

And to make things even more complicated,, they frequently leave two-thirds of the buying committee on the ‘outside’. 

The good news? Virtual selling isn’t deterring buyers from making large purchases through digital channels. So even if you may feel distanced from your potential customers, it doesn’t mean you can’t close the deal. 

You can. And a clear, compelling sales proposal will get you there by working for you – on every timezone, at any time of the day, every day of the week, for all buying committee stakeholders (even those who aren’t in the meeting.)

How to build winning sales proposals 

If you want your sales proposal to act as your 24/7 delegate, you need to make sure it’s perfect.

This means:

• Clearly-defined scope of work 
• Outlined deliverables
• Revenue-based outcomes
• No typos 
• Spotless grammar

Most importantly, all the elements of your sales proposal need to come together and create a story that shows a clear understanding of your customer’s needs and how you will address them. 

Not sure where to get started in enhancing your sales proposal experience? Dive into the 10 Key Elements of Winning Sales Proposals below.

#1: Personalize the buyer experience

Personalization is one of the critical ingredients in convincing prospects you’re worth their time and money. And here’s why: everybody wants to feel ‘heard’. Your buyer is no exception. 

2 out of 3 buyers are influenced by the quality and customization of your sales materials, and a quarter of them will only accept personalized materials.

In our webinar poll, 80% of participants said they are personalizing their sales proposals, although 76% said it’s a manual process— typically searching/replacing or manually typing in data.

The obvious disadvantages of manually personalizing proposals include:

• It’s time-consuming, eating into valuable selling time
• It’s prone to human error
• It’s not scalable

Alternatives to manual personalization include using a proposal and sales collateral solution like Qwilr, that can plug directly into CRMs like Hubspot and Salesforce, so you can create tailored proposals with just a few clicks, pulling key customer data from HubSpot.

However, even if you don’t use a proposal solution, and decide to go the manual route, there’s a few things you can do.

First, at the very minimum, your collateral should include your potential customer’s name, company name, logo, and an image relevant to them. 

Plus, ideally for high ticket-size sales you should customize your overall proposal to:

• Fit the types of narratives your buyer’s likely to engage with and 
• Include hand-picked data relevant to your prospect

#2: Make it visually appealing

The human brain can process visual information 60,000 times faster than the written word. Additionally, we remember only 10% of written information after three days but retain 65% of the message when presented with relevant images.

Adding relevant, supporting graphics and graphs can make your sales proposal easier to digest — and more memorable too. So while your prospects may be evaluating other business proposals, using the right visuals will help yours stand out for being engaging, comprehensive, and compelling.

Need ideas and inspiration for making your proposal more visual and engaging? Check out the Qwilr Proposal Look Book now.

#3: Underline the problem statement

Research shows that 70% of buyers make a purchase to solve a problem, so it’s beneficial to understand that dilemma. Uncovering the buyer’s problem is usually part of the discovery call. However, if you discover gaps in your understanding of the buyer’s situation, it’s perfectly acceptable to go back and ask the buyer for clarification.

A problem statement reflects your potential client’s challenges and may include anything from workflow bottlenecks to resource challenges or other fundamental difficulties.

Including a problem statement in your sales proposal serves many purposes, including that it:

• Demonstrates to the buyer that you’re listening. Only 13% of buyers believe salespeople understand their needs; a problem statement shows them otherwise.
• Opens a dialogue between you and your buyer as you discuss the challenges and desired future state.
• Highlights gaps in your knowledge and if further exploration is needed on your part.

Sometimes, buyers aren’t always clear on the underlying problem, but they’re familiar with the resulting symptoms. Questions to help uncover the buyer’s root problem include:

• What’s your biggest inhibitor to growth?
• What is your most significant pain point?
• What does your boss obsess about?
• What consumes the most time in your day?
• What topic always surfaces in your internal meetings?

And, of course, never underestimate the personal side of a buyer’s challenges. Asking what would help improve their lives can uncover problems like work/life balance or professional aspirations that make for solid motivators to move forward with a purchase.

#4: Bring forward a compelling offer

Your offer and pricing play a critical role in the sales process and negotiation. Deals are often won or lost based on price alone. 

This came through in our recent survey, where we found that 58% of sales objections are related to price, although back-and-forth negotiations can also slow down the time to close. 

Additionally, buyers want to be empowered to choose the features and optional services that benefit them. A static excel table that lays out pricing options often does not meet the preferences of buyers and may not present your price clearly. 

Plus, don’t be afraid to add flair to your pricing presentation. Alternatives to the standard excel table include interactive and tiered pricing tables, which can be especially helpful for price-sensitive buyers. 

Want to delve deeper into crafting irresistible offers? We wrote the Pricing Playbook on that – check it out!

#5: Include a call to action (or two)

After all the phone calls, email messages, and finally presenting your sales proposal, you’ve told your buyer what, why, and how much. Now, tell them what to do about it! E-signatures are convenient, popular, and legally compliant, too. 

Many businesses will split their sales proposal from the agreement, meaning you must send a separate document for your prospective client to approve. However, Qwilr offers to accept, sign, and even pick from several payment options — straight within your proposal.

This is a classic case of making it easy for stakeholders to say “yes”, thus streamlining the end of your sales process and reducing unnecessarily deliverables.

Your buyer isn’t ready to accept and sign your proposal (yet)? That might feel discouraging, but it happens, and not all hope is lost. You could, for example, include a secondary call to action in your proposal, like an embedded calendar link so they can book a time to follow-up.

#6: Spend extra time on your executive summary

Writing a compelling and engaging executive summary can single-handedly win half of the battle. People are busy all the time, everywhere. They want to know what’s in it for them: how your solution will help their business thrive.

Your executive summary should, thus, include all the essential information in your sales proposal — sprinkling in ‘know how’ so that your prospect knows you’ve been listening.

Make sure your summary includes the following:

• A quick overview of the proposal
• Your customer’s needs and challenges 
• Your proposed solution to said needs and challenges (how your business will help theirs)
• Your competitive advantage (why should they choose you over anyone else?)
• A clear, concise, and inviting call to action (i.e., how to get your solution — the fast and easy track, as well as the “I need to discuss more” one, if you think your prospects aren’t entirely in on it just yet.)

#7: Include social proof

One of the main reasons people buy anything is… because they admire or respect others who have bought it. Social proof shows you’re trustworthy because, after all, why would anyone else sing your praises if you haven’t delivered on your promises?

Here are some types of social proof you can include in a business proposal:

• Reviews on other websites (like G2 if you sell software or Clutch if you sell services)
• Testimonials from previous clients
• Links to extensive case studies on how you solved your prospect’s problem in a different context
• Screenshots of LinkedIn or Twitter comments or reviews from happy customers

If you can show potential new clients that your existing customers are ‘true fans’, they’ll be more likely to buy from you.

#8: Make your proposal structure accessible

Your prospective customers don’t have time to read endless blocks of text. Make it easy for them to understand your sales pitch by structuring the information in a way that makes it easy to read — and even easier to understand.

Some tips for this include:

• Using headings and subheadings
• Including a Table of Contents to help them navigate the information
• Using bullet points and numbered lists
• Using visuals aids like bold and italics (without overdoing them)
• Keeping your sentences short (no more than 20 words)
• Keeping your paragraphs short (no more than 4-5 sentences)

People rarely read everything, much less so when there’s no actual benefit in it for them. So make your proposal easy to skim through (without losing all the vital information.)

One easy way to structure your proposal comprehensively is to use a ready-made, sales methodology-driven template, like:

• The BANT sales template 
• The SPIN sales template 
• The Sandler sales template

Additionally, if you prefer creating your own narrative and story arch, you can start with a simple sales or enterprise proposal template and build from there.

#9: Proofread, then proofread again

Proper grammar and punctuation are essential non-negotiables for successful business proposals. For a target audience consisting of decision-makers, poor grammar can be more than just a minor blunder—it may become a deciding factor against them deciding to work with you.

Embarrassing typos may not directly say anything about your skills as a sales professional. But they can take your prospect’s attention away from all the good things you’re doing — and place it on wrongful (albeit subconscious) associations people make about lousy grammar:

• Sloppiness
• Lack of credibility
• Lack of attention to detail
• Unprofessionalism

You don’t want these associations, so always double-check your sales proposal before hitting “send.” If it helps, use a grammar checker like Grammarly or get it peer checked by another rep or sales leader.

#10: It’s all about them (the prospect)

When writing a sales proposal, you may feel tempted to underline one too many of your product’s qualities. It’s easy to see why: after all, you do want to close the deal, right? 

Right. 

The thing with humans, however, is that we’re terribly bad at focusing on anything that’s less relevant to us. As such, rambling on about the various features of a product or service may not be the best way to go if you want to craft a winning sales proposal. 

Instead, make it all about your prospect, position the solution as the answer to their burning dilemma.  

Takeaways

Your sales proposal reflects your brand and needs to “speak” on your behalf after the Zoom call ends. Make it easy for buyers to say “yes” by communicating your offer clearly and providing the next steps. A good proposal shares information about your product or service. A great sales proposal is memorable, rises above the competition, grabs attention, and accelerates winning the deal.

Book a demo with our team to learn how Qwilr’s web-based proposals can help you impress buyers, improve your win rates, and scale your sales team.

The post How to Write a Winning Sales Proposal appeared first on Qwilr.

According to research by Forrester, only 10% of sales reps are value-focused. The difference between showing what a customer needs vs. a more traditional sales approach is what’s called a value gap. The more a value gap widens, the harder it is for sellers to get the price they want, let alone win the business. 

