According to HubSpot, 75% of companies say “closing more deals” remains their top priority. That’s not surprising considering growth relies on an increase in sales over time. However, sales can be a tricky game. You need an air-tight business development strategy to stay in it.
In our years of experience with businesses from a range of industries, there are some common holes in business development strategies. The key is to identify these shortcomings early and patch them up with a lasting solution.
Which of these common holes are causing your sales pain?
1. Lead Scoring
There’s a lot out there about how to gain leads, but not nearly enough about how to rate them. Lead scoring has two components: evaluating a prospect’s profile and rating their interactions with sales and marketing efforts. Both hinge on quality data in your CRM.
Quality data starts with being intentional about how you gather information. Make a plan on what you’re recording and where, share it with your team, and enforce regular, proper data gathering. Part of determining what data you gather is how you’ll score each sales and marketing interaction. See a sample lead scoring matrix below to get you started on what data to track and how to rate it.
2.) Prospect Progress
Businesses often struggle with moving prospects through the buyer’s journey. A common issue here is a lack of follow up. The solution is a defined outreach cadence, adapted for each buyer persona. This form of professional persistence is a set plan for how often to reach out to an unresponsive contact, by which means, and what to say. For effective outreach, adapt each cadence to various persona needs, include multiple types of outreach, and vary content.
3.) Lead Drop Off
A common prospect progress issue is lead drop off. This is when a lead is moving through the buyer’s journey but suddenly disappears. According to research by Gartner, up to 70% of these leads are lost from poor follow-up. Improving outreach cadence can have a positive influence, but other issues may be at the heart of this drop off.
One possible cause is a lack of engaging content. Your outreach cadence should be matched with the right content to move prospects through the buyer’s journey. Draw in leads with fact sheets, get them engaged with whitepapers, and connect with them through engaging client stories. Personalize content along the way to make it even more effective.
4.) Closing the Deal
Once you got your leads through the sales funnel, it’s time to close the deal. Deal closing is wrapped up in what you do leading up to that point: it’s a culmination of the right cadence and content, delivered by a competent salesperson. Here is where experience, training, and mentorship come into play. Build a successful sales team with all three of these elements, and you’ll rarely worry about bringing a deal to close.
Leverage Salesforce® Accelerator to Fill in Your Gaps
Whether your team is faced with one or all of these common development gaps, we have the right tool to fill them in. From our 70+ years of experience in sales, we at NuGrowth have developed the NuGrowth Accelerator app for Salesforce.
Loaded with built-in buyer persona profiling, custom call cadences, and content templates, Accelerator has all you need to ramp up your business development strategy to its full potential.
Find out how our over 150 clients gained $373 million in pipeline revenue and $107 million in closed revenue: get in touch today at 614.304.3922 or sales@nugrowth.com.
Sarah Deak is a veteran copywriter and content strategist with NuGrowth Solutions. She likes to look for the unexpected angle and uses her background in education, business development, and marketing to create interesting and informative pieces to equip readers with actionable data