Sales News, April 2021

Obviously, Maestro is all about velocity. Sales acceleration is one of the main skill sets we teach. But Velocity is also one of the most central parts of Maestro’s DRIVE information-gathering framework. That’s because understanding the customer’s timeline is one of a sales professional’s most essential tasks.

This month’s sales news all deals with factors that relate to the concept of Velocity in sales. These are articles and resources that should help you gather Velocity information more effectively or add velocity to your own sales practices.

FAST IS NOT LOST

Hubspot put out a long list last month of ways that things can go off the rails in closing. That’s about the worst possible place for a deal to get stuck because you’ve already invested so much time in it. Much better to get all the cards on the table early on so that you can nail the closing. As it turns out, several of the tips in the article cover concepts that are related to Velocity and understanding the speed the customer is comfortable with in the sales process. Give a read to numbers 6, 9, 15, 16, and 21 on the list.

Of course, while negative advice is pretty easy to understand (“don’t do that!”), I’m a big fan of positive advice that gives the learner goals to aim for. Check out our earlier post on Understanding the Customer Timeline to get some of those great questions for gathering information on Velocity.

CONTROL WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL

You cannot control when the customer is hoping to buy. You can’t control how many people need to be involved in the decision, or the fact that half those people just left for a vacation. But there are a lot of things you can control about the speed at which your deal moves. These include:

• Response time – It’s from 2018, but Vendasta collected all the available stats on lead response time, and the picture is staggering. Run, don’t walk, if you want to capitalize on leads.
• When you suggest meetings – For outbound sales email campaigns, Maestro recommends requesting a meeting 24 hours out, which is a big acceleration for most organizations. But for inbound sales, see if you can create instant meetings through conversational marketing.
• Onboarding time – Many B2B SaaS solutions take an extraordinarily long time to deploy. Make sure that your organization stands out by being able to promise an efficient onboarding process. What sounds better, “we can have you up and running in four months,” or “we can have you up and running by the end of the month?” If you want to dig into onboarding best practices, check out Userpilot’s “State of SaaS Onboarding 2021” study.

COMMUNICATE FASTER

If you want to find out about the customer’s timeline and the velocity they expect in the sale, you have to talk to them about it. And that means honing your sales communication practices. Gong Labs had a great new post on LinkedIn this month digging into the sales cold email outreach practices that are most likely to get a meeting booked within five days. A couple months ago, Gong demonstrated how group calls boost win rates, especially later in the funnel.

If you’re hungry for data on sales communication, the Gong Labs blog is an all-you-can-eat buffet. Improving sales communication, whether it’s managing a group call effectively or sending professional, effective emails promptly, will help throughout the organization. In fact, Italian researchers in 2019 discovered that “direct communication, simple language, fast response times, and consistent points of contact” were characteristics of email communication with clients that were highly correlated with high Net Promoter Scores. In other words, the same factors that help sell via email in the first place also help keep existing customers satisfied.

ONWARD THROUGH DRIVE

May will be the last month of our tour through DRIVE as we explore Expectations. Remember that if you want to adopt the DRIVE information-gathering system, it is smart to practice. Check out our partner Tensai for a quick, focused approach to honing your great questions.

The fastest way to get better at sales? Deep learning through intensive, modular training. Contact Mastery@maestrogroup.co today to explore the options that would best suit your organization.