Selling Power Blog

How to Add Value to Your Sales Process

Today’s post is by Sherri Sklar, CEO of GrowthTera, a consulting firm that helps organizations accelerate growth by elevating their performance to WOW. Hear her present “Sales Planning: Strategies that Leave Your Competition in the Dust” live at the Sales 3.0 Conference in Las Vegas on September 18 and 19.

 

Recently a sales leader asked me for some advice about coaching reps on sales process:

One of my sales reps was diligently trying to follow the sales process we laid out for him, but he was missing the buying signals of this customer. I could see they were ready to move to the contract negotiation stage, but the rep continued to take the buyer through unnecessary steps.

I’m concerned a rigid approach to process could hinder our ability to win deals, but I also believe in the value of sales process. What are your thoughts on how the sales process should be properly used?  

First and foremost, I applaud this sales leader for using a sales process. Without a process, sales reps would wing every deal – and the sales leader would have no mechanism to gauge, manage, and optimize performance on a consistent basis.

That said, no sales process can be considered a one-size-fits-all solution. Yes, you want to provide a consistent and repeatable process for your folks, but it should never override the buying signals of your buyer – nor should your rep ever abdicate good ol’ common sense.

Tuning into Your Buyer Takes Process and Skill

The more aligned reps are with buyers, the more likely they’ll get the deal. In fact, a good process should instruct reps to listen very carefully and do whatever it takes to sync with the buyer completely.  

How can reps go further and add value to the buyer’s thinking and buying process? Concerning the situation above, the buyer may say, “Just send me over a proposal,” but the sales rep still needs to take a moment and clarify with the customer all the steps the customer needs to take – not only to make a purchase decision, but also to bring a contract to close. In some cases, the buyer may not even know what has to happen to bring a contract to close. Here’s where your rep can add value to help the buyer by asking questions the buyer may or may not have considered.

For example, if you know the buyer already has your solution in house, and all they are looking to do is expand, then you may want to focus on building relationships with all the key stakeholders you haven’t met yet so you can build a broader coalition to roll your solution out. This helps the buyer make a bigger impact on his company – and it helps you expand the deal size.

At the same time, reps must qualify buyers to determine whether they are just another column on their checklist of vendors, or are a serious contender. And they need to figure out if they are talking to the right person(s) in the buyer’s organization. Being able to do this requires more than having a sales process to refer to. It takes skill. Mastering skill takes developing, coaching, and practice.

That’s very different from either following a rote sales process that would have you go through all the steps to sell the solution itself – or the knee-jerk reaction many reps have, which is to hand in the proposal prematurely – just giving the buyer what he wants.   

Your sales reps do need to be in full command of the process so they can be guides  or advocates for your buyer – not someone going through the motions.

The Importance of Sales Training and Sales Playbooks

Some organizations forget that they need to supplement the sales process with training and a good playbook. This is like trying to ride a bike without the wheels on. A good sales training program will teach not only the process, but also why reps must do certain things, including what bad or good things can happen if they do or don’t follow the process, and how to enhance their skill at using the process. Good training should always include role playing so your salespeople get a good opportunity to practice.

Give your reps the blessing of a great sales manager who is equipped to know how to look for ways to add value to the sales process and guide each rep in adding value to each buyer. Give them the training and coaching they need and you will reap the benefits of utilizing sales process supported by creating a skill development machine second to none.

Avoiding Sales Burnout: Finding the Tricky Balance Between Work and Life

Today’s post is by Jamie Crosbie, CEO and founder of ProActivate. Jamie is a certified peak performance mindset trainer. Contact her at jcrosbie@proactivate.net or 214/720-9922 to learn more about how her training can help your sales team reach peak performance levels.  

 

Dawn was exhausted. As a pediatric nurse – and mother of two – she found herself burning the proverbial candle at both ends...and the middle. One morning, she almost fell asleep driving to work, narrowly missing a tree on a slippery road. That’s when she knew she had to change.

After talking to her husband, Dawn started her own medical writing company and never looked back. Now she works from home, loves what she does, and she enjoys the down-time with her family – time she never had before.

