How to Save Your Sales Team from Burnout

by craig | Aug 3, 2020 | Coaching, Sales

How to Save Your Sales Team from Burnout

A high lead volume isn’t necessarily a bad problem to have, but your sales team may be suffering from severe burnout. The pressure of connecting with leads combined with the stress of trying to reach the whole often results in a sales team closing less deals.

Salespeople are ambitious and often go-getters. While they’re always going to do their best to reach every lead, their human bandwidth will always leave them falling short. As a sales leader, your team should be able to count on you to put systems in place that encourage a consistent and profitable outcome.

If you want to see your team succeed without burnout, you’re going to have to invest in new ideas, philosophies and solutions:

1. Always be closing prospecting.

Yes, “always be closing” is the motto. But sometimes this philosophy can lead to extreme frustration when sales is constantly chasing leads that aren’t closing. And when a sales team cannot close deals, morale tends to quickly plummet.

Shift your mentality to “always be prospecting,” you’ll find your sales team gaining momentum. A strong prospecting strategy leads to high-intent and quality leads. If your sales team can start to separate the quality from the unqualified, they’ll close more deals. To read more tips on prospecting and best investments, we linked some here.

2. Separate work from home life (even in remote work).

Now more than ever, this is vital. Before COVID-19, there might have been the problem of sales taking phone calls at dinner or on weekends. But now, with work being more consistently brought into your home, it’s vital to keep things as separate as possible. Here are some ways you can do that:

Set up an office area where you can focus and maintain efficiency. Do not use that area or room for anything but work. This ensures clear separation between personal and professional.
Create or maintain routine. Give yourself a sense of normalcy and momentum. Choose things to consistently do throughout your day that will bring you rhythm. Dress like you were going to the office or a meeting (yes, even wearing professional pants on that Zoom call will help you separate loungewear and downtime from work.
Get outside. Spend some time outdoors on breaks or in your free time. Listen to an audiobook, bike, spend time with family and friends. No matter what you do, getting outside and getting out of your house will help boost your mood and help separate you from the work that waits for you at home.

Talk to a Verse Lead Conversion Specialist to see how we can help

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3. Skip the expensive offshore call center. Try a lead conversion software.

Sales cannot possibly reach every single lead when dealing with high volume. Even more so, they’re typically burned out from filtering through the leads who aren’t going to purchase. It’s ultimately wasted time for salespeople.

Many sales teams know this and decide to hire an offshore call center with a newly built software and trained representatives. While this feels like a decent outsource, it’s actually incredibly expensive and tedious, sometimes taking 6-12 months to put into full effect. Even more so, there are still lots of leads that fall through the cracks.

Verse was created to relieve sales without costing an arm and a leg. We built a 24/7 contact center with AI-driven conversational technology to initiate contact with and qualify your leads via SMS. This immediately relieved sales teams from chasing down unqualified leads and wasting time. Now, sales can focus on closing deals and bringing in more revenue.

Our representatives are on standby to step in when necessary, and we have a speedy onboarding process to get a custom script that maintains your brand’s voice. Maintaining your reputation and customer service satisfaction keeps the “personal touch” in the middle of the funnel that sales would have otherwise handled. Now your qualified leads are left feeling catered to and head into an appointment with sales carrying a pleasant experience.

If you want to learn more about how Verse can help prevent your sales team from burnout, watch our walkthrough to see all of the benefits our software and contact center can provide.

Talk to a Verse Lead Conversion Specialist to see how Verse can help.

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Sales and the Top 1%: How to Be Better than the Rest

by craig | Jul 6, 2020 | Sales, Coaching

Believe it or not, it is not confidence or charm that separates the top 1% of salespeople from the rest. It’s actually the art of organization. A salesperson with an organized and systematic sales process will be most likely to close more deals.

The reason this sales quality seems to so heavily influence performance revolves around “lead fatigue” and the consistent anxiety of chasing and hunting down prospects. An average salesperson typically gets caught up in doing too much, ultimately causing them to lose motivation and a solidified sales funnel.

