Guest Post: Seven Key Practices to Sales Success

*Originally published by PipelineDeals

If you’re in a small or medium-sized business, you’re always looking for an edge to maximize your sales success. PipelineDeals recently hosted our first annual Accelerate Sales Conference to bring together the top minds in sales and marketing to share what high growth companies were doing to excel. Seven best practices emerged from the keynotes and sessions as the difference makers for sales excellence in SMB.

“The best sales machines are those with a focused team, resources, intelligence, and plan, and following these seven practices accomplishes this,” said JP Werlin, CEO of PipelineDeals. “PipelineDeals has extensive expertise as to what does and doesn’t work for any business type, enabling us to give businesses the power to focus sales and dominate their markets.”

Pipelinedeals’ Seven Key Practices to Sales Success

1. Help… don’t sell: Be on the customer’s side. Focus conversations on customers’ needs and goals by listening and answering questions.
2. Collect the right intelligence to strengthen the pipeline: Work smarter, not harder. Understand people change roles and jobs. Keep an eye on these changes to find new leads and maintain existing customer relationships.
3. Focus on what’s in it for them: Stop selling products and start selling outcomes. Focus on what leads and customers can accomplish with the product to meet their bottom line. It’s about their needs, not sales compensation plans.
4. Show up early: No, not getting up at the crack dawn, but arriving at the beginning of the decision-making process. Focusing on prospects that are ready to buy now is starting too late. Engage in conversations earlier to learn about their needs for the best sales pitch possible.
5. Use the 3 P’s: Preparation, practice, and planning: Get a system down. Prepare by spending a bit of time researching a company or person before contact. Remember that practice makes perfect. Constantly rehearse pitches and anticipate questions to improve it over time. Plan with measurable goals and create a system of accountability to stay on track. Each meeting should have a desired end-state to measure success rates.
6. Prioritize by understanding the quality of a lead: Time is money. Invest it on the sales leads with the most potential first. Referral and word of mouth are best, followed by those generated by direct outreach programs, with website and marketing programs next.
7. Establish fans for life: Sales is like a relay race. Getting a meeting or closing a new deal is only the first leg. Strong customer relationships have long-term benefits, including repeat business, referrals, and positive market perception.

These best practices are easily integrated into a company’s sales workflow with PipelineDeals. We offer small and medium-sized businesses a comprehensive CRM and sales productivity suite that eliminates the cost and complexity found in more expensive and difficult to manage enterprise systems. Our intuitive and powerful solutions enable businesses to focus on resources, talent, and intelligence precisely when and where needed to accelerate the sales process.