Iain Swanston
How to Sell on LinkedIn without being Spammy
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How to Sell on LinkedIn – the short answer
Follow LinkedIn’s four recommendations listed in the Social Selling Index which are:
- Create a professional personal and company brand.
- Find and save the profiles of the right people so LinkedIn can push updates to you.
- Start engaging with insightful content that generates likes, comments and shares.
- Continuing to build relationships via connecting in a value led approach.
- Lastly from Klozers – stop trying to sell to people. The more you try and sell the more you will put people off.
Here’s a more detailed guide on How to Sell On LinkedIn
1. Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn
The genesis of LinkedIn in 2002 was as a recruiting platform that enabled job seekers to be found by recruiters and the reverse, in that job seekers could quickly find new opportunities.
The platform has moved on since then and is the largest B2B Directory with over 722 million users listed. The sheer volume of contacts has made LinkedIn the place to be for B2B salespeople who are researching and connecting to decision makers throughout the sales process.
The size of the opportunity is equalled only by the size of the potential to ruin both your personal and company brand on the platform.
LinkedIn has a certain etiquette and when you break the “rules” your personal brand is damaged. For example, if the percentage of your connection requests are refused then your prospect can block you for life – not just for the time you are in your current job role, every future job role. Life means life on LinkedIn.
The advent of lockdowns where Field Sales people where suddenly forced to do everything online without any strategy, planning or training, resulted in a massive increase in LinkedIn Spam which made connecting and selling on the platform more difficult than ever.
LinkedIn is without a doubt the best platform for generating new B2B sales leads and a must have as part of your social selling strategy.
2. Your Company Brand on LinkedIn
Outbound done badly damages your brand and this is so true on LinkedIn. The use of automations, spam, connect and pitch messaging and even fake profiles does nothing to enhance your brand.
To compound this problem many people turned to “LinkedIn Lead Generation Experts” who would take control of your profile and spam everyone on the planet with some form of “buy now” message.
Yes these people generate leads, however, this is a scorched earth strategy and the damage will be found by the profile owner for years to come.
Your Personal and Business brand is what attracts and retains customers. Cherish, nurture and develop them all you can.
3. Don’t be spammy
Everyone knows selling has changed, however, it’s worth reminding people as not everyone has got the message. People do not want to be sold to, but they do like to buy. The role of sales is no longer to sell, but to facilitate the right conditions for buyers to buy.
How do you do this:
- Provide value up front
- Provide insight up front
- Focus on building relationships
- Provide every single piece of information the prospect wants, including the information that they don’t know that they want, up front.
When you get this right, there is no need to “sell”. It’s actually so much easier.
4. How to Optimise your LinkedIn profile
Let’s start at the very beginning, your LinkedIn Profile. In order to put your best personal brand forward LinkedIn rewards those with the most complete profiles.
By reward I mean they will push you and your content to other users more actively based on the completeness of your profile.
With that in mind it’s important to complete as much information as possible on your profile, whilst paying particular attention to starting from the very top:
- Your LinkedIn URL. Be sure to “claim” your name and once you have done this add your primary keyword to the title as shown in the image – I have added the keyword “sales trainer”.
- Include a professionally designed banner that conveys your brand promise. This should be congruent with your company website.
- Use a business like, professional portrait image – not an image of you sipping cocktails. LinkedIn is B2B and you need to play to that audience.
- Use keywords that your target audience would use to search for you in your title. Many LinkedIn trainers will recommend a title targeting a specific audience and including the outcome that you provide. I can tell you that I and many others immediately decline connection requests from these people as they have just told you in advance “I am coming to get you”. Remember nobody wants to be sold to.
- Include relevant hashtags for your industry. This needs to be done via the Creator Mode feature.
- Be sure to complete the “Providing Services” section with three services that you would like to promote. Where possible these should match your hashtags
- Next up is the “Featured” section. This is an opportunity for you to showcase your subject matter expertise. White Papers, Books, Articles and Posts that position you as the expert. Where possible include lead magnets from your website to attract new prospects.
- About is the next section you should customise. This should be about who you work with, the services you provide and the results you deliver. Lastly include a call to action, keywords from your Skills section (more on this to follow), hashtags and contact details.
- The next two sections are Experience & Education, and these should be as detailed and truthful as possible. Whether you are selling a product or service or yourself in an interview, company’s will look to verify this information and you will quickly be found out if you are not telling the truth.
- Licenses and Certification is the next section and here you should take the opportunity to reinforce your brand. This is arguably easier for us as a training provider, however, you can include vocational training and anything that puts you forward as a thought leader. If you are not continually educating yourself and keeping up to date you should be.
- Skills & Endorsements is the nest section and this is really important. The LinkedIn search algorithm is more likely to recommend you for a skill if you have been endorsed for that skill, which makes sense. Therefore, you should ensure that the skills you would like to be known for are at the top to encourage people to endorse you for these skills.
As you can see from my profile I have 99+ endorsements for a few skills but not for the core skills “sales”, “sales coaching” and “sales trainings”. My fault as I was not aware of the importance of this until recently.
What’s also strange is that LinkedIn has not listing for “Sales Training” only “Sales Trainings”. This may be a language/translation issue, however, as the Skills are predefined there is no way to change this.
- Lastly, the Accomplishments section is a great place to highlight any awards, courses or publications that you are credited with.
That’s it. One important point I should explain. Whist we always advocate a consultative, non salesy approach we are referring to our communication style your personal and company pages should be very salesy. They are akin to a website Landing Page and should do as much as possible to convert the visitor to an enquirer.
5. How to create a LinkedIn Company Page
Like your personal profile page the Company page should be like a Landing page on your website. Content rich and full of information.
Once the page is complete it’s important that you keep the page up to date with new posts in order that anyone visiting the page will not be confronted with an empty page with no activity.
Again it’s important to have your company livery and brand promise front and centre. The about section is an opportunity to tell the world how great your products and services are, who they are for and the results they help your clients achieve.
Don’t forget your call to action button, contact details and hashtags.
6. How to create a LinkedIn Showcase Page
Showcase pages are a great tool for promoting a product or service. Imagine you are Microsoft, your company page would be Microsoft and you could create Showcase pages for Microsoft Dynamics or Microsoft Teams.
We use the Showcase section to promote the events we run on LinkedIn and Funnel Sprint which is our premier lead generation training programme.
Please note: Showcase pages must be created from your Company page using the “Admin Tools” drop down menu.
7. How to create a LinkedIn Showcase Page
LinkedIn articles are a great resource for positioning your personal brand. LinkedIn loves content so they desperately want you to be creating content on a regular basis.
When combined with creating content for our own website this can be really demanding, however, the best strategy is to create full, long form content on your website and then create a short summary piece as a LinkedIn article that links back to your website.
That way you have satiated both the Google and LinkedIn beasts.
As an example this particular blog post How to Sell on LinkedIn was first published on the klozers.com website with a summary article then published on LinkedIn here.
Google does index content published on LinkedIn but so far we have found by far it’s better to use our company blog as the primary content source.
8. How to create a Boolean Search Strings
Boolean search strings are the somewhat complicated looking search terms that allow you to create very specific and highly targeted searches. This targeting is encouraged by LinkedIn and contributes to your Social Selling Index score. Here are the different operators you can use:
- Quotes [“”] These are used when you are looking for an exact match. As an example when you type in sales manager to the search bar without the quotes the search returns all the contacts with the word sales and manager in their profile. By adding the quotes and entering “sales manager” the search returns all the contacts with that exact keyword.
- Parentheses [()] These searches are used when you want to combine search terms. For example if you wanted to find people who have “VP” in their profiles, but exclude “assistant to VP” or SVPs, type VP NOT (assistant OR SVP).
- NOT – when you type NOT in capital leaders this excludes what follows. For example you may search for “sales manager” NOT “sales director” if you wanted to exclude sales directors from the results.
- AND – as it sounds when you type in AND in capital letters the search returns results for both keywords. As an example if you type in “sales” AND “marketing” the search would return results that included both words.
- OR – OR is the broadest search term and best used when you want to widen the results. The search term “sales” OR “marketing” would cast a wider net and return more results than “sales” AND “marketing”.
9. How to connect on LinkedIn
Building your network is one of the 4 foundations of social selling, however, this has come under more scrutiny recently. LinkedIn would like you to only connect to people you know – but equally they know users are connecting to people they don’t know all the time.
Unfortunately, most people employ a spray and prey approach and connect with anyone and then never speak to them again. Because of this LinkedIn has reduced the number of connection requests to 100 per week to stop this although there are legitimate ways around this via the groups function.
In an attempt to short circuit the connection process many people search for the “best” connection messaging templates on Google.
By the time these templates are on Google they have been used literally millions of times. People buy from people we would encourage you to interact via like, comments and shares before trying to connect.
You can then refer to content or comments they have shared in the connection request and voila – no templates required.
By employing this strategy your acceptance rate will increase from the standard which is around 30 to between 60 and 70%.
HOW TO DOWNLOAD YOUR LINKEDIN CONNECTIONS
LinkedIn allows you to download your connections although it’s worth pointing out that this does not include the users email address or contact details.
The data is nonetheless still helpful for Account Planning and targeting larger enterprise accounts.
10. How to get the most from LinkedIn Messaging
We’ve covered the best approach to messaging with respect to when you are connecting, however, what happens after you have connected. The options here are three fold:
- Pitch your product or service. This will work for some people, however, the percentage of times this will work is very low. If you are in a hurry, and don’t care about your personal or business brand, then this is your best option.
- Send a thank you for connecting message and never speak to them again like the majority of LinkedIn users
- Focus on building a relationship by providing insight and value. This is a longer term approach, however, the results are much improved in comparison to options 1 and 2.
Here are some ideas that you can use to facilitate this approach:
- Tell the prospect in the “thank you for connecting message” that you regularly share insight to their job title about xyz and look forward to speaking again.
- As discussed in step 1 regularly share insight with the prospect but don’t bombard them.
- Message the prospect and ask for help with an industry survey
- Create a plan – download our simple spreadsheet so you can plan and track all your interactions on LinkedIn.
- Engage – Follow the individual using Sales Navigator and like, comment or share when the prospect posts or comments on the platform.
- Provide sales leads to them using our “recommended search” hack
Lastly, you must compress all your messages as no one wants to read a novel in their inbox and wherever possible make the desired response to your message a simple thumbs up emoji. The quicker and easier it is for the prospect to respond the more likely they are to do so.
11. How to Create a LinkedIn Event
LinkedIn Events took off during the lockdown period as millions of users found themselves stuck at home in need or new routes to market and in some cases training.
Whilst the LinkedIn Events platform was primarily designed to host and deliver events on the LinkedIn platform itself many users are hosting Events and using LinkedIn as the main channel to drive registrations.
We’re personally great fans of LinkedIn Events and regularly run workshops on the platform. This has allowed as greater access to our clients and also potential new customers outside our current 1st degree connections and into 2nd and third degree contacts across the globe.
Like your company page, its important to brand your events inline with your company branding. Once the event is set up you can easily invite any of your personal connections and you should share the event regularly in your timeline.
In addition to LinkedIn we have a webinar sign up page on our website and use our email list to drive registrations. With what we would describe as limited effort we typically have between 50 and 100 attendees.
The downside of any free online event is there is a huge drop out rate on the day. This is partly due to the fact that the LinkedIn Events function does not add a Calendar Appointment to the users diary when they click yes to attend.
It’s obviously not possible to send a regular diary invite as the users would then have access to the contact details of all the other attendees.
We have managed to create a workaround using Microsoft Live Events, however, it’s still manual and something that we need to work on before we would share this.
12. How to use sell using LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn Groups used to be huge, however, LinkedIn decided to move users away from the groups, and group discussions, leaving many groups almost dormant.
Whereby previously groups where the hotbeds of focussed industry discussions they mostly lie silent and posting into groups can feel like shouting into the unknown.
The plus side is that groups remain an easy route to build connections and gather data. For example, while new connection requests are limited to 100 per week, this can be sidestepped by connecting to users in a common group. LinkedIn may well change this again in the near future.
Users are allowed to be members of up to 50 LinkedIn groups and we recommend joining groups where your Ideal Client Profile can be found.
13. How to get the most from LinkedIn Inmail
LinkedIn Inmail historically had the highest open rates which according to LinkedIn is 57.5% which when compared to standard email which is 21.6% sounds great.
Forgive me though – Inmails are limited to premium accounts (20 Inmails per month) and add-ons that you can be purchased, so without independent verification this may not be the most accurate of data.
What I believe to be true is that the open rates and conversion rates from Inmail has dropped as it has become more widely adopted by sales and marketing team.
For us, the Inmail feature shows no difference in open rates given the strategies that we use, however, when certain prospects are not active on LinkedIn and have locked down their connection settings, Inmail might be the only channel available.
14. Using LinkedIn for Content Marketing
LinkedIn loves content creators and with the new “Creator Mode” available from 2021 they have signalled that this is the direction that they want to take the platform.
For obvious reasons when compared to Facebook, LinkedIn is primarily focussed on B2B, however, the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 drove new users to the platform and encouraged existing users to engage more using content.
The type of content has also changed there are much more personal stories on the platform then previously.
From a sales perspective this makes sense as stories sell. Whilst some people are uncomfortable sharing their story other content types that are popular are:
Industry Insights
Event Information
Customer Focussed
Employee Focussed
Company News
Products and services
Partners & Sponsors Stories sell, so in order to gain engagement and visibility it’s important to develop your content around a story wherever possible.
15. How to sell on LinkedIn using Sales Navigator
Sales Navigator is the Premium version of LinkedIn and a must have tool for any modern sales rep. The Navigator platform is extremely powerful and in addition to the increased search filters, the main benefit we would suggest is the ability to follow prospects and target accounts from a central dashboard.
The dashboard provides alerts based on both the prospects and accounts you are following allowing you to identify opportunities to engage at a glance.
Sales Navigator also provides what they call “Smart Links” which gives the user tracking data for any documents they send via Inmail.
The data includes the number of times the link was clicked, how long the user viewed the link, the date and time the link was clicked and the full details of the user who clicked on the link. All of which are important when sending .pdf, ppt or word documents to prospects.
Saved Searches are also an important feature within Sales Navigator. These allow the user to save highly targeted searches and return to them as LinkedIn updates the search results on a daily basis.
The saved search function has many uses such as tracking when connections move companies or when they are promoted to a more senior role.
16. What is LinkedIn Social Selling Index?
Linkedin developed the Social Selling Index (SSI) to encourage both user adoption and best practice. As mentioned at the start of this document the SSI has four core areas:
1. Creating your professional personal and company brand
2. Finding and saving the profiles of the right people so LinkedIn can push updates to you
3. Engaging prospects with thought leadership and insightful content that generates likes, comments and shares
4. Continuing to build new relationships via connecting in a value led approach
LinkedIn displays an SSI score for every user and their position or rank compared to their Team. Again, this is to drive user adoption and make the product sticky.
Most users are unaware of the benefits of having a social selling strategy. LinkedIn and Sales Navigator are like Ferraris which mean they need to be driven differently to a supermarket trolley if you want to get the full benefits from them.
Any strategy will take time, however, in the new world of remote selling it’s much more than inside sales and SDR’s who can benefit from the platform.
From our own experience we have developed a social selling strategy that can be replicated across every industry. There is however no magic wand and no substitute for hard work.
The more you put into LinkedIn the more you will get out.
17. How to sell on LinkedIn using Automation Software
The popularity of the LinkedIn platform has led to the development of a number of Google Chrome browser extensions that automate the process of visiting, connecting and messaging.
Like all tools they are only as good as the individual who is configuring them. In essence the tools are great, however, the widespread use of the tools are what has caused LinkedIn to now limit the amount of connection requests to 100.
Spray and prey, connect and forget and Scorched earth are the negative results caused by the misuse of the tools.
As you would expect LinkedIn discourages users form using any form of automation as they are against the rules.
With that said every one of the automation providers are on LinkedIn and even using LinkedIn events to promote their tools so the cynic in me thinks they are well aware of the problem and turn a blind eye to it because for the time being it suits them.
My understanding is that if you are “caught” using automation you will receive a warning and not immediately blocked from the platform.
I have never received such a warning so I can’t confirm this – only you know your level of risk so I will leave the decision to automate or not up to you.
18. How to sell on LinkedIn – Engagement Pods
A different take on Automation are Engagement Pods. Like other automation tools these are browser bases extensions that allow you to join a pod or group.
