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Designed for Growth: Scale your recurring revenue with the new Teamgate SaaS CRM. Explore SaaS Features →

Book a demo today and save 50% off your first month, or 20% off your first year.

Get a free sales audit to uncover hidden revenue opportunities!

The modern buyer is so demanding that a special sales philosophy has been developed to respond to market’s expectations. Praised for its educational nuances, consultative selling has swiftly become the preferred sales methodology of high-growth startups and online businesses. Curious what got everyone so excited? Learn the 7 main principles of consultative selling to jump aboard this trend without any hiccups.

What is consultative selling?

Consultative selling is a sales approach that puts the focus on the buyer’s needs and experiences over the product a company is selling. Some salespeople go so far as to call it a sales philosophy for its unwavering commitment to developing a holistic understanding of the customer’s needs, providing value and finding a customized solution. While the traditional way of selling might often be disliked for its aggressive tone, consultative selling is all about asking the right questions and really drilling down into customers’ answers.

Consultative selling is also often called solution-based selling because of its strong focus on providing a tailor-fit solution. When used in combination with content marketing, this solution-driven sales approach can make a huge impact on the whole lead generation performance. By constantly engaging customers in a dialogue, sales teams can better understand the target market’s way of thinking, the main pain points, and expectations. If sales and marketing teams manage to bring their efforts together and use this intel to create high punching lead generation and nurturing campaigns, the results can be particularly exciting.

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Achieving a high Sales and Marketing alignment (SMarketing) is not the simplest of tasks, especially if both teams are using different tools. However, easy access to lead intelligence for Sales is crucial if they’re expected to adopt a consultative approach to selling. A robust CRM can unify Sales and Marketing teams by gathering all the essential information in one place, clearly defining each team’s responsibilities throughout the process and making the state of the pipeline more transparent and easier to understand. Let’s say your business uses a sales tool like Teamgate. Not only your teams get help at every stage of the sales process (we’re talking fully automated integrations, optimization hacks, and simplified processes), but they can better understand how and why leads convert and work side-by-side on future campaigns.

Consultative Selling Approach

Image Source: Picjumbo

Consultative selling vs. Product-based selling  

Whereas consultative selling puts the emphasis on what the prospect wants and needs, trying to cater to those specific cases, product-based selling pays little to no attention to the customer’s unique requirements concentrating on showcasing the product’s best features. Strong communication is essential in consultative selling where active listening makes up the basis of the methodology, while product-based selling draws on traditional sales techniques, such as features over benefits, to try and convert leads.

With the huge demand for personalized, tailored solutions and services, consultative selling is taking the central stage. To really benefit from this sales methodology, a company must follow these seven main principles.

#1 Research

Providing your customers with tailored solutions means you must know everything you can about their business and be able to anticipate any and all questions a customer may ask. If you’re gathering leads through inbound marketing campaigns, you will most likely have some helpful information like company size, email preferences or social media behaviors as well as know what content is trending among your customers and therefore, what issues they’re trying to solve.

#2 Pre-frame

Pre-framing is a sales technique that helps salespeople address buyer objections and concerns before they become a threat to a sale. Skilled salespeople use pre-framing to influence the outcome of a conversation or experience by letting buyers know exactly what is going to happen before it happens and what it is going to mean.

An example of this technique could be something like, “I realize this is slightly above your budget, but if I extended a 10% discount, would you consider the offer?”. What it does is gives salespeople the upper hand in negotiations by letting them keep the control and eliminate potential doubts and hesitations well before they take root.  

#3 Ask more questions (including Socratic questions)

Remember, the end goal of consultative selling is to offer the consumer a unique solution that addresses his pain points. Although it’s likely you’ll have some information about your leads before engaging in a conversation, it would be a huge mistake to assume you know everything that matters. Be prepared to ask a lot of open-ended questions (who, what, when, why, where, and how) that will allow you to dig to the bottom of their issues. Questions that start with words like Are, You, Do and Can lead to yes or no answers, which is not very helpful when you’re trying to build an understanding of who you’re dealing with.

Approach of Consultative Selling

Image Source: Unsplash

Socratic questions are also rather popular among salespeople dabbling with this sales approach. Socratic questions refer to five different types of questions developed by the great philosopher himself:

  • Questions for clarification: why do you say that? What exactly does this mean? How does this relate to our discussion? Etc.
  • Questions that probe assumptions: what could we assume instead? You seem to be assuming…? What would happen if…? Etc.
  • Questions that probe reasons and evidence: what do you think causes to happen…? Why? Why is that happening? What would be an example? Etc.
  • Questions about viewpoints and perspectives: another way of looking at this is…, does this seem reasonable? What alternative ways of looking at this are there? What if you compared … and …? Etc.
  • Questions that probe implications and consequences: what are you implying? Then what would happen? How does … affect …? Etc.
  • Questions about the question: what was the point of this question? Am I making sense? Why not? Etc.

#4 Let the customer speak

In sales, nothing beats great active listening skills. Letting your customers speak is probably the best advice you are going to get today. But don’t just let them jabber away — listen and document everything your leads tell you. It’s likely you’ll be able to use this information at some point during the negotiations or simply be able to inform your decisions better. Getting the customer to speak about their pain points or issues is not always easy. So if you manage to get the ball rolling, pay attention to their tone, pitch, and level of enthusiasm — this will help you read between the lines.

