Deep Sales – Who? Why? And What’s in it For You?

Being a “good salesperson” has become more complex with sales itself going through an evolution process.

Many purchases are being done online and buyers have access to data, so they are well-prepared before making a purchase. They research and compare different options and make sure where they can get the most value for money. I was surprised when I realized that sellers spend only 5% of their time with buyers .?

This blog post is the first of a series that will focus on top-performer sellers’ best practices and behaviors. More importantly, provide you with tips and actions that will help you as a sales professional close larger deals in shorter sale cycles.?Sounds promising, right? Let’s get started.?

Since I work with a few dozen of customers and am in contact with many decision-makers in different roles, I tried to distil a helpful list of similarities regarding the challenges they currently face.?Regardless of the size of the company, funding stage, or industry, the three main challenges I hear most often are:

1.??????Lack of efficiency – Most sales organizations I speak with share the same frustration. They use multiple tools, but inefficiently. They use different “buyer Intent” tools, but they all seem extremely inaccurate. They are also struggling with getting the decision-makers’ attention and response to emails. The usual MO of the SDRs and BDRs is sending generic emails in high volumes by using automated systems. They operate in quantity over quality method. Hence, they think that the “large numbers rule” will help them achieve their targets by scheduling enough calls or meetings for the account managers. Despite all these efforts, the numbers speak for themselves: the response rate for emails had dropped by 30% during the COVID-19 pandemic.

2.??????Long sales cycles – Although many companies create a big funnel of opportunities, they are struggling with closing deals. I’ve heard a few different reasons from companies I work with why sales cycles are so long: (1) FOMU – Fear of Messing Up. Since we are in a challenging macro environment, most people want to avoid taking risks and making mistakes. Many of my customers share that their prospects focus on becoming more efficient and stay away from purchasing new products to avoid the chance of messing up and increasing the costs for their companies. (2) The decision maker left the company – the sales rep had invested all their efforts in building relationships with one specific stakeholder only to realize that they are no longer with the company and now they are back to square one. (3) Wrong timing – as most companies still operate using the “cold calling” method, they often attempt to sell during the wrong time for their clients.

3.??????Lack of up-to-date data – The CRM is full of outdated accounts and leads and opportunities get lost because decision-makers have changed roles and the sales reps didn’t receive any notice for this change. Since sales reps don’t trust the CRM as the single source of truth, they track and monitor their deals and forecast on excel sheets. This leads to greater challenges with accurate pacing, sales cycle monitoring, and forecasting.

The numbers are mind-blowing. According to the Pavilion Pulse survey, 68% of organizations are missing their sales targets .

What are the main actions top performers take?

After being the party pooper with all the bad news and frightening numbers: what can be done? Like in other aspects of life, we want to learn from the top performers and follow in their footsteps.?As LinkedIn is the largest network platform in the world, it has an incredible amount of data that tracks the actions of top performers and analyses what they are doing differently.?

First things first: top performers spend 10% less time selling than other sellers. Wait, what?

Apparently, the old cliche “less is more” is applicable here are well. Top performers invest most of their time in (1) Leveraging data to learn thoroughly about their customer’s industry and company. (2) They focus on leveraging their network for warm introductions and finding hidden alleys within existing businesses and (3) Engaging with buyers when they want to buy (not when we want to sell) by using buyer intent signals.?

Ok. Sounds good - but what does it mean and what can you do to improve your performance? In the next few blog posts, I will share with you tips and best practices that will help you and your sales reps transform from shallow selling to the new method of deep sales. We, salespeople, have a very difficult job to begin with, and the aftermath of COVID-19 did not make it easier. I, myself am facing very similar issues to the ones outlined in this blog, and have been looking for answers and best practices for a while. The good news is that there are things we can do, right now, to make our lives a bit easier. I hope you’ll join me in this series as we explore in depth how top performers get over this hurdle and how you can do that too.