I’ve been keen to work with Intercom, a messaging company based in US, because I’m alway keen to explore a new sales tool and had heard a local retailer was using it. The below set of sales snacks and tidbits of information are from their PDF / Book called the Sales Handbook.
https://www.intercom.com/books/sales-handbook
So here is my little extract for a short read of the nuggets in that book, which if you can download if you have time or want more detail from any of below.
The foreword by Jill Konrath, International Speaker, Sales Strategist and Bestselling Author of SNAP Selling and More Sales, Less Time, may seem obvious, but is worth considering. The rest of the content snippets are from various leadership at Intercom. Generally the bold marks a new concept or chapter from each of the contributing authors.
The first rule of selling is always be crystal clear on the value you’re adding.
Seeing things differently is exactly what makes great salespeople so good at their jobs. There’s even data to support it. According to Forrester Research, you have a 74% chance of closing a deal if you’re the first vendor to create a viable vision for the future.
Crafting a sales strategy is one of the core activities every business will have to undertake. You can delay it until you’ve acquired your first 100 or 1,000 customers, but at some point you’ll need to find sustainable traction in the market.
But, if you’re in somewhat of a complex sale that involves a sales cycle longer than 2030 days, and at least two or three calls with multiple people, sales is a critical part of that to make sure it goes right.
You can only automate and educate people so much before they want to talk to somebody. Maybe $5,000-$10,000 is when people get more uncomfortable putting their credit card online and buying without talking to people.
Why salespeople need to think like consultants
Those of us in sales have to step up our game in order to add value to that whole ecosystem. We need to be there as consultants and advisers to our buyers. We need to do a better job, when we engage with someone, to engage with them in their context.
Setting up a sales operations team is absolutely paramount to your success as a sales leader. They’re a strategic arm that puts your sales strategy into high gear. For all the talk about sales hacks and magic, sales operations is really what helps you nail the right motions for your team.
Let me put it this way: if your sales reps are race car drivers, your sales ops team is the pit crew. They’re the ones ensuring your frontline sales team gets deals to the finish line with precision and consistency. And just like in auto racing, you can’t have one without the other if you want to put your business into hyperdrive.
First, let’s get the basics out of the way: If you’re trying to get your first 10 or 100 customers, resellers and sales channel partnerships aren’t the right channels for you
If you don’t have a steady and stable stream of customers and monthly income coming in, these aren’t the right channels for you.
It’s so important to have account or relationship managers on your sales team dedicated to building relationships with customers.
Although a sales organization might seem too expensive, the revenue it will add can far exceed the cost (you want your sales organization to generate 3x its loaded cost). Creating a formal sales organization will help accelerate revenue and product adoption, as well as result in more satisfied customers
Sales and product need a way to collaborate on the product roadmap. Sales is usually the only team that has in-depth conversations with would-be customers who couldn’t proceed due to a product problem. If your product team isn’t taking roadmap input from your sales team, you’re not listening to the potential market. You can go deeper in your current niche, but you’ll never expand out of it, nor will you move upmarket.
If you want to understand how to build a great SaaS sales organization, you should read Mark Roberge’s The Sales Acceleration Formula. It’s the single best book on the topic.
Why your sales team needs to care about more than quota
They go out of their way to deliver customer feedback to product teams. • They’re dedicated to protecting your non-negotiables. • They’re fired up to help the team create best practices and scalable processes.
The one thing Jack Welch thinks all salespeople need
How do you instill your passion on somebody else?” In front of 1,000 people, he basically told me I was an idiot. He said, “You’re looking at it all wrong. You can’t instill your passion in somebody else. You have to hire passion.”
Hire salespeople who can blend art and science
Someone who is very articulate, who can create content, can command an audience but who also has a fundamental understanding of modern communication tools and CRM
Salary or bonus-heavy compensation: which model is best?
The short answer to that question is that at the expansion stage, the more you can leverage compensation for results, the better off you (and your sales team) will be in the long term.