How is value selling different from selling your product’s features and benefits as you would in a traditional sales pitch? In this post, we’ll look at the value-based sales framework and show you how to make the shift.  

What is Value-Based Selling?

Value-based selling is defined as the overarching process of demonstrating your product or service in terms of the value it creates for customers. You can take this a step further by looking at value-added selling, which is the specific sales process where the salesperson works to provide customers with value at every stage of the selling process.

Think about it this way, why can companies like Apple, Salesforce, and Starbucks charge higher prices than their competitors? There is a perception of value and quality from purchasing from these brands. They have earned the right to charge what they charge in their respective markets. Potential customers don’t go to these brands looking for a good deal – they go to find what they want or need.

Even if you’re not selling for one of these brands, you, too, can find ways to sell value in your market. With some research and practice, you’ll master the art of value-based selling in no time.

Opening up the value conversation

To get started, you need to understand the challenge or business pain your prospective client needs to solve.

If your prospect is like most buyers, they have already done a lot of preliminary research on you and your competitors or anyone who might be able to solve their challenge. In fact, according to Gartner research, buyers may be halfway through their purchasing decision before engaging with a salesperson. Some sources say buyers may be as much as 70% of the way through making a decision before contacting a sales professional.

What does this mean? Your buyer has probably already combed your website, reviewed any content or case studies your company has published, and read all of the reviews on your product or service. They now feel ready to come to you for more details as to how you can help solve their specific need.

Leveraging your discovery call to learn where you can add value

During your discovery call, ask specific questions to gain insight into your buyer’s specific pain points, challenges, or goals that they want your solution to help with. This information then becomes the foundation for presenting the value of your product or service. 

If you want to be seen more as a trusted advisor than a sales rep, you’ll need to do a little research before you have this initial call. It’s helpful to understand what is going on in your prospective buyer’s industry and even within their company.

How do you find this information if you’re new to their industry or don’t know the company yet? Google News, LinkedIn, and even social media can help. A few minutes of focused research can yield a lot of information to help you start a great conversation and build trust.

You’ll want to ask questions and listen carefully to what your prospect says (and what they don’t). This language can help you tailor your solution and your proposal to create the best value proposition for your buyer.

Some of our favorite discovery call questions to open up the value conversation during discovery include:

• Can you tell me about your [or your team’s] current process for X?
• Why do you do X this way? Is it working well, or are there opportunities for improvement?
• How much time have you spent doing X this way?
• How much budget do you have assigned to X?
• How much of an impact does X have on your business?
• Are you able to change how you do X? If so, what would that process look like?

How many questions do you need for your call? Research from Gong shows that sales reps should be asking 11-14 questions in a discovery call. Too many questions, and you risk having your prospect feel like they’re being grilled. Not enough questions, and you won’t have the information you need in order to craft a winning sales proposal.

You may want to ask a few open-ended questions to start and see what direction your prospect takes the discussion, as they may bring up topics and pain points you haven’t thought to ask about.

Value Selling Framework

1. Define your unique selling proposition (USP)

Your unique selling proposition may vary from client to client. It’s about what your product or service can do for them. A good USP solves a problem or business pain point in a way other solutions can’t. For example, if you sell project management software, your USP may be that you can save a project manager four hours per week of administrative time. This time can be better utilized by collaborating with clients and the internal team or helping business development understand the team’s capacity for new work. You’ll notice that we didn’t talk at all about the product’s design, features, or even how it works – just what the result will be for the buyer.

In the early stages of the buying journey, your decision-makers may be overwhelmed by researching different products or solutions. It can get to the point where all of the solutions sound and feel the same. In that case, they may be tempted to choose the product with the lowest price. And this is where a good USP comes in. It can help you stand out from the competition and be a point of differentiation.

2. Tailor your pitch, don’t rush it!

While early in your sales training, you might have heard about how important it is to ask for the sale quickly – in value-based selling, you don’t want to rush to get to the pitch. It might take a few sales conversations before you even get there. The cadence for these conversations will be highly dependent on your client’s needs and timeline.

It may take many follow-ups and touchpoints across a sales cycle before you actually ask for the sale. Each of these touchpoints should highlight the value your product or service brings without making an aggressive sales pitch. By the time you actually do make the pitch, your prospect should already know, like, and trust what you’re saying – and this takes time.

Instead of pitching your product or service and the corresponding pricing, you’re really going to be pitching the impact you’ll have on your customer’s business and how long it will take them to see a return on their investment. For example, if your potential customer is an office manager for a busy medical practice and your product is an HR tool that helps manage clocking in and out, payroll, and vacation requests – that’s not exactly what you’re selling – you’re selling them on the idea of more data that is easier to interpret and action against.

You’re selling the dashboard that they can log into from anywhere and see what their staffing levels will be like for the next two weeks and the number of callouts that happened over the last month!

Now, if you also need to take this pitch to the CEO, you’re also telling them about how much more time their office manager will have to work on employee engagement initiatives and how each employee will save 5 minutes a day signing in and out and 10 minutes putting in vacation requests and getting them approved.

For more examples and advice on tailoring a pitch to highlight the value of your unique product or service look at, The Challenger Sale by Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson and the sales methodology that came from their book and research.

3. Focus on building relationships.

When using a value-based selling approach, relationships are critical. You’ll want to build in time to focus on your customers and the relationship you have with them. This may mean having notes in your CRM about their birthdays and families and even sending cards or a small token to celebrate a life event or milestone in your customer’s career.

You will want to maintain these relationships as possible when the initial deal is done. This can help with contract negotiations or give you the opportunity to upsell in the future. You want this to feel natural and not like you’re just coming to this client when you want to sell them something.

Once the deal is done, consider adding another task in your CRM to check in quarterly, annually, or whatever cadence feels most appropriate for your relationship. You can keep up with sending birthday wishes and recognizing work anniversaries or promotions too.

4. Be an expert in your product or service.

This part of the framework is generally considered table stakes for being a good salesperson. You’ll want to make sure you know your product or service inside and out. What can it do? How does it work? Who is the right organization to use it? How is it implemented, and what maintenance should a customer expect to need?

While you won’t necessarily be selling features and benefits, without this knowledge, you won’t be able to create the value-based messaging you need to close more deals and see the sales success you want.

If your company has a customer success or customer support team, consider sitting in on some of their calls with current customers. Hear what is on their minds and how they talk about their work and your product. Mirror some of this language in your sales conversations and proposals to help communicate your product or service’s value.

Getting started with value-based selling

Now that you understand what value-based selling is and the benefits it can bring to your organization (and sales career). You might want to understand how to get started and apply a value-based sales framework to your next set of deals.

Shift your mindset to think about value first.

As we discussed earlier, many products or services could work similarly to yours. Customers may have several solid choices in highly competitive industries like SaaS, insurance, or managed services.

In these situations, being able to deliver is just table stakes. Any of your competitors may be able to provide the same or a similar solution, so what you need to address here is the value that you and your organization uniquely bring to the table.

Is it a dedicated customer support professional, better onboarding and education, or even just the opportunity to work with YOU and your team? Whatever makes your deal unique, that’s what you want to highlight. And here’s the hard part, you may also need to quantify how your differentiator may impact your customer’s bottom line.

Is working with your competitor costing them more money? Can you save them time and resources in setting up a new platform? These things will ensure that even the CFO enthusiastically tells your customer to sign on the dotted line (or even better – accept a Qwilr proposal!).

Become a trusted advisor, not just another salesperson.

If your potential customer is actively seeking a new solution, they’re likely meeting with a number of salespeople as part of the process. This is where you can use the value-selling methodology to stand out. Buyers want sellers who can guide them to make the best decision possible.

The first step in this process is to do your research. Learn everything you can about their industry, their challenges, the company you’re selling to, and where your potential customer sits within that organization. Then, you’ll want to ask good questions to both validate your research and learn more about your prospects’ points of view. You can also learn about what might make this deal a win for your prospect, their boss, and their business.

From this position, you can start to advise. You’ll want to use data and other proof points to tell your story. Data can help you highlight the different types of value your organization can bring to your customer. The proof points you raise will help your prospective customer visualize how you’ve been successful before and how your solution might play out in their organization. These stories will help you build credibility and ultimately trust with your potential customers.

Put your focus on your customer – and keep it there.

Buyers want a personalized sales experience and will often dismiss brands that use generic sales pitches. Have you ever had someone connect with you on LinkedIn using one of the really obvious sales templates and rolled your eyes (while blocking them)? That’s what it feels like to your buyer when you send a generic proposal.

This sales strategy doesn’t require you to throw out all of your templates; it’s just a reminder that they’re just that. You need to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and mold those templates into something valuable for them. Think of your proposal template or pitch deck as another framework or outline and add details and customize them (as well as your overall sales process) to create a buyer journey that is unique to this specific customer or deal.

Communicate the value and impact you bring to your customers, and watch as requests for deals and discounts disappear.

While the idea of value selling can be a big shift for many sales organizations, it’s worth noting that focusing on value instead of features, benefits, and price creates a strong perception of your product or service. This can help you as a sales rep support your product’s price without being tempted to offer a discount.

By having a differentiator, you may be able to argue that other (less expensive) similar products aren’t even if your league – and therefore, you shouldn’t need to discount your price to remain competitive. Additionally, proving value gives buyers the confidence to commit to signing a purchase agreement.

Looking for a proposal and sales collateral solution that supports your value-selling efforts? Look no further than Qwilr. Create proposals and sales material that demonstrate value and delight your customers and prospects in minutes. Want to learn more? Book a demo.

The post B2B Value-Based Selling: A Detailed Breakdown appeared first on Qwilr.

