Category: Newsletter

Enabling Buyers at Every Stage

Posted on by irc

Buyer Enablement helps steer prospects toward your offer. It’s about feeding them the right information at the perfect time, potentially boosting conversion rates by 20%.

The buyer’s journey into three stages: Awareness, Consideration, and Decision. Here’s how to craft content for each stage:

Awareness Phase

Goal: Educate and guide

What Buyers Want: Knowledge about their problem

Best Vehicles:

Indications that a lead is in the “Awareness” stage:

  • Website visits to educational or informational pages
  • Google searches with symptoms of a problem included in keywords
  • Attending informational events.

Tech that Can Help:

  • Social Media Management Tools: Tools such as Hootsuite, Buffer, or Sprout Social let you schedule, post, and monitor social media content to engage with early stage leads
  • SEO Tools: Platforms like SEMrush, Moz, or Ahrefs ensure content is optimized for organic search, attracting potential buyers during their research phase
  • Google Analytics: To understand the source of website traffic and what content potential buyers are engaging with

Consideration Phase

Goal: Showcase expertise

What Buyers Want: Deep insights, comparisons, and potential solutions

Best Vehicles:

Indications that a lead is in the “Consideration” stage:

  • Engagement with content that compares one solution with another
  • Inbound questions regarding specific differentiators of your products vs others
  • Engagement with tools like cost calculators and product configurators

Tech that Can Help:

  • Email Marketing Platforms: Tools like Mailchimp, HubSpot, or Constant Contact enable lead nurturing through email marketing and more
  • Chatbots and Messaging Platforms: Tools like Intercom, Drift, or MobileMonkey engage leads in real-time, answering questions and directing them to resources or reps
  • Webinar Platforms: Solutions like Zoom, Livestorm, or Webex hosting informational sessions or workshops

Decision Phase

Goal: Make the Sale

What Buyers Want: Address objections, showcase value

Best Vehicles:

Indications that a lead is in the “Decision” stage:

  • Requesting detailed pricing information, terms and conditions, etc.
  • Requesting references or further social proof (e.g. industry-specific specific case studies)
  • Requesting a trial

Tech that Can Help:

  • Sales Enablement Platforms: Tools like SalesLoft, Highspot, or Showpad equip reps with the right content or knowledge at the right time
  • Proposal and Quoting Software: Platforms like PandaDoc, Proposify, or Qwilr to create, send, and track professional proposals quickly
  • E-Signature Platforms: Solutions such as DocuSign or PandaDoc expedite the closing process by allowing leads to securely sign contracts or agreements online
  • Competitive Intelligence Tools: Platforms like Crayon or Kompyte help reps stay updated on competitors’ moves, allowing them to position their offerings more effectively

Boost Email Engagement with Video

Posted on by irc

Boost your email open rates by 19%, click-through rates by 65%, and cut unsubscribes by 26% with one tool: video. Video, especially in emails, has become a powerful marketing tool because:

  • It’s now affordable and accessible to produce high-quality content.
  • Videos can simplify complex topics better than text.
  • They showcase the brand’s personality, fostering familiarity.
  • They naturally grab more attention than plain text, boosting visibility and engagement.

For prospecting, videos are invaluable. Start with an email introduction and then offer a personalized video. This makes your video anticipated and tailored to the recipient, increasing engagement.

Example strategy:

  • Email 1: “Thanks for downloading our Commission Modeler. What challenges do you face in selecting the right commission structure? Reply, and I’ll provide a personalized video with recommendations.”
  • Email 2 (if no response): “Here’s a video about selecting the right commission model for various sales models. If you want personalized insights: <insert link to sales page>”

Thinking of using video? Here are tips:

  • Personalize: Address specific issues of the prospect.
  • Keep it concise: Aim for about 30 seconds. Anything longer than that, and viewers drop off.
  • Be clear: Have a succinct message with a defined call-to-action.
  • Prioritize quality: Even smartphone cameras work, but ensure good lighting, minimal background noise, and stability.

