Sales

Following up with a prospect is one of the most important steps in the sales journey.

Get this: 

• 80% of prospects say “no” four times before they say “yes.”
• 40% of salespeople give up after the first “no.”

Yep, you read that right.

Imagine what your team is missing out on by giving up after the first (or fourth) rejection.

Following up again (and again, and again, and again) is the name of the game when it comes to sales.

But there are ways of going about it that will increase your revenue team’s chances of engaging with prospects.

Getting your follow up email subject lines just right is one of them, especially since it’s what will encourage your recipients to either open or toss your email.

Sales objections are common in every industry.

Think about it— how many objections have you gotten that sound something like, “We don’t need that right now,” or worse… 

“.” 

(In case you’re wondering, that represents no reply at all.)

This is because businesses are constantly changing and evolving, which can make it difficult for buyers to know exactly what they need. 

As a result, it’s important to be prepared with how you’ll address common objections. 

This post discusses the different types of objections and 9 of the most common sales objections you'll encounter–and how to respond to them.

If prospecting to small and medium-sized businesses is an uphill struggle at times, enterprise sales prospecting is like making the ascent of Everest. You still need a lot of the same gear, but breaking into complex multinationals takes military planning and precision that goes far beyond the prospecting strategies that serve for landing SME customers.

 At Mixmax, we sell to salespeople so we’re used to listening to the challenges they face when cracking large accounts, and devising tools to help them achieve their objectives.

Outreach is an amazing sales engagement tool. 

For sales teams that are all about spray-and-pray.

If, however, you need to focus on nurturing prospects and building relationships, it’s not going to cut it.

If that’s you, chances are you’re looking for an Outreach alternative. But with so many to choose from, how do you know which is right for your sales teams? 

How many deals are you losing in discovery? 

If you don’t take the time to dig deeper into your prospect’s challenges, key drivers, and company to understand how you can help them achieve their goals, then our guess would be, a lot. 

Without being on the ball in discovery, you can have the world’s greatest product but lose your sale to an AE with better questions.

But in a rush to get to the demo, companies often skip this step altogether, which wastes precious time and resources and leads to prospects dropping out of the sales funnel because they were never truly a good fit.

Too many AEs make prospects sit through a call only to give them a vanilla demo that doesn’t specifically address their problems and pains. 

We sell to salespeople, so we know all about how challenging discovery is.

The sales discovery process is an essential step in learning how you can bring value to your potential customers. But all too often, in a hurry to get to the demo, it’s rushed through as part of qualification or even skipped altogether. 

Biiiig mistake.

As Jacco van der Kooij, says, “Prescription without diagnosis is malpractice,” and this couldn’t be more true in sales. 

Trying to pitch a product without first understanding prospect pain or how they’ll use your solution is a crutch that lower-performing salespeople lean on way too heavily.

A crutch that will come back to bite you when prospects drop out of the sales cycle without buying. Or worse, sign up, find the product doesn’t meet their needs, cancel the contract at the first opportunity, and badmouth you on review sites. 

“Everyone is in a rush today to get to the punch line,” says Vincent Burruano, President of Vince Burruano Consulting Services. “Successful selling requires a time investment.”

How can you avoid these pitfalls?