Tag: sales

2 Levers to Lift Revenue

Increasing revenue and profitability may be difficult but are not complicated.

The simplest approach with the least risk involves elevating conversion rates, lead volume, or both without increasing your sales costs.

By elevating conversion rates, lead volume, or both without increasing costs of selling, revenue and profits quickly grow. The simplicity can get lost in the haze of the latest, greatest business metrics. You simply need to close more sales while maintaining costs by:

  1. Converting prospects to customers at a higher rate
  2. Reaching more prospects
  3. Not adding additional salaries or solution subscription costs

Volumes have been written on keeping costs under control and that isn’t the focus of this article. We’ll focus this article on proven strategies that lift lead volume and conversion rates in the sales cycle.

INCREASING LEAD VOLUME

There are many ways to increase lead volume, and the experts agree that a holistic, multi pronged approach works best. Organizations today that generate significant lead volume are doing so through a variety of means, platforms and approaches that include:

  • Cold calling campaigns (phone)
  • Email campaigns (automated cadences/sequences)
  • Video campaigns (Vidyard/Videolicious)
  • Social interaction (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook)
  • Contact Campaigns (3D objects delivered to your prospect)

The verdict is in:

Phone prospecting ONLY isn’t as effective as a “combo” approach that includes phone, email and social.

Phone prospecting ONLY isn’t as effective as a “combo” approach that includes phone, email and social. (Like the one encouraged by Tony Hughes, in his book Combo Prospecting). Sophisticated sales teams are using any number of combinations to get their prospects to take that initial call,  and it’s now taking 7-13 “touches” to get your prospect to say yes to a first meeting.

Sales leaders like John Barrows speak to the structure and format of these outreaches in depth, and Chris Orlob and the team at Gong.io have released some incredible insights that speak to what’s working and NOT working in outbound outreach.

Our approach is similar and starts with an in-depth understanding of your Ideal Client Profile (ICP). Specifically, start by finding out what they are trying to accomplish (goals) and what they are challenged with (challenges).

Then, detail how your prospect can overcome their specific challenges and achieve their goals uniquely through your product/service.

Outreach attempts fail when they are product or feature focused instead of client focused.Long, boring bulleted emails about your product specs or run-on voicemails that detail how long you’ve been in business rarely get a client to say “Yes” to a first meeting.Outreach attempts fail when they are product or feature focused instead of client focused.

Part of this is due to the proliferation of powerful sales and marketing automation tools and the ease of which sales development professionals can “spam” huge lists with templated emails and voice messages. Don’t get me wrong, tools like Outreach and Hubspot are amazing, but as Spider Man learned, “With great power, comes great responsibility”.

Business development reps are learning that a personalized approach to outreach nets more initial meetings than simply blasting a contact list with vague generalizations. Companies like Drift have developed incredible capabilities around a new approach to sales they call “Conversational Marketing”. Put simply, make it easy for your buyer to get the information they need to purchase, on their own.

A POWERFUL LIST-BUILDING COMBO

We and several of our clients have benefitted from a very targeted approach to increasing lead volume using little more than LinkedIn Navigator and a contact info grabbing tool like LeadIQ. The way to leverage these tools in your outreach is simple:

  1. Build a targeted list in LinkedIn Navigator
  2. Gather their contact info using LeadIQ

LinkedIn Navigator allows you to hyper segment your outreach by Geography, Industry, Employee count and Title/Persona. Mix that with a solid boolean search for titles and you get a very detailed list of the contacts most likely to do business with you.

Save that search and then use LeadIQ to gather contact data including work/personal emails as well as work/personal phone info. Now, you’ve got everything you need to target your ICP with a multi touch campaign that utilizes phone, email and social platforms.

Then, create phone, voicemail and email scripts that highlight the BENEFIT your prospect will receive as a result of doing business with you. Use case studies and customer testimonial to paint a picture of what your prospect can expect by engaging you and prospects will respond.

Use case studies and customer testimonial to paint a picture of what your prospect can expect by engaging you and prospects will respond.

Keep the volume of information low, but highlight the value of your product/service using a contrasting worldview in every communication you have with your prospects (this is your world WITHOUT our product immediately contrasted with this is your world WITH our product).