Expand video use to social media, post-event emails, testimonials, and demos. Incorporating video in your email marketing not only boosts engagement but also effectively addresses prospect needs, paving the way for conversion.

Adapting to Sales Changes: Longer Cycles, More Approvals

Posted on by irc

In our last newsletter we mentioned going high early and often to adjust to today’s challenging economy and sales environment. Let’s dive more into that interview with a SaaS rep for more on that strategy and others.

 

Q: How have sales changed this year?

A: The biggest trend we’ve seen is sales cycles lengthening. Contract size is still strong but it takes more approvals, which can add a month or two. In the past we only needed one executives approval but now we need more. Buyers are more conservative now so we need to work the business case more for each department to make each decision more bulletproof.

 

Q: What’s your process for navigating longer sales cycles and extra approvals?

A: Two calls in, if it seems real then I have my CEO (her assistant) send an email to an executive at the prospect’s company, offering to align priorities.

Next we offer to collaborate on a business case. Execs often look at our product and say “oh that’s a good idea” but it needs to be more defined- increased efficiency for him, increased loyalty for her, ROI calculations, etc.- for all execs to sign off one by one.

We basically try to go high and then wide. Before we went wide then high.

 

Q: Tell me more about the email from your executive to theirs.

I type up an email then send it to my CEO’s assistant. She uses our targeting tool to find the email address of the department head of the teams I’ve been speaking with, then sends the email from my CEO’s account.

It’s the same email format every time but I customize the bullet points to match their priorities I learned from speaking with their team.

DOWNLOAD EMAIL TEMPLATE

The market is tough. No, it’s not just you.

Posted on by irc

The economic downturn is here.

I’m hearing the same message from nearly all clients, business owners and my spies in the sales world: sales are down.

This isn’t a shock. The better question is what can you do about it?

Here’s a summary of some good tips for surviving this new recession:

  • Profit actually matters again. Growth is the objective in a bull market whereas profit is king right now. Research leads and customize your message to highlight profit and efficiency for a small target market. For a larger target market, prioritize personalization over volume by focusing on sub-levels of your market. Understand how you can grow profit of your customers and explain it concisely. (Predictable Revenue)
  • Frame your solutions towards CFOs. How can you reduce their costs, help them grow revenue predictably, mitigate risks, or improve customer satisfaction? (Gong)
  • Go high early and often. Sales cycles have lengthened and more approvals are necessary to close. Early in the sales process, have your CEO send a note to the prospect’s C-suite offering to align on priorities. As the sales process continues, engage VPs and executives from your company and theirs, getting them on calls together to discuss business cases and ROI. (From an IRC interview with a sales executive; SaaS $300k+ OTE)

AI Meeting Assistant Reviews

Posted on by irc

I’ve been looking for the right meeting assistant for years. Excellent ones like Gong.io lead the industry but cost thousands per month and aren’t affordable for many startups or small businesses.

For the last month I’ve been testing out two new AI meeting assistants: Read.ai and tl;dv. Fully loaded, both cost $25 per month, per user (when billed monthly).

Here’s what both apps do:

  • Automatically record calls on Zoom and Google Meet by joining the meeting as an attendee.
  • Transcribe calls using GPT to make the transcriptions much more accurate than anything pre-AI.
  • Automatically save meetings with timestamps for takeaways, topics, or questions covered in the call. Click on what you’re interested in and it plays that portion of the call.

Here’s what you need to know about Read.ai:

  • Seems like it’s designed more for enterprise teams, or for managers reviewing rep performance en masse. Scores meeting performance and participation. Gives feedback on attendee engagement, talking pace, interruptions, non-inclusive terms, bias and more.
  • For each meeting it documents: summary, chapters & topics, action items, key questions. The chapters & topics are usually accurate and helpful, but nothing else.
  • Meetings often don’t record, or nothing besides the transcript is documented. Each time, support told me it was a bug they’re fixing.

Here’s what you need to know about tl;dv:

  • Simpler approach: meeting reports contain “takeaways” throughout the call. AI does a good job of recommending these, plus they place a button in your meeting client so you can manually set markers with one click during a call. Great for when you know in real-time that something is important.
  • Integrations for automatically logging calls and highlights in HubSpot, Salesforce or Slack.
  • Easily create clips of takeaways or other key moments and share them.