#5 Provide value and show expertise

One of the core features of consultative selling is providing value to the customer. As an expert in your industry, you must be prepared to answer and even consult on questions that are in no way related to your product or service. Building rapport and gaining customer trust is the only way to execute the consultative selling technique. To blow your customers’ minds, you need to find a way how to exceed their expectations. If you focus on helping the lead no matter what, you’ll quickly be able to form a positive image in their eyes and also show your expertise. If they trust you, they’ll buy from you and might even recommend your product to a friend.

Value and Expertise of Consultative Selling

Image Source: Picjumbo

#6 Qualify

We have talked about lead qualification as a great deal. Without lead qualification, businesses often end up working cold leads. It’s a huge waste of already scarce resources and time and should not happen in organizations that have some process in place.

A qualified lead has goals, challenges to overcome, a defined timeline, and budget. Although helping unqualified leads is part of consultative selling, you should focus your time and energy on identifying the most promising sales opportunities.  

#7 Use their language and close

A robust lead qualification process will ensure that the closing part is a relatively simple affair. If it’s done right, it should feel like a natural culmination for both you and the client. A top tip often shared by experienced salespeople is to try and use your potential customers’ language to prompt them to act sooner and elicit an emotional response. By the time you reach the closing point, you will know which buttons to press to get your leads to say yes.

P.s. don’t forget to work on your deal-closing line. Here’s one that’s trending right now: “You’re interested in X and Y features, right? If we get started today, you’ll be up and running by [date].”

Take action

Paired with some high-quality content, consultative selling approach has the potential to be hugely successful. As a repeatable, scaleable process, consultative selling enables salespeople to qualify leads faster, shorten the sales cycle and win more business.

The nature of B2B sales has experienced a seismic shift. And since the world has apparently moved on from the “Always be closing” mentality, some B2B businesses find themselves in a bit of a pickle, scrambling to adapt to the new buyer-seller relationship.

People don’t want to be pitched, qualified, or closed. They want to be helped.

The most successful salespeople these days are living by the “teaching is the new pitching” mantra. Having taken up a more consultative approach to selling, they’re using new tactics to win business and close deals.

A money-making B2B sales strategy is not a miracle. Use these eight practical steps to sharpen your selling prowess and level up your game.

Learn pre-framing

Pre-framing is one of the best-kept secrets of the sales world. Even if you haven’t heard of it, you have most likely experienced it at some point in your life. When successfully mastered, this technique puts salespeople in control, giving them full power to steer the sale the way they want it.

Wonder what this clever technique is all about? In essence, pre-framing is the act of directing someone’s focus in advance and influencing the results you want to get from a particular situation, interaction, experience, interview, and so on. Salespeople achieve that by letting their prospective clients know exactly what is going to happen before it happens and what it is going to mean.

We all know that sinking feeling of having to make a decision when we’re unsure and feel completely out of our comfort zone. The natural response in these types of situations is to step back and reject whatever is causing the feeling. For a salesperson, that’s a lost sale and a lot of disappointment. So to tackle buyer objections and eliminate potential doubts and hesitations in advance, salespeople invoke the pre-framing technique and deal with the challenges while they are either insignificant or non-existent. They set the scene on their terms, address common objections and create ways of pre-framing them to influence people in a positive way.

A simple example of pre-framing in sales can be something along the lines of, “I know you think this is too expensive, but if we could get you a discounted price, would you see yourself using a service like this?”  

What do good frames include? Most often they make situations more ‘human’ by embracing emotion, vision, and ownership. The goal is to make the context more engaging and relatable to make people care about what you’re selling.

You will be able to overcome client objections much easier when you learn how to pre-frame a sales call or meeting. The difference between winning and losing a deal will lie in the story you set up for your customers.

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Take advantage of weak ties when prospecting

The strength of your weak ties determines how far you can extend your network beyond your normal reach. In his paper on the strength of weak ties, Mark Granovetter refers to strong ties as your ‘friends’ and weak ties as your ‘acquaintances’. The easiest way to look at weak ties is to think about your ‘LinkedIn’ account. Are all of your connections on LinkedIn strong ties? Do you consider those people friends? Or are they colleagues with who you occasionally mingle? You will most likely find several sets of weak ties once you start inspecting your social media networks.

In sales, weak ties represent the opportunity to greatly expand your reach and increase the potential of finding new clients. And in B2B sales, in particular, connections mean a great deal when it comes to developing and maintaining relationships with clients and winning new deals. Sometimes a friend of a friend’ can be all it takes to land an important client or close a huge deal. Or at least get through the door to be able to pitch a new prospect.

Generally, the importance of strong ties increases as we progress in the sales process. At the prospecting stage, though, weak ties can prove to be of great value. They typically act as connectors to other social groups, opening new worlds of opportunity to hungry salespeople. If we only relied on strong ties, we’d always be simmering in the same juice – talking to the same people about the same stuff. In the social economy world that we live in today, weak ties are critical to getting access to important information early on, finding work, and winning new business.

So when prospecting, tap into your social networks to make those weak ties work for you – don’t be shy to ask for introductions or recommendations; only by extending your reach beyond the first ‘layer’ of friends can you generate new leads and discover new nuances of influence.

