Having the right sales strategy will make or break your startup. From doubling down on perfecting your cold email outreach, to identifying profitable niche markets, leveraging storytelling, knowing how to follow up the right way and more here’s how the best are creating winning sales strategies.
- Be Flexible
During your sales conversations, you’re naturally going to come across new challenges and unique demands from your prospects. This makes sense, since each company you work with is structured a little differently, has a distinct set of internal processes and objectives. Since saying “you can’t,” “won’t,” “that’s impossible” and other variations of no to your prospect is a death sentence, your sales strategy needs to be flexible enough to adapt in the face of new challenges on the go.
- Use Storytelling
Humans have been telling stories in the form of cave paintings, books, radio shows, movies (and more) for nearly 40,000 years with the goal of educating, communicating with, and entertaining each other.
Incorporating storytelling into your sales strategy can help captivate your prospects on a deeper level beyond just selling them strictly on the benefits, thus netting you more customers over time. Storytelling works well as a sales strategy because we’re wired to absorb information much better when we encounter it through stories.
- Give your Undivided Attention to Sales Calls
Whether you’re making a cold call or following back up with one of your sales leads, it’s important to treat the call at hand as the most important thing you could possibly be doing at the moment. If you’re not engaging with your prospect, expressing interest while they’re talking or asking them questions that show your breadth of understanding, they’ll be able to see through your lack of attention.
- Highlight Risks and Opportunities
Many salespeople tend to focus the majority of their conversations with prospects around highlighting all of the potentially amazing opportunities, benefits and quick results the prospect will get from using their solution.
Rather than presenting your solution as the sole solution to your prospect’s “problem,” be honest with them about any risks associated with making the switch to your platform or venturing into this new strategy.
At the end of the day, however, you can try all of the sales strategies in the world, but the best way to improve your close rate is through real experience. There’s no substitute for emailing your leads, picking up the phone, and having conversations with your prospects. Learn what you can from every interaction and develop an understanding of what motivates your customers to buy or not buy.
By Ryan Robinson