INCREASING LEAD CONVERSION RATES

If you had to make a choice between increasing lead volume or lead conversion, what would you choose? Certainly, with more opportunities to sell, you could impact revenue by increasing lead volume… right?

Not so fast.

If your conversion rates are low and you have difficulty converting your ICP to a paying customer, take a step back and look at your conversion rates.

You can identify your conversion rates at each stage of your sales process in your CRM by implementing a strategy like the one advocated here using Salesforce.

If outreach to your ICP is targeted like the one encouraged above, there is no reason to have low conversion rates. They have a problem, and you can solve it. If you faithfully communicate value at every step of the sales process, you should be converting many of them to customers!

HOW DO YOU DO THAT?

More often than not, sales teams with low conversion rates have them because they employ an outdated inquisition style approach early in their discovery process or they are “winging it” on that first call. Typically their sales conversations are heavy on company info (how long we’ve been in business, who we work with, etc.) or product features (long winded, boring technical demos)

HOT TIP: Your ICP doesn’t care about your company or product. They ONLY care about what your company/product can do for THEM. They enter into every sales conversation silently asking the question, “What’s in it for ME?” If you don’t directly answer that question, it’s no wonder your conversion rates are low.

Your ICP doesn’t care about your company or product. They ONLY care about what your company/product can do for THEM.

Sales teams that articulate VALUE do so by religiously communicating how your prospect will be better off as a result of using their product/service.And this is the primary reason so many great sales organizations with great products and services struggle to lift their conversion rates: Crafting a conversation that communicates high value from your prospect’s point of view TAKES TIME.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

You have to build a conversation for every persona you are selling to. Your product/service doesn’t change, but what it means is completely different to each persona you speak with.

If you are selling to a CEO, a conversation about ease of use will mean almost nothing. Likewise, if you are talking to an end user, focusing the conversation exclusively around capturing market share or increasing shareholder value will totally go over their head.

Build a conversation that connects with your target persona using these steps:

  1. What are they trying to achieve? (Goals)
  2. What challenges do they face that keep them from their goals? (Challenges)
  3. How can you uniquely help them overcome their challenges to achieve their goals? (Uniqueness)

This is WHY they should engage you. Then, and only then are you free to talk about HOW your product/service works and WHO it has worked for in the past.

Think about it from your prospect’s point of view: Why would they care what your product can do if they aren’t convinced that it can help THEM? Some of the best tools on the market won’t work for me based on our company size. It doesn’t matter how good that product works if they don’t have an offering for small sales teams!

HERE’S THE GOOD NEWS

By leveraging these techniques to increase lead volume, you’ll get more opportunities to sell. By leveraging these techniques to increase lead conversion rates, more of your prospects will convert to paying customers.

The effect?

LIFTING REVENUE. Which is really the name of the game, isn’t it?

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I would love to hear your feedback! Please like, share & comment.

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Most business owners have no extra time to devote to sales coaching. This is where MasterMessaging steps in and excels. We optimize your sales teams’ conversion rates, your lead volume, or both for less than the costs of a single administrative hire. The impact on your sales is significant and sustainable, continuing for years with no ongoing costs. 

Our custom messaging solutions are strategically scripted, cadenced, and executed to increase conversion rates for maximum impact on your company’s revenue and profits. If needed we can also increase lead volume. Our system fits seamlessly with your existing sales process to ensure successful adoption & smooth rollout throughout your entire organization. Our solutions are high impact, low risk, minimally invasive, and integrate into your existing sales efforts. 

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

Q&A With MasterMessaging Founder

David Kurkjian, the founder of MasterMessaging, was recently on the Dana Barrett Show to talk about his experience as a new business owner. If you’d like to listen to the clip, click HERE.

We thought this would be a great time to do our own Q&A to show a little more about how MasterMessaging got started and what’s planned for the future.

Q: What made you decide to start your own business?

David: During my sales career I had wondered what was behind my success in selling. Over the last few years, I realized my success came from two abilities- The ability to consult and teach. Coincidentally, not only did my success come from these abilities, but when I was doing these things is when I also found the most enjoyment in my work.

