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Lead sourcing is the process of finding prospects who are interested in what your company has to offer. It involves identifying and contacting the right leads to increase sales and save time and resources in the process.As you expand your lead generation efforts and the number of leads goes up, it can be difficult to focus on the right leads and improve your sales efficiency. This is where using a B2B contact database comes into play.Before delving into B2B contact databases, let's first explore the fundamentals.

<h2>What is B2B Data?&nbsp;</h2>In simple words, B2B data is data that you have on other businesses. You can use this data for your marketing and sales campaigns, monitoring your client’s financial health, and so on.There are two types of B2B data: Objective and Enriched.&nbsp;ObjectiveObjective data refers to information on the company’s current situation. Objective data includes:&nbsp;<ul><li>Contact lists&nbsp;</li><li>Company location</li><li>Financial information&nbsp;</li><li>Parent or subsidiary companies&nbsp;</li><li>Stakeholders</li></ul>…and so on.&nbsp;Enriched Data&nbsp;Enriched data, on the other hand, involves enhancing the objective data you already have. For example, if you have someone’s username, you can look them up on a relevant database to extract their first and last names, department, designation, etc.So, enriched data is essentially supplementing or completing the data you already have. Examples of enriched data are:&nbsp;<ul><li>Credit score&nbsp;</li><li>Insolvency risk&nbsp;</li><li>Growth propensity</li></ul>

<h2>Getting B2B Data&nbsp;</h2>There are two primary ways to get more B2B data. Through:&nbsp;<ul><li>Public channels&nbsp;</li><li>Private channels&nbsp;&nbsp;</li></ul>Public Channels&nbsp;Public channels are well…public sources of information. Websites, news articles, social media profiles, etc., are public channels that you can use to get the information you need (objective data).Private Channels&nbsp;Private channels help you fetch enriched data. These channels are accessible only to subscribers. Data-as-a-service (DaaS) providers like Xignite and Urban Mapping are examples of private channels.&nbsp;

<h2>What is a B2B Contact Database?</h2>A B2B contact database is a collection of contact information of all your prospects. A B2B database helps you:&nbsp;<ul><li>Identify the most promising prospects&nbsp;</li><li>Centralize all your prospect and client-related details&nbsp;</li><li>Enrich your internal data records</li></ul>

<h2>How to Choose the Right B2B Contact Database&nbsp;</h2>With tons of B2B contact databases on the market to choose from, it can be difficult to make the right choice if you do not know what to look for. Here are a few factors you ought to keep in mind in your search for your ideal B2B leads database:Data Accuracy&nbsp;One of the most critical factors to account for while choosing a B2B contact database is data accuracy. You want to stay away from contact databases with errors in their data. By errors, we mean:<ul><li>Outdated information&nbsp;</li><li>Spellings&nbsp;</li><li>Inconsistency&nbsp;</li><li>Duplicate information&nbsp;&nbsp;</li></ul>Many contact databases sell you volumes of data, as opposed to accurate, valid data. The problem that these contact databases do not address is data decay.Data decay is the deterioration of data quality in sales and marketing teams over time. According to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.datasciencecentral.com/data-enrichment-benefits-increase-sales-efficiency-amp-customer/">Data Science Central</a>, data decays at a rate of 30% per year.&nbsp;Data Enrichment&nbsp;As you look for the right B2B contact database, you ought to look for one that has all the records filled and recorded.&nbsp;While not every field has to be completed, a few fundamental ones have to be stored and recorded to help you prepare for calls, understand your audience and prospects, and segregate your leads based on behavior.Examples of fundamental details are:&nbsp;<ul><li>Prospect name&nbsp;</li><li>Email address&nbsp;</li><li>Location&nbsp;</li><li>Budget&nbsp;</li></ul>..etc.Support and Service&nbsp;You need to ask yourself if you think the B2B contact database in question supports your vision and requirements. Does your data provider understand your needs as a business? Or is it only focused on giving you high volumes of data?Do they offer consultations to discuss your strategies and progress to enhance your experience with their contact database?If you cannot answer these questions with a YES, you’re better off not going for such a B2B contact database.&nbsp;

<h2>How to Create a B2B Contact Database&nbsp;</h2>Here are a few steps you ought to follow to set up your B2B contact database:&nbsp;1. Create Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)&nbsp;Your&nbsp;<a href="https://accelerate.outplayhq.com/hubfs/ICP%20Questionnaire.pdf">ICP</a> is the profile of your ideal customer - someone who is most likely to purchase your product or service, benefit from it, and stick to your brand long-term.Determining your ICP will:&nbsp;<ul><li>Help your marketing team run productive and specific campaigns and create the type of content your prospects are looking for.</li><li>Help your sales team identify leads who are ready for a sales call and potentially make a purchase.&nbsp;</li></ul>In other words, creating your ICP helps you avoid wasting time on the wrong leads, thereby saving you tons of time and money in the process.Read this&nbsp;<a href="https://outplayhq.com/blog/how-to-understand-sales-intelligence-a-guide">article</a> for more on ICP.2. Get a Lead Source&nbsp;You can either build your own lead source manually, use our&nbsp;<a href="https://outplayhq.com/chrome-extension">chrome extension</a> to capture leads, or buy a B2B contact database after carefully considering the factors we’ve mentioned earlier. If you want to build your own lead source, you can (and should) use a variety of methods, including:&nbsp;<ul><li>Checking sites like LinkedIn, Upwork, etc., to find leads&nbsp;</li><li>Creating blogs and other long-form content for the search engine to attract inbound leads&nbsp;</li><li>Creating written, image, and video content for social media to attract inbound leads&nbsp;</li><li>Personalized outreach through emails and DMs. Use our&nbsp;<a href="https://outplayhq.com/features/multi-channel-sales-engagement">Multichannel Outreach tool</a> for this.&nbsp;</li></ul>

<h2>Best B2B Contact Database Providers on the Market&nbsp;</h2>If you aren’t looking to build your own B2B contact database and prefer to look for one instead, here are a few options you should consider:&nbsp;

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1. Outplay&nbsp;We recently launched our very own lead sourcing tool, helping you identify promising leads and engage them on the same platform. With our lead sourcing tool:&nbsp;<ul><li>You get access to error-free data. This means you do not have to worry about data decay and duplicate records because our data is highly accurate.&nbsp;</li><li>You can create and segment your contact lists as you please. Use our filters to sort your leads, create contact lists, and save and export them.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li><li>Enrich your leads quickly and engage them on the same platform. This saves you the trouble and time of switching to another platform to engage your leads.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li></ul>Check it out&nbsp;<a href="https://outplayhq.com/blog/introducing-lead-sourcing-by-outplay-fast-track-your-growth-with-our-sales-prospecting-tool">here</a>.

&nbsp;2. ZoomInfo&nbsp;Zoominfo is one of the best-known B2B database providers on the market. With an impressive collection of 100M+ company profiles, 63M+ direct dials, 100M+ direct emails, and 4.3M+ C-level contacts, Zoominfo carves its name on this list of robust B2B contact databases.With ZoomInfo, you can:&nbsp;<ul><li>Find the ideal buyer’s intent and contact information in one place.&nbsp;</li><li>Build workflows using internal and external insights to boost your marketing.&nbsp;</li><li>Create web tracking tools to capture website leads.&nbsp;</li></ul>That said, ZoomInfo requires you to sign up for a yearly contract, which is not ideal for B2B buyers looking for a reliable B2B contact database.&nbsp;

&nbsp;3. Lusha&nbsp;Lusha is another B2B database provider that has been making the rounds on the internet. Lusha prides itself on being able to help you build a robust database with its Chrome extension. Some of Lusha’s features are:&nbsp;<ul><li>Data enrichment through API&nbsp;</li><li>100M business profiles&nbsp;</li><li>81% accurate data&nbsp;</li></ul>Unlike ZoomInfo, you do not have to sign up for a yearly contract to use Lusha. Lusha has four different pricing plans, ranging from free to enterprise (for which you will have to contact the sales team).Ultimately, Lusha is an excellent solution for small teams on fairly tight budgets.

&nbsp;4. LinkedIn Sales Navigator&nbsp;Considering LinkedIn is a goldmine of leads, it makes sense to add LinkedIn Sales Navigator to our list of B2B database providers. LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers three account types:&nbsp;<ul><li>Sales Navigator Core&nbsp;</li><li>Sales Navigator Advanced&nbsp;</li><li>Sales Navigator Advanced Plus&nbsp;</li></ul>The Sales Navigator Core comes with advanced filters, storage of 10,000 leads, custom lists, and unlimited searches (and you can save those searches).The Sales Navigator Advanced allows you to upload your book of business via CSV and gives you buyer intent signals like alerts on buyer intent engagement and team collaboration tools - like sharing lists and searches.Sales Navigator Advanced Plus allows you to integrate your CRM with Sales Navigator. You can expect CRM-powered lead recommendations and create and leads and contacts in your CRM directly from Sales Navigator. It also offers ROI reporting to measure your revenue impact and an auto-generated list of opportunities and risks in your accounts.

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<h2>Build Accurate B2B Contact Databases with Outplay</h2>While there is a large selection of B2B contact database tools on the market, with each claiming to be the most accurate database on the market, many of them suffer from data decay and inconsistencies.&nbsp;If you are looking for an all-in-one integrated B2B database provider that gives you highly accurate real-time data, helps you manage your contacts lists seamlessly, and engages them without having to shift platforms and sign up for yearly contracts, Outplay is for you.

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What is B2B Data? 

Getting B2B Data 

What is a B2B Contact Database?

How to Choose the Right B2B Contact Database 

How to Create a B2B Contact Database 

Best B2B Contact Database Providers on the Market 

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The Ultimate Guide to B2B Contact Databases

If you’ve been navigating the world of sales for some time now, “how to find CEO email addresses” is a phrase you’ve probably been typing into your Google search bar ad infinitum. You may have read other articles on our <a href="https://outplayhq.com/blogs">blog</a> and understood the need for email IDs.&nbsp;You may also know that connecting with the CEO is your best chance of making a sale happen because they are a decision-maker.&nbsp;If you can personalize your pitch to each CEO, you stand a good chance of converting them. But how do you get their email addresses in the first place?&nbsp;In this article, we shall look at a few tricks you can use to find a CEO email address.&nbsp;

<h1>Visit Their Website&nbsp;</h1>Visiting the company’s website is probably the first thing you should do. The company website is home to everything you need to know about the company - often including the CEO’s email address.Consider checking both the Contact Us page and the list of authors on their blog. The list of authors often contains the email address of each contributor, one of which could be the CEO.&nbsp;As a general rule, you ought to take a good look at the company website while personalizing your pitch to them.&nbsp;<h1>Google Their Email Addresses&nbsp;</h1>Yes, this approach is a shot in the dark. However, there’s a good chance you will find the CEO’s email address somewhere on the internet. All you have to do is type the name of the company and the CEO’s first name and last name.There’s a good chance the company in question has job listings on different job sites with the CEO’s email address in the description.&nbsp;

<h1>Sign Up for the Company Newsletter&nbsp;</h1>Every online business has a newsletter. Most companies send newsletters from a regular email address (instead of a no-reply address) and read most replies to their emails. Signing up for their mailing list is an excellent way to:Boost your chances of getting the CEO’s email address. Reply to one of their emails, asking them for the CEO’s email address.&nbsp; Understand the company better. Understanding the company that you want to work for helps you personalize your pitch when you do get access to the decision-maker (in this case, the CEO). &nbsp;<h1>Check LinkedIn and Twitter&nbsp;</h1>Social media accounts like Twitter and especially LinkedIn serve as the easiest form of access to the company’s CEO. All you have to do is search for the name of the company in question and look for the company members under the ‘People’ section.You will often find the names of the people who work at the company with their respective designations.&nbsp;<h1>Use the Website’s Live Chat&nbsp;</h1>Another easy way to get access to your CEO is by using the website live chat. Most websites these days have a live chat box on the lower-right corner. In the chat box, ask for the customer services manager, and then ask them for the CEO’s email address. This approach takes only a few seconds.

