Land and Expand – The Ultimate Strategy For Business Growth
Imagine that you’ve just graduated from college and landed a job with the organization of your dreams. The salary is generous (to put it mildly) and there are immense opportunities for professional growth. All in all, it’s a perfect fit. On the third day of the job, you enter the CEO’s cabin and demand that she assigns you to the flagship project, doubles your salary, and promotes you on the spot. That escalated quickly, didn’t it? It is not supposed to (umm, never even think about trying this). In reality, you may have to showcase exemplary skills for years before being anywhere close to such atrocious demands or expectations. This is even applicable in your personal life and the analogy from Forbes hits home in that regard. This is nothing but a modest case of land and expand business strategy. Definition: What Is Land and Expand Strategy? Land and Expand is a business strategy that is based on three simple rules: Rule#1: Efficient selling involves a natural progression. Rule#2: Selling too much too soon can undermine deals. Rule#3: Current customers are the best source of income. In other words, land and expand strategy dictates a strategic framework under which the salesperson first focuses on landing a small deal with an organization (‘Land’). The goal is to first get the foot in the door. Now that he/she becomes a part of the organization, it gets considerably easier to explore opportunities for upselling and cross-selling over time (‘Expand’). For instance, let’s say that you work in a tech company that sells hotel management software. Your latest convert is a multinational hotel chain with tremendous potential for account growth. Under the framework of ‘Land and Expand’, you would go above and beyond and do everything in your power to overdeliver. This might mean providing hands-on training to their employees or constantly anticipating and addressing possible concerns even before they arise. Think about your favorite restaurant that sends you a free pudding with every order. Or your local store that provides free delivery even for low-key shopping sprees. The idea is to delight customers and exceeds expectations, forging long-term relationships. As HubSpot lays it down for newcomers, ‘Exemplary Service’ is key. Now, let’s say that the client loves the experience and a couple of hotels can significantly improve their day-to-day productivity, saving thousands of dollars every month. Imminent trust looms around the corner, ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. This is where you sweep in and start taking advantage of possible upselling opportunities, potentially introducing your software to hundreds of other hotels in their portfolio. What it Isn’t? Notice that we have cautiously used the term ‘business strategy’ in the above definition. Contrary to popular beliefs (and the lingo of marketing gurus), Land and Expand is not a sales strategy. It is a business strategy that masquerades as a sales model. It may seem that the sales team is doing all the heavy lifting. After all, they are the ones who plant the seeds and nurture them to fruition. But many variables are working in the backend to support their case. This can range anywhere from ideal marketing and pricing strategies to unmatched deliveries and focused vision. As evident, this is very different from the case of one user organically leading to 10 other users. Importance of Land and Expand Strategy Once you decide to implement this framework, you’ll find that it takes the center stage in everything that you do. At its peak, it may even be driving more than half of your entire revenue. If properly executed (a big IF), Land and Expand strategies can help you: Significantly increase your cross-sell and upsell rates while also protecting you from discounted deals. Reduce the overhead cost of acquiring additional revenues with fertile customer expansion strategy and retention patterns. Taper the risks associated with selling by increasing the number of customer touchpoints and conversion timeframe. Accurately pitch the value proposition of your offering to your clients with an extended sales timeframe. Land And Expand Process The first step is to keep track of new user signups so that a sales representative or a customer success representative may identify ideal customer early on, even before your product is widely used. A typical ‘Land and Expand’ strategy will include several activities, each will ensure the relationship with the customer is strengthened across all potential stakeholders. Cold calls, emails, in-person meetings for lunch or at events, webinars, linking one of your executives with the customer’s decision-makers, or even a quarterly business review are some of the possibilities. You’ll need to keep an eye on user acceptance of your product as you improve your relationship inside the customer’s organisational hierarchy. It is critical that you maintain your focus on product adoption at all times. Make sure you understand the broader potential use cases for your product as well as the commercial impact it will have. As the product gains traction, it’s time to take advantage of the relationship you’ve developed with the customer’s decision-makers. Your product’s advocates and power users will help persuade high-level decision-makers of the importance of implementing your solution throughout the organisation. Land and Expand Action Plan: How To Implement It? For the strategy to work, you need to have a repeatable strategy action plan that moves the customer from one milestone to another, irrespective of the pace. Such a framework should include steps such as: Acquiring small pieces of business within potential accounts. Servicing every ensuing task at extraordinary levels. Developing trusted relations with multiple potential stakeholders. Penetrating the business by encashing this trust at strategic touchpoints. In the context of conversion and engagement funnels, Hunter And Bard neatly presents the framework as follows. At the ground level, this framework calls (rather, screams) for a support system in the form of sound practices. No Land and Expand strategy is complete without these: Right Off the Bat: Exceptional service should be the talk of the town from day one. Trust is an important
Social Selling -The Route for Building Sales Effectiveness