Polish your sales script

There are so many no-nos when it comes to writing a good sales script that I’m tempted to jump straight into listing the most common mistakes. A poor sales script would typically entail the following:

  • It’s sketchy about who you are and why you’re calling. The goal is to ‘get through rather than to have a proper conversation.
  • It’s a hideous monolog. Aim to ask lots of questions to connect with prospects early on and avoid talking to people.
  • It paraphrases what the prospect does instead of showcasing your knowledge of their pains and struggles. Focus on telling the prospects how you can help rather than what they do.

B2B Sales - Calling Scripts

Image Source: Pexels

A good sales script can be your best friend, but it can also be your worst enemy if you fail to write one that meets customer expectations. A successful script will always focus on confirming the next step – whether that’s setting up a face-to-face meeting, video call, or email follow-up, rather than pitching on the spot. To put your prospect at ease right from the start, make sure your script answers these questions truthfully:

  • Who are you?
  • Why are you calling?
  • How does the prospect benefit?
  • What are you asking for?

Although a little time-consuming, the best way to make sure you cover the most important points and touch on the prospect’s pain points is to write a personalized outline of what you want to say. Even if the conversation takes a different course, you will always have a clear plan in front of your eyes, keeping you focused on your main goal.

Take a few minutes before each call to research your prospect: their hobbies and interests, any mutual connections, issues and pain points, and so on. Imagine if you went to the same school or are huge fans of the same sports team – that could be a wonderful icebreaker.

Be prepared to face objections and know how to overcome them. One of the best formulas used by salespeople for this purpose is called the Best Friend Formula, which involves three steps:

  1. Relate: demonstrate your understanding.
  2. Bridge the gap: make it easy for them to move forward by offering new information.
  3. Ask again: cement their commitment.

This formula works perfectly if you’re facing objections like “we already work with your competitor”, “call back in x months, this is not a priority right now”, “email me with more information”, and “thanks, but we’re not interested”.    

Related: Stop Cold Calling. Work Your Inbound Leads Instead

Qualify leads

A study by HubSpot found that the best three lead sources for B2B companies are SEO (14%), email marketing, (13%), and social media (12%).

B2B Sales- Qualify

Image Source: HubSpot

However, before you put a lead generation process in place, take some time to think about and clearly define what a “good lead” means to you and your business. It’s best to set specific criteria that will help you identify and qualify leads for your business, as with the vast variety of terms being used to describe the same thing (prospect, lead, suspect, opportunity, etc.), sales and marketing teams often struggle to communicate effectively. Agree on what criteria a lead needs to meet to qualify and stick to that throughout the entire process.

That lead qualification is a vital part of B2B sales confirms these self-explanatory statistics:

Without a robust lead qualification process, B2B businesses would waste most of their time chasing people who are not ready to buy. It’s not only a huge waste of time, money and resources but could also be incredibly demotivating.

BANT is a simple but effective set of questions used by salespeople to qualify leads and move deals forward:

  • What is your Budget?
  • Who has the Authority to make the decision?
  • Do you have a Need for this solution?
  • What’s your implementation Timeline?

It’s also highly recommended to establish a lead scoring system and continue grading the leads until they convert. This way your sales team can focus on the most promising leads and hopefully, close more deals.

Close

A study by CEB showed that an average B2B buyer is 57% through the buying decision before engaging with a salesperson. That’s a massive change since the days when buyers used to rely thoroughly on the information and help from sales reps needed to make a decision. To be relevant and useful in the newly established buying processed, salespeople must find a way how to provide more value and assist customers during their journey.

B2B Sales - Close

Image source: Pexels

That’s why HubSpot insist that BANT isn’t good enough and have therefore given it an upgrade. GPCTBA/C&I is a process HubSpot have developed internally to be used during an exploratory call. Here’s a breakdown of this three-part framework.

  • GPCT (Goals, Plans, Challenges, Timeline). The first opportunity for a sales rep to establish herself as an advisor is at the Goals stage. Ask about their and the company’s goals, priorities for the year and revenue objectives. You want to identify quantifiable goals that your prospect needs to reach and provide help if the goals need resetting or quantifying. The next stage is Plans where you should start assessing the prospect’s plan for hitting their goals and their chances of implementing it. The Challenges stage is where the sales rep should try to seize the day and figure out what keeps the prospects from reaching their goal. This is when you can determine whether your product or service is the right solution for the prospect. Timeline is obviously focused on figuring out timing and determining whether it is the right time to offer your solution.
  • BA (Budget & Authority). Once you finish qualifying the lead using the GPCT approach, it’s time to start talking about how the prospects will make the decision and what budget the money will come out of. Budget is the critical part where you learn what your prospect’s financial capabilities are and whether you’ll be able to offer a solution. Then move on to establishing the decision maker and go through GPCT with them if it’s a different person.
  • C&I (Negative Consequences and Positive Implications). The last stage will focus on establishing your value proposition. Find out what will happen when your prospects reach or don’t reach their goals and how your product can be of value to them.

Use S.M.A.R.T. goals

SMART is a framework developed to help people set goals and objectives more efficiently. It can be highly effective because it keeps everyone focused and on the same page. A SMART goal stands for:

Specific – use clear language to communicate what is expected, why it is important, who is involved and where it is going to happen;

Measurable – the criteria for measuring the progress and reaching your goal should be clearly defined;

Attainable – your goal should be realistic;

Relevant – your goal should matter to your business;

Timely – you should have a clear deadline for reaching your goal.