<h1>Use an Email Finder Tool&nbsp;</h1>Finally, consider using an email finder tool to get reliable information. Unlike the manual methods we’ve discussed above, using an email finder tool saves you substantial amounts of time and energy while improving your chances of retrieving the CEO’s email address.While there are tons of email finder tools on the internet, we recommend our own <a href="https://outplayhq.com/chrome-extension">Outplay Connect</a>.With Outplay Connect, you can:&nbsp;<ul><li>Capture verified emails, and phone numbers, using your chrome browser with a single click&nbsp;</li><li>Have your reps send emails, cold call prospects, etc., without even having to use their Outplay account</li></ul>…and more.&nbsp;

<h1>How to Write Emails That the CEO Will Reply to&nbsp;</h1>If you have managed to capture the CEO’s email address using one of the methods discussed earlier, congratulations!Your next question is probably “how to address a CEO in an email?”Here are a few quick tips to help you write irresistible emails that the CEO cannot help but reply to:&nbsp;<h2>Have a Compelling Subject Line&nbsp;</h2>CEOs get dozens of emails every day. You need to send them an email that they would regret not opening. A short but intrigue-inducing subject line will help you do just this.Make sure your email subject line tells them what your email is about without giving everything away. You need to give them enough information that they are interested, but not so much that they aren’t curious enough to open the email.&nbsp;<h2>Keep Your Email Short&nbsp;</h2>With the overall reduction in the attention span in today’s world, no one spends more than a few seconds reading what is in front of them to gauge whether it is worth their time.Your email needs to be concise and specific.&nbsp;<h2>Personalize Your Pitch&nbsp;</h2>While pitching your service to someone, you need to make sure they actually need that service. So, before cold emailing the CEO, make sure you’ve done your homework. You need to know:&nbsp;<ul><li>What their company needs&nbsp;</li><li>Precisely how you can help them&nbsp;</li><li>How you have helped other brands in this space&nbsp;</li></ul><h2>Go for a Small Ask&nbsp;</h2>They do not know you yet. That means they do not trust you yet. Try asking them for something they are likely to say yes to. An example of this is asking for five minutes of their time over a call to discuss an idea that you came up with that will help them. &nbsp;<h1>Conclusion&nbsp;</h1>In conclusion, reaching out to a decision maker like the company’s CEO furthers your chances of closing a deal, and reaching out to them isn’t as hard as you think. We suggest you give all the methods a try to get the CEO’s email address easily. As mentioned earlier, Outplay Connect can help you simplify this process significantly. Request a demo <a href="https://outplayhq.com/request-a-demo">here</a>.

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How to Find CEO Email Addresses Quickly: A Guide

If you are spending precious time and money on mundane, repetitive tasks, understand that this is time that you could use for more important tasks to help generate more revenue.&nbsp;You can never grow and scale as long as you are stuck carrying out repetitive tasks every day, week, or month.&nbsp;You could (and should) hire other employees and build a team. But, as you know, you cannot expect them to work 24/7. Maybe, you are starting out and do not have the budget to hire more people just yet.&nbsp;So, what do you do? Use sales automation tools.&nbsp;<h1>What is Sales Automation?&nbsp;</h1>Sales automation involves the use of software and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to perform manual, repetitive, mundane, and time-consuming tasks. There are sales automation tools for just about every function you can think of: &nbsp;<ul><li>CRM</li><li>Report and Analytics</li><li>LinkedIn outreach</li><li>Cold call outreach</li><li>Email outreach</li><li>Prospect tracking</li><li>Meeting Scheduling</li><li>Lead scoring</li></ul>…and so on.&nbsp;<h1>Benefits of Sales Automation</h1>Here are the primary benefits of sales automation tools:&nbsp;<h2>Saves You Time</h2>As you may have already guessed, using a sales automation platform helps you save critical amounts of time. If you were to spend your time on activities like lead scoring, reporting, reminders, scheduling, etc., you would be wasting tens of hours every week. Automating such activities saves your sales team a lot of time, helping them focus on forging solid relationships with their prospects.&nbsp;<h2>Increases Productivity</h2>This point ties in with the first one. If you automate low-value, repetitive, mundane tasks, your sales reps will be able to focus on essential tasks that help you nurture and close more leads. Sales automation platforms also help you keep track of each prospect as they go through the customer pipeline, allowing you to close them at the right time and accelerate your sales overall.&nbsp;<h2>Consistent Data</h2>Any task performed by humans is bound to be plagued by human error. This means you can expect to find duplications, mistakes, and overall inconsistencies in data - all of which will cause confusion and affect your sales significantly. With sales automation, you never need to worry about the integrity of your data. You can safely use the data in your sales operations and close prospects without worrying about in discrepancies.&nbsp;<h2>Improved Communication and Customer Satisfaction</h2>Since sales automation tools serve as a centralized entity that has everything you need, your sales reps will be able to communicate with each other and their prospects easily. In other words, there will be lower response times, less confusion, streamlined communication, and as a result…improved customer satisfaction.&nbsp;<h2>Easy Reporting</h2>Reporting is one of those vital but tedious tasks you have to carry out if you want your business to grow. Unfortunately, creating manual reports will cost you large amounts of time and most likely lead to confusion due to inaccuracies. Automating your reporting will help you track your: &nbsp;<ul><li>Sales reps</li><li>Teams</li><li>Sequences</li><li>Replies</li><li>Open rate</li></ul>,..and much more.&nbsp;<h1>What to Look for in a Sales Automation Platform</h1>Now that you know what a sales automation tool is and why you should use one, here are a few primary features to look for in your search for the right sales automation tool:&nbsp;<h2>Integrations</h2>Today, just about any tool you use has an integration or two. You especially need integrations for sales automation platforms since they serve as the “go-to place” to handle all your sales operations. Examples of commonly used integrations are Google Calendar, Calendly, Slack, CRM integrations, and so forth.&nbsp;<h2>Email Templates</h2>In your email outreach, you will inevitably end up sending specific types of emails to certain types of prospects under different circumstances. A sales automation platform with pre-written email templates will help you save a lot of time in your prospecting.&nbsp;For example, if you want to send a bunch of follow-up emails, use a template. Of course, you will need to make sure these are tailored to each prospect to get their attention.&nbsp;<h2>Meeting Scheduler</h2>You are going to be severely limited in your prospecting if you do not have a meeting scheduler. If you plan on sending multiple emails back and forth to fix an online appointment:<ul><li>You are going to waste a lot of time back and forth</li><li>There’s a high chance of confusion and the prospect not showing up</li></ul>With a meeting scheduler, all you need to do is send your prospect a calendar link with a list of free time slots and they can choose one at their convenience.&nbsp;<h2>Automated Reporting</h2>We’ve already mentioned the benefit of automation in reporting. Creating a report manually, taking screenshots, etc., can take you an hour or two. Plus, there is a high chance of making a mistake while drawing up a report. Instead, use your sales automation platform’s integrated CRM to automate your reporting.&nbsp;<h2>Lead Enrichment</h2>Lead enrichment is the process of adding and modifying information on your prospects to help you qualify and manage them efficiently. The more information you have on your prospects, the easier it gets to connect with your prospect and establish trust. It also allows you to qualify the right leads after based on parameters like company size, budget, industry, etc. So, if you have a tool that fetches vital data on your prospects, you will be able to significantly increase your lead qualification process.&nbsp;<h1>Best Sales Automation Tools on the Market</h1>There are many sales automation tools on the market that claim to be the best. Here are some of the best automation software we think you should use:&nbsp;<h2>1. Outplay</h2>Outplay is your go-to stop to make selling easy. With a barrage of intuitive tools (and we continually come out with a new tool or feature) at your disposal, there’s no way you cannot close deals.&nbsp;Unlike a lot of tools on the market, Outplay offers you a multi-channel outreach platform. If you are used to only LinkedIn outreach or email outreach, you can maximize your outreach across multiple channels, including LinkedIn, email, SMS, WhatsApp, cold calls, etc.&nbsp; Besides this, here are a few features you will find interesting:<ul><li><a href="https://outplayhq.com/meeting-scheduler">Meeting scheduler</a></li><li>Lead sourcing</li><li>Free chrome extension for one-click prospecting</li><li>Email template library</li><li>Sales analytics</li></ul><h2>2. Mailshake&nbsp;</h2>Mailshake is a powerful outreach tool that prides itself on helping you reach your prospect's inbox and not their spam folder. Mailshake allows you to automate your cold outreach. You can use Mailshake to:<ul><li>Send personalized cold emails at scale</li><li>Use one dashboard to manage your entire operation</li><li>Engage your prospects on multiple platforms</li></ul>Here are some of its primary features:<ul><li>Automated email outreach</li><li>Sales metrics tracking</li><li>Integrations with LinkedIn, Calendly, Pipedrive and many more</li><li>Multi-channel outreach</li></ul><h2>3. Outreach.io</h2>Outreach.io is one of the more popular sales automation tools on the market with a focus on closing the sales execution gap, which is the gap between the performance of the organization and the sales it achieves. Outreach’s sales automation platform:<ul><li>Optimizes your seller productivity with high-impact workflows</li><li>Helps accelerate deals with actionable insights</li><li>Helps increase your sales reps’ execution speed</li></ul>Here are some of Outreach’s primary features:<ul><li>Streamlined workflows</li><li>Meeting scheduler</li><li>Team analytics</li><li>Galaxy integrations</li><li>Automated data sync</li></ul><h2>4. Salesblink</h2>Salesblink helps you find leads, personalize your outreach campaigns, and automate your follow-ups to help you find your ideal customer. Besides its integrations with tools like Zoho, Pipedrive, Salesforce, and so on, Salesblink’s primary features include:<ul><li>Drag and drop visual campaign builder</li><li>Multi-channel outreach</li><li>Automated multi-channel follow up</li><li>Meeting scheduler</li><li>Database of 250M leads</li></ul><h2>5. Reply.io</h2>Reply.io helps you create new opportunities at scale while keeping every touchpoint personal. Reply.io provides a variety of solutions, including inbound sales, outbound sales, outreach, etc. It also has a selection of essential integrations like Pipedrive, Salesforce, Gmail, Calendly, and more. Here’s what Reply.io offers:<ul><li>Multi-channel sequences - email, calls, SMS, LinkedIn, etc.&nbsp;</li><li>LinkedIn Automation</li><li>Email templates</li><li>Calendar for appointment booking</li><li>Reports and analytics</li><li>Contact management</li></ul><h1>Conclusion</h1>There you have it - a quick overview of everything related to sales automation tools. To recap, sales automation tools take care of mundane, repetitive tasks that would otherwise take you a lot of time to perform. No sales team can function without a sales automation platform. While looking for the right sales platform, you should consider:<ul><li>The platform’s key integrations</li><li>Email templates</li><li>Meeting scheduler</li><li>Lead enrichment</li><li>Automated reporting</li></ul>…among other features. Outplay has a comprehensive suite of all the tools you will to streamline your sales operations. You can check it out <a href="https://outplayhq.com/features">here</a>. If you want to learn about sales, get started with our <a href="https://outplayhq.com/blogs">blog</a>.