Her advice? Go big AND go home by finding a balance between work and the rest of your life.

Finding Your Sweet Spot  

Many people climb into their cars every day to commute to a job they hate, just so they can afford a beautiful home they never actually enjoy because they are so busy paying for it. While a balanced life might seem difficult to manage, it is not impossible. It does, however, mean making life choices that fit your needs and goals.

For some, that may mean being able to take weekends off and play a round of golf. For others, it may mean – as it did for Dawn – a complete change of pace, which included starting her own company. Although the answer of what to choose may vary, health and success experts have defined some tips that may help you find your ideal life-work balance.

Unplug Yourself on a Regular Basis

From social media to mobile apps, many people find themselves connected to a digital tether of continual productivity and accessibility. A recent Harvard study showed that a whopping 94 percent of working professionals reported working at least 50 hours per week, while half said they worked more than 65 hours each week. From endless phone notifications to text messages, time with family and friends is often undercut by staying on the career drip-line of constant updates.

Set up Healthy Limits

One of the best ways to handle this is to set up clear boundaries, carving out time that is separate and unmarred by work stressors. If you need to turn off your phone to watch your kid’s softball game, do it. The time you spend with loved ones is never wasted. “I just wish I had worked more, read more reports, and answered all my emails instead of making pancakes with my children,” said no one ever, on their deathbed. Life is meant to be lived. Not endured.

Being Present Is a Gift to Yourself

Loretta LaRoche, an internationally recognized expert on stress and life-work balance, likes to say that “Life is not a stress rehearsal!” She encourages people to fully participate in life by stepping out of their mental stress constructs and being fully present instead. She also teaches people to release the expectation of perfection in all circumstances. The truth is that most things are neither good nor bad: they just simply are. It is our inner interpretation of a given circumstance that determines how we feel about it. While you do not always have the power to choose every situation, you can choose your response – and, therefore, how you feel about it.

Bottom line: You are in charge of your life, your time, and your happiness. Take your power back by being present, changing things up if need be, and charting your own course to a more balanced life. For more tips on developing and maintaining a peak performance mindset, please subscribe to my blog.

Is Social Selling Missing the Target?

Today’s post is by Stu Heinecke, the best-selling author of How to Get a Meeting with Anyone and host of Contact Marketing Radio. He is also the co-creator of NASP’s “The Power of Contact Marketing” training program, a Wall Street Journal cartoonist, hall of fame-nominated marketer, and founder of Contact, a first-of-its-kind contact marketing agency dedicated to helping sales teams connect with their most important prospects and assigned accounts.

A few weeks ago, I posted the graphic above in a LinkedIn blog post and asked, “Is social selling missing the target?” In the post, I recounted an interaction I’d had with someone I’d come to know fairly well on LinkedIn. She is part of a new group forming a contact marketing association, she’d read my book, and was now part of the inner circle.

As the group debated its new charter, one member suggested we focus on promoting a couple of the vendors in the group. I responded that I didn’t think that was a useful direction to take – it should be about building and sharing the knowledge base – and pointed out there were vendors, including me. “I run a contact marketing agency,” to which she replied, “Oh, I didn’t know that.”

Ouch.

Not only have we had numerous conversations about contact marketing, this is someone who’d read my book and is a fan of the message of focusing on making critical connections to push the scale of the enterprise. It might sound like I’m faulting my new friend but, really, the responsibility for creating awareness of what I do is mine, not hers.  

If the credo of social selling is to add value, to volunteer your help, and to wait for others to talk about what you do, I wondered in my post if all of this was wasting a lot of people’s time – when they should be out selling. And what’s wrong with talking about what we do?

So I did just that. I talked about the book, my agency, and the amazing results we and others are seeing with contact marketing.

Having committed the ultimate transgression, I figured I would immediately see my contacts count drop by half. I’d be banished from groups. My life as I knew it would be diminished. Still, I had to find out what others might have to say about it. Surely, I couldn’t have been the only one wondering if things weren’t quite hitting the target.

And then came a few surprises.  

