In this webinar, Justin Michael, RVP Sales at YOUAPPI and XANT CEO David Boyce provide tips for managers and reps to keep momentum during the coronavirus pandemic but focusing on three key principles. keep momentum COVID

RELATED: How To Lead From Home

In this article:

1. 1. 1. Meet the Speakers
      2. The Current Situation
      3. Hire for Agility in Industry Shifts
      4. How to Build the Digital Relationship
         
      5. Key Points
      6. Further Information and Support

Ideas for Remote Sales Managers and Reps

Meet the Speakers keep momentum COVID

Justin Michael scales tech companies and is a lifetime revenue leader. You may know Justin from his LinkedIn videos, or from sending 1 million emails to different startup businesses!
“YouAppi is a leading performance-based mobile app marketing and retargeting platform for premium app publishers and brands. From user acquisition to retention via app retargeting and re-engagement, the company delivers a comprehensive range of mobile marketing solutions to grow your business at every stage of the funnel.”  keep momentum coronavirus

The Current Situation keep momentum COVID

As we work from home, we are trying to figure out the new reality.

Part of that has been to work out how to make a professional life that is being conflated with our home life. How should you deal with this new reality in terms of sales?

The shift has been major; salespeople are sheltered in place, working hard to carry on as usual, but now people are wondering why they hadn’t ramped up their remote working practices before this crisis.

Some parts of the economy are still growing, and it’s an excellent opportunity to be more responsible and drive new revenue.

Call connects are high in some industries, but contacts are much more distracted. What is essential is to be more careful about what you do at that moment. A good tactic is not to try and close meetings but to dialogue sequences, and spark interaction.

RELATED: How To Manage A Sales Team While You Work From Home

Focus on Three Principles – Humanize, Personalize, Empathize

Interestingly, and paradoxically, because we’re all forced into this separation mode, we actually have to be more human because we can’t meet face to face right now.

And so, think about humanizing your messaging, like you would if you met someone face to face. What would you do in the real world and translate that to the virtual world?

Look at your prospect’s profile, and consider mentioning links or pick out something pertinent to them to be ahead of the game.

Be empathetic by tailoring how you connect with others. For example, the travel industry is severely impacted, so pull back and retarget different businesses.

To start off interactions, ask people how they are or how they’ve been impacted.

We have shifted from very clinical connections to more personalized ones. Although it takes longer, it’s more personalized and sincere. The intent of the communication is important, and you need to be genuine with how you humanize, personalize, and empathize to build connections.

A proper technique could be to share your own story, how events are impacting you, and then dovetailing that into questions about the prospect.

RELATED: 14 Helpful Tips For Working From Home While Social Distancing

How to Build the Digital Relationship

Your first-degree network is way bigger than you think, but it can be challenging to see. Use a sales navigator and search worldwide to mine your first-degree connections.
Talk a little bit about our communities and be natural. Just think about running into a person at the grocery store or a networking event. Think about what you would do and then do this over a channel—for example, email, phone, text, WhatsApp, Messenger.
You could go as far as calling your clients and ask them how they are and ask if you can do anything to make things easier, like a health check. Make sure this is nothing to do with closing business (unless the client leads that conversation).
Use open questions or illumination questions to get your clients to open up and talk. Don’t be too personal or overstep either. Keep your question sensible and have finesse – don’t over ask, just open the conversation, and let clients share their thoughts if they want to.
Use video platforms to get your face seen as much as possible in a more human way.
Understand Your Client’s Needs – Make deposits, not withdrawals right now. I.e., build the relationship and knowledge base to make withdrawals later. keep momentum COVID
Utilize Your Network – Utilize your robust LinkedIn network and using the three principles. Try LinkedIn voicemail drops to all your first degree connections that are relevant. You can record LinkedIn videos, or you could use third-party platforms to do this.
Get New Content – Ask your marketing teams for content to engage clients, even if you write it. For example, this could be blogs or YouTube content, news, diagrams, visual illustrations, graphs regarding COVID-19 effects. Start organic dialogues where the zoom naturally occurs at the back of these.
There’s an urgency to drive business right now because things are very volatile. But if you can be disciplined enough to give something away, to go for the dialogue, not the meeting, then your clients will become curious and interested.

Key Points keep momentum COVID

• • Conversations are still happening, but it is more relevant now to have empathy, to be personalized, and to be human. 
  • Rethink your sequences, target better, and be more empathetic in the way that you create those messages. 
  • If you’re doing something manually, which is well personalized, you can automate it, and it can be just as effective if you do it right.
  • Look for prospects on different platforms, Omni channels, and reach out in novel ways.
  • Lean a little bit more into personal phone calls, a little bit more into one on one interactions and make sure that you’re human first.
  • Make your deposits not withdrawals during this time when everyone is worrying. 
  • So, we do not have to step back from having conversations with customers. We just must have personalization. Humanization and empathy as we do it.
  • Sales leaders don’t necessarily need to change KPIs or performance reviews, just rethink them. Wins can include having warm dialogues with the right customers and Q3 planning.

Further Information and Support

In these challenging times, Justin Michael is giving away a free digital copy of his book “TQ-Technology Quotient: How to Achieve Superhuman Sales Engagement Skills.” Just inbox him via LinkedIn.

XANT is offering Playbook software for free during the pandemic crisis to help people while they figure out how to work better remotely; head to XANT Cares. 

You can also head to our website to find out further advice on how to work from home better.