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How to Decide on a Sales Automation Software

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‘What gets measured gets accomplished’ -&nbsp;Dan Peña‍In sales, measuring metrics can be the difference between making money and not making money. It can be the difference between taking your business to the stratosphere or shutting shop. You get the idea.&nbsp;‍High-performing B2B companies continually track specific&nbsp;top sales metrics and take essential action to improve their performance. In this article, we shall discuss what&nbsp;sales metrics are and the&nbsp;most important sales metrics&nbsp;to track.&nbsp;

<h2>What are Sales Metrics?</h2>Sales metrics&nbsp;are data points that evaluate the performance of an individual, group, or entire company’s performance over a specific period. Tracking these metrics helps identify strategic issues, facilitate business growth, track progress toward business goals, sales compensation, and more. There are multiple&nbsp;types of sales metrics. We shall discuss them in the next section.

<h2>Types of Sales Metrics</h2>Here are the primary&nbsp;types of sales metrics you should track:<ul><li>Sales Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)</li><li>Sales Productivity Metrics</li><li>Pipeline Sales Metrics</li><li>Software as a Service (SaaS) Sales Metrics</li></ul>

<h2>Sales KPIs</h2>Sales KPIs allow you to measure company-wide performance and track your business growth. Here are the primary KPIs to measure:Total RevenueTotal revenue refers to the amount of money you generate from both sales and operational activities from all your products and services. To calculate your total revenue, use this formula: Total Revenue = Price x Quantity sold If you are a product-based company, use this formula to calculate your total sales: Revenue = Number of units sold x Average price of goodsIf you are a service-based company, use this formula: Revenue = Number of customers x Average price of servicesNet Promoter Score (NPS)Your NPS shows you how likely your customers are to recommend your business to another person. To calculate your NPS, ask your customer to tell you how likely they are to recommend you to another person on a scale of 0-10. You can have them fill up a survey and give you their rating. Once you do this, use the following formula to calculate your NPS: NPS = %Promoters - %Detractors&nbsp;Promoters are customers who answer your question ‘How likely are you to recommend this product (or company) to a friend or colleague?’ with a 9 or 10. Such customers are enthusiastic about your brand and are likely loyal customers.&nbsp;Detractors, on the other hand, answer the same question with a 0 to 6 out of 10. These customers are obviously not very happy with your product or company and aren’t all that likely to recommend you to someone else. You need to minimize the number of detractors your business has. People who vote 7 or 8 out of 10 are passively satisfied, which means they may not be all that loyal to your company and can easily jump ship to a better competitor. To calculate your NPS -&nbsp;<ul><li>Add the number of promoters.&nbsp;</li><li>Then, do the same with your detractors.&nbsp;</li><li>To calculate the percentage, divide the number of promoters by the total number of responses. Do the same with your detractors.</li></ul>After this, subtract the two based on the formula mentioned above.Average Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)LTV refers to the revenue that you can expect to generate from someone during their time as a customer of your company. Calculating and maximizing your average customer LTV is critical. Here are a few reasons why:<ul><li>It is easier to sell more to a current customer than to acquire a new one. In other words, you cut down your customer acquisition costs</li><li>It helps you identify issues with customer loyalty and retention over time.&nbsp;</li><li>It helps you increase revenue over time</li><li>It helps you target and retain your ideal customers</li></ul>Here’s how you calculate your customer LTV: CLTV = Customer Value X Average Customer LifespanHere Customer Value = Average Purchase Value X Average Number Of PurchasesTo increase your CLTV, do the following: Increase your average order value: You can do this by adding complementary products to the products that your customer wants to purchase. If you are running a subscription-based company, consider getting them to pick up an annual subscription.&nbsp;Optimize your onboarding process: Make your customer onboarding process easy and seamless so that they know what your company works, what it is about, and why they should stay.&nbsp;Year-Over-Year (YOY) GrowthThis metric is a comparison of this year’s generated revenue with that of the year before. This is a vital metric to track because it allows you to evaluate your company’s performance over a specific period. You can use a metric like this to redirect your business strategy if necessary. The formula to calculate Year-Over-Year Growth is - YOY Growth = (This Year’s Revenue - Last Year’s Revenue) / (Last Year’s Revenue) For example, let’s assume you made $100,000 last June and $120,000 this June.&nbsp;YOY Growth = (120,000 - 100,000) / (100,000)&nbsp;That is (20,000) / (100,000) = 0.20.2 X 100 = 20% YOY growth rate.&nbsp;Net Profit MarginNet Profit Margin is a ratio of the profits made to the revenue generated. You can express this ratio in percentages or in decimals. The formula to calculate your Net Profit Margin is -&nbsp;Net Profit Margin = (Revenue - Cost) / (Revenue)

<h2>Sales Productivity Metrics</h2>Sales productivity metrics help measure and evaluate the productivity of your sales reps, thereby helping you determine how long it will take for them to hit your revenue targets. The faster they can hit those revenue targets, the higher your company’s productivity.&nbsp;Conversion RateTracking your conversion rate is an excellent way to understand your team’s sales performance. It tells you how effective your sales strategy is.&nbsp;The conversion rate tells you how many leads you had to generate to close one of them. To calculate your conversion rate,&nbsp;divide the number of conversions by the total number of leads your team has received.Average Deal SizeTracking your average deal size is vital to generating more revenue and managing your time effectively. If your team is solely focused on large numbers of small deals, you will have to alter your lead generation process.&nbsp;You will have to encourage and coach your team to close larger deals and increase the average deal size to make the best use of their time.Win RateWin rate refers to the success your sales team has had over a specific period. In other words, it is the ratio of sales to the total number of sales opportunities. This can be calculated over a month, quarter, or year. Tracking your win rate:<ul><li>Gives you a thorough understanding of your finances. This helps you focus on products that sell the most, sales techniques that work the best, and so on.&nbsp;</li><li>It helps you find areas of improvement. If your win rate is declining, you might be able to identify areas of improvement and work on them accordingly.&nbsp;</li><li>Helps predict future sales and draw in more investors. You can analyze your win rate to predict future sales and extend your budget in certain areas. You can also show your stakeholders successful sales. The more successful sales you have, the more investors you can draw.&nbsp;</li></ul>Here’s the formula to calculate your win rate: Win rate = (Total number of sales/number of sales opportunities) x 100Besides the metrics mentioned above, here are a few more&nbsp;sales productivity metrics&nbsp;you should track:<ul><li>Percentage of time used to create content</li><li>Number of sales tools used daily (By the way, check out our<a href="https://outplayhq.com/features/sales-analytics">&nbsp;sales analytics tool</a>)</li><li>Number of high-quality leads your team has followed up with</li><li>Percentage of time spent on selling activities&nbsp;</li></ul>

<h2>Pipeline Sales Metrics</h2>Tracking pipeline sales metrics can help you understand the ins and outs of your holistic sales process. Here are a few metrics you must analyze by team or individual over a specific time period:&nbsp;Length of Sales CycleSales cycle length refers to the time it takes for a new customer to move from the opportunity stage to a close. Understanding this metric is crucial to identify and rectify any bottlenecks that you might have in the sales pipeline.&nbsp;You also need to track the time in each stage of the sales process to determine which sales opportunities are dead-end and which are worth pushing.&nbsp;Total Value of SalesNot to be confused with total revenue, this metric refers to the revenue generated exclusively from sales activities in the company.&nbsp;Conversion Rate by Funnel StageUnlike the conversion rate we mentioned earlier, this metric refers to the conversion rate at&nbsp;each stage of the sales funnel. You can get your sales team or a member of your sales team to track this metric over a specified period.&nbsp;Total Open and Closed OpportunitiesThe total open opportunities refer to the number of open deals you have while the total closed opportunities are a measure of how many closed-won deals you have.&nbsp;Weighted Value of PipelineThe weighted value of your pipeline is a measure of the value of deals that move through your sales pipeline.&nbsp;

<h2>SaaS Sales Metrics</h2>If your business is a SaaS model, know that you have to track different&nbsp;key sales performance metrics than you would if yours were a product-based business.&nbsp;With subscription-based businesses, your revenue depends on the customer's lifetime span. If they are happy with your service, they will stick with your company for a long time.However, if they are dissatisfied, they will quit almost immediately. Here are the metrics you need to track:&nbsp;Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)This metric refers to the average amount of money you will spend on sales and marketing to acquire one new customer. Your sales and marketing efforts will include inbound marketing, outbound marketing, sales and business development, social media, events, etc.Here’s the formula to calculate your CAC - Customer Acquisition Cost = Amount Spent Acquiring More Customers Over A Specific Period / Total Number of Customers Acquired During the Same PeriodChurn RateYour churn rate refers to the percentage of customers who cancel their subscriptions and drop out. As you know, you ought to minimize your churn rate as much as possible. There are many ways to reduce your churn rate:<ul><li>Find out the reason for the churn</li><li>Talk to your customers</li><li>Provide better service</li><li>Target the right audience</li><li>Offer incentives</li></ul>The formula to calculate churn rate is - Churn Rate = (Number of lost customers / Total number of customers since the start of the specified time period) X 100Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)Before you conflate or confuse CPA and CAC, know these are two very different metrics to track. The difference is that CPA refers to the amount you need to spend to acquire a&nbsp;non-customer. Examples of non-customers are leads, free trials, registrations, etc.&nbsp;To calculate CPA, divide the total cost of conversions by the total number of conversions.&nbsp;Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)MRR is one of the most important metrics to track if you are a SaaS business. It is the total predictable revenue that your business generates every month. Tracking this metric is vital because it allows you to track your business growth and predict your future revenue. To calculate the MRR, multiply the number of monthly subscribers by the average revenue per user.&nbsp;Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)Your ARR is essentially your MRR multiplied by 12. It is the amount of recurring revenue in a calendar year. While MRR tells you how your business is doing every month, ARR tells you how your business is doing every calendar year. Ideally, you need to track both ARR and MRR.&nbsp;Revenue ChurnWhile MRR is the total predictable revenue you generate every month, revenue churn is the money that you lose in a month. Revenue churn is different from churn rate. Churn rate refers to the percentage of customers you’ve lost, while revenue churn refers to the amount of money you’ve lost.&nbsp;If you want your business to grow, you need negative churn. Negative churn happens if your MRR is greater than your revenue churn.&nbsp;

<h2>Extra Metrics to Note</h2>So, we’ve given you a list of the primary&nbsp;sales growth metrics&nbsp;you should track to ensure your business grows. Here are a few extra&nbsp;sales metrics you should also consider tracking:<ul><li>Email open rates</li><li>Email close rates</li><li>Click Through Rates (CTR)</li><li>Percentage of opportunities won</li><li>Percentage of opportunities lost&nbsp;</li><li>Percentage of opportunities lost to a competitor</li><li>Average time-to-hire</li><li>Percentage of sales management time spent on hiring</li><li>Average turnover rate</li><li>Percentage of offers accepted</li><li>Percentage of reps following the sales process</li><li>Average cost of training a salesperson</li><li>Percentage of reps using the CRM</li><li>Average Contract Value (ACV): This refers to the revenue generated by a contract per year</li><li>Number of conversations</li><li>Number of emails sent</li><li>Number of calls made</li><li>Number of proposals sent</li><li>Number of referrals</li><li>Market Penetration: This refers to the number of your customers Vs. the total number of potential customers in the market</li></ul>

<h2>Track your Sales Metrics</h2>And there you have it - all you need to know about&nbsp;sales metrics&nbsp;and how to track them. As you can see, there are countless metrics you can track. We suggest you first track the four types of&nbsp;sales metrics we’ve explained in the article and then prioritize the extra&nbsp;sales metrics&nbsp;we’ve mentioned in the final section.&nbsp;Tracking&nbsp;sales metrics&nbsp;is vital. It is often the key difference between generating revenue and no revenue, satisfied and dissatisfied customers, a short sales cycle and a sales pipeline full of bottlenecks, high MRR, and a high churn rate. In short, if you want to run and grow your business over time, you need to prioritize tracking sales metrics. Check out our<a href="https://outplayhq.com/blogs">&nbsp;blog</a> to learn more about sales.