I didn’t lose half my connections. Instead, they shot up by 5 percent in one week. And it drew lots of comments. Chris Beall remarked, “I think it’s bizarre that folks on a professional social network should go out of their way to talk less about what they do than the same people at a cocktail party.” In fact, there was a lot of agreement in the comments about this apparent disconnect between socializing and selling. Tom Cramer shared Gary Vaynerchuck’s advice to “Jab, jab, jab; then right hook,” to describe his prescription for the cadence of content sharing and self promotion.

Understandably, proponents of social selling also joined in. In the past, I’ve seen so many “You just don’t get it” kinds of comments. I figured I’d see a few here but, happily, that wasn’t the case. And it certainly wouldn’t have been helpful in addressing a lot of the concerns expressed by most of the respondents. They all seemed to be saying, “Yes, be here to add value, but you must do so with a strategy that allows for selling interactions to enter the equation. Jill Rowley’s 4:1:1 formula was offered, which suggests a cycle of posting four articles, then one post about yourself, and then another that is closer to an advertisement for your services.

For more advice on putting more emphasis on the word “selling” in your team’s social selling efforts, my recent interview (below) with Brynne Gordon Tillman sheds light on best practices. Either way, I’ll bet you have an opinion on whether social selling is on target. And I’d love to have you share your thoughts below.

With great special thanks for those who participated in this story on LinkedIn.

A Crisis of Concentration in Selling: Tips to Improve Your Focus

Today's blog is by Christine Harrington, The Savvy Sales Lady. She is a facilitator for Peak Performance Mindset Workshop and a personal sales coach. Christine helps sales professionals develop their beliefs to improve their sales performance.

 

According to my client’s shaky recollection, the last time he found himself in deep concentration, without interruption, was…uh...college. He’s now 42 and a senior account executive for a large corporation – and suffering from insomnia and failing sales. 

Another client answered my question with much hesitation: “When was the last time you concentrated in complete silence on just one task?” “I…I…can’t remember,” she stammered. Sally is 31 years old and a sales manager for a midsize regional insurance company – suffering from migraines and an underperforming sales team.

Here are just two examples out of many I coach on a weekly basis, and the story is always the same: suffering sales along with physical ailments such as migraines, insomnia, eating disorders, addictions, depression, obsessive behaviors, anxiousness, and panic attacks.. A coincidence? A concentration problem? 

Now, I’m not a doctor or psychologist, but I can’t ignore the concentration crisis I see happening with my clients – and, perhaps, the correlation to some of their physical symptoms.

Here’s the Science

According to ScienceNordic.com this is called “The Pinball Effect.” “The pinball effect…is exactly the psychological repercussions, which stem from frequent shifts in information structure. In other words, the attempt to divide attention to different sets or chambers of information simultaneously.”

To simplify it: multi-tasking. When trying to read and respond to emails while scrolling through your Twitter feed and listening to Adele on your AirPods at the same time, it’s impossible for your mind to focus and catch up. The shifts in information are incompatible with your brain structure; thus, you become ineffective. But, more importantly, it harms your cognitive abilities – even with a simple activity like talking on a cell phone while driving. 

I’ve always said it’s hard for me to chew gum and drive...apparently, that’s a thing.

Strayer, Drews, and Crouch concluded in their 2006 research: “The impairments associated with using a cell phone while driving can be as profound as those associated with driving while drunk.”

The pinball effect can be described as the doubling of space; that is, an attempted splitting of attention.

“Doubling induces an exhausted awareness, thus creating the pinball effect, leading to impaired concentration. Studies show that it can take...15 to 25 minutes for the brain ‘to get back where it was after stopping to check an email.’ This is easily seen in the cellphone-using driver, but also in the Facebook-checking office worker or student and in the coffee-drinking café guests whose tables are often occupied by a couple of ‘attention-seeking’ smart phones.”

“More instructively, the pinball effect is harmful to tasks that must be performed with sufficient attention. Therefore, the pinball effect should be reduced as much as possible in spaces of learning, education, and where even minimal concentration is required.”