Inherent in the term ‘Social Selling’ is relationship building, lead nurturing, lead farming. The way these are termed may differ as per different individuals, but they mean one and the same thing. Using and leveraging social media platforms to identify prospects, connect with them, engage with them in conversations and then build a relationship mapping with them before taking it offline as well. Social media has totally revolutionized the way we sell – yes, even in the more complex B2B industry. It has changed the dynamics of demand and supply in a way that has not been imagined before. In this whole new yet not-so-new world, ‘Who Blinks First’ has also changed – it could be the buyer who hunts the seller or vice versa. A lot indeed can happen over Social Media! You can also use the best SMM panel for more efficient and streamlined social media management. Let’s do a quick sprint on how the Social Media Selling Process works and what one needs to do, to be good at it. Identify the right Social Media Platforms for your product. One quick way of picking the right platforms is to find out – Where is your customer present, online? What are his favorite haunts online when he is wearing his professional hat? It is also important to be aware of his favorite haunts beyond his 9 to 5 garb. Once you know this, you will be able to pick the top 3 social media channels/platforms he frequents. That’s where you connect with him. For instance, for a majority of B2B companies, a professional platform works better – such as LinkedIn. Work on your profile on that platform. Build a good profile. A profile on any Social Media platform needs a lot of working upon. Your profile is the face you show to the public. So while you need to be careful you are not shouting from the rooftops about your accomplishments, you must note all your accomplishments accurately. Being honest and transparent while working on your profile, has its own merits. Do not forget to have a nice formal, professional photograph uploaded. Research your prospects Do some research on the people you would like to connect with. See their profiles, take your time researching, be professional, yet creative and original when you send out that request for a connect. Among the millions on that platform, you need to give him a strong reason to want to accept your request to connect. Keep your connections engaged Keep your connections engaged in conversations. Be regular in updates – this helps your contacts stay updated with the happenings in your company and life Listen, acknowledge and applaud. Do all of these, as the case may be. Do read your contact’s updates. Comment on those acknowledges his accomplishments as you read about them, share an article that may be of interest to him and applaud when the situation demands. These things help you stay visible in his mind and ensure recall at a later stage when you may need it. This also sets the stage for your prospect to develop a ‘liking’ towards you – the first building block of trust and a long-term relationship Take it offline, too. When you have developed a fair engagement mutually, seek a meeting or a phone call with him. This is when you move your purely online relationship to offline. Keep it going. From here onwards, keep up the engagement online and offline. Social Media Selling has made it very convenient to ensure that we skip the cold calling or legwork of the old days and connect with our prospects in no time at all and is now being recognized as a route for building sales effectiveness. It has made it very convenient to form a connect and build a relationship. And if we were to go by Social Media Analytics, these are relationships that have greater chances of converting into hardcore sales. Explore the complete guide to Cross-selling and Up-selling to identify unexplored opportunities for your business as well as your clients’ business and grow better in 2021.
Sales Representative to Sales Operations – A Good Move?
We understand that this might be a point of view that is subject to argument, but that did not stop us from putting this down, as we believe that this might prove to be a good move. Let’s see why. The Sales Representative has seen, lived, breathed, tasted, every bit of the sales process himself. He has tasted rejection and success, pain and pleasure, respect and denigration; he has seen it all in his role as a sales representative. He knows the process inside out and stands a good chance of knowing what works and what doesn’t. The Sales Representative will understand the challenges and pain points of the sales team and the weak links in the process and systems and process as he has experienced them first-hand. So simply put, he will know how to address them. He will be able to put an operations department in place that takes the routine work off the sales team’s shoulders so that the team can focus on their core strength, sales. The Sales Representative will have an all-around view of the sales-marketing- customer triangle of love and will do his best to keep it in the love mode and not allow it to deteriorate. He will add more value to the sales team’s role and ensure he keeps smoothly running operations so as to enhance the performance and productivity of the sales team. On the other hand, many times, organizations opt for external administrative heads or specialists. Let’s find out why this might not be a good problem to have for the sales team. The non-sales person will never know how the sales organization or department works and the nitty-gritty involved. He will never know the sales departmental processes inside out or how they work, as much as a person who has lived with these processes would know. He would not be able to relate to the real world challenges and problems and the aspirations and inspirations of the sales team. He may be more focused on tactics and not results. He may be more reactive instead of being proactive, which is more a result of not knowing fully how the sales system works. He would still be an outsider to the sales department and may not be readily accepted as one of them soon. Sales and Operations are not being two separate things, and being intricately intertwined, needs a sales representative, a hands-on guy to perform sales operations well. Sales operations are perhaps one of the most important roles in the sales organization and on the sales floor and the person who heads it needs to be chosen from one among the tribe if it were to work smoothly without too much friction.
