According to a study by Keller Research Centre, Cold calling, an outbound selling strategy only has a 2.5% success rate. It is more challenging than ever to “push” consumers to buy something they have never used before or are simply not likely to buy. As the consumers are becoming smarter, the marketers and the salesmen too need to constantly stepping up the game. And it’s reason enough why businesses are adapting the ‘Inbound’ way of sales. Let’s explore the term further.

What is Inbound Sales?

Inbound sales is mainly focused on:

• Analysing precedent trends
• Studying buyer personas from a sales perspective
• Generating relevant content that the sales team can use
• Creating a personalised experience for the consumer
• Establishing trust as a salesperson
• Comprehensively helping the buyer through his journey

The emphasis is more on establishing trust and creating a relationship with the consumer rather than only focusing on closing sales. Based on the consumer’s behaviour and preferences, the salesperson crafts an approach that is conducive, at the same time personalised for every prospect.

According to Forrester, “By the time an actual salesperson gets involved, up to 90% of the selling process could be over and done with.”

Inbound Vs Outbound Sales

Outbound Sales greatly comprise of making cold calls and orchestrating sales shows. It refers to a push approach of sales where you look for clients, carry out a generalised approach irrespective of the preferences of your prospects. On the other hand, with the inbound approach, a salesperson tries to pull potential clients and then qualifies them on the basis of their interests. With inbound sales, it is more about identifying, connecting, exploring, and advising.

Consumer have a sea of options for every product or service they desire. This also creates a market with cut-throat competition where companies are striving to be seen and recognised by the prospect. In an environment like this, pushing a prospect to use your product or service based on a generalised approach would be more than difficult for conversion. The inbound sales approach gives the opportunity to the salesperson to lead the consumer towards what they need rather than constantly pursuing them in a cold manner.

How do Inbound Sales work?

There has been a massive transformation between how sales used to work traditionally and how it does now. Keeping up with today’s empowered buyers’ needs might be challenging but once you have crafted the sales methods in a way that makes the prospects come to you, there’s no looking back for your business. Let’s understand how the process of inbound sales works: 

Crafting a personalised sales approach

After having your buying journey in place from a sales point of view, you can build your sales process. The Inbound Sales methodology looks something like this:

The first phase is all about identifying consumers with goals or bars for salespersons to convert into leads. In order to have these as qualified leads, the inbound salesperson helps prioritise the goals. Next is exploring whether the offer is fit for the qualified leads’ context. If it is so, then these qualified leads turn into opportunities. Ultimately, the inbound salespersons put forth how these offers are relevant and specifically positioned in accordance to the buyer’s context. In case of an agreement between the buyer and the salesperson, the opportunities then become customers.

Identifying Buyer Persona

The key difference between inbound and outbound sales is that in case of inbound sales the focus is only placed on the active buyers who would potentially be interested in buying what you have to offer. This saves a great deal of time. Salespersons can identify the active buyers by checking if they have previously visited the website, engaged with the content, filled out a form or opened the email sent to them. Out of even those buyers, there would be the ones that salespersons can help or cannot help with their offerings. They need to further classify such buyers to be able to finally craft an ideal buyer persona.

Customising Relevant Content

In case of inbound sales, the salespersons craft personalised messages to address the buyer’s specific challenges or goals. This could include anything from common connections to interests or buyer’s industry and role. The emphasis is to help the buyer through their journey by making offers like free consultation or proactively answering the buyers’ queries based on their search. This would drive the buyers to engage with your business on their own.

Tailored Experiences

Once the buyer expresses interests and engages with the content you are putting out, it is now time to leverage that into building trust and establishing a long-lasting relationship. It is only then that an inbound salespersons would understand the buyer’s interest in his offering and establishes whether or not they have what the buyers demand. Is they do, then they would further invest time in tailoring the perfect content offer for them, thereby achieving the sales or customer goals.

Quick Refresher

There has been a disruptive transformation in sales and marketing with the progression of technology and the ease of access to information. Inbound salesperson provide more than just what buyers have access to. They create a personalised experience by helping them through their journey and identifying their goals. Their prime focus is not to push the buyer to become a customer but to invest time and effort in building trust and relationship. That’s when the salespersons can design the most suitable experience and convert that opportunity into a long-lasting commitment.