When I found myself looking for the next career opportunity, I started to consider how I could put myself in a position to do more consulting and teaching. When I looked at the career options, starting my own consultancy was the best option.

Q: What was the best piece of advice you got starting out?

David: I’d have to say the best piece of advice was to give myself at least a year to establish the business before I’d entertain any job offers. Too often individuals start a business, have a little success, then they get a job offer that looks really good because it offers a level of security and predictability they are not experiencing in their own business. It takes time, plan on it.

Q: What has been your biggest challenge since starting MM?

David: The biggest challenge was creating a predictable and steady flow of new clients. Like a lot of small businesses, I found myself in a familiar cycle. I’d spend time developing new business, then focus on delivering the work. But when the focus was on delivering work, new business development took a back seat. The other challenge was reaching beyond my network to acquire new business. I didn’t have a business development process or system that could predictably create new business.

I realized that I wasn’t equipped to tackle some of these challenges, and that is when I decided to expand MM and bring on two partners. One with a CEO mindset to address the building of the business, and the other a Sales and Operations professional to focus on sales and systems.

Q: What’s been the most rewarding thing since starting MM?

David: Watching the sales professionals we consult with embrace and use the things we teach. I realized early on that a primary focus of the workshops would be to structure the content and activity in a way that made it easy for sales professionals to apply it in their day to day work. There were a number of times in my career where I attended a sales training that sounded good in theory but was too difficult to apply. I wanted MM to be different so that the sales reps could use what we teach to get the results they needed.

Q: Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?

David: As a part of a larger team at MM speaking and teaching to a more diverse clientele. Over the last couple of years, I’ve had a number of business owners encourage me to grow MM beyond just a single consultant practice. To accomplish that I realized I needed some talent I didn’t possess. Specifically a CEO and a full time sales professional. After adding this talent as partners, we’ve structured the business for high growth over the next few years.

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Most business owners have no extra time to devote to sales coaching. This is where MasterMessaging steps in and excels. We optimize your sales teams’ conversion rates, your lead volume, or both for less than the costs of a single administrative hire. The impact on your sales is significant and sustainable, continuing for years with no ongoing costs.

Our custom messaging solutions are strategically scripted, cadenced, and executed to increase conversion rates for maximum impact on your company’s revenue and profits. If needed we can also increase lead volume. Our system fits seamlessly with your existing sales process to ensure successful adoption & smooth rollout throughout your entire organization. Our solutions are high impact, low risk, minimally invasive, and integrate into your existing sales efforts.

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

How to Break Free from the Seller’s Apathy Loop

In a recent buyer’s preferences study by CSO Insights, researchers highlight how buyers perceive salespeople and what they wish they would do differently and more consistently. What they found is that buyers want salespeople to understand their business before the engagement, to be be excellent communicators, to focus on post sale and to receive insights and perspective.

A major issue they found for salespeople is that the buyers have them in an apathy loop that is hard to break out of. According to the study, this apathy loop comes in five parts:

1. Sellers are viewed as “meeting” but not exceeding expectations.

2. As such, buyers see sellers as representatives of products, not solvers of business problems.

3. Correspondingly, buyers wait until they want to learn about a specific solution before engaging a seller.

4. Sellers often feel constrained in their opportunities to sell and demonstrate value. Most buyers say when they engage multiple vendors, one is usually a “little” better than the others.

5. And with that, sellers meet a buyer’s expectations. From a buyer’s point of view, “I was ready to purchase a specific solution and the seller assisted with that.” And the cycle continues…

This apathy loop creates a gap between buyers and sellers that makes it hard to acquire, grow and retain customer relationships. Some larger organizations like Amazon don’t see this as a problem, but as a seller, you don’t want your buyers to move to self-service mode and exclude you from the buying process entirely.

So how do you break out of this loop? Here are three suggestions:

1. Find opportunities for early engagement

Surprisingly, 90% of the buyers surveyed said they would be open to engaging with a salesperson earlier on in the buying process. Early engagement offers sellers more time to create a relationship and differentiate themselves from other sellers.