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What are Sales Metrics?

Types of Sales Metrics

Sales KPIs

Sales Productivity Metrics

Pipeline Sales Metrics

SaaS Sales Metrics

Extra Metrics to Note

How to Measure Sales Metrics and Boost Performance {List Included}

If you’ve been in the sales game for a while, you know that several factors affect your sales. One of these factors is your hiring. You need to hire the right people for your sales team to ensure your sales operations run seamlessly and your conversions go up consistently.&nbsp;In this article, we will discuss the benefits of B2B sales hiring, mistakes to avoid during your sales hire, best sales recruiting strategies and practices, and the steps to follow in your sales hiring process.&nbsp;

<h1>Can anyone be good at sales?&nbsp;</h1>Before we get into how to hire people for sales, you need to know why you need to hire specific people to do the job. Here are the primary reasons to prioritize your sales hiring:&nbsp;<h2>Sales skills and industry knowledge&nbsp;</h2>This is a no-brainer. Sales is one of those skills that take a significant amount of time and experience in the industry to solidify. While you could train some of your aspiring sales reps and get them started, you’re far better off hiring experienced salespeople to help train reps and boost your overall conversions in a relatively shorter timeframe. Experienced salespeople have industry knowledge and years of experience under their belt.<h2>Easier to maintain client relationships&nbsp;</h2>In this day and age, customers want more than a reliable product or service. They want an excellent customer experience. In other words, you need to maintain a solid relationship with each customer. Customers have unique backgrounds and situations, which can make it difficult for your current team to deal with them. Since salespeople have years of experience, they can manage various types of buyer relationships with ease.&nbsp;

<h1>Mistakes to avoid while hiring for sales&nbsp;</h1>Here are the most common mistakes you should avoid while hiring for sales:&nbsp;<h2>Writing unclear job descriptions&nbsp;</h2>Writing unclear job descriptions is a surefire way to get fewer applicants or the wrong ones (or both) to apply. As a result, you will lose a lot of time interviewing unqualified salespeople. Instead, keep your job description as accurate and concise as possible. Include the following:&nbsp;<ul><li>Roles and responsibilities&nbsp;</li><li>Skill, personality, and experiential requirements&nbsp;</li></ul>In the next section, we discuss precisely what you must include in your job description.<h2>Lack of structure and time management&nbsp;</h2>When dealing with numerous applicants, it is vital to manage your time and interview them such that you are sure who to go for.The last thing you want to do is ask your applicants a bunch of random, improvised questions with no way to choose between them at the end of all the interviews. Instead, come up with an outline for your interview, a uniform set of questions, and a scorecard to compare their performance.&nbsp;<h2>No step-by-step sales hiring process&nbsp;</h2>If you want to consistently boost your sales and conversions, you need an excellent sales team in place. However, as is the case with every company, you are bound to lose salespeople along the way.The best way to remedy this issue is to follow a reliable sales hiring strategy. This is what it looks like:&nbsp;

<h1>Sales Hiring Strategy&nbsp;</h1><h2>Create your sales hire persona&nbsp;</h2>Before anything else, you need to build your sales hire persona or hiring profile. In other words, you need to be clear about what kind of salesperson you are looking for. You need to be as selective with hiring salespeople as you are with working with prospects. So, be sure to identify the skills, experience, industry background etc, your sales hires must have to qualify as a perfect fit for your company.&nbsp;An excellent way to get started is by taking a close look at your current top performers in the sales department and deconstructing their expertise, skills, background, aptitude, etc, and using this information to create your ideal hiring profile.&nbsp;Be sure to look for salespeople with the following traits:&nbsp;<ul><li>Diligent and hardworking: Is your sales hire willing to carry out their tasks diligently? &nbsp;</li><li>Coachable: Is your sales hire coachable and open to feedback? (absolutely crucial)&nbsp;</li><li>Curious: Are they curious about your prospects?&nbsp;</li><li>Successful track record: Do they have a successful track record in sales?&nbsp;</li></ul><h2>Create a job description&nbsp;</h2>Have a sales hire persona in place? Write a job description to make it easier to find your ideal salesperson. A well-written job description will determine both the quantity and quality of your sales candidates.Your job description must:&nbsp;<ul><li>Accurately describe the role(s) and responsibilities of the sales hire &nbsp;</li><li>Clearly explain why they should join your company&nbsp;</li></ul>Here are mistakes you should avoid while writing a job description:<ul><li>Creating a generic job description or copy that's written by other companies&nbsp;</li><li>Writing a vague job description that causes confusion and can potentially mislead your candidates&nbsp;</li><li>Not mentioning the salary/pay structure&nbsp;</li><li>Not mentioning why they should work with you&nbsp;</li></ul>However, you should:&nbsp;<ul><li>Explain the benefits of working with your organization, company work culture, and pay structure&nbsp;</li><li>Describe the roles, responsibilities, and the typical workday for someone who takes up this position &nbsp;</li><li>Mention skills, traits, and other requirements</li></ul>

<h1>Look for your ideal sales hire&nbsp;</h1>Now that you have your job description ready, start posting it on as many channels as possible. You can post your job description on:&nbsp;<ul><li>Job sites like Glassdoor, Monster, Indeed, Angellist, etc. Industry-specific communities on forums like Reddit and Facebook groups&nbsp;</li><li>Social media accounts like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. You can post it on your social media accounts and run paid ads to reach a larger audience. &nbsp;</li><li>LinkedIn jobs. Post your description in the LinkedIn jobs section and post the same on your feed. &nbsp;</li></ul>You can also contact people in your network for recommendations. Consider asking your former employees, colleagues, industry contacts, etc. if they know of any suitable sales hires for your company.&nbsp;Consider asking your top-performing salespeople to check their networks and spread their word on social media to increase your chances of hiring the right salesperson.<h1>Screen your candidates&nbsp;</h1>If you’ve written an excellent job description and spread the word on as many online channels as possible, you’re probably sifting through dozens of job applications. At this point, you will need to screen your applicants to:&nbsp;<ul><li>Increase your chances of landing the right sales hires&nbsp;</li><li>Save your time&nbsp;</li></ul>You can screen your candidates the way you want. Consider incorporating phone and screen interviews, and tests into your screening process. Ideally, you want to test them on:&nbsp;<ul><li>How they speak&nbsp;</li><li>How they build rapport&nbsp;</li><li>Their problem-solving skills&nbsp;</li><li>Their personality&nbsp;</li></ul>Essentially, you need to test them to see if they have all the traits we’ve mentioned in the first section.&nbsp;We also suggest you get them to do a mock demo. As part of your mock presentation or demo, get your applicant(s) to sell your company a product. Essentially, they will need to treat it as a real sales role - from start to finish.&nbsp;Screen for the following:&nbsp;<ul><li>Creating and sending invites for meetings with all the necessary details &nbsp;</li><li>Do they know everything they need to know about your company?</li><li>Excellent objection handling skills&nbsp;</li><li>Confirming the meeting and sending reminders&nbsp;</li><li>Following up with a prospect and sending proposals&nbsp;</li><li>Closing properly&nbsp;</li><li>Periodic and probing questions</li></ul>

<h1>Interview your candidates&nbsp;</h1>Assuming you’ve managed to screen applicants (i.e, they cleared the phone or screen interview and the mock demo), you need to put them through a standard set of questions. You also need to have a scorecard to track their performance.&nbsp;In other words, you need to employ a structured interview process to ensure there’s no bias or confusion. Have a fixed set of questions for an entry level position and a different set for experienced candidates that cover the following:&nbsp;<ul><li>Reason for motivation&nbsp;</li><li>Personality, communication, and behavior&nbsp;</li><li>Technical know-how and experience&nbsp;</li><li>Dealing with hypothetical and real-life scenarios&nbsp;</li></ul>Score your candidates based on their answers and compare their total scores to determine who fared the best. As you do this, you also need to be prepared to answer questions if you decide to onboard some of your candidates.&nbsp;If they are interested, they will probably question you on the sales and onboarding process, the work culture, pay structure, work model (office, work from home, hybrid), sales metrics, opportunities to advance their careers, and so on.<h1>Make an offer&nbsp;</h1>Once you have your scores ready, discuss who you plan on hiring with everyone involved in the entire recruitment process. Since hiring and training the wrong salesperson can cost you a significant amount of time and money, be extra cautious and welcome everyone’s perspective.After you’ve decided who you are going to hire, make an offer via phone or email before sending them a formal offer letter to save time. Give the applicant some to decide and expect them to negotiate their salary and benefits with you.Then, send an email to everyone who came up a bit short telling them that you are considering working with them in the future. Maintaining a positive relationship with them will make it easy to work with them in the future if you wish to hire them.

<h1>Onboarding&nbsp;</h1>A seamless onboarding process is necessary to get your new sales hire up to speed quickly. Furthermore, this increases your chances of retaining them.&nbsp;

To help them hit the ground running on the first day, give them a head start. Consider welcoming them into the company with an outline and the resources they will need to catch up. This way, you can be sure that your sales hire will be familiar with:&nbsp;<ul><li>Your company’s vision, mission, and history&nbsp;</li><li>What you have to offer&nbsp;</li><li>What differentiates your company from your competitors&nbsp;</li><li>Any other vital information you want them to know&nbsp;</li></ul>Also, follow a formal onboarding process. With a formal onboarding process, you will be able to:&nbsp;<ul><li>Establish your expectations for each new sales hire&nbsp;</li><li>Goals and their respective timeframes &nbsp;</li><li>Metrics to measure progress&nbsp;</li></ul>Once you establish expectations, be sure to provide adequate training and support to help your sales hires meet those expectations. This means you need to put a training program and resources in place.While you do this, get your new hires to shadow senior sales reps. In other words, let them observe the senior sales reps in action so that they know how to implement the processes and systems in real time.Finally, evaluate their early performance and work to see consistent progress. If they are meeting expectations and excelling at their job, be sure to provide them with additional resources and advanced training. However, if they aren’t progressing, you can intervene and identify your next steps.&nbsp;

<h1>Best Sales Recruiting Tips&nbsp;</h1>Here are a couple of sales recruiting tips to keep in mind:&nbsp;<h2>Think long-term&nbsp;</h2>Hiring for sales is often a costly and time-consuming affair. So, if you find yourself having to choose between hiring less-than-ideal salespeople today and potentially ideal clients in a few months, choose the latter.Sure, you might end up saving time and money in the short term if you hire the wrong people today. However, their performance will likely be average or below average, which means you will have to invest extra time and resources to train them properly.&nbsp;<h2>Treat your interviews as pitches&nbsp;</h2>Ultimately, you want to assess your candidate’s sales and communication skills. What better way to do this than by treating the interview itself as a sales pitch? By treating the interview as a sales pitch, you will find out how your candidate is likely to respond to a potential customer.&nbsp;<h2>Prepare a bunch of interview questions&nbsp;</h2>As mentioned earlier, you need to have different sets of questions for different types of candidates. In other words, you need a fixed set of questions for entry level candidates and another set for experienced candidates.Here are a few interview questions you can add to your arsenal:&nbsp;<ul><li>What would be the ideal activity for you in your first week on the job? &nbsp;</li><li>What are you passionate about? &nbsp;</li><li>What do you want to know about me?&nbsp;</li><li>What kinds of sacrifices have you had to make to be successful?</li><li>Why do you think a career in sales is the right choice for you?</li><li>Tell me about a recent sale you lost. What happened and what did you learn from it?&nbsp;</li></ul><h2>Be prepared to answer questions</h2>As you interview sales candidates, you must be prepared to answer some of their questions. They might question you on:&nbsp;<ul><li>Your approach to training&nbsp;</li><li>What challenges do your salespeople face (newbies and veterans)&nbsp;</li><li>What differentiates your top performers from the average salesperson&nbsp;</li><li>What the promotion path is like&nbsp;</li><li>What your sales process looks like&nbsp;</li><li>How your salary and commissions work</li></ul>