If your inbound marketing team is fully stacked with personalised content and messaging for leads, why wouldn’t your sales team have the right tools to convert them?

Are you making the most of inbound sales? How are you doing it? Let us know in the comments below.

Emails form a crucial part of any given point in our professional career. In 2020 alone, 300.4 billion emails were sent and received a day.

The way you write an email reflects on your professionalism and most importantly, ensures everything is documented.

I personally love emails. Email writing is not everybody’s cup of tea, which is why it is an art. Based on personal experiences I share a few “tricks of the trade”.  

Champions are brilliant at the basics – John Wooden, American basketball coach and player. With this thought in mind, let us start with the basic tips to draft a professional email.

1. Subject

Subject is the first thing that will attract your reader’s attention. Here are a few dos and don’ts.

While highlighting what the email is about to ensure high open rate, your subject should also be: 

• Short
• Contain important keywords 
• Brief and specific
• Have the purpose eg: MOM/Invoice/Proposal
• Contain words like regarding, company name

For eg: 

• Regarding contract ending + way forward
• MOM : XYZ<>Your company name
• ABC: Design changes
• Interview schedule
• Feedback on session conducted
• [internal][external] [urgent] [imp] tags

2. Salutations

This sets the tone of your email. Do not be over-friendly.

• We generally go by first names only
• Avoid using “Dear” in professional emails
• Use “Sir” only if the person is really senior in regards to experience and age
• Format

For eg:

• Hi John,
• Hey Peter,
• Hello Emma,
• Hi Swami Sir,
• Hi Dan & team,

Hubspot Drag and  Drop Email Editor – Email Marketing Tool

3. Greetings

They basically lay the foundation. Consider them the biscuit base to your email cake.

• These are email starters
• Keep these focussed on the day, time, special events 
• Avoid emoticons and being over-friendly
• For eg:
• Hope you had a great start to the week (Mondays or Tuesdays)
• Happy Friday!
• Hope you are well/doing great
• Happy holidays!
• Trust you are well and safe [Covid times]
• Thank you for your time [MOM emails]
• Pleasure to e-meet you [if you are introduced/looped in an email]

4. Purpose

This is the soul of your email. It is the reason why you are writing the email.

• Introduce yourself if it’s the first interaction 
• State your reason for writing as clearly and concisely as possible.
• Give reference/context if required.
• Start with acknowledging their thoughts 
• Put the information in a sensible order. Use paragraphs/bullet points

For eg:

• This is Nilesh from
• This is in reference to…
• Based on our discussion [if it’s a response email]
• Thank you for pointing out your concerns.
• PFB my responses inline [for a query resolution]

5. Call to action (CTA)

This defines the action that needs to be taken and is the most important aspect of an email, especially if you want your reader to know what has to be done next.

• Keep a clear CTA
• Be clear about what response you expect from the recipient

For eg:

• Let me know a convenient day and time to discuss this
• Do let me know your thoughts on this
• Please share your approval on

6. Ending

This seals the email. At this point the recipient should be aware of why the email was written and what is expected of him/her.

• Always end on a positive note
• Have a common signature format across the organisation
• Signature should have relevant links, contact information

For eg:

• Hope you understand my perspective
• Regards
• Best
• Thank you
• Thanks & Regards
• Cheers [only if we are celebrating something in the email]
• HubSpot Email Signature Generator

Some additional tips to help you out

• Name the attachments appropriately
• Avoid unnecessary attachments
• If you are using links in the email, rename the links to relevant names.
• Avoid heavy attachments. Larger organisations have attachment size limitations
• Have quick response to emails
• Read your email before sending
• Add “+” if you are adding someone in the loop/ “-” if you are removing someone
• Use standard font size and style. Arial, Calibre, Times New Roman or go with default gmail fonts and styles
• “Reply all” only if required.
• Do not use capital letters
• Avoid abbreviations and emoticons
• Avoid long complex sentences

As many as 376.4 billion emails are expected to be sent and received by 2025. This statistics only shows that email etiquettes are an important aspect of your business. People are always running short of time. To hold their attention and let them know what you want them to know in the shortest time possible, you must learn the tricks. 

Need assistance on how to create a marketing strategy or roadmap for your business? Talk to us today.

Why Inbound Marketing Works?