How do you humanize, personalize, and empathize? What successes have you had? Please share your ideas below.

Up Next:

• • How To Comp Sales Teams In A Crisis
  • 15 Sales Management Software and CRMs Used By Sales Teams
  • 7 Ways To Increase Operational Efficiency

Find out the four elements you need to consider and master to have a successful sales cadence. Keep reading to find out more.

RELATED: The 5 Step Process to Building a Sales Cadence That Works

In this article:

1. What Is a Sales Cadence: The Problem with Defining Sales Cadence
2. The XANT Sales Cadence Research
3. The XANT Research Study Results
4. Laws to Follow in Building a Sales Cadence
   1. First Law of the Sales Cadence: Attempts
   2. Second Law of the Sales Cadence: Media
   3. Third Law of the Sales Cadence: Duration
   4. Fourth Law of the Sales Cadence: Spacing
   5. Fifth Law of the Sales Cadence: Content

The Sales Cadence Best Practices

Sales Cadence Definition: This refers to the sequence or frequency with which someone like a sales leader meets with the sales team or with individual members. This also refers to the sequence of activities that aim to increase contact and qualification. The main purpose of the sales cadence is to monitor progress.

What Is a Sales Cadence: The Problem with Defining Sales Cadence

I believe there are multiple pillars you need to master to have a great prospecting strategy. Today, I’ll share the four laws of building sales cadence.

This is a topic I discussed with Bob Perkins for a webinar with the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals. Perkins is the Founder of AA-ISP.

We debated the definition and context of “sales cadence.” Some refer to the cadence as a sequence.

There are also others who call it “sales engagement,” “sales play,” or “sales follow-up strategy.” One of the problems we see in the market is we can’t really define what sales cadence and all these other terms are.

This is an interesting debate because a lot of the definitions we have for these come from our gut. We don’t really base them on data.

The XANT Sales Cadence Research

That is why we at XANT decided to conduct research on sales cadence. For this study, we took two steps.

1. First, we reached out to 1,400 companies and asked them how they believe they conduct their sales cadence process. We wanted to get opinion data, so we asked them things like the number of touches their sales reps do.
2. Second, we visited our big data set and looked at what people were actually doing. XANT has the world’s largest database which captures literally billions of sales interactions.

Phone calls made, emails sent, changes in lead status, opportunities — we capture all those through our AI engine.

We looked at three perspectives during the study:

• What people believe they are doing
• What they are actually doing
• The optimal data that will yield the best results

The XANT Research Study Results

Reviewing study results to learn sales cadence

The results we got from this study were very interesting. Let me share with you what our team of data scientists told me — mind you, they’re not experts in sales.

The first thing they pinpointed is defining sales cadence. We have to start there.

When you talk about a cadence, you’re referring to a sequence of activities to increase contact and qualification. What we’re focusing on here is trying to get better conversations.

If you do this right, you can qualify people better.

When our data scientists delved further into the data, they were able to break down, or sequence, the DNA of a sales cadence. These are the four laws in building a sales cadence which we will be discussing, and we’ll also cover the fifth law.

Laws to Follow in Building a Sales Cadence

Looking at the data we’ve gathered, we discovered that, if you want to build a cadence, you need to have these five elements:

1. Attempts — The total number of touches in a cadence or a sequence
2. Media — The pattern you use and the different types of media you use to reach out to prospects (e.g. phone, voice mail, email, etc.)
3. Duration — Refers to the length of time from your first touch to your last touch
4. Spacing — The time between activities
5. Content — The message you say in your communication

That was how our data scientists broke down the DNA of a cadence. Then we decided to go into each one of these four elements, or laws.

In our study, we aimed to know what people believe they do versus what they are actually doing. We also sought the best practices that will yield the best sales cadence results.

An important thing to remember is there is no one-size-fits-all cadence. We didn’t see this in the data we’ve gathered in our research.

Another thing we’ve noticed is outbound cadences are completely different from inbound cadences. Going cold to somebody who’s never heard of your company is a completely different cadence compared to following up on a marketing-generated lead.

All of the data I’m going to share with you today focuses on outbound. They are also primarily B2B sales data.

First Law of the Sales Cadence: Attempts

As I mentioned earlier, we’ll be looking at three perspectives as we discuss the laws in building a sales cadence. Based on our research, sales reps believe that the number of attempts they make per contact is 15.1.

This is fascinating because when you look up the optimal number of attempts in a cadence, the Internet will also give you around 15. This is because it’s what people believe they are doing.

We even broke down the 15 attempts into the different forms they take:

• 4.7 phone calls
• 2.9 voice messages
• 0.7 SMS
• 4.6 emails
• 2 social touches

Yet the real question is, what are sales reps actually doing? We’ve looked at a million data points, so what we’ve found is the average.

Know that by industry and company size, the number can be slightly different. Also, this is outbound-based data, and not inbound.

The actual number of attempts that sales reps make per contact is 3.5. Now, what is the optimal number of attempts?

This was surprising to me, but the optimal is 7 attempts. We saw a big drop in contact rate when you go past 7 attempts in an outbound cadence.

Also, although 7 is the optimal number, this is true only in a specific time frame. What we found in the data is that there are companies that practice “recycling.”

They will run a cadence of 7 attempts for a certain time frame, then they’ll let that sit dormant for a certain time. Afterward, they’ll recycle that and hit them 7 times again.