For reference, his favorite opener was “what’s a typical day like for you?”

A salesperson’s ability to extract useful information from a prospect is paramount to success. Questions are the primary tool by which someone would get information from another person. 

In fact, research shows 22% of salespeople list discovery as the most difficult part of their job, which makes sense. In most situations, there are numerous questions you could potentially ask. However, since you have a finite amount of time with a prospect, you have to be efficient with your inquiries. 

To get to the answers that help you close the deal, we’ve put together a guide on how to create a list of sales discovery questions that helps you really understand your prospect, so you can support them better. And as a bonus, we’ve also added our top nine discovery questions examples to ask prospects when you want to get the ball rolling.

Let’s get down to it!

What are discovery questions?

In B2B sales, “sales discovery questions” refer to the questions a salesperson will typically ask during a discovery call. The main goal of these discovery call questions revolves around building trust, identifying prospect’s needs, their roadblocks, and how your product can help them achieve their goals.

Understanding the value of efficient sales discovery call questions

Journalists and salespeople are more alike than they’re different. Both interact with humans on a daily basis, they’re both looking for problems (and solutions), and both ask questions. In both cases, asking the right questions is fundamental to success. The wrong questions can lead a journalist off-trail and put a damper on a sales process faster than a bolt of lightning.

The right questions? They can be more precious than a self-digging gold mine in your backyard.

You could have the best product in the world, the best service, and the most attractive pricing — If you don’t ask the right questions, you won’t understand your customer’s actual needs to respond to.

Here’s a quick overview of what good discovery sales questions could do for you:

• Help you identify and qualify potential customers
• Give you a better understanding of their current situation
• Uncover their needs and wants
• Understand their purchasing process
• Determine the best solution for them
• Identify factors that may stop them from buying
• Help you understand how they make decisions
• Establish trust and rapport
• Show that you care about them (genuinely!)
• Better understand where in the sales process your prospects are
• Gauge what other sales conversations and collateral will help your prospects

How to build a strategy for your customer discovery questions

People like hearing template-driven discovery questions about as much as they like having someone call them during dinnertime. If you don’t want your discovery meeting to feel like a cold call, you need to adapt to:

• The person in front of you
• Their pain points
• Business goals
• And biggest challenges

Creating a successful discovery process boils down to two golden rules:

• Tailor your questions to the individual’s specific stage in the buyer’s journey
• Make sure your questions contribute to the conversation

Let’s take a closer look at each of them.

Ask questions for each stage of the buyer’s journey

During a sales discovery call meeting, one of your main goals is to meet your prospect where they are — and make sure they know this isn’t yet another disguised sales pitch. Good sales professionals adapt questions to the specific stage of the buyer’s journey in a smart way to ensure you keep the conversation close to your prospect’s pain points. Here are some examples of questions you could ask at each of the three main stages of the buyer’s journey:

Awareness stage:

• What are your goals for the next year?
• How will implementing a solution help you achieve your goals, in your opinion?
• What are some other ways you’re working towards your goal?

Consideration stage:

• What solutions have you considered so far?
• What criteria are you evaluating when considering a solution provider?
• What budget have you allocated to this project?
• What is your current solution (if any) doing well? What isn’t it doing so well?

Decision stage:

• What made you decide to go with our solution?
• How can we help ensure a successful implementation of the solution?

What do you consider to be the most important success criteria for this project?

Make sure your questions contribute to the conversation

Although there’s no one-size-fits-all recipe for a great discovery call, there are a few best practices to keep in mind:

Start with the least sensitive questions

Building trust happens gradually, so it’s important to ease into the conversation, especially when it’s your first call. Don’t start asking questions about budget or business challenges (hold those off for a later stage.) Instead, begin with something more casual. This will help your prospect relax and open up, as well as give you valuable insight into their personality.

Listen more

This is, ultimately, the best rule of any communication. In his cult book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie spoke about the power of showing genuine interest in the other person. And although he wrote it down in 1936, the advice is more relevant than ever. In a world of always-on, 24/7 selling, being someone who actually listens is a rare and valuable (!) skill.

Focus on the prospect, not the product

It doesn’t matter what you’re selling: if you bring up your product every other sentence, you’ll lose your prospect. Focus on them, how you can help them achieve their goals, and how they can benefit from your solution. Not only will this yield better information exchange, but it will also make you more likeable.

Be flexible

Your goal is to create a productive dialogue, not an interrogation. Listen to your prospect and adapt to their answers. Ask follow-up and open-ended questions that invite new conversations. Remember, your discovery call questions aren’t about reciting the same text to every potential customer that comes your way: it’s about really learning more about them.

Be mindful of the time

Finally, don’t forget to respect the customer’s time. Keep your discovery call within a reasonable (and mutually agreed) timeframe. Make sure to use conversational signposts and check-ins so that your customer knows you’re actively listening to them and understanding their needs. This will build rapport and trust with your customers — and eventually close more deals too.

Research your prospect

A quick look at your prospect’s LinkedIn can tell you more about where they live/ work, what experience they have, who the organization’s internal stakeholders may be, and why their company may be in the market for a new solution like the one you offer. A bit of research can go a long way in making your sales cycle smoother and more efficient.

Top 9 best questions successful sales reps use

As promised, here are the top nine best discovery questions we frequently use in our sales process:

1. What problem are you trying to solve?

There’s only one reason we ever buy anything: to solve a problem. We may not always phrase it that way, but that’s the truth. For example, any time you buy food, the problem you’re solving is hunger. Or, if you buy a coat, the problem you’re solving is staying warm. 

Your prospect is no different. They have a problem, and you can earn their business if you sufficiently show how to solve it. However, you’re only able to do that if you fully understand what their problem is.

Though it can be hard to ask direct and sometimes difficult questions, it boosts the efficiency of your sales process. And it’s well worth your time to do so. Only 13% of customers believe a salesperson understands their needs. Since it’s so foundational to the sales process, this is a great question to ask early in your discovery process. 

2. Tell me about your current process

It’s likely your prospect has a workflow they’re currently using. If they’re talking to you, that’s a pretty clear signal whatever it is they’re currently doing is no longer working. Or, at the very least, can be improved upon. 

By asking about their current process, you can uncover the pain points they may be experiencing. You’re also given insight into how you may be able to position your product as a better solution. For example, at Qwilr we often hear prospects mention how much of a pain it is to update business proposals or contracts and then resend them to get signed. 

With that information, we can segue into a quick product demo, talk about how a Qwilr page can be updated, have the prospect refresh the link on their end, and the changes will be reflected in real-time. This way, they see there’s no back-and-forth and no recreating materials involved in the process – we’ve solved one of their sales pipeline bottlenecks.

When you understand your customer’s current process, you’re able to better position yourself as the next evolution.

3. What do you do day-to-day?

When you tell someone you’re a salesperson, they probably think most of your time is spent selling. However, as you well know, that’s not the case. In fact, salespeople only spend about 35% of their time actively selling.

Though that may seem crazy for someone outside of sales, those who know the job wouldn’t be anywhere near as surprised by those numbers. 

The reality is someone’s job title only gives you a little bit of information about what they do day in and day out. Similar to the question above, when you ask about your prospect’s daily activities, what you’re looking for are ways, or areas, to which your product or service is applicable. 

And, if you want to take it a step further, quantify the information your prospect shares. For example, we sometimes hear sales teams spend 2-3 hours each day creating sales proposals. We know with Qwilr, we can dramatically reduce that time. Based on the salary of the average salesperson, we can quantify the cost of manual processes to our prospect with an ROI calculator, to visualize the value of our solution.

Whenever you can show a prospect their current process is more costly than your solution’s price, it’s a no-brainer to move forward with your offer.

4. What are your top priorities? (price, value, etc.)

Every prospect has their own set of priorities. For example, some may be most concerned with how easily your service may integrate with their current workflow. Others may be interested in specific features or to make sure security measures taken. For many, price is the biggest determining factor.

By asking about their priorities, you can better speak to any concerns they may have and overcome their objections. You’ll also be able to discover any potential deal-breakers early on. 

5. Who’s involved in the decision-making process?

As teams have become more cross-functional and purchases more complex, the number of people involved in purchasing decisions has grown over the past few years. In fact, on average, there are seven people involved in the decision-making process for most purchases. 

The goal of asking who’s involved in the decision-making process isn’t really to get the names of all the decision-makers, but to understand the roles and influence across the buying committee. For example, if you’re pitching to a sales manager, your approach will be different than if you are pitching to an account executive.

Knowing who else is weighing into the decision empowers you to start planning early for those conversations and what’s most important to each deal influencer.

6. Do you have a timeline for getting a new tool/ service?

Timing is as important a part of closing a deal as any. When you know if your prospect has a specific timeline, you can better understand where they are in the buying process and how urgent their need is. 

If they don’t have a solid timeline, chances are they’re earlier in the process and probably in the research phase of their decision. However, if they have a hard deadline, it signals they’re a more serious buyer and may be closer to making a purchase. 

7. What metrics are you responsible for?

We all have goals. And most of us measure our success by looking at one or a few different metrics. For example, a sales team may be responsible for monthly recurring revenue (or MRR). 

As with many of the questions in this article, the real goal is to better understand your prospect and how you can frame your pitch to make it as relevant as possible. Being able to relate exactly how your offering could impact their primary metrics is incredibly powerful. 

8. What is your ideal scenario? 

Any time we buy something, we have an expectation of the item or service we’re purchasing. Not only do we have an expectation of how the product or service works, but we also probably have an expectation of the buying process, too. 

