Sales Engagement 101: Strategies to Boost Revenue
- CEO at DeckLinks, Speaker, Podcast Host
- Published on September 18, 2022
- Updated on September 8, 2024
Table of Contents
“Our sales reps are wasting too much time playing email tag and leaving fruitless voicemails.” Sound familiar? If your sales team’s efforts feel scattered and ineffective, you’re not alone. According to Salesforce, salespeople spend only 28% of their time actually selling, with the rest consumed by administrative tasks. The good news is that emerging sales engagement platforms can dramatically increase sales rep productivity and the overall effectiveness of the sales process. This sales engagement guide will help your sales team pick the right sales engagement approach to connect with more qualified buyers. You’ll learn how leading organizations structure data-driven sales engagement sequences, leverage automation, and align sales and marketing to create consistent, valuable interactions that drive results.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Having a structured, data-driven sales engagement strategy aligned to your sales process is essential for building sales momentum and achieving success.
- Sales engagement platforms help sales teams execute, track and optimize interactions across channels like email, social, phone calls and more from one interface.
- Sales enablement and engagement platforms are key sales tools that make sales teams more productive by automating tasks and providing sales intelligence.
- Personalization, transparency, humor and storytelling help sales reps stand out and increase engagement. Don’t rely solely on templated outreach.
- Regular communication and valuable insights are crucial for building strong relationships with prospects over time. Don’t just focus on short-term sales.
- Analyze sales engagement metrics like open rates, click rates and sales collateral engagement to identify what sales enablement content and channels are working or need improvement.
- When choosing a platform, ensure it has robust workflow automations, supports preferred communications channels, and provides analytics.
- Don’t become entrenched in a sales engagement strategy – be adaptable, test new creative approaches and keep optimizing interactions.
- Investing in sales technology, enablement and the right sales engagement strategy gives sales teams a competitive advantage by maximizing sales reps productivity.
What is sales engagement?
Sales Engagement - Definition
Sales engagement refers to the processes and strategies sales teams use to connect with potential buyers throughout the customer journey to build relationships, nurture leads, and drive revenue. It encompasses sales interactions across multiple channels such as email, social media, events, video, phone calls, and more.
Modern virtual sales technologies enable B2B sales leaders create scalable and strong sales engagement strategies for inside sales and outside sales. Well-thought-out and properly implemented sales strategies help revenue teams improve buyer’s journey, increase the volume and quality of their customer interactions, accelerate the sales cycle and drive more revenue and ARR. Because the B2B sales cycle is long and complex, the right sales engagement strategy is essential to building and maintaining sales momentum.
Having a data-driven structure in place that helps sales professionals on when and how to engage with prospects throughout the customer journey is critical to team’s success. This ensures that potential buyers get the correct information at the right time and sales reps can build and maintain sales momentum throughout the buyer’s journey.
Sales engagement, in a nutshell, is all about establishing a connection with a prospect to develop a relationship while moving them down the sales pipeline.
To discover more about B2B sales engagement and learn practical tips on how to increase it, continue reading our definitive guide to sales engagement.
What is pre-sales engagement?
Pre-Sales Engagement - Definition
Pre-sales engagement is all actions that precede the first customer interaction. Pre-sales engagement ensures that sales reps can build and maintain sales momentum throughout the buyer’s journey.
These are the most common pre-sales engagement actions:
- Prospecting.
- Qualification.
- Market and product research.
- Customer analysis.
- Deal qualification.
- Creating sales and value propositions.
Pre-sales engagement activities, if executed effectively by the sales development team, have a direct influence on sales engagement.
A lead with no context and no prior research puts a sales rep at a disadvantage from the beginning of the sales process. Now the sales rep must invest time in getting to know the lead, conducting customer research, etc., and then putting together a sales pitch. Ideally, the sales rep receives a well-researched and pre-qualified lead.
A solid CRM system is a necessary part of a strong sales engagement strategy as it provides critical customer data that can be organized and accessed by everyone in your company.
Companies largely struggle with communication flow between departments. It can be slow and sometimes it can feel like using direct mail! So don’t let emails and endless video calls waste everyone’s time when your team could easily access what they need right from your CRM system.