The biggest reason organization manifests so much success is due to the understanding that time is money. That means that time spent chasing leads should be leveraged in productive, structured strides.

1. Confirm appointments – every time.

This is a fairly simple, yet substantial tip to manage your time better. Check in the day before with your prospect and verify the time and date. We even recommend doing so first thing the day before meeting because you can always quickly check your calendar before getting started on your work day. Then, by end of day, you know what your next day will look like appointment-wise and can prioritize other tasks meanwhile.

2. Use a management software tool.

Whether you use a CRM tool or a task management software, these kinds of resources will help. Look into what aspects might be most important or necessary for your sales process. Lead scoring? Conversation records? Response checklist? Remember less is more when it comes to softwares (remember the average salesperson), however, they do offer avenues to optimize your time management.

3. Speed-to-lead and ISAs

The looming cloud of speed-to-lead is dreaded by many salespeople. Inside Sales did their own study and found a conversion was 21x more likely when a lead was contacted within 5 minutes of filling out an inquiry. But how can a salesperson be available 24/7 to manage this? Unfortunately, they can’t. However, our 24/7 contact center at Verse poses as an ISA for your sales team while optimizing the chance of initial connection with your leads. If 40% of your leads come in after hours, Verse would be the best chance at being more organized and in the Top 1%.

Talk to a Verse Lead Conversion Specialist to see how we can help

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4. Organize qualifying questions

Getting a lead to convert is often named the most difficult part of the sales process for account managers. Often the right questions aren’t being asked when you connect with a lead. Do you and your team have a list of qualifying questions? What differentiates a lead ready to purchase and a lead that needs nurturing? HubSpot offers a great start to your qualification questions. Focus on the low-hanging fruit and use your CRM tool to monitor yet-to-be-qualified leads.

5. Leverage lead conversion software

Again, leveraging a 24/7 contact center like Verse will give you the most. Verse uses AI and omnichannel communication to best connect with leads. While they not only connect with your leads, they also qualify and nurture them until they’re ready for conversion where Verse will then book an appointment for them to meet with you. This essentially relieves sales of chasing and wasting time with leads who will never buy. We filter them out for you.

Organization is the key to success. Utilizing tools, lead conversion software and quick communication with your prospects will let you focus on the low-hanging fruit and move your way up to the Top 1%. Work smarter, not harder.

Talk to a Verse Lead Conversion Specialist to see how Verse can help.

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The Sales Funnel and Meaningful Human Connections

by craig | Jun 26, 2020 | Sales

The business world at its core is composed of people and the deep-rooted need for all people, both sellers and buyers, is human connection. Any sales person knows connection is the difference between a comfortable buyer or an agitated and uninterested one.

However, sales and marketing teams struggle on finding the best ways to connect with consumers due to their ever changing nature and desire for immediate gratification. The sales funnel, in each of its portions, should integrate to make sure a lead is connected with at every point, from top to bottom.

To establish human connection from lead generation to closing, a breakdown of the funnel with unique ideas on reaching prospects can help your company convert more leads and close more deals.

Top of the Funnel

So how can marketers separate their brands from others while still maintaining human connection?

Using cool swag to give to both customers and employees is a positive way to spread branding and connect with consumers on a personal level. Going to a trade show and offering water bottles and tee shirts will attract many people simply because people love getting free stuff.

It can, also, be a new marketing strategy. Sending leads and targeted demographics free stuff is a great way to introduce yourself due to its less aggressive approach toward getting their attention. It simultaneously gives them something useful for their daily work space.

Smell is the sense that creates the most powerful impression on your brain. So next time your potential customers pick up their cup of coffee to smell and drink, make sure it’s your logo on their cup.

-Palm Tree Promotions

According to Jet Marketing, consumers are 2.5 times more likely to have a positive impression of promotional products compared to internet advertising. Even better, 87% of people keep promotional products for over a year. A simple strategy such as swag can have such a large and positive impact on a brand.

Trying to get water bottles, totes, shirts, stickers and other various branding materials would typically require going through multiple companies. So Swag Up decided to fill this void by offering all of it with a customizable swag pack, a simple uploading of files and logos, and an easy checkout process.