By asking about an ideal scenario, what you’re really finding out is what the prospect’s expectations are. If you’re selling software, for example to solve laptop storages problems, they may expect your team to help set up integrations. They may also have an expectation of how long the software implementation takes. 

No matter the case, it’s good to understand what those expectations are upfront. That way you can plan for them beforehand. Remember, the sales process doesn’t end when a prospect signs the deal. 

9. Are there any potential roadblocks? 

There’s a great saying, “An ounce of preparation is worth a pound of cure.” What it means is that being prepared upfront can save a lot of time later on. When selling, there is any number of potential roadblocks that could come up. If you’re unprepared, they can cause a lot of trouble and delays. 

Though it might seem a little direct to ask a prospect if they foresee any potential roadblocks, it is the most effective way to be informed. If they do raise concerns you’ll be able to address them accordingly, potentially avoiding a deal-breaker.

Staying curious 

Learning about your prospect and their needs is integral to the sales process. One of the best ways to do that is by asking thoughtful questions to your prospect. Though there are any number of questions you can ask, the ones mentioned above should be a good place to start. 

The more conversations you have, the more you can develop a bank of questions you can pull from to make sure you get the most out of your conversations. As long as you’re earnest in your effort and curious about your prospects, you’ll be on the right path. 

Impress your buyer, demonstrate the value of your solution, and reduce the time spent creating sales proposals with Qwilr. In just 15 minutes, we’ll show you how. Book a demo now.

The post 9 Effective Sales Call Discovery Questions To Use In 2023 appeared first on Qwilr.

The past few years have seen further shifts in the approach to how we sell, again driven by technology as the pandemic took its grip on the world. Almost overnight, we shifted from in-person selling to virtual sales and an anytime/anywhere work environment. The way we sold had to change, and the capabilities of today’s sales tech stack made it possible to engage with buyers in new and exciting ways. 

A new era

Customers now demand faster response times and more personalized experiences than ever before, which means that salespeople need to adopt modern tools and methodologies in order to remain relevant. Automation, AI, and other new technologies can help streamline the process by reducing manual tasks and freeing up time for more strategic activities. Additionally, these tools allow for better data collection and analysis, which can lead to more informed decisions about target audiences and product offerings. There’s no dispute that technology has driven sales capability to sell faster and to more people. But even with ongoing advancements in software, automation and AI, selling can still be a hard slog. 

Buyer expectations and behaviors have changed, which means sales teams have to shift their approach to be successful. At the end of the day, people buy from people and ensuring sales reps have the necessary skills and processes to support them is just as important as the tech stack lurking behind the scenes. 

In today’s ever-changing business climate, sales professionals must adapt to the times and modernize their processes in order to stay competitive. Back in February, Qwilr teamed up with Mixmax to discuss Modern sales techniques for the modern buyer. Here are 6 areas I discussed with my good friend and colleague, Kyle Parish, VP of Sales, for salespeople to build on to modernize their approach and improve success rates. 

1. Personalization and relevance at scale

The days of sending a million emails to a million prospects from your CRM, and hoping something sticks, are over. If your prospect doesn’t see the relevance in the first moments of outreach, they won’t engage. Personalization is key. A report on buyer behaviour in 2022 shows buyers spend 45% of their time on independent research into possible solutions, so if you’re a good market fit they’ll likely already know about your offering before you reach out. 

Trust is a growing commodity between buyers and sellers and your prospects need to see that you take a consultative approach to understanding their problems and care about solving them. Adopting methods that enable you to personalize your sales content to make it highly relevant to your buyer during outreach, will go a long way to establishing trust early on in the sales cycle.  One approach is to develop USPs by industry, that can be used to target multiple organizations with similar problems as a way to build relevance at scale. But personalization is still needed to really address the unique challenges that your buyer and their organization feel are relevant to them. 

(Sound words of advice from Kyle: NEVER let your prospecting outreach get stale.)

2. SDR and AE collaboration

Having Sales Development Representatives (SDRs, or commonly known as inside sales) and Account Executives (AEs) working closely together on territories has long been seen as a best practice in sales teams (for organizations lucky enough to have the headcount!) and a way to build a pipeline of fresh AE talent. When both roles work together seamlessly, it creates a sales organization where everyone is invested in achieving common goals — resulting in increased efficiency and improved outcomes overall.

Building true collaboration with ongoing mentorship, incentivized deals and constant feedback on what works/doesn’t work will ensure both the AE and SDR are set up for success. When working a specific deal, the SDR collects valuable information from their interactions to use in personalization, and that can be leveraged in decision-maker conversations by the AE. 

3. Adapting to the times and being creative

Adapting to the times means recognizing that there are situations beyond your control that will impact your ability to sell. By staying ahead of the curve and adapting quickly to changing customer needs, companies can ensure that their offerings remain attractive and competitive in an ever-evolving market. In challenging times, for example, finding your niche and positioning your solution as a ‘switch and save’ option for your buyer, may provide inroads to organizations you haven’t had access to before. 

Remember that different companies have different goals. Explore markets that have a higher propensity to buy, understand what they care about and establish yourself as a trusted partner to their business through the many channels available (see our recommendations for utilizing LinkedIn during social selling).

And it pays to be prepared. Anticipate some of the barriers to success as you’re working a deal. Find out what the CFO cares about and make sure you address that. Think creatively when it comes to the logistics of deal terms, payments etc. Anticipating blockers in advance will help you to make it as easy as possible for your buyer to buy. 

4. Quantification vs qualification

When it comes to prospecting leads for new sales, there is an important distinction between qualification and quantification. Qualified leads are those who have expressed interest in your product/service by taking some kind of action, and fit your ideal customer profile (ICP).  

Quantification is about understanding if your product or service can help your prospect save time and money by eliminating major issues and blockers for them. You can determine that by finding out why the customer wants to talk to you and quantify the problem that they have. Ask what brought them here. What are their needs? Understand their business metrics and sell to your use case. If you can’t, do both of you a favor and qualify them out. 

When times are hard, it can be tempting to build pipeline regardless of whether you can meet their needs. Quantification can be a crutch, but qualification is crucial. Don’t be afraid to qualify out so you can focus your efforts where it matters. 

5. Text messaging 

When communicating with prospects, we recommend salespeople view text messaging as a useful tool in the sales process, but a bad idea when prospecting. No matter how commonplace texting is these days, an unsolicited text to a prospect feels too intrusive, too personal. Basically, it’s spam. 

BUT when used well, texting to keep in touch during the sales process can help drive the deal forward and increase the feeling of trust and rapport between the seller and champion. Our recommendation is always to ask permission before contacting a prospect by text, as a courtesy. Be mindful that different cultures have different views during the buying process if you’re selling internationally. 

6. Selling behind the scenes to buyers

These days, it’s unlikely that you’ll find yourself face-to-face IRL or even via video call with every member of the buying committee. So salespeople must consider how to make the decision-making process as easy as possible for those behind the scenes. Understanding exactly who is involved – IT, security, procurement, finance, management – and who poses the biggest challenge, is key. By this stage, the sales rep should deeply understand the business drivers and share highly relevant information to make the purchasing decision a no-brainer for everyone involved. 

One thing we see that works with Qwilr, is embedding a recording of a demo into the Qwilr page (using tools like Gong or Chorus), so that the buying committee can quickly understand the value to the business. The demo can use the insights uncovered by SDR and AE collaboration to ensure that the content shared is highly personalized and relevant, with the outcomes that matter to the buyer committee. 

Qwilr makes it easy to create differentiated, compelling sales material that responds to the needs of each unique customer by combining content, interactive pricing, ROI calculators and more, in a single mobile-friendly webpage, that can be easily shared and sold. While the buyer shares their personalized proposal with the rest of the buyer committee, you can track their behavior through analytics and identify the optimal time to re-engage.

Evolving and modernizing your sales process is essential for staying competitive in today’s dynamic markets. But technology can’t do it all. The process and people are just as important to ensure your sales experience delivers the best possible revenue results, and engages your customers well into the future. 

For more great insights into modern selling please watch the full webinar Modern Sales Techniques for the Modern Buyer

The post The evolution of sales: technology, people and process. appeared first on Qwilr.

You wouldn’t run a business without key metrics, or KPIs, to guide you on what’s working and what isn’t. The same logic applies to sales teams: without analyzing data such as win rates, sales cycle length, average deal values and conversion rates, you don’t know if you’re doing the right things to achieve business growth. 

These sales metrics on their own provide valuable insights that can identify strengths and weaknesses in your go-to-market approach. And when combined together into a sales velocity score, sales teams can utilize the insights gleaned to turbocharge their performance. 

In this blog, we explore how tracking sales velocity provides valuable insights to improve the results of growing sales teams.

What is sales velocity and why is it important to your sales cycle?

Sales velocity measures how quickly deals move through your pipeline and generate revenue, and is a valuable indicator of pipeline health. It considers the number of opportunities, average deal size, win rate (or conversion rate), and length of the sales cycle.

You may have seen this sales metric represented as a formula:

Sales Velocity Formula

To calculate sales velocity, simply multiply the number of opportunities within a set period of time by the average deal value, then multiply by the win rate. Divide that figure by the average length of the sales cycle within the same period and eureka – you have your score. The higher the number, the quicker you are moving customers through the sales pipeline. 

For example (time period = one quarter):

Want to know how your score ranks? Use Qwilr’s Sales Velocity Calculator to see how your team’s performance stacks up against benchmark data from 800+ B2B companies >

Sales velocity is an important metric that sales teams should track and evaluate on a regular basis, over a consistent period of time, to measure ongoing team and individual efficiency. It’s also a useful metric to track before and after a change in your sales process, so you can determine whether the change had a positive impact on the sales funnel, or not. 