Keeping track of various interactions at the early stages of the sales process should be a part of your sales engagement strategy.
PDF Documents Tracking
Identify the most engaged viewers and understand how they interact with your PDF presentations and documents. Learn more.
What is the difference between sales enablement and sales engagement?
Whereas sales engagement and sales enablement are often conflated, they are in fact very different. The primary source of confusion for sales enablement and sales engagement platforms is that some of the features offered by these platforms serve very similar purposes.
Sales Engagement vs Sales Enablement
Sales engagement refers to efficiency and its primary goal is to help sales reps accomplish sales-related tasks in the least amount of time by engaging buyers in a well-defined methodical way.
Sales Enablement vs Sales Engagement
Sales enablement is aimed at effectiveness and its focus is to ensure account executives always have access to the information they and their customers need.
The primary goal of sales enablement is to make sure every customer engagement helps sales reps build and maintain sales momentum and make an impact. Sales enablement provides B2B sales teams with knowledge of the product or service and how to sell it effectively.
Sales enablement and sales engagement platforms work in tandem to help a sales organization scale their sales processes, and improve and maximize every customer engagement throughout the customer journey.
RELATED POST
Written by Lidia Vijga
What is sales engagement platform?
Sales Engagement Platform - Definition
A sales engagement platform is a tool that aids sales teams in planning, executing, monitoring, and optimizing interactions with consumers across various sales communication channels through a single interface.
A great sales engagement platform is one of the most important components of a strong sales engagement strategy. And it is one of the most efficient ways to improve the sales process. Sales engagement platforms enable B2B sales teams to scale prospect outreach efforts throughout the buyer’s journey by providing structure and direction.
Sales engagement platforms are created to work hand-in-hand with a CRM system. By organizing, displaying, and surfacing data as well as automating manual activities and monitoring outcomes, these two systems working together create a more effective sales process overall.
What do sales engagement platforms do?
Sales engagement platforms cover a wide range of applications. The most important thing sales engagement platforms do is allow sales teams to connect with prospects and customers from a single interface.
As a result, your consumers can continue to communicate with sales reps using their preferred channels at all times. This leads to increase in prospect engagement and accelerated sales cycle.
Here’s the list of things that most sales engagement platforms do:
- Automating selling activities like sending email follow-ups.
- Customer insight is gathered by sales engagement platforms, allowing sales representatives to prospect qualified leads.
- Reaching out to prospects over their preferred channels.
- Make it easier for sales professionals to keep track of their daily tasks and activities.
- Use data and sales intelligence to produce reports that sales reps can use to make better-informed decisions.
RELATED POST
Written by Lidia Vijga
What are the types of sales engagement?
These are the main categories that sales engagement covers:
Workflow automations
Call and email sequencing, outreach and presentation templates, and sales scripts are all examples of process-based activities that can be improved with modern sales engagement technology.
Sales engagement platforms provide workflow automation features making it easy to send automated emails and sales cadence. However, sales teams have to be sure that their sales engagement strategy doesn’t come across as too overwhelming and spammy, or you’ll lose potential customers.
Preferably, your sales process has a solid workflow engagement framework, this way they don’t have to spend time researching the next interaction or engagement step in the sales process. Workflow is also the most flexible part of the sales engagement process. What works for one customer may not be ideal for another. Therefore, sales managers and sales leaders must include alternatives in the sales playbook.
Content recommendations
Good sales engagement platforms give sales professionals the ability to access sales tips and recommendations, like email and sales presentation templates, and even answers to customers’ questions available instantly on-demand. The two primary solutions are knowledge management and content management platforms. Oftentimes, these come as a part of sales enablement platforms and sales engagement platforms.
Analytics
Analytics covers all the applicable KPIs: open rates, clicks, sales and marketing content engagement, sales reps interactions per month, etc. These are some of the most common sales engagement KPIs. Sales teams must keep KPIs in mind when creating a strong sales engagement strategy.
Optimizations
Sales engagement platforms provide optimization tools to analyze how the sales engagement plan is being carried out and automatically provide suggestions using machine learning and real time data. These are generally sales engagement tools that keep track of and analyze phone calls and video sales calls.
