Six tools to simplify your sales

By guest blogger, Kyle Porter
Kyle Porter is the CEO of SalesLoft, Sales Intelligence

It doesn’t take a brainiac to realize your buyers are busy. Numerous studies report that less than 7% of phone calls to executive buyers are even being answered. These buyers are looking for an easy button. It’s your job to give it to them.

And the ones who do will be rewarded immensely. By understanding your prospect’s needs and making their life easy, you can motivate them to prioritize you. By maximizing simplicity, you can win more business and close deals faster. These six methods will help you do this:

1. Communicate Better
No more long emails. Ever. Your buyers are just looking for a reason to hit delete…or the ‘E’ button for archive  in Google mail. Remember – you’re most likely a lower priority than their boss, their spouse, their new employee, or the deals they’re trying to close on their own. Those situations are already complex enough for them. Simplify things by keeping emails 5 sentences long and asking simple yes/no questions to take next steps. Avoid phone when email or text will work, and never meet in person when a call will do. Dump cliches and buzzwords from your messaging and stop talking about yourself. When customers can understand and respond to you simply, they’ll do it more often.

2. Sprint to Deliver
Time kills deals. You probably (hopefully) learned that in your first sales job. So why does it take you 2 days to get your customer a proposal? Tactical ‘back-and-forths’ can ruin sales cycles and make it hard to hit quota. It’s never a good thing when you (the seller) are the one slowing down the sale. Use cloud tools and documents to collaborate on terms before your carve them in PDF. Build a stronger relationship with the tech team to help you answer those tough questions. The faster you deliver, the more the client will feel their time is being respected. Many of them will return this gesture.

3. Know your Customer Better than Everyone Else
To get through to today’s buyer, you must understand them. Luckily, the keys to a world of understanding exist across the web. Go consume relevant info on their website, devour their LinkedIn and soak up their latest tweets. Find out what’s moving their industry and the major events their company faces. For automating sales information, setup Google Alerts and subscribe to your prospect’s blog. Sign up for sales intelligence apps for a deeper level of efficiency. Having this relevant information will reduce trust barriers and make it easier for your buyer to work with you.

4. Make your Buyer the Center of the Universe
Your company has done some impressive things and you’re not too bad yourself. But this isn’t the time for your accolades; customers want to talk about themselves. Make it simple. Focus intently on them and put yourself in their shoes. Decisions are easier for buyers to make if they see the immediate benefit.

5. Share your “Standard Process”
You want your customers pressing that easy button during each correspondence. Don’t make them guess the next steps. Tell them how your “happiest customers” do things. Get great at defining and communicating next steps in the process to your prospect. If you don’t know an answer to the question “what are the next steps?”…then you’re in trouble.

6. Sell with sincerity
Selling with sincerity means constantly seeking ways to be a source of value to your buyer. It means paying attention to them and knowing what they’re faced with. Rather than just focusing on getting the sale done, practice empathy and feel the pain of your prospect. This will build trust and improve the relationship, creating a more compelling reason for them to work with you.

Keeping things simple is the first step to winning in complex sales. Pull this tool out often and you’ll see immediate sales rewards.