Yet sales velocity is more than a metric of good vs bad. Its insights can be used to help validate quota and revenue goals, level-up individual sales performance and identify opportunities to optimize your sales strategy and boost performance. 

Optimize your sales strategy

Examining the metrics that determine sales velocity enables sales managers and their teams to optimize the sales strategy to close deals faster. Let’s explore what these metrics are, and how they can optimize the sales pipeline.

Number of opportunities

This is the number of opportunities you have in your CRM across the period of time you are measuring. 

Closing deals and growing your business is a numbers game – the more you put in, the more you get out. A shortage of qualified leads will always lead to a deficit in the number of sales opportunities you need to increase sales velocity, and ultimately revenue. However, an abundance of unqualified leads won’t solve the problem either! Only quality leads generate paying customers. Keep that top of mind when building pipeline, and ensure that your salespeople are working as efficiently as possible to follow up and qualify leads in and out. As a rule of thumb, a smaller number of qualified opportunities is far better than a pipeline stuffed with duds. 

Average deal size/value

Establish your average deal size by dividing the total value of deals won over a set period of time, by the total number of deals. 

If you think that your average deal value is a weak link in your sales velocity score, explore strategies to increase it. This may be finding opportunities to upsell through bundled offerings, or targeting larger customer accounts to increase deal size.  

Win rates

The win rate, or conversion rate, represents the average percentage of deals that were closed-won over your set period of time. Divide the total number of opportunities generated in your set period of time, by the number of those that were closed-won deals to calculate your win rate.

You can assume that your win rate is a reflection of lead quality, but while this is a factor it is also an indication of how successful your approach to sales is. Teams or individuals with lower win rates may find it valuable to explore where in the sales funnel deals are exiting, to identify and resolve the root cause. 

Average sales cycles

The length of your sales cycle is the number of days it takes for a prospect to progress from a qualified lead or opportunity to a closed-won deal in your CRM. 

Sales cycles are often affected by circumstances beyond a sales rep’s control. A shift in priorities or a loss of budget can extend the sales cycle for much longer than expected. However, inefficiencies in your sales process could also be hindering the speed at which deals close. If this is an area for improvement, consider what steps in the process are cumbersome and look for opportunities to automate admin tasks that waste valuable time for your team and your customers. 

Sales velocity and revenue goals

Understanding the sales velocity score can help sales leaders to plan and validate revenue goals. Using the formula, you can basically calculate your team’s earning power over a set time frame. If there is a disparity between their total earning power and your set revenue goals, you have two choices. Either push back on revenue goals or find a way to increase your sales team’s velocity. We know which convo we’d rather have! 

Sales velocity and individual sales performance

Some sales managers opt to use sales velocity not to just measure their sales teams’ performance, but also that of the individual sales reps by ranking each of their territory’s scores. Be warned, depending on your go-to-market model, it may be like comparing apples and oranges. Reps of course need to be assessed ‘like for like’, so avoid comparing salespeople who operate in different markets eg. enterprise vs SME, or have other such factors that can impact deal size, conversion rates or deal volume. By assessing individual sales velocity you can identify inhibitors to their sales success. For example, reps with lower win rates may need further enablement training. 

While providing tangible insights into individual sellers’ behaviors, ranking individuals can also be used as an additional metric to recognize and reward those with consistently higher sales velocity. Besides, who doesn’t like a little healthy competition? 

Any sales manager worth their salt is constantly seeking ways to improve the bottom line. If measuring sales velocity isn’t part of your current sales management toolkit, now is the time to start. Try the Qwilr Sales Velocity Calculator and compare your sales performance against benchmark data from 800+ B2B companies, with recommendations on how to speed up sales cycles and increase win rates.

The post What Is Sales Velocity? How To Increase It In 2023 appeared first on Qwilr.

The difference this time is that sellers are still adapting to virtual selling, driven by the global pandemic and a resulting shift in buyer behavior, which is no doubt here to stay. Despite the debate over workforce productivity, modern organizations and their employees continue to reap the benefits of flexible working practices that equate to less face time with sellers. And, according to Gartner, B2B virtual sales interactions will continue to rise over the next 5 years. We have no doubt that as Millenials and Gen Y move into decision-maker roles, the appetite for a confident and efficient B2B digital buying experience will only make the virtual sales trend even more prolific, fueled by seamless B2C experiences that have become the norm since most of our lives are online.

Couple this modern way of selling with the inevitable objections triggered by the possibility of a global recession, and it’s fair to say that the vast majority of sellers will find 2023 to be their most challenging yet when it comes to buyer engagement.

Buyer challenges

Buyers will also have a lot to contend with this year. Every business worldwide will grapple with improving competitiveness and productivity, and generally doing more with less, as we each manage the risks associated with a global recession (whether it happens or not). Budgets will be cut, and priorities will change….but problems will still need solutions. And so in order to drive projects forward, buyers will want and need to be confident that their purchasing decisions meet the expectations of the buying committee, and ultimately deliver value to their businesses. They’ll be meticulous about their research before shortlisting prospective solutions and will expect sellers to partner with them to achieve their goals, as opposed to making a quick sale. 

To be successful sellers in 2023 and beyond, organizations must realize the importance of the buyer experience by investing time and effort to meet their needs and expectations.

38% of sellers have closed deals over $500K without ever meeting the buyer face to face.

LinkedIn, Global State of Sales Report, 2022

Stats like this one 👆demonstrate that virtual sales can be just as effective as traditional methods, while positively impacting productivity with less time (and cost!) spent on travel and meetings. But the effectiveness of virtual sales relies heavily on the quality of execution, and an understanding that live meeting practices do not transfer 1:1 to virtual settings. 

Here, we explore what sellers must consider to improve buyer engagement and close deals in a challenging market.

Trust is a big deal

88% of customers stated they believe trust becomes more important in times of change

LinkedIn, Global State of Sales Report, 2022

The key to improving buyer engagement this year will rely heavily on trust. Most organizations will be cautious about spending valuable dollars, and there will be an increased aversion to risk until markets and inflation stabilize. Too often the sales process can feel transactional, with a one-size-fits-all approach – but not this year. Buyers will seek to work with brands and individuals they trust to facilitate an intelligent purchasing decision that solves their problems and/or delivers real ROI. 

Don’t confuse building trust with building a relationship. Sure, ideally you want both, but building rapport with a prospect doesn’t necessarily equate to a trusted partnership. 

Instead, buyers will be reassured by sellers who clearly understand their business, what they need to achieve and the blockers that prevent them from doing so. They will need to feel confident in their recommendations to the buying committee, even if they are not an expert in the solution. The seller will need to demonstrate their expertise and understanding to gain trust, and put the customer at the centre of a buying journey that is focused on their objectives. A 2022 report reinforces the value of trust, with 87% of business buyers expecting sales reps to act as trusted advisors, but only 61% of business buyers say they generally trust sales reps.

Knowledge is power

Getting to know prospects from the inside out can be resource intensive, and sales teams that adopt this approach may feel nervous about the amount of time they spend on research instead of ‘selling’. But there is nothing to fear. The 2022 State of Sales report from LinkedIn found that top-performing sellers reported spending less time on traditional selling tactics than average performers. By spending more time on prospecting research to get a deep understanding of the business and improve buyer engagement; and updating their CRMs with valuable insights into the buyer committee, these top sellers apply their knowledge to ensure they win more often. 

After all, knowledge is power. By becoming an expert in their prospects’ business and its challenges, by utilizing multiple data sources, sellers become the trusted partner to guide the buyer in their decision-making process. 

Gaining that knowledge requires an in-depth discovery process that includes the awkward discovery questions that we don’t like to ask. But in doing so, not only will sellers develop a more thorough understanding that builds trust, but they’ll also get the insight needed to effectively drive the deal forward saving time and energy in the long run. 

Amp up your discovery

To understand your customer’s pain, utilize these discovery questions:

• How is the economy impacting decisions and priorities?
• What’s the largest business pain the company is experiencing? 
• What are the biggest budget asks? 
• What are the concerns of the executive team? 
• What is the decision-making process and who is involved?

Improve buyer engagement with a summary of their pain points and goals, and use content as the communication tool between both parties, to ensure you’re capturing their needs.

The Sales Experience you offer matters

Buyers now expect a seamless and personalized experience along the entire customer journey, which will in turn reinforce their trust. In virtual sales, connection to buyers is often via an impersonal computer screen, leaving very little time to impress, with buyers left to sort through what’s relevant in a series of emails with attachments about the product, extra services, and pricing. Buyer overwhelm (it’s a thing) can lead to buyer indecision, impacting sales pipeline predictability, win rates and ultimately revenue. 

88% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its product or services.

LinkedIn, Global State of Sales Report, 2022

The buyers’ experience through the decision-making process will influence whether they can rely on the seller as a trusted partner, and will likely be viewed as a reflection of the overall brand. 

By building a comprehensive understanding of the prospective buyer and their business challenges, sellers arm themselves with the knowledge they need to truly put the buyer at the center of a buying experience that addresses their needs, concerns and expectations. Buyers expect to be enabled with the right information to make an informed decision. Sellers also need to consider whether their buyer contact has the information they need to sell the solution to the buyer committee, even when they are not in the room, and enable them to do so. 

Keep it simple

Make it easy for your buyer with readily accessible and relevant information that they can easily share to champion for you internally. Multiple, static documents littered with mistakes not only confuse your prospects, but also dilute confidence in your brand. The rise of digital sales rooms is making it easier and more common to centralise buyer information in one place, making the overall experience better for your buyer. And easier for them to sell internally and champion the deal. 