RELATED POST
Written by DeckLinks Team
Contacts
Contacts and account management cover everything about your prospects and clients. This is account-based selling and prospect qualification and management in one package. A strong pre-qualify strategy plays a significant role in determining the quality of your contacts. Pay close attention to these features when choosing a sales engagement platform.
Calls
This category is focused exclusively on productivity. Though sales teams have different takes on phone engagement, specifically when it comes to cold calling. While some sales managers see it as an essential tool for generating new leads similar to email tools, others view it as a necessary evil.
There is no denying that cold calling can be an effective way to reach new potential customers. And they can all agree that calling could be more efficient. If you want to be more productive as a sales rep, increasing dialing speed is key, and there are a few ways to do this, like using a power dialer. A lot of sales engagement platforms provide power dialers.
What is a power dialer? A power dialer can automatically call phone numbers on a list, one right after the other, without input from a sales representative. If a number is busy or disconnected, the power dialer will automatically move to the next call phone number on the list.
RELATED POST
Written by Lidia Vijga
How to increase sales engagement?
When looking to increase seller engagement, there are always best practices and tips you can follow.
Here are some of the most effective ways to increase sales engagement:
Track sales engagement across multiple touches and channels
In today’s highly competitive marketplace, keeping track of engagement across multiple touches and channels is more important than ever. By doing so, sales reps can gain a clear understanding of what’s working and what isn’t, and adopt the right sales engagement strategy. Identifying the problem is one of the first steps in fixing it!
Sales engagement platforms can help revenue teams track various interactions across all sales channels including social, emails, phone calls and video calls, marketing and sales presentations, and even direct mail. By identifying channels with the lowest engagement level, sales professionals can then create a plan to improve those areas or focus their prospecting efforts on channels that produce consistent results.
Additionally, tracking sales engagement can help your sales team identify opportunities to improve the buying experience throughout the customer journey.
By keeping track of sales engagement, you can ensure that your sales engagement strategy is aligned with your sales process and your core sales strategy. Ultimately, this will help you build and maintain sales momentum throughout entire customer journey.
RELATED POST
Written by Lidia Vijga
Identify sales engagement metrics
Sales engagement metrics tell you how often your customers interact with your company. Great sales engagement platforms can help guide sales representatives in creating sales engagements as well as track the progress being made toward achieving sales success.
If you want to compete in the market, your company’s aim should be to figure out which features your consumers enjoy the most, what distinguishes you from your competitors, and what makes your product sticky. You can then encourage them to spread the word about your product. To do this, you’ll need to track user activity and have a high NPS.
The Net Promoter Score is a method of measuring customer satisfaction with a product using a single question. “How likely are you to recommend our product to a friend on a scale of 0 to 10?”
It’s also essential to not just focus on the quantitative metrics. You want to understand why customers behave the way they do. Why do they use a specific feature? Why do they (don’t) read your newsletters? To get a clear picture your sales team needs to analyze both quantitative and qualitative metrics.
Showcase your brand.
Create company profiles with custom banners and info-packages tailored to different industries.
Show your contact info easily accessible by your prospects and clients.
Add custom CTAs to drive prospects or clients to your calendar, sign up form, etc.
Collect feedback from prospects and clients. Feedback and reactions are not publicly visible.
Share any existing PDF presentations and documents.
4x Sales Content Engagement
Record and share Video PDF presentations and proposals and WOW your prospects and clients with the most personal customer experience. Access engagement analytics. Learn more.
Focus on your professional development
A sales rep who isn’t passionate about learning is hardly better than no sales rep at all. If a sales rep is blindly following directions without truly understanding them, it’s a waste of time and resources for everyone involved. Therefore, it is unreasonable to expect them to generate high-levels of sales engagement.
Astute sales managers and sales leaders can take action by implementing professional development programs. All performers, no matter how skilled, can improve by sharpening their sales skills and helping their colleagues to succeed.
