Wen Shaw, CEO & Founder of Cooby, a WhatsApp sales platform (Forbes 100 to Watch).
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In the last decade, sales tech has been revolutionized, in particular, thanks to the rise of groundbreaking sales engagement tools.
However, this boom has sparked a critical issue: rampant sales email proliferation.
Working with numerous late-stage startups worldwide, I've seen a clear pattern: As sales engagement tools gain traction, the power of outbound sales emails plummets. This isn't speculative; it's a concrete challenge these fast-growing companies face daily. These startups experience 100 times revenue growth in five years! But with this explosive growth, their sales mechanisms are drowning in emails, transforming a once key strategy into a cluttered, ineffective mess.
This article cuts to the heart of this email overload crisis, offering sharp, actionable strategies to conquer and excel in today's dynamic sales arena.
Challenge: Sales Email Proliferation
Prospects today face an abundance of emails, often of low quality and irrelevant to their needs. This information overload can make it difficult for your messages to stand out and capture their attention. Furthermore, email service providers (ESPs) like Gmail and Yahoo have become more stringent in cracking down on spam, imposing strict thresholds to maintain deliverability rates. This challenge extends beyond prospecting, affecting the entire sales process.
Solution 1: Switch To Intent-Based Outbound
To combat the challenges of email proliferation, sales teams can adopt an intent-based outbound strategy. By leveraging product, marketing and third-party data, warm outbound leads with strong intent can be identified among the larger pool of prospects. Building a robust data tech stack that combines multiple data sources, such as email marketing tools, website analytics and product usage, is crucial in creating an effective scoring model.
When you evaluate solutions, remember to focus on:
• Intent Identification And Data Integration: Find solutions that identify high-intent leads and seamlessly connect with your existing tech stack for a unified view and data-driven lead scoring.
• Customization And Actionable Insights: Look for solutions that allow you to tailor lead scoring to your specific needs and provide actionable recommendations beyond just identifying leads.
Meanwhile, try to avoid vendor lock-in and black-box models. Choose solutions offering data portability and transparency in scoring models.
By focusing on these key considerations, you can leverage technology effectively to navigate email fatigue and identify high-quality sales leads.
Solution 2: Connect Beyond Emails
Expanding communication channels beyond emails is another key solution. While LinkedIn offers great prospects, it is also saturated with recruiting messages. Exploring alternative channels like messaging, such as texting in the U.S. and WhatsApp in the rest of the world, has proven to be effective.
In fact, WhatsApp has been one of the most underrated sales channels. WhatsApp has a whopping 98% open rate, compared to 20% open rate for emails. Messaging encourages quick feedback loops and elicits more authentic responses, allowing you to stay on top of your deals and gain a real understanding of customer perspectives.
Solution 3: Managers Need To Dig Deeper Than Deals
High-quality conversations are the cornerstone of successful deal closures. As winning through volume becomes increasingly challenging, the focus must shift to delivering quality interactions. Managers play a crucial role by coaching their teams on conducting high-quality conversations with prospects. These conversations not only lead to deal closures but also provide valuable insights into customers, product enhancements and market trends. Leverage conversational intelligence tools to gain actionable insights from these interactions.
Conclusion
Sales technology is evolving, with a growing reliance on AI and data to overcome challenges in a highly competitive market and a prospect base wary of email spam. To stay ahead of the competition and meet market demands, companies must update their sales tech stack. By targeting warm outbound leads through intent-based strategies, connecting with prospects through multiple channels and leveraging conversational intelligence, sales teams can deliver the perfect pitch and drive success in the modern sales landscape.
Remember, the key to thriving in the sales tech evolution is embracing innovation and leveraging the power of data and AI to adapt to changing dynamics and customer preferences.
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