Recovery Tips

• More isn’t better. Is social media working for you? Or are you addicted to the feel-good it gives you? Be honest. Set aside three times per day to concentrate solely on social media. Give it only 15-20 minutes of your precious time and mental energy. Turn off all social media notifications so you’re not tempted to look every time you hear a “ding.”
• For one week, turn off all noise. Work in silence – complete silence, with no background noise. Learn to tune into your mental thoughts and creativity. Focus only on what’s in front of you. If a thought invades, reminding you to pick up the dry cleaning or whatever, have a sticky note handy and write the thought on the note. Then, get back to the task at hand.
• One hour before bedtime, turn off all items that stimulate your senses. If you’re reading on a tablet, switch to a book. Turn off the TV, your smartphone, laptop, and iPad. Play soothing music or ambient music to evoke relaxation of the mind. If you have problems drifting to sleep, try Hemi-Sync music. It uses audio guidance technology to influence brain-wave activity. You’ll sleep like a baby!
• Structure your day. Chunking time slots during your day will free you from the feeling of being overwhelmed. It also keeps you on track and gives you the strength to ignore all the distractions that can interrupt your concentration.
• Turn your office phone on do-not-disturb mode. Close your office door and attach a do-not-disturb sign. Put your smartphone on silence. Mute the computer. Then get to work on the most important task of your day. Realistically, you can’t mute your entire day, so pick and choose those critical tasks you can go dark.

How to Improve Concentration

According to Psychology Today, “Pay attention. You cannot take in information unless you are paying attention, and you cannot memorize information unless you are taking it in. Get enough food and sleep, and avoid distractions such as a background radio or television.”

• Writing notes with pen and paper is much more effective cognitively than typing on a tablet.
• Review information: If you have an important sales presentation coming up, practice the material. Sleep on it and practice again and again. Or, if you’re unsure about an email you need to send, write it out, save as a draft, then review it again in 24 hours.
• Exercise your body and mind. It’s a scientific fact that mental challenges create new connections in the brain, encouraging the formation of a neurotransmitter (a chemical brain cells use to communicate between each other) called dopamine. Dopamine provides your “get up and go.” If you have trouble concentrating, you may have a dopamine deficiency. Physical exercise also boosts dopamine production.You don’t need strenuous exercise to get brain-boosting benefits: taking walks or doing gentle, no-impact exercises provides powerful mind-body benefits.

If you find yourself having difficult bouts in lack of concentration, try these suggestions and tips. More isn’t always better for your mental and physical health. Get off the multi-tasking hamster wheel and take control of the distractions. You can control your environment…inside your head and outside.

Please share your thoughts on “A Crisis of Concentration in Selling.” What are the worst distractions you have in your life right now? I’d love to help you solve it! Just tap those fingers on the keyboard and leave a comment.

Top Selling Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Today’s post is by Andrea Grodnitzky, chief marketing officer at Richardson.

 

 

We asked and sellers responded. We wanted to know the biggest challenges they face in each stage of the selling process. More than 350 field reps, senior sales professionals, and sales leaders across industries weighed in.

The Number-One Concern for Sales Leaders: Sales Productivity

Far and away, the question on productivity received the largest response. Nearly half – 49 percent – identified “spending too much time on administrative or non-selling activities” as their biggest challenge.

It’s a common trap for sellers. They find themselves consumed with administrative or operational work, which makes it hard to focus on sales and closing new deals. Or they tend to babysit their accounts because they don’t trust their own service and support people to do a good job.

Managers need to be aware of what’s going on and who is doing what work. It is the manager’s job to remove obstacles so sellers can get back to selling.

More Top Concerns: Team Selling and Combating the Status Quo

The second-largest responses, at 26 percent, were “knowledge about how to team-sell effectively” and, for challenges facing buyers in making purchasing decisions, “combating the status quo.”

The trend in buyers wanting to interact with subject-matter experts and project teams is increasing the need to team-sell. Yet not all team members are trained in either selling or effective customer interactions. This can lead to a disjointed and confusing buying and selling process. Additionally, sellers often work on their own, so collaborating as part of a selling team is a skill that needs reinforcement.