SMART goal setting is a surefire way to concentrate your efforts on tasks and projects that aid in achieving what you planned. It’s also a great way to identify and work on your weaknesses.

Master your chosen CRM software

Teamgate CRM

Image source: Teamgate

The B2B sales funnel is a much more complex beast than it might seem at first. The metaphor somehow implies that leads continuously trickle into the funnel and, at some point, eventually emerge as customers. In reality, prospects can get stuck at any stage or drop out altogether never even reaching the purchase stage. For B2B companies it’s often tricky to untangle this all-mysterious funnel and see where their prospects are, how they got there and why. This is where CRM comes in to save the day.

CRM systems help B2B businesses track opportunities through every step of the funnel and replace the guesswork with easily observable and measurable sales processes. By adopting and mastering a CRM software of your choice, you will know exactly how, when and why your prospects travel through the sales funnel and what you need to do to help them progress to the final stage. More visibility over leads and pipeline will keep your sales team up-to-date and in check and more reliable data and reporting will help you figure out which metrics make a difference to your bottom line. The bonus is less admin and increased efficiency (once you reach the CRM master level and actually know what you’re doing). 

Track your ROI and iterate

When you implement a CRM software, lead tracking will be an easy thing to do. This will not only tell you where the leads are coming from, but will help increase sales by directing sales reps to customer segments that are most profitable. Once you have a clear idea of what generates the best ROI, you can focus your efforts on the best performing channels as well as add new ones to the mix.  

Different segments of your customer base will require a different approach, so don’t settle on one-size-fits-all solution. Ensure you’re closely following the buyer journey and catering to customer needs.  

Conclusion

Although we think that more information makes the buying experience easier and motivates the customer to follow through on their purchase intentions, a CEB research shows that customers are deeply stressed, uncertain and paralyzed by the sheer amount of information. To avoid overwhelming your customers with needless decisions, aim to simplify your buying process using a prescriptive approach.

The same CEB study found that ‘a proactive, prescriptive approach increases purchase ease by 86%.’ A prescriptive approach requires businesses to give clear recommendations backed by a specific rationale, present a concise selection of options, and explain the complex parts of the sales process meticulously. Purchase ease is by far the biggest driver of deal quality, with customers perceiving prescriptive salespeople as being more helpful and  keeping ahead of everyone else.

Satisfying customers’ every request for information doesn’t make buying easier. On the contrary, it can quickly get too overwhelming. By mastering pre-framing and taking advantage of your weak ties network, you can also eliminate some obstacles and reduce the buying tension. In this article, we have covered eight practical steps you can take to calibrate your B2B sales approach to achieve profitable, long-term outcomes. Stay tuned for more new age sales advice coming soon!

Usain Bolt, the 30-year-old Jamaican sprinter, is regarded as being the fastest man on the planet. He is an eight-time Olympic gold medalist as well as holding the world’s 100m record. According to him, there is a simple rule when you run a distance – the faster you run, the faster you reach the finish line. Being an entrepreneur or a sales representative means that you too will always be part of a competition. As experienced business consultants and sports lovers, we can see the parallels between the experience of running a distance and running a business.

As soon as you stand in the same starting line with your competitors, your secret to success can be an absolutely unique service, a niche market, a commitment to hard work, the best team available, or a well-organized sales process. But when Usain Bolt has been asked about how to be the world’s fastest human, he simply replied: “I don’t want to be the second best”. So, if you have already made the decision to run a business, your choice is clear – you have to be the first one.

How Not to be Second in Sales - Finish Line

Speed up your sales process to be the first one

Time plays an equally important role in both cases: whether running a distance or running a business. A business sales process means specific, step-by-step actions are made in order to close a deal; too-long sales cycles prevent you from making those sales. Unfortunately, there are no precise rules, no clear diagrams or methodologies as to how exactly you should be doing things. However, there are three TOP negative factors (or we would rather say – mistakes) which may delay the closing process:

  1. Poor follow-up

One of the most frequent mistakes sales reps make is poor planning and lack of initiative. At first, sales reps usually think about their own sales steps instead of prospects. It means that the sales team cannot control what is going on with a prospect after their sales steps have been carried out.

Let’s take a typical sales step within a Sales Pipeline named “Commercial offer”. The most common mistake made by sales reps is to send an offer to a client and then do nothing; still expecting to receive a positive response/feedback sometime later. Unfortunately, on the basis of various studies, clients do not read an offer 10+ times in order to make a final decision. In this case, the sales reps loses the advantage of speed as well as the chance to be the first one across the line and sell. Meanwhile, it’s possible that your prospect is dealing with your competitor.

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  1. Delayed evaluation

Each step of the whole sales cycle should be measured by time in order to immediately improve it. Just try to remember how time-consuming the qualification and closing stages are. In order to run faster, sales reps should determine the length of time spent on each stage of a sales process. Furthermore, only these steps which sales reps are able to measure by time should be set in your Sales Pipeline.

  1. Pending deals

Indeed, according to experts, the majority of a sales reps’ time each day is spent on hardly-closed deals. It means that these deals are suspended, or marked as pending, with many explanation tags within your Sales Pipeline. However, if you do not want to be second best again, get rid of it! Your sales reps should start to follow the approach “No more pending deals in my Sales Pipeline!” by focusing on the end results, and enabled-to-close deals.