RELATED POST
Written by Lidia Vijga
Use content management features to track sales and marketing content
Your sales team needs to make sure that all sales reps and customers are on the same page. If you have high-performing email templates but don’t realize it, the rest of your team is missing out on the opportunity to improve their sales engagement.
By tracking the performance of sales and marketing content in your sales engagement platform, sales organizations can identify what is and isn’t working and make necessary changes. There are several metrics that can be tracked, such as views, clicks, time spent per page, conversion rates, etc. By analyzing this data, businesses can determine which content is most effective at engaging potential customers and driving sales.
Furthermore, tracking performance also allows businesses to see which sales channels are most effective. As a result, they can allocate their resources more efficiently and focus on the areas that are most likely to generate sales. Ultimately, tracking the performance of sales and marketing content is key to improving sales engagement and generating more revenue.
Sales and marketing teams have to be on the same page
Sales and marketing content generated by your marketing team is part of your sales engagement plan template. This is the sales collateral that the sales reps share with prospects and clients (PDF files and sales presentations). As a result, it’s critical that your sales and marketing teams have tight coordination to ensure that sales reps always have access to the most effective and up-to-date sales collateral.
One of the ways to do this is by holding consistent meetings between sales and marketing teams and those who are in charge of the sales content and sales engagement strategy. To make sure both teams are on the same page and the sales team always has access to sales collateral that they need to sell effectively, it is important to promote communication.
Did you know that you can track PDF files and presentations and help your marketing team improve sales collateral? Not only that but also by tracking how your prospects and clients interact with your sales collateral you can follow up more strategically and accelerate the sales cycle.
RELATED POST
Written by Lidia Vijga
Personalization is the foundation of a solid sales engagement strategy
When it comes to sales outreach, personalization is key. According to Salesforce, 72% of B2B buyers expect vendors to personalize sales engagement and buyer’s journey to their needs.
Sales representatives might be tempted to flood prospects’ inboxes with templated emails using email automations. However, this is a very ineffective sales engagement strategy, will lead to an unpleasant buyer’s journey, and can be detrimental to your brand.
Sales out outreach is a numbers game. However, it has to be done right.
B2B buyers these days expect highly personalized interactions and insights from sales reps. They can easily see right through poorly created automated sales cadence. Prospects are more likely to engage with an email that feels like it was written specifically for them, rather than a generic message that could have been sent to anyone.
To personalize your sales outreach, start by doing your research. Learn as much as you can about your potential buyers, including their needs and pain points. Then, craft a message that addresses their specific needs. If you have any shared experiences or connections, be sure to include them. If you don’t create them!
Go to their social media, like LinkedIn page, and engage with their posts or comments. B2B sales are about building relationships and LinkedIn is a great place to start when selling virtually. Give social media engagement a try, it will can help you close more deals!
By personalizing your sales outreach on social media and tailoring your prospect engagement strategy to the customers, you’ll stand out from the competition and increase your chances of connecting with the prospect.
RELATED POST
Written by Lidia Vijga
Start using video to increase sales engagement
Video content is not only more likely to cut through the noise but greatly increases engagement. According to our internal data, asynchronous (pre-recorded) video presentations with narration, on average, receive 4x higher engagement compared to static PDF presentations! Giving a sales rep more time to convey the message and connect with the target audience on a human level.
PDF Documents Tracking
Identify the most engaged viewers and understand how they interact with your PDF presentations and documents. Learn more.
By using highly personalized videos as part of your sales engagement strategy, you can easily explain even the most complex products and offerings. And by sharing an asynchronous (pre-recorded) video presentation with your product champion you can ensure that your message will not get lost in translation when they share it with the decision-makers!
RELATED POST
Written by Lidia Vijga
Customer interactions should be focused on the client's ultimate objective
Oftentimes, sales engagement strategy falters because the sales reps are focused on making quotas and their personal benefits. However, if they focus on what the customer needs, they will get better results.
When account executives sell based on the customer’s interests rather than their own, they almost always improve sales engagement and buyer’s journey, and drive better results.
Don't be afraid to try new and creative things
In today’s competitive B2B sales environment, it’s more important than ever for revenue teams to stand out from the crowd. That means that when you’re prospecting new customers, you can’t be afraid to try new and creative things.