Taking time to impress your buyers with a world-class sales experience, that directly meets their needs and makes it easy to buy, will not only help to turn prospects into customers, but also turn customers into advocates.

Foundations for a successful future

While many sellers will be tempted to overcome challenging quotas in 2023 with a spray-and-pray approach, savvy sales folk will understand the value of building trusted partnerships, even in a virtual environment, that position them as an invaluable resource. As sellers, we may be in for a challenging year but it’s also an opportunity to develop and hone strategic sales skills that set us up for success in 2023 and beyond.

What can you do right now?

– Centralise all your buying material to make it easier for your buyer to distribute. How do you know which attachment they’re sending around? 

– Think about the information your buyer needs, and what their stakeholders need. Are you including pricing/ROI info for the CFO? Are you catering for their marketing team? Ask your buyer what it would take to sell this internally and partner with them to create an experience that meets expectations.

Want to learn more?

Book a demo to discover how Qwilr can enable your sales teams to close the buyer-seller gap, with compelling collateral that improves sales efficiency, predictability and velocity.

The post Buyer Engagement: 3 Surefire Sales Strategies appeared first on Qwilr.

In this article, we’ll explore the nuances of the complex sales process, outline essential skills and tools required, and provide strategies for sales professionals and leaders to ensure hit quota.

What is complex sales? 

Complex sales, also known as enterprise sales, typically involve lengthy sales cycles and customizable products or services. 

These deals often require the involvement of multiple decision-makers, each with their unique priorities and objectives. Consequently, the sales process for complex sales can span months or even years in certain cases, can be challenging for reps and leaders, but can also be incredibly rewarding – both personally and financially.

There is no set price range for what constitutes a complex sale. It could be a multi-million dollar multi-year enterprise software contract for a large corporation or a $50,000 custom manufacturing order for a small business. The key is that these sales carry high value, and they may have longer sales cycles than more transactional sales.

Complex sales are typically associated with B2B transactions―think multi-year contracts for cloud services in IT or large-scale equipment purchases in manufacturing―although they’re not exclusive to these sectors. A high-end real estate property transaction might take months to complete due to negotiations, inspections, and financing arrangements in a B2C business.

What are the stages of complex sales? 

Many of the deal stages in complex sales are comparable to a more transactional sales motion. However, it’s the depth and personalization in each phase that sets complex sales apart. It’s not typically a ‘buyer-committee-of-one’; it instead involves a multifaceted process and navigating a complex buying process with numerous stakeholders, each with their own demands and objectives.

Remember, complex sales are flexible – according to your product, service, or industry, there may be more or fewer steps. This 5-stage breakdown, however, provides a framework for building on. 

Stage 1: Discover and Analyze 

Complex sales require a detective’s approach. You may or may not have an RFP to respond to. Your goal is to understand not only your potential customers but also their organizational structure. 

Start at the organizational level. What is happening in the company? Are they growing rapidly, or have they faced layoffs or budget cuts recently? Have they raised a round of venture capital or gone through an IPO? Search Google, local business journals, and LinkedIn to give you a picture of what is happening in the business. 

Next, you’ll want to start learning about the buying team. The goal is to discover every key player in their buying team’s roles and objectives, as well as their business pain points.

For each member of the buying team, you’ll want to know: 

• What are their prevailing challenges?
• What initiatives are they charged within the organization?
• What determines success in their role, and how might buying your product or service impact their performance or reputation in the organization?
• How much influence does this person have in the buying process?  (If they say no, can the deal move forward?)
• How do they approach decision-making, and who makes the final decision in the deal? 
• Are there any unknowns or X factors that could impact the deal? 

Identifying these insights will help you determine how to best engage with each member of the buying team. 

There shouldn’t be a ‘mad rush’ to get the deal over the line. Instead, it’s about developing a solution and a strategy that aligns with the goals and expectations of each stakeholder. Building trust and credibility is the key to establishing a lasting relationship and ultimately brokering a deal that serves both sides, beyond moving the deal to ‘closed won’.

Stage 2: Define and Qualify 

Once you have conducted your in-depth research, it’s time to narrow your focus. It is at this point that you filter out the prospects with genuine needs, interests, and financial capacity.

Pursuing every prospect is neither a luxury nor a strategic move. You need to identify those in your sales pipeline with high potential. These are organizations with the need and means to invest in your solutions, not just those who express interest.

As part of this process, you will likely have many conversations with members of the buying team. The goal of these sales conversations is to get enough information to create the right proposal and create alignment with your buying team. This is not a process you can rush. In some deals, sellers meet with prospective buyers for months or years before submitting a proposal. 

Why? It could be due to contract length. If your prospective client is in a long contract with their current provider, it might be months or years before they can make a change. 

Stage 3: Propose  

You’ve selected your top prospects, and spent a lot of time getting to know them. Now it’s time to strike. In complex sales, here is where the rubber meets the road. It’s time to submit your proposal – a precise, tailored strategy demonstrating how your product or service meets the requirements. 

Remember that your buying team is likely made up of a diverse mix of people and roles in the organization. As you build customer relationships, you’ll begin to understand who needs what to get the deal done. You might need to provide case studies, technical specifications, and documentation on how your solution will work. But, non-technical team members may not understand the details in these documents; they just want to know how you can help them. 

Now, what makes a great proposal in a complex deal? First and foremost, make sure you’ve hit all of the requirements. Then you want to show a new world in which your buying team and their colleagues are thrilled with your solution. Complex sales tend to be high risk for the buyers, too so anything you can do to mitigate perceived risk in your proposal may help you close the deal.

Your proposal needs to demonstrate how working with you will save time, money, and headcount or drive efficiency. This type of proposal will likely require a formal presentation. This is where you want to brush up on your storytelling skills and learn to challenge the status quo. 

Stage 4: Close 

You’ve done your homework and delivered a standout presentation and formal proposal.  Closing the deal is the next step in our sales process. In this type of sales, being chosen as the winning proposal is just the beginning of the process of getting the deal closed.

The contracting and procurement process is another hurdle you’ll need to navigate. Your buyers should connect you to their procurement, finance, and legal teams to start getting the contract written and executed. 

This takes us back to our early due diligence – hopefully, you have started the sales process by inquiring as to what the procurement and contracting processes are like. If you did, this process will go much more smoothly as there should not be any surprises (and if you didn’t, you will next time). 

Stage 5: Deliver 

In a complex selling environment, the selling process doesn’t end once you’ve closed the deal. How your organization delivers on what was promised is the final yet equally vital stage.

Complex sales partnerships and contracts can last for years or even decades. This creates many opportunities for success or failure. As a sales professional, you might be tasked with checking in on your customers periodically to ensure things are still going well. 

You may also have the opportunity to sell additional products or services to these customers. Your sales strategy and hard work have guided you this far. Now it’s about turning that signed contract into a successful partnership. So, roll up your sleeves and deliver on the promises made. The true measure of success in complex sales is satisfied stakeholders.

Essential skills required to win at complex sales 

Complex sales require an equally complex set of skills that can vary depending on your business. In general, here are some of the most important skills sales professionals will need to succeed in a complex selling environment. 

Risk Management 

Complex sales can be riskier than their transactional counterpart considering the typical dollar amount of each deal and the length of the sales cycle.  

When you factor in all the decision-makers and other involved parties, that risk grows exponentially. That means your team needs people who can assess and mitigate risk rather than do damage control.

As a sales professional, you also take on some risk in a complex sale, as your compensation is tied to your performance. While commission payouts can be lucrative on complex deals, they can also take longer to see due to the length of the sales cycle and the number of potential deals you can work on in a given timeframe.

Communication 

Communication is key in complex sales. To engage multiple decision-makers, sales professionals need advanced skills in sales conversations, negotiation, and stakeholder management.

Complex sales professionals need to be in tune with the needs of everyone on the buying team. They know when to provide more information, schedule a face-to-face meeting, or back off. They must also be skilled negotiators and understand game theory and other methodologies to leverage in a long and complex sales process.

Patience 

The complex sales cycle can take much longer than the typical sales process. That means your sales team needs salespeople who can stick to the plan until a goal is met (an average of 6 to 24 months). 

You shouldn’t cut corners in the sales process because if you do, you may not end up closing the deal. The bottom line is that you and your sales team must be patient to conduct any complex sale successfully.

Business Acumen 

If you want to excel at complex sales, you and your team need to have excellent sales skills and a deep understanding of the industry dynamics. The ability to navigate pricing, budgeting, and ROI discussions effectively is crucial. 

Also, knowing the legal aspects of contracts and negotiations can help you close deals in complex sales situations. Using industry knowledge, financial acumen, and a grasp of legal considerations, you can effectively communicate your value proposition to clients, aligning with their expectations and increasing your chances of success.

Essential tools for complex selling 

If complex selling seems a bit too complex, don’t worry – there are tools that can support your efforts. You may have experience with some of these tools, but how you use them in a complex sale might be a little different than you’re used to. 

CRM 

Considering the many stages and decision-makers involved, CRM software can make your job much easier by acting as a central hub. A good CRM enables you to store and organize all relevant information related to the complex sales process in one place. This makes it easier for your team to access the same info, which saves time and avoids miscommunication.

A powerful CRM, like salesforce.com, lets you manage contacts, tasks, and timelines and gives you a place to store information about the deal. You can set reminders and create tasks new for future follow-up so that no critical actions or milestones are missed. It keeps everyone accountable and ensures important actions are taken at the right time.

CRM systems can help manage contracts by keeping track of details and expiration dates. Leveraging this functionality lets sales professionals stay on top of contract renewals and bidding opportunities. 