Selling as a team requires a different process – one that spans five natural stages:

1. Creating your team
2. Organizing its work
3. Practicing your pitch
4. Executing when it counts
5. Regrouping afterwards to execute and grow

When it comes to the challenges facing buyers in making purchasing decisions, “combating the status quo” reflects the comfort and safety of staying the course. Buyers may be risk-averse or hesitant to try something new.

To overcome the buyer’s inertia, sellers need to create a compelling case for change by highlighting the loss or risk associated with not changing, addressing missed opportunity costs – the benefits unrealized – by staying put, and outlining a clear path forward to make the change decision easier to make.

Negotiating and Closing: Third-Toughest Challenges

Questions about negotiating and closing received the third-largest response, at 24 percent, where the top challenges were “gaining higher prices” and “competing against a low-cost provider.”

In fact, “gaining higher prices” has been the top negotiating challenge for three years running. The underlying issue is closely aligned with “competing against a low-cost provider,” which, in Richardson’s 2016 survey, received 47 percent of the responses.

Clearly, pricing – and the ability to win deals without lowering prices – remains crucial for sales success. Sellers can add value by helping buyers diagnose their unique situations. Then they can help identify the best solutions so buyers make informed decisions that drive the results they desire. When sellers add value to the buying process, price may still be an issue, but it may not be the most important one.

The Richardson 2017 research report confirms the continuation of a demanding sales environment driven by ongoing shifts in buyer behaviors, competitive pressures, and operational trends. It also suggests there has never been a better time to face these demands, as sellers can leverage mobile technology and social networks to better understand their buyers and build lasting engagements in today’s hyper-connected world.

For more survey results and insights, download the full report, “2017 Research: Understanding Selling Challenges,” from the Richardson Website.

The Seven Great Lies of Selling

Today’s post is by Kevin Doddrell, vice president of Revenue Storm.

 

 

A quick Google search of “Seven Great Lies” will return lists about marketing, parenting, politicians, and so much more. Not one to be left out of a trend, I wanted to present my version – sales style.

So often salespeople are quick to accept that everything told to us by prospects and customers is good and true. Of course! We are optimists by trade and respect a good pitch; it’s in our nature to believe what we hear, especially when it supports our plan. The opportunity is awesome! The client loves me! The deal is cruising to a close.

Well, I’m here to interject a little reality and provide a test to see if you have heard any of these great lies of selling before. Read carefully, think hard, and be honest –’- your deal is depending on it.

Lie #1: “I am the decision maker” – This is the classic of all lies. If you were really unfortunate, this would have been followed with, “So, therefore, there is no need to talk to anyone else.” Here is the weird thing – some people who tell you this often believe it to be true. They too are fooling themselves.

The truth: In a complex B2B sales cycle there is no one single decision maker. You are dealing with myriad influences and opinions and the decision will always be made by this blend of influences and persuasions.

Action: Seek out all the decision makers and influencers to create a complete approach.

Lie #2: “I am very interested; please send me a proposal” – This is the classic pass-off and is the way a person will end a meeting when they really have no intention of moving forward. It’s a lot like, “I’ll call you.”

The truth: You didn’t grab this person’s attention and he doesn’t want to deliver the hard truth. Most likely your proposal will be lost in his inbox.

Action: Submit a proposal only once you have commitment from the prospect to collaborate.

Lie #3: “The decision is going to be made on price” – Unless you are in a totally commoditized single-product comparison, this is always not true.

The truth: In a B2B sales environment there are always multiple influences that will come into play from people who are not interested by price.

Action: Go back to your pitch and work on your value proposition and demonstrate to the prospect that your solution delivers value beyond that of the competitors.

Lie #4: “I will come back to you on this next week” – About 90 percent of the time, this means, “I do not really have an interest in this, but I do not want to confront you with it – please go away.”

The truth: Human beings typically avoid conflict and would rather just smooth things over without disappointing you.

Action: This is your cue to expand your sales cycle with other influencers and decision makers in the organization to gain buy-in.

Lie #5: “The procurement process will be easy” – Maybe no one believes this one very often, but hope can be a trap. Understand that procurement is a political animal within its own right.

The truth: Many a deal has been stalled and then been defeated by procurement.