That recycle time differs between companies, but know that you can run a play, attack them 7 times, and then come back. Run a different play later 7 times.

If you have a target account, you “never” stop going after it. That’s why you recycle.

RELATED: Cadence Definition: What a Salesperson Should Know

Second Law of the Sales Cadence: Media

Using various media types to build sales cadence

Next is media, which refers to the types of communication you use in a cadence.

How many communication methods can a sales rep use in a prospecting cadence? We’re talking about inbound or outbound here.

We asked this question to sales reps, and they responded with 7. The communication methods they mentioned were phone, voice mail, text, chat, email, social, and direct mailer.

There was a big debate on video — a lot of people we surveyed said they believe that video is part of email. It’s true that it is generally a part of a different channel, so you can’t use it by itself.

The point is, there are many different types of communication methods. Don’t box yourself within email or phone, because there’s a lot out there that you can utilize.

One of the things we found interesting was, only 10.4% of sales reps and teams use video and email. To me, that screams opportunity!

Another underutilized communication method is direct mailer. We surveyed 500 executives from different industries and asked them which type of communication method they’ll respond to best.

Direct mail actually came on top, yet there’s a low percentage of salespeople using that. This is another opportunity to explore on an underutilized communication method.

Now when we looked into the data, we discovered that salespeople are predominantly using only two communication methods.

The optimal number is three or even more. Your contact rate will increase four times if you don’t limit your communication methods.

Expand your horizon — that’s the best advice you can follow when it comes to media. Remember that anything you initiate that causes somebody to learn about you is already considered an attempt, or touch.

Third Law of the Sales Cadence: Duration

Duration is often less thought about, compared to attempts and media. We asked our survey participants how long they think the typical cadence of a sales rep lasts.

That’s from the first touch down to the last touch. The average duration our survey participants came up with was about a month.

We’re referring to the total days in a month, not only the business days. Based on the data we gathered, the actual practice is around 20 to 25 days.

The other question we posed was, how long should your outbound cadences be? Survey said, up to 8 days.

Now, should you do your 7 attempts in 30 days? I say go after them, and fairly hard too.

Hit them in around two weeks. If you break that into business days, you’re hitting about a week and a half.

Hit them multiple times, rest them for a little while, and then pick it up again and run another program. The optimal practice is 7 touches within a week and a half.

It’s good to note as well that if you’re going after different personas, the numbers we’re presenting will change. This is also something we noticed in our research data.

Fourth Law of the Sales Cadence: Spacing

Spacing refers to the time between activities.

What is the optimal spacing of a sales cadence? Our survey participants said up to two days, which is what most people believe when it comes to spacing.

In reality, people in general wait about a good full week when it comes to their cadences. A lot of people run cadences that last around 60 to 90 days. They’re doing about 15 to 20 touches across those 40 to 60 days.

Yet optimal-wise, having a short spacing is better. One thing we learned from the study is to hit prospects short. Try to educate them on who you are and then back off.

The optimal spacing on the recycling period based on the data we gathered is anywhere between 2 weeks to 45 days. That’s also the range that we typically saw people practice.

Remember that you don’t want to just hit your prospects 7 times and then leave them. You’ll want to recycle by starting a new sales cadence.

Fifth Law of the Sales Cadence: Content

Using quality content to build sales cadence

As promised, we will also cover the fifth law in building a sales cadence. As we delved into content, here are the things we’ve found:

• Voice Messages — This communication method is not dead. Yet the shorter the voice message is, the better. Try to keep it under 30 seconds.
• Video — Don’t neglect this communication method. You also need to keep this short, so really think about what you will say in your 60-second video-based email.
• Direct Mail — Executives love receiving this. There are different types of direct mail like branded and general gifts, handwritten notes, and gift cards. The most effective one is the handwritten note.

It’s still best to contact prospects at the beginning and end of the day during the middle of the week (Wednesdays and Thursdays).

As you prepare your sales cadence, remember the five laws you ought to build it on. Now that you know these, there is no excuse to keep on taking actions based on guesswork.

Instead, start following the optimal prospecting cadence to get the best results.

What practices would you like to improve on your own sales cadence? We’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.

Up Next:

• The Sales Cadence Tool You Need to Generate More Leads
• 26 Things a Sales Cadence Tool Should Do for You
• Sales Best Practices Every Sales Professional Should Know

RELATED: 3 Salesforce Email Template Tips for Effective Sales Emails

In this article:

1. About Our Guest — Bryan Kreuzberger of Breakthrough Email
2. Sales Email Secrets: An XANT Study
3. The Outbound Triangle
4. The Waterfall Technique
5. Marketing Through Email: How to Create Your Message
   1. Step 1: Your Purpose
   2. Step 2: The Opportunity
   3. Step 3: Your Ask
6. Common Mistakes Made in Email Marketing
7. The Importance of Getting Email Marketing Right
8. The Playbook

Email Marketing for Business: How to Do It Right

About Our Guest — Bryan Kreuzberger of Breakthrough Email

Recently, we had a chance to speak with the founder and CEO of Breakthrough Email, Bryan Kreuzberger. His company helps businesses and sellers find leads and grow their revenue.

He’s one of the Top 40 Sales Experts of Forbes and he’s featured in The New York Times.

As a salesperson, Kreuzberger tried different ways to reach his clients and get them to respond. At that time, he was selling a very specific product and he had hard-to-reach buyers.

He’s experienced in sales strategies like cold calling, networking, and trade shows. Yet, it wasn’t until he learned how to write emails that he was able to get people to meet with him.