Proposal software 

Creating a compelling and well-timed proposal that resonates with your buying team is key to a successful complex sales process. Proposal software, like Qwilr, can help streamline the process of creating a proposal that not only contains all the critical information but also impresses buyers.

Using Qwilr, sellers can easily collect relevant content, images, and data from various sources so their proposals are complete and persuasive. The intuitive platform makes collaboration and sharing seamless, so teams can work together efficiently and present a unified proposal, and stakeholders can share the proposal across the team. Using Qwilr’s tracking features, sellers can get real-time insights into prospects’ interests so that they can tailor their approach accordingly.

Sales automation 

Sales automation tools offer a wide range of capabilities to streamline and automate various aspects of the complex sales process. 

These include:

1. Lead Management: Lead capture tools can capture leads from various sources, such as website forms, social media, and email campaigns. Using predefined criteria, leads can be assigned, categorized, and routed to the right sales rep.
2. Follow-up and Nurturing: Follow-up tasks and nurturing activities can be automated by sending personalized emails, scheduling automated reminders, and triggering targeted campaigns based on specific customer actions. Throughout the complex sales cycle, prospects get consistent and timely communication.
3. Task and Activity Management: You can automate task assignments, reminders, and notifications for sales reps and sales leaders so everyone on the team stays on top of important activities and deadlines. As a result, it’s easier to keep track of and manage the multitude of tasks involved in complex sales processes.
4. Proposal and Document Generation: Sales proposals, contracts, and other documents can be automated. Sales reps can customize templates with placeholders for personalized information to generate professional documents quickly and accurately.
5. Sales Reporting and Analytics: Using sales automation tools, you can track pipeline performance, conversion rates, and revenue projections in real-time. Sales managers and executives can track progress, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions with customizable dashboards and reports.
6. Workflow and Process Automation: Multiple stakeholders and sequential steps are common in complex sales processes. Workflow and process management can be automated with sales automation tools, so tasks and approvals are executed in a predefined sequence, reducing manual work.
7. Integration with CRM and other Systems: Customer relationship management (CRM) systems and other business applications can integrate seamlessly with sales automation tools, allowing for seamless data synchronization, eliminating manual data entry, and giving you a unified view of customer interactions.

Sales Intelligence 

If you need to access data in real time, sales intelligence software can help. It lets your team view information about sales and customers and more in-depth insights. 

You can use sales intelligence tools for:

1. Prospect Research: Sales intelligence software can provide detailed company profiles, including financials, industry trends, and news mentions. Your sales team can use this information to identify prospects, understand their needs, and tailor their approach.
2. Contact Information and Enrichment: Use sales intelligence software to find accurate contact info for target companies’ key decision-makers. You can also enrich the contact data you already have with job titles, LinkedIn profiles, and social media posts.
3. Sales Trigger Alerts: Your team will get notified when something relevant happens, like leadership changes, mergers, or funding announcements. Personalized messages addressing the prospect’s specific situation can be sent right at the right time with these alerts.
4. Sales Analytics and Reporting: You can track sales activities, measure performance metrics, and identify patterns. With a data-driven approach, you can refine your strategies, optimize your efforts, and focus on what’s important.
5. Competitor Analysis: The right sales intelligence software can give insights into your competitors’ pricing strategies, product launches, and customer wins. With this knowledge, your team can position your offerings effectively, highlight unique value propositions, and stand out.

Digital sales room 

Coordination and collaboration between team members and decision-makers can be tough. However, leveraging digital tools and software can make this process much easier. The best way to get information and foster collaboration is to create a digital sales room.

Start by choosing a reliable and secure platform with features tailored to complex sales processes. Make sure it has document storage, version control, task management, and communication tools. Choose a platform and create dedicated workspaces for each deal or project within your sales room.

Use these workspaces to organize information and documentation related to the complex sales process. Documents like proposals, contracts, meeting notes, relevant research materials, etc. Ensure the saleroom is logical and easy to navigate, so team members and decision-makers can find what they need.

You can collaborate within the digital sales room with features like shared document editing, real-time messaging, task assignments, and progress tracking. Build a collaborative environment by encouraging team members and decision-makers to participate and contribute.

FAQ

How are complex sales different from transactional sales?

Complex sales have longer sales cycles, more decision-makers, and more in-depth buying processes than transactional sales (sometimes called traditional sales).

What are the characteristics of a complex sale?

Complex sales tend to have a high level of customization and solution development, as well as a significant investment of time and resources. The associated risk is also higher as the buying decision affects more people.

How do you close a complex sales deal?

It takes a multifaceted approach to close a complex sale. Several factors contribute to successful deal closure. 

First and foremost, the sales team must build strong relationships with key stakeholders. To do this, they must understand their needs, concerns, and priorities and show them how the proposed solution addresses them.

Next, the team needs to put forth a compelling proposal. This may be followed by a series of negotiations to align on everything from the scope of service to the contract duration and even pricing and payment terms.

Finally, once the client has accepted the proposal, the team will work to execute a contract and any other legal documentation. Once all of the contracts are executed, the team will start the onboarding process.

Making Complex Sales Simple

Complex sales may be overwhelming, but they can also be exciting. When selling a complex deal, there is no greater feeling than hearing that you’ve won the business. Following this process and using our tips and tools can improve your chances of a successful sale.

Want to learn more about leveraging Qwilr’s capabilities for complex deals? Book a demo to see it in action, or give it a try for yourself.

The post The Complete Guide To Complex Selling In 2023 appeared first on Qwilr.

You may not know when objections will arise or what specific concerns your prospects will raise, but you can still take proactive steps to preempt and handle them effectively.

The good news?

Anticipating a sales objection does not have to feel like you’re facing an impending disaster: it’s something you can preempt, address, and win over. When you understand the most common sales objections, you can be proactive about overcoming them.. Most importantly, you can better understand how to guide your buyer through the sales process and onto closing the deal.

How to navigate the seemingly perilous waters of sales objections and ride the wave instead of letting it drown your process? We’ve taken a deep dive into sales objections and how to handle them. 

Sales objection character types

Overcoming objections is simpler if you think of your buyers in terms of categories and types of character. Once you identify the character type, it will be easier to approach them (and their rebuttals) successfully:

The early objector

As the name suggests, the early objector raises concerns very quickly. They are generally well-researched and well-informed about your product, so they have their objections ready when you meet them (likely for the first time). These scenarios can be a little intimidating, but the prospect’s preparedness means they’re interested and taking the call seriously. 

Pro tip: When asked a very technical question, give an equally technical response. Showing your knowledge and expertise can build trust and help ease any worry they have. 

The silent objector

The silent objector doesn’t offer as much insight into their issues as the early objector. Instead, they tend to give concise answers and are more challenging to engage. Unlike the early objector, they may not have a clear agenda on what they want to address. 

Pro tip: Ask open-ended questions that require longer responses and have plenty of probing questions ready. 

The non-confrontational objector

This character type doesn’t want to give their objections in a face-to-face setting. They mostly use email for communication, and they tend to need a lot of time to decide and getinput from multiple sources before closing. 

Pro tip: Be patient and persistent. It may take more messages than normal, but you should be able to get answers if you keep asking. 

The “no” objector 

This type of objector is generally someone just learning about the product and may not be as well-informed as others. Many times, they’re not the final decision maker, so their need to surface objections may be limited as they’re primarily fact-finding. 

Pro tip: Arm them with helpful information they can take back to their team. Having an advocate on the inside is always helpful.

The four types of sales objections

If you’ve been in sales long enough, you’ve probably heard any number of reasons why a prospect isn’t ready to close a deal. Though they may vary wildly, most objections tend to fall into one of four categories: 

1. Price

Cost is the most common thing people object to. HubSpot research found 35% of sales reps list price objections as the top challenge when selling. Though many reps might categorize the objection as an issue with the price, what the prospect is really objecting to in most cases is perceived value. If you can show that the value of the product is higher than the cost, you’ll be one step closer to closing the deal. 

If you’ve been running into price objections with your customers, you may want to read this article on value selling, for more insight on this topic.

2. Lack of Need

The “need” objection is very similar to the “price” one, with some nuances. The buyer may be saying they don’t need the product, but what they really mean is they don’t need it now. ualifying urgency early is a very smart move, as it’s a good indicator of whether or not a deal will close. 

Like with the price objection, , the opportunity here is to show the value your product brings. You can also use a “need” objection to create urgency by showing your buyer the cost of doing nothing. When you mix these tactics, your prospect no longer questions whether they need your product. Instead, they start to consider exactly how much they need it and how soon they can get it. 

Shameless plug: Qwilr’s ROI calculator is excellent for illustrating product value or showing the cost of the status quo!

3. Urgency

The “urgency” objection usually occurs when the buyer feels that your timeline is too aggressive — or why action needs to be taken as soon as possible. For example, they may feel the implementation timeline or contract length is too short. Or they may feel your timeline is too long and don’t want to wait for the product.

One way to overcome this type of objection is by showing flexibility. You should also be prepared to walk them through the benefits of each timeline and find a happy medium that works for both parties.

4. Authority

If you’ve ever heard the phrase, “I need to talk with my manager first,” that’s an objection based on authority. Simply put, they’re saying they’re not the decision-maker and need to involve someone else to get final approval.

In these situations, be sure you have great sales collateral that your prospect can share with their team. The easier you can make it for them to pitch your product internally, the better: you save time, and ensure you make your point. Your prospect can comfortably bring up the topic with their managers to reiterate how your product addresses their pain points.