Action: Work proactively to learn the procurement processes early and do not leave it till the last minute. This includes building relationships and creating a strategy for walking your deal through this important gauntlet.

Lie #6: “She has no time available in the next two weeks” – It’s easy to fall for this one, yet it indicates that you do not rate in the priority of things that are important.

The truth: Yes, your target executive is busy, but if your deal was strategic, it would have her full attention.

Action: Reposition your offering to sync with the strategic priorities of her organization.

And finally,

Lie #7: “Everything is good” – You need to take lies 1-6 into consideration and not fool yourself into thinking everything is wonderful. It is a disservice to yourself, your company, and your customers.

The truth: B2B selling is complex, with many moving parts, agendas, and political landmines. In other words, there is a lot that can go wrong.

Action: Don’t get lulled into a false sense of security – keep selling!

You Can Still Hit Quota by December: Tips on Sales Process & Sales Training

Today’s post is by Scott Runkle, director of global account team at Vantage Point Performance, a global sales management training and development firm. Scott helps his clients transform their sales teams to drive better sales performance. Visit our Resources Center.

 

Each year, as June rolls into July, sales leaders start breaking into a panic. It’s mid-year and, if sales results aren’t where they need to be—and let’s face it, they are rarely where they need to be—leaders begin pulling out all the stops to drive higher performance.

This is a widespread phenomenon. Studies find that fewer than six in 10 reps are making their targets, while our own comprehensive study of sales management practices found 75 percent of managers had less than half their reps at quota. Yet companies keep raising the sales bar. And, in their effort to clear that higher bar, sales leaders mostly turn to two common approaches for improving sales performance:

• Train sales reps. Organizations spend millions of dollars every year on tools, tactics, and methodologies aimed at elevating individual rep performance, but the ultimate impact of these investments is negligible.
• Implement new technology. Last year, according to Gartner, the CRM industry approached $36 billion. Companies pour money into technology like CRM and other selling tools but then frequently complain about underutilization and failure to move the performance needle.

As leaders look at their year-to-date performance and the disappointing results from these two investments, they’re asking, “What else can I try to hit our number by year end?”

The answer lies in the sales management population referenced above. A whopping three-quarters of sales managers report that less than half their team is making quota! There’s the opportunity. The latest technology and the best sales rep training can’t overcome ineffective management. To really impact results, you need to first elevate the performance of your managers.

High-quality management leads to high-quality reps, which leads to high-quality results. The opposite is also true: inconsistent management leads to inconsistent reps, which leads to inconsistent results. We see this time and again. You determine your company’s path to success or mediocrity simply by choosing whether or not to give your sales managers the skills they need to excel in a management role.

What are some of the signs you may have a sales management problem? Beyond low performance numbers, the following challenges typically signal an issue with sales management:

• Inconsistent performance at the sales team level
• Low overall close rates
• Inaccurate forecasts
• Bloated pipelines
• Lack of a common management language

That last point is the key to successful sales management. We hear it all the time from sales leaders: “We need all our managers speaking the same language and working from the same book.” And, “If we could just duplicate what our top 25 percent of managers do, we could drive better results.” They are right. By employing a solid, repeatable framework for sales management, organizations can set up their sales teams for solid, consistent, repeatable results. It’s management process and training that drives consistent performance – not the lucky hire of a naturally great manager.

Here’s an example. We recently worked with a furniture manufacturer’s Texas district, where sales had remained within a static range over a four-year period. While the company had developed a sales methodology, it had never deployed sales management training. After working with Vantage Point to integrate its sales methodology with sales management training, the Texas district sales manager grew revenues from $5 million to $9 million over a four-year period – an 80 percent improvement. Other key metrics improved sharply as well. For instance, the Texas district now has the lowest discounting rate in the company due to better opportunity qualification.  

These results were attributable solely to the creation of a great sales management framework coupled with training that changed the game. And this is no isolated case. We regularly see improved forecast accuracy, higher win rates, lower push rates, increases in net new business, more reps hitting quota, and other positive results when companies implement a sales management framework.

