Prompt Inc.’s Post

IS YOUR SALES TEAM FALLING BEHIND? OUTGROW COULD BE THE GAME-CHANGER YOU NEED! Wow! The response to my LinkedIn post “OUTGROW... THE PERFECT SALES PROCESS!” has been incredible. It’s clear that sales teams are actively seeking the best tools and techniques to elevate their success. The number of businesses reaching out confirms the growing need to address major sales challenges. Here are some key hurdles sales teams face today: 1. Reducing Sales Cycles Economic uncertainty is causing sales cycles to drag out. Customers are taking longer to make decisions, raising more objections. Sales teams need to focus on high-potential leads and offer flexible pricing to keep deals moving. 2. Aligning Sales and Marketing A massive 70% of salespeople report struggling with sales-marketing alignment. When these teams aren’t aligned, companies end up with poor-quality leads. Successful businesses are integrating their efforts for better results. 3. Building Trust in Virtual Sales Trust-building in virtual environments is tougher than ever. Personalization and simplifying the sales process are essential for overcoming the hurdles of virtual selling and creating deeper customer connections. 4. Managing Time Effectively Sales reps spend only 21% of their time on actual selling, with much of their day bogged down by admin tasks. Automation and better time management can free up more hours for direct selling while maintaining strong client relationships. 5. Customer-Centric Selling The shift to a “buyer-first” mindset is real. Instead of pushing for quick sales, teams must focus on understanding how buyers prefer to purchase. Building strong relationships is key to success in this changing landscape. Outgrow is built on a proven mindset: positive, proactive, and accountable. When executed with discipline and intentionality, it boosts leads and sales, driving higher revenue and profitability. The ROI speaks for itself. Businesses can either continue with underperforming teams or take proactive steps toward building a high-performing, efficient sales machine with Outgrow. If you’re interested in how Outgrow can transform your sales, reach out to me at 714-624-4552 or marshall.krupp@eosworldwide.com. Let’s talk! If this message doesn’t resonate, keep doing what you’re doing—but remember, you’re competing with others. If you’re not changing, they are!

This list of mistakes and the 7 strategies to take now, is spot on. Many of the strategies are not obvious to the tech founder. https://lnkd.in/gCgVRSZ2

Sales/Marketing connections, I’m excited to recommend Steven Crepeau at True Sales Results for his invaluable contributions to our introductory sales conversations. His expertise in applying The Challenger Sale methodology based on his experience with other cybersecurity and technology companies, particularly the "teaching conversation," has significantly improved our engagement and initial conversations with potential clients. I honestly thought this might hurt our pipeline growth, but in fact the opposite has happened. Simply presenting differentiation in features and benefits was somewhat working for us. Steve has seen this before and understood this challenge and helped us leverage the science behind the "teaching conversation" to lead us to increased pipeline growth. By guiding us to ask insightful questions of this particular buyer type, challenging assumptions/'status quo' about their current state, solutions and processes, and educating prospects on a new and better way to solve their cybersecurity problems, we've witnessed a dramatic shift in the nature of our introductory calls. These conversations are no longer one-sided "show and tells"; they are valuable dialogues that build trust and establish our team as credible thought leaders and is helping us break through the noise and capture the attention of potential clients. Interestingly, research aligns with this approach as Steve pointed out on a few occasions. The research presented in the book consistently show that Challengers outperform other sales types, I'll link to a summary of this by HubSpot* in the comments. Feel free to reach out directly to Steve or I am happy to make an introduction.

