There’s always some level of uncertainty in the world of sales. Sometimes a particularly motivated buyer suddenly goes silent, and sometimes a big, mouthwatering deal closes sooner than expected. It’s all part of the excitement of the job. But sometimes external changes bring new kinds of uncertainty, like when there’s an economic downturn, or when you switch from field sales to inside sales, or when both happen at the same time. You may feel like you don’t know how to do your job anymore.
If this is how you feel right now, here are five tips to turn your current challenges into opportunities.
How to Sell Through Uncertainty
The way people shop has changed dramatically in recent weeks. The days of handshake deals over coffee have been put on hold, and many are wondering how sellers will adjust.
Is it still possible to build a pipeline and sell in a remote and faltering world?
Here are 5 tips to help you manage your sales pipeline and efforts in times of uncertainty:
Checking Reality
When reality is chaotic and confusing, nothing helps more instagram database than a healthy dose of data. HubSpot has been releasing weekly benchmark data to help you decide when short- or long-term adjustments to your strategy may be needed.
Some recent data HubSpot found:
Weekly average sales call volume has maintained a rough 20% decline from pre-COVID averages, but the number of meetings booked increased from about 7% below previous averages in the first few weeks to 10% above averages.
Closed deals improved 9% week-over-week, but closed deal volume is still 22% lower than pre-COVID averages.
Sales teams created 8% more deals than the week of April 13. This is an improvement, but still trending 15% below pre-COVID levels.
Target Growth
During any economic downturn, headlines tend to focus on right time for example you can trigger struggling industries, but every downturn has a silver lining. But people and businesses that experience that silver lining sometimes need help adjusting to these economic changes and can afford to get that help. If your solution isn’t tied to a specific industry, expand your target market to include sectors where growth is happening.
Businesses in these industries may already be searching for your solution. If your website has HubSpot’s tracking code installed, you can use the Prospects tool to see a list of companies that have visited your website. You can filter them by industry, size, location, and a variety of other factors.
Increase Engagement
Our data shows that chat volume has been steadily increasing over the past two months, and we believe this number will continue to grow. Conversational sms to data marketing offers a real-time way to answer customer questions and automate the lead routing process to enable your business to serve potential and existing customers, even when your team is out of the office.
Improve Personalization
We don’t know about you, but we find a lot of emails in our inbox from companies we haven’t heard from in years. Unfortunately, in many cases, I can’t figure out why they thought I was interested in those emails, especially now.