It’s not too late! You can still hit your target numbers this year. Simply turn your sights away from the well-worn paths of technology upgrades and sales rep training, and look instead at improving the performance of the group that has the greatest impact on results: your sales managers.

The Basics of Good Sales Pipeline Management

Today’s post is by Danny Wong, who is a marketing consultant, sales strategist, and writer. He leads marketing at Tenfold, a seamless click-to-dial solution for high-performance sales teams. Connect with him on Twitter @dannywong1190.

 

The vast majority of B2B leaders understand pipeline management is an important part of building a successful sales process, yet 44 percent of executives surveyed reported their organization did not engage in effective sales pipeline management. Filling your pipeline with the right buyers – and nurturing them through the sales cycle at an appropriate pace – will help ensure you are consistently engaging with enough leads to hit your quotas and optimize the flow of the sales process for the entire company.

1. Clearly define your cycle stages

Without clear pipeline stage definition, all the other important aspects of pipeline management become impossible, including strategy building, process measurement, and collaboration. The various processes of your pipeline management process must be standardized across the organization so everyone is on the same page regarding definitions, procedures, and expectations.

Once you know how to delineate between the different states of your sales pipeline, you can set guidelines for what actions constitute a transition from one segment to the next. You can also create protocols that detail which team members are required to take ownership of the client relationship during the various stages, so transitions are seamless.

2. Develop a comprehensive data management strategy

The quality of your data and your methods for collection and analysis are going to have a significant impact on the overall efficiency of your sales pipeline. Keeping your pipeline filled with prospects who are a good fit for your company requires knowing, in detail, what those types of customers look like, how they behave, and what they are specifically looking for in a relationship with your brand.

This means everyone from marketing and sales to logistics and customer service not only need to have a plan for maintaining data quality, but they also have to understand what data is important to the other units and why. One weak link will always be the downfall of the entire organization when it comes to data management.

3. Utilize integrated technological solutions

To keep precise track of how your customers are progressing through your pipeline, it’s crucial to utilize a combination of technological solutions that are compatible. Customer and resource data entered in one unit can have ramifications throughout the company, so it’s vital to ensure everyone has consistent access to the information they need, and that formats and storage procedures are standardized.

Information in the CRM system can be invaluable for marketing professionals who are trying to hone messaging aimed at specific buyers. Buyer personas can likewise be important for sales reps as they nurture leads and develop relationships, and even for customer support and onboarding teams in creating specialized training modules and solving issues.

4. Specialize your content for maximum impact

Content can be useful for encouraging customers to move through the pipeline when they are in any stage, not just as an initial marketing technique. The key lies in knowing what kinds of content your buyer values based on their specific needs of the moment – and crafting a library of content to satisfy those needs.

When creating your content, it helps to think about the customer’s journey holistically so you can continue to enhance their experience in layers. While relationships with your team members are the foundation of the partnership, great content is often a gateway into these relationships. Therefore, the more your content specifically speaks to your buyers’ needs, preferences, and behavior, the more likely it is you will have an opportunity to build a relationship.

5. Prioritize collaboration throughout

Here’s what often passed for pipeline management in the not-so-good old days:

• Marketing created messaging they believed would fill the pipeline with valid opportunities
• Leads deemed “qualified” were passed onto sales reps, who would contact accordingly
• Signed clients were pushed onto the onboarding team

Collaboration was minimal and each unit had its own set of prioritized metrics they could use to boast of their success. For instance, if marketing produced the right number of opportunities they were content they had done their job – regardless of whether those leads turned into revenue-producing customers, let alone highly-satisfied ones.

It should go without saying this kind of compartmentalized arrangement won’t fly in the contemporary landscape. Research from CSO Insights indicates effective collaboration can increase quota attainment by up to 21 percent. Collaboration across multiple units is the way to consistently fill your pipeline with high-quality prospects, give them the information they need to understand why a purchase would be valuable, and set them up for sustained success.

This means leaders must work together to develop an integrated suite of metrics that are influenced by – and reliant on – one another. Representatives from all sectors need to work together from the first moment of customer awareness until after onboarding is completed to develop shared, value-added content, and deliver unified messaging throughout the process.