Whether it’s fun and witty messaging or sending a small gift, thinking outside the box is essential for attracting attention and generating interest.
For example: One of our clients has had great success sending cold emails that had a misspelled word in the subject line!
Of course, not every new idea will be a home run, but the only way to find out is to experiment. So go ahead and get creative!
RELATED POST
Written by Lidia Vijga
Be adaptable and receptive to change
Making a sales plan is excellent, but don’t become so entrenched in its implementation that you overlook glaring problems. If your sales engagement strategy encounters an issue, modify it. You don’t have to wait for a monthly meeting to make obvious adjustments to your sales plan. Talk to your sales manager if needed.
For instance, if your offering involves a bundle but you discover that it is very difficult to convince first-time buyers to purchase more than one product, sales managers should permit their sales reps to make some adjustments.
It’s preferable to adjust the strategy and convert that prospect than lose the opportunity to an inflexible plan. You and your customer success team will have plenty of chances to upsell the customer in the future.
Optimize interactions with customers and your sales engagement process
Once your sales engagement strategy is up and running, the real work begins! The process of improving and finding the right sales engagement strategy is never truly finished. There is always room for improvement, and even the most successful B2B sales teams and sales professionals can find ways to optimize interactions with customers, sales processes, and sales engagement strategies.
Sales reps should be following the set sequences and playbooks so that the sales managers and sales leaders can have more reliable data to identify problems, optimize, and eventually find the right sales engagement strategy.
By analyzing sales engagement data and some levels of sales intelligence in a sales engagement platform, sales managers and sales leaders can look at the team and individual metrics. Doing this will help them not only understand how effective their sales engagement strategy is but also identify ways to support sales representatives who may be struggling.
Once you have identified areas for improvement, it’s time to start making incremental changes. Remember that even small tweaks can have a big impact on your results, so never stop trying to optimize interactions with customers and your sales engagement process as a whole.
By constantly striving to improve, you’ll ensure that you always stay ahead of the competition.
RELATED POST
Written by Lidia Vijga
Investing in the right sales tools and modern sales engagement technology can greatly increase sales rep productivity
The right sales tools and modern sales engagement technology can help your sales organization achieve their sales goals faster and easier. Both a sales engagement platform and a sales enablement platform are necessary sales tools to properly scale your sales engagement strategy, increase rep productivity, and are essential to the team’s success.
A sales engagement platform helps a sales organization build and optimize its sales engagement strategy quickly. A sales enablement platform will have account executives equipped with the right sales content and proper guidance. This will help sellers engage effectively their prospects and customers, and maximize every customer interaction at every stage of the buyer’s journey.
RELATED POST
Written by Lidia Vijga
Top 30 open-ended questions to ask to increase sales engagement
By asking open-ended questions, you will be able to qualify prospective customers, build trust, discover pain points, and bring clarity to the next steps to accelerate the sales cycle.
Here’s the list of top 30 open-ended questions to ask on a video sales call to increase sales engagement:
- What motivated you to connect with us?
- I came across your piece on _____.
- What are your thoughts on _____?
- What do you want to happen as a result of this meeting?
- Tell me about your favorite places to visit in _____.
- When did you first start using your current solution, and why?
- What are the next steps for this project?
- What are the most serious challenges your company is currently facing?
- Who else is involved in the final decision?
- What would you do differently if there were no time or financial limitations?
- What are your objectives for the next several months?
- How do you evaluate your success?
- Have you ever tested a product like this before?
- If is this the case, then what were the results?
- Describe the area where you believe your competitors are outperforming you.
- Can you walk me through your current workflow?
- Why is now a good time to look at our product or service?
- What are some of your current frustrations?
- What consequences will arise if you don’t buy a solution to solve the problem?
- I hope you don’t mind me asking, but how did that _____ project go that we spoke about last time?
- What difficulties do you encounter in your work?
- Have you ever considered any other products or services?
- What is causing your process to slow down right now?
- What would happen if we don’t resolve these issues?
- How will it affect you personally?
- If I could address your concern, would you be more likely to move forward with this?
