Let’s face it: we live in an age of consumers spoiled by an abundance of different options, choices, and technological advancements.
If you don’t step up a gear and respond to their needs and interests in a satisfactory and meaningful way, you’re practically sabotaging your success and growth of your company.
Various factors play an important part in attracting your prospects, nurturing them, scheduling demos, closing deals, and retaining your existing customers, and you need to cover every stage properly in order to sell.
In a nutshell, you need to build a team of full-stack sales leaders who will be on top of their sales game all the time.
Our B2B-Sales Handbook is the right resource packed with our cumulative knowledge and experience on all these topics, which we have been amassing in the past 15 years.
We also included other successful sales-leaders’ examples, real-life stories, and advice in order to create this compilation of highly-valuable and proven sales tactics.
Chapter #1: Be the brand
“Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” – Jeff Bezos
All your efforts should be directed at building both your personal and business brand because branding is all about trust, credibility, and authority.
Being a brand means that people can always count on you to deliver and live up to their expectations.
Easier said than done.
Many salespeople fall into the trap of pushing their own sales agenda and doing everything in their power to hit their quota.
While there’s nothing wrong with trying to achieve your sales goals, don’t forget about what’s at the core of sales – being helpful. Your prospects should know and feel that you’ll go out of your way to solve their pain points. The selling part comes later, and shouldn’t be your first concern.
As paradoxical as this may sound, this is how things work.
But what does it have to do with branding?
Everything!
Building a great brand means being empathetic and helpful without asking for anything in return. As a matter of fact, empathy is one of the most important traits in sales rep, and it’s the one which distinguishes between a great salesperson and an average one, according to our LinkedIn community.
That’s the way to create a brand that matters to people. And people are more likely to buy from brands that matter to them.
Our B2B sales handbook discusses different ways of building your brand and strengthening it and illustrates them with relevant examples.
You can greatly benefit from finding out:
- How to leverage your network and not only promote your brand but also forging strong relationships, partnerships, and collaborations.
- Why learning marketing is crucial for every sales rep, and how to find your voice and convey your message through mastering copywriting skills.
- Why joining different sales communities and groups is crucial, and how to build authority and leadership through sharing your two cents and contributing to discussions.
- How embracing technology can help you boost your own and your company’s performance.
Instead of theorizing and talking your ear off with a dry narrative, our little sales guide jazzes things up with anecdotes, interesting stories, and examples.
Chapter #2: Step up the game
So, you want to be a successful sales professional?
This section of our value-packed B2B sales handbook discusses some of the most important principles and tactics necessary for making it in the world of sales.
What’s important to emphasize is that all these guidelines are evergreen, so that you can count on them being useful in a couple of years too.
- Finding a coach is the first rule. You need a mentor to show you the ropes and tricks of the trade. But, as you progress in your sales role, be ready to become one yourself and hone your skills additionally by advising and teaching your followers and those who look up to you.
- Building a winning team is half the battle. Without a reliable, high-performance team, your business will never take off and achieve anything worth mentioning.
- Crafting and delivering a stellar demo. You can’t win your prospects over with a half-baked, ineffective demo. And as we’ve promised, this book provides you with tips & tricks for delivering game-changing demos after which your prospects won’t be able to help but sign a deal. How? Here’s a hint: the less YOU talk, the better! Just tease your prospects and stop. The book reveals why this is an absolute must when it comes to demos.
- Offering invite-only access to your product. Don’t wait for your product to be completely developed before you showcase it. Ask people to join your group and keep them posted about the latest developments. Don’t go stealth and hide in beta. Build excitement, FOMO, and buzz around your project, and ask your community for feedback.
- Engaging your prospects. Connecting with your prospects and keeping them engaged makes the world of difference. Use different channels, tools, and strategies (which are discussed further on in the book) to warm up your leads and accelerate their buyer’s journey.
- Following up a must! That’s why we cover this point in great detail and provide a number of high-converting follow-up sequence templates that we use at Autoklose to get in touch with our prospects and pique their interest. You can find usable and customizable examples for scheduling a demo, missed demo, and a reminder to start a trial. Speaking about email sequence templates, you can also check out these 14 super useful templates that you can download and implement.
Chapter #3: Lifelong Learning
The concept of lifelong learning has become indispensable in every field and industry.
You can’t expect to grow as a person and a professional, and advance your career if you don’t learn new things.
Raising this bar is something that will push you forward.
But, the trouble is that there are so many different resources that it’s hard to pick only those that are valuable and from which you can actually benefit.
That’s why we decided to share our favorite sales books, blogs, podcasts, groups&communities, as well as top sales influencers to follow.
From all-time classics such as How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie all the way to contemporary bestsellers like Jeffrey Gitomer’s the Little Red Book of Selling, you’ll find a compilation of 10 inspirational books which can change your life and transform your career to put on your must-read list.
Shorter content forms such as blog posts, videos, and infographics make an excellent read during a busy week when you can’t focus on a book. These blogs provide value and no-nonsense, straightforward advice that you can implement and improve your sales, as well as the latest industry news and trends. Apart from our own blog, you can learn a lot by following Sales Hacker, Gong.io, or Heinz Marketing, to mention only a couple of them. We also described what you can expect to find on each of them, and what kind of topics they deal with primarily.
As a busy sales professional with a hectic schedule, you most certainly can’t always find enough time to read. Don’t worry, because you can learn even when you’re commuting to work or while running on a treadmill by listening to these amazing podcasts from our list. Their hosts are some of the most popular names in the sales industry such as Jeff Blount, John Barrows, or Barbara Giamanco.
Sales groups and communities are excellent for connecting with your fellow sales reps and exchanging your experiences. They also present you with an opportunity to build your brand and expand your reach. But again, you need to join the right ones. We have a couple of great suggestions including Sales Talk With Pros, Sales Pitch Galore, or Sales Best Practices, to mention only some of them.
Finally, we’ve already mentioned the importance of having a coach or mentor, but it’s also a good idea to follow sales influencers on social media and check out their personal websites, as most of them are more than willing to share their expertise. This is a great way of learning new tricks that have been tested. And you can bet that the likes of Jill Konrath, Max Altschuler, Koka Sexton, or our own Shawn Finder will change your perspective on sales.
We’ve only scratched the surface here, while our amazing (no, we don’t want to be modest about this) B2B-Sales Handbook delves into the topic of how to book, nurture, sell, and retain like a champ you are. Download it here and let us know what you think of it. It also won’t hurt to share your own experiences and advice.
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