Sales in the Subscription Economy #19
New podcast: how to become Mission Critical to your customers; articles on sales enablement, creating fierce customer loyalty, and mastering cold emails right now. Dive in!
Here's what subscription revenue leaders need to know this week:
*Quick note: no newsletter or podcast episode next week – we are finally going to get to travel to Texas to meet our new niece, and I'll be showering her with attention, so you're on your own ;)
The 3 elements of sales enablement (and how they'll help you close more deals)by Steli Efti of Close.com
Key Takeaways:
Sales enablement means providing your sales team with resources, information and tools that can help them close more deals in less time. In sales conversations, you’re enabling them to get past common pain points, hesitations and questions without having to say the same thing over and over again.
Set up a landing page that presents a direct comparison of your product with your closest competitors. They're going to do the research anyway; this is your opportunity to present and control an honest narrative.
Create case studies. Your own case studies should explain the client’s problems and showcase how your product helped—exactly what a prospect will be interested in learning about.
Create pain killer content for your prospects. Help your prospects solve some of the problems they’re facing without paying you a dime and you’ll accomplish two things: move them closer to saying yes and create reciprocity!
You must prioritize. Talk to your sales team and ask them what questions, hesitations and pain points they hear about the most when talking to prospects and create resources that solve for those pain points first.
The key to fierce customer loyalty? Your support team by Courtney Chuang of Intercom
Key Takeaways:
Support teams turn company promises to their customers into experiences that drive long-term loyalty.
There’s a common trap that companies fall into over and over again. It’s the belief that if you build a great product or offer an outstanding service, the rest will fall into place. Support leaders know this isn’t true. The reality is customers aren’t sticking around just for your product or service; they’re here for the experience.
Reduce friction --> increased customer satisfaction. Make it fast and dead simple for your customers to reach your support team. And measure "completeness" of each support interaction - how effective is your support team in fully resolving your customers' problem?
Speaking of making support easy, your support documentation and search functionality should make finding solutions to common problems nearly effortless. You should also fix those problems or preempt them in onboarding...
The work that modern support teams put in demonstrates just how genuinely they care and customers are picking up on that. By investing time and effort in delivering a high-quality support experience, reducing friction and effort, and respecting customers’ time, support teams are showing their customers that they, not stakeholders or employees, come first. And, in return, these businesses are being rewarded with fierce loyalty – and faster growth.
19 sales leaders share what they want to see in your first email by Amy Copadisof Close.com
Key Takeaways:
We asked 19 B2B sales leaders this question: What do you want to see in a sales rep’s first email? They gave us insight into the 4 elements your first cold email must include: Awareness, Personalization, Value, and Clarity.
Awareness: By identifying the real impact of COVID-19 on your prospects, you’ll be able to send an email that acknowledges the current situation without using false empathy. Of course, building real awareness requires research. You need to understand the current situation of the industry, the market, and the prospect themselves.
Personalization: It’s essential to go above and beyond traditional personalization tricks, such as adding a lead’s name or company. This kind of automated personalization isn’t enough to cut through the noise, especially now. Do your research (see Awareness above...) and consider something hyper personalized, like a video for each of your prospects.
Value: Make that email uber-valuable to the prospect. To be successful (pandemic or otherwise), you need to do deep research into their business to find a problem that your solution solves. Look at their website, read their blog, listen to their earnings report, and find any trace of a potential inefficiency that your product solves.
Clarity: Everyone is quite aware we are experiencing some pretty unusual times for the economy and society in general. I think the outreach needs to avoid spending too much time, if any at all, having a long preamble talking about "unprecedented times" or anything like that. I will be more likely to respond if the outreach has a short compelling message showing they did some research about my business or role, social proof of how their service or technology helped companies similar to our company, and ideally some key stats about the potential business impact (cost savings, revenue gain, etc.). These are outreach fundamentals, but they are that much more important today and many outreach emails are still missing the mark.
New Sales in the Subscription Economy Podcast!
Listen to episode 18 with special guest Jenny Lewis, Director of Sales at SurveyGizmo! Jenny is known for her uncanny ability to build, motivate, coach, mentor, and develop high performing sales teams. In this no-holds interview, Jenny tells it like it is: gone are the days of nice-to-have, here's how to be mission critical to your customers! Listen up!
Listen to Sales in the Subscription Economy at subscriptioncoach.com/podcast, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or your favorite app.
Get serious about being a value-forward, empathetic, highly-successful subscription sales organization
I help revenue leaders & founders of SaaS, subscription, and online membership businesses get their revenue machines running at full strength through coaching, consulting, recruiting, and as a fractional executive. Learn more about how I can help you at SubscriptionCoach.com
Book a 30 minute exploratory call with me – let's position your sales machine to operate at full strength in an incredibly challenging economic climate!
Follow me on Twitter @NorthcuttAmanda or ping me at amanda@subscriptioncoach.com