All in all, it’s unique, captures the attention of the consumer, and spreads brand awareness across the board. Swag Up can be a great additive to an already existing marketing strategy while still maintaining the important element of authenticity and human connection.

Middle of the Funnel

The “handoff” between marketing and sales happens in the middle of the funnel and this is where human connection can easily get lost. Somewhere between generating and contacting leads can be fickle and slow, creating a disconnect between the potential consumer and the seller.

There are two important ways to solve this problem:

Offering text. Upon generating a new lead, sales teams might find themselves calling this lead, maybe even more than a few times. What some sales teams don’t realize is 89% of consumers prefer text communication. Why? Because consumers are all about instant gratification. They want to talk when they feel like talking and text allows them the ability to respond accordingly. Consumers can feel less bombarded when they receive the legitimacy and comfort of text.
Speed-to-lead. It’s no mystery for companies that their leads are 21x more likely to purchase when contacted in the first five minutes of filling out an inquiry. Getting to the consumer fast establishes top-of-mind awareness, a “wow” factor, and a presence detection of the brand for the consumer. It also ensures another company isn’t getting to them first.

These two things have been deemed unsolvable or unmanageable by many teams. Not only is it not unsolvable, but negating the human connection is not an option, as it results in lost money and time.

Lead conversion companies such as Verse can save your sales team from stretching themselves too thin. Verse is able to contact a lead via text within five minutes for qualification, so sales can focus on taking the appointments for qualified leads instead of doing the filtering themselves. Human connection is preserved and companies can see more appointments and money by investing in such a platform.

Talk to a Verse Lead Conversion Specialist to see how we can help

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Bottom of the Funnel

Since human connection has been established and cultivated in the first two-thirds of the sales funnel, your in-house sales team can now take over and manage nurtured and qualified leads. Sales teams are not ignorant to the need for personable relationships with consumers and as other measures have been taken to maintain that authenticity, sales teams are simply picking up right where marketing left off.

At this point, the brand is maintained in a positive light, the consumer is comfortable and feels catered to, and the salesperson can continue to answer questions, be available when necessary and prioritize the qualified buyer better.

Overall, these methods and the personal connection to the lead will result in more deals and less time wasted and will continuously boost your brand and general reputation as a company.

Talk to a Verse Lead Conversion Specialist to see how Verse can help.

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Why sales leaders are turning to marketing for help with revenue goals

by craig | Oct 25, 2019 | Marketing, Sales

An organization’s sales and marketing teams tend to be at odds with one another.

Theoretically, the two should work seamlessly together: one is charged with generating and handing off the leads, while the other is responsible with securing and converting those leads into a customer.

So then why are so many organizations losing out on countless leads that could turn into potential sales?

Sales team and marketing teams should be coordinating their lead strategy day in and day out, yet they still experience drastic lapses in missed sales. For the most part, they’re not even aware of how much these lost leads and opportunities are costing their organization. A recent study by Forbes noted that an estimated 71% of an organization’s internet leads are wasted! Their findings noted that the biggest reason for this high lead-loss statistic was due to the delay in response. Furthermore, our research indicates that during the marketing-to-sales handoff, 55% of leads are lost and result in time and money wasted.

Simply put, just because your marketing team generates and gathers the leads doesn’t mean they will be a “lay up” for your sales team to capitalize upon and close.

In this article, we’ll show you how the sales/marketing relationship is changing, the cutting-edge ways savvy sales professionals are utilizing marketing to boost their results, examples of those results in the real world, and the strategies you can adopt now to see the same results in your organization.

Forward Thinking Sales-To-Marketing Alignment

We get it, as a sales professional, you get many leads from your marketing team. At times it can be frustrating to get so many leads because it’s hard to decipher which leads to pursue. Of course, time is money and with inefficient lead processing you are losing out on opportunities.

What are forward thinking sales professionals doing differently?