Measuring Sales Effectiveness for Social Selling
Social Selling is quite becoming the norm for many organizations. While most are quick to adopt newer ways of selling through the new age media like Social Media in the hope of bettering the sales targets, many may not be aware of whether these new techniques are even effective. Many are not aware of how to measure the sales effectiveness of these techniques for their sales force. Social Selling involves a more personal mode of selling, it involves the building of relationships, one-on-one through Social Media. It means measurement takes on a new meaning entirely. It takes into account the fact that sales is not merely about a number of calls and emails sent, meeting scheduled, but about lead farming and nurturing. Here, we give you ways to measure the Sales Effectiveness of your sales force for these sales techniques. These techniques will measure your sales team’s ability to build a quality relationship mapping by tracking these skills and activities. Since most Social Media has both, a qualitative and quantitative angle to them, we need to consider both, as we move through the ways of measurement, below: Let’s begin. Establishing your online professional brand: What is the effort that your salespeople are putting in to build their profiles on Social Media? What are they doing, sharing, discussing there that keeps the prospects engaged with your products and services? Are they writing blogs in the domain, which establish your company as a thought leader? Are their blogs read, followed and commented on? It is found that salespeople who display a willingness to talk about what value their company offers to a prospect, with equal enthusiasm time and again, is an indicator of their ability to connect with prospects better. What are the salespeople publishing about your brand online? Are they well prepared with their elevator pitch as well as their nurturing methods? Do they know what differentiates their product from the competitors? What the salespeople post online and how it is received by their online audience is a good indicator of sales effectiveness in Social Selling. Finding the right people. Building the right network: Social Media Channels have various tools, many of them free for a certain limited number, that help in identifying prospects. Are your salespeople using these tools or if not, doing things manually – making lists of people they would like to be connected with? Are they increasing their sales pipeline? Do they know who the decision-makers are? Do they have a strategy and a calendar plan to connect with these prospects? How networked is your sales team? Salespeople should leverage their first level contacts on their network to seek an introduction to their second or third level contacts; unless they do that, or they personalize their invite while sending out a request to connect, it may be seen as a cold call and may die a premature death. Sales effectiveness can be measured by analyzing the strategy your sales team uses to build a network and a strong pipeline. Insight knowledge and insight mining: As we have already seen in one of our earlier blogs, insights into the domain of the customer is a strong skill set every salesperson needs to possess. In Social Selling, this domain knowledge and insight into what exactly the customer may be looking for is seen through how your salesperson authors content. Is he writing like a thought leader, thinking like one and connecting with prospects through his content? Has he been able to hit the pain points and offer a solution for those? The fastest way to connect with a prospect is to be able to precisely identify his pain point and take the time and effort to provide information to solve it. Another way of measuring effectiveness is to measure the open rates of InMails sent by your salespeople. This is a LinkedIn tool that measures the open rates. It depends on how you craft your sales messages. You have to have a method that is more nurturing than pushy. Who are the people that matter? Who should you connect with? Social selling is not about the number of connections you tote on your profile. It is about the right kind of connections. Are you connecting with the decision-makers? This can be tracked by measuring the accepted requests vis-à-vis the sent requests. Another way of measuring is to find out how many key connections does your salesperson has in each of his Key Accounts. It is important to have multiple good contacts and key contacts into a single Key Account. A merging of your CRM contacts with the building of contacts on Social Media could make all the difference to your customer relationships and your Key Account management relationships. Social Media marketing Tools built into Social Media can pretty much measure Sales Effectiveness, effectively. However, there are going to be missing links in these tool measurements, which with time will be filled. Until then, Social Selling measurement for impact can be used as a complement to more traditional ways of measuring sales effectiveness. Explore our blog on cross-selling and up-selling in which we’ve elaborated how it can be used to grow business in 2021.