HubSpot describes inbound marketing as “attracting customers through relevant and helpful content and adding value at every stage in your customer’s buying journey. With inbound marketing, potential customers find you through channels like blogs, search engines, and social media.”

The “attracting, converting and delighting” process lays the groundwork for getting discovered by interested parties and generating buyer-initiated conversations. It reduces the time and rejection rates associated with prospecting using outbound methods like trade shows, billboards, and cold-calls.

Social Media & Inbound Marketing?

One of the top inbound marketing methodologies is leveraging the power of social media to get discovered by the target market and a platform that can significantly boost your inbound sales is LinkedIn.

The professional networking site has over 675 million users, and the average time spent on the site by a professional is 17 minutes! Furthermore, 4 out of the 5 members are key decision-makers. A recent study by HubSpot found that LinkedIn gives the highest visitor to lead conversion rate.

How to Boost Inbound Sales with LinkedIn?

There are multiple ways you can expand your inbound sales interest and revenue by making LinkedIn an integral part of your digital marketing strategy.

1) Leverage the Company’s LinkedIn Page

LinkedIn is one of the top 5 websites that Google indexes regularly in search. Your company can easily pop up in Google’s top SERPs by doing the following

• Update or start a LinkedIn Company Page (it’s free publicity). Make sure you complete every single section of the company page
• Optimize your company’s description by including SEO-friendly, customer-centric, and results-oriented keywords
• Make a positive impression by using high-resolution and appropriately sized company photos; ensure the selected pictures are consistent with your brand’s image
• Include relevant industry keywords
• Highlight company awards, track-record, or honours

2) Share Content

There is a fine line between sharing resourceful content and just spamming everyone’s feed. LinkedIn is a great content sharing platform but for it to work to drive inbound sales, mix up your content feed. Plan your content calendar and be aware of emerging industry news and trends.

Expand the reach of your content by using Linkedin Pulse, which is a news aggregation feed within LinkedIn. It is designed for members to share self-published content to a target audience, and the platform generates news stories, blog posts, and insights.

3) Position Yourself as an Authority

Social media is a two-way stream, and LinkedIn is a great place to get conversations started. Participate in industry groups (you can start one too!) and share relevant information/tips that people want to read or address specific issues raised in discussions. Nobody wants to associate with a person just posting random or self-promoting content.

You can also position yourself as a trusted resource by taking part in the Q&A section on LinkedIn. Find and answer questions relevant to your expertise and give the best answer. People will start trusting you and following you. Also, a green star will get added to your profile if you have the best answer in your industry.

Being active in professional groups is an excellent way to connect, network, and prospect!

4) Target & Optimise your Posts

If you want your content to be shared and discovered, then make sure it is optimised. Frequently post blogs and articles with visually appealing content, keywords, and tags. This is a very effective way that can help you rank higher in the search engines. You can use SlideShare to draw in readers with visually-stunning content.

Further optimise your content by including attention-grabbing headlines, clear captions, and links.

Create backlinks from your LinkedIn posts to your website, blog, and company LinkedIn page.

Also, experiment with posting at different times and days to understand when your target audience’s engagement rate is high. Track multiple posts and ask, “Which posts have gotten the highest level of engagement and are there any commonalities between them (timing, topic, etc.)?”

5) Ask for an Introduction

One of the most powerful features of LinkedIn is the ability to build a large professional network. Expand your circle by adding co-workers, clients, prospects, etc. and don’t stop here. Sometimes, a future customer is just a connection away. Use mutual connections to get an introduction to the third party, as people are more likely to respond if there is a common ground. Exchange a few pleasantries and you can set yourself up for a call to get additional information or help.

6) Used InMail to make a Connection

The golden ticket of LinkedIn is its InMail feature, which allows you to send a personalised and targeted message to prospects. Use your industry knowledge and research to craft a short and compelling message to your prospect. Tell them who you are, what you do, and include a point of commonality (if there is one). It might surprise you just how a friendly InMail opens the door to a lifelong client relationship!

Quick Refresher!

LinkedIn is a huge arsenal to have in your sales and inbound marketing toolkit. From building connections, increasing visibility, and helping your research prospects, to even making an introduction for you, the social media platform can boost your efforts and ROI in multiple ways. The professional networking site enables you to be more efficient by reducing time spent chasing non-targeted leads and spammy cold calls, to create a lean, sales machine!