Empower your CRM software to be the first one

Client relationship management system (CRM) has proven very effective for many sales actions, but it is not enough to simply have it. No doubt – it is an advantage. But if sales reps spend too much time receiving lower-than-expected results, it is time to seriously reconsider your sales process management tool. The robust sales software solution is like your running shoes. You should feel comfortable by using it and the most important – it should help you to win! So, try to count how long it takes for your sales reps to answer the following questions:

  • How long does the opportunity stay in this step?
  • When the opportunity has been moved into this step and how long does it take in the previous one?
  • Which opportunity hasn’t been moved to the next stage today/this week/this month?
  • How long does it take to close an opportunity? Does it fit into your sales cycle timing?
  • What are the bottlenecks of your spent time?
  • What kinds of deals are pending by needing quick attention?

If it takes just a few minutes to understand and answer these questions, it means you are already further on in the sales race compared to your competitors. Though it will take some time you probably need to spend more time in order to reconsider your current sales tools. To achieve best-in-class productivity, sales reps have to realise the need for a really easy to use and understandable Sales CRM tool.

Old Sales Pipeline

Follow the best examples to be the first one

Here at Teamgate, over the last few years, we have had a normal practice to prepare the various sales reports for the sales team, managers, board, investors, etc. As all of these reports are automated, it is easy to show the goals reached, the forecasts, the status of lead qualification, the sales funnels, the sales activities and even more differing insights needed on a daily basis. However, we had one continuing issue which couldn’t be solved during this time. Therefore, we tried to solve this by handling the situation manually and because of this lost much valuable time. Finally, we decided to set a TOP KPI on purpose to make our sales cycle significantly shorter.

During this time our sales reps had been trying to report to the sales director with the status of opportunities, explaining every situation and so on. Believe us – when you are doing this on a daily basis it is a tiresome and time-consuming process. Finally, we came up with a simple idea to show in detail, each opportunity and its movement in a real-time perspective. Since that time we have started to focus more closely on the opportunities at hand.

New Sales Movement Pipeline View

With this absolutely simple decision, we have made our sales cycle twice as fast and all within a couple of weeks. Finally, we started to focus on the minutes instead of days or even weeks.

How to Stop Being the Second in Sales - Photo Finish

Related: 7 CRM Best Practices for 2017

Be the first one who crosses the finish line

To be number one in sales depends on many factors, but you can start by following these prescribed tips:

  • Set up your Sales Pipeline in the way which your prospects would buy.
  • Make sure you are able to measure the time for each of your sales steps. Don’t forget to set the time duration for each step!
  • As your Sales Pipeline should be clear and clean, try to avoid pending deals.
  • Review the movement of your Sales Pipeline. Install a TV screen on your wall with live streaming – it really helps!
  • Split your products or services into different Sales Pipelines.
  • Don’t forget to set goals for win conversion and try to beat 9 out of 9 records!

A free personal presentation: Learn how to win 9 out of 9 deals

Join Teamgate CRM Senior Sales Manager Amber Gintare for a free personal presentation and learn the best practices on how to improve your sales process and close more deals, faster.

“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated” – William James.

Are you looking for new leads or working on retaining current customers? Of course, you are. Customers are such an important part of any business that a big amount of time and money are spent on them. And don’t waste time and money when you get new customers, just to forget about them after they’ve bought your product or service. Keep them interested and loyal to you. Let’s learn how.

In order to generate more leads and, ultimately, convert them to more sales, you should build strong trust and loyalty, both of which are very important.

Build A Strong Company Culture

Let’s take a look at a natural leader, Genghis Khan, and see what we can learn from him. He advocated loyalty to the group first and foremost. This focus on his people’s well-being is what made them so strong as a clan. As it is in business, you should do the same. Focus on the people you work with first and they in turn will treat customers differently. In psychology, it’s called the trickledown effect.

But how do you do this? One way is to give appreciation where it is deserved. As people, one of our most important needs is to feel appreciated. Let an employee know he’s doing a good job. Encourage an atmosphere of positivity and growth instead of one of stagnation. Compliment someone based on their merit and you will have built a strong bond between you and them.

Empathize With Your Customers

Think about your customers first. Think about their needs and wants. In one of my sales jobs, I had attended a company meeting to discuss sales and strategies. One of the most important points I learned was about buyer archetypes.

Given the different variety of customers who walk in to your store, it is important to filter out who will be the most likely to buy and who won’t. The way to do this is to group customers by certain traits, and these traits would be our way of approaching them.

It’s easy to dismiss this when it’s widely taught, but it’s very important because this acts as a cheat sheet to know what the customer wants and their way of thinking. Letting the customer know that you understand them and their priorities is what builds a relationship with the customer. In turn, it builds loyalty and retention. Ultimately, this leads to sales conversion.

business-1370984_1920 (1)

Related: Proven Ways to Utilize LinkedIn to Generate New Sales Leads

Don’t Hold Back The Truth

When you have to tell a customer something unfortunate, tell them. If you do, they will know you’re being honest with them, because who wants to be the bearer of bad news? If you don’t, you run the risk of them finding out later and that leaves a very bad impression.

Another point about telling people the whole truth is they will see you as someone who is looking out for them. Even if they don’t like what they hear, they will feel good knowing you’re not hiding anything from them. This ties back to feeling appreciated, mentioned above.