- What aspects of our product would you like to see that you haven’t had the chance to experience yet?
- What else can I do to help you make a decision?
- Are there any questions or concerns I haven’t yet addressed?
- What are your ideas for the next steps?
RELATED POST
Written by Spencer Cowley
What are the main rules of sales engagement?
These sales engagement rules provide practical tips on how sales representatives can create customer interactions that will help them start meaningful conversations, build trust, and create and maintain sales momentum at every step of the customer journey.
Sales engagement rule #1: Deliver value.
To effectively engage and encourage customer interaction, you must appeal to the person’s self-interest. As a result, right away you must show the prospect that you can provide them with something of value.
The first steps is to put yourself in the shoes of the prospect. After doing thorough customer research, ask yourself: “What message and value proposition would make me want to engage?”
A successful value proposition has to precisely address the prospect’s pain points and how products or services can best eliminate them. Once you’ve established the value proposition, you must deliver on your promises. B2B customers will expect nothing less from you.
Sales engagement rule #2: Build strong and lasting relationships.
B2B sales are a highly competitive and saturated market. Sales organizations are constantly competing for customer attention and all of their prospecting efforts are aimed to start more customer interactions. Customers today have come to expect highly personalized sales communications from companies. Modern sales engagement technology and social media have created the demand for it in today’s consumers.
A sales representative must show the potential buyer that they value them enough to invest the time and energy to build strong and lasting relationships. Sales success is highly dependent on how you can build better relationships with customers over time.
The most lucrative source of information is customer insight. Stronger bonds between account managers and customers lead to a deeper understanding of customers’ businesses and pain points. This in turn provides customer success teams with the right information and new insights to help customers better, maintain relationships, and protect themselves from losing the client to competitors.
Sales engagement rule #3: Be transparent with prospects and customers.
Transparency is the key to modern sales. Customers expect and deserve transparency. Anything less than that has the potential for a lasting backlash. You must be honest with your prospects about what you are asking from them and why these actions are aligned with the value proposition you’ve established.
If you are offering to solve a specific pain point, don’t try to squeeze in another paid solution when sending a proposal to hit your quota. You and your customer success team will have plenty of time to upsell the customer later. Don’t focus on short-term goals. Instead, focus on solving your customer’s problems first and building long-lasting relationships.
Sales engagement rule #4: Support the marketing team in building a brand.
In today’s sales landscape, it’s more important than ever to have a strong brand. With so much noise and competition, it can be difficult for B2B buyers to cut through the clutter and find the products and services that are right for them. By supporting your marketing team in building a compelling brand through social media like LinkedIn.
The easiest way to do it is by posting, liking, and commenting on social media posts you can engage potential customers in a non-salesy way. Try joining sales podcasts and Slack groups in your niche. If you do it right, it will help potential customers see you as a trusted resource and help your marketers build the brand. In turn, this will help you create sales momentum and start building relationships with your customers.
Sales engagement rule #5: Show the potential impact.
One of the most effective ways to maximize customer interaction is to show the impact that your solution can have. This can be done through case studies, which provide real-world examples of how the solution has been used successfully.
A case study is one of the most essential and effective sales tools in convincing potential customers of the effectiveness of a new solution. Case studies can also help build trust and credibility, as they provide concrete evidence that your offering is highly effective.
When choosing case studies to showcase, it is important to select those that are relevant to the customer and that will illustrate the key benefits of the solution.
For example, if you are engaging a small business, do not show them a case study about a well-known enterprise client trying to impress them. In most cases, this case study is irrelevant to a small business client.
Sales engagement rule #6: Share your customers' success stories.
One of the most effective ways to engage new customers is by creating and supporting brand ambassadors. When your customers have a great experience with your product or service, they’re likely to tell their friends about it. And thanks to the power of social media, their word-of-mouth recommendations can reach target audience anywhere in the world.
That’s why it’s so important to share your clients’ success stories in your company and on personal business social media channels, like LinkedIn. Not only will this help to build trust and credibility with potential customers, but it will also show that you’re invested in the success of your clients.