Does your inbound marketing strategy include LinkedIn to drive sales? Share how you use this platform with us in the comments section.

As a sales professional, do you want to stay ahead of the game? Then you will have to prepare for customer challenges in advance by pitching better than your competitors.  

How Do You Do That?

By keeping a tab on information about your industry, competitors, benefits of your products or services and of course, pricing and USP.  

And what’s the best way to have this information under one roof? The sales battlecard!

A competitive sales battlecard is a masterpiece that can make sales teams fall for the content well-researched by marketers. It has a clear, concise and actionable piece of information that a sales team can use to win more deals and grow the business.

Crayon’s 2023 State of Competitive Intelligence (CI) report claims that 86% of CI leaders at software companies say they enable their sellers with competitive battlecards.

In this blog, you can expect to read about the sales battlecard, its type, why it is essential for the sales team and what it should include.  

What Is A Sales Battlecard?

A sales battlecard, sometimes referred to as competitor battlecard or kill sheet is an internal document that is designed to provide sales representatives with the detailed information they need to compete effectively against a specific competitor. The battlecard typically includes information about the competitor’s information, as well as their product offerings, pricing, USP, counter questions and positioning in the market.

The purpose of a sales battlecard is to enable sales representatives to effectively position their company’s products or services against the competition and be accountable for answering counter questions raised by potential customers. By providing sales representatives with this information, companies can increase their chances of winning deals and gaining market share.

Types Of Battlecard? 

Companies use various types of sales battlecards to help their sales representatives compete effectively against their competitors. A few of them are listed below:

#1. Competitor-Focused Battlecards:

These battlecards focus primarily on one or more competitors and provide detailed information about their products/services, pricing, positioning and sales strategies. The sales representatives can prepare their pitch accordingly using the detailed information given by their sales enablement team.

#2. Product-Focused Battlecards:

These sales battlecards are based on a particular product or service that competitors are selling. The marketing & sales enablement team provides this information to their sales representatives so they can compare it to similar products offered by competitors.

#3. Question-Based Battlecards:

These cards basically consume relevant information for all the possible questions that your potential customer could ask the salesperson. Sales representatives can use these cards to handle counter questions from customers. Answering such questions helps sales reps to establish good communication with customers.

#4. Value Proposition-Based Battlecards:

These battlecards collect information about target audiences, value propositions, counter questions, opportunity registration process and much more. Not only this, but the value proposition-focused battlecard template captures what value customers are gaining from your product and services.

#5. Market-Focused Battlecards:

These sales battlecards provide details about the overall market landscape, including trends, key players and emerging technologies or solutions. It helps you in the company’s product offering positioning within the context of the market.

#6. Partnership Battlecards:

These cards capture the details or information about the competitor’s partnership with other businesses making it easy for the sales representatives to pitch them accordingly.

#7. Persona-Focused Battlecards:

These battlecards provide information about the different types of buyers or decision-makers that sales representatives may encounter, including their pain points, goals and decision-making criteria. It also helps sales reps to improve the sales process to cater to different personas.

Overall, the type of sales battlecard a company leverages will rely on its specific goals and the competitive geography in which it operates.

Why Does The Sales Team Need A Battlecard?

#1. More Effective Pitch: 

A sales battlecard helps sales reps to deliver a compelling pitch. They don’t have to scramble for information anywhere while entertaining a customer. All the details they require are available at their fingertips.

#2. One Step Ahead Of Competition:

There would be chances where sales representatives might miss a chance to explain their company’s new offerings, features or services on customer calls. In such cases, the sales battlecard helps them stay updated with the new launch and offerings of what’s shaping the industry in terms of growth and competition.

For instance, let us assume one of the competitors has launched a new product that your company already has. In such a scenario, you could include language in the battlecard letting your potential customers know how your product is a frontrunner and available for customers to reap immediate benefits.

#3. Ready For Situational Pitches:

If your sales team is aware of the customer challenges, then it would be easy for them to pitch and cater to clients accordingly. But if not, then you can lose a deal.  

Sales battlecards can help you with this by having a few things in place including what product your customer wants, its shelf life, newly launched features/products, new discount offerings and promotions. So, sales reps can navigate customers in a better way.