Always Go The Extra Mile

This applies to everything. Listen to the customer when you’re talking with them. Take down notes on each customer so the interaction becomes personalized. Ask for and say their name once or twice. Ask questions about the customer and try to teach them something new. Give them something of quality whether it is content or product. A good example is to give insight about your competitors or peers. You’ll be seen as an expert in your field and someone everybody can go to for advice.

These things add up, and even if the customer doesn’t know it, they’ll come to trust you. 

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Relationships Are More Important Than The Sale

Remember, relationships come first and then the sale. Always build the bond between you and the customer. Do this by following up with them over the phone or email. Another way can be mentioning something that was previously brought up in conversation. Like I’ve mentioned before, all these details add up.

This does two things:

  1. It allows the customer to feel important. The more important they feel, the higher they’ll hold you in similar regard.
  2. It builds repetitiveness in their mind each time you connect with them. Repetition allows you to stay on their mind. The customer will likely remember you after you’ve chatted with them on an ongoing basis.

Do this at least two or three times. How do you know when you’ve built a trusted relationship? A good indicator is when they ask you for advice on their problems. But when you have this trust, be very careful not to break it.

When broken, it is extremely difficult to get back.

Conclusion

You must start from within and build a sense of community focused on loyalty and wellness. Then you can focus on your customers and getting to understand them. Next, you be honest with customers and never hide details from them. At the same time, you do what you can to go above and beyond! Lastly, follow up! Let them know you value the relationship between you and them more than the sale. Do this and you will see your customer base and sales increase!

You cannot run a business without the customers, and the customers do not just fall from the trees. Being in a startup business means that you have to establish the team relations as well as customer relations; therefore, to achieve that how can one not use a sales stack? You can never leave sales stack in a startup as an option for later. Various startup founders have deduced that the most important asset that one can have while starting a business is the contacts. No matter what business you are in, what you are starting, success and losses will come and go, but the relation that you have with your contacts that can last for eternity. Whether your business is the kind that is focused on customers or the kind that is focused on products, both require a sales stack.

Every startup has the opportunity to benefit from a sales stack. This is not only for the purpose of making sales or for the support teams, but a sale stack can help in impacting everyone working on a team through the customer relationships. As to why sales stack is important and should never be left as optional, the reasons are given below.

1. To Restructure the Sales Process

A sales process is very important and can impact business in various manners. A system that is accessible for leading the contacts and following up with them, and to bring in the new clients, such a system or process is what makes or breaks a startup. When you streamline your sales process, you get the benefit of coming off as professionals and also help in reducing the instances where lead is dropped.

This is where sales stacks can play an important role. The question is how? The answer: by spending time on meeting new prospect and connections, a sales stack can help you in keeping up with the people you are in contact with each day. With a sales stack, you can keep track of the progress of the prospective leads and follow up on them regularly. A sales stack surely helps in smoothing out the path towards bringing the client onboard.

With a sales stack, a flawless sales process is developed and deployed.

Related: Better Robots, Better Sales: Revolutionizing CRM Software with the Power of AI

2. Luminous Customer Service

Your sales reps require a sales stack almost on a regular basis. With the CRM, the sales reps can access the previous interaction with the client that enables them to help the client efficiently without having to ask too many questions.

With a CRM, the sales reps can:

  • Get the related information about the contact and their account details;
  • The details about the purchases that a customer made in the past;
  • The details about different sales rep dealing with the client in the past;
  • The progress and status of the project being worked on for the client

With an amazing customer service, you can go miles. Being a startup business, it is easy to create good and efficient customer service with CRM as there aren’t too many clients. The impact you can make at this stage is important and will make you prosper in your business.

3. Automation of the Marketing Efforts

Usually, people are unaware of the association that a sale stack has with the marketing; as they believe it is only for sales. However, a good CRM will incorporate both these factors. With the sales stack, you can determine where you are getting the leads from and where you are headed to. Sales and marketing are the two prospects that should be closely linked to a startup business, and sales stack is the best way to achieve both.

Related: Networking and Capturing of New Leads with CRM 

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4. Customer Oriented

As a startup, the teams working should be involved with both sales and marketing. The teams should always be on the move for collaboration, and with CRM that is mobile enabled, can play a crucial role. The philosophy of the transparency and collaboration is what works best for a startup. With teams knowing where the prospect is coming from, what he is after, the knowledge about certain to all the members will lead to next to no information gap.

5. Saves Customer Data for the Future

With a sales stack or a CRM, you can think of the leads as a company’s property and not an individual’s property. Following this, it means that if a client goes towards a different opportunity, you will still have the contacts of that prospective client for future sales or referencing. In a startup, contacts are crucial, no matter if they are no longer with us they can prove to be beneficial in the long run.

More importantly, as a growing company, you might get new recruits, with a sales stack or CRM, the information of the clients or customers is immediately available to those new hires. Since everyone has to be up to date with the customers, CRM helps in achieving that.

To conclude, sales stack really is a non-optional thing for the startups. As a startup, you really can’t get too far without a sales stack or a CRM at your disposal. It is most important for a startup to acquire a sales stack as soon as possible and build up the business as you go.

No matter what type of business you are running you have to be sure that you are properly stocking the business with items & features that the customers want. For example if you are running a store that sells tools you must be sure that the customers you attract find the tools that they need.

You must have a selection of various brands for the customer to choose from when in your store. Even if you as the business owner think that you are providing the best products that are available to the public, you might be working on a bias or you are not aware of other tools that may be better than what you are currently selling.