To find these opportunities, you must be able to target the decision makers and get their attention by communicating your unique value. One way we do this is by using LinkedIn Sales Navigator. You can target your ideal buyers, understand what they value, and engage them in a personal way. It’s important to make sure your profile reflects how your prospect’s challenges can be solved by using your solution.

It’s imperative that a seller understands the buyer’s business and challenges before they engage. A great opportunity for sellers to learn more about their buyer’s world is to do an internet search of job postings in a similar industry and similar title of your ideal client profile. Job postings are treasure troves of valuable information where you can learn what the primary objectives and priorities are of your prospect. You can also learn the key performance indicators of how they are typically being measured in their job performance.

Knowing this enables the seller to engage their prospective buyer with valuable information that will help your prospect overcome their challenges and achieve their goals. In this way, the seller becomes a valuable resource in the minds of their prospect.

2. Communicate unique value

Value is perceived in a contrasting worldview. It’s in the distance between what your prospect’s world looks like today (WITHOUT your product/service) and what their world could look like tomorrow (WITH your product/service) that your prospect perceives value.

It’s important to identify specific value positions that make you stand out among others in your marketplace. A value position has 3 important characteristics:

  1. Important to PROSPECT.
  2. Unique to YOU.
  3. You can DEFEND it.

If you solve a problem that your prospect isn’t experiencing, there’s no value to them and they won’t engage you. If it’s not really unique to you, then why should they use you? Finally, if you can’t prove it, where’s the credibility? How can you make statements that are indefensible?

Value Position Statements are the single most important part of your selling conversation. These succinct “Imagine if” or “What if” statements are what your PROSPECT can do differently, NOT telling them the capabilities of your gizmo or software. This is what will help boost your perceived value and make you stand out among your competitors.

3. Prioritize post-sale follow through

Once you’ve made the sale, it’s extremely important to have a process in place that ensures a smooth follow-through. According to the study, sellers are perceived as not focusing enough on, or demonstrating enough commitment to, what happens after the sale.

The buyer cares the most about what happens after the sale, when the solution is implemented and you have created value for them. This means that this should be a top priority for salespeople too. Make sure your account management methodology and customer success process is providing the execution that exceeds your buyer’s expectations. Never stop striving to improve your post-sale follow-through processes.

If you consistently look for early engagement opportunities, communicate value, and prioritize post-sale follow through, you will not only stand out in the marketplace, but you’ll be able to build strong, long-lasting relationships with your clients.

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We understand it can be hard to know where to start when you want to stand out in the marketplace and communicate value clearly and consistently. That’s why we’ve created an E-book on Communicating Value that you can download HERE.

Please leave your feedback in the comments section.

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Most business owners have no extra time to devote to sales coaching. This is where MasterMessaging steps in and excels. We optimize your sales teams’ conversion rates, your lead volume, or both for less than the costs of a single administrative hire. The impact on your sales is significant and sustainable, continuing for years with no ongoing costs.

Our custom messaging solutions are strategically scripted, cadenced, and executed to increase conversion rates for maximum impact on your company’s revenue and profits. If needed we can also increase lead volume. Our system fits seamlessly with your existing sales process to ensure successful adoption & smooth rollout throughout your entire organization. Our solutions are high impact, low risk, minimally invasive, and integrate into your existing sales efforts.

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

First Call Checklist- Infographic

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We understand it can be difficult to know where to start when developing a first conversation script, that’s why we’ve created a Sales Conversation Roadmap “Cheat Sheet” that you can download here.

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Most business owners have no extra time to devote to sales coaching. This is where MasterMessaging steps in and excels. We optimize your sales teams’ conversion rates, your lead volume, or both for less than the costs of a single administrative hire. The impact on your sales is significant and sustainable, continuing for years with no ongoing costs.

Our custom messaging solutions are strategically scripted, cadenced, and executed to increase conversion rates for maximum impact on your company’s revenue and profits. If needed we can also increase lead volume. Our system fits seamlessly with your existing sales process to ensure successful adoption & smooth rollout throughout your entire organization. Our solutions are high impact, low risk, minimally invasive, and integrate into your existing sales efforts.

Call: 678-643-9025, Email: dkurkjian@mastermessaging.com or instant message David Kurkjian on LinkedIn to start the conversation.