#4. Track Competition:

Marketers proactively track competition in a timely manner. However, a sales battlecard helps keep an eye on your competitor’s website, analyse their activities on all platforms to understand what marketing strategies they are leveraging and more.  

What Elements Do You Need To Build A Sales Battlecard? 

Elements of a sales battlecard rely on the type of domain and competitive landscape your industry is dealing with. In general, a sales battlecard comprises the following elements:

1. Competitor Overview:

Sales & marketing are considered to be the ambassadors of an organisation and are expected to be aware of everything about their company including offerings, products/services, positioning, history, geographical presence and so on. Although most of the details are covered on the website, they are not very handy. 

However, creating a sales battlecard with a summary of the competitor’s history, products or services, market position, target audience, strengths and weaknesses can help sales reps to win the customer’s trust.

2. Persona Insights:

The sales battlecard should have information on the ideal facets of buyer personas that the sales team is likely to encounter, including their pain points, motivations and decision-making criteria.  

3.Unique Selling Points:

What are the key features, benefits or capabilities that differentiate the company’s products or services from your competitors? Think about a distinctive aspect of your product and list it down on your sales battlecard.

4. Use Cases Applicable To A Client:

A sales battlecard should have a separate section for use cases to show your clients how you have solved similar business’ real-life challenges. They love to hear what you are thinking about their firm and how you can bridge the gaps they are facing.

5. Industry Trends:

Sales reps should know the latest trends and information shaping their industry, including the overall market landscape, key players and emerging technologies or solutions. A brief overview of industry trends helps sales reps to perform better in client meetings.

6. Answering Counter Questions:

Sales rep should practice situation-based cases to avoid instances when they have no answers to give a potential customer. Include briefly common objections that may arise during the sales process, including when, what and how to respond to questions claimed by the competitor in the sales battlecard.

7. Sales Strategy:

The sales team always does their best to win the deal but guidance on how to effectively sell against the competitors can help them convince clients about your services. You can include strategies for an effective sales process keeping different scenarios in mind before including them in the sales battlecard.

Who Creates The Sales Battlecard?  

Sales battlecards are typically created by marketing or sales enablement teams and are distributed to sales representatives before they can engage with customers. They may be updated periodically to reflect changes in the competitive landscape or the company’s offerings.

Conclusion

A sales battlecard depends on the type of business you have. The good news is that more and more B2B businesses and marketing automation companies are leveraging sales battlecards to get every competitor’s detail handy and improve their sales process. This will help the sales team close more deals.

How TransFunnel can help

TransFunnel, a HubSpot Elite Solutions Partner, can help you align your sales & marketing efforts and ensure optimisation of your sales process for the rapid growth of your business. We have a team of HubSpot experts that can assist you at every step of your sales journey.

Align sales & marketing

With salespersons getting more and more involved in the whole sales-marketing strategy or sale-marketing alignment, they are also crafting personalised approaches, identifying relevant buyer personas, and making sure they are sharing relevant content with their target audience, via social selling. 

What Is Social Selling? 

Social selling refers to the use of social media to look for, connect, establish trust, understand, and nurture relationships with prospects. As a tool now being frequently circulated among salespersons, social selling is driving great results for inbound sales. 

The inbound methodology of sales takes a comprehensive charge of everything, right from the challenges and goals to the needs and preferences of the prospects and customers. Unlike the traditional ways of selling, with inbound sales, the entire focus doesn’t just lie on closing the sale, but on building a strong relationship with prospects and customers and guiding them throughout the sales funnel. 

There are a number of ways in which you can increase your inbound sales with the power of social media. Let us traverse through how salespersons, who increase 16% of the company’s revenue through social selling, can make the most of it. 

Leveraging Twitter Connections

The key is to always listen as your prospects are highly likely to post something that can be immensely insightful to you. Twitter, after all, is a platform for creating and leveraging connections, just like LinkedIn. As it’s widely used to express personal opinions, following trends, and leveraging the latest hashtags, it can come really handy. When you keep a track of these attributes of user behaviour, you gain successful opportunities for initiating conversations, answering relevant questions, and creating useful connections. 

