A recent Salesforce study revealed some eye-opening stats on how salespeople spend their time in a given week and only 30% of that time is spent on actually selling.
Building lists and managing multiple platforms feels like a constant balance of learning how to fully utilize the tools you have and adopting new tools that promise better results.
With new AI tools launching every week promising to do it all for you, it can be overwhelming and with the state of sales being what they are right now. Its easy to understand why so many sales departments are constantly chasing new solutions.
“With nearly 70% of sales reps saying they’re overwhelmed by the number of tools, 9 out of 10 sales organizations plan to consolidate their tech stacks over the coming year so reps can spend more time selling and connecting with customers.”
This puts a tremendous amount of pressure on your reps to appear busy, but it is also leading to a proliferation of AI generated Spam that is actually hurting your ability to connect.
Being able to cut through this noise is even more challenging and it seems a lot of companies have resorted to using automated tools and AI to spam that messaging more effectively.
But all these messages still miss the mark because they always focus on what they are trying to sell and what makes them so great as opposed to showing they understand what you do and how they can help.
According to that same salesforce article
“Reading down a spec list or script won’t cut it with buyers, who — contending with the same tough market as sellers — seek personalized advice tailored to their specific circumstances. Seventy-three percent of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations, and over eight in 10 reps say buyers increasingly conduct research before they even reach out.”
I was recently looking for a design agency for some work and posted a few contracts and I can tell you that everyone who took the time to examine my needs and explained how they thought they could help got a meeting. Unfortunately, most just sent me a list of their services and why I should choose them but didn’t mention anything about what I needed done.
Authentic personalization works and it will increase your conversion rates and AI can be a great tool to help with that, but it all depends very much on how you use it.
It won’t replace a good salesperson, but it can turn a decent salesperson into a great one.
A recent LinkedIn Sales Blog post highlighted just how important personalization is today.
From the article
“There are two types of sales messages.
One dives right into the pitch, selling you from the moment you open your InMail. The other type is rooted in your world, focuses on your challenges, and offers a path to help.
Which one of those emails is more likely to get deleted before the reader ever gets to the second sentence? And which one is likely to start a relationship?”
I think we all know the answer because we all get these cold emails. Personalization isn't a magic bullet that will guarantee you a meeting or call. But taking the time to understand your prospect if well worth the effort.
Check out this quote from the article on how one of the contributors prepares before engaging a prospect.
“Before I reach out, I Google their name, I see if they are on a podcast, I see what they are posting on LinkedIn, and I’m looking for a few things. How does the CEO talk about what the company is trying to do? How do they talk about what makes that hard? How do they talk about how they're trying to get there?”
Now imagine if you received an Ideal Client Profile that contained all that information and more.
How much time would that save and how much better would your outreach be if you could actually address your prospect’s unique challenges when reaching out?
Shoot me an email and I would be happy to run through a presentation of how our service works or send you over a sample ICP.
Articles
Comments