The purpose of the pods is to boost the reach of the members content by automating the like and comments on their posts.
The LinkedIn algorithm promotes content to more of your connections based on the engagement withing the first hour of posting.
Whilst you might like the idea of boosting the reach of your content, the problem arises when you suddenly find the automation is commenting on content that does not fit your brand and in some cases, will be damaging your brand.
You have no control over what they post and what comments they attribute to you. Giving control of your LinkedIn account to other pod members is not something we would recommend to anyone.
19. How to sell on LinkedIn – Social Selling Course
Social selling is such an important part of modern B2B selling we have incorporated all our best social selling strategies and tactics into our B2B Lead Generation Course. In addition to live training the course provides practical strategies and tactics that users are encouraged to use immediately.
The course is comprehensive and covers everything from the basics of setting up and optimising your LinkedIn profile to the more advanced lead generation strategies we teach.
As always our sales training is built around the consultative sales methodology so the priority is always the protection of your personal and business brand.
LinkedIn Sales Strategy Consulting
Need more help? Training is great, but strategy is the game changer that can set you apart from your competition.
We provide a full LinkedIn Sales Strategy Consulting for companies who need their team to have a joined up approach.
LinkedIn, Sales Navigator and Social selling are all vital components of any Account Based Marketing campaign which we are happy to advise you on.
Sales Training and Consulting for B2B Companies
Why invest in Sales Training and Consulting?
There are normally two reasons companies invest in our Sales Training and Consulting services. Firstly, they are often in a hurry to find sales growth and are looking for a short cut, a growth hack.
Often these companies would eventually find the right strategies and tactics themselves, but they may be keen to capitalise on their first mover advantage or satisfy the needs of external investors.
For these companies we provide a shortcut, we help them avoid the pitfalls and roadblocks that every growing business experiences.
When you engage with Klozers your team has access to over 70 years experience in B2B sales and marketing.
Our sales training can help you get the best out of your team, alongside our consultancy services that will help you deploy the changes identified by our consultancy
Let’s take a closer look at why it makes so much sense to use sales training and consulting services together.
1. Why sales consulting compliments your sales training?
Many companies make the mistake of rushing into training as the solution to improving sales performance.
Indeed, training may be part of the solution, but it is never the whole solution. Before any training takes place it’s important to understand the root causes of the challenges within the sales department and only when we truly understand the problems can we prescribe the best possible solution.
By rushing into training we would be assuming that everything else that affects sales is 100% perfect, and that is simply never the case.
As with anything, the greater the investment upfront in terms of the diagnosis, the more effective the training will be.
This is because the training can then be customised to meet the exact needs of the business which makes it much more impactful.
2. Why is Sales Training so effective?
Sales training builds both skills and confidence, and those are simply unbeatable in front of a customer.
The best salespeople are like athletes and they are hungry to learn more and stay at the top of their game.
The reason they are so good is that they are constantly looking for an edge, an advantage, and this keeps driving them forward.
These are small but important things that make the difference and gets more deals over the line. Our training is designed to keep your team at the top of their game and help them benefit from the very latest insights and industry best practice.
Our sales trainers work hard to keep your team engaged and motivated during training sessions, using a range of mediums to maintain their attention and inspire them.
Your sales trainer will help your team sell more effectively whether that be over the phone, in-person or online.
They can help them improve their lead generation, closing and account management skills, and provide indispensable mentoring services.
3. What happens before training takes place?
Before your training sessions begin, it’s important to identify what you want to get from them. As a sales training provider we offer bespoke services that are based on your specific needs and challenges.
We can provide a full sales consultancy service in advance of any training. This would typically include an evaluation of your current sales unit in relation to sales maturity and best practice.
We can also provide full training needs analysis so you can gain a better understanding of your requirements before staring any training course.
For sales training to be effective, they need to be delivered in a way that maintains your teams’ attention, which means your sessions will include a great deal of interactivity.
Our sales training sessions include a range of demonstrations, exercises, games and roleplay.
4. What is the aim of Sales Training
Our goal as a provider is not to deliver sales training, but to deliver results.
Therefore we believe the goal of Sales training is to help you meet a range of sales goals faster than you would if you were to continue without any intervention.
Not every company’s needs are the same, but businesses often invest in sales training because they want to improve their staff’s sales skills, close more deals, create more conversions, make their staff feel more supported, improve morale and boost the average value of their sales.
However, ultimately all of these lead to one overall benefit – an improvement in results. Some companies invest in training because they have identified a particular problem that needs addressing which is being caused by a skills gaps within their businesses.
Training may also benefit your team if they seem to be lacking direction, or are feeling unmotivated. A lack of motivation can often occur because staff are unclear on what their roles are, or because the current strategies they are using are not working.
In many occasions this is why Sales consultancy is a perfect fit alongside sales training as it can also help you identify and deal with additional challenges.
5. How can a Sales Consultant help our business?
A sales consultant will help your business by taking a close look at your current situation, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and helping you make positive changes to drive revenue growth.
If you are not currently meeting your sales targets, our sales consultants can help you find out why this is happening and develop strategies to address the issues.
Our experienced consultants can help with optimising your sales processes and ensuring you get the maximum conversion ratios from the leads you are generating.
With our years of experience in B2B sales our sales consultants can introduce you to specific resources that will support your business.
These can include lead generation, marketing, sales tracking, and training programmes and software that will give you a better insight into how your sales team are performing.
6. Adding Sales Experience to your Leadership Team
When you are immersed in the day-to-day running of your company, it can be hard to assess your situation objectively.
It’s often impossible to find anyone around you who is not objective as your team all have a role which in some way will make them subjective.
Our sales consultants aren’t just there to identify problems that you weren’t previously aware of, we are completely hands on and happy to work alongside your team to implement any solutions.
Where applicable we will highlight your strengths and help you make the most of the resources that you currently have. In most cases this revolves around the creation of a sales plan, which we work with you to develop and if required are happy to help with executing against the plan.
Our consultants will work with you to help you improve relationships between departments and colleagues. For instance, we are often called upon for detailed advice on aligning sales and marketing departments so you’re delivering coherent messages to your customers.
Indeed aligning sales and marketing is one of our most popular services.
7. Which Companies benefit the most from Consulting Services
We typically have two types of customers of our consulting services. The first are larger organisations who already have a Sales Plan in place.
They need help executing and delivering against the plan as they simply lack the internal resources to do this themselves.
The second group are those looking for external and objective advice. In some cases they have seen a substantial decline in sales recently or aren’t meeting their targets they need to reach and hence are reaching out for support.
These businesses hire us because we have a track record of turning companies around. Alternately you may need external support if you have experienced changes in your industry and you’re struggling to keep up with your competitors.
Companies also may hire us because they feel missed sales targets are starting to affect morale and staff retention rates.
By investing in training and consultancy services, you can show your team you’re determined to improve and start achieving more.
8. Build a Selling System
It’s also common for companies to invest in sales consultancy services because their sales processes are confused and unclear, with team members pulling in different directions.
We are a huge advocate of having a selling system. Finance has a system, operations have a system so why not sales. Building a repeatable scalable selling system is simply a must for any business.
By mapping this out we can help your salespeople to understand how and where they can influence buyers and sell to people on different parts of their journey, helping you secure more sales.
Our consultants can also help you gain a richer understanding of the data available to you, from both your marketing automation and CRM platforms.
In many cases our clients either don’t have enough data or they are overwhelmed by data, and miss out on the most important parts. Either way we can help.
In Conclusion
Sales is an ever changing environment and more and more businesses are improving their performance, staff retention rates and workplace morale.
For most of use this means competition is tough and by investing in our sales training and consultancy services we can give you that edge you need to not just compete, but win.
Sales consultants and trainers can provide invaluable mentorship, help you identify and eradicate weaknesses, and help you make the changes that you need to not only survive but prosper.
Our team can breathe new life into your organisation and inspire people throughout your company. Whether you’ve been missing your targets or are simply ready to build upon recent success and take your business to the next level, there are many great reasons for hiring sales training and consultancy professionals.
If you are ready to hire a sales trainer, sales consultant or both, come and talk with us.
Sales and Service Training Courses
If your business is typical, up to 80% of next years revenues will come from this years customers. Despite this many organisations give little or no thought to customer service, viewing it merely as a cost to the business.
In many cases customer service is a cost to the business, however, survey after survey shows customer service as a core component of your brand. In certain cases some brands who understand the commercial value of great customer service, use it as an opportunity to cross sell and upsell, thus driving additional revenue into the business.
There are so many great statistics for investing in sales and service training once you look into it, it’s difficult to ignore. As an example studies show that 82% of customers leave because of a poor experience and of those 73% leave because of a reaction to rude staff.
Structured and well supported training can help your team meet your customers expectations and even exceed them. The right sales and service training can make your team more adept at winning customers’ trust, whilst boosting your teams confidence.
The best sales and service training programmes are designed to help companies move away from customer service and towards customer experiences.
How can Sales and Service Training help my team?
Often the biggest challenge in business is winning new customers. Given that’s the case it surely makes sense to do everything possible to not only keep those customers, but to maximise the revenue from them.
Most service issues have a simple root problem, for example, 55% of customers are leaving because of delays in resolving a dispute and 51% are leaving because of poor staff training. What’s possibly most important to note, is that all these problems can be easily remedied.
Sales and service training can give your team a system to measure, track and consistently improve your customer service and sales. This will help change the mindset of your team, enabling them to make a real impact by being able to identify what matters most and take action to improve.
When done correctly training can enhance your workplace culture substantially and provide your sales team with additional skills that can benefit them personally throughout their careers.
Close More Deals and Learn New Skills
Most companies are unaware of the potential sales opportunities they have with existing customers. With repeat customer spending up to 67% more, sales and service training is more than just handling complaints and returns.
A big part of resolving customers problems should be finding new solutions to the problems customers encounter. In most cases the problems that customers experience are actually the best opportunities for cross selling and upselling.
Training can introduce your team to new strategies and tactics that they may simply never come across before. In addition to external input, there are often great lessons that can be shared internally, and these should be captured and documented for the benefit of others.
Training will help your team become more familiar with your own company’s best practices. In a well structured sales and service training programme, your staff will not only learn new techniques, but also find out why they are so effective and which situations they should be deployed in.
Benefit from External Sales Specialists
Often a key benefit of sales and service training is that it gives your team a chance to take onboard new ideas and strategies from outside the business. In many cases they are more open to learning from external facilitators with an in-depth knowledge than from internal colleagues.
Sales and service specialists can give your team more than just the skills they need to engage potential customers in meaningful conversations. They can help you explain on your customers terms why your products and service may be a good fit for them.
Sales and service training will help your team use the product knowledge and information that they have about your products and services, and turn this into powerful questions that make the buyer want to buy rather than them having to sell to them.
Retain the Best Staff
Many companies are now switched on to the fact that it’s easier to retain quality staff when you invest in training courses for them.
If your team members feel you aren’t investing in them, there’s a high possibility that they will move to a company that will. Investing in training shows your employees that you are eager to help them improve.
When staff receive quality training, they tend to feel more supported, which in turn boosts their confidence. Recruitment costs to replace team members can be incredibly expensive and take up an inordinate amount of management time.
It’s therefore important to try and keep hold of the employees that you have already invested in and continue to develop them.
Should Managers attend Sales and Service Training?
Your Managers set the bar in terms of what is acceptable performance and what is not. With this in mind, it’s important that sales managers attend every sales and service training along with their staff so they can hear the information first-hand.
When managers know exactly what’s covered and agreed during training, they can ensure their staff apply this knowledge to real-life scenarios and coach them if they are struggling.
Sales training often includes an element of goal-setting, which is yet another reason why it’s so important for managers to attend. It’s important for the managers to set realistic, yet achievable goals, rather than targets that are out of your team’s reach.
Failure to do this will simply harm the confidence of the team and demotivate them.
Increase your Customer Satisfaction Ratings
Training like everything else in your business needs to deliver a return on your investment. Whilst not everything should be judged by customer service scores, any service training should ultimately improve your customer satisfaction ratings.
Customer expectations are arguably higher than they have ever been and today’s customers expect to receive high-quality service more than ever before.
If they have a bad experience with a member of your team, they’re likely to make their opinions public and Social Media can amplify bad news like never before.
Customer Service training will not only teach your team to deliver the best customer experiences possible, but also turn your happy customers into advocates for your brand, thus generating new business referrals.
Omnichannel Customer Support
Modern customer service training often starts before your customers have even made a purchase. In most cases your customers first interaction with your brand is either your website or social media pages.
It’s important to include these as part of your wider customer experience strategy. This is supported by many statistics for example, using three channels instead of one for marketing campaigns results in a 287% higher purchase rate.
Providing Omnichannel customer support helps your team keep your clients happy across a range of channels and mediums. It can help them communicate with your customers better not only over traditional channels like the phone, but also via live chat, email, social media, SMS and other platforms.
The most successful customer service teams around today adopt an omnichannel approach with research showing that companies with an omnichannel approach experience a 23 fold increase in customer satisfaction.
We believe it’s really important to include these areas in your service programme. Many companies are failing to meet their customers’ expectations which makes it easier for you and your team to stand out from the crowd and win business from them.
Build Expert Product Knowledge
No matter the industry customers want to deal with experts and not agents who are simply following a call centre script.
If sales reps don’t have the knowledge that they require, they are more likely to leave customers feeling frustrated, with the customer going on to air their feedback publicly.
The more your reps know about your products and services, the better they can address customer pain points and explain why your solutions are the answer to their problems.
Enhance Customer Loyalty
Repeated studies show that customers tend to be much more loyal to companies that offer outstanding customer service. Many of today’s customers say that customer service is more important than price when they’re deciding who to do business with.
By investing in sales and service training, you can attract and retain more customers and gain a real edge over your competitors. Part of your overall programme should include how you plan to collect and share customer reviews.
With 70% of people taking action based on customer reviews this is an essential component of every sales and customer service training.
Resolve Disputes Quickly
Delays when resolving complaints can often be the straw that breaks the camels back with 55% of people leaving a brand because of delays in resolution.
Sales and service training can help your reps resolve complaints quickly which is important when dealing with angry and frustrated customers.
Training can help them show tactical empathy when they are dealing with an angry customer and enable them to steer the conversation in the right direction, no matter which medium they are communicating on.
Understanding active listening skills can turn your team into better, more helpful listeners that pay close attention to what your customers have to say and then use the skills and information they have to deliver the best outcome possible.
Customer Service Training
Unlike traditional customer service training courses, Klozers provides the latest in business simulation software, that allows your team to experience a 2 year customer experience transformation program in 1 day.
Our state of the art business simulation goes way beyond basic communication skills and helps your sales team understand customer expectations, sales process, and what truly drives sales performance across the organisation.
Designed specifically as a holistic cross departmental our customer service courses are designed to engage everyone from your front line sales team, product and services teams and company management.
The customer service training includes two options as follows:
Enterprise Customer Service Training
SaaS Customer Success Training
Please contact us for further information.
In Summary
How important is retaining your existing customers?
How valuable would the extra revenue be if your customer service team were actively cross selling and upselling throughout their day?
Investing in sales and service training will make your staff and customers much happier. If you look after your staff they will in turn look after your customers.
If you feel you need to make improvements in these areas, please give us a call. We would love to work with you and make the sales and service goals you have in mind a reality.
Sales Coaching – For Individuals and Sales Teams
There’s a new way to deliver sales growth…
Don’t buy Sales Training until you’ve watched this video…
1. Sales Coaching - Why Invest in Coaching?
At Klozers we love sales coaching. Watching people or a company who had previously struggled, suddenly find their feet and take off, is one of the main benefits of our job.
However, as with anything in business, sales coaching must provide real value and a financial benefit to the business. Unfortunately, many companies still do not invest in professional coaching for their salespeople and the most common reason for this is the cost.
One could argue that if you can’t afford sales coaching then there is an even greater need for it. Perhaps it’s easier for people to blame the cost, than for the coaching profession to admit they could do more to help justify the costs.
We were in that position ourselves until we changed the format of our own sales coaching in order to make it easier for our clients to measure the increases in their pipeline and the subsequent sales revenue that comes from this. If you would like to learn more about this and how you can change your own sales coaching process then you can jump to the end here.
2. Sales Training vs Sales Coaching - what's the difference?
Many people get confused between what is sales training and what is sales coaching. Not only is training and coaching different, they also have different outputs which are really important.