Using Full Power of LinkedIn

LinkedIn has a unique feature called “LinkedIn Saved Search” that lets you create a search specific to your ideal customer profile. You are notified whenever someone that matches the profile joins the network. The following steps will help you achieve this :

• Perform a search with the LinkedIn search field
• Enter desired criteria including job title, industry
• Click on search
• Scroll down to relationship box
• Go on to the second level on connections
• Click on save search

The second level of connections indicates the fact that you have something in common. This speeds up the process of getting introduced to your prospect. You can then decide the frequency of being notified of these prospects. In “receive notifications” of your saved search, add whether you want to receive these notifications weekly or monthly. 

Publishing On LinkedIn Private Groups

Driving inbound sales? Why not leverage one of the most effective platforms of social media? 40 million users on LinkedIn are in the position of decision making while 61 million members are senior-level influencers. LinkedIn’s publishing groups let you write and share insightful material to entice your audience that you aren’t yet connected with. It translates to exposing you to a sea of prospects and letting you target them with the right content. Inbound sales are all about creating the pull to lead your audience to you instead of pushing them to buy. Personalise your content in accordance with the persona you tap into and start getting responses and queries from them. 

Keep Listening

With the help of marketing automation and CRM, conduct insightful research by entering your targeted keywords and stay announced when anyone talks or shows interest in what you have to offer. For example, if you add the keyword ‘Hubspot’, whenever anyone posts anything related to it, you will get notified. This enables you to initiate conversations that can act as catalysts towards increasing engagement and therefore, conversions. Even if the prospect isn’t making an immediate buying decision, you have already captured their attention and they are likely to recall you when the need arises.

Get Your Research Right

Personal information on your prospects is just a click away as almost everyone has at least one profile on social media. In addition to this, with the help of marketing automation and CRM, you can now fill in the required information to maintain records to be used in your campaigns. These tools save a great deal of time for inbound salespersons, letting them invest the share in strategy and implementation. But, as a salesperson, you need to have your research done right. Indulge in understanding your personas thoroughly, ask the marketing teams to educate you on their strategies, and always be “listening”.

Sharing Relevant Content Across Platforms

Only creating connections on social media alone might not fully work to your advantage. It is imperative to engage and constantly connect with them. Cold calls and voicemails no longer serve the purpose they did decades ago. Unless you are sharing information that will interest them, your efforts may not yield full-proof results. The number of active users on social media are showing an upward trend and are bound to only increase in the coming years. To tap into these smart consumers, the inbound salesperson needs to strategically integrate the potency of social media and use content to the best of its merit to drive the best results. 

Quick Refresher

Be it crafting personalised content or answering your prospects’ queries, you can drive great engagement and create long term relationships via social selling. Help your prospects through their decision-making process by providing them with information that is relevant and establishes trust. With everyone living in the wake of social media, it is even more important for salespersons to go social and increase conversions, more importantly, establish fruitful relationships.

Do you ever ask yourself why some web pages turn potential visitors into loyal buyers, while others fail completely? There is one thing responsible for this difference – knowing what a sales funnel is and how to lead the client through it properly.

A sales funnel can be described as a map on which a large number of potential clients at the top become loyal customers at the bottom. Regardless of whether you want to learn more about creating an enterprise sales funnel, work with a b2b sales funnel, or discover sales funnels for beginners, the key principle stays the same.

In this guide, we will share all the essential steps to build a sales funnel. You will learn how to:

• Engage and lead prospects down the funnel with the help of free assessments, demos and expectations.
• Manage the “Nurture to Close” stage efficiently by optimizing response time.
• Make your prospects become buyers by offering appropriate incentives.
• Apply sales funnel best practices starting with identifying client pain points.

Are you ready to manage your sales funnel and close more deals? Dive right in!

Tell A Relevant Story Based On The Funnel Stages

It is the Sales funnel that pushes your leads into becoming customers. Also called as a sales pipeline, conversion funnel or marketing funnel, it is an end source for marketers to add new traffic to a website and then nurture them down through different stages until they land on your revenue generating department – sales, often supported by tools like HubSpot Sales Hub.

Industries across e-commerce, technology and business services are driven by the sales funnel. Not just that, recruiters and B2B companies also focus on sales funnel best practices while looking for clients or businesses.

Tell Your Story

The story your brand speaks is the reason people choose to buy from you. The catch here is how relevant it is to your customer. Your customer’s story is similar, but it goes even deeper: It talks about who they are, what they need and how relevant your product or service is to them.

All you have to do is understand what you are trying to fulfil. Why do you want this? Who are you trying to serve and what will your customer get if they pick you?

