Sales development is such an important - yet too often misunderstood - aspect of any company, including early stage startups. A strong sales strategy requires considerable planning and execution, as even the slightest mistake has the potential to ruin any progress a company has made. Luckily, this post by Warsaw Founder Institute Mentor, Rudradeb Mitra, outlines the most common sales development mistakes to avoid and what to do instead.
The article, "New sales development for 8 tech companies: 5 common mistakes and lessons learned", originally appeared on Linkedin and has been republished below with permission.
Tech sales representative is one of the most difficult jobs - it requires a versatile set of skills including knowledge of both technology and sales which is a rare find. Many companies struggle with finding a good sales representative, so a few months ago I decided to take up the challenge of building a tech sales platform. The goal is to help tech companies develop new sales internationally.
Over the past 5 months, I worked with 8 companies (from the US, Europe, and India) driving their sales development. I also interacted with CEOs / VP Sales of over 30 small and medium-sized enterprises learning about their sales strategies and processes. In hindsight, I realize that most of the companies I interacted with make the same mistakes that I did running the sales development.
Mistake 1: I was not prospecting targets smartly
I did not spend enough time on prospecting - identifying companies based on criterion like ‘Which companies have the biggest need for the product I am selling and what problems they face without the product?’, ‘Where do the companies search for the solution of the problems’, ‘Who are the decision makers in those companies and how can I reach to them most effectively’.
Instead, I, like most, took the easy route.
Got a database, wrote a well-crafted email template, send bulk emails and hoped people will respond back. Some did but the quality of people who responded was not my first priority targets and those who did respond were just fishing around - often not the best leads to follow. Worse, since no high-value target replied I presumed they are not interested.
Does the above process sound familiar? This is how many startups and SMEs drive their sales.
Problem with the above strategy:
Most of the decision makers in good companies are very smart people and are easily able to identify bulk emails, no matter how personalized the template is. They do not reply to such bulk ‘spam’ emails - I know I will not respond. If you want a response from me, write a personal email giving a good reason Why should I be interested and How did you get to know me.
Changed strategy:
Instead of running a cold email campaign I started spending much more time on identifying prospects. Then select ~10 companies each week and focus on those 10 companies.
For example, in one case after considerable analysis, I identified that top prospects will be a companies growing fast and have a development office in a certain country. Within 3 days I was able to get a hot lead and this one deal, once converted, will achieve the sales target for next 6 months.
Lesson learned: Spend time and effort on prospecting, select few top prospects and chase them. Running cold email campaigns on a large database does not work well.
Mistake 2: My tasks were not goal oriented
At the beginning of every week, I made a list of task to do and go on to execute the task. Our weekly task list looked something as below:
Problem with the above strategy:
I was deciding on the daily/weekly task without connecting them to a particular goal. So I was missing the bigger picture behind a given task. And if a task was not giving the desired results, I was not able to effectively adapt it to achieve the goal. Additionally, since multiple tasks were not connected under one goal, I was not able to see how the failure of one task impacted the other task.
Changed strategy:
Be in life, building a company or driving sales - answering the why question helps us to keep the focus. Connecting a goal with a task helped me to answer the why question.
I follow a weekly sales sprint model where we connect every task to a goal. And we also identify 2-3 key questions whose answers we want to find in the sprint.
Lesson learned: Connect task to a goal. This helps in keeping the focus, adapting the task, changing other connected task and keeping the motivation high even when results do not show up as desired.
Mistake 3: I did not spend enough time to know the seller’s existing clients and sales process
When I started working with a company, the majority of the time I spent with them was to know their product well, what are its benefits, what is the unique selling point etc.
Problem with the above strategy:
I didn't know how the seller company acquired their first customers or who are their best customers. Why their existing customers decided to work them. Some of the companies I am working with exist over 10 years and have a long list of clients.
Knowing answers to these questions would have saved a lot of my time. In one case, I was working with a development company with revenue of ~$1M. After 4 weeks of work, I found out that what I learned could have learned before just by spending more time on understanding their existing clients.
Lesson learned: Get to really know the client list of the seller company. Ask the following questions to the sales head or the CEO of the seller company
- Who are our best customer
- Why they became customers
- Why they still buy from us
- Why do prospects choose us over other similar products
(The above questions are taken from Who and Why Questions, Chapter 5 of the book 'New Sales. Simplified'.)
Mistake 4: Wasted too much time talking to the lower level managers
While driving sales of a fashion tech company, we were reaching out to purchasing managers of retailers and wholesalers. Often they were rude and not willing to talk. Soon we realized that people in lower management a) are ready to talk only when they have a purchasing requirement, b) work to keep their job so often not willing to accept new products and c) are often unhappy in their work and thus rude.
Changed strategy:
In his book 'New Sales. Simplified', Mike Wienberg advised to directly reach out to the top executives. Following his advice, when I started reaching out to CEO/top executive I found the discussions to be a lot more strategic. They were able to see the value of a product much more than lower management. In some cases, I was able to create the demand even if initially they did not see a requirement. I realized that top-level executives have the power and vision to adapt which low-level managers don’t.
Lesson learned: Reach out to top-level executives like CIO/CTO. It is easier to talk to the top level executive than lower level managers.
Mistake 5: I wanted quick results and was too quick to change direction.
In a couple of cases, I agreed to take up the sales of a company for 1 or 2 months. The company wanted to see quick results so we ended up setting unrealistic goals and if we cannot see results in a week or so, we ended up not pursuing a path and changing direction.
Lessons learned: Set a minimum timeline of 3 months. New sales development is difficult, so set realistic targets in the beginning.
Some final tips:
- Write down the call scripts, all the possible objections and questions a prospect may have and how to deal with it helps in rehearsing as well as building confidence in the sales executive making the calls.
- Write down the sales process - How to identify and classify prospects, How to reach out to hot prospects, What to do when a prospect converts to leads etc.
- Record the calls. I have seen that by recording all the sales calls and reviewing it afterward, I can identify a lot of my mistakes and improve my future calls.
Some of my lessons and tips may seem obvious to seasoned sales professionals but I came across many who make these mistakes. I hope this article can help them. Finally, I would like to give special thanks to Mike Wienberg for writing his book ‘New Sales. Simplified’. A must-read for anyone interested to do new sales development.