My very own inception moment. "...a sales leader selling software that improves the software sales process" You sure know how to make a girl feel good about herself, Crossbeam team 😉 A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to lead a breakout session at GTM2024 on Buyer-Led Sales. We of course unpacked a ton of stats. Painful stats like: - 69% of AEs missed quota in H1 of this year - 61% of deals are lost to NOTHING 🤦♀️ The two themes we dug into: - B2B sales is hard...and getting harder - B2B buying is fundamentally broken So what do we do about it? 1️⃣ Give your buyers more of what they want. Buyers want to self-educate more. They want (and expect) access to more async content. They need real life examples from friends and colleagues that are working with you. And they want to touch and feel your product earlier and more often. 2️⃣ Put your product at the center of your entire GTM motion If you sell software, then I can almost guarantee that your product is hands down the most valuable asset that your business owns. But as SaaS sellers, we've been trained to gate keep - and it has to stop. At Walnut we talk about 'product led everything' a lot, which is just a fancy way of saying that your product should be at the center of how you market, sell, and support your customers. Your end to end GTM motion should center around your product. Your prospects and customers will thank you 🩷

Why sales is (not) “Black Magic”, and the 1 proven trick you can do right now to lift your bottom line. — As a tech founder, you despair that sales doesn’t fit into a neat, organised, scientific box. You love to apply logic to all aspects of your business but conclude “Sales is an Art”. You have a proven scientific approach for - product development installation finance etc, but every attempt to “science-a-fy” sales has gone nowhere. You’re frustrated that you can't step away. You can’t make sales work without you.  Which means, you can’t scale. But guess what…Sales is a SCIENCE and so is Sales Leadership.  There is logic to it. And a more scientific approach drives more revenue. There are proven processes and frameworks. Imagine a sales team delivering predictable results (without relying on you), within that scientifically proven framework. It’s not fanciful - it’s a framework. We’ve worked with 95 companies since 2019 with a 95% success rate. Here’s 1 thing (that worked for them right off the bat), that you can steal right now: They stopped wasting time on prospects that were time wasters. That is, they no longer ran demos to prospects who had no intention of making a buying decision. Just think about it… How much time would you get back if you - ONLY worked on deals that could be won Spent very little time on deals that result in no-decision or constant tyre kicking. Imagine how free your calendar would be! P.S. DM me “tyre-kickers” and I’ll happily share the Qs you should be asking, and when to ask them.

What’s the fastest way to speed up your sales cycle when selling large deals to Enterprise accounts? It’s not: • Meeting with department heads • Giving a product demo to get them excited • Hoping they’ll sell it to upper management for you Instead, try my Yo-yo sales framework. Here’s how it works: ----- STEP 1: Start at the Top Connect with the key decision-maker (the “power”). Understand their most important problems, why they need to change, and the costs of not changing. If your solution can help, get their sponsorship for your discovery process. Write a note they can send to their team to kick things off. ----- STEP 2: Meet with Department Heads Now meet with the department heads and really dig into their day-to-day challenges. Gather quotes and insights about their biggest pain points. Focus on understanding the people, processes, and issues, not selling your product. The goal here is to deeply understand how your solution can make a difference. ----- STEP 3: Package and Present Take everything you’ve learned and put it into an Executive Summary and Business Case. Present this back to the executive sponsor and their team. Demo only the parts of your product that are directly relevant. Then, close the deal. Power compresses deals. Btw, my partner Steph and I have spent over 300 hours creating a 5-step guide with free templates to help founders and sales professionals improve their sales by attracting ideal clients. If you’d like the free guide, feel free to DM us!

🚀 Sales Strategy Guide: 6 Steps to More Efficient Selling by Dini M. Just read an awesome article on Salesforce.com that’s a game-changer! 💡 Imagine turning your sales process into a well-oiled machine that effortlessly matches customers with your product. That’s the power of a solid sales strategy! Here's what you’ll uncover: 🌟 What a sales strategy is 🌟 Why you absolutely need one 🌟 10 popular sales strategy types 🌟 A super simple 6-step guide to building your strategy 🌟 Must-have tools to turbocharge your sales Top takeaways: 1️⃣ Align your product perfectly with customer needs. 2️⃣ Boost your sales team’s efficiency and productivity. 3️⃣ Create a repeatable, reliable sales process. Curious? Dive into the full article and start revolutionizing your sales game! 🎯 #SalesStrategy #SalesForce #SalesTips #BoostProductivity #SellSmart