Answer the ‘Big, Burning Question’ at Dreamforce 2016
Help us answer our ‘big, burning question’ at Dreamforce 2016 Every year we try and bring our big, burning question of the year to Dreamforce, were practicing professionals not only help us find answers but inspire us to ask ourselves even bigger questions…So, if you follow us on social media, you could not have missed our excitement for the upcoming Dreamforce ‘16. Last year, Dreamforce turned out to be a great source of inspiration – the people, products, and technologies from around the world set us thinking about the endless possibilities of technology to transform. Meeting greats like Rick Welts & Bob Myers a bonus. Dreamforce’15 was great, but I missed Key Account Management. Last year, my team and I were honored to present our company DemandFarm at Dreamforce. As a technology that helps B2B Companies manage and grow Key Accounts from within Salesforce, we found tremendous interest and enthusiasm among the community of Sales and Marketing professionals. People were curious and excited by the question – can technology transform the way you manage and grow your most Strategic Customers? Yet, even as the Key Account Management (KAM) tech space grows, I missed seeing more of it in Dreamforce’15. I wish there had been more talks, stalls, and events around Account Management and how technology can transform KAM as we know it. Making Dreamforce’16 count for Key Account Management There is no denying the value of Key Accounts. But how best to navigate these complex, global Accounts, with their dynamic networks and multiple white space opportunities? How can technology bridge the gap between the art and science of Key Account Management and create more value for all stakeholders? This is the question that’s been pushing us to develop technology that can enable people and institutionalize the key account management processes that drive success with Key Accounts. And, I am hoping that Dreamforce’16 will be a great place to take the question to you – the practicing professionals. After all, Dreamforce is all about the biggest ideas, innovations, and interactions. Let’s make it count for KAM this time round! With that in mind, we are setting up a ‘Dreamforce Dialogs’’ calendar so we can meet professionals like you in person and talk about all things KAM tech. We’d also be happy to take more tough questions about how technology can address KAM challenges. Set up a session with us in our Dreamforce Dialogs calendar if you like to organize things in advance. If there is anything you would like to talk about before then, I would love to hear from you at [email protected]. In the meanwhile, join me on Twitter and LinkedIn to get all the exciting updates about all the KAM stuff that matters before and after Dreamforce’16. PS: We are also curating the best Dreamforce Sessions for you! In the weeks leading up to Dreamforce’16, we are writing about all the sessions, people, and parties to watch out for if you are keen on being a part of the Key Account Management conversation. Add us to your address book so you do not miss out on any of the actions.
The 2016 IDC Report on the Salesforce Economy is out!
It’s official! As an entrepreneur, you tend to go by gut feel a lot. Especially when you are breaking new ground like we are – with technology to manage and grow Key Accounts. It is all about building the solutions you believe in, nurturing the people you think will go the distance, working with partners that can help create value and taking the epic journey into the future just based on intuition. However, on some rare occasions, you get confirmation from a credible, fact-based entity that you are on the right track; that the dream is indeed real; and that the choices you have made are 100% justified. Today is one of those days. Today, we are celebrating the confirmation of something we have all grown with and grown from. Today we are celebrating the success of the Salesforce Economy. Why today? Because we just received word about new research that shows that Salesforce and its ecosystem of customers and partners will create nearly 1.9 million jobs and add $389 billion in GDP impact worldwide over the next five years. Because the research confirms that Cloud computing is slated to grow at more than six times the rate of traditional IT spending from 2015 to 2020. Because Salesforce customers have installed apps from the Salesforce AppExchange more than 4 million times. Also, because DemandFarm is one of the awesome apps on the AppExchange that’s been creating value by transforming the way B2B companies manage and grow their Key Accounts. The Ecosystem that has got our head in the clouds When we set out to build DemandFarm as the preferred technology for B2Bs to manage and grow Key Accounts, our goal was to create unparalleled value for our users. This goal was and is in many ways made possible by being a part of the Salesforce Ecosystem. Being native to Salesforce makes it easy for our customers to deploy and use DemandFarm securely and seamlessly from AppExchange, on the cloud. More importantly, it helps address major pain points for our users – Sales professionals and Sales Ops teams – when it comes to data management and customer-centric insights. Here is how we leveraged being on the Salesforce ecosystem to help solve a major customer problem – the lion’s share of data that goes into DemandFarm