This was when his sales career really took off. In our conversation with him, Kreuzberger shared with us how to write effective emails and gave us tips on creating personalized email templates.

The Benefits of Email Marketing

With other forms of communication available to businesses today, what’s so special with email marketing? Here are top three reasons why you should prioritize marketing through email:

1. You own your email list — In social media, the host website owns your account and fans, and they have the authority to suspend your access anytime. In email marketing, you own the contacts you earned and the email lists you built.
2. Email is the best means of communication — A study conducted by Radicati Group revealed that even before 2019 began, more than 3.8 billion people are email users.
3. Email marketing converts better — Campaign Monitor reported that email marketing yielded an ROI of $44 for every dollar spent. It also generated 174% more conversions compared to social media.

Sales Email Secrets: An XANT Study

Before we get to the nitty-gritty of email marketing, let us share with you a recent study that XANT conducted.

We’re constantly finding ways on how to make people be better at what they do. To do this, we look at every aspect of the sales process. We also focus on revenue growth.

Since sending emails is part of the sales process, we looked at 18 million emails and tried to understand what some of the best practices were.

One component of the study is the time of day when people actually open their emails. We also looked at download rates — when do people actually download the content you send them?

Imagine being able to map all your communication to the likelihood of people to actually consume what you send them. It’s basically being able to figure out the best time to send email to your targets.

In this study, we discovered that optimal send time produces 21% better open rates and 64% better download rates.

The Outbound Triangle

Now, there are two parts to every sale — the opening and the closing. We’re going to focus our discussion on opening the sale — getting the lead and making sure you get to meet with the actual decision-maker.

Kreuzberger began honing his skills in email marketing by writing and sending emails, always testing to see what worked.

He framed the outbound like a triangle. At the top of the triangle is who you contact — that’s the target list, the decision-maker, and the research you do to find the information you need.

The bottom left is how you reach them. You can do this through cadence tools like InsideSales, an outside agency, an inbound lead, a trade show, cold call, or referral.

At the bottom right is what you say. In the case of email, it’s the message. People call it the “pitch,” which is how you establish credibility.

Kreuzberger found that for most people, what you say is the most important factor. Yet he believes it’s actually who you contact.

It’s because who you contact brings you the client. You need to find somebody who is “BANT-qualified” — someone who has the budget, authority, need, and timing.

You can have the greatest message in the world, but it won’t matter if you reach out to the wrong persons.

That’s why the first thing you should do is to identify who to contact, then figure out the right thing to say to get responses.

Ultimately, what we want are customers, not responses. The big advantage of outbound is you get to pick your customers.

In his discussion, Kreuzberger focused more on the actual messaging, but it is good to keep in mind that who you target is absolutely critical.

The Waterfall Technique

One of the first things that Kreuzberger learned from a targeting perspective is the practice of delegation. If his target was the Director of Marketing, he would get delegated down to an outside agency.

For any outbound, there’s a whole hierarchy involved. Because they practice delegation, Kreuzberger decided to reach out to the VP of Marketing, the Chief Marketing Officer, and the Chief Executive Officer instead.

His solution was to send emails to all three people whose positions are above his actual target person’s. Though he had no business contacting them, eventually, the delegation practice would earn him a meeting with a decision-making person with authority.

He is then able to get buy-in and use that leverage.

Marketing Through Email: How to Create Your Message

To help us understand email marketing further, Kreuzberger shared with us a sample email to McDonald’s.

In his subject line, he used “Appropriate Person,” as a global company like McDonald’s would have a lot of people involved in marketing and media buying. The purpose of this email is to find the right contact person — the decision-maker.

The first sentence doubles as the preview pane, which is what his recipient can see before opening his email. The second section is the opportunity, which introduces what his business can do for McDonald’s. Then the closing part is his request.

RELATED: C-Level Secrets — Tips for Connecting with the Top Brass

Step 1: Your Purpose

The first step in creating your email marketing message is introducing your purpose for writing. The subject line is the Appropriate Person. Kreuzberger gave us this example:

“I am writing in hopes of finding the appropriate person who handles multicultural media?

I also wrote to Person A, Person B, and Person C in that pursuit. If it makes sense to talk, let me know how your calendar looks.”

The other persons he was referring to were the CEO, CMO, and VP of Marketing. He doesn’t practice copying people in a single email — he writes four separate emails to triple his response rate.

When asking for the contact person, Kreuzberger advises salespeople to be broad. This is because you want your recipient to continue reading your email.

He also mentioned that the common mistake of most salespeople in writing emails is talking about themselves. For instance, starting the email with something like, “My name is Bryan Kreuzberger and I’m the Founder of Breakthrough Email…”

Your recipient can already see from their inbox who they’re getting the email from. What’s left to do is get to the point. The subject line is the point, and the first sentence reinforces that.

While there is really nothing wrong about starting your email with a let-me-tell-you-about-us spiel, your aim is to influence your recipient. To do that, you have to hook them in with what they actually care about.

Step 2: The Opportunity

Instead of talking about what you can do, talk about what you can do for your potential customers.

In the first sentence of your email’s body, frame the major concept. What is the end result they can expect or would want from you?

For example, the company Bryan referred to in his sample email targets restaurant owners. So he framed the opportunity he offers this way:

“Voodoo Box helps restaurants increase sales and revenue.”