<h1>Motivate your salespeople&nbsp;</h1>Motivating your salespeople is vital to keep your sales operations running seamlessly. There are many ways to do this (without having to spend money). Here’s how you do it:&nbsp;Give them opportunities outside of their line of work. Your salespeople probably would not get a chance to pursue other opportunities while working their current jobs. Giving them a brand new opportunity gives them a chance to try something new and rise to the occasion.&nbsp;Work with them once in a while. Help them run some cold calls, answer some emails, etc. Acknowledging their jobs and joining them to keep things light and fun will eventually pay dividends.&nbsp;Give them direct access to you. Everyone wants to be on the inside. They wanted to be included and get a piece of the insider’s information. Get your CEO to spend some time with one or more of your sales reps, showing them where the company is headed, planning new products, etc. Doing something like this will make the sales reps feel seen and valued.&nbsp;If you want to motivate your salespeople, you need to acknowledge their presence and value their work. It’s one thing to give them a raise, but it is another thing to celebrate small wins, and acknowledge and value their work. You need both elements if you want to keep your salespeople motivated and willing to work for your company in the long run.

<h1>Conclusion&nbsp;</h1>As you can see, hiring for sales doesn’t have to be as tedious a task as you are probably making it out to be. All you need is to know what mistakes to avoid and a step-by-step process to get started.Since this is a process and you are dealing with multiple applicants, you will have to ensure you have a structure in place for interview questions, scoring, onboarding, job descriptions, screening, and so on. Oh, and you will need to equip yourself to answer questions that your salespeople will have for you. Remember that good salespeople will ask your questions that you need to be prepared for. If you want to know more about sales, be sure to give our <a href="https://outplayhq.com/blogs">blog</a> a quick gander.

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How to Hire for Sales: A Guide

According to <a href="https://www.checkli.com/checklists/anthonycaliendo/21-roi-stats-on-sales-coaching-can-your-organization-afford-not-to-hire-a-sales-coach">Checkli</a>, companies with a formal training process reach 91.2% of their sales quota. In <a href="https://outplayhq.com/blog/sales-quota-how-to-ace-the-sales-game">another article</a>, we discussed the importance of setting sales quotas. If you do not have a sales quota, you will fail to consistently increase your sales over time.&nbsp;Without sales coaching, your sales team will have a problem hitting their monthly, quarterly, or yearly sales quotas, which means your sales will suffer. Sales coaching is one of the most effective (if not the most effective) productivity investments in sales. So, what should you know about sales coaching? Let’s find out.&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">What Is Sales Coaching?</h2>

Sales coaching is the process of evaluating and mentoring your sales reps to optimize their sales performance and increase sales consistently. With an effective sales coaching program, you can identify each rep’s sticking points and deficiencies and show them how to take ownership of their sales performance…ultimately improving their performance and making a positive impact on the organization.Here are a few examples of sales coaching:<ul style="list-style-type:revert;"><li>Reviewing sales reps’ calls and emails to evaluate their conversations with the client to identify what went right and wrong.&nbsp;</li><li>Giving your sales reps sales tips and tricks</li><li>Motivating sales reps to improve their performance&nbsp;</li><li>Analyze data</li><li>Share the vision, and mission, and come up with an action plan to accomplish both</li><li>Monitor customer engagement&nbsp;</li></ul>However, sales coaching is NOT giving a step-by-step process and the same advice to each sales rep without accounting for their strengths, weaknesses and motivations.&nbsp;<h2>Why Is Sales Coaching Important?</h2>

As we’ve mentioned earlier, sales coaching helps you improve your sales team’s performance. Here are a few other benefits you may not have thought about:Close Bigger Deals And Boost Your Revenue&nbsp;Okay, this one is obvious.For one thing, sales coaching helps diagnose deficiencies and increase overall efficiency. This translates to the consistently excellent performance by your sales team. So, sales coaching keeps everyone on their toes, thus boosting your sales and revenue.Besides this, sales coaching helps your sales team close bigger deals than they are probably used to closing at this point. As you help them take care of their weaknesses and give each sales rep specific feedback, they will feel more confident in closing deals they’ve never done thus far.Gives Your Sales Reps A Better Understanding Of Your Products And Services&nbsp;Think about it - if your sales reps do not fully understand your products and services, how are they going to convince anyone else to sign up for them? Sales coaching allows you to fully explain each product and service to sales reps - highlighting the features, use cases, merits, and demerits of each product and service and how they fare against those of your competitors.Giving your sales rep a crystal clear picture like this will help them identify what the customer needs and close them accordingly.Sailing Through Hard Times&nbsp;The primary challenge that sales reps face is uncertainty. Many of them are uncertain about their skills as sales reps and are not sure that they can improve. With sales coaching on your side, you can instill hope in your sales team and get them to perform beyond their expectations.Share Your Best Practices&nbsp;If you have strategies you know are proven to work, why not share them with your team to boost your sales performance? Sales coaching allows you to do this. This way, you can ensure consistency amongst your sales team, while still giving them custom advice based on their strengths and weaknesses.Increase Employee Satisfaction And Retention Rates&nbsp;Sales coaching gives your employees clear steps and directions. This reduces potential confusion and burnout. Sales coaching is designed to help improve their sales performance and productivity, hence increasing employee satisfaction.If your sales reps do their jobs well and feel a sense of accomplishment after having done them, they are more likely to stay in your company despite being tempted by offers from other companies. &nbsp;Improve Client Satisfaction&nbsp;If you give your sellers effective training, they will do their job with confidence and efficiency, which means that your clients are likely to be satisfied. Increased satisfaction translates to more referrals and a higher retention rate.<h2>What Should Your Sales Coaching Goals Be?</h2>

While different companies have different goals and objectives, here are a few that most companies have in common:&nbsp;<ul><li>Giving your sales reps the necessary tools, information, and resources to improve the professional skills they need to optimize their sales &nbsp;</li><li>Getting your sales reps to take responsibility for their performance Creating an environment of trust within the sales team and ultimately building each sales rep’s confidence, thereby helping them to succeed. &nbsp;</li></ul>Now that we have a few sales coaching goals in place, here are a few outcomes you need to see as a result of your sales coaching:&nbsp;<ul><li>A shorter, more efficient sales cycle&nbsp;</li><li>High sales rep retention rates&nbsp;</li><li>Sales reps are largely independent and productive&nbsp;</li><li>Consistently meeting sales and revenue targets&nbsp;</li><li>High win rates for deals&nbsp;</li></ul><h2>What Sales Coaching Techniques Can You Use?</h2>

<h2>Get Your Best Sales Reps To Help The Others</h2>Sure, coaching each sales rep one-on-one can be helpful. However, you will save a lot of time and effort if you can get at least one successful sales rep to help the rest of the team. Encourage them to share their best practices, strategies, techniques, and the mistakes they made that they should have avoided.&nbsp;<h3>Say No to Micromanaging</h3>Remember how we talked about employee satisfaction? The last thing a sales rep wants is to be ordered around and micromanaged every step of the way. Instead, give them a basic framework and set of rules and allow them to manage their work independently. Besides this, you want to involve them as you try to optimize your process. Ask them for feedback on how to improve, which metrics to track, what you should stop doing, etc.&nbsp;Use Sales DataIf you do not have data on your side, you will have no idea how to focus your sales coaching efforts. After all, how do you improve when you do not know where you are lacking?Using sales software (like <a href="https://outplayhq.com/features/sales-analytics">Outplay</a>) can help you leverage your data, track conversion metrics, and identify the overall areas of improvement. Another thing you can do is track and compare each sales rep’s performance.&nbsp;<h3>Experiment With Different Sales Coaching Styles</h3>Since you need your sales reps to excel at various skills, it makes sense to mix up your sales coaching style every now and then. Alternate between strategic (big picture) sales coaching, tactical, and specific skill coaching.&nbsp;Tactical coaching refers to sales knowledge and skills - qualifying your prospect, sales calls, etc. Specific skills are, well…specific. This could refer to communication, soft skills, etc. &nbsp;<h2>How Do You Track Your Sales Coaching?</h2>

So you know a few sales coaching techniques you can use immediately. But, how do you measure their effectiveness? There are five primary metrics to track to measure your sales coaching’s effectiveness.&nbsp;<h4>Productivity</h4>Productivity is the primary metric to track while measuring your sales coaching’s effectiveness because it gives you an overview of your entire sales process. Two metrics that help you track this are conversions and sales cycle length. &nbsp;<ul><li>You can track your Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) to see how many your sales team were able to convert in a month.&nbsp;</li><li>Conversions refers to how many prospects you have closed. Sales cycle length refers to how long you took to close these prospects. Be sure to track your sales cycle length to understand if your sales cycle techniques and strategies are doing well.&nbsp;</li></ul><h4>Retention</h4>Retention is another critical metric to track. When we say retention, we are referring to both - customer and employee retention. So, you know your sales coaching techniques are working if you are able to increase the customer Lifetime Value (LTV) and retain more customers and employees.&nbsp;<h4>Assessments</h4>Assessments are particularly useful when you are tracking your employees’ behavior. If you want an employee to improve their behavior and communication with their prospects and team members, making quantifiable assessments and tracking them can help you identify their progress.&nbsp;You can also track absentees to check how well your sales coaching strategies are working. If you notice that your sales reps are feeling pressurized and not turning up, you can alter your techniques accordingly.&nbsp;

<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Best Sales Coaching Practices</h2>Here are some of the best sales coaching practices you can use to ensure productivity and optimal sales performance:&nbsp;<h3>Record And Review Sales Calls</h3>The best way to give specific feedback is to evaluate each sales rep’s sales calls. Be sure to record each sales rep’s sales calls and review them one-on-one to give them custom coaching. This way, you will be able to identify their areas of improvement and make them aware of the same.&nbsp;<h3>Find Out Each Sales Rep’s Motivation</h3>We mentioned not giving the same advice to every sales rep. While sales reps differ in skillsets, their motivations also vary. Sure, they all want to make money. But, how much? And why?&nbsp;If you want to engage your sales reps in the best possible way and maximize their potential, you will need to find out what makes them tick. That will tell you how motivated they are, how long they might work with you, and so on. You can use this information to tweak your sales coaching strategy.&nbsp;<h3>Give Them Incentives</h3>This should go without saying but incentives are vital. If you want your sales reps to improve on a certain metric and find that they aren’t making enough progress, consider giving them an incentive - like a flat amount or percentage from the sales they make if they hit a target you set.&nbsp;Again, you will need to know each sales rep’s motivation to give them the right incentive.&nbsp;<h3>Provide Accurate &amp; Positive Feedback</h3>We aren’t saying you should sugarcoat anything. However, you may want to consider giving them positive reinforcement as you give them specific feedback. This is vital because it keeps them in high spirits and they become aware of whatever they are doing correctly.&nbsp;<h3>Conduct Regular Meetings</h3>As your sales team grows, it can become difficult to keep track of each sales rep’s strengths, weaknesses, and progress. Make sure you conduct quick meetings regularly so that everyone in the team is clear about where they stand and can work in the most efficient way possible.&nbsp;<h3>Communicate Your Vision</h3>Earlier, we discussed employee satisfaction and a feeling of accomplishment. In other words, your employees want to contribute to a shared vision. So, before you get them started, we recommend you share your vision and mission as clearly as possible.&nbsp;You also want to remind them of your vision, which means that you ought to share it at every team and one-on-one meeting. Furthermore, you should shine a light on those sales reps who have been working towards that vision.&nbsp;<h3>Try Role-playing</h3>When your sales reps are just starting or if they have a sticking point they are not able to get past, try role-playing with them to help them practice. Conducting role-plays to help them overcome uncomfortable situations can help them learn quickly without bearing the pressure of not messing it up with a client.&nbsp;<h3>High-Quality Training And Resources</h3>Ultimately, the sales coaching itself has to be amazing. If you have ineffective sales coaching and strategies, the lack of progress and performance from the sales department is on you. So, ensure your sales coaching brings actual results upon implementation. Make sure you are constantly testing and revamping your strategy and empower your sales team by directing them to important resources like ebooks, websites, and other content.&nbsp;

<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Conclusion</h2>There you have it - a quick guide to sales coaching to help you get started. To recap, sales coaching is one of the best investments you can make to improve your team’s sales performance and overall ROI. It helps your sales team consistently meet the fixed monthly, quarterly, and yearly sales quotas. Check out our <a href="https://outplayhq.com/blogs">blog</a> to quickly get a grip on the fundamentals of sales.‍LIKE WHAT YOU JUST READ? SUBSCRIBE <a href="https://outplayhq.com/blogs">HERE</a> FOR FREE TO READ MORE SUCH INSIGHTFUL BLOGS.

