It seems as though the world of selling gets more complex and challenging every year. Consequently, salespeople are always looking for an edge — a tool, a process, or a technology that helps them become more efficient and more productive. I found such an edge when I deployed HubSpot’s Sales Pro Tool. It’s a sales enablement tool that’s part of HubSpot’s Growth Stack. I use it all day every day. Here are five ways it has made me a better sales person.
The biggest challenge when prospecting for new business is knowing who to call. Most salespeople “kiss a lot of frogs” when they’re prospecting for new business, because building target prospect lists has always been a bit of guessing game. You do your best to identify the companies and contacts who seem to be a good fit for your solution, but it’s far from being a perfect science.
The Notification feature of HubSpot Sales Pro adds a bit more certainty to the equation. HubSpot sends me a notification every time one of my prospects revisits my website, opens one of my emails, clicks on a link in an email, or downloads a document I sent them. If I’m going to spend hours dialing the phone to talk to prospects, I’d rather reach out to people who are demonstrating an interest in my company and my services. Having that level of insight into who to call can virtually eliminate the cold call.
It is said that timing is everything. It’s true in life and in sports. But it’s probably more true in business — or more specifically, sales. I may have what I think is the perfect prospect list, but that doesn’t mean they’re ready to talk to me. They may not have the problem my solution solves. They may have the problem, but the corresponding pain hasn’t reach a level that requires their attention yet. Or they may not have the budget to deal with the problem. Or their boss is on vacation. Or their assistant is on maternity leave. Or their favorite team just lost a big game. There are any number of issues that can impact the timing of engaging with a prospect. If we only had a crystal ball.
The Notification feature of HubSpot Sales Pro provides real-time notification of website re-visits, email opens, clicks, and document downloads. It tells me not just who is interacting with me digitally, but when that interaction occurs. I can now align the timing of my call to the timing of their interest.
Sales is a process. More accurately, sales is a series of processes. Many processes (especially those at the top-of-the-funnel) can be repetitive. For example, the same introductory or follow-up email is often sent to multiple prospects. The recipient may change, but the content of the email remains the same. Many sales people waste hours each week retyping the same email over and over again. More savvy reps have advanced to copying and pasting, but that can still be a time consuming and mind-numbing process.
The Template feature of HubSpot Sales Pro provides salespeople with the ability to write an email once, store it as a template, and then reuse/resend that email to multiple people with just one click. The emails can still be personalized, customized and edited, but they don’t have to be rewritten multiple times. Further, HubSpot provides analytics regarding the performance of each email template. This helps salespeople to continuously optimize their email communication over time.
Most of the sales leads that salespeople work are not “hot” leads that will close this month. They are “warm” leads that may not close until next quarter or even next year. Neglecting these “not-ready-to-buy-yet” leads will negatively impact future revenue. These leads need to be nurtured. However, establishing reminder “ticklers” and maintaining ongoing communication with these leads can be a complex and time consuming process.
The Sequences feature of HubSpot Sales Pro allows salespeople to build mini “workflows” to ensure ongoing, long-term communication with a prospect. A sequence of email templates can be easily constructed by simply clicking and dragging to put them in the appropriate order. You can then specify when you want each template in the sequence to be sent. Once the sequence is built it can be scheduled and sent with just a click. One click to send up to 5 emails to a prospect over a period of days, weeks or even months. Nurturing leads has never been easier.
So much business these days is conducted via email. While email can be a great tool to facilitate communication with our prospects, it can be a bit cumbersome and clunky in some situations. One example is scheduling a meeting or call with a prospect. A prospect replies to an email and says they’re interested in scheduling a call to learn more about your solution. You reply to their reply with days and times you’re available. They then reply to your reply (of their reply) with the time that works best for them. You then send an invitation to make sure the meeting is on everyone’s calendar. That’s a lot of back and forth just to schedule a 15-minute call. Depending on everyone’s responsiveness, it can sometimes take several days to nail down a meeting.
The Meetings feature of HubSpot Sales Pro eliminates several steps and simplifies the process. Salespeople can include a link to their calendar in every email they send. If a prospect is interested in scheduling a call, they only need to click on the link to gain visibility into the salesperson’s availability. They then can select a time that is mutually convenient. When they do, HubSpot sends calendar invitations to both parties — the prospect and the sale person — and the meeting is added to both calendars.
HubSpot Sales Pro offers a lot of “bang for the buck.” It costs just $50 per user per month and, like all HubSpot products, it’s easy to install and implement. You don’t have to be a HubSpot Marketing or CRM user for the Sales Pro tool to work, but it does integrate nicely with both. Want to try out HubSpot Sales Pro for yourself? Just click below and I'll walk you through a demo.