Sales Engagement: Avoid This Common Mistakes
Once you’ve got the right tools and you’ve decided on the right messaging for each channel, you’re ready to hit send. Congratulations! But that doesn’t mean you can just set it and forget it. To get the best results, you’ll need to analyze and optimize your campaigns.
As you do so, beware of these common mistakes:
Measuring the performance of each touchpoint in isolation. You may find that certain channels offer better results, and choose to double down on them. However, you need to look at the campaign performance as a whole, and not just one isolated step. Just because someone replied to your emails but didn’t respond to your social media engagement, that doesn’t mean you should immediately stop all social media touchpoints. It’s highly likely that even if they didn’t directly lead to a response, they still assisted in the process.
Not balancing quality and quantity.
We’ve always been a fan of personalizing our emails at Reply. It’s no good spraying out thousands of bland, impersonal emails. However, personalization takes time. How long should you spend perfecting that one message that’s only relevant for one client? We handle that at Reply by dividing our ideal customers into three different tiers:
Perfect customers.
These are the customers who tick all the boxes, such as industry, company size, location, and revenue.
Almost perfect customers.
They look very similar to your perfect customer, and have a lot of the same criteria, but don’t completely match your perfect vision.
Everyone else.
These are the customers who can still get value from your product/service, but otherwise don’t look like your typical customer.
For tier one prospects, thoroughly research and personalize all your messaging. For tier two, only personalize messages for the most relevant positions. For tier three, keep personalization to a minimum and rely on automated outreach.
Always looking for more sales tools.
FOMO (the fear of missing out) is a real danger for sales teams. It’s easy to be constantly looking for the next best tool, the new shiny object that will change everything. When you find yourself looking longingly at yet another sales tool, ask yourself if you really need it.
Does it add to or substantially improve your existing process?
Or do you already have tools that can do the same job
Overcomplication makes it harder for your SDRs to get familiar with their tools and their sales processes. Each new sales tool means you need to onboard your team and document new processes and procedures. It’s better to have a handful of tools you can expertly use, rather than hundreds that you use once and never again. Try at least one or two tools in each category and find the perfect solution for every business.
Letting your processes get stale.
As a sales professional, it’s essential to keep on top of any new trends. For example, growth advisor Guillaume Cabane shared how he’d ask website visitors if they wanted a tea or a coffee, via a chat window, which he’d then have delivered to them. That's helped boost their conversions. But when he told everyone about that experiment, lots of other B2B companies starting using the same approach and it quickly became overused. That’s why it’s important to stay ahead of whatever everyone else is doing. It helps to read a lot about what new trends, new tools, and new approaches are out there. However, to get ahead of the competition, you need to start experimenting and inventing new tactics yourself. Then, when you create that next tactic, avoid sharing it for at least six months, so you can get the full benefits!
Sales engagement is far more than just a trendy buzz-term. Rather, it covers your whole attitude to sales and is essential if you want to stand out. By using a sales platform to reach your prospects on the channels they’re using, by engaging with them, and then enabling your whole team to get the same results, you’ll be able to build genuine relationships with your prospects, leading to even greater sales.