All sales representatives should strongly consider sharing client success stories, it is a very powerful sales engagement tool.
RELATED POST
Written by Lidia Vijga
Sales engagement rule #7: Regular communication is the key to high sales engagement.
Regular communication is the key to high sales engagement. By staying in touch with customers and prospects on a regular basis, sales professionals can build relationships, stay top of mind, and be better positioned to win new clients and upsell existing customers.
In today’s highly competitive market, it is crucial to stay connected with customers and potential customers. The good news is that sales engagement platforms can automate this process to a certain degree. Sending personalized messages or video emails and providing value is the most effective way to build stronger relationships.
Record a video message or share a link to an interesting article or a white paper to stay top of mind with your prospects and clients. Your customers will appreciate it!
Showcase your brand.
Create company profiles with custom banners and info-packages tailored to different industries.
Show your contact info easily accessible by your prospects and clients.
Add custom CTAs to drive prospects or clients to your calendar, sign up form, etc.
Collect feedback from prospects and clients. Feedback and reactions are not publicly visible.
Share any existing PDF presentations and documents.
4x Sales Content Engagement
Record and share Video PDF presentations and proposals and WOW your prospects and clients with the most personal customer experience. Access engagement analytics. Learn more.
Sales engagement rule #8: Being funny and entertaining can help you win clients.
Could be the most obvious rule, but this is also where many sales reps fall short. People want to be entertained.
In B2B sales, as in many other areas of life, humor is a highly valuable quality. When prospecting for new clients, sales reps who can make their potential customers laugh are more likely to win their business. Humor breaks down barriers, puts people at ease, and makes the sales process a lot easier and more enjoyable for both parties. And when clients enjoy working with their sales representative, they are more likely to keep coming back.
So if you’re looking to win new customers, don’t underestimate the power of humor. It might just be the key to your sales success.
RELATED POST
Written by DeckLinks Team
What are the most common sales engagement mistakes?
Every sales and marketing team has different sales engagement strategies that they have developed over time. Even though this sales engagement process worked for them in the past, it may not be as effective anymore at generating prospect engagement because customer behavior has rapidly changed.
Did you know that according to a study by Harvard Business Review, 73 percent of B2B decision-makers are millennials (age 25–39)?
Here’s a list of the most common sales engagement mistakes that even the most experienced sales reps make:
Not realizing that customers do more research than ever before
These days customers can have almost any information they want at their fingertips. Your competitors are one click away. From product reviews to alternatives, customers are doing thorough research online before even contacting companies.
Not giving customers more control
Customers today prefer to perform tasks on their own, with the increase in the popularity of “self-serve” products and services. In a lot of cases, customers don’t require direct assistance from a company sales rep until the last moment when buying a product or service.
Not providing customers with a personalized buying experience
Above all else, customers want a cohesive and personalized buyer’s journey. At every customer interaction, they anticipate the same level of familiarity and personalization that is catered to their needs and requirements.
Treating customers as if they enjoy ads and cold sales calls
Customers are becoming more aware of the various marketing tricks and tactics used by sales reps. They are becoming increasingly sensitive to what they may consider “aggressive” sales tactics, from digital advertising to cold calls.
How do you choose a sales engagement platform?
You can of course start with the G2Crowd Grid that shows a rough landscape of sales engagement software companies that are operating within the sales industry market. However, one thing you should keep in mind, there is no such thing as the best sales engagement platform or sales enablement platform.
What works for one sales team may not be suitable for another. Many sales organizations use multiple tools for different use cases. Also, one thing to keep in mind that a lot of the functionality that you find in a sales engagement platform, oftentimes you will also find in a sales enablement platform. It can get a bit confusing.
Therefore, before choosing a sales engagement platform or a sales enablement platform, for that matter, we highly recommend doing extensive research and getting demos of the software that spark your interest.
Here’s the list of the most important things that your team should consider when choosing the right sales engagement platform:
1. A great sales engagement platform has advanced workflow automations.
Remember sales engagement refers to efficiency and it is all about increasing efficiency by definition. Workflow automations are invaluable when it comes to doing sales outreach at scale.
