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When I discovered these two facts, I was shocked. 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up. 80% of sales require five follow-ups. In other words, 44% of salespeople aren't putting in 1/5 of the effort needed to close the deal. Too often we give up after one follow-up email, despite data proving that multiple follow-ups are required. Yet persistence is only one lesson that can be learned from the following 107 sales statistics. There are countless others to be revealed. Check out this SlideShare to sell smarter, stop wasting time on useless tasks, and start closing more deals in less time:...
Inbound marketing — it’s definitely grown in popularity as a marketing buzz word in the last 5 years. But inbound, content marketing is more than just a buzz word. It’s more than blog posts, checklists, eBooks, and landing pages. Maybe it should be called Inbound Smarketing. Because when “add value first” is your strategy from marketing to sales, you can take the principles of a traditional content marketing strategy and apply it to a 1-on-1 situation between a member of your sales team and a prospect. When both marketing AND sales go “value first” the results can be hard to argue with. Prospects Don’t Want To Hear About What Your Product Does If you’re selling an SaaS product, or are in charge of SaaS marketing, your prospects actually, probably don’t care about your product. They probably don’t care about your company. (Read Ben Horowitz’s blog, or The Hard Thing About Hard Things for a better explanation on why nobody cares about your company). Prospects and would-be customers are all busy trying to solve various problems of their own. Your focus should be on providing a solution to their problem. More specifically, a set of solutions for the problems specific to your unique customer personas. Prospects are only interested in your product because they perceive it can solve one of their problems. This is why starting a conversation with a prospect about your product will have you fighting an uphill battle, too often, too early in the sales process. Your prospect did not wake up hoping to hear about your scheduling and payment product feature. But they probably woke up thinking about how to reduce client cancellations and get paid up front when clients book a spot in their Saturday morning boot camp....
By now, every business knows it has to be smart in its online strategy. Gone are the vanity metrics of yesteryear, with numbers of downloads, visitors, and the like. Now it’s all about user engagement, customer loyalty, and business results.
This startup based in Singapore and India is using AI to automate a lot of what goes into generating sales leads and acting on them fast.
More and more sophisticated tools are coming into the market to help with tracking what’s actionable that really matters to the business. Conversion rate optimization, funnel analysis, real time heat maps, abandoned cart recovery, sales lead generation – there are tech tools for all that and more. The trouble is many businesses are just not equipped to derive insights from these tools or act on them. Small and medium businesses (SMBs) especially can’t afford to hire high caliber data scientists to make the best use of the tools for customer retention or sales closure.
That’s where Lucep comes in. This startup based in Singapore and India is using artificial intelligence (AI) to automate a lot of what goes into generating leads and then acting on them fast. Sales Gorilla is the name of its AI engine behind the Lucep app....
In a previous article, I shared the 5 Core Steps to Consultative Selling. The steps were: - building rapport,
- conducting a needs analysis,
- crafting a solution,
- proposing / selling the solution,
- and then servicing the account.
Today, let's look at each of those steps from a social selling perspective.
According to Forrester research, 74% of your sales process happens before a buyer calls you. These invisible sales stages, in which buyers initiate the selling process without calling on sales, gives them tremendous freedom to browse, learn, and compare without your influence. This customer-controlled, pre-selling environment has given rise to "social selling."
So how do we apply social selling to each of the 5 core steps?...
If you can improve your pricing page, you can make more sales. It’s that simple.In other places, I’ve explained some powerful tips that will make your pricing page absolutely irresistible. Here, I want to compile some of the industry’s best tips for optimizing your pricing page.Most of my experience with pricing pages is in the SaaS industry. Although most of the tips below deal with SaaS products, you can apply the information to other ecommerce sites as well....
Many people have found headlines that work wonders, consistently, time after time. And they go well beyond the saturated listicle or clickbait. Why not take so…
CTAs are critical for achieving any results online, because traffic, subscribers, and followers don’t do you any good until they become leads and eventually customers. That’s why calls-to-action can be used in more places than just your website. They should also be employed in your: blog social media email blasts pay-per-click campaigns guest articles anywhere else you publish or market online It takes practice to craft the perfect CTA for a given offer and page, but there are a few guidelines to keep in mind that can help you....