The Verdict

tl;dv is my new everyday meeting assistant. It’s reliable, accurate, and has already saved me hours of sifting through sales/client calls to find information.

Read.ai is good too but worked on less than 75% of my calls. It also seems like it’s made for monitoring employees. These features don’t take away from the experience, but the bugs do. I’ll try it out again in a few months to see if they’ve ironed out the issues and improved the quality of action items and key questions.

tl;dv is offering 30% off your first 6 months if you click this link.

Read.ai did not offer a discount for our subscribers.

How will AI impact the sales industry?

Posted on by irc

Artificial intelligence (AI) is all over the news. Ever since the arrival of ChatGPT and AI art like Journey, everyone is asking one of two questions:

  • Will I be replaced by AI?
  • How can I use AI to get an edge?

Human sales reps won’t be replaced by AI anytime soon. AI can’t compete with humans when it comes to making phone calls, giving presentations, or providing a personal, confidence-inspiring sales experience. At least not yet.

Today’s buyers are the primary reason sales reps are safe for the time being. The technology will come, but when will humans be willing to interact solely with AI agents to close 6-figure deals? Similar to driverless cars, even if you’re told they’re safer, are you comfortable sharing the highway with 80,000 pound trucks driven by robots? People still prefer the company of other people.

So what is sales AI good for?

Today’s AI is incredible at comprehending language. This includes spoken languages and programing languages. This boils down to conditions and rules that, with enough training, AI can master. Since ChatGPT trained its AI model using pretty much the entire history of human text, it’s safe to say it’s receiving enough training. AI is excellent at researching as well.

Understanding language means AI can make the predictable aspects of sales much easier.

Digital sales experiences will change quickly. Well-trained AI can soon replace inbound reps who only work chatbots or inbound emails.

The same thing goes for operational sales processes like targeting or workflow automation. Targeting is a research task and automation is programming.

To clarify, the AI technology is already here (and improving rapidly), we’re more so waiting for companies to harness it and train it.

You can go on ChatGPT right now and teach it about your product, common objections and ideal responses, then have reps use those chat prompts to respond to leads. But, while that may improve response quality for some companies, it’s not convenient enough to be used at scale. We need products that interface with AI in order to use it at scale.

Here are some areas to keep an eye on:

  • Live Chat & Inbound Email — One of the most frustrating aspects of inbound sales is when reps find a way to mess up easy deals that should’ve been a quick close. AI does best with specific scenarios, reading and comprehension. So if buyers are coming to you ready to commit once you answer a few questions, AI can make a serious impact right away. One of my favorite prospecting tools, Reply.io has a conversational AI feature powered by ChatGPT that’s worth taking a look at.
  • Outbound Email — Writing personalized emails or introductions is time consuming, and most sales reps aren’t great writers. AI can do this much quicker than all sales reps, but the quality is inconsistent and therefore only better than some sales reps. Projects working on this include SalesGPT and Coldreach.ai but they’re not quite there yet. HubSpot is also working on an AI content assistant for prospecting emails, marketing emails and blogs.
  • Targeting — Check out this Twitter thread that uses ChatGPT to provide similar (if not better results) than a marketing research firm.
  • Operational Processes — Read.ai and tl;dv are AI meeting assistants that outperform non-AI competitors. Bardeen integrates in many ways that Zapier and Make can’t hack. Browse.ai replaces costly scraper bots capable of tracking your competitors websites and pricing. HubSpot’s ChatSpot (in beta) gathers reports and sends follow ups. All of these tools buy back more time for sales reps to sell.

This How Smart is ChatGPT graphic shows where AI lands in all major academic exams (99th percentile in the verbal GRE, around the 90th percentile in the reading & writing SAT, LSAT and bar exam.) I noticed a response saying this means AI is “only as good as a smart college kid.”

But hey, as long as it’s predictable and consistent, that’s not so bad.