Preparing for objections

While you may not know exactly which objection you’ll face, you can apply a few techniques to preempt potential arguments and be better prepared. Here are some of the best ones we’ve tried at Qwilr:

Exposure therapy

If you have extreme fears or even allergies, you may be familiar with “exposure therapy.”

This type of therapy involves exposing you to small amounts of an allergen over a period of time, so your body can get used to the allergen and eventually stop reacting to it. You can use the same process to learn to handle sales objections.

Though nothing is quite as good as an actual interaction with a prospect, role-playing can help get you more comfortable handling objections. If you decide to try role-playing exercises, be sure that you have a goal upfront to get the most out of it. 

Sharing objections with the team

Another exercise to consider is one for your sales team meetings. Set aside 10-15 minutes for everyone to mention the most common objections they’re hearing and have others give tips on how they’ve responded in the past. Your teammates have a ton of collective knowledge — why not use it? 

Battle cards

One last option to consider is developing “battle cards.” This tactic boils down to having a succinct document of talking points to use when your competitors come up in conversations. Again, leveraging your team’s experience is helpful here. Talk to your teammates to learn what prospects most commonly say about competitors and what types of counterpoints work best, then write it all down in one place that’s easy to reference while on a call. 

Responding to sales objections

You shouldn’t take objections as negative feedback — they’re actually an opportunity to learn and improve. By paying attention to objections, you can better understand your prospects and strengthen your offering. Plus, if you handle the situation correctly, you may actually turn an objection into an opportunity. Or, as sales professional and author Brian Tracy says, “Treat objections as requests for further information.”

Of course, every prospect is different, and so are their concerns. Still, successful counterarguments revolve around four key elements: active listening , acknowledging the prospect’s concern, addressing the matter at hand, and confirming that the issue has been addressed.

Listen

Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People is a staple for sales reps (and people in every industry, for that matter.) One memorable quote from the book is, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming genuinely interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

In many ways, this quote encapsulates the key to overcoming sales objections. When you’re genuinely interested in your prospect’s needs, , their questions, concerns, and objections will become plain to see — and you’ll be better positioned to address them. So, instead of jumping the gun and cutting your prospects off in the middle of their objection, let them finish their thought and actively listen to what they have to say.

Acknowledge

All people ever want is to be heard and understood.

Your prospect is no different. When they do raise a concern, it’s important to validate that concern by acknowledging it. For example, let’s say your prospect is concerned about price. You might acknowledge that concern by saying, “Cost is always a big consideration. What about the cost is worrisome for you?”

Asking a follow-up question furthers the conversation and could be an excellent way to uncover their real concerns. Research conducted by Gong shows that asking between 14 and 18 questions during a call correlates with higher success rates when compared to interactions where reps ask fewer questions. 

Need more ideas on what to ask during sales calls? Take this free discovery call checklist with 35 questions to help you prepare and improve your call effectiveness.

Address

Now that you know the customer’s objection, its time to address it. .

One  suggestion for addressing an objection is simple: be honest. Sometimes, that means you must tell a prospect you can’t fulfill a need. It’s far from ideal, but it can help you build a trust with your customer and a positive reputation.

Keep in mind that Harvard Business Review reports peer recommendations to influence around 90% of all B2B buying decisions. So, even if you don’t sell to that prospect directly, honesty could earn you a recommendation somewhere down the line. 

On the flip side, if you can actually meet a need, be sure to lay out the steps you’ll take to fulfill it. Doing so will help the prospect feel more comfortable with the purchase decision.

Confirm

The final step in handling an objection is confirming with the prospect that it’s been addressed. Even something simple like, asking,“Does that address your concern?” is enough. If they say no, you can ask further questions to determine what else they will need to see or hear from you to move the deal forward. If they say yes, it’s a signal you’re both in agreement and can move on to the next step in your sales process.. 

Specific examples of overcoming sales objections 

There are as many specific sales objections examples as people in the world. And sales rejections can be hard to take, especially when you’ve put a lot of work into finding the best-suited prospects, showcasing your product, and understanding their needs. Rejection is not the end of the world, though — nor does it have to be the end of the line with a prospect firmly objecting to purchasing your product.

With that in mind, here are a few examples of common sales objections and how to address them.

Sales objection #1: “I’m just not interested.”

This may feel like a brush-off, but you can turn it into an opportunity.

When someone says they’re not interested, they could be thinking any of the following:

• They are actually not interested
• They already use a similar product
• They have a different product in mind
• They don’t understand the benefits of using your product
• They don’t see the value in your product

Your first reaction might be to contradict them — but keep in mind that it would only make your prospect even more defensive, and that leads nowhere. Instead, show empathy, listen, and try to understand why they’re not interested in what you have to offer. If you pay attention, you will likely uncover a more specific objection that you can then address — and thus, you will be able to continue the sales conversation and get your prospect into a warmer stance.

Here’s what you could say in this type of situation:

“I understand that you may not be interested in our solution, and I’m okay with that. Could you help me understand why?”

Sales objection #2: “I don’t have enough budget.”

If your prospect expresses this type of rebuttal, it’s essential to find out why. In these cases, you need to dig deeper to get to the real objection — the root cause of their budget worries.

You can also try to empathize and validate their opinion by simply saying, “I understand that budget can be a challenge, but…” and then you can reiterate the value of using your product. This is a great opportunity to showcase data, social proof, testimonials, or case studies demonstrating your product’s return on investment (ROI).

Doing this can shift your prospect’s mindset from viewing your product as a cost to an investment.

Here’s an example of how you could turn this to your advantage:

“I understand that budget can be a challenge, but our product has been proven to produce an ROI of X%. For instance, Client X reported a 10% increase in sales after implementing our product. Would that be something that could interest you?”

Sales objection #3: “I don’t think I need this right now.”

This type of objection frequently stems from a sense of complacency. The real reason people say this is that they either want to postpone looking for a solution or are downright not interested in making a change and trying to let you down easily.

The best way to turn the situation to your advantage is by bringing your prospect out of their comfort zone and showing them why they need to make the changes you are proposing. Creating a sense of urgency (or “fear of missing out”) can help you steer them in the right direction.

Here’s an example of what you could say:

“I understand you may not need this right now, but in the long run, it will benefit you greatly. Just the other day, I was reading this article (link) on how [name of competitor] is using [product category] to [achieve something.] Plus, there’s this study from [reputable research company] showing that [product category] is at an all-time high adoption rate. I think it would help your company [achieve something greater] if you do decide to go for it. What do you think?”

Sales objection #4: “We already work with [competitor name]

This one might feel like a sting, but it’s a very good sign that the customer is already using a solution in your category. This means they are familiar with the process and may just need some convincing that your product can do more than that of your competitor.

Ideally, this is where you could show them case studies and comparison pages on your website, showcasing how your product is better than the one they’re already using. It’s essential to have a Unique Selling Proposition that differentiates you from other market players, including their current supplier.

Here’s how you could spin this to your advantage:

“I understand that you are already working with [competitor], and that’s great. But what would you think if you could do everything you do now with [competitor name], but with added [benefit] and [benefit] at a much better price? Switching to [your company name] is an easy process, and we actually have existing clients who’ve done it already. For instance, here’s a case study (link) of how they increased their [activity] by X% when they switched from [competitor]to us. Would that be something you would consider?”

Sales objection #5: “Your price is too high.”

This rebuttal is similar to the budget-related one mentioned before — with one major difference. If someone says your product is expensive, they might be trying to get a lower price from you, or they may just be using or considering something less costly. Either way, they are somewhat warmed up to the idea of using a product in your category, and they do have some budget for it — it’s just that they might not be willing to go as high as your price.

In this case, you should focus on the value of your product and how it outweighs the cost. You can also offer them payment plans, or other incentives that make it easier for them to get your product.

Here’s how you could respond to this:

“I understand that our price may seem a bit high, but I can promise you that the value you get for it is well worth it. Plus, we have various flexible payment options to help you get started with our product. Would you like me to explain them in more detail?”

FAQs

What are the 4 major sales objections?

The four major sales objections are price, need, urgency, and authority. The price objection refers to customers objecting to a product or service’s price, the need objection is when they don’t think they need the product or service, the urgency objection is when they don’t feel any sense of urgency to take advantage of an offer, and the authority objection is when they are not the decision-makers in their company.

What is the most common objection in sales?

There are many common objections in sales. Some of the most common types of objections salespeople point out include price/ budget, complacency/ urgency, mistrust/ credibility, and features/ benefits. Each of them can be counteracted with the right approach, but it’s important to be aware of them and know how to respond.

Putting Your Objection Handling Skills to Good Use

Uncertainty is uncomfortable, but it’s also an almost unavoidable part of the day to day in B2B sales. If you’re worried or fearful of objections, know that you can overcome those feelings by being prepared.  

Keep an eye out for some of the common types of objectors and sales objections described here. That way, when an objection does arise, you can set your fear aside, confidently acknowledge it, and address it. 

You can also use objections to learn more about your prospect’s needs, better explain the value of your offering, build your reputation through honesty, and move the sales process forward.

Most of all, remember it’s a process. The more you experience, the more comfortable (and confident) you’ll get. It may be uncomfortable at times, but it’ll all pay off in the long run. Your role is not to push sales pitches and templated collateral and give up as soon as you face a prospect’s objection.

Your job is to help eliminate a business problem and help your prospect navigate the buying process successfully. Yes, rebuttals can feel like roadblocks — but handled correctly, they can be an opportunity for you to better gauge your product’s capabilities and underline your value proposition.

If you’d like to learn more about how Qwilr can help you to earn the trust of your buyer through visually compelling sales documents or demonstrate the value of your product or service, we invite you to book a demo.

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