5 Tips for Full Cycle Salespeople

2023 has been a tough year for many. One of the big trends we've seen is salespeople being asked to generate more of their own leads as inbound has dried up and many BDRs have been fired. 18 months ago, 80% of students in our training were BDRs and now it has flipped in that 80% are full cycle salespeople.

Closing your own deals while generating your own leads can be tough to juggle. Here are 5 tips for those in that situation.

1. Block off at least 1-2 hours in your calendar every day to prospectThis sounds super basic but if you don't prioritize prospecting and have it as part of your daily schedule, you'll never get around to it. So many salespeople we coach make the usual excuse "Oh, I had no time to prospect in the last week so I have no outbound messages or calls to review." Have an unnecessary internal meeting? Cancel it and prospect instead.
2. Identify common pain points from your past deals to use in your messagesAnalyse all of your past deals and work out what were the challenges you heard over and over again. These are the pains you should be focusing on in your emails/LinkedIn messages/cold calls as they are the most current. Inbound and outbound is interconnected. Use your customer calls to drive outbound messaging
3. Contact lost or on hold opportunities in your CRMBUT don't be generic. A lot of salespeople think "they know who we are" so I can just ask them to meet with no context. Revisit your notes, check online what's happened at the company since you last met them and customize your message accordingly. Here's an example:"When we spoke 6 months ago, you had just started using Apollo with your 4 European salespeople. Saw you just hired 3 BDRs in the US. Open to revisting our cadence templates that your new BDRs could use on Apollo?"
4. Ask your happy customers for referralsWhen you do this, be as specific as possible, don't just say "hey Mark - know anyone that may want to work with us?". Instead say something like:"Mark - saw you used to work with Joan from ABC. Noticed she has an international sales team also in the fintech space, so thought our sales enablement program could be relevant to her. Open to introing us with the case study we recently did together?"
5. Contact past customers who've changed jobsThese are quick wins a they have awareness of your product and you know they can be good champions as have bought from you in the past. BUT again that does not give you the right to send a generic message and end up with all the other spam they get saying "congrats on your new role. want to buy my stuff?" Instead, write something like this:"Carla, your new marketing role in agriculture AI sounds fascinating. As you get settled, you may identify the same MQL-SQL problem you had at GYB corp. Open to a catch up at end of month to see how you're getting on?"

The above is just scratching the iceberg. Want to hear more sales tips for your full cycle team? Please DM me or email me at [email protected]