People will remember the first and last things you say. That’s why in your email, make sure you’re referencing the main benefit for them or the frustration that you’re solving.

Kreuzberger said that if he were to distill his email copy into two words, it would be “credible opportunity.” The question is, how will you establish credibility if your prospect doesn’t know you or your company?

The answer is to reference your most recognizable clients. For example:

“Some of our clients include Burger King, P&G, and Chili’s.”

Now, if you have a unique business and model, and very hard-to-reach decision-makers, Kreuzberger warns that you need to understand the fundamentals of creating email copy first. You can’t simply take any template and expect top decision-makers to meet with you.

Step 3: Your Ask

The third step is your ask, or your request. For example:

“If you are the appropriate person to speak with, what does your calendar look like? If not, whom do you recommend I talk to?

Thanks,

Full Signature”

In the signature, Kreuzberger found that it’s not necessary to include a web page link. The reason behind this is he doesn’t want his recipient to visit his page but not respond to him.

The goal is to have your recipient delegate your request to somebody else, or get them to agree to meet with you.

Kreuzberger also shared their findings from testing word choices. They discovered that using “calendar” instead of “schedule” brings a 35% increase in response. The tip is to not be too desperate.

Likewise, using the word “talk” instead of “meet” or “call” brings a 60% increase in response. He advised to not worry over how you’re going to meet with your prospect.

What you want is to ask them to give the lowest-perceived commitment on their part. The order of priority you should have is:

1. Finding customers
2. Contacting decision-makers
3. Creating the messaging
4. Getting the meeting

If you don’t get to the decision-maker, you’re empowering somebody to say ‘no’ to you, even if they don’t have the ability to say ‘yes.’ 

Other Effective Email Marketing Tips

Aside from knowing who to contact and how to write your message, here are helpful tips you can apply:

Choose Quality over Quantity

Providing content with value is more important than the number of emails you send out.

Make sure you have a good purpose for sending out an email or launching a marketing campaign. You won’t be able to maximize the effectiveness of email marketing if you don’t have goals.

At the same time, don’t overwhelm your subscribers by bombarding them with messages. Plan out your content well to increase your engagement rate.

Personalization and Visuals

Knowing who you’re reaching out to helps a great deal with personalization. Take the time to research about your prospect or customer so you can create a compelling and persuasive message.

Keep your paragraphs short and use bullet points so your recipients can skim through your content easily.

Use visuals as part of your message, but don’t overdo it. One way to do this is to integrate a part of your message within graphics to entice your recipient to read through your email.

Keep in mind that some email providers block inline images or even mark emails with graphics as spam.

Call to Action

What do you want your recipient to do after reading through your email? Tell them through your call to action.

This is similar to the third step we discussed above (your ask). The call to action should reinforce your purpose for sending out an email marketing material.

Through this, you can ask your recipients to take actions such as the following:

• Visit your website or store
• Avail your promo
• Follow you in social media
• Join your contest

Provide an Unsubscribe Option

Providing an unsubscribe option may seem like a negative thing thing to do, but it can help you in the long run.

If you don’t give users an option to remove their email address from your list, it might prompt them to mark your email as spam. This is something you must avoid so it won’t open up problems for you moving forward.

Avoid the Spam Folder

The first step how you can avoid getting into someone’s spam folder is to make sure they’ve opted in your email list. Aside from that, you should also avoid the following:

• An all-caps subject line
• Too many exclamation marks
• Vague subject lines
• Messy HTML format

Email providers’ spam filters differ from one another. It’s best to test your email marketing campaign first to ensure that you will send the best version to your recipients.

Responsive Design

People open their emails on different devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Having a responsive design allows your recipients to view your email with ease using any of those devices.

As you think about how you will compose your message, don’t forget to make it responsive as well.

Common Mistakes Made in Email Marketing

One of the mistakes that salespeople make is writing to one person, thinking that they’re covering the company.

Another one is writing to the actual target person, but not to the people who have higher positions. As a result, they get delegated down, or they don’t get any leverage.

Lastly, they write declarative email marketing messages and talk about themselves.

Once you have a playbook that works, you can use technology like InsideSales and make your team more effective.

The Importance of Getting Email Marketing Right

Doing email marketing the right way will make you so much more effective in sales. The results of this are getting qualified leads and meetings because the right people will be able to relate to your email.

Remember that there is no long copy, there’s only boring copy. If you don’t know what to say, sending nothing is actually better than putting something out there.

The Playbook

When it comes to email marketing, you never really know what’s going to resonate with each target person. Each company has a different drive and decision-makers at different levels.

To identify the actual messaging, you can create if-then scenarios for your business.

Once your company has a playbook, you can upload it to your own system and create the cadences. You can create your messaging matrix to really understand your customers.

In turn, your salespeople can be much more effective.

There are companies out there that need your help and they can change your life. If you really focus on what your customers care about, you can reach anybody through email marketing.

Spend time to think through your marketing email target and message. Really understand what motivates your buyers so you can be an effective salesperson.

Do you know other tried-and-tested methods on email marketing? Share them with us in the comments section below!

Up Next:

• 7 Email Personalization Best Practices You Need to Know
• Building Rapport with Customers: 3 Steps to Build Trust in Minutes
• Marketing and Sales: Why They Need Each Other

The debate is prompted as more and more companies are looking to automate some sales functions and become more lean and efficient in their customer response.

Companies are also looking at digital transformation processes, as they accommodate new buyer behaviors such as individual product research, price shopping online and consuming product marketing content, which bypass the traditional sales role.