I've rescooped this article from fellow curator John Kratz because I thought it was so good. It is a great example of how a company ramped up business once it started sharing stories of its customers -- with customers as the heros. Take notes folks! And thanks John for finding and sharing this article. The year is 2008 and you are in the Financial Services Business. "How do you turn a quiet, sales-driven organization into a B2B marketing powerhouse?" "Consider the story of Lincoln Financial Group, a traditionally sales-centric organization... The 106-year-old financial services, insurance, and annuities company..." "Lincoln Financial had previously conducted research showing that the more people take charge of their lives, including their finances, the better they feel about the direction of their lives." "While others in the category seemed to be drawn to using fear in their advertising, we felt the time was right to try a new, more optimistic approach." "...the campaign showcased a video of women of all ages showing how they take charge of their lives and provided educational content to help women do just that. The PR focused on the research results. The Chief Life Officer ads continued the "take charge, optimistic theme," which was reinforced in social media. "And how has the integrated campaign done?" Read the success story here: http://www.fastcompany.com/3002425/creating-winning-b2b-integrated-marketing-campaign [Excellent case study ~ Jeff]
Via Ken Jondahl
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The Harvard Business Review reported cold calling is ineffective 90% of the time, and more recent research shows that less than 2% of cold calls actually result in a meeting. Assuming a 0.3% appointment-booking rate and a 20% win rate, it would take 6,264 cold calls to make just four sales. 15 Lead Generation Alternatives to Cold Calling What can the modern business do to protect its future and get new leads without cold calling? The good news is that it doesn’t involve a circus act or shameless begging of any sort. The bad news is that it requires a completely different way of thinking and some serious energy and hard work. Here are 15 alternatives to cold calling salespeople can use to generate leads....
“The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing.” - Joshua Harris Have you ever called a lead on a Tuesday morning and heard nothing, but tried that same lead two days later and they responded back almost immediately? That’s not luck -- there’s some science behind why this happened. According to research from James Oldroyd and InsideSales.com, effectively reaching out to prospects comes down to one thing: timing. For example, did you know 4-5 p.m. had a 164% better connection rate than 1-2 p.m.? Or that connection rates drop by 400% if you respond in 10 minutes instead of five? The following infographic reveals the best times and days to connect with respond to prospects. Science and data are starting to dominate sales. Are you keeping up?...
Deftly diffusing a potentially conversation-ending roadblock is one of the hardest parts of a salesperson's job. While specific sales objections vary significantly based on the specific product or service that's being offered, most can be grouped into larger categories: price, timing, disagreement among the stakeholders, etc. Wouldn't it be nice to have a strategy guide that could help you rebut these common doubts? The wise people at RAIN Group have heard your pleas. The infographic below lists 18 oft-invoked objections, along with suggestions on how a salesperson could overcome them. Forward this to your sales team, and fear the dreaded "but" no more....
Every decision your customer makes consists of many conscious and subconscious emotions. The key to success in any business is an understanding of psychology and human behaviour.
We all have the same basic mental triggers and needs that drive action. If we understand these psychological triggers, we can craft more effective marketing messages and increase sales.
Below is an introduction to 7 important psychological and emotional triggers that can increase your sales, backed up with examples and further reading....
Some might choose to tackle the Gen-Y demographic and wait on learning more about Gen Z, and others might just group these audiences together and figure they’re killing two marketing birds with one stone. But Deep Focus’ latest Cassandra Report, Gen Y and Gen Z want very different things from brands, and now that people who are a part of Gen Z are making independent purchasing decisions, that distinction is very important....
...Calling somebody cold.Out of the blue. No referral. No information. No relationship. No trust. No credibility. No rapport. No introduction. No qualification. Just cold.
Why would anybody with half a brain and bills to pay ever do that?
Then I read more of his article and found he made some pretty good points and I cooled down a bit....
Picture this. You meet someone new. "What do you do?" she asks."I'm an architect," you say."Oh, really?" she answers. "Have you designed any buildings I've seen?
In 2009, the duo embarked upon a curious experiment: They would purchase cheap trinkets, ask some of today’s most exciting creative writers to invent stories about them, then post the stories and the objects on eBay to see whether the invented story enhanced the value of the object. Which it did: What a great research project and article on the power of storytelling to increase profits! Here Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn demonstrate that when you can attach a compelling story to a product, its monetary value increases. That is good news for anyone using stories to sell products. I think it will work the same for selling services, too. Anyway, go read the story of this research and the results they experienced. I bet you'll get ideas for some stories you want to create for your products/services. This review was written by Karen Dietz for her curated content on business storytelling at www.scoop.it/t/just-story-it [A fascinating read for content producers, marketers and PR pros. Thanks to Karen Dietz for scooping it - JD]
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![107 Mind-Blowing Sales Statistics That Will Help You Sell Smarter [SlideShare] | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/q6eUjzK0qq7w93EtyWDhgzl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
![The Best Time to Call Prospects, Based on Data From 100,000 Calls [Data] | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/yhuIPF32t5WqfnU8bJrF1jl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
These selling statistics will permanently change the way you prospect, qualify, and close.