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How to Become a Sales Coaching Expert: A Guide

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Almost everyone would agree that anything that gets measured gets accomplished. This is especially true of sales. Sales leaders generally set goals, known as sales quotas, that individual sellers and sales teams alike must reach.&nbsp;Without a set of well-defined goals, you will not be able to consistently up your sales over time.&nbsp;According to <a href="https://www.pipedrive.com/en/blog/sales-statistics">Pipedrive</a>, 67% of companies believe that hitting sales quotas is the best indicator of individual sales performance.In this article, we will take a deep dive into the subject of sales quotas.&nbsp;

<h2>What is a Sales Quota?</h2>A sales quota is a time-sensitive, financial goal or target that sellers or sales teams must reach within a certain period. Sales quotas are generally set monthly, quarterly, or yearly. Ultimately, the point of a sales quota is to drive sales in a specific period.&nbsp;

<h2>Why are Sales Quotas Important?</h2>Sales quotas are important for the following reasons:1. Clear, well-defined goals - With this quarter’s sales quota, you now know what your targets are and how long you have to achieve these targets. Having clarity can help you reach your targets faster.2. Challenge and commitment - Sales quotas generally come with incentives. As a result, you are challenged to reach the stipulated targets in time to earn that incentive.&nbsp;

<h2>Benefits of a Sales Quota</h2>It is probably clear to you that setting a sales quota is vital if you want to up your sales consistently. However, here are a few benefits of sales quotas we think are worth highlighting:<ul><li>A sales quota helps you determine your bottlenecks and areas for improvement in your pipeline.&nbsp;</li><li>It allows you to highlight the best-performing sales reps, incentivize them to reach higher targets and standardize their best practices to optimize your organization’s overall performance.&nbsp;</li><li>A sales quota also allows you to determine if your employees are being paid fairly and, if not, rectify it.</li></ul>

<h2>Types of Sales Quotas</h2>Now that you know what a sales quota is, it’s time to look at some important sales quota types. Sales quotas are primarily based on revenue, sales activity, etc.&nbsp;1. RevenueRevenue quotas are the most common type of sales quotas you will come across. With a sales quota like this, sales team members are expected to increase their sales and subscriptions to generate a certain amount of revenue in a specific period. You can set a sales quota monthly, quarterly, or yearly.&nbsp;This is the most basic and general definition of a revenue quota. However, you can set a revenue quota for your specific sales needs. For example, you can set a sales quota for profits on a certain product or line of products. Set a quota for the profit and overall sales you want to make for each product or service in your catalog.&nbsp;2. Sales VolumeThis sales quota determines how many units of a product or service need to be sold in a specific time frame.&nbsp;Volume quotas are generally set on a yearly basis and are for individual sellers, branch offices, product lines and ranges, etc. Sales volume quotas are useful in monitoring sales reps and forecasting.&nbsp;3. Expense&nbsp;&nbsp;An expense quota is a budget that you assign each sales representative.&nbsp;Set the expense quota as a small percentage of the total sales volume target every month, quarter, or year, and make sure each sales rep limits their expenditure to the expense quota you’ve allotted. Ultimately, setting an expense quota can help you with your cost control.&nbsp;4. Sales ActivityConsistent, deliberate sales activity is vital for improved sales and business growth. This is why it is vital to continually track sales activity and keep teams accountable, especially considering how companies worldwide are implementing the remote work culture.&nbsp;As the name suggests, a sales activity quota refers to a set number of activities that Business Development Representatives (BDR) and Sales Development Representatives (SDR) are required to carry out during a specific period. This period could be a month, quarter, or a year.&nbsp;Sales reps are generally required to carry out a fixed number of the following tasks as part of the activity quota:<ul><li>Making calls</li><li>Submitting documents</li><li>Dealer visits</li><li>Number of closes</li><li>Number of meetings held</li></ul>5. Forecast&nbsp;A forecast quota is a monthly or quarterly quota you assign a sales team based on historical performance to help them hit certain targets. Forecast quotas help determine what influences a company’s revenue.6. Combination&nbsp;As the name suggests, a combination quota involves more than one metric. It is a combination of multiple quotas. Different companies and managers have different sales quotas. However, in most cases, you will find a combination of sales activity and volume.&nbsp;An example of this is assigning a sales rep a specific number of calls and closing a percentage of those calls.&nbsp;

<h2>How to Set Up Sales Quotas</h2>Here are a few steps you need to follow to set up a sales quota:&nbsp;1. Set A BaselineThe first thing you should do while setting up a sales quota is establish a baseline of performance. This baseline could be for sales reps, teams, etc.&nbsp;When we talk about baselines, we are essentially establishing the minimum revenue you need to generate to keep your business going.When setting a baseline, be sure to account for business growth, your current quarter, opportunities in different regions, and other factors you deem to be relevant.&nbsp;2. Decide On Your Sales Quota Setting ApproachOnce you establish your baseline, you need to choose an approach to set your sales quota. There are two approaches:&nbsp;<ul><li>Top-down approach</li><li>Bottom-up approach</li></ul>3. Top-Down ApproachWith the top-down approach, you set the goal first and then set the sales quotas accordingly. In other words, you set the goal and sales managers reverse engineer the work needed to accomplish that goal.&nbsp;Of course, you need to be clear with your objectives before you set the goal and convey the same to the rest of your team to ensure they accomplish it.&nbsp;While this approach undoubtedly motivates the sales reps, you run the risk of setting unrealistic goals and sales quotas.&nbsp;4. Bottom-Up ApproachAs you may have expected, the bottom-up approach is the opposite of the top-down approach. With the bottom-up approach, sales managers evaluate the past performance and capabilities of the sales reps to set appropriate sales quotas.&nbsp;Sales managers generally look at factors like:<ul><li>Number of qualified leads</li><li>Lead to close ratio</li><li>Deal size</li></ul>…and so forth.&nbsp;In other words, the bottom-up approach allows you to set a realistic goal for sales reps. You can adjust the sales quota for the sales reps as they get better.&nbsp;The bottom-up approach may not look as ambitious as the top-down approach. However, you can still make it challenging for the sales reps to motivate them sufficiently.5. Set Activity GoalsUnless this is an activity quota, you will need to set activity goals to match the quota-setting approach and baseline. Based on the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you decide on, you can set activity goals for your sales reps. These aren’t necessary, but give them direction.&nbsp;Give your sales reps a specific number of calls, emails, etc., to conduct to match the requirements of the sales quota.&nbsp;

<h2>What Makes a Good Sales Quota?</h2>While setting a sales quota, make sure that they have the following qualities:&nbsp;1. ChallengeAs we’ve mentioned, your sales quotas need to challenge your sales reps. If you do not sufficiently challenge them, you run the risk of having them take things for granted and not meet the stipulated goals.&nbsp;The sweet spot to set a challenge is to give them a goal that is difficult but not so difficult that they think it is impossible.&nbsp;2. RealisticSetting challenging yet realistic goals is vital to having your sales reps perform their best. As mentioned, your sales reps need to be challenged but still think those goals are achievable.&nbsp;If you set unrealistic expectations, they may get demotivated and perform poorly. The best way to go about setting realistic goals is to look at their past performance and their potential and set goals accordingly.3. DynamicWhile challenging your sales reps to perform better, it is vital that you keep their goals dynamic. Giving them the same goals and challenges repeatedly will hinder their growth.&nbsp;If you recognize their improvement over a specific period, change your goals for them accordingly so that they stay on their toes.&nbsp;

<h2>What Sales Quota Mistakes Should You Avoid?</h2>Now that you know what steps to take and the qualities that make an excellent sales quota, here are a few critical mistakes you should avoid as you set sales quotas:&nbsp;1. No Consistent Method Or ProcessChanging your sales quota setting methods every year or so will not result in growth. Avoid switching between bottom-up and top-down approaches every few months in an attempt to see results.Ideally, you want to use an approach that aligns with your business and stick to it, only changing it once in three or five years.&nbsp;2. Setting Quotas LateLate quotas result in complete confusion. Some companies release their quotas well after the year has started, sometimes in the second quarter.&nbsp;Releasing a late quota will leave your sales team in a world of confusion because they will not be able to accomplish the goals you’ve set unless they understand your strategy.Ideally, you need to have your sales quota ready at the start of the new year. A late quota can mean significantly less success during that year.3. Over-AssignmentOver-assignment of tasks is a common problem in companies. Remember how we talked about setting challenging goals that are realistic? Many companies do not do this.&nbsp;Sales managers over assign tasks to their sales teams. As a result, sales reps end up performing poorly over time.&nbsp;4. Not Measuring Your QuotasSales quotas are meant to:&nbsp;<ul><li>Predict your sales</li><li>Motivate salespeople to perform well</li><li>Give the company direction</li></ul>You will be unable to manage your quotas if you aren’t measuring them properly. You will not be able to determine if your quotas are good or bad due to a lack of reliable information.&nbsp;5. Calculating Your Sales QuotaIdeally, 80% of your sales team should be able to meet their sales quota targets most of the time. If not, you may have to set a new, realistic quota. You can do this by following the steps highlighted earlier in the article. Use this formula to calculate your sales quota:&nbsp;Baseline Sales Quota = Average Number Of Closed Deals Per Month X Average Contract ValueOf course, be sure to take the following into account while calculating your sales quota:&nbsp;<ul><li>Average number of available leads</li><li>Number of target activities</li><li>Sales rep’s base salary</li><li>Incentive pay and bonuses</li></ul>Also, there are several sales quota calculators on the market that you can use.&nbsp;

What Sales Quota Mistakes Should You Avoid?

<h2>Conquer Sales Quota with Proven Strategies</h2>To recap, sales quotas are vital to ace the sales game. If you want your sales team to consistently do well during the year, you need to set your sales quota well in advance to help them perform.&nbsp;Your sales quota must be challenging enough to motivate your sales reps to do well, yet not too challenging that they think your sales quota targets are impossible to meet. Check out our <a href="https://outplayhq.com/blog">blog</a> to get a deeper understanding of the sales world.