However, most companies are still relying on the dependable stream of qualified leads that traditional sales development teams are producing. Sales development representatives are still the phone warriors that are working to contact and qualify prospects, keeping sales rep’s pipeline full of hot leads and the revenue stream going.

AI-powered Sales Tools Enabling the Modern Sales Rep

The modern sales development rep no longer works from a spreadsheet, as new sales tools that allow predictive insights about buyers allow them to work more efficiently and productively. Sales cadence tools allow sales reps to:

• Predict who is more likely to buy from you, what product, and when?
• When is the best time and method to reach a customer?
• What are the best contact strategies and messaging to close a deal?

In a recent survey, XANT Labs asked over 600 sales leaders to report whether they think AI can take over the sales development role, and an overwhelming majority (78%) answered with a resounding “NO.” 

AI vs SD: Join the Webinar!

What is your opinion? Will AI end up replacing some sales development roles, or will it enable and support them, changing the way they do their day-to-day interactions? Join the webinar with Gabe Larsen, VP of Growth at XANT, and Victor Antonio of the Sellinger Group, author of “Sales ex Machina,” to learn more about:

• How is AI being used in sales
• What are the sales and marketing trends in AI for 2019
• Sneak preview of the 2019 State of AI Research, a survey of 600 sales leaders

Register below to join the webinar!

Data from management consulting firm, McKinsey & Company shows that organizations that add the human touch to digital sales consistently outperform their peers. They achieve five times more revenue and eight times more operating profit. For public companies, this approach brings twice the return to shareholders. What’s more, this data holds true over a four- to five-year period.

However, many sales organizations have trouble with integrating digital sales systems with a classic face-to-face selling approach. When does a customer want to browse through your website and get a data sheet, and when do they need some help talking to someone about a pricing plan? You need accurate data to make these decisions.

The Secret to Winning in B2B Sales: Join our Webinar!

Candace Lun Plotkin, Director of Knowledge at McKinsey & Company will reveal how companies can combine the benefits of sales automation with the human touch for outstanding sales results. She will also discuss specific implications and opportunities for inside sales.

Join the webinar hosted by XANT to learn:

• When exactly do B2B customers prefer to self-service, and when do they need to talk to a seller (whether FTF or inside sales)?
• What do B2B buyers see as the most annoying sales practice?
• How do you re-wire traditional inside sales channels, technology and content to deliver fantastic customer experience?

Why Pipeline Review Calls Are Painful

Sales reps will sometimes over-estimate or under-estimate their deal sizes, sandbag opportunities or stuff just any questionable deal into the pipeline just to get managers off their back. All this leads to inflated pipelines and inaccurate forecasting.

This means manager can’t always have confidence in their ability to predict growth or revenue.

This makes pipeline review calls a pain, and unfortunately there’s no manual on how to do pipeline management.

The XANT team has been working on a blueprint on how sales leaders can run a pipeline review call without dealing with most of the problems of traditional sales forecasting.

Learn the Secrets of Running a Perfect Pipeline Review Call

Aaron Janmohamed, head of product marketing for XANT, and Scott Smith, principal product manager,  will explain how you can avoid most of the headaches of pipeline review calls. Join the webinar from XANT to learn:

• How predictive sales software can help increase forecasting accuracy by 30%
• What sales managers really need to make their pipeline review calls more efficient
• The 5 secrets of forecasting a sales leader must know

Whether you’re an inside sales or as a field rep, you need to make sure that all of your remote sales meetings are as productive as an in-person meeting.

Increasing Engagement For Virtual Sales

There are many opinions, but not much research—until now. There are a few schools of thought, as to what makes an effective remote sales call.

At a basic level, there are four approaches for increasing sales engagement:

1.   Verbal-only – Try to “reduce friction” by keeping the conversation verbal only and not directing prospects and customers to web links, apps, or other visual storytelling aids for fear of reducing their willingness to participate
2.   Web Link with PowerPoint – Ask prospects and customers to go to a web link to show them some form of traditional PowerPoint presentation deck to help tell your story
3.   Dynamic Visual Storytelling – Use interactive visual storytelling over the web, in the form of virtual demonstrations of your solution, or using dynamic visual builds in PowerPoint, or even the salesperson “hand-drawing” simple images using a whiteboard app
4.   Active Customer Participation – Ask prospects and customers to grab a piece of paper and pen and hand-draw certain concepts described by the seller that help illustrate your core message—moving them from passive observer to active participant

The highest number of respondents ranked the third and fourth categories as the most effective, showed the Corporate Visions survey. It looks like 87% rarely or never ask prospects and customers to draw anything. And this happens even though 64% believe it would have a positive impact.

This comes at a time when nearly half (47%) believe their core messaging is only somewhat well-suited or worse for phone or web conference environments.

What’s the Best Solution? Find Out in Our Webinar!

Currently, there is no research to show what are the methods for increasing sales engagement in remote calls. Corporate Visions is testing out these four approaches in an ongoing research simulation being done with Dr. Nick Lee, a professor at the Warwick Business School in Coventry, U.K.

Join Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy Officer, Corporate Visions and Gabe Larsen, VP of Growth, XANT look at this brand new research during the webinar: “How to Dramatically Improve Your Virtual Sales Calls.”

Are you ready to be remarkable in phone or online environments?

Reserve Your Seat Now!