Whereby sales training is about the transfer of knowledge, Sales Coaching is about the practical implementation of that knowledge in the field.
The easiest way to think of this is if your company has technical people like engineers or software developers. The training is what a developer would go through to learn how to write the code.
The coaching is what the developer would need to turn the code into a meaningful application for your business. This means that coaching is the part that drives productivity in the sales team.
One of the main benefits of coaching is that it reinforces the new skills and techniques learnt during the training. Without coaching studies show that up to 98% of knowledge is lost within 30 days.
In other words, one off event-based training sessions have a very limited impact on sales productivity.
3. When to coach and when not to coach
A recent study on Sales Coaching identified it as one of the most productive activities for any sales team, however, not every sales rep is coachable. Some salespeople have a “superiority complex” and don’t believe they can either learn or improve.
This can be falsely reinforced by hitting sales targets that are too low or by being the top sales performer in a group. Other people will not responding to coaching as improving sales invariably means changing sales behaviours and every human being struggles to change their behaviours.
The last reason some salespeople do not respond to coaching is because they are simply stuck in their own comfort zone, and without any really powerful reason to change they simply carry on as before.
The irony is of course that in the majority of cases these people are in the most need of training and coaching. With that said, unless there are exceptional circumstances you should not invest time or money in coaching people who have no desire to improve.
You must either accept them as they are and the potential negative impact they will have on the wider group, or you must have one of those ”management” conversations with them.
Get started with our Sales Performance Coaching
4. Sales Coaching Models
There are many sales coaching models and frameworks that you can choose from. The one we use both internally and externally is the GROW model which we find provides the simplicity and flexibility we require.
It’s worth noting that coaching in sales can be very different to other forms of coaching. For example, in Exec coaching, coaches are encouraged not to provide the answers and to focus on the questions.
This forces the coachee to come up with the answer and the though process is that because its their idea they are more likely to believe it and then act on it.
In sales when there are potentially millions of dollars in terms of deal values up for grabs and time is of the essence, the best sales coaches will switch from a consultative coaching process to directive coaching whereby they are training, coaching and advising the coachee what they need to do.
Opportunities for Coaching
There are many areas within sales that lend themselves to sales coaching. The most common areas Managers should be focussing on for coaching we have found are around:
Sales Activity
Accountability
Lead Generation
Pipeline Coaching
Qualifying/disqualifying
Deal Coaching
Field Coaching
Pre-call planning
Post-call debriefing
Storytelling
5. The Six Biggest Benefits of Sales Coaching
1. Growing Sales Revenues
The more adept your employees become at selling, the more revenue they will generate for your business. We use the word employees because sales has changed and the most productive companies have people in every department that can sell to one degree or another.
For example, many companies who have now aligned their sales and marketing now acknowledge that great salespeople can do marketing and great marketers can sell.
Best in class companies have expanded this to their operations team who are now positioned as thought leaders and subject matter experts. This helps build brand authority and helps to differentiate companies in the marketplace.
By investing in training based on the very latest strategies, techniques and market activity, you can gain a real edge over your competitors.
2. Increased Sales Productivity
Productivity can be difficult to measure in many roles, however, in sales there is a tangible figure every month that can be used as a good indicator.
That’s not to say that your MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) or other revenue goals are the only indicator of productivity, but it’s always the ultimate figure that sales reps are judged by.
Whereby sales training is about the transfer of knowledge, Sales Coaching is about the practical implementation of that knowledge in the field. This means that coaching is the part that drives productivity in the sales team.
With studies showing that 83% of employees want to learn new skills sales training and coaching can make your team more productive and efficient. Quality sales coaching sessions can inspire your team and help them get out of a rut.
You may find that some of your employees feel that they know all there is to know about driving sales. However, the market is always changing, and what works one year isn’t always as effective 12 months later.
Some of your employees may have more sales potential than they think, and training and coaching can help them unlock this.
3. Closing Bigger & Better Deals
Many times human beings create their own glass ceilings and get stuck. Salespeople are susceptible to this and often suffer from self limiting beliefs around deal sizes, sales behaviours and the whole sales process.
Sales training can give your staff the skills they need to secure bigger, more lucrative deals, however without coaching they will quickly lose the new skills and revert back to type.
A good sales coach helps embed the new skills and strategies your sales reps learn in training and helps hold them accountable to using the new skills. As your team become more knowledgeable and confident, they’re more likely to close more deals and bigger ones.
By using highly experienced sales coaches who live and breathe sales you are in effect fast tracking your team past all the typical problems they will encounter that slow down company growth.
Your team will learn about the latest best practices that they can follow whilst attempting to close deals. The more successful your sales reps become, the more their confidence will grow. Success breeds success.
4. Win More New Clients
Often the most difficult activity in sales is generating new business. Sales prospecting, lead generation, whatever you call it in your business filling the top of your sales funnel is always a challenge in B2B sales.
The problem with prospecting is that nobody wants to do it, but it still needs to be done. Many of the problems associated with sales prospecting are connected to the mindset of the sales reps.
It’s easy to churn out 70 calls a day, and even when you achieve some success it’s difficult to get motivated to come back in day after day and make more calls.
The job of the modern sales coach isn’t just to help improve your telephone skills, or the number of dials you make every day. A great sales coach will take a more strategic approach, and work with you on the bigger picture – revenue goals, sales coals, sales campaigns that dramatically increase your sales results.
This in turn helps to motivate and inspire your staff, and get them thinking more strategically about the sales process.
5. Boost Workplace Morale
Great sales coaching can also boost confidence and improve morale amongst your staff. Research by LinkedIn shows that 91% of people agree that teams that learn new skills together are more successful.
Furthermore 90% of people surveyed believe that team learning helps foster a sense of belonging to the organisation.
Whilst not everyone will, the majority of your team members are likely to appreciate the effort you’ve put into training them, and helping them improve their knowledge and skills.
Investing in training shows your staff that you care about their career development and want them to achieve more. If staff feel valued, they are more likely to meet their goals and stay with the organisation longer.
Employee satisfaction can be worth its weight is key when it achieving customer satisfaction and meeting business targets. Training can also refresh their knowledge so they can follow and new best practices and anything they may have forgotten or become unclear about.
6. Increased Decision Making by Sales Reps
Many companies struggle to grow because there are bottlenecks in their internal decision-making process. These bottlenecks occur when sales reps do not have the confidence or knowledge to make any form of decision.
This makes companies less agile and slow to react to changes in the market. Many companies are investing in sales training and coaching in order to improve the decision-making skills of their sales leadership team.
Effective sales coaching can help your team recognise and capitalise on opportunities to drive not only your business forward, but their professional development too.
Sales trainers act as a sounding board and can listen to your Teams ideas and help them fine-tune them to make them more effective in real-world situations.
Other benefits of sales coaching are that your team can become more creative and you will foster an environment where they feel more comfortable discussing new ideas.
6. Virtual or Remote Sales Coaching
During the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 many salespeople were forced to work from home. Homeworking was easier for some than others, however, many studies showed that people felt less connected and even unsettled when working from home.
Many Field Salespeople who had spent their lives on out on the road where suddenly confined to their home and confronted with a completely new way of selling. These are exactly the sort of scenarios where coaching can help people adjust to new circumstances and maintain performance.
In many cases sales reps had to retrain on how to sell remotely using tools like MS Teams and Zoom. Sales training and coaching can bring your remote team together and make it more than the sum of its parts.
The best sales trainers don’t just focus on boosting individual performance but foster a sense of teamwork and unity between your staff. To close big deals in the modern sales world takes a Team and not just one individual.
If everyone is using a common sales language and are working together at the best of their abilities, you’re more likely to close bigger and better deals than ever before.
7. Sales Coaching Tips
1. Focus on One-on-One Coaching
One of the most impactful sales coaching tips is to prioritize one-on-one coaching sessions. Sales representatives often struggle with specific challenges unique to their roles. By tailoring these sessions to the individual’s needs, a sales coach can offer the most relevant content and actionable advice. This personalized approach enables sales reps to make progress more effectively, ultimately achieving their business goals and hitting quotas.
2. Implement an Effective Coaching Program
An effective coaching program is essential for any sales organization looking to improve its sales performance. By regularly conducting coaching sessions on a monthly basis, sales managers can keep their teams on track. The best coaching programs include a formal process for providing ongoing feedback, focusing on areas for improvement, and setting clear objectives. Implementing such a program can significantly impact your team’s effectiveness and overall success.
3. Encourage Role Play and Real-Life Scenarios
Role play is a crucial component of sales coaching that allows salespeople to practice real-life scenarios in a safe environment. This technique not only prepares them for potential sales situations but also helps them to refine their selling techniques and overcome common obstacles. By simulating conversations with prospects, sales reps can better articulate their value propositions, handle objections, and close deals more effectively.
4. Offer Constructive Criticism and Praise
Balancing constructive criticism with praise is vital in sales coaching. While it’s important to address areas where sales reps need to improve, recognizing their strengths and achievements is equally crucial. Offering encouragement and celebrating small wins can boost self-motivation and foster a positive coaching environment. Remember, the goal is to create an environment where salespeople feel supported and motivated to excel.
5. Align Coaching with Business Goals
To ensure your sales coaching efforts lead to tangible results, it’s important to align your coaching activities with your organization’s business goals. Regularly reviewing progress toward quotas, discussing action plans, and adjusting strategies as needed will help keep your team focused on what matters most. By aligning coaching with business objectives, you can create a win-win scenario where both individual reps and the organization as a whole achieve success.
6. Utilize Technology for Continuous Improvement
Leveraging technology like CRM systems and sales analytics tools can enhance the effectiveness of your coaching program. These tools provide valuable insights into sales performance, helping coaches identify areas for improvement and track progress over time. Additionally, video recordings of sales calls can be reviewed during coaching sessions to offer specific, actionable feedback. Incorporating technology into your coaching process not only improves efficiency but also ensures that your coaching remains data-driven and impactful.
7. Foster a Culture of Continuous Learning
Sales coaching should be viewed as an ongoing process rather than a one-time event. Encouraging a culture of continuous learning within your sales organization is key to long-term success. Provide your team with professional development opportunities, such as sales training courses or workshops, to help them grow their skills. A great coach knows that developing people is a continuous journey, one that requires commitment, support, and the right resources.
8. Best Practices for Sales Managers in Coaching Sessions
When it comes to improving the performance of sales representatives, the role of a sales manager in coaching sessions is crucial. Conducting effective coaching sessions requires a structured approach that leverages insights, encourages motivation, and focuses on the specific needs of each team member. Below are some best practices that sales management can follow to ensure their coaching sessions get the best results:
1. Understand Your Team’s Needs:
Sales managers should begin by identifying the unique strengths and weaknesses of each sales representative. By conducting a thorough analysis and reflecting on past performance, managers can tailor coaching sessions to address the specific challenges that sales reps struggle with, ensuring that each session is impactful.
2. Set Clear Objectives:
Establishing clear, actionable goals is essential for any coaching session. Sales managers should define what success looks like and communicate these objectives effectively to their team. Whether it’s improving close rates, enhancing product knowledge, or mastering objection handling, having a defined goal helps in tracking progress and ensuring accountability.
3. Incorporate Regular Feedback:
Consistent feedback is a key component of successful coaching. Sales managers should provide constructive criticism while also recognizing the achievements of their sales reps. Regular feedback, given during weekly one-on-ones or after team meetings, helps reinforce positive behaviors and correct any areas of concern.
4. Utilize Role-Playing Scenarios:
Role-playing is an excellent way for sales representatives to practice and refine their skills. Sales managers should incorporate role-playing exercises into their coaching sessions to simulate real-world scenarios. This approach not only builds confidence but also helps reps think on their feet and improve their performance during actual sales calls.
5. Foster an Open Communication Environment:
Creating an environment where sales reps feel comfortable discussing their challenges and successes is vital. Sales managers should encourage open-ended questions and active participation during coaching sessions. This open communication fosters trust and allows for a more personalized coaching experience.
6. Leverage Data and Technology:
Sales managers can enhance the effectiveness of their coaching sessions by leveraging data-driven insights from CRM systems and other sales tools. Analyzing sales performance data helps in identifying patterns, tracking progress, and making informed decisions. Additionally, using video recordings of sales calls can be a powerful way to provide targeted feedback.
7. Focus on Long-Term Development:
While addressing immediate performance issues is important, sales managers should also focus on the long-term development of their team members. This includes providing professional development opportunities, offering career guidance, and helping reps build a path toward achieving their career goals.
8. Balance Between Guidance and Autonomy:
A great sales manager knows when to provide guidance and when to allow reps to take ownership of their learning. Striking the right balance between offering direction and encouraging autonomy empowers sales reps to take initiative and develop their problem-solving skills.
9. Track and Measure Progress:
Regularly tracking and measuring the effectiveness of coaching sessions is critical. Sales managers should set key performance indicators (KPIs) and use these metrics to evaluate progress over time. This approach ensures that the coaching process is aligned with the overall sales goals of the organization.
By implementing these sales coaching activities, sales managers can conduct coaching sessions that not only improve individual performance but also contribute to the overall success of the sales organization. Effective coaching sessions are a blend of insight, motivation, and structured guidance, and when done right, they have the power to transform average companies into high-performing sales teams.
9. Sales Coaching Techniques
Sales coaching is a critical part of any effective coaching program, especially in a dynamic sales organization where sales representatives are constantly adapting to new challenges. Here are some essential sales coaching techniques to help your sales reps succeed:
1. One-on-One Coaching for Personalized Development
Personal 121 coaching sessions are an effective way to address the unique needs of individual sales representatives. Often a Sales rep may struggle with specific obstacles in their role, and these tailored sessions allow coaches to provide relevant content and actionable advice. By making personal coaching a top priority, sales coaches can focus on developing core performers, thereby improving overall sales performance and achieving business goals.
2. Implementing an Effective Coaching Program
A structured and effective sales coaching program is essential for ongoing development and quota attainment. According to CSO Insights, a well-implemented coaching process leads to significant improvement in close rates and overall sales performance. By scheduling coaching sessions on a monthly basis and providing ongoing feedback, managers can ensure their teams are consistently making progress. Importantly, these sessions should be seen as opportunities for constructive criticism and praise, helping to motivate and guide reps toward success.
3. Role Play to Prepare for Real-World Scenarios
Of all the sales coaching activities you could implement, Role play is by far the most productive. Role play is a proven technique that prepares salespeople for real-world interactions with prospects. By practicing different approaches in a controlled environment, the sales rep can build confidence and refine their techniques. This method not only helps reps articulate value propositions more effectively but also enables them to overcome common objections they may face during sales calls.
4. Leveraging Technology for Enhanced Coaching
The use of CRM systems and other sales enablement tools is crucial in modern sales coaching. These technologies provide valuable insights into sales activities, allowing coaches to track performance, identify areas for improvement, and review sales calls for feedback. By integrating technology into your coaching sessions, you can ensure that your coaching is data-driven and tailored to the specific needs of your sales team.
5. Encouraging a Culture of Continuous Learning
Creating an environment that fosters continuous learning is vital for long-term success. Sales coaching should not be a one-time event but rather an ongoing process that aligns with the organization’s goals. By offering professional development opportunities and encouraging self-motivation, sales leaders can ensure that their teams are consistently developing and improving. This culture of continuous learning will ultimately lead to greater job satisfaction and higher retention rates.
6. Aligning Coaching with Business Goals
To maximize the impact of sales coaching, it’s crucial to align coaching activities with the organization’s business objectives. Regularly reviewing progress and setting action plans based on these goals helps create a win-win situation where both the sales reps and the organization achieve their targets. By focusing on these main points during coaching sessions, sales leaders can ensure that their teams are on track to hit their quotas.
7. Fostering Trust and Ownership Among Reps
Effective sales coaching is built on a foundation of trust and ownership. Sales coaches must foster an environment where reps feel supported and accountable for their progress. By involving reps in the decision-making process and encouraging them to take ownership of their development, coaches can empower them to achieve success. This approach not only leads to better results but also helps build stronger, more resilient sales teams.
By implementing these sales coaching techniques, you can create an effective and motivating environment that drives your sales team toward success.
10. Coaching your Sales Team in a Structured Way
It’s common for companies to know exactly what kind of training their teams need. However, many sales management teams are unclear about how the training should be structured.
Structure is important because it ensures that the training sticks and is embedded in the organisation. Without any form of structure you will find participants forget up to 98% of what they learn in training.