Sales teams deserve the best tools to succeed yet so many are left to struggle. After speaking with countless salespeople, I realized something shocking: Many sales teams still lack the proper tools to support their prospecting efforts. Some are stuck relying on Excel as their primary tool, others are using outdated solutions and leveraging only 20% of the features, while many struggle to juggle between multiple inefficient, outdated tools. It’s like sending them to war with a knife. How can you expect them to hit ambitious targets when they’re left completely unarmed? Here’s the reality: You’re paying salespeople an average package of €80K/year. But you’re letting them prospect without proper tools. As a result, they waste time and miss opportunities. Investing in the right tools isn’t a cost it’s a multiplier. With the best tools, they’ll save 50% (or more) of their time, focus on closing deals, and deliver better results. The ROI? Those tools will pay for themselves faster than you think and the benefits go straight to your bottom line. Takeaway: Equip your sales team to succeed. The right tools turn time into revenue and effort into results. At ZELIQ, we’re building the future of sales. 🚀 Get ready—Zeliq is about to be everywhere! What’s stopping you from arming your team for success?

The Silo Impact on Sales: Beacon Worldwide has worked with dozens of organizations long term to assume often combined roles at the C suite level. This typically includes some combination of sales, marketing and operations. Titles like Chief Growth and Operations Officer. We often see one of the biggest inhibitors to sales is not the sales team, marketing or your competitors. It can be the failure to establish a customer/patient facing strategy that cuts across every department. While your sales and marketing teams (particularly digital), capability is important, Beacon has seen the failure to properly integrate across an organization have a devastating impact on revenue. To break down the often-unintentional silos, there needs to be a Board level dedication to a customer or patient-based sales strategy. The customer/patient journey needs to be reviewed objectively from every possible touch point, even when you think they are unrelated. For example, companies can be flawless in the entire sales cycle and then billing inaccuracies and untimely invoicing turns a very satisfied customer into a very unsatisfied customer. In other cases, we have seen call centers, the hub of communications with poorly paid and undertrained staff to handle the incoming or outbound calling expectations. Or, we have seen a host of locations that are disconnected due to the lack of SOPs based upon best practices. While good sales enablement, great marketing and solid operational efforts can all be helpful, if they are not fully integrated there may be revenue leakage points that are fully recoverable. Just something to think about but sales, marketing and operational audits ("SMO" audits) can be very helpful. Particularly if you are a small to mid-sized company under $500M. For more details, feel free to reach out. Carl Erickson President and CEO 603 745 8888

The Silo Impact on Sales: Beacon Worldwide has worked with dozens of organizations long term to assume often combined roles at the C suite level. This typically includes some combination of sales, marketing and operations. Titles like Chief Growth and Operations Officer. We often see one of the biggest inhibitors to sales is not the sales team, marketing or your competitors. It can be the failure to establish a customer/patient facing strategy that cuts across every department. While your sales and marketing teams (particularly digital), capability is important, Beacon has seen the failure to properly integrate across an organization have a devastating impact on revenue. To break down the often-unintentional silos, there needs to be a Board level dedication to a customer or patient-based sales strategy. The customer/patient journey needs to be reviewed objectively from every possible touch point, even when you think they are unrelated. For example, companies can be flawless in the entire sales cycle and then billing inaccuracies and untimely invoicing turns a very satisfied customer into a very unsatisfied customer. In other cases, we have seen call centers, the hub of communications with poorly paid and undertrained staff to handle the incoming or outbound calling expectations. Or, we have seen a host of locations that are disconnected due to the lack of SOPs based upon best practices. While good sales enablement, great marketing and solid operational efforts can all be helpful, if they are not fully integrated there may be revenue leakage points that are fully recoverable. Just something to think about but sales, marketing and operational audits ("SMO" audits) can be very helpful. Particularly if you are a small to mid-sized company under $500M. For more details, feel free to reach out. Carl Erickson President and CEO 603 745 8888