Hundreds of professional salespeople have joined our #Playmakers Facebook sales community already, and we’re grateful for that! 

We’ve been giving out prizes each day of the Dreamforce conference (6-9 November), so it’s not too late to join!

The Playmakers

In our Facebook community we welcome the top salespeople who want to improve their sales game. We share sales strategies, prospecting tactics and research, and offer a space for everyone to share their winning sales plays.

Playmakers are the modern salespeople, who wage war against traditional sales and win.

They use a data-driven approach to sales, and don’t just guess at the game.

The Plays

What’s the idea of plays? What does that mean? Let me take you through the concept. Each of the elements of a play will help salespeople run a strategic prospecting initiative.

Playmakers run plays. They don’t just run cadences or sequences. Those are sometimes just random activities. A play has to be more than that. It’s a strategic approach to sales.

P stands for purpose or goal. Play makers don’t just wing it.

L is for list or leads. When you run a play you’ve got to have a target, the person or account you’re going after.

A are your assets. Assets are needed because you have to give value before you get value back.

Y is yield. Playmakers, they measure everything. They iterate. They don’t just shoot from the hip.

S is the sequence. Those are the sales activities that lead to contact and increase qualification rates.

Three Plays for Growing Your Pipeline

We were live today on a Facebook webinar, showing you the three plays that pros use to win, and we had an amazing turnout, thank you all for joining!

The Starbucks Coffee Play

If you haven’t heard of our Starbucks coffee play, you need to try it out. Our goal was pipeline generation for this play, and we targeted accounts in Austin. There was only one sales rep working on this one.

Our assets were Yeti Starbucks coffee mugs, a $10 gift card and a hand written note. We also had some research for a data-driven marketing approach.

Then the results were fantastic! We had an 86% appointment set rate. We also made 700K in pipeline and $140,000 of closed revenue.

The sequence was to send the coffee mug and gift cards first, then follow up with calls, voicemails and emails to make sure the gift landed. This is how we were able to get in contact with our leads and find their paint point.

The Socialize Me Play

The second play is what we call “socialize me”. This was a social selling play to see if we couldn’t reach out to our target audience via social media.

We identified a handful of people that were more active on LinkedIn, this was our list. One of the problems with social selling is that everybody wants to do it, but some of your target audience might not be on LinkedIn or Twitter.

The assets that we had in this case, were just LinkedIn Navigator. Don’t get me wrong, Twitter is good, but we focused on LinkedIn this time.

The yield on this one was also pretty good, not as good the coffee play. We had 50% appointments set rate and about 150,000 in pipeline, I can’t remember the exact detail. And we closed two deals off of it.

The sequence was more or less the following: three phone calls, two voice messages, four emails, four social touches.

The Three C’s of Social Selling

The key on the social touches was the following: comment, connect, and call to action. I do feel like you want to keep this in your back pocket for all social selling strategies. These are the three C’s of social selling.

We call this program luv, L-U-V, which means “leaving unsolicited validation.” This means we didn’t blindly reached out to people. We first left unsolicited validation on their social media, in order to gain confidence. 

This meant following their social media activity and liking and commeting on some of their posts, or endorsing them for a few skills. This put us on their radar and then we had a higher chance of connecting.

The blind connection request is going to kill your sales strategy – it needs to be the last step.

Last, but not least, we made sure there was a call to action for them.

The Dialer Tool Set

Play number three is what we called the “Why, What and How” video play. We just released, as part of our tool set, the ability for sales reps to send note cards as part of their cadence strategy. So we wanted to have a strategic outreach for targets that could benefit from this new feature.

I’m always a big fan of video, but this one worked exceptionally well.

The purpose on this play was targeting a very specific set of customers that we felt like would be good up-sell opportunities on the product.

The assets were three short videos (5-10 minutes long):

• We explained why should care about direct mail, deriving videos out of some XANT Labs research on the topic
• The second video showed what direct mail is, some examples, some experiments that we’d run. 
• We created a video showing how can you actually utilize direct mail in your sales process. Then we ended with a pretty killer offer of a free trial for the product.

We had 12 appointments off the first initial play. This one isn’t finalized yet, so we are still running this play as I’m writing this. We had just under 300K in pipeline and we are waiting to see what closed.

This was the sequence for the play: on a Monday we sent the “Why” video embedded into an email. Wednesday we sent the “What” video. And then Friday we sent the “How” video.

The sequence was: three email cadence with these little videos embedded, sending them to a landing page with all three videos, that you could unlock every few days. The following week we did three phone calls and two voice messages. Finally, on the last day we added another email to educate them on the importance of direct mail.

It was a nice follow up strategy and it really landed well with our target audience, to those customers that we’ve felt like were going to be most likely to buy our product.

Those are the three plays that we’ve found to be very successful in the last 90 days.

Just One Play Away…

If you feel our sales plays are useful and you can work with them in your industry, let us know! Make sure you invite your friends to the #Playmakers group. We’re going to be doing some other interesting plays as the months go by.

Remember, success is just one play away…

Even seasoned sales executives can agree that talking to C-suites might sometimes be intimidating. But go past the title and the suit, and you will find just another human being. A professional who is ultimately interested in increasing business profitability with the least amount of effort and investment.

SnackNation specializes in food delivery for small businesses and has seen explosive growth since its inception in 2014.

How Will My Business Improve If I Buy Your Product?

Aside from affordability, a C-level executive will first be interested in the real business results. This is why you need to explain how your product helps with this from the get-go.

