Sales

Ah, salespeople.

The often-stereotyped driving force behind most businesses. 

The ones who are out on the front lines, trying to close deals and bring in revenue. The ones who mostly get ignored (and sometimes yelled at) for just trying to do their jobs. 

But they’re also the ones who take on the huge task of trying to maintain a high level of efficiency. And they’re good at it, too. 

Sales teams are often the most efficient departments in a company, thanks to their experience with managing leads, developing relationships, and, of course, closing deals. 

Yet, for all their efforts and all the (often expensive) tools they have access to, they’re still spending time on repetitive or lower-value work that hasn’t been automated.

The result? 

They constantly feel like they’re swimming upstream. It’s a real challenge to stay afloat and keep up the motivation when you feel like you’re constantly fighting against the current.

Time. To. Fight. Back.

Great sales leaders are constantly evolving their processes to help their team be more efficient and effective.

However, according to a study, sales reps still spend 65% of their time on tasks that don’t involve selling.

Like the dreaded CRM updates after each communication. Or manually setting up reminders to follow up. Or going back and forth to schedule meetings. Or… 

You get it. 

If this is the case for your team, it might be time to look into sales automation tools that integrate with your CRM and that encourage prospects to respond.

“Sell me this pen.”

If you’re familiar with the film The Wolf of Wall Street, you know this classic sales line. It’s where Leonardo DiCaprio, as Jordan Belfort, is trying to teach his sales team how to sell anything to anyone. 

And the answer is always the same: find out what they need and give it to them.

Now, while Jordan Belfort and his team were peddling penny stocks and taking a crazy amount of narcotics, they were on to something. 

In order to sell anything, you need to know what your prospect wants. You need to understand their needs, their desires, their intent.

Knowing what your prospect wants is essential to sales, but figuring it out is like attempting to figure out the ending to Lost. 

Were they dead the whole time? Is the island purgatory? What even is the smoke monster?!

Just like we were never going to figure out Lost without watching hundreds of YouTube explainers, without some help, we’re never going to be able to read our prospect’s minds. 

But that’s where intent data comes in.

Intent data is a crystal ball for salespeople.

It’s the difference between cold calling and warm outreach. It’s what tells you that a prospect is interested in your product before they even know they’re interested.

If you’re looking to boost your sales pipeline and close more deals, this post is for you.

Your email staying Unread in someone’s inbox is the equivalent of digital purgatory. Seriously, it's worse than being ghosted by the person you've been texting for weeks. 

At least with ghosting, you can take solace in the fact that they were probably never that interested in you to begin with. 

But being completely ignored and left for dead unread? 

That's just cold.

You've put in the effort, crafted the perfect email, and hit Send only to have it disappear into the digital abyss. 

So, what gives? Is there a best time to send cold emails?

There are a few things that can contribute to your emails being left unread (forever), but one of the most common reasons is timing. 

Sending an email at the wrong time can mean the difference between getting read and getting deleted. 

There's nothing worse than putting all your time and effort into an email campaign only to have it go to waste because you hit Send at the wrong time.

So, when is the best time to send a cold email?

The answer, unfortunately, is that it depends. It depends on your industry, your recipient's location, and a whole host of other factors.

But don't worry, we've got you covered.

We did some digging and compiled a list of the best times to send cold emails for the highest open rate. 

Have you ever looked at a job description that included “regularly updating Salesforce” and thought to yourself, “Man, I love that”?

Didn’t think so.

We all know what a pain it is for sales reps to have to sign into Salesforce to log activity and update accounts.

The truth is, if your sales team doesn’t have Salesforce automation, people won’t want to join your organization.

And chances are those who are already on your team aren’t having a jolly good time because they don’t have the tools they need to be successful.

So what’s the solution here?

Salesforce Gmail integration. Boom.

Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away, Yesware was the go-to solution for AEs doing email outreach. 

Times change. 

And, while it’s made a valiant effort, Yesware just hasn’t been agile enough to maintain its position. 

Sure, Yesware bills itself as a sales engagement solution but, truth is, the features leave a little something to be desired. 

Ok, a lot. 

Truth is, these days, it’s just not part of the sales engagement conversation anymore.

Boosting sales productivity isn’t about helping salespeople do more of the same thing—but freeing reps up to do the higher value tasks that can’t be automated: like building relationships and talking to customers.  

Increasing productivity means salespeople have more customer-facing time to do what they do best: sell. 

We sell to salespeople, so we know sales productivity results from a strong sales acceleration process. But, how do you increase sales productivity and where do you start?

There’s nothing worse than investing in a new sales engagement solution only to find your reps don’t use half the features it offers. 

Sound familiar, Salesloft user? 

Let’s get one thing straight: Salesloft is an amazing product. Nothing but love over here. 

But it’s not for everyone. 

And it don’t come cheap, either.

If you’re looking for something that’s a better fit for your revenue teams–with the specific functionalities that enable them to achieve true engagement right across the sales cycle—you’ve come to the right place. 

Measuring sales productivity lets you identify where your teams are struggling, so you can provide the tools and sales training they need to improve. 

But with modern sales teams generating a tsunami of data every day, how do you know which KPIs to track? 

Knowing which sales productivity metrics to measure helps you focus on the right numbers  

Well, sales productivity varies from company to company, so it’s all about choosing the right metrics for your business. 

You’re probably here because your sales teams are doing their best, but somehow they’re not hitting the numbers you need. 

And that affects your bottom line and team morale, and can even cause burnout.

Maybe you just need to hire more of them? 

Nope. 

If your revenue teams aren’t operating at peak efficiency and effectiveness, hiring more is unlikely to improve your results. But it will add to your overheads, and sow panic among your reps if there isn’t enough opportunity to go around. 

Instead, the answer lies in tracking and measuring sales productivity so you can empower your teams to achieve more with less.

Rep burnout is real. 

It’s a common scenario: you can see your sales reps are overwhelmed and juggling tons of different tasks. But even still, you’re not getting the results you expected. 

Maybe you’ve even hired more salespeople, so you know it’s not an issue of getting more sales reps to work even harder. 

Instead, you need to increase their productivity so they can quickly and effectively move more prospects down the pipeline—without burning themselves out. 

In an increasingly complex sales landscape, you don’t want your top reps juggling low-value tasks that don’t contribute to converting prospects.

You want to arm your sales reps with the tools and strategies they need to focus on finding and nurturing high-quality accounts and building strong relationships.

We’ve talked to our salespeople and other top sellers to compile sales acceleration strategies you can use to empower sales reps to efficiently and effectively interact and communicate with prospects for better results.