Experienced training providers and coaches can help you examine your current sales culture and build a training programme that’s specifically tailored to your organisations needs.
A sales training provider can carry out research such as a training needs analysis before training and coaching takes place. Any training and coaching should also be aligned with the companies sales strategy.
For example, if there is a need from the business to reduce customer churn the training and coaching on this topic might be a priority.
Training can also be built around new product launches and sales campaigns and wherever possible should be built around your current sales challenges.
11. Product and Service Training
Buyers have very little time to spend with sales reps and when they do they want to talk to salespeople who understand their industry, their business and their own products and services.
For any new sales rep this can be a huge challenge as they get up to speed on products and services.
Buyers expect salespeople to know all the answers to their questions, and their products inside out. including all their features and benefits. While training supports features and benefits, coaching provides the all important bridge between them, and what relevance and value they provide to the customer.
Sales coaches can help reps gain a deeper, richer understanding of the context and relevance of the products that they’re selling. This in turn allows them to emphasise their value when discussing them with customers.
A quality sales coach will encourage your team members to talk about the most important features of your solutions, so your prospects can clearly see how beneficial they are, resulting in more sales success for everyone.
12. Coaching Sales Managers
Many companies overlook one of the most important elements of any successful sales coaching program, namely the sales manager.
In most cases a sales manager also fulfils the role of the sales coach and as such has a huge influence on the success of the sales team.
Coaching sales people will have limited results if the overall coaching program does not include the sales manager.
Modern sales managers set the bar in terms of productivity and sales performance, so unless they are learning and improving, neither will their team be.
Most sales managers have neither been trained in sales management, let alone as a sales coach.
Running an effective sales coaching programme is very different from being a great sales person or sales manager.
13. Virtual Selling
The pandemic and subsequent lockdowns resulted in many traditional field sales reps being taken off the road and working from home.
Despite most lockdowns having lifted the traditional field sales role has in some cases merged into a hybrid role and in other cases been removed completely.
Virtual selling is here to stay and for most organisations this represented an immediate need for sales coaching and training to support reps in their changed environments.
Sales Managers with no training as sales coaches where thrown into the limelight, and overnight were required to be the sales coach.
In addition to their management duties, overnight they now had strategic coaching, tactical coaching, sales cycle coaching team motivation, coaching sales calls, coaching underperforming sales reps, one on one meetings, group sessions to keep their team motivated, boost engagement maintain accountability and sales performance.
All this whilst managing their own performance and continuing to meet the revenue and sales goals and overall sales success of the organisation. Sales managers need support, they need professional development programs themselves if they are in turn expected to support other team members.
Remote selling requires a different skill set and different coaching techniques in order to deliver results.
14. In Conclusion
If you’re interested in providing structured and effective sales coaching program that’s specifically based on your needs, we would love to talk with you. Sales coaching can reverse any negative sales trends, make your team more adept at selling, improve your sales processes and increase morale within your workforce.
By getting your sales leaders on board and involved in the training and coaching process, you can increase the chances of the training being successful.
Sales coaching can also unite sales teams, help you close bigger, better and more lucrative deals, enhance your revenue, help you win new clients, and retain existing ones. Few companies regret their decision to invest in sales coaching.
Klozers has different sales coaching programs available for salespeople, sales managers and business leaders. We have built our business on our ability to train and coach sales professionals across various industries and love what we do.
12 Critical Objectives of Sales Management
The Objectives of Sales Management
There are many objectives and goals for sales management and the importance of each will vary from business to business.
Business to business sales can be complex, with many variables and whilst the obvious objectives of revenue, profitability and growth are important it’s easy to argue a case for the plethora of other objectives such as customer satisfaction, team morale, employee retention.
Effective sales management is the key to running every successful sales team. When sales management is executed correctly, the rest of your enterprise benefits.
Sales managers are responsible for inspiring teams, leading by example, maximising profits and providing customers with the best experience to make sure they return for more.
We’ve resisted the urge to include the all to common piece around smart goals, because we assume your past all that and looking for something more meaningful.
So, we’ve listed below what we believe to be the main objectives of sales management, enjoy.
1. Sales Plan
We’ve listed sales plan at the very start because of it’s importance. Without a plan it’s difficult to track progress, meet or exceed your goals and align your sales team around those goals.
Quite simply, the sales plan ensures that not only is everyone on your company boat rowing in the same direction, it ensures that the boat itself is going in the right direction.
As with any objective or goal, the sales manager should be measured on the execution of the sales plan.
For some reason the majority of companies do not have a sales plan and miss out on the many benefits they bring.
2. Sales Strategy
Strategy is listed in the dictionary as “an approach” and although it sounds simple coming up with the best approach or strategy to how you gain maximum market penetration with the budget available to you is never easy.
At best if you nail your sales strategy sales will take off and at worst you will find that sales become like wading through treacle. An eternal hardship that consumes any profits you dreamed of as it sucks the life from your business.
Once you’ve agreed on a strategy you need to review this on a monthly basis and adjust as required.
Beware however, of changing your strategy before it has had a chance to mature or you might just end up going round in circles.
Once you’ve decided on your sales strategy the next challenge is aligning all your resources including the sales team and executing on that strategy.
3. Reporting and Metrics
Before you start to implement and share your strategy and sales plan you will need to give some thought as to how you are going to measure your progress.
Data is the new oil and Sales reporting is an essential part of the modern sales managers day to day activities.
Your reporting system should tell you everything from how well your reps are performing on a daily basis, to the cost of customer acquisition on your latest sales campaign.
Reports will tell you which areas you are succeeding in and areas need your attention. You should draw up a list of baseline sales metrics and then from there you can measure progress towards your targets.
In almost every scenario, you will be asked to generate Management Reports for your board and these will include things like your current sales funnel/sales pipeline which will provide information such as how many live deals you currently have in your funnel, the average size of each deal and the average length of the journey through the funnel.
It’s critically important that you not only can generate the right reports, but that you can interpret the results in a meaningful way.
4. Sales Performance
There is no one individual who has as much influence over sales than the sales manager.
Every day the Manager sets the bar between what is acceptable and what is not, in terms performance from their team.
They are responsible for not just managing, but also the training, coaching and development of the sales team.
Every salesperson wants to sell, every salesperson wants to be part of a winning team and the sales managers that succeed are those that focus on 2 things:
- They do everything they can to help salespeople sell more
- They do everything they can to develop their salespeople.
Unfortunately, as the manager has the power to make everything a success, they can also be architects of their own failure.
5. Key duties of the Sales Manager
Sales managers are tasked with developing sales teams, coordinating all operations within sales departments and identifying and implement the right sales techniques to deliver success.
Although the aim is to meet sales targets, it’s not uncommon for these aims to be surpassed.
The right sales management processes can give you a substantial edge over your competitors and ensure your company is thriving rather than simply surviving.
As a minimum the sales manager should address the following areas in their plan. Strategy, Process, People, Channels, Technology, Customers and Leadership
6. Team Morale
Morale is extremely important when it comes to building a winning sales team. The more inspired and confident your team are, the more they will achieve.
This is why it’s so important to ensure each member of your team feels listened to and respected. The easiest way to do this is by including them in the sales planning wherever possible.
Provide real-time information on as much as possible including things like the exact costs to the business to employ them, the profitability of your sales and how many deals they need to close to breakeven in terms of their own cost to the company.
Transparency is essential, so make sure each member of your team knows how well you’re currently performing.
What’s also important in terms of morale is being completely fair and not having any personal favourites in the team.
It’s normally easy for managers not to have favourites, however, many find it more difficult to deal with disruptive sales reps and often ignore them rather than look to resolve the problem.
Often times the most disruptive sales reps can be a top performer but you will still need to let them go if you feel they are damaging the overall morale and productivity of the team.
It’s incredibly important to foster a positive workplace culture where workplace friction is addressed as soon as it arises.
7. Setting realistic but ambitious targets
When it comes to setting your sales targets it’s vital to strike a balance between being ambitious and being realistic.
If your targets are unrealistically high, your sales team and your sales team fall so far behind that they don’t believe they can hit those targets, they will quickly become demotivated.
We recommend that you include your sales team as part of the planning process to help you set your sales targets.
By doing this you are much more likely to get buy in from the sales team and as the manager, you can still guide the team to create targets that are challenging.
Unrealistic targets will only serve to damage morale substantially and in turn, this will lower the overall performance of the team.
Managers should guide and coach their team members through the entire period of the targets to help ensure they remain on track and re-motivate them if they begin to lose confidence.
Managers typically have lots of experiences and skills that they can draw on from when they were a salesperson that will support their sales reps.
8. Building a sales funnel
Creating a sales funnel that continually is topped up with new, high quality sales leads is one of the most important objectives of sales management.
A sales funnel, also known as a pipeline is used to outline each step a customer takes throughout their journey towards making a purchase.
In B2B sales the salespeople are responsible for moving the deals or opportunities through the sales funnel.
There is nothing more demotivating to sales reps than the struggle to fill the sales funnel with new leads. It’s therefore important that you work with your marketing team to ensure a continuous flow of good quality sales leads.
If you are using Sales Development Reps (SDRs) to generate their own sales leads then you must give them the strategies and tactics to generate those leads.
Tactics like cold calling and cold email campaigns do work but they on their own it is a slow way to scale your business. As the sales manager it’s your responsibility to break the entire sales process down into easy, manageable stages.
Sales funnels enable salespeople to remain organised and in control, especially when used in conjunction with a good CRM system.
With the right CRM dashboards in place Sales reps can easily see the progress they have already made towards their sales targets.
This in turn will inspire them to continue focussing on moving deals through the sales funnel.
9. When can I expect results?
In our experience every overnight success has taken years of hard work to get there. With that said, you should see early indications of success in months, not years.
It’s important to manage expectations and collectively agree what success looks like in the initial phases.
This is why we are such advocates of creating a sales plan that everyone can align themselves behind.
Your sales plan should identify what we call the lead indicators rather than the lag indicators for success and you can start tracking them immediately.
It’s unlikely your sales management will deliver exceptional results immediately but with planning, patience and persistence you will slowly turn the ship around.
Trial-and-error can play a big role in helping you create the right sales process for you.
Even when you start seeing the results that you’ve been aiming for, you should always be prepared to make amendments as customer behaviours and requirements, technology and markets change.
10. Motivating your Sales Team
As a sales manager, you will be tasked with overseeing things like data, technology, processes and sales pipelines which you may or may not find easy.
However, often the biggest challenge is people management and listening to your team is very important.
It’s essential to ask your team what drives them and what their personal goals are and then tie them into your own business objectives.
Not every member of your sales team will be motivated by money alone, so try to find out what else drives them and why they were interested in a career in sales in the first place.
It’s also essential to deliver additional support for those members working remotely during any lockdown period.
Some team members will be comfortable working from home, whilst others will prefer to be out in the field visiting customers and working in a busy office environment.
11. Do great salespeople make great sales managers?
One problem many companies encounter is that not all great salespeople make a fantastic sales manager.
Being a sales manager requires a whole host of different skills not required by salespeople, and it may take time to start seeing success once you’ve moved from making sales to overseeing them.
Most of the key tasks assigned to sales managers are strategic versus the tactical skills required by salespeople.
For example, data analysis is hugely important for every sales manager, as is planning, strategy and people management.
In addition, identifying realistic goals, hiring the right salespeople, creating incentives, arranging ongoing training and learning and matching the right kind of guidance to specific individuals in your team are all important.
12. Learning & Development
It’s easy to overlook training as a Sales Manager because there never seems to be any free time for developing your team or indeed yourself.
Training falls into the category of important/not urgent and because of this it often gets overlooked. In nearly every case the salespeople who don’t want training are those that need it the most.
Learning and development starts by hiring the right salespeople and only recruiting those who are driven and determined with great people skills.
The team that you inherit may be very different from this and it’s your objective as the sales manager to improve the team that you’re working with over the coming months or years.
It’s also important to seek out coachable people as these people are great learners and will continuously improve given the right support.
You will encounter people that already have good sales skills but seem unwilling to continue learning or taking feedback and this can become a problem.
These people not only don’t want to learn but they don’t want others to learn either and can sabotage and undermine your leadership.
Under these circumstances, as long as you have done everything possible to try and support these people if they still refuse then you will have no alternative to letting them go.
If you’re able to offer real-time information that you can display in the workplace, you should certainly do this as this creates incentives and keeps your salespeople’s eyes on the ball.
Transparency is essential, so make sure each member of your team knows how well you’re currently performing.
In conclusion
Sales managers are arguably the single most important part of your sales team and the right manager will help you achieve outstanding results when they build an exceptional and focussed team that they take the time to support.
They will ensure the organisation has the right people, structures, technology and sales processes in place progress which can be tracked and clearly visible for all the stakeholders.
By ensuring team members remain willing to learn and committing to learning more themselves, sales managers can deliver real success, even in the most competitive markets.
Sales Negotiation Training
Key Negotiation Skills – Introduction
There is a common misconception that sales negotiation skills are only required towards the end of the sales process. The part in every sales process where costs and terms are agreed. Whilst this is undoubtedly true, it’s also true that the best salespeople are negotiating all the way through the sales process. In fact every Professional salesperson negotiates, every single day which is why it’s an important part of any training programme.
From negotiating with their children on what to have for breakfast, to negotiating with a Partner on where to go for dinner. In between times they will negotiate workloads with their line managers, negotiate meeting times with co-workers, negotiate dates & times for appointments with prospects and lastly negotiating sales contracts, project delivery and aftercare contracts. In short, Negotiation is actually unavoidable, and the ability to Negotiate is a core skill for every Salesperson.
Planning for Sales Negotiations
Like most things in life when it comes to Negotiation knowledge is power. The more information you have and better prepared you are then the more likely you will achieve a successful negotiation. Follow the information below to discover how to research and plan your next negotiation.
Sales Negotiation Goals
These are the needs, wants and desires of the parties involved in the negotiation. In business this can be complicated as not only may both sides have differing goals, but parties within each side may have differing and even conflicting Goals.
Goals can be subjective for example “We need to increase the confidence of our people.” or they can be more objective like “We need to reduce our overheads by 10 this quarter”. Either way it’s important to know both your own Goals and that of the other side. Important questions you must ask are:
- Have we identified all the Goals?
- What are the Prioritised Goals?
- What are the Business Goals?
- What are the Personal Goals?
- Are there conflicting Goals?
| Business Goals Examples | Personal Goals Examples |
| Strategic | Security |
| Change | Satisfaction |
| Growth | Peer Pressure |
| Improvement | Financial Gain |
Please note Goals are NOT the same as outcomes.
Example:
Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal). In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital. Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest.
The Outcome is the Negotiated agreement that they come to.
Negotiation Options
These are all the possible solutions that satisfy the goals of both parties. They are all possibilities that both parties agree or say Yes to.
By investing time to explore all the Options then you are more likely to find:
- Alternative solutions
- Enable both parties to achieve their goals
- Reach the Best Possible Agreement (BPA)
Example:
Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal). In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital. Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest.
Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement.
Criteria for Negotiation
Criteria are the “terms” of any possible Option
Example:
Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal). In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital. Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest.
Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement.
Criteria – George needs to guarantee a minimum payment every month regardless of the profitability of that month. Mike needs to ensure ensure he will not be liable for any warranty, liability or compensations claims from the period before he take responsibility/ownership of the business.
Get expert Sales Negotiation Training from our Sales Coaches
CNA – Cost of No Agreement
Not all Negotiations end in an agreement, it is therefore vital before entering into any Negotiation that you first work out what the Cost of No Agreement is for both parties. The costs of no agreement can be both Objective and Subjective.
Example:
Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal). In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital. Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest.
Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement.
Criteria – George needs to guarantee a minimum payment every month regardless of the profitability of that month. Mike needs to ensure ensure he will not be liable for any warranty, liability or compensations claims from the period before he take responsibility/ownership of the business.
CNA – George does not have the financial resources to retire (Objective) however he has been trying unsuccessfully to sell his business for three years and is now desperate (Subjective) for a solution. Mike is keen to buy a business (Objective) but knows there are hundreds of businesses for sale and he is pretty relaxed (Subjective) if this deal doesn’t go through another one will come along.
The Subjective Cost of No Agreement can be more powerful than the Objective ones as people make decisions emotionally and then justify their position intellectually afterwards.