Story at Every Stage

How you tell a relevant story depends on the level of the sales funnel you target your customers and how effectively your sales enablement process supports the buyer journey. Your audience at the top of the sales funnel is wider. Your content here is not specific to a particular segmented audience. It caters to a larger crowd. However, this is different when you want to focus on middle and bottom of the sales funnel. The narration of your story becomes different at these two stages to narrow down the wider audience to fit into the intent and decision stages of the sales funnel.

Use content marketing as a part of this process: Send relevant articles and videos; create case studies; provide longer-form content (such as white papers) that educates prospects further about your product/service offerings.

How to engage and push leads down the marketing funnel

•     Qualify leads
•     Set expectations
•     Offer a sale
•     Ask for the business (and contact information)
•     Offer assessments, demos and consultations for free

Click here for HubSpot Onboarding: Difference between Marketing Hub vs Sales Hub

Nurture to Close

Never give up is the mantra here! Keep nurturing your leads until they are ready to make a purchase or at least looking for more information about it.

Response Time  

When a prospect reaches out to you via email, social media or any other channel of contact with your business, make sure that you are able to respond within 24 hours (or 48 hours with prior intimation as a thank you message in case of a form fill).

Close the Deal

At this point, you’ve made your pitch and convinced your lead to make a purchase. Now it’s time for them to actually make a purchase. These can be some of the possible situations:

•     They could choose not to buy from you
•     You can offer an incentive or discount if they decide that now would be a good time for them to take their business elsewhere
•     You can offer them a product or service related specifically towards what they were looking for when speaking with you as an incentive

Sales Funnel Best Practices

The first step in creating a sales funnel is to define the problem/pain point before you begin. This establishes that you know exactly how your product or service can solve the problem for your customers. You cannot move ahead without this.

Once you’ve identified the problem, it’s important that you set goals for achieving those results. Be ambitious but realistic. You can think of tangible fitness goals as examples:

•     2 pounds lost per week
•     10 push-ups each day

Conclusion

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to sales funnel. You will be able to create an effective sales funnel to generate more leads and close more deals by taking into consideration your end goal and the pain points of your customers. Tailoring your marketing automation strategy accordingly is key.

TransFunnel is a marketing automation and inbound marketing solutions company that can help you with the right strategies aligned with the sales funnel.

Your leads deserve a funnel that actually converts. We’ll help you get there. Let’s Build Your Funnel!

According to Harvard Business Review, ineffective sales pipeline management can push businesses to grow by a mere 4.6%. But they can expect a growth of 15% if businesses plan and execute the right marketing strategies with the right techniques.

This implementation brings an average growth rate of 5.3% to businesses. However, opting for strategic sales management techniques, including well-defined sales processes, pipeline management and spending time training sales managers also led to a boost of 28% in business revenue.

This guide covers all the fundamentals you need to know about sales pipeline management and the difference between sales pipeline and sales funnel.

What is sales pipeline?

The sales pipeline visually shows the various stages involved in the sales process before a prospect turns into a customer. It is a systematic approach to managing the sales process and pushing prospects or leads to the next stage.

Different stages of the sales pipeline

The sales pipeline is divided into several stages where a prospect goes through several stages before becoming a customer. These sale pipeline stages can vary depending on the organisation’s sales process, but they generally include:

1. Suspect:

At this initial stage, you have a long list of leads with some potential customers interested in your products/services. These potential leads are results of your marketing efforts, personal contact or other activities. However, you need to filter out the potential leads which have a high intent of buying your product.

2. Prospect:

Technically, prospects are those who are highly interested in buying your products and services. However, according to your business mode of communication, start communicating with your first lead.

A recent study in 2023 by Leadsquared reveals that salespeople can better contact prospects on channels such as LinkedIn (21%), SMS (21%), social media (18%), and in-person at industry events (34%) and email.

3. Analysis:

Understanding your customer’s buying potential and interest is an integral part of accomplishing their needs before pitching your products/services. Generally, salespeople at this stage analyse the root causes, requirements, needs of prospects and determine how their product can meet customers objectives and solve challenges.

4. Negotiation:

A novice salesperson may be afraid of ending up losing a deal if somehow failed to convince prospect. At this stage, prospects are interested in your product but not completely convinced about the next step. All your efforts can be vain if not tackled in the right manner. But the expert can change the whole game with a blink of an eye.