is populated automatically from the Salesforce CRM data. That means minimal-to-no data entry for Account Managers – which means more time for real Sales work! Because of everything about the Key Account – including Annual Plans – is in one place in one format in DemandFarm, Sales professionals no longer spend hours just entering, collating or compiling data to generate reports or make Account plans. Because the data and the related intel mined from the data are auto-populated and real-time, Sales Ops teams save hours spent chasing after various stakeholders for customer-related data points, crunching the numbers or other data management tasks. DemandFarm joins the dots across complex Account data, so everything about the Key Account is right there in real-time – customer-centric intel that helps make all the right strategic decisions. A Brave New World As we continue to learn, grow and innovate with Salesforce on this epic journey deeper into the clouds, this seems like a great time to take stock of what we have achieved with DemandFarm. With users across every B2B verticals including manufacturing, automotive, retail, and finance, we are pretty delighted with the response we are getting from leadership and users alike. You can read some of our customer success stories here. This year forward, our renewed focus is on enabling the people (read: all stakeholders) and institutionalizing the processes that drive growth for Key Accounts. What do we mean by that? It is pretty simple – everything that matters to Key Accounts and can be managed, facilitated or enriched with technology, we try and make DemandFarm do it. It is about balancing the art and science of Key Account Management– with all the lightness of being on the Cloud, and the convenience of AppExchange. If you are B2B and if you are on Salesforce, then I would strongly recommend a free trial of DemandFarm to see if Salesforce account planning can transform the way you manage and grow your Key Accounts. This month, it is an all-access pass to every single feature we have, for up to 3 users in your company. Don’t miss it. In the meanwhile, we are going to be in celebration mode along with all our compatriots in the Salesforce Ecosystem, as we make our way together into the future of automation and technology.
Dreamforce 2016 Parties Calendar
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You have got Leads. Now make them 4X More Effective.
There are 4 simple yet highly effective strategies for improving sales effectiveness and improving your chances of converting a lead to a deal. Speed: Strike when the iron is hot Shocking truth: In a survey done across 350 companies, 38% took more than a full day to respond. In the fast-paced world today, the speed of response is of the essence; this is succinctly explained through the adage ‘Strike when the iron is hot.’ The lead is open to being nurtured and led further in the funnel if your response time is quicker. The more you let the dust settle down on the lead, the more difficult it gets to convert him. Even the difference between 5 minutes and 30 minutes could mean death in the form of a dead lead. So make sure you set and communicate your response time and follow it through. Persevere: Never say die Shocking truth: 53% made no more than two attempts at contact and gave up after that. There are reams written about how if you hang in there and keep trying, success can be all yours. All of it is every bit true. A sale or a deal is lost not because it was dead, but because the salesperson did not try enough times or gave up far too soon, especially when he was far too close to closing it. The 2-word mantra for every sales person to convert a lead should be persisted and persevere. Even if you have to try for the 8th time or beyond, do so, as this will get you a higher response rate Embrace personalizing Shocking truth: 30% had no element of personalization in their emails. Messages, emails, professional calls tend to impact the personal touch, often making the sales call impersonal and cold. Personalizing the message, call or email makes all the difference in the world as it immediately puts the recipient in an open, receiving mode. Well begun is half done, as they say. The more elements of personalization you add in your communication, the more likely the recipient will click through and open and read the email. The content of the email should also be carefully tailored to suit the recipient as much as possible to garner more responses. It has been proven that personalizing messages make it 137 percent more likely that the recipient will open the email and respond. Perform or perish Shocking Truth: 58% were likely to miss the email at least 10 percent of the time. Checking how the email or your communication works and correcting course to make it work better, is very important. The effort deserves its dues, but so do the results. Performance needs to be the objective and the checkpoints of all your communication. Just as it is true in every aspect of business, it is true here – perform or perish! The truth, as we clearly can see above is that companies are nowhere close to the ideal strategies of follow-up; but they need to get there soon. Else the chasm between a lead and a deal will keep widening. “Act now!” should be the anthem and the action.
Operation Scaling Up – How Sales Operations is the Defining Factor at this Stage?