BATNA – Best Alternative to No Agreement
Not all Negotiations end in an Agreement, it is therefore vital before entering into any Negotiations that you first work out what the Best Alternative to No Agreement is. In some cases you may well experience that the other party is so entrenched in their position that they have no desire to Negotiate. BATNA is typically but not always, an alternative course of action that can be taken if no agreement is reached.
BATNA helps you prepare for a Negotiation by:
- Helps prevent you from agreeing to something you will regret
- Defining your Minimum Possible Agreement (MPA)
- Provides you with a Plan B
- Helps prevent you from over or underestimating the your own and the other party’s position
- Helps you understand where the leverage is
- Identifying alternative Options
Example:
Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal). In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital. Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest.
Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement.
Criteria – George needs to guarantee a minimum payment every month regardless of the profitability of that month. Mike needs to ensure ensure he will not be liable for any warranty, liability or compensations claims from the period before he take responsibility/ownership of the business.
CNA – George does not have the financial resources to retire (CNA) and has been trying unsuccessfully to sell his business for three years and is now desperate for a solution. Mike is keen to buy a business and has spent £3,000 with Solicitors and Accountants thus far completing his due diligence on the company.
BATNA – George is in discussion with his Lawyers to explore the possibilities of a Management Buyout for the business. Mike knows there are hundreds of businesses for sale and he is pretty relaxed if this deal doesn’t go through another one will come along.
Concessions for Negotiation
A concession is something given to the other party in furtherance of the agreement. These concessions should be identified in advance and segmented for both parties in terms of:
High Value – High Cost
High Value – Low Cost
Remember – Never give anything away without receiving something of equal or greater value in return.
Example:
Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal). In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital. Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest.
Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement.
Criteria – George needs to guarantee a minimum payment every month regardless of the profitability of that month. Mike needs to ensure ensure he will not be liable for any warranty, liability or compensations claims from the period before he take responsibility/ownership of the business.
CNA – George does not have the financial resources to retire (CNA) and has been trying unsuccessfully to sell his business for three years and is now desperate for a solution. Mike is keen to buy a business and has spent £3,000 with Solicitors and Accountants thus far completing his due diligence on the company.
BATNA – George is in discussion with his Lawyers to explore the possibilities of a Management Buyout for the business. Mike knows there are hundreds of businesses for sale and he is pretty relaxed if this deal doesn’t go through another one will come along.
Concessions – George is prepared to spend 3 months of his time ensuring during the handover period which is Low Cost to him as he will be retired but High Value to Mike as he is new to the industry and recognises the benefit of George’s experience.
Mike is prepared to move quickly which has no cost to him however this is High Value to George as the last thing he wants is a long protracted sale.
Negotiation Strategies
Aggressive Tactics
- Shoot the hostage
- This strategy is extremely aggressive as it involves an immediate offer to walk away with no deal which is designed to throw and unsettle the other party. This is often delivered in a reluctant tone “we don’t want to do this but…”,
- Delaying tactics
- When time is clearly on one parties side the process can often be deliberately slowed which is extremely effective when there are cost implications if talks over run. This tactic also applies if the other party has another meeting or needs to leave. The negotiator deliberately talks around the subject to delay the real conversation and then uses time to put pressure on the other party to come to an agreement.
- Poor Me
- This strategy is used to play the false victim that needs rescued by the other party.
- Last Minute.com
- As the name suggests this strategy involves the Negotiator agreeing to a solution right up until they are required to sign and then withdrawing. The withdrawal is usually followed up quickly with a counter offer at dramatically reduced terms.
- Misleading/lying
- Often Negotiators will make exaggerated claims or even lie so without hard data to support them you should discount these. They may also issue warnings and threats or make matters personal to unbalance you.
- Missing People
- Everyone knows the importance of having all the Decision Makers in the room but Negotiators may even turn up with complete strangers. In sales some companies will remove Sales People from the final negotiations. If the Sales People have a relationship with the other party they could be more empathetic and weaker negotiators. Turning up without warning with complete strangers also unbalances the other party.
Co-operative Tactics
- Agree on the Process
- Spend time up front agreeing the process and format of the Negotiations including what’s in scope and what’s not.
- Win Win Agreements
- Most professional Negotiators accept that any final agreement must be fair and sustainable for the life of the time period. In most business scenarios it should never be win at all costs as this destroys relationships.
- Matching Rights
- Offer the other party the right to match any solution that you receive. For example if one of two business partners decides to sell their shares to another party they may have the agreement that the other party gets first refusal if they match the offer.
- Contingent Agreements
- These are simply agreements based on future events. Financial Bonus may be tied to Performance. Football transfer fees can be include Contingent Agreements that provides the selling club additional revenue if a player is sold on and or if a player is capped by their country or simply makes a certain number of appearances.
- Multiple Offers
- When multiple offers are placed on the table this allows both parties to indicate preferences and encourages creativity as a winning hybrid offer can be formed. Placing one offer on the table often leads to a refusal and a stall in the process.
Sales Negotiation Checklist
1. Be prepared to walk away. Sales Negotiation is 70% Mindset and 30% Strategy and unless you are prepared to walk away, no strategy will help you.
2. It’s not what you charge it’s what your worth. Thoroughly research the market and discuss with the buyer the Value you bring to the table?
3. Take council from colleagues and external advisors and agree a pre-meeting strategy for the negotiations then PRACTICE.
4. Never give anything away without receiving something of equal or greater value in return.
5. Never enter a Negotiation without first providing your price and outline terms in advance, to anchor the prospect to a higher number and terms.
6. Where possible in high value deals do not include your sales people in Negotiations, as they will be emotionally involved in the sale and not objective.
7. Ensure everyone in your team have agreed in advance your trade-offs, your concessions, and your best alternative to a negotiated settlement.
8. You must be comfortable with silence and at most only talk 30% of the time, as the more you talk the more information you are giving away.
9. If it’s not Win Win then you run the danger of the prospect backing out or failing to implement your agreement, then the lawyers are the only winners.
10. Negotiation is between human beings, you must therefore be familiar with Human Psychology, DiSC, Neuro Linguistic and Programming.
Wie man einen SaaS-Verkaufstrichter aufbaut
1. Was ist ein Verkaufstrichter?
Ein Verkaufstrichter ist eine Abfolge von Aktionen, Ereignissen oder Phasen, die ein Nutzer durchläuft, bevor er ein Produkt oder eine Dienstleistung kauft. Mit Hilfe von Verkaufstrichtern können Marketingexperten den Verkaufsprozess verfolgen, aufzeichnen und optimieren, um die Ergebnisse zu verbessern.
Mehr über unsere SaaS-Vertriebsschulungen erfahren Sie hier.
2. Wie man einen SaaS-Verkaufstrichter aufbaut
Ihr SaaS-Verkaufstrichter ist ein wesentlicher Bestandteil des Erfolgs Ihrer Apps. Wenn Sie SaaS-Anwendungen anbieten, ist die Erstellung eines wiederholbaren, skalierbaren und nachvollziehbaren Verkaufstrichters einer der wichtigsten Schritte, die Sie unternehmen müssen.
Klingt einfach? Dann denken Sie noch einmal nach. Der Verkaufstrichter ist der Punkt, an dem viele Start-ups, die in die Umsatzgenerierung einsteigen, Schwierigkeiten haben und in vielen Fällen scheitern.
Bevor Sie mit dem Aufbau Ihres Trichters beginnen, sollten Sie sich zunächst überlegen, wo Sie sich in Ihrer App-Reise befinden.
3. Die drei Hauptphasen der SaaS-Entwicklung
Leider gibt es im Vertrieb nie eine Einheitslösung, und der Ausgangspunkt für den Aufbau eines SaaS-Verkaufstrichters hängt davon ab, wo Sie sich in Bezug auf die drei Hauptphasen eines SaaS-Geschäfts befinden?
Sind Sie bei:
Phase 1: der Beginn der Reise, in der der Gründer und das Hauptteam noch versuchen, die Passung zwischen Produkt und Markt herzustellen.
Phase 2: Der Gründer und die wichtigsten Teammitglieder haben bewiesen, dass ihr Produkt zum Markt passt, und sie haben bewiesen, dass sie Systeme und Prozesse implementieren können, die andere zum Verkauf nutzen können.
Phase 3, die letzte Hürde, in der Sie bewiesen haben, dass Ihr Produkt zum Markt passt, in der Sie die richtigen Systeme und Prozesse für die Skalierung identifiziert und erprobt haben und in der Sie nun bereit sind, Ihren Vertrieb zu skalieren, sich auf die Kundenakquise zu konzentrieren und Ihre MRR aufzubauen.
Die Strategien, die Sie für den Aufbau eines SaaS-Verkaufstrichters verwenden, hängen davon ab, was Sie in Schritt 1 oben gelernt haben.
Für die Zwecke dieser Übung gehe ich davon aus, dass Sie sich bei Schritt 1 befinden. Wenn Sie bei den Schritten 2 und 3 immer noch Schwierigkeiten haben, einen Verkaufstrichter aufzubauen, dann haben Sie entweder bei Schritt 1 etwas übersehen oder es hat sich etwas geändert, so dass alles, was Sie bei Schritt 1 gelernt haben, nicht mehr funktioniert.
4. Erstellen Sie einen Marketingtrichter vor Ihrem Verkaufstrichter
In jedem Unternehmen ist es wichtig, dass Sie Ihrem Verkaufsteam die optimalen Voraussetzungen für den Erfolg bieten. In der SaaS-Welt reicht es nicht aus, eine großartige Website zu haben, Sie brauchen eine Website, die:
a) Ihre Produkte und Dienstleistungen in den wichtigsten Suchmaschinen – Google, Bing, Yahoo und YouTube – gefunden werden können
b) durch die von Ihnen gelösten Probleme in den großen Suchmaschinen – Google, Bing, Yahoo & YouTube – gefunden werden können
c) den Webverkehr in marketingqualifizierte Leads umwandeln kann
Viele Unternehmen ignorieren dies und bauen in aller Eile ein Outbound-Verkaufsteam auf. Tatsache ist, dass jeder potenzielle Interessent, den Ihr Outbound-Team anspricht, anschließend auf Ihre Website geht, um weitere Nachforschungen anzustellen.
Wenn die Web-Erfahrung nicht gleich oder besser ist als die Erfahrung, die der Interessent mit Ihrem Outbound-Team gemacht hat, wird er sich sofort abwenden.
Um einen Marketingtrichter aufzubauen, müssen Sie “überzeugende Inhalte für den ersten Nutzer” erstellen. Dies sind Inhalte, nach denen die Nutzer aktiv suchen, nicht die Inhalte, die Ihr Vertriebs- und Marketingteam pushen möchte.
Ihr SaaS-Marketingtrichter ist ein wesentlicher Bestandteil Ihrer Inbound-Vertriebsstrategie. Um dies erfolgreich zu tun, müssen Sie in jeder Phase der Buyer Journey qualitativ hochwertige Inhalte erstellen (siehe unten).
Der Inhalt sollte auf subtile Weise Ihre Markengeschichte und den Erfolg erzählen, den Sie anderen Nutzern gebracht haben . Machen Sie Ihre Early Adopters zu Helden, nicht Sie selbst.
TOFU – Oberer Teil des Trichters
Der erste Teil Ihres Verkaufstrichters, auch bekannt als TOFU, ist die Bewusstseinsstufe des Trichters. Der Interessent ist sich der Probleme bewusst, die er hat, und sucht nach Lösungen.
Ihre Website muss Inhalte enthalten, die diese Probleme ansprechen und Ihr Unternehmen als Experten in diesem Bereich positionieren. Die beliebtesten Inhalte wären hier:
Anleitungen
Erklärungsvideos
Blog-Beiträge
Blei-Magnete
In dieser Phase befindet sich der Interessent im Forschungsmodus, nicht im Kaufmodus und sammelt lediglich Informationen.
Möglicherweise ist Ihr Interessent in diesem Stadium noch gar nicht an Lösungen interessiert, da er noch versucht, seine eigenen Probleme genau zu diagnostizieren. Es ist unwahrscheinlich, dass Ihr Interessent in dieser Phase mit dem Vertrieb sprechen möchte.
Wir empfehlen Ihnen, die Marketing-Automatisierung zu nutzen, um zu verfolgen, über welche Artikel/Seiten Ihre potenziellen Kunden die Website betreten, da dies das Problem ist, das für sie am wichtigsten ist. Dies zu wissen, kann es dem Vertrieb leichter machen, ein relevantes Gespräch mit ihnen zu führen.
Sie können auch mit Chatbots auf Ihrer Website Erfolg haben, aber viele werden in dieser Phase anonym bleiben wollen.
Mitte des Trichters
In der Mitte Ihres Verkaufstrichters beginnen potenzielle Kunden, auf der Grundlage der in Stufe 1 gewonnenen Erkenntnisse spezifische Lösungen zu bewerten. Zu den Inhalten in der Mitte des Trichters gehören:
Präsentationen
Demonstrationen
Fallstudien
In der Praxis werden sie eine Art Auswahlliste potenzieller Anbieter erstellt haben und sich dann mit den Einzelheiten jeder potenziellen Lösung befassen.
In diesem Stadium ist der Interessent möglicherweise noch nicht bereit, sich auf Sie einzulassen, da er oft nur im Auftrag anderer Personen in seinem eigenen Unternehmen recherchiert und seine Priorität immer noch in der Informationsbeschaffung liegt.
Boden des Trichters
Wenn Ihr potenzieller Kunde das untere Ende Ihres Marketingtrichters erreicht hat, hat er sich in vielen Fällen bereits für einen bestimmten Anbieter oder eine bestimmte Lösung “entschieden”.
Sie haben ihre Entscheidung größtenteils auf der Grundlage ihrer Web-Erfahrung mit der Marke, Ihrer Vertriebsbotschaft und Ihrer Fähigkeit getroffen, sich nicht nur als Marktführer, sondern als Vordenker zu positionieren, der ihre Probleme versteht.
Bottom-of-Funnel-Inhalte würden Dinge beinhalten wie:
Preisgestaltung
Vergleichstabellen
Testimonials
Bewertungen
Bei einfacheren, preisgünstigeren Lösungen werden Sie feststellen, dass sie jetzt bereit sind, eine Testversion zu nutzen, wenn Sie einen starken Aufruf zum Handeln (CTA) anbieten, während sie sich bei teureren und komplexeren Lösungen jetzt auf den Verkauf einlassen werden.
Die folgende Abbildung zeigt, wie ein einfacher Marketingtrichter in einen Einkaufswagen und ein komplexerer B2B-Verkauf in einen Lead für den Vertrieb übergeht.
Der Erfolg liegt nicht in der Wahl des richtigen Modells, sondern im Aufbau eines eigenen Modells auf der Grundlage von Daten und Versuch und Irrtum.
Die meisten Marketingsoftwares verfolgen inzwischen das Nutzerverhalten auf Ihrer Website und können mit Hilfe von Lead Scoring die Vertriebsmitarbeiter darauf hinweisen, wann der beste Zeitpunkt für eine proaktive Kontaktaufnahme mit potenziellen Kunden ist.
Unserer Erfahrung nach ist der Zeitpunkt fast immer zu früh, und ein gut definiertes Lead-Nurturing-Programm ist ebenso effektiv.
Um dies zu erreichen, sollten Sie in Ihr Marketing mindestens drei verschiedene Lead-Magneten einbauen, die Ihnen helfen, Ihre Web-Besucher in Abonnenten zu verwandeln, damit Sie in Kontakt bleiben können.
5. Werbung zum Füllen Ihres Verkaufstrichters
Viele Unternehmen füllen ihren Verkaufstrichter erfolgreich über Werbung. Die digitale Werbung ist inzwischen so ausgereift, dass sie ein umfangreiches Tracking und Reporting ermöglicht, so dass Sie innerhalb weniger Wochen wissen, wie hoch Ihre Conversion Ratio und Ihr CAC sein werden.
In erster Linie würden wir “Re-Targeting-Kampagnen” befürworten. Dies ist einfach der Prozess der Platzierung von Werbemitteln vor Leuten, die bereits Ihre Website besucht haben.
Studien zeigen, dass Retargeting siebenmal effektiver ist als neue Kampagnen, weshalb wir dies als Ausgangspunkt befürworten.
Diese Strategie funktioniert sehr gut mit einer starken Content-Marketing-Kampagne. Der beliebteste Add-Kanal für B2B ist LinkedIn, aber viele Unternehmen sind auch mit Facebook und Instagram gut gefahren.