Analyze the Demand for Different Tools or Features

The first and maybe most important thing that you must do is familiarizing yourself with the trade area and market that you are running your business. You do not want to be a person who sells services or tools if you have little or no knowledge of the subject. Once you are familiar with the trade you can then begin deciding which products and features will be available in your store or platform and you can back up your decisions with data and solid analysis.

It is important to know what are the most desired tools in the area and you should know which brands of tools or features are the most reliable to sell to your customers. If you do not do this research and you choose unreliable or cheap tools to sell, many customers will avoid your business because they know that the items you sell are not reliable.

It is important that you won’t spend too much on inventory but you also should not want to spend too little. You should balance your inventory with your sales and must be able to determine which tools and services are both in high demand and are reliable.

Keep Up with Newly Released Products and Features

In addition to you initial research for your inventory; you must continuously do your research and learn about different tools or functions that are being released to the public. Many customers want what is new and trendy. If you provide your customers with these options they will continue to visit your business because they know you are constantly updating and upgrading your products or services.

This does not necessarily mean that you must cease purchasing items from your old inventory and only stick with the new but it shows that you are actively involved in your business. If you are constantly upgrading your inventory and taking away the popular items from your old inventory the customers that do not wish to own the trending tools will go elsewhere.

Trending-teamgate (1)

When collecting your data and having solid analysis of the tools or features that are keeping your business alive you will easily be able to decipher which items to keep and which ones should stay.

You want your business to be diverse; however remain in the same trade and strategy as where you began. If you begin to add different items that are out of that specific trade you will likely lose customers because your product selection will begin to decrease.

If you want to expand your business you can most definitely do so. When doing this it should be an experimental process. This means that you should implementing new features or few new items for inventory slowly. Do not ever try to change your regular features or items with new ones. Use the few new experimental tools to determine whether or not the item will add value to your business.

Related: GetRank Research & Key trends for 2016

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Break Away from the Competition

When you know what other businesses offer to their customers try to think of creative ways to provide your customers with a different experience than all of the “other guys.”

You do not want your business to be categorized along with the other companies that sell tools or software products.  You want to be the business that has the trending new tools, the reliable tools and the tools that customers may not be able to find anywhere else.

Here you must do research and see what you can do with your business to increase revenue and keep your customers coming back time and time again. In addition you could even offer different perks to your customers. Things such as offering coupons to members that sign up for business newsletters or reward points of some type. The “other guys” may not have these options and the more you put into your business the more you will benefit from your work.

It is important to know what the customers are looking for when shopping around for tools or choosing new sales software. The customers know what they want and the customers are the ones that dictate what you should have in your inventory or software.

Your business is only as strong as your customers and their dedication to your business. If you provide them with what they want – when they want your business to grow and expand.

Related: Interactive Graphic Shows the Best Days of the Week for International Customer Sign-ups

When you first learn to drive a car, the first thing to do is to watch someone else. Only then can you be sure of yourself when it comes time to get behind the wheel. CRM is the same. We can learn what we need to get started by simply observing. We have take a look at three major case studies, published this year, and extracted what we think could benefit you the most. Here’s what we found, from a hotel chain, a bank, and retail outlets across the globe. What you will learn can be applied to any industry.

UK Chain Hotel Reveals the Impact of Organizational Culture on CRM

The Department of Marketing, Innovation, Leisure and Enterprise at the University of Wolverhampton administered a survey of 346 managers from a hotel chain in the UK to find the impact of organizational culture on implementing CRM in the hotel industry. What they found was that adaptability, consistency, staff involvement, and mission play a significantly positive role on the implementation of CRM. Success, although it correlates strongly with each of the above factors, does not depend on all of them. This is useful for every strategist.

Here’s how you can apply the findings to your planning:

  • Adaptability – All CRM strategies should include room for growth and transformation. When you can, write and create a calendar for analysis and changes directly into your plan. This ensures that you have a flexible plan that will evolve with your consumers and your brand.
  • Consistency – Across all platforms, your tactics should be consistent. This means that the sales team, customer service, and anyone else who will be in communication with customers (even offline), should have the same methods of resolving issues and helping people. By making sure that you brief everyone in your organization of your service guidelines, you create consistency across the board.
  • Staff Involvement – Who better to help create a CRM plan than the staff that is regularly in communication with clients and customers? When you are ready to start strategizing, involve everyone in your collaboration. If you have a large organization, it can be a good idea to create a survey asking pertinent questions about how to approach topics. Include a place in the survey for additional suggestions, as you never know what you could be overlooking. Not only will you be able to cover all of your bases, but your staff will be happy to feel involved.
  • Mission – When setting your CRM mission, keep in mind company goals as well as smaller “department level” sales goals. When an objective is present, you can measure success and make changes to a plan as needed.

If you’re able to implement at least one of the actions above, you know that you are on the right track. If you can integrate all of them, you are on your way to superstar growth. Your company will reap great benefits.

Can You Render Better Services to Customers by Reaching Out Like This Bank?

SBI is the largest bank in India. They are applying CRM technology to bring banks and customers together into immediate and close relationships. A case study conducted by Rayalaseema University and ICBM, shows that the SBI treats their customer relations as more than technology, and more of an attitude and concentrated behavior. By reaching out to all bank members and other consumers, not just those with the most return on investment, this bank has seen large, measurable growth in their income as well as membership numbers. They used the word “democracy” to describe their set of tactics.