“What is actually going to change or improve at my business, at my company, in my department? How significant are those changes going to be, and how does it happen? Most demos go the same way. […] Very rarely are sales reps actually showing me what’s going to change, what is going to get better, specifically, by using your product,” said Kevin Dorsey, during the webinar hosted by XANT.

The SnackNation VP suggests that, when creating a presentation for the C-suite, you should include metrics for measuring business performance. These will be different for each industry and department, he adds. You should focus on the metric which will have the most impact for your decision-maker.

How Much Time Is This Going to Take?

When making a business acquisition, executives will ask questions about the time it takes to implement the solution. They will also assess how easy it is to use it and how quickly they will be able to see results after adopting it.

“If your product is going to take a month to implement, and hours of my time and my team’s time, sometimes that alone is enough to push people away from it. So, you need to answer this for your prospects: ‘How much time is this going to take, and how quickly will I see those results?’,” added Kevin.

However, some enterprise business solutions may take weeks, even months to implement. If your prospects are not going to see results for months, you may be able to break that down into smaller units. This way, you can highlight progressive success, shows Kevin.

What’s the Possibility of This Going Wrong?

Nobody wants to think about the possibility of a project going wrong, but it always pays to have a plan B. Executives will always think about what’s the possibility of the acquisition going wrong, and the costs involved. Being able to articulate solutions to any problems that might pop up is key to this conversation, said Kevin.

“You need to be able to talk to me about if it doesn’t work, here’s what we’re going to do,” says Kevin. He adds that if sometimes the solution does not fit, companies could propose ways to improve the product, or offer a money-back guarantee that the customer can fall back on.

“I know in the SaaS world especially, everything is the annual contract. […] That year agreement, with no way out of it, has a lot of repercussions for the people trying to sign up. And do you really want that disgruntled customer for 12 months?” asks the SnackNation VP.

Will I See a Strong ROI From This Product?

Return on investment (ROI) is a metric that is usually missing from most sales pitches, says Dorsey. And it is precisely the number that C-levels are looking to see, when considering an acquisition.

“[…] Even if you’re not selling to CEOs or CFOs or VPs, say you can only work up to the director level. If you can help the director see that for every one dollar they spend, they’ll make five back, that’s a very easy way for them to get approval,” shows Kevin.

If you’d like to see the entire webinar hosted by InsideSales and learn more about selling to C-level executives, you can see it here:

Watch the Webinar!

XANT offers the sales industry’s first comprehensive sales acceleration platform that creates high-performance sales teams with breakthrough technology. InsideSales webinars include prestigious guests from the sales industry. They cover topics like lead prospecting, pipeline management or forecasting and best practices in the sales field.

This article was originally posted by Koka Sexton on the LinkedIn Sales Solutions Blog.

Using social networks like LinkedIn have proven to be impactful over the years for sales professionals. Cold calling, though revered by some, is quickly losing its ability to get a decision maker’s attention.

There is a blend of the two worlds that is rarely discussed but needs to be addressed.

On one side is the phone, a tool that’s been used for decades. Probably the single most effective tool for sales professionals, it allowed sales professionals to scale in unprecedented ways until email came along. Phone and email are the tools that traditional sales professionals and leaders have come to trust.

On the other hand, we have social media. Traditionally adopted by marketing, social networks have been used as a broadcast tool and more recently as a place to build communities. When used by sales professionals in the right way, social networks become one of the most effective applications to connect, communicate, and generate pipeline. Social selling is fairly new, but the impact it is having around the world is becoming more evident as companies are able to attribute revenue to the activities of their sales team.

These sales strategies are not mutually exclusive. A sales professional could continue only using the phone and dial for dollars, or they could go all in with social networks like LinkedIn and find some success either way. I am biased as to which one I would focus my energy on, but I know that there is a way these tactics can be balanced to maximize results.

The best of both worlds

The reality is that even though social selling is highly effective, getting your decision makers on the phone is still necessary in most sales cycles. Moving from online to offline with efficiency is the key. With this being true, sales professionals need to become experts in both, and sales leaders need to adopt new applications to ensure the success of their teams.

In social selling, you need to leverage your professional brand to identify the right people and to fill your pipeline by using insights while building strong relationships. It all starts with your professional brand and there is no other network designed to showcase your brand like LinkedIn. This is why having a social selling methodology is so important for sales executives to empower their teams to be successful.

The idea is to use social signals as trigger events to engage with decision makers. By socially surrounding these buyers, your chances of seeing these triggers increases exponentially, as does your proximity to them if you build social capital. The goal of this is to take the online conversations you are having offline to a meeting or call that can further build the relationship and move the sale along.

The science of social selling is knowing the methodology of leveraging both disciplines in a process that identifies:

1. decision makers at scale and engaging with as many as possible in social media and
2. funneling these decision makers into traditional tactics of getting only the highly qualified buyers on a call in order to maximize your effectiveness.

Building a bridge between social media and your phone should be a strategy all sales leaders focus on this year. Having a team of sales professionals building relationships by the hundreds online without having the process in place to take those relationships through the buying process offline is a waste of energy.

Relationships are important, but they don’t bring in revenue if your only actions are “likes” and “shares.” The winning playbook combines both strategies and coaches sales professionals to use them proficiently.

I’ll be continuing the discussion with Ken Krogue from XANT in a webinar at 11 a.m. PT on Feb. 10 and would love for you to join us. Register here.