Using sales engagement platforms that have advanced workflow automations enable sales reps don’t to spend significantly less time on manual data entry, sending follow-up information, etc. since they can automate repetitive activities.
Most sales engagement platforms can perform triggered actions that can, for example, send an automated email to a lead that has expressed interest in their products or services.
For example, as soon as a new lead enters their email on your website or a landing page, the sales engagement platform can automatically send a welcome message in response. The customer knows exactly what to do next without the sales rep having to take any action.
2. All means of sales communications should be available in a great sales engagement platform.
The best sales engagement platforms enable sales professionals to access all the important information they need to engage with prospects and clients from a single UI (user interface). This means that sales representatives can utilize any form of sales communications that your customers prefer, like email, video email, video calls or phone calls, LinkedIn, and even direct mail.
Great sales engagement platforms also should have features that allow sales reps to quickly access and evaluate all previous sales communications that happened between your sales representatives on your sales team and prospective clients. This gives sales reps the ability to look back into prior interactions and dig deeper into how other sales representatives interacted with prospects and clients. Not only does this feature help everyone on the sales team to stay on the same page but also it is a great knowledge base!
By studying others’ tactics and sales engagement strategies, sales representatives can learn how to build and maintain sales momentum at every stage of the buyer’s journey and increase sales engagement.
RELATED POST
Written by Lidia Vijga
3. A great sales engagement platform simplifies lead generation, scoring, and nurturing.
Not only do sales teams need the ability to generate leads, but they also need to score and track them efficiently and effectively. The process of finding and grouping leads is known can be extremely time-consuming and most sales engagement platforms can effectively automate that using machine learning.
After your sales team determines pre-qualified leads, sales representatives can start engaging those prospects. As the sales reps move the leads through the sales pipeline, they need to track their progress. Being able to see what actions sales representatives need to take next in order to keep moving the prospect down the sales pipeline helps sales professionals to stay the course and prioritize their tasks.
4. A great sales engagement platform can provide tools to access and manage sales content.
Great sales engagement platforms should provide a way to access and manage sales content like email templates, and phone or sales pitch scripts. Any scripts or templates that your sales team has created, sales reps should be able to access on demand.
Prospecting platforms are usually used for cold emailing or calling. Providing standardized cold calling scripts or email templates that can be readily customized allows sales representatives to keep their sales pitch consistent and not get sidetracked.
5. A great sales engagement platform provides access to sales performance analytics.
The best sales engagement platforms can generate granular sales performance reports and show exactly where your sales team is currently positioned relative to their sales engagement objectives. A lot of these sales engagement platforms use machine learning to analyze and generate reports. By digging deeper in sales performance reports sales managers can easily identify areas of concern.
A well-implemented sales engagement strategy is key to the team's success
Sales enablement and sales engagement technology is essential for a team’s success. Any company that is heavily relying on remote or virtual selling and wants its team to succeed in B2B sales needs a solid plan to invest in the right tools.
The right sales engagement strategy paired with the sales enablement and sales engagement platforms allows sales representatives to generate more opportunities, create and build sales momentum throughout the buyer’s journey, and help drive more revenue for sales teams.
RELATED POST
Written by Lidia Vijga
FAQs
How can sales tech improve sales engagement?
Sales engagement technology like CRMs, sales engagement platforms, and sales acceleration software can help automate and optimize sales processes to boost engagement. Key features include email tracking, document tracking, lead scoring, workflow automation, data integration, and analytics.
What metrics indicate strong sales engagement?
Metrics like email open/response rates, inbound lead generation rates, sales qualified leads (SQLs), marketing qualified leads (MQLs), meaningful sales conversations per rep, and sales cycle length can reveal how successfully you are engaging prospects.
How can sales reps get prospects to engage?
Sales reps can spark engagement by personalizing messages, communicating value quickly, asking good questions, responding promptly, varying outreach channels, social selling, and leveraging intent data. Following up persistently yet professionally is key.
How to personalize sales engagement for B2B clients?
Tailor your outreach with insights from their industry, pain points, and previous interactions. Use CRM data and intent signals to understand their needs. Craft messages that resonate and offer tailored solutions.