These sales gurus are aligning their efforts to work with their marketing team rather than against or in isolation. As mentioned above, one of the most important facets of the sales to marketing alignment isn’t always if the lead is “good” or not but how quickly it is responded to. In fact, you are 3X more likely to convert a lead if you incorporate a smart cadence (instant response + strategic follow-up). This can be a huge opportunity for your organization. The 2018 State of Inbound Marketing Survey conducted by Hubspot found that 1 in 4 organizations noted that their sales and marketing efforts were “misaligned” or “rarely aligned.” Furthermore, that misalignment is costing organization 10% or more in revenue loss annually.

If your organization is “misaligning” sales and marketing efforts, how can you expect that you’ll be able to respond to the lead first? Plain and simple – you can’t.

Let’s take a look at how your sales efforts can benefit from sales-to-marketing alignment.

How Sales Can Benefit From Marketing

When your sales and marketing efforts are properly aligned, your organization will experience increases in revenue. This idea was highlighted by the Harvard Business Review,

“[…] There is no question that, when Sales and Marketing work well together, companies see substantial improvement on important performance metrics: Sales cycles are shorter, market-entry costs go down, and the cost of sales is lower.”

Here are some specific ways marketing can better support sales and thereby align the two groups:

Content Marketing collateral

B2B marketers are creating more content than ever in order to get information pertaining to their product or service out in front of potential leads. Once a reader becomes a lead, however, that content strategy disintegrates.

Once a reader/visitor becomes a lead (through landing page conversion etc), the content strategy is generally abandoned for a sales-specific approach. Often times, a lead can feel “duped” or misguided when this clunky handoff takes place.

Much of the strategy behind the content is to inform and educate; however, this becomes lost in the handoff. As a better alternative, many sales professionals remain in the educator role before becoming the “pushy” salesman. Organizations with a tightly integrated sales and marketing operations experienced a 24% increase in growth and a 27% increase in profit growth over a 3 year period.

Follow up cadence messaging and automation

As referenced above, it’s important to respond to a lead instantly. Forward-thinking sales professionals are integrating automated response technology into the marketing-to-sales handoff in order to experience the higher conversion rate associated with doing so.

There is technology in the marketplace that responds to leads instantaneously, in the preferred manner of the lead.

What do we mean by this?

Well, have you ever taken into account how your leads prefer being contacted?

Do they prefer email correspondence?
Do they prefer SMS?
Do they prefer a phone call?

The Messaging Consumer Survey Report notes that consumers in India, South Korea, Singapore and the United States prefer SMS over voice calls for their customer service needs. Progressive sales professionals know and understand this, and they’re now integrating it into their follow up efforts.

Proper lead qualification

There’s a difference between a marketing qualified lead and a sales qualified lead.

A marketing qualified lead is someone who is looking for brand awareness or education on a specific product or service (a lead closer to the top of the sales funnel).

A sales qualified lead is someone who has decided they are going to purchase and need to choose which business to give their sales (a lead near the bottom of the sales funnel).

Dynamic sales executives have different ways of implementing a lead scoring system into their organization. That way, they know which leads are ready for instant response and which might be higher up in the funnel. Every organization’s lead scoring will look different but here are some of the highlighted variables:

Demographic information
Company information
Online behavior
Email engagement
Social engagement
Spam detection

When you can score your leads, you open yourself up to focusing resources on the more valuable leads your marketing team handed over. In fact, a study conducted by Marketing Sherpa study showed organizations using lead scoring had a 77% boost in lead generation ROI over those not using scoring.

Your Sales and Marketing ROI increases when you align

Sales professionals who strive to align with their marketing compatriots experience higher ROI. In fact, Marketo notes that sales and marketing alignment can help organizations become 67% better at closing deals. That’s a drastic supercharge to your sales force’s efforts.

What was once two different elements of an organization working in isolation (though thinking they were working in unison) is drastically changing. Sales leaders that take it upon themselves to use tools that allow them to qualify the leads that come their way are experiences in overall sales conversions as well as revenue for them and their organization.

Sales and marketing don’t need to point fingers any longer as to who is responsible for the lost sales. They need to align and watch their ROI soar beyond what they thought was possible.