Dies wird natürlich von Ihrem Publikum bestimmt. Werbung kann in einfachen Trichtern eingesetzt werden, um Verkäufe zu fördern, und in komplexeren, um neue Anfragen für Vertriebsmitarbeiter zu generieren.
Komplexere Verkäufe benötigen möglicherweise eine definierte Sequenz, bei der die Benutzer auf einen Lead-Magneten klicken und eine Anzeige schalten, um einen Lead-Magneten zu erhalten, wobei jeder Lead $3 kostet.
Wenn es Ihnen anschließend gelingt, 5 % dieser neuen Leads zu konvertieren, können Sie 60 $ pro Verkauf aus der Werbung auf Ihre CAC anrechnen.
Sie können aus jeder Aktivität, nicht nur aus der Werbung, eine nachvollziehbare Sequenz oder ein Modell erstellen. So können Sie beispielsweise anhand von Veranstaltungen, Webinaren und Telesales nachvollziehen, welche Aktivitäten am kosteneffizientesten sind, um nicht nur Ihren Trichter zu füllen, sondern auch tatsächlich zu Aufträgen zu führen.
6. Wie man einen SaaS-Verkaufstrichter aufbaut
Ihr Verkaufstrichter wird sich je nach Ihrer Verkaufsstrategie unterscheiden. Verkaufen Sie Ihre App direkt oder verkaufen Sie sie über Partner? Auf welche Kanäle haben Sie sich zunächst konzentriert?
1. Identifizieren Sie Ihr perfektes Interessentenprofil. Dies ist die Version einer Marketing-Persona für den Vertriebsmitarbeiter. Sie enthält alles, was auch eine Marketing-Persona enthalten würde, sowie einige zusätzliche Informationen, die dem Vertrieb helfen, den potenziellen Kunden besser zu verstehen und mit ihm zu kommunizieren.
2. Erstellen Sie Ihre Vertriebsbotschaft. Ein Teil der Produkt-/Marktanpassung besteht darin zu verstehen, welches geschäftliche oder persönliche Problem Ihr Produkt löst.
Nach unserer Erfahrung sind die erfolgreichsten SaaS-Dienste Unternehmenslösungen, die Geschäftsprobleme lösen.
Wenn Sie erst einmal verstanden haben, wie dies mit Ihrem eigenen Produkt/Dienstleistung zusammenhängt, können Sie damit beginnen, Ihre Vertriebsbotschaften zu erstellen.
Es sind die Worte und die differenzierte Sprache, mit denen Sie nachweislich eine Verbindung zu potenziellen Kunden herstellen. Es reicht nicht aus, über Ihr eigenes Unternehmen und Ihre Lösungen Bescheid zu wissen, Sie sollten auch Ihre Kunden kennen.
Sie sollten genau wissen, wie Ihre Lösung Ihrem Kunden hilft, Geld zu sparen, Geld zu verdienen und ihm das Leben zu erleichtern.
3. Lead-Generierungs-Kampagne.
Sobald Sie Ihre potenziellen Kunden identifiziert und Ihre Vertriebsbotschaft erstellt haben, müssen Sie mit der Arbeit an einer Lead-Generierungskampagne beginnen.
Es gibt zwei Hauptansätze für die Lead-Generierung wie folgt:
a) Inbound-Lead-Generierung. Bei Inbound-Kampagnen zur Lead-Generierung nimmt der Interessent zuerst Kontakt mit Ihnen auf. Sie können ein Formular auf Ihrer Website ausfüllen, Sie anrufen oder Ihnen eine E-Mail schicken. Um eingehende Leads zu generieren, müssen Sie in irgendeiner Form Inhalte erstellen, Anzeigenkampagnen, Webinare, Empfehlungsprogramme oder SEO durchführen.
b) Outbound-Lead-Generierung. Outbound-Kampagnen zur Lead-Generierung sind Kampagnen, bei denen Sie potenzielle Kunden über Telefon, E-Mail, Direktwerbung, Veranstaltungen oder kontobasiertes Marketing ansprechen. Outbound-Kampagnen bedeuten immer, dass Sie ein Outbound-Team aufbauen müssen, was teuer sein kann.
Die meisten SaaS-Unternehmen nutzen eine Kombination aus Inbound- und Outbound-Kampagnen, wobei der Schwerpunkt fast immer auf einer der beiden Vorgehensweisen liegt.
Als grober Anhaltspunkt kann gelten, dass SaaS-Dienste, die kostengünstiger sind und auf KMU abzielen, marketingorientiert sind und sich vorwiegend auf Inbound konzentrieren.
SaaS-Dienste, die eher kostenintensiv sind und auf mittelständische bis große Unternehmen abzielen, verfolgen einen eher vertriebsorientierten Ansatz über Account Based Marketing.
7. Was sind die Stufen eines SaaS-Verkaufstrichters?
Die Stufen Ihres Verkaufstrichters sind einfach eine Reihe von Schritten, die Ihre Interessenten durchlaufen, um eine Bestellung aufzugeben.
Diese Phasen können sehr unterschiedlich sein, und es gibt nicht den einen Trichter, den Sie auf jede App anwenden können. Auch wenn die Phasen gleich sind, kann die Methode, mit der Sie potenzielle Kunden durch den Trichter bewegen, unterschiedlich sein.
Ihr Verkaufstrichter ist ein hervorragender Ausgangspunkt für die Erfassung von Daten, um die Leistung zu messen und im Laufe der Zeit Verbesserungen vorzunehmen.
Im Allgemeinen sollten potenzielle Kunden den Verkaufstrichter so schnell wie möglich durchlaufen – dies wird als Verkaufszyklus oder Rohrgeschwindigkeit bezeichnet.
Durch die Messung der Geschwindigkeit, mit der sich potenzielle Kunden durch den Zyklus bewegen, können Sie Blockaden in Ihrem Trichter und Bereiche, in denen potenzielle Kunden langsamer werden, identifizieren.
Diese “Knackpunkte” sind die Punkte, an denen Sie Verbesserungen vornehmen sollten.
8. Wann führe ich mein SaaS-Produkt den Kunden vor?
Das Timing von SaaS-Anwendungsdemonstrationen innerhalb des Verkaufsprozesses ist für viele Unternehmen ein Diskussionsthema.
Die Antwort auf diese Frage lautet leider “es kommt darauf an”. Viele Unternehmen führen ihre App zu Beginn des Verkaufsprozesses erfolgreich vor, aber es gibt auch viele, die ihre App zu Beginn vorführen und dann ihre potenziellen Kunden in einem schwarzen Loch aus Voicemail und unbeantworteten E-Mails verschwinden lassen.
Kurz gesagt, je billiger und einfacher die Lösung ist, desto früher im Prozess können Sie sie vorführen, und je teurer und komplexer die Lösung ist, desto weiter hinten im Verkaufsprozess sollte sie vorgeführt werden.
In der Realität neigen Unternehmer und Vertriebsmitarbeiter dazu, ihre App in aller Eile zu demonstrieren, in der Hoffnung, dass die Demo den potenziellen Kunden davon überzeugt, sich zu registrieren.
Selbst wenn der Interessent qualifiziert ist und gut zu uns passt, besteht bei einer Demo ohne irgendeine Form der Diagnose des Schmerzes des Interessenten die Gefahr, dass der Interessent verloren geht.
Ihr Interessent muss wissen, dass Sie seine Welt kennen und verstehen. Dies kann nur durch intelligente und gezielte Befragung erreicht werden. Wenn Sie den Verkauf beschleunigen wollen, verlangsamen Sie den Verkauf.
Die Demo ist in der Regel der größte Hebel des Verkäufers, und wenn Sie sie zu schnell verschenken, verlieren Sie den Hebel und höchstwahrscheinlich auch den Interessenten.
Als Faustregel gilt: Schieben Sie die App-Demo in Ihrem Verkaufsprozess so weit wie möglich nach hinten.
Demos kosten Zeit und Geld, insbesondere bei komplexen Verkäufen, bei denen häufig eine maßgeschneiderte Demo erforderlich ist.
Jede maßgeschneiderte Demonstration darf nur den leitenden Entscheidungsträgern im Einkaufsteam des Interessenten vorgelegt werden. Gegebenenfalls können Sie sogar zwei Demos innerhalb des Verkaufsprozesses durchführen – es gibt keine anderen Regeln als die, dass Sie es tun, wenn es funktioniert.
Die meisten Vertriebsmitarbeiter machen den Fehler, diesen Teil des Verkaufsprozesses zu nutzen, um die Vorteile des Produkts im Detail zu erläutern.
Wenn du erzählst, verkaufst du nicht. Verwenden Sie intelligente Fragen, um den Interessenten dazu zu bringen, Ihnen mitzuteilen, wie die Lösung seine geschäftlichen Probleme lösen wird.
Sie sollten es vermeiden, über Merkmale zu sprechen, von denen Sie glauben, dass sie für sie relevant sind. Wenn Sie dies in der Entdeckungsphase des Verkaufsprozesses nicht aufgedeckt haben, ist es von Natur aus riskant, im weiteren Verlauf des Prozesses etwas Neues einzuführen.
Bei einfacheren, preisgünstigeren Lösungen sind sie nun bereit, eine Testversion zu nutzen, während sie bei teureren und komplexeren Lösungen nun mit einem Vertriebsmitarbeiter sprechen werden.
Um nachzuweisen, dass sie ihre Sorgfaltspflicht erfüllt haben, werden sie immer mit zwei oder drei potenziellen Lieferanten sprechen.
Dabei geht es nicht unbedingt darum, einen Lieferanten über den Preis zu schlagen, aber manchmal müssen sie der breiteren Beschaffungsgruppe innerhalb ihrer Organisation erklären, warum sie eine Präferenz haben.
Testversionen von Anwendungen sind ebenfalls ein guter Weg, um Nutzer zur Registrierung zu bewegen, allerdings ist das Verhältnis von Testversionen zu Geschäftsabschlüssen in den meisten SaaS-Fällen schlecht.
Je nach Preisgestaltung können Sie eine verwaltete Testversion anbieten, damit der Kunde Ihre Software testen kann, während Sie ihn im weiteren Verlauf des Verkaufsprozesses betreuen.
Bei einem Test kann der Interessent sehen, wie das Produkt in der Praxis funktioniert. Es ist wichtig, dass Sie den Termin für die Verhandlung gut planen und im Voraus vereinbaren, was passiert, wenn die Verhandlung erfolgreich ist.
Wir haben die obige Grafik erstellt, um visuell zu erklären, wie dies für Ihre Organisation funktionieren könnte.
Es ist erwähnenswert, dass in diesem Beispiel der Großteil der CAC auf das Marketing entfällt, wohingegen bei einem komplexeren Trichter die Kosten Marketing, Vertrieb und Kundeneinführung umfassen.
9. Beispiele für SaaS-Verkaufstrichter
Die folgenden Verkaufstrichter sind Beispiele. Sie sollten diese NICHT nachbilden, es sei denn, sie passen zu Ihrem Verkaufsprozess.
Sie sind als Ausgangspunkt für diejenigen gedacht, die einen Verkaufstrichter entwickeln wollen.
Wie Sie aus der Grafik ersehen können, gibt es viele Alternativen zu den Stufen, aus denen Ihr Verkaufstrichter besteht, je nachdem, welche Art von Trichter Sie erstellen wollen.
Für rein digitale Trichter könnten Sie haben:
Lead Magnet Landing Page – wo potenzielle Kunden ankommen, nachdem sie auf Ihre Anzeige geklickt haben
Bestätigungsseite – Bestätigung Ihres kostenlosen Angebots, Ihrer Testversion oder Ihres Kaufs
Upsell-Seite – auf der potenzielle Kunden die Möglichkeit haben, zusätzliche Dienstleistungen oder Upgrades zu erwerben
Kassenseite – hier bezahlen Interessenten für den Dienst
Gratulations- oder Dankeseite – hier können Sie Interessenten mit den entsprechenden nächsten Schritten unterrichten.
10. SaaS-Verkaufstrichter-Metriken
Wenn es um Kennzahlen geht, sind wir der Meinung, dass dies die üblichen Vertriebskennzahlen und KPIs sind, mit denen die meisten Menschen vertraut sind. Es versteht sich von selbst, dass diese Kennzahlen wichtig sind und Sie sie aufzeichnen und auswerten sollten.
LTT – Umwandlung von Leads in Tests
Dies ist die Anzahl der Leads, die in einen Versuch umgewandelt wurden.
DCR – Demo-Umwandlungsverhältnis
Die Anzahl der Demos, die erfolgreich in die nächste Stufe des Verkaufsprozesses übergehen.
TTS – Umwandlung von Probezeit in Verkauf
Dies ist die Anzahl der potenziellen Kunden in der kostenlosen Testphase, die zu zahlenden Kunden geworden sind.
LTV – Lifetime Value des Kunden
Dies ist der durchschnittliche Gesamtwert, den ein Kunde ausgibt, bevor er den Dienst verlässt. Ironischerweise ist dies umso schwieriger zu messen, je besser Ihr Produkt ist, denn wenn die Kunden nicht gehen, wissen Sie nicht, wie lange sie bleiben und welchen Gesamtwert sie für Ihr Unternehmen haben.
Churn – Anzahl der Kunden, die abwandern
Die Kunden werden abwandern, und das ist nicht immer etwas Schlechtes. Wenn die Kunden, die Sie verlassen, Ihrem ICP (Ideal Client Profile) entsprechen, haben Sie ein Problem. Kunden, die abwandern und nicht in Ihren ICP passen, setzen möglicherweise wertvolle Ressourcen frei, die für Ihren ICP verwendet werden können.
MRR – Monatlich wiederkehrender Umsatz
Die monatlich wiederkehrenden Einnahmen geben Ihnen einen Überblick über Ihren Erfolg, aber es ist nur ein Überblick, und Sie müssen sich die Details innerhalb der Daten ansehen, um ein genaueres Bild zu erhalten.
ARR – Jährlich wiederkehrender Umsatz
Die jährlich wiederkehrenden Einnahmen geben einen guten Überblick über das Geschäft, aber wie die MRR sollten Sie alle Daten untersuchen, um ein genaueres Bild über den Zustand Ihres Unternehmens zu erhalten.
Verkaufszyklus – Die Zeit vom ersten Kontakt bis zum Abschluss eines Auftrags
Dieser Zeitraum ist in der Regel kurz für einfachere Lösungen mit geringem Wert und länger für komplexe Unternehmensverkäufe. So kann beispielsweise ein Verkauf an eine Tier-1-Bank vom ersten Kontakt bis zum Abschluss 18 Monate dauern.
CAC – Kundenakquisitionskosten
Es ist wichtig zu wissen, wie viel es Sie kostet, einen einzigen Kunden zu gewinnen. In einer idealen Welt würden Sie dies in der Anfangsphase des Unternehmens entdecken, wenn Sie das Wertversprechen unter Beweis stellen. Ohne diese Zahl ist es unmöglich, die Systeme und Prozesse für die Skalierung des Unternehmens einzurichten, da Sie nicht wissen, wie viel Sie für das Marketing und den Vertrieb an der Front ausgeben können.
Negative Abwanderung –
Negative Abwanderung ist eine aussagekräftige Wachstumskennzahl, die anzeigt, dass die Einnahmen aus dem Upselling und Cross-Selling bestehender Kunden die Einnahmen übersteigen, die durch den Weggang von Kunden verloren gehen.
11. Einreichung von SaaS-Vorschlägen
Nach der abschließenden Vorführung sollten Sie niemals anbieten, ein Angebot zu unterbreiten.
Angebote kosten Zeit und Geld, und wenn Ihr Interessent interessiert ist , wird er Sie um ein Angebot bitten.
Wenn Ihr potenzieller Kunde Sie nicht um ein Angebot bittet, bedeutet dies, dass er nicht an einer Zusammenarbeit mit Ihnen interessiert ist und Sie den Verkaufsprozess zurückverfolgen müssen, um zu verstehen, was Sie falsch gemacht haben.
Wenn der Verkaufsprozess ins Stocken gerät, liegt das selten an etwas, das Sie in diesem Moment falsch gemacht haben – häufiger ist es etwas, das Sie zu einem früheren Zeitpunkt im Verkaufsprozess übersehen haben.
Vergewissern Sie sich, dass Ihnen alle Vorteile der Software klar und deutlich erklärt wurden und dass sie mit ihren Bedürfnissen übereinstimmen.