You can follow their lead by making sure that your strategy includes and is influenced by all consumers – both hot and cold leads, those who have purchased your products and services as well as those who haven’t yet. Facilitating a unified relationship between members of an organization and consumers one of the most highly beneficial assets that technology can bring. In this way, your CRM tactics will enhance your brand image and make your company approachable and enjoyable to be a part of.

teamgate-india-bank (1) (1) (1)

This is How to Use CRM to Boost Sales, According to Retail Outlet Data

The Department. of Management Studies, Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering & Technology took a look at selected organized retail outlets in order to comprehend multiple facets of the CRM frameworks utilized. They found that many of the companies were not leaving their customers with the level of satisfaction that they expected (You didn’t expect that, did you?). These particular stores were not utilizing their technology to it’s full advantage. So, the study included a list of suggestions, based on the information that they had gathered from the outlets.

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The suggestions included items such as responding quickly to clients’ grumblings and maintaining adequate information on hand about available inventory. Here’s what you can learn from this: Don’t wait for a specialist to analyze your customer data. With modern technology, you have access to complaints at your fingertips. Keep an eye on your customer data in your analytics dashboard and take note of any and all issues that arise. If a hurdle or dissatisfaction comes up more than once, that is an indicator that it’s time for you to implement changes in the way you approach the relationships your have with your customers.

Related: 4 Ways CRM Makes Small Business Employees More Productive and An Extensive Sales Stack for Current Business

In Conclusion

The fact that you have access CRM technology is not an isolated indicator that you are going to have improve relationships with your customers and target market; you must leverage the tools in a strategic way. Use CRM platforms in a way that shows what you’re learning from the successes and mistakes of yourself and others. Start applying what you’ve learned today for increased sales success. 

Related: 6 Sure and Simple Ways to Internationalize Your Business

Remember when developers started to be called “Hackers”? Or how many marketers now call themselves “Growth Hackers”?

No one will blame you if you believe Customer Success is just a rebranding of Customer Support or Account Management.

chart crm

A Google Trends search of the phrase “Customer Success” shows how the phrase quickly rose to popularity in the past 2 years. in 2014 alone, “the number of Customer Success job listings on Linkedin has increased by 300%” according to Gainsight research. So what’s going on exactly?

What we are witnessing is the SaaS industry’s impact on the sales and delivery models of products.  Welcome to the “Subscription Economy”.

Traditionally, businesses derived most of their revenue from one-time purchases or long-term contracts. But now, with cloud advancements, the rise of Software As A Service, and a bustling B2B economy, the sales model has shifted to renewal sales in the form of pay-as-you-go and subscription plans.

Delivery-wise, businesses can now quickly deploy a Minimum Viable Product and acquire customers as they test and improve the product. The data gathered from customers’ interactions with the product (surveys, support tickets, etc.) is key to how every business evolves.

Customer Success is the SaaS answer to some of the challenges that the subscription model presents. Can non-SaaS businesses benefit from Customer Success strategies as well? Before we answer the question, we need to define Customer Success.

Related: Customer Success Strategies for Non-SaaS Businesses

When most people think of the average Customer Support experience, something like this comes to mind:

service (2)

Well, a bad experience at least.  Whereas we tend to think of account managers as usually distant people whose only care is to close deals or satisfy high-profile clients

 

As opposed to Customer Support and Account Management, Customer Success is a proactive approach to customer relationship management. Instead of waiting to respond to customer problems—in the case of customer support, or waiting to solve client’s conflicts—as account managers do, customer success is about anticipating the customer’s current and future needs.

Lincoln Murphy, SaaS expert, of sixteenventures.com defines Customer Success as:

“Customer Success is when your customers achieve their Desired Outcome through their interactions with your company.”

By making sure that customers reach whatever outcome they desire from your products or services, you:

  • Lower Churn.

Churn-Rate-Calculator-Kompyte

  • Increase Upsells.

upsell

  • Increase Customer Retention.
  • Increase Customer advocacy.

Since most of the revenue in the SaaS model flows in after the sale, a customer success department has to ensure the following:

  • Customers are successfully in implementing the product.
  • Customers understand how to use the product.
  • Customers receive excellent support.
  • Customers are engaged to share their feedback.
  • Customers are interested in the continued use of the product.
  • Customers are interested in acquiring new product features.

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Depending on the product or service that your business offers, your customer success manager might have to focus on some responsibilities more than others.  In fact, the agility of your processes will prove invaluable in making the customer success role effective. Customer success teams can actually generate as much more or more revenue than sales teams over the life of a customer.

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If the churn rates at the onboarding stage (Trial-to-Paid customers conversion for example) prove problematic, an agile customer success department should adjust its focus accordingly instead of sticking to one-size-fits-all approaches.

Is it relevant for non-SaaS businesses?

Your service/product does not need to be on the cloud for you to incorporate Customer Success into your business. Non-SaaS B2B companies, gyms, art workshops, and other businesses can benefit from customer success processes as well.

In the subscription model, the need to keep customers successful and happy throughout every single interaction with the company is urgent. In addition, there is a high focus on using customer data to implement key metrics in order to improve the product and customer experience. How does this translate for non-SaaS?

Customer Success, after all, remains about knowing your customers (segmentation article) and earning their trust.

Would you like to know your Customers better? Start your Teamgate Free Trial today!