The negotiation can be a monetary, feature-based, trial period, service duration and much more. However, use discounts, free trials, offers and real case studies to boost the process.

5. Closing:

Finally! A big sigh of relief. The sale is finalised at this stage and your customer is convinced to buy your product/ services and ready to become your paying customer.

6. Order:

Conversion is a selling part, but customer retention is a winning deal. At this stage, the salesperson follows up with the customer at regular intervals to ensure customer satisfaction and discover opportunities for new sales.

Let’s understand at which stage you need to put more effort into improving your sales process.

How to improve sales pipeline management?

As per a recent report by Harvard Business Review, companies with an effective sales pipeline management process achieve 28% higher growth in ROI.  We’ve put together the best sales pipeline management tips and push your business one more step toward growth.

1. Never miss a follow-up :

Follow-up is the third most challenging practice for sales teams. However, having proper sales pipeline management will give you a quick recap of which leads need to follow up timely. HubSpot CRM tool automates processes and reminds you to follow up at a specific time and date.

2. Improve documentation :

The sales process may seem simple and achievable on paper but quite complex to execute. In contrast, documentation can standardise the complete sales process and help salespeople to understand their next step. Moreover, using a sales management tool like HubSpot CRM can optimise documentation and lets you learn the sales process through interactive UI.

3. Create resources for sales enablement :

95% of buyers choose brands who assist for content plan at every stage of purchasing process. However, aligning your sales & marketing teams must ensure the content produced is in sync with the requirements and needs of what customers are looking for.

4. Visualise your sales pipeline to identify bottlenecks :

Analysing potential leads across the sales pipeline gives you a quick insight into the directions your efforts lead to. Further, collating all data in one place manually is tiresome but automation makes it easy for you. HubSpot CRM can help you generate real-time data and reports.

5. Speed up processes with automation :

Ideally, 4-6 months is the average deal closing duration for novice customers. However, businesses should decrease each sales pipeline stage’s time to maximise sales revenue. HubSpot CRM can help in automating the lead nurturing stage and speed up the entire sales process. Real-time sales analytics data can help you manage sales pipelines.

Why build your sales pipeline management?

Sales pipeline management refers to the process of organising and managing the various phases that lead to a sale, from lead generation to closing the deal.

Here are some of the advantages of effective sales pipeline management:

1. Increased accountability:

Sales pipeline management helps you assign different responsibilities and track the progress of the salesperson responsible for each stage of the sales process. This can increase accountability among team members and ensure deals are closed in a timely manner.

2. Improved customer experience:

By tracking your customers’ progress through the sales pipeline, you can personalise your sales approach and provide a better customer experience.

3. Better collaboration:

Sales pipeline management provides a centralised platform for tracking and sharing information about potential customers and deals. This can facilitate collaboration among team members and help them work together more effectively.

4. Improve forecasting :

Sales pipeline management allows you to forecast your sales revenue more accurately, which can help you plan and budget more effectively.

5. Increase total sale volumes and revenue :

By managing your sales pipeline effectively, you can identify potential customers and opportunities early on, which can help you close more deals and increase your sales.

How to build your sales pipeline management?

All the stages in the sales process are benchmarks in the sales pipeline that ensure you are a step closer to cracking the deal.

To track your marketing and sales efforts and performance, you need to follow these steps:

1. Track progress and performance at each sales stage
2. Set pipeline goals to break down targets into achievable milestones.
3. Don’t let leads stagnate
4. Track, record and analyse sales pipeline metrics

Difference between sales pipeline and sales funnel

A better way to understand this is to assume a sales funnel to be a pipe with different stages and a fixed end. Through this, the leads are filtered at every stage and reach the end. The only leads that reach the end enter into the stage of a sales pipeline.

Let’s understand some major differences between both:

Key takeaway

By tracking your prospects’ progress through the sales pipeline, sales teams can identify potential bottlenecks and areas for improvement in the sales process.

If you want to boost your sales process and experience seamless tracking to analyse and improve the same, then a marketing automation consultant is the right choice for you.

TransFunnel has helped many businesses align their sales and marketing teams with the help of the right marketing automation strategies and training.

Align your teams to speed up your business with hubspot sales & marketing alignment