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What is a Sales Quota?

Why are Sales Quotas Important?

Benefits of a Sales Quota

Types of Sales Quotas

How to Set Up Sales Quotas

What Makes a Good Sales Quota?

Sales Quota: How To Ace The Sales Game

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In today’s sales world, you must optimize strategies, processes, and techniques to boost your sales efficiency. Customers expect personalization at practically every phase of the sales cycle. If you want to provide customized solutions, you need accurate data.&nbsp;This is where sales intelligence comes into play.&nbsp;If you are looking for a quick, comprehensive guide to sales intelligence, you’re in the right place.Let's get started!

<h2>What Is Sales Intelligence?</h2>Sales intelligence is a collection of prospect insights and other relevant data that helps sales teams understand their prospects better. This allows sales teams to understand workflows and the revenue cycle better. Sales teams generally use various sales software to collect prospect data.&nbsp;

<h2>Why is Sales Intelligence Important?</h2>Today, personalization is everything. You need personalization if you want to identify your ideal leads, pitch your services, nurture them, and ultimately boost your conversions. Sales intelligence offers you the following:&nbsp;<ul><li>Specific needs and pain points of your buyers</li><li>Buyer intent of your customers and prospects</li><li>Customer loyalty after having converted them</li><li>Buyer persona characteristics</li></ul>Also, Sales intelligence helps you:&nbsp;1. Shortens the sales cycleWith sales intelligence data, salespeople do not have to waste time on people who aren't looking to buy their products. Instead, they can use it to find out when they have an intent to do so. In other words, there’s less time between the initial contact and closing.&nbsp;2. Better customizationSalespeople can leverage sales intelligence data to find out when a prospect has an intent to buy or hear from them, making it easier for them to craft a message that is personalized to each prospect.&nbsp;3. Enhance productivitySales intelligence gives salespeople quicker, cleaner, accessible, and accurate data, making it easier for them to increase their sales and overall productivity. Ultimately, if you want better leads and a higher conversion rate, you will need as much accurate and relevant data as you can get.&nbsp;

<h2>The Role of Data in Sales Intelligence</h2>As you know by now, data is&nbsp;crucial for sales intelligence. Here are four types of data you can use to increase your conversions:&nbsp;1. Customer funnel dataA customer funnel is essentially the journey of a lead to a customer. A customer funnel shows you the exact sequence of events from the first point of contact to the actual sale. So, studying the customer funnel is vital because you will be able to find out:<ul><li>Where you may have lost leads</li><li>The prospect’s overall experience</li><li>What caused the prospects to buy your products and become customers</li><li>Everything that went right and wrong from beginning to end</li></ul>Here’s what you can do to build a robust customer funnel:<ul><li>Use a sales intelligence tool to analyze your target audience’s behavior.&nbsp;</li><li>Create a landing page to get leads</li><li>Send your leads valuable content through campaigns on multiple platforms (you can use<a href="https://outplayhq.com/features/multi-channel-sales-engagement">&nbsp;Outplay’s Multichannel outreach too</a>l for this)</li><li>Nurture each prospect up to a point where you are ready to sell</li><li>Try to upsell them to another product.</li></ul>2. Website analyticsYour website is where all your prospects will end up looking up resources or possibly picking up a product.&nbsp;This makes website analytics vitally important because everything that a prospect does on your site, every page that your prospect visits, will tell you about their buyer intent. To get a grip on your prospect’s intent, here are a few questions you ought to answer:<ul><li>Which are your website’s most visited pages?</li><li>How long were your prospects on these pages?</li><li>Which page(s) did they generally visit after the landing page?</li></ul>You can use any website analytics tool to determine this information and identify your prospects’ pain points. Webinars, seminars, live streams, and other cool engaging online events have always served as excellent ways to fetch you high-quality leads. If you’ve held online events or plan on conducting them, be sure to collect data like:<ul><li>Pain points, specific needs</li><li>Profession, industry, niche, title</li><li>Contact and personal details</li><li>Audience demographic data</li></ul>3. Buying signalsAs the name suggests, buying signals are signals that your prospects are ready to buy. A lack of understanding of buying signals is one of the primary reasons salespeople lose out on lucrative deals and closes. Here are a few buying signals you ought to look out for:&nbsp;<ul><li>Visits to a product page on your website</li><li>Filling up your forms with their personal details</li><li>Responding to a CTA, like signing up for a demo or trial</li><li>High social media engagement</li></ul>

<h2>Benefits of Sales Intelligence</h2>In a nutshell, you need relevant, comprehensive data to know more about your prospects and gauge their buying intentions. You can use a sales intelligence tool to identify the prospect’s name, email address, job title, and other personal details. Intent data will help you gauge your prospect’s buying intentions. Here are some benefits of sales intelligence:&nbsp;1. Find your target audience easilyHow much time would you save if you were to find the customers&nbsp;you want without spending much time? Well, sales intelligence does that for you. You can use various data like company name, location, etc., to identify the potential customers that are likely to buy your products.&nbsp;2. Find decision-makers quicklyFinding and contacting decision-makers is absolutely crucial when it comes to sales. You need to identify the best person to contact. This means you need someone who is accessible and has the authority to make decisions.&nbsp;Getting the right decision maker means you can pitch your product to the&nbsp;right&nbsp;person, and not someone who doesn’t need it or is not in a position to take a call. Sales intelligence allows you to customize your outreach and send intelligent emails to these decision-makers to prompt a response.&nbsp;3. Improve lead generation &amp; qualificationSales intelligence allows you to generate quality leads that match your ICP. We shall discuss your ICP in the next section. Most websites have a lead form that retrieves visitors’ names and email addresses. However, this data isn’t enough.&nbsp;You need to have more data like financial information, location, industry or niche, and so forth. Sales intelligence helps you qualify your leads and send them to the sales department faster, thereby giving you better sales in less time.&nbsp;4. Keep an eye out for your competitorsBesides helping you optimize your lead generation, qualification, finding your target audience, etc., sales intelligence also helps you monitor your competitors and stay ahead of the curve.&nbsp;5. Get in touch with your customers at the right timeAs you know, not reaching out to prospects or reaching out to them at the wrong time will cause you to lose out on sure-shot sales. However, with sales intelligence on your side, you will be able to recognize the correct time to contact them through buyer signals, news, trigger events, and so forth.&nbsp;

<h2>Who is your Ideal Customer Profile?</h2>In the previous section, we mentioned the term ICP. If you’re trying to boost your sales, wouldn’t it be useful to know your&nbsp;ideal customer? We thought so too. You can use sales intelligence to identify your ICP. Your perfect customer or ICP is someone who is likely to purchase your product, benefit from it, and stick with you for the long term.&nbsp;Before we get to defining your ICP, we need to understand why we need to have one in the first place: &nbsp;<ul><li>For marketing: If you have your ICP in place, you will be able to run more specific, more productive campaigns and create content that resonates with the people you are looking to target. &nbsp;</li><li>For Sales:&nbsp;Having your ICP ready will help you generate the right leads and reach out to them at the right time. This way, you can position yourself as the best possible option for your prospects while avoiding people who aren’t looking to buy from you. In other words, increased productivity and less time wasted.&nbsp;</li></ul>&nbsp;Knowing your ICP will help you focus all your efforts to boost your sales. Sales intelligence can help you develop your ICP (more on this later).&nbsp;Here’s how you define your ICP:&nbsp;1. Who Are Your Biggest Customers?Look at your customer data to find out which companies are already your customers. Ideally, you want to look at the companies that spend the most, use your product the most, and benefit the most from it.&nbsp;Once you shortlist your biggest users, interview them to find out why they like your product. Here are a few things for you to find out:<ul><li>How they found you</li><li>What value were you able to provide them, or how were you able to solve their problems</li><li>How and when they were able to make the decision to purchase your product</li></ul>2. Analyze The Data And Create An ICP TemplateAnalyze the data to identify the most common patterns and build your ICP template. You can use the following criteria to craft your ICP template:&nbsp;<ul><li>Pain points</li><li>Business goals</li><li>Company Size</li><li>Budget</li><li>Industry or niche</li><li>Titles of decision-makers</li><li>Buying process</li><li>Location</li></ul>Of course, there’s no fixed template to identify your ICP. You need to continually make changes and refine your template to get the best results.&nbsp;

<h2>Using Sales Intelligence to Develop Your ICP</h2>Remember how we mentioned sales intelligence can help you develop your ICP? Once you know your ICP, you can use sales intelligence to reach more of your ideal customers at the right time. Here are the five different types of data you can use: Intent Data: This data tells you which leads and accounts are actively searching for the products or solutions you have to offer.&nbsp;‍Chronographic Data: This is primarily company data that marketers consider to be sales triggers. Essentially it refers to a change or event in the company that could affect sales, for example, new hires, funding, product launch, etc. Demographic Data: Demographic data refers to details like income, location, industry, etc. This data gives you a real picture of your ICP, telling you who your prospects really are.&nbsp; Firmographic Data:&nbsp;This data refers to types of information that you can use to categorize your prospects, like geographic location, industry, revenue, etc.&nbsp;‍Technographic Data:&nbsp;Technographic data tells you which technologies your prospective customers are using. If you find that they are using your competitors’ products, it’s clear that your products can help address their pain points.

<h2>How Do Sales Intelligence Tools Work?</h2>In a nutshell,&nbsp;sales intelligence tools&nbsp;collect, sort, analyze, and evaluate large amounts of data you can find online publicly.&nbsp;‍Sales intelligence tools&nbsp;continually crawl millions of public sites and aggregate relevant information from a variety of sources. Some&nbsp;sales intelligence tools provide sales teams with in-depth, accurate insights from their previous interactions with their prospects, thereby saving them lots of time that would have otherwise gone into research and analysis. These tools gather this data and match it to the profiles in their database and allow sales teams to search and evaluate this data.&nbsp;‍Sales intelligence tools are often confused with CRM tools.&nbsp;The primary difference between them is that&nbsp;CRM tools allow you to conduct and document your interactions with prospects, while&nbsp;sales intelligence tools allow&nbsp;sales teams to use and evaluate prospect data. Sales Intelligence tools primarily focus on the following:&nbsp;<ul><li>Aggregating vital information that you can use to reach out to clients via LinkedIn, email, calls, etc.</li><li>Creating prospect lists in order of priority to help reach out to the most promising prospects first</li><li>Continually collecting new lead information to keep your CRM up-to-date</li></ul>

