Selling is hard. It requires proactive research, laser-focused messaging, and genuine relationship building. When a process ends up working, it often becomes entrenched and difficult to change.
But, technology and buyer behavior mean that sellers have to change more often than they like. 6sense research has found that 70% of the buying journey is complete before a buyer engages with you; if your sales team isn’t oriented to that reality, then they’re working from an out-of-date playbook.
Traditional sales techniques include:
- Working an account list based on imprecise factors (brand recognition, company size, etc.)
- Limited personalization of outreach (e.g., using a prospect’s first name and some facts from their LinkedIn profile).
- Pushing back against objections in the hope the seller can power through to a deal.
- Doggedly working leads. Perseverance and persistence are great traits, but if a seller is hearing “no” too much they might suffer burnout.
The bad news? Change is hard to implement.
The good news? New technologies and processes are available that make change easier, cheaper, and more effective.
Time to Change: How You Prospect and Prioritize
The way buyers buy has changed. Not only do they complete nearly 70% of their purchasing decision by the time they engage with you, but they make key decisions that largely determine whether you will win or lose before they talk to you. Old school sales tactics might have you wait for the buyer to say they’re ready, and that will be too late.
But here’s the tricky part: According to 6sense Research, buyers won’t talk to sales until they’re ready. You can reach out early, but you’ll be ignored.
The keys to winning more deals are understanding which accounts are in-market, maximizing your influence within the buying group during their research phase, and knowing when to reach out.
What’s needed to effect this change? Intent data and predictive analytics.
Even though buyers aren’t raising their hand, they’re still doing their due diligence. Buyers are:
- Searching keywords about their pain points
- Reading content on your website (that’s not gated – if it’s hidden behind a form, most won’t see it)
- Comparing products and services on third-party review sites
- Engaging with content related to their needs on social media
All of those activities are a gold mine for sellers. They reveal which accounts are actively searching for the products they sell and what features/topics interest them the most. But, without the right technology, that intelligence is lost.
6sense helps your sales teams prospect and prioritize their outreach by:
- Capturing critical intent data from key accounts
- Surfacing the accounts that are most likely ready to hear from you and engage with sales
- Providing easy access to contact info for critical stakeholders across any organization
- Helping you work with your marketing team to target specific messages to accounts based on their interests, progressing them toward becoming a sales opportunity
With 6sense, sellers can easily find out what accounts are in-market and ready to hear from them, reducing useless prospecting and increasing engagement.
Time to Change: How You Use Outbound Email
How do you deliver truly personalized engagement to hundreds or thousands of contacts without relying on generic mass-send templates? Traditionally, it’s been impossible. You only have so many hours in the day, and you can’t spend them hand-crafting bespoke emails to your entire contact list.
Instead of simply inserting a prospect’s first name into an email template, an AI email assistant like 6sense’s Conversational Email can:
- Generate personalized emails based on seller prompts.
- Deliver these emails to all your critical buyers, full of relevant, personalized messaging based on actual buyer behavior.
- Handle tedious lead follow-ups to attendees of tradeshows and webinars, still delivering a personalized message.
- Respond to replies and loop in humans when prospects are ready to meet.
- Keep cold leads warm with always-on campaigns that deliver relevant messaging no matter the buying stage.
An AI email assistant takes a huge workload off sellers and creates more sales opportunities by delivering prospects better personalization, more engagement, and faster responses. It frees sellers to focus on progressing deals without worrying that their pipeline will dry up.
Conclusion
Change is hard, but it’s a lot easier when the new technology and processes being brought in make sellers’ lives easier by:
- Reducing manual tasks,
- Increasing initial meetings, and
- Providing the intel to make deals easier to close
Interested in seeing how 6sense can make your sales teams receptive to change? See a demo here.