Lassen Sie sich nach Möglichkeit immer von Ihrem Weißen Ritter bei der Ausarbeitung des Vorschlags unterstützen, und prüfen Sie einen Entwurf mit ihm, bevor Sie die offizielle Fassung abschicken.
Bevor Sie Ihren Vorschlag abschicken, müssen Sie sich darüber im Klaren sein, was im Falle eines Zuschlags oder einer Niederlage als nächstes zu tun ist.
Wenn Sie dies nicht tun, werden Sie höchstwahrscheinlich die nächsten drei Monate damit verbringen, Geister in der Mailbox zu jagen.
12. Preisgestaltung für Ihre SaaS-Verträge
Viele Unternehmen geben auf ihrer Website nur begrenzte oder gar keine Preise an, weil sie nicht wollen, dass ihre Konkurrenten ihre Preise sehen, oder weil sie glauben, dass dies potenzielle Kunden abschrecken würde.
Sie sollten stolz sein auf Ihren Preis und den Wert, den Sie bieten. Lassen Sie sich von der Konkurrenz unterbieten und alle Ressourcen für unrentable Geschäfte binden.
Menschen kaufen selten die billigste Lösung, also erlauben Sie Ihren Interessenten, Sie zu unterbieten.
Wenn Sie immer noch Bedenken haben, Ihre Preise auf Ihrer Website anzugeben, dann denken Sie daran, wie Sie sich fühlen, wenn Sie sich über eine Lösung informieren, an der Sie interessiert sind, und dann feststellen, dass die Preisseite mit POA übersät ist.
Wenn Sie wie die meisten Menschen sind, finden Sie das wirklich ärgerlich und gehen schnell zum nächsten potenziellen Anbieter weiter.
Ein weiterer Vorteil der stolzen Preisangabe ist schließlich, dass sie jeden ausschließt, der nicht bereit ist, in diesem Umfang zu investieren.
Dies kann Ihnen viel Zeit und Ressourcen bei Interessenten sparen, die einfach ein anderes Budget haben.
Es gibt zahlreiche Preisstrategien, die Ihnen zur Verfügung stehen, aber nach unserer Erfahrung ist das Einzige, was garantiert ist, dass Sie Ihre Preisgestaltung ändern werden.
Als Faustregel gilt: Wenn Ihre Preise für einen kurzfristigen Vertrag oder eine kostenpflichtige Testversion zu hoch angesetzt sind, kann es sein, dass der Interessent die Vorteile der Software nicht in vollem Umfang nutzen kann, bevor der Vertrag ausläuft, und dass er sich gegen eine Verlängerung entscheidet.
Wenn möglich, sollten Sie potenzielle Kunden während des Testzeitraums für das Hinzufügen von Informationen und die Nutzung des Dienstes belohnen.
Bieten Sie z. B. eine kürzere Testphase an und schaffen Sie Anreize, wenn die Nutzer ihr Profil/Konto vollständig einrichten.
Bieten Sie einen weiteren kostenlosen Zeitraum an, um sie zu ermutigen, das Produkt zu nutzen, wenn sie beispielsweise Daten in das System hochladen.
Die Idee ist, Ihre neuen Nutzer Schritt für Schritt “einzubinden” und Ihr Produkt so klebrig wie möglich zu machen.
Möchte der Interessent dennoch weitergehen, sollten Sie Verträge mit digitaler Unterschrift verwenden, um den Verkaufsprozess zu beschleunigen.
Senden Sie niemals Verträge in E-Mails oder Links zu digitalen Verträgen, da diese leicht übersehen werden können.
Vereinbaren Sie einen Termin mit dem Interessenten am Telefon, um den Vertrag mit ihm zu besprechen. Sobald sie allen Punkten im Vertrag zugestimmt haben, bitten Sie sie einfach, zu unterschreiben, während Sie sie am Telefon haben.
Auf diese Weise behalten Sie die Kontrolle über den Verkaufsprozess.
13. Warum der Verkaufstrichter für SaaS-Anbieter so wichtig ist
Viele Unternehmen sind gescheitert, weil sie nicht in der Lage waren, einen Verkaufstrichter zu implementieren. Die Vermarktung und der Verkauf von SaaS-Produkten kann eine unglaubliche Herausforderung sein, und die Chancen stehen gut, dass Ihre Zielkunden bereits mit Angeboten von konkurrierenden Softwareanbietern überschüttet werden.
Überlegen Sie, aus welchem Teil des vorhandenen Budgets des Käufers Sie Einnahmen erzielen wollen. Welchen direkten oder indirekten Konkurrenten werden Sie Budget wegnehmen?
Sie konkurrieren möglicherweise mit einigen der größten und mächtigsten Marken der Welt, die generische Lösungen für die gleichen Probleme anbieten, die Sie lösen.
Das bedeutet, dass Sie etwas Besonderes anbieten müssen, das Ihre Kunden tatsächlich benötigen.
Laut einer Studie von CB Insights scheitern 42 % der SaaS-Start-ups, weil sie Produkte anbieten, die ihre Zielkunden nicht brauchen.
Es ist wichtig, potenzielle Kunden davon zu überzeugen, dass Ihre Software einen echten Mehrwert bietet.
14. Umgang mit den Erwartungen der Interessenten
Bei der Erstellung eines Verkaufstrichters geht es darum, eine Reise vom Webbesucher zum Abonnenten aufzubauen, die durch Demos und Pfade führt und mit der Vertragsunterzeichnung endet.
Ihr Verkaufstrichter sollte jede der wichtigsten Phasen hervorheben, die Ihre potenziellen Kunden auf dem Weg zu einem Vertragsabschluss durchlaufen werden.
Seien Sie offen und ehrlich und teilen Sie Ihren potenziellen Kunden die einzelnen Phasen des Prozesses im Voraus mit.
Sie sollten genau auf alle Reibungspunkte achten, die auf dem Weg Ihrer potenziellen Kunden durch Ihre Vertriebskette auftreten können.
Dies gibt Ihnen die Möglichkeit, Verbesserungen an Ihrem Trichter vorzunehmen.
Das Wichtigste ist, dass Sie alle Datenpunkte in Ihrem Verkaufstrichter aufzeichnen.
Dies wird Ihnen helfen, Entscheidungen auf der Grundlage von Fakten und nicht nach Ihrem Bauchgefühl zu treffen. Es kann einige Zeit dauern, bis Ihr Verkaufstrichter seine volle Wirkung entfaltet, und Sie müssen möglicherweise mehrere Verfeinerungen vornehmen, bevor Sie einen wirklich optimierten Verkaufstrichter haben.
Viele Kunden wissen nicht genau, was sie brauchen, wenn sie Ihnen zum ersten Mal begegnen. Bieten Sie Lösungen und nicht nur Produkte an, indem Sie potenziellen Kunden helfen, die Verbindung zwischen beiden herzustellen.
Es stimmt auch, dass die Nutzer oft das kaufen, was sie wollen, und nicht das, was sie brauchen.
Deshalb ist es so wichtig, gezielte Fragen zu stellen, um die Bedürfnisse der Kunden genau zu ermitteln, damit Sie Ihre Software möglichst günstig positionieren können.
Anhand dieser Fragen können Sie auch feststellen, wie nah oder fern sie einer Entscheidung sind.
15. Das Aufkommen von SaaS-Lösungen
Es scheint, als ob alles in der Welt jetzt durch SaaS-Anwendungen online betrieben wird. Von Netflix und Amazon Prime bis hin zu LinkedIn und Microsoft M365 sind wir heute von SaaS-Lösungen der einen oder anderen Art umgeben.
Aus finanzieller Sicht ist SaaS sinnvoll, da es hohe Anfangsinvestitionen vermeidet und die Lösung weniger risikoreich macht.
Denn wenn es nicht klappt, ist man in der Regel nur für maximal 12 Monate gebunden. Zu den weiteren Vorteilen von SaaS gehört, dass es in der Regel schnell eingesetzt werden kann und keine Wartung seitens des Kunden erfordert.
Upgrades werden in der Regel automatisch geliefert, wobei den Kunden in der Regel ein garantiertes Serviceniveau angeboten wird.
Backups und Datenwiederherstellung werden in der Regel im Auftrag des Kunden durchgeführt, so dass dieser sich auf seine eigentliche Arbeit konzentrieren kann, in der Gewissheit, dass alles von den Softwareentwicklern selbst erledigt wird.
Lockdown hat SaaS mit Turbo aufgeladen
Die Tatsache, dass SaaS-Produkte es ermöglichen, von überall aus zu arbeiten und zusammenzuarbeiten, hat dazu beigetragen, SaaS noch stärker in unserem Alltag zu verankern, denn Fernarbeit war schon vor der Pandemie auf dem Vormarsch.
In jedem Land der Welt werden Tausende von neuen SaaS-Produkten entwickelt, so dass der Wettbewerb hart ist, aber der Appetit von Verbrauchern und Unternehmen auf SaaS-Lösungen ist ungebrochen.
Ein kohärenter Verkaufstrichter kann den Unterschied ausmachen, ob Ihr Produkt ein viraler Erfolg wird oder ob Sie gezwungen sind, zum Reißbrett zurückzukehren.
So schreiben Sie einen Verkaufsplan in 8 einfachen Schritten (mit KOSTENLOSER Vorlage)
In this article we will cover...
1. Wie man einen Verkaufsplan schreibt
Nur wenige Unternehmen schaffen es, ihre Verkaufsziele zu erreichen oder zu übertreffen, ohne einen Verkaufsplan zu haben, oder sollte ich sagen, erfolgreich einen Verkaufsplan zu erstellen und ihn auszuführen.
Die Erstellung eines Verkaufsplans hilft Ihnen, Ihre Verkaufsziele festzulegen und die Schritte zu skizzieren, die Sie unternehmen werden, um diese zu erreichen.
Ein typischer Verkaufsplan enthält Informationen darüber, wie das Wachstum erreicht werden soll (dies wird manchmal als Verkaufsstrategien und -taktiken bezeichnet) und wie der Umsatz gemessen werden soll.
Die Messung der Verkäufe Ihres Produkts oder Ihrer Dienstleistung mag einfach erscheinen, aber es gibt oft andere wichtige Indikatoren und Messgrößen als den Umsatz, die zur Messung des Erfolgs der Umsetzung des Verkaufsplans verwendet werden können und sollten.
Ihr Plan kann auch Details über die Zielkunden und ihre Probleme, den Verkaufsprozess, Rollen und Verantwortlichkeiten, Umsatzziele, Geschäftsziele und eine Verkaufs- und Marketingstrategie für Ihre Produkte und Dienstleistungen enthalten.
Wir hoffen, dass Sie nun ein besseres Verständnis für die Vorteile eines Vertriebsplans haben und den nächsten Schritt machen und unsere Vorlage kostenlos herunterladen, damit Sie mit der Erstellung eines Vertriebsplans für Ihr eigenes Unternehmen beginnen können.
2. Verschiedene Arten von Verkaufsplänen
Angesichts all der Unterschiede zwischen Branchen, Unternehmen und Produkten gibt es leider keinen einheitlichen Plan, der auf jedes Unternehmen angewendet werden kann. Es gibt 3 Hauptunterschiede, die Sie kennen sollten:
1. Kundenstamm – verkaufen Sie an einen etablierten Kundenstamm, bei dem Sie bestehende Kunden verwalten müssen, oder verkaufen Sie an ein neues Gebiet, in dem Sie sich auf die Eröffnung neuer Kunden konzentrieren müssen? In Wirklichkeit ist es oft eine Mischung aus beidem.
2. Marktbewegung – ist der Markt stabil genug, um Ihnen zu ermöglichen, die Verkaufszahlen der vergangenen Jahre zu wiederholen, oder verändert sich der Markt und zwingt Sie, sich gleichzeitig zu verändern?
3. Geschäftsstrategie – der Verkaufsplan muss die Ziele des Geschäftsplans erfüllen oder übertreffen. Der Plan muss daher auf die Unternehmensmission und die allgemeine Geschäftsstrategie abgestimmt sein. Wenn ein Teil der Geschäftsstrategie darin besteht, das Risiko aus einem Einkommensstrom zu verlagern, muss der Verkaufsplan dies widerspiegeln.
Der Umsatz ist der Treibstoff, der das Schiff antreibt, aber es ist das Unternehmen, das entscheidet, wohin das Schiff fährt.
3. Steigerung Ihrer Verkaufserlöse
Manchmal scheint der Verkauf sehr kompliziert zu sein, aber es lohnt sich, daran zu denken, dass es nur drei Möglichkeiten gibt, den Umsatz zu steigern:
a) Steigern Sie Ihren Umsatz, indem Sie an Kunden verkaufen, die mit Ihren idealen Zielkunden übereinstimmen.
b) Steigern Sie den Umsatz, indem Sie mehr an bestehende Kunden verkaufen
c) Erhöhen Sie Ihre Preise
Das Wachstum in Ihrem Verkaufsplan muss mindestens einen der oben genannten Faktoren widerspiegeln, vorzugsweise jedoch alle drei. Sie müssen auch die “Abwanderung” berücksichtigen, denn jedes Unternehmen, egal wie gut es ist, verliert mit der Zeit Kunden.
Selbst wenn Sie nichts falsch machen, werden Kunden in Konkurs gehen, sie werden übernommen, sie werden wegziehen und Sie verlieren Ihr Geschäft.
Die Verringerung der Kundenabwanderung kann durchaus Teil Ihrer Wachstumsstrategie sein. Alles, was Sie tun können, um Ihren Customer Lifetime Value zu steigern, lohnt sich immer und wird Ihnen in Zukunft zugutekommen.
4. Für den Erfolg vorbereiten
Verkaufspläne sind in erster Linie darauf ausgelegt, Ihnen dabei zu helfen, mehr Verkäufe zu erzielen. Sie sollten Informationen darüber enthalten, wie Ihre aktuelle Situation ist, was Sie anstreben und was Sie tun müssen, um Ihre Vision Wirklichkeit werden zu lassen.
Vertriebspläne sind wie ein Fahrplan, dem Ihr Team folgen kann, um erfolgreich zu sein. Ohne diese Roadmap werden sie länger brauchen, um ihre Ziele zu erreichen, da sie sich langsamer und möglicherweise sogar in eine andere Richtung bewegen.
Ein fokussierteres und motivierteres Team
Ein wesentlicher Vorteil jedes Vertriebsplans besteht darin, dass er dazu beitragen kann, dass sich Ihre Teammitglieder stärker auf das Erreichen eines bestimmten Ziels oder einer Reihe von Zielen konzentrieren.
Sobald ein Vertriebsplan aufgestellt ist, sollte Ihr Team eine festere, kohärentere Vorstellung davon haben, was Ihre Ziele sind. Sie sollten auch eine genauere Vorstellung davon haben, welche Schritte sie persönlich unternehmen müssen, um diese Ziele zu erreichen.
Verkaufspläne können Ihnen auch dabei helfen, einen Umsatzrückgang im Laufe der Zeit zu verhindern, indem sie Ihr Team fokussiert halten und ihm ein konstantes Gefühl der Zielsetzung vermitteln.
Sie können Ihnen auch dabei helfen, die spezifischen Fähigkeiten Ihres Teams optimal zu nutzen und den am besten geeigneten Mitarbeitern Rollen zuzuweisen.
Vertrauen schaffen
Vertrauen ist ein wichtiger, aber oft übersehener Teil des Verkaufserfolgs in jedem Unternehmen.
Ein gut ausgearbeiteter Verkaufsplan gibt dem Verkaufsteam Zuversicht und Orientierung, und wenn Sie über einen soliden Verkaufsplan verfügen, ist es wahrscheinlicher, dass Sie Investoren und andere Beteiligte für sich gewinnen oder an sich binden.
Der Verkaufsplan sollte auch Informationen über die wahrscheinlichen und möglichen Herausforderungen enthalten, die Sie sich vorstellen, und wie Sie diese zu bewältigen gedenken.
Klarheit und Kohärenz
Verkaufspläne sollten einfach sein, damit sie auch von Personen außerhalb der Verkaufsabteilung verstanden werden können.
Es macht keinen Sinn, Ihren Verkaufsplan mit einem Verkaufsjargon zu füllen, den einige Teammitglieder nur schwer verstehen können.
Es ist wichtig, dass Ihr Vertriebsplan Ihre Pläne und Ziele für den betreffenden Zeitraum in einem übersichtlichen Format fest umreißt.