<h2>How Does Sales Intelligence Affect The B2B Sales Process?</h2>Sales intelligence facilitates the B2B sales process in the following ways:Creating your ICPWe’ve already discussed ICPs, but you should know that every business needs an ICP. After all, you are not looking to target everyone. You are looking for the ideal buyer and tailor your marketing and sales efforts to them. Sales intelligence allows you to make lists of target companies and buyers that match your ICP. The five types of data mentioned above (intent, chronographic, firmographic, demographic, and technographic data) will help you zero in on the right prospects.&nbsp;Lead ScoringNow that you have your ideal leads responding and engaging with your content, you can use sales intelligence to gauge which of these leads are most interested. You can use sales intelligence tools to gauge your audience’s responses to your emails and other forms of outreach.Qualification &amp; OutreachAt this stage, you will have to contact your prospects and qualify them. Sales intelligence tools not only give you the right data of the prospects you want to reach but also monitor many data points, thereby helping you reach out to the prospect when they are most receptive.&nbsp;

how sales intelligence affect b2b sales process

<h2>Features of Sales Intelligence Tools&nbsp;</h2>Contrary to what you might believe,&nbsp;there are different&nbsp;sales intelligence tools&nbsp;for different purposes. Here are a few features that&nbsp;sales intelligence tools have:&nbsp;Sales EngagementUltimately, you want to increase your sales. Sales engagement enhances the communication between the sales and marketing teams. As a result, sales teams become more focused, save more time, and personalize their communication with their prospects. As you know, personalization and customization are paramount to closing deals. Prospects become customers if they feel understood and looked after from the point of contact until the end of the buying process.&nbsp;Sales engagement describes the relationship between the salesperson and the prospect in question, which is represented by the conversations they have. Sales engagement tools personalize and automate the customer journey for each prospect, thus optimizing communication with them (including social media content, emails, calls, etc.) Outplay does that for you. Click<a href="https://outplayhq.com/request-a-demo">&nbsp;here</a> to sign up for a demo.&nbsp;Lead QualificationIf you want quality leads without having to spend too much time, you will have to qualify your leads. Sales intelligence software allows you to qualify your leads. These tools tell you which leads to target and which others to avoid. Some tools allow you to prioritize your leads and list them accordingly based on templates and rules.&nbsp;Lead GenerationThere are many&nbsp;sales intelligence tools&nbsp;that help you in prospecting and lead generation. You can define certain criteria, and the software will show you exactly who your leads are.&nbsp;These tools will give you lists of your potential customers along with vital details like public contact information, address, company details, and so on. You can engage these leads straight away. Besides this, some of these tools offer email alerts every time there is a change in your target audience or target customers.&nbsp;Data EnrichmentSometimes, CRMs have incomplete data. Having incomplete customer records with missing information like phone numbers, email addresses, and other contact information can make it difficult for salespeople to reach out to potential customers.&nbsp;Sales intelligence tools&nbsp;are known to enrich the data within your CRM by completing missing fields. It also helps you with your lead nurturing and lead scoring.&nbsp;

<h2>Level Up Your Sales Intelligence with Outplay</h2>Sales intelligence isn’t here to replace anything or anyone. It is here to supplement. However, it is a necessity if you want to boost your conversions. Accurate, relevant, and in-depth data will help you get the right leads at the right time to boost your conversions.&nbsp;There are tons of sales intelligence tools to choose from, depending on what features you are looking for.&nbsp;Take a look at Outplay’s sales intelligence platform right<a href="https://outplayhq.com/">&nbsp;here</a>, and if you are looking for more resources on everything sales-related, check out our<a href="https://outplayhq.com/blogs">&nbsp;blog</a>.

Understanding Sales Intelligence: A Guide

What Is Sales Intelligence?

Why Is Sales Intelligence Important?

The Role of Data in Sales Intelligence

Benefits of Sales Intelligence

Who is your Ideal Customer Profile?

Using Sales Intelligence to Develop Your ICP

How Do Sales Intelligence Tools Work?

How Does Sales Intelligence Affect The B2B Sales Process?

Features of Sales Intelligence Tools 

Boost Your Sales Strategy with Sales Intelligence: A Comprehensive Guide

“Before LinkedIn and other social networks, in the sales world, ABC stood for Always Be Closing. Now, it means ‘Always Be Connecting.” – Jill Rowley&nbsp;If you want more sales, you need to go where the customers are. These days, you can find businesses and their respective target audiences across various niches on social media - Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. Originally starting as just a social media platform that people use to post small threads or tweets, Twitter is now a viable platform for online businesses. Content creators, business and fitness coaches, etc., have bought into Twitter in a big way - amassing tons of followers and, in turn, buyers. &nbsp;Since its inception as a tool that allowed job seekers and professionals to post their CVs online, LinkedIn has blossomed into an incredibly powerful tool for content creation and marketing.&nbsp;According to <a href="https://blog.hootsuite.com/linkedin-statistics-business/#:~:text=93%25%20of%20B2B%20content%20marketers,and%2071%25%2C%20respectively).">Hootsuite</a>, 93% of B2B content marketers use LinkedIn for organic marketing. Let that sink in. So, social selling is real and more popular than ever. &nbsp;If you’re looking for the nuts and bolts of social selling, this article is for you.&nbsp;

<h1>What Is Social Selling?&nbsp;</h1>Social selling involves using your brand’s social media channels to build relationships with your prospective clients. It involves engaging your potential customers on social media and building a relationship with them to a point where they consider your brand first when they are finally ready to make a purchase.In other words, social selling is lead nurturing, not hard closing.&nbsp;<h1>What Social Selling Is Not</h1>Social selling does NOT involve spamming strangers with irrelevant messages that do not help them in any way. It's also not about increasing your list of random followers and sending random messages to engage them. It’s about making those interactions meaningful for them. You’re looking for quality leads, not just quantity.

<h1>Why Do You Need Social Selling?&nbsp;</h1>Okay, so you know what social selling is and what it isn’t. However, it is vital to know why social selling is as important as we are making it out to be. Here are a few critical reasons you ought to be aware of:&nbsp;

<h2>1. Your Audience Is On Social Media&nbsp;</h2>Your prospects are on social media so you ought to be on social media, selling to them. Seems blatantly obvious, doesn’t it? Think of it this way - a big chunk of your audience grew up with phones and social media and people of all age groups seem to be scrolling through their Instagram and Facebook feeds incessantly. According to <a href="https://sproutsocial.com/insights/instagram-stats/">Sprout Social</a>, Instagram has 2 Billion active users. If you’re not selling to them on Instagram (or another social media platform of your choice), think of how many opportunities you are missing.&nbsp;<h2>2. People Use Social Media For Research&nbsp;</h2>Ever found yourself taking a hard look at a brand’s Instagram or LinkedIn page to determine whether or not they were legitimate? Your prospects are doing the same thing. It is no longer enough to have a stunning website that loads fast. You need everything optimized - including your social media. While social media serves as an excellent tool for salespeople, it also acts as a vast source of information. According to <a href="https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/social-selling-stats?__hstc=210964170.af7b2cf1287eb0846d87d6daf3976fbc.1669887171132.1672950195710.1672979137521.54&amp;__hssc=210964170.14.1672979137521&amp;__hsfp=1413747390">HubSpot</a>, 41% of B2B buyers view 3-5 pieces of content online before interacting with a salesperson.&nbsp;<h2>3. Manage Reputation&nbsp;</h2>Reputation is everything in this day and age because social proof is a critical factor in boosting sales and gaining credibility. If you promote your brand and manage your reputation properly, you can expect to amass more followers and attention. However, a negative reputation will slow down your growth in no time.Social selling allows you to:&nbsp;<ul><li>Track for competitors' online activities. You can check if there’s anything being said against your brand. &nbsp;</li><li>Engage with your customers directly and instantaneously.&nbsp;</li><li>Receive instant notifications when you receive comments or if your brand’s name is mentioned.&nbsp;</li></ul>

<h2>4. Customer Retention&nbsp;</h2>Everything we’ve mentioned thus far has to do with acquiring new customers, which is ideally what you should be doing. However, you need to retain these customers to increase your revenue. Once you have acquired a client, you need to make them come back for more. Social selling helps you do this. Your sales team can use social selling to gauge the position and perspective of your current and previous clients and engage them accordingly. These techniques will help you create the offers and content that your current clients need to return to your business.<h2>5. Improved Selling&nbsp;</h2>In this day and age, cold calls and emails, and outbound marketing do not suffice. Today, customers do not seem to interact with businesses in this way nearly as much as they would in the past. You need to engage them on social media. More engagement means more sales. Personalized engagement makes a significant difference because you are catering to their preferences and pain points, giving them solutions, and building trust in the process. This kind of engagement can help establish brand loyalty, which means that they will turn to you once they are ready to purchase.

<h1>Tips To Optimize Your Social Selling&nbsp;</h1>Now that we’ve established why you need social selling, here are a few social selling tips and practices that you can employ to optimize your social selling efforts:&nbsp;‍1. Optimize Your Profiles&nbsp;This is the first thing you should do. If you are on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc., you will have to spruce up your profile before you start social selling or your prospects may end up ignoring your messages. We will show you how to optimize your profile later in this piece. ‍2. Create and Share Content&nbsp;Content is the name of the game. Any business or personal brand that has consistently created quality content has managed to gain significant mileage online. Online content is generally entertaining or educational, or ideally both.&nbsp;Remember - your social media platforms serve as an information source, which means that you need to cement your brand as an authority in your respective niche. Creating and posting compelling content consistently will help your brand become a thought leader in your niche. &nbsp;3. Interact With Your Followers Consistently&nbsp;If you regularly create quality content, you can expect to have new followers, connections, messages, and so forth. Be sure to stay in touch with them. It is incredibly vital to reply to their comments, reply to their messages, answer their questions, find their pain points, direct them to the right resources, and forge a solid relationship in the process.&nbsp;Doing this will help you in two ways:&nbsp;<ul><li>Based on the engagement you get, you can determine which kind of content works best and stick to that.&nbsp;</li><li>Secondly, as highlighted earlier, you get an accurate view of your audience’s pain points. You can use this information to eventually make customers out of them.</li></ul>4. Track Your Engagement&nbsp;We mentioned finding out what kind of content works best and sticking to that. You can only do this if you track the engagement your posts receive. Be sure to track the likes, comments, shares, message response rate, follower engagement rate, Click Through Rate (CTR), revenue, etc. We shall take a look at some of these metrics later in this article.&nbsp;&nbsp;

5. Communicate With Your Prospects On Different Platforms&nbsp;Sure, you have them on Instagram and Facebook. Why not talk to them on LinkedIn and Twitter as well? Each platform has different nuances, which means the tone of the content you share on each platform will be different. Also, we understand that when you’re handling multiple prospects, it can be difficult to keep your interactions personal with each prospect when done manually. However, you can use a tool like <a href="https://outplayhq.com/features/multi-channel-sales-engagement">Outplay’s Multi-channel Outreach</a> to create personalized sequences across various platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, SMS, email, etc.6. Join Different Groups And Forums&nbsp;As we mentioned earlier, you are looking for quality leads. Why not go where you’re bound to find them? Sign up and join different groups and forums. Doing this will help you:&nbsp;<ul><li>Stay up to date with the latest challenges your potential customers are facing, allowing you to provide more effective solutions&nbsp;</li><li>Find the kind of leads you are looking for</li></ul>However, remember to add to discussions and build trust with members of these groups instead of using these platforms to pitch your services right off the bat. Sales-y messages will most likely annoy people.

<h1>How To Optimize Your Social Profiles?&nbsp;</h1>Remember how we said LinkedIn and Twitter are excellent platforms for business? We are going to give you a quick run-through on how to optimize your profiles on these platforms to maximize your social selling efforts. &nbsp;<h2>LinkedIn&nbsp;</h2><ul><li>Have a high-resolution, professional photograph. As you know, it’s all about first impressions. With a professional photograph, you want people to see the professional side of you at first glance. &nbsp;</li><li>Write a punchy headline. Your headline tells the viewer what they can expect from you at first glance. So, mention what you do and who you help.&nbsp; &nbsp;</li><li>Write a concise, yet informative bio. You need to essentially re-iterate your headline and supplement it with a detail or two. This means that if you mention you work in a certain niche, be sure to explain what kind of results you were able to bring your clients in that niche. End it with a Call-to-Action (CTA).&nbsp; &nbsp;</li><li>Complete your profile. No seriously, fill up all the relevant fields. Also, add details where you can. So, if you are in a certain company, make sure you mention what that company is and represents, what your role was in that company and what kind of results you were able to generate.&nbsp; &nbsp;</li><li>Get testimonials from your previous clients and feature them on your profile to demonstrate your credibility.&nbsp; &nