The market is evolving faster than ever, and the beginning of the new year is the perfect time to research new trends and strategies that can improve your sales in the next year. The first step you need to take in the new year is to analyze your data and performance from the last year to determine where there is room for improvement. This will help you set some new goals for 2020 and be in tune with what your reps need. 

Here are some strategies that can help you boost sales in the new year:

1. Make sure Sales and Marketing are Collaborating

These two tend to stay separated, but it would be really helpful for both parties if the sales team sat in on some content brainstorming sessions in the new year. Who knows potential clients better than the sales people having conversations with them every day? 

If sales reps inform the marketing team on typical questions and conversations they’re having with prospects, this will help them come up with inbound marketing content that brings educated, qualified leads to the pipeline. 

2. Incorporate New Marketing Strategies

Each year, there are new marketing trends and strategies that can improve your ability to grab your prospects’ attention and communicate value. Social media marketing and integrated 1-1 video are two to keep your focus on.

Social media

There are always new trends in social media, so it’s important to stay up to date on what people are doing and what the best practices are. We’ve had a lot of success using LinkedIn in our marketing strategy in the last year. Sending a personalized message sequence to specific connections in SalesNav have significantly boosted our conversations with key prospects. 

Personalized Video

According to IMPACT, here are some benefits of using personalized video:

• When you use video for prospecting, prospects are more likely to engage.
• When you use video for introductions and confirming sales appointment calls, prospects are less likely to stand you up and feel more connection with you and your brand.
• When you use video to send personalized recaps and walkthroughs of discovery conversations, you further that connection and stand out from other competitors they may be talking to.
• When you use video to introduce and follow up on proposals, you reduce friction, create more of a dialogue, and significantly increase the likelihood that a deal will close.
• And when you use video to hand-off a new client from sales to service, you create a great experience for them and decrease those pesky “lost in translation” issues that so often happen when sales leaves the picture.

It sounds like video is a must-have for your marketing and sales strategy in 2020!

3. Assignment Selling

Assignment selling is the process of using educational content you’ve created about your products and services to resolve major concerns and answer questions of prospects so they are much more prepared for a sales appointment. 

When you create content for your blog or website, social media platforms aren’t the only way you can share it. Make it a part of your prospecting process to send high value content to future clients before they have a phone conversation with you. This will not only peak their interest in you, but they’ll already have some sort of understanding of the value you’ll be able to offer them. We often include this content in our email and LinkedIn campaigns. 

4. Customer Focus

It’s important to clearly define who each of your buyer personas are. You can’t group all of them together when creating messaging for your sales and marketing teams. Do some research to discover what their pain points are and what their goals and possible solutions are. It’s helpful to create unique value position statements for each persona you have. 

It’s also helpful to clearly define your buyer’s journey. When you look back at last year’s performance, evaluate where most of your deals got stuck. If they get stuck after the first conversation, maybe you need to re-evaluate the messaging during those conversations and if your reps are communicating high enough value. 

Customer Retention

The new year is a great time to reach out to existing clients and check in on how they are doing. If you are willing to listen to customers and adapt your product/service for their needs as well as wants, they will remain with you because they trust you as a business to solve their problems.  You may also find that they have a problem that can be solved by using one of your other offerings. 

5. Hold a Training Event

A great way to get all of your sales team on the same page in the new year is to partner with a sales consultancy and hold a training event.

When talking with other sales leaders about the goals of their sales training events or annual meetings, we hear that they want their reps to engage with the content and walk away equipped with skills to lift their sales performance.

Salespeople are always looking for fresh, relevant content and techniques. You need a sales trainer that teaches fresh content that is tailored to your reps and company. The content should be focused on value-based selling and using techniques backed up by recent discoveries on behavioral psychology.

One way to keep all of your reps engaged is to create a whiteboard during the event that they can start utilizing right away. According to Forrester, practicing a presentation, learning a whiteboard, or anything that involves doing something and receiving feedback about it will have a much longer-lasting effect than passively listening to a speaker.

Partnering with a sales consultancy can allow you to refocus on the new year and start implementing solutions to low conversion rates and burnt out sales teams.

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If you have a training date on your upcoming calendar, we would love the opportunity to be a part of the discussion on how we can partner together to help you and your team achieve your goals. The content of our training workshops are taught by a 35-year sales veteran who specializes in elevating value by understanding the science of decision-making. Every rep will walk away with mastery of a conversation framework scientifically proven to communicate high value in every conversation they have with prospects and customers.

Let’s talk.

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We’d like to offer you a free e-book on how to communicate value in your sales conversations. Click HERE to download.

Call: 678-561-6260, Email: dkurkjian@mastermessaging.com or instant message David Kurkjian on LinkedIn to start the conversation.