Wenn Sie Hilfe bei der Erstellung und Umsetzung Ihres Verkaufsplans wünschen, bieten wir einen umfassenden Verkaufsberatungsservice an und würden gerne mit Ihnen darüber sprechen, wie wir mit Ihrem Team zusammenarbeiten können, um das Umsatzwachstum voranzutreiben.
5. Rahmen für einen Verkaufsplan
Wir haben einen Rahmen für Ihren Verkaufsplan in Microsoft PowerPoint erstellt, der auch als Präsentationsdokument verwendet werden kann. Es enthält leicht auszufüllende Abschnitte zu:
1. Rückblick – Zu lernen, was im vergangenen Jahr funktioniert hat und was nicht, ist ein wesentlicher Bestandteil eines jeden Verkaufsplans. Auf diese Weise können wir das, was funktioniert hat, wiederholen oder verbessern und das, was nicht funktioniert hat, reduzieren, eliminieren oder anpassen.
Es ist auch ratsam, bei der Festlegung von Zielen auf Ihre vergangenen Daten zu achten. Haben Sie eine gute Erfolgsbilanz beim Erreichen Ihrer Ziele? Wenn Sie Ihre Ziele in der Vergangenheit nicht erreicht haben, kennen Sie die Gründe dafür?
Indem Sie Ihre bisherige Leistung genau bewerten, können Sie die Erfolgschancen Ihrer letzten Kampagne optimieren und vermeiden, unrealistische Ziele zu setzen.
2. Vertriebsteam – Vertriebsmitarbeiter sind ein wesentlicher Bestandteil des Vertriebserfolgs in jedem Unternehmen und sollten immer in den Plan einbezogen werden.
Neben der Darstellung früherer Leistungen sollten Sie darlegen, wie Sie sie während der Laufzeit des Plans durch Schulungen und Coaching unterstützen möchten.
Details des Trainings sollten in jedem Mitarbeiter PDP (Persönlicher Entwicklungsplan) aufgezeichnet werden und Coaching sollte in individuellen Coaching-Arbeitsblättern aufgezeichnet werden.
Es mag Zeiten geben, in denen jeder Vertriebsmitarbeiter ähnliche Entwicklungsbedürfnisse hat, aber zumindest sollte das Coaching immer maßgeschneidert sein.
3. Strategie – dies ist einfach eine übergeordnete Aussage darüber, wie Sie den Verkauf an Ihren Markt angehen werden. Die Einzelheiten wie Ziele, Prioritäten und Meilensteine der Strategie werden im Abschnitt “Ziele” des Verkaufsplans dargelegt.
Ein Beispiel für eine Strategie wäre die Big Bets- oder Blockbuster-Strategie. Stellen Sie sich vor, Sie würden ein Filmunternehmen leiten und müssten entscheiden, in welche Filme Sie in den nächsten 12 Monaten 100.000.000 Dollar investieren wollen.
Würden Sie Ihre 100.000.000 Dollar nehmen und 1 Million Pfund in 100 Filme investieren oder würden Sie 10 Millionen Pfund investieren und versuchen, 10 Blockbuster zu schaffen?
Vielleicht besteht Ihre Strategie darin, Ihren Kundenstamm von Mid Market- auf Enterprise-Konten zu verlagern. Ihre Strategie könnte darin bestehen, Ihr Angebot zu erweitern, um mehr Kundenbedürfnisse zu befriedigen und die Konkurrenz fernzuhalten.
Ihre Strategie könnte das Gegenteil sein, und Sie möchten vielleicht Ihr Portfolio reduzieren und verschlanken.
Durch den Wegfall der Wahlmöglichkeiten können Sie Vertriebs- und Marketingressourcen konzentrieren und die Betriebskosten senken. Wir sind große Fans der Blockbuster-Strategie, denn wir lieben den Fokus und die Einfachheit, die sie mit sich bringt.
Wir akzeptieren, dass ein erhöhtes Risiko besteht, wenn Sie sich auf weniger Optionen konzentrieren, Ihre Blockbuster-Strategie sollte jedoch in irgendeiner Form validiert werden. Wird der nächste Bond-Film ein Hit? Nach den bisherigen Bond-Filmen ja.
Die Mehrheit (nicht alle) Blockbuster sollten also bereits bewährte Einnahmequellen sein, die Sie einfach verdoppeln.
4. SWOT-Analyse – hier können Sie Ihre Stärken, Schwächen, Chancen und Risiken dokumentieren, um Ihre Verkaufsstrategie zu formulieren und zu validieren. Bitte denken Sie daran, dass sich die SWOT nur auf Ihre Verkaufsstrategie beziehen sollte.
Die SWOT dient als Beweis dafür, dass Sie und Ihr Team Ihre Verkaufsstrategie kritisch durchdacht haben und sich die Zeit genommen haben, jeden Aspekt der Strategie zu durchdenken.
Sobald Sie eine SWOT-Analyse abgeschlossen haben, können Sie die Daten verwenden, um eine Strategie zu entwickeln, die die Schwächen und Bedrohungen minimiert und die Stärken und Chancen maximiert.
5. Ziele – Ihr Verkaufsplan muss auf wirklich erreichbaren Zielen beruhen. Es wird viel schwieriger sein, Ihr Team für Ihren Verkaufsplan zu gewinnen, wenn Ihre Ziele unrealistisch oder unvernünftig sind.
Es ist in Ordnung, ehrgeizig zu sein, aber Ihre Ziele müssen dennoch realistisch sein. Unrealistische oder unerreichbare Ziele werden das Verkaufsteam nur demoralisieren und dazu führen, dass es aufgibt.
Ihre Ziele und Strategien müssen messbar sein, damit Sie Ihre Fortschritte verfolgen können. Sie müssen Forschung einbeziehen, die Ihre Ziele unterstützt, insbesondere wenn Ihre Ziele besonders ehrgeizig erscheinen.
Festlegen von Wachstumszielen/Zielen im Plan
Wachstumsziele in einem Verkaufsplan können stark variieren. Einige Verkaufspläne basieren auf dem, was das Unternehmen im nächsten Quartal erreichen möchte, während andere längerfristige 12-Monats-Ziele haben.
Es wäre ungewöhnlich, einen Verkaufsplan zu haben, der länger als 12 Monate dauert, da sich Märkte und Kunden so schnell ändern können.
Ihr Verkaufsplan muss agil genug sein, um schnell auf diese Änderungen reagieren zu können. Die besten Verkaufspläne enthalten detaillierte Informationen darüber, welche Aktivitäten stattfinden müssen und welche Art von Ressourcen eingesetzt werden müssen, um Erfolg zu erzielen.
Eine einfache Methode zur Verkaufsprognose wäre, die monatlichen Verkaufszahlen der Vorjahre zu nehmen und dann 20 % zu jedem Monat hinzuzufügen. Dies bietet ein monatliches Verkaufsziel, das alle saisonalen Änderungen berücksichtigt und nach 12 Monaten ein jährliches Wachstum von 20 % erzielt hat.
Normalerweise ist es am besten, getrennte Verkaufsziele für folgende Bereiche aufzulisten:
Produkt-Mix
Neukunden vs Bestandskunden
Umsatz nach Region
Umsatz nach Branche
einzelne Vertriebsmitarbeiter
Während die Verfolgung jedes Elements übertrieben erscheinen mag, können Sie Ihren Verkaufsplan schnell anpassen und bei Bedarf Notfallpläne implementieren. Wenn beispielsweise eine Branche unterdurchschnittlich abschneidet, können Sie Ressourcen in andere Branchen umleiten, die aktiver sind.
6. Verkaufstaktik und -techniken – nach Strategie und Planung kommt die Taktik. Dies sind ganz einfach die Ansätze, die Sie verwenden werden, um die Ziele des Verkaufsplans zu erreichen.
Ihre Verkaufstaktik sollte die Aufgaben und Aktivitäten nennen, die das Verkaufsteam täglich ausführen wird, um den Plan umzusetzen.
Taktiken könnten so einfach sein wie das Ändern der Verkaufsbotschaften, um sie an einen neuen Markt anzupassen, oder die Umschulung von Kundendienstteams, um bestehende Konten weiterzuverkaufen.
Vielleicht möchten Sie, dass Ihr Vertriebsteam mehr Zeit in soziale Medien investiert, indem Sie Tools wie LinkedIn verwenden, um neue Interessenten zu identifizieren, oder Sie sind daran interessiert, eine kalte E-Mail-Kampagne zu starten.
7. Metriken – es ist wichtig, sich vor Beginn eines Projekts darauf zu einigen, wie Erfolg aussieht und wie er gemessen werden soll.
Hierfür stehen viele großartige Systeme und Tools zur Verfügung, Sie sollten jedoch eine Liste der Tracking-Methoden erstellen, die Sie für die Dauer Ihres Plans verwenden werden.
Dazu können Ihre Verkaufsstrategien, Techniken zur Überwachung und Leistungskennzahlen gehören.
Wo möglich:
a) vorhandene Systeme und Tools wie CRM nutzen, die bereits vorhanden sind und verwendet werden, damit Sie nicht in ein Software-Implementierungsprojekt hineingezogen werden.
b) Die Erfassung der Maßnahmen sollte keinen zusätzlichen Arbeitsaufwand für die Verkäufer bedeuten, da diese dann mit geringerer Wahrscheinlichkeit durchgeführt werden.
c) möglichst Vorlaufindikatoren und keine Nachlaufindikatoren verwenden. Beispiele für einen Lead-Indikator könnten die Anzahl der erstellten qualifizierten neuen Sales-Leads sein, und ein Lag-Indikator ist der monatliche Umsatz.
Die Einnahmen sind zwar wichtig, aber wenn wir bis zum Ende des Monats warten, um die Umsatzzahlen zu erhalten, und das Ziel verfehlen, ist es zu spät.
Durch die Messung der Frühindikatoren können wir korrigierend eingreifen, bevor der Spätindikator übersehen wird.
SaaS-Unternehmen verfolgen oft Abonnements für ihre App, was wichtig ist, aber der Leitindikator könnte so einfach sein wie die Anzahl der Besucher der Website.
Sie müssen eine Liste der Tracking-Methoden erstellen, die Sie für die Dauer Ihres Plans verwenden werden. Dazu können Ihre Verkaufsstrategien, Techniken zur Überwachung und Leistungskennzahlen gehören.
Wir verwenden Sales Scorecards, um KPIs aufzuzeichnen und zu verfolgen. Es gibt jedoch viele verschiedene Methoden, KPIs zu verfolgen, von einfachen Tabellenkalkulationen bis hin zu Online-Apps.
8. Budget – Verkauf und Verkauf kostet Geld. Ob es sich um ein einfaches Linkedin Sales Navigator-Abonnement oder eine 6-stellige Expo in Las Vegas handelt, alles im Vertrieb kostet Geld, das eingeplant werden muss.
Die Budgets sind von Unternehmen zu Unternehmen sehr unterschiedlich, Sie sollten jedoch immer versuchen, die Kosten im Voraus zu quantifizieren.
Unternehmen, die keine formalisierten Budgets für den Vertrieb haben und auf Ad-hoc-Basis arbeiten, sind naturgemäß niedriger im Vertriebsreifemodell.
Wenn Sie planen, in diesem Zeitraum eine beträchtliche Summe auszugeben, müssen Sie dies gegenüber Ihren Stakeholdern rechtfertigen. Der Plan sollte detaillierte Zahlen enthalten, um zu veranschaulichen, wohin Ihr Budget gehen wird.
Wenn Sie während des Zeitraums in neue Ressourcen investieren, fügen Sie Ihrem Verkaufsplan eine ROI-Analyse hinzu, um die Investition zu rechtfertigen.
Möglicherweise möchten Sie auch unvorhergesehene Kosten wie Personaleinstellungen einplanen, sollte ein Vertriebsmitarbeiter unerwartet ausscheiden, müssen Sie ihn ersetzen.
Wenn Sie nicht das erforderliche Budget erhalten, müssen Sie möglicherweise Änderungen an Ihrem Verkaufsplan vornehmen, aber Sie müssen ihn nicht unbedingt vollständig verwerfen.
6. Verkaufsplaninhalt
Ihr Verkaufsplan sollte nicht nur aus Text bestehen. Wann immer möglich, lohnt es sich, das Dokument professionell gestalten zu lassen.
Wenn Sie sich für eine Vorlage wie unsere entscheiden, müssen Sie mindestens Ihr eigenes Branding einfügen. Üblicherweise werden Listen, Tabellen, Grafiken, Screenshots und Diagramme verwendet, um wichtige Informationen über die Ziele des Unternehmens und den von Ihnen bedienten Markt zu vermitteln.
Der Verkaufsplan sollte auch Recherchen über die aktuellen Entwicklungen in Ihrer Branche enthalten. Das bedeutet, dass es wichtig ist, Statistiken auf der Grundlage der neuesten Forschungsergebnisse aufzunehmen.
Es ist auch ratsam, Ihre bestehenden Kunden und Ihren Zielmarkt zu untersuchen, bevor Sie mit der Erstellung Ihres Verkaufsplans beginnen.
Je nachdem, in welchem Sektor Sie tätig sind, kann es sein, dass die Nachfrage in einem Marktsegment größer ist als in den Vorjahren.
Umgekehrt sind Gruppen, auf die Sie zuvor abzielten, möglicherweise nicht mehr so interessiert an Ihren Produkten und Dienstleistungen wie früher. Recherchieren Sie, wo immer möglich, damit Sie die von Ihnen vertretenen Positionen belegen können.
Denken Sie daran, dass Ihr Dokument nicht unglaublich formell sein muss, aber es muss kohärent und leicht verständlich sein.
7. Ermutigung zum Buy-in
Sobald Sie Ihren Verkaufsplan fertiggestellt haben, müssen Sie ihn nicht nur Ihrem Team, sondern auch Ihren Stakeholdern und relevanten Managern präsentieren.
Wenn Sie diese nicht an Bord bekommen können, ist Ihr Plan wahrscheinlich nicht effektiv. Je überzeugender Ihr Verkaufsplan ist, desto mehr Begeisterung können Sie erzeugen.
Das Management wird Ihr Budget auch eher freigeben, wenn Sie einen beeindruckenden, gut durchdachten Verkaufsplan vorlegen können.
In diesem Sinne ist es immer am besten, andere Personen in die Erstellung des Verkaufsplans einzubeziehen. Es ist viel einfacher, von Vertriebsmitarbeitern Zustimmung zu erhalten, wenn sie bei der Erstellung des Dokuments mitgeholfen haben, und die Geschäftsleitung wird mit größerer Wahrscheinlichkeit Budget zuweisen, wenn sie in den gesamten Prozess einbezogen wurden.
In diesem Sinne lohnt es sich, Ihre Vertriebsmitarbeiter aufzufordern, Minipläne und Prognosen speziell für ihr Gebiet zu erstellen und diese dann in den Gesamtplan einzubeziehen.
Dies ist eine gute Möglichkeit, Eigenverantwortung und Verantwortung in Ihrem Verkaufsteam zu entwickeln, und bietet einen guten Bezugspunkt für zukünftiges Coaching.
Ein gut entworfener und ausgeführter Vertriebsplan kann Ihr Unternehmen auf die nächste Stufe bringen. Denken Sie nur daran, es realistisch und verständlich zu halten, damit andere es akzeptieren.
Ob Sie ein neues Unternehmen, ein kleines Unternehmen, ein Mittelstand oder eine Großunternehmensorganisation sind, die Vorteile eines gut geschriebenen Verkaufsplans sind hoch. Wenn Sie es richtig anstellen, wird Ihr Verkaufsplan Sie sowohl für den kurzfristigen als auch für den langfristigen Erfolg positionieren.
Oft spielt ein effektiver Verkaufsplan eine wichtige Rolle bei der Ausrichtung der Aktivitäten des Verkaufsteams und stellt sicher, dass alle auf dieselben Ziele hinarbeiten und vorankommen.
Kostenlose Verkaufsplanvorlage
Laden Sie eine kostenlose Vorlage herunter, damit Sie die Vorteile einer strategischen und effektiven Planung genießen können.
Die kostenlose Vorlage steht als Microsoft Word-Dokument zum Download bereit, um Ihnen den Einstieg zu erleichtern.
Diese Vorlage ist eines von über 30 Verkaufstools und Vorlagen, die in unserem Verkaufsleitfaden verfügbar sind .