The most friction inducing factor is when companies start growing up at an exponential rate and aim at a skyrocketing of revenue. Typically, companies at this stage end up hiring more and more star sales people; which is good in its place, but the most important hire of the organization’s growth season could be a Sales Operations Star. Here’s why: You are hiring new sales people by the dozen; you need someone to train them and make them productive and at a fast clip. While most of us think that sales directors and the top sales people are the ones who should be doing this, we are sadly mistaken. They are the last ones to be interested in helping HR write Job Descriptions, screening candidates, interviewing, recruiting and once on board, training, coaching, mentoring them. Even if they do, they may take their own sweet time as their primary focus is sales. Time lost is sales lost. The need of the hour is a Sales Operations Star. A great sales leader isn’t always a great operations guy. There may be exceptions, but they are just that. Exceptions. Most sales leaders and star sales people practically hate the operations job of putting together information in spreadsheets, analyzing it, studying metrics and putting together an action plan to hit where it is needed. They would rather work on the actual field sales. They are action guys and not operations guys. Sales and leadership alignment is a back room job – not the battlefield goal. Alignment between sales and marketing may be a good thing to think of and say, but practicing it is often difficult. The sales force is keen to roll up their sleeves and convert the next hot lead they can get their hands on; they are not too fond of pricing, packaging or other high-level strategies and would rather leave it to a representative who is specially cut out for the job – he is better known as the Sales Operations Specialist. Generating reports is not the sales person’s cup of tea. Generating reports is the bane of a sales team. Somewhat like a necessary evil; sales persons may often avoid working on reports like the plague. This job is better left to the sales operations person who will, in all probability, lovingly spend lots of time over generating reports from the CRM insights on a daily, weekly, monthly basis in whatever format they are required for whoever at the organizational level. Choosing the right technology tools is the mandate of the Sales Operations Chief along with the Sales Leadership. Technology planning, implementation, and the preview is the job of a sales operations person along with the Sales Leadership’s support. Technology and choosing the right tool is crucial to every organization’s sales department as it enters the growth phase. Sales operations leaders allow their sales force to focus on sales and handle the operations and sales administrative part themselves. Sales operations without a doubt are necessary to grow sales and revenues.
Behaviours that Enhance Sales Effectiveness
In one of our earlier blogs, we have argued a case where tech alone cannot help in selling and selling well. Selling is an art and a science and weaves together psychology, business learnings, and personal skills. If we are to base our five on science, there has been enough research in the last 5 decades or so, to arrive at some conclusive findings that help in hugely enhancing selling effectiveness. We are primarily going to talk about some specific behaviors, which are easy to follow and practice. You will see a difference and a hike in your sales effectiveness that will prove how effective these behaviors are in selling. 1. Label the prospects: Labeling the prospect is very simple. Here, the salesperson assigns a certain behavior to a prospect and by doing so, sets an expectation of similar behavior from the prospect. In this case, it is not so important what the prospect was thinking earlier. Research has proven that when you label your prospect, he is more likely to behave the way you want him to. For example – If a prospect is being elusive while answering some important questions to the salesperson, and the salesperson labels him by saying – “You are very open you’re your answers and thoughts, thank you!” The chances that the prospect stops being elusive and starts being more open are much more. In fact, going by research, he will be more open. Labeling the prospect is a wonderful thing that can be used in enhancing selling effectiveness. 2. Rebel. React: It is found and proven that prospects rebel when salespeople create a sense of urgency for them to respond. When the above was analyzed, we observed that prospects feel threatened that their personal freedom to decide is being restricted and threatened and the salesperson is taking over their freedom to choose and decide. These create a reactive behavior in a prospect and he rebels without even thinking. This kind of behavior is extremely human and the pushier one gets, the more the other person rebels. Instead, if the salesperson ends by saying to the prospect – “This product will help you improve your quality 3x. But of course, the decision is yours.” There are greater chances the prospect falls into a responsive mood and is more positively inclined to you, rather than saying – “You won’t get a better product than this and since we are running out of our special offer, you must make a decision fast.” The latter statement will put off the prospect for certain. Salespeople should say the right things and ensure they never end up pressuring the prospect. It calls for tremendous patience, but it is a great skill to master. Collaborating with top UI UX companies can also enhance this process, as a well-designed user experience can make prospects feel more comfortable and in control during their decision-making journey. 3. Turn value statements into value questions: Typically, prospects never understand your value statement easily. They take their time. But one easy and scientifically proven way to make them understand your value statement easily would be to convert the value statements into value questions. These questions help amplify the persuasiveness of sales messages because they guide prospects in mentally digesting the value you offer and give them a feeling that it is they, who are going to take the decision. It is simple to create a value question – you need to add a questioning phrase, a short one, to your value statement. Example – “This software would reduce your HR operational costs annually by $200,000, wouldn’t it?” You could even keep a set of value questions ready, based on your key value statements. If all the above sounds simple, it is. But it is proven to produce amazing results. We urge you to try these three selling behaviors to overcome sales effectiveness bottlenecks. Do share with us, your views and experiences. And get ready for a superlative increase in sales enablement, effectiveness and performance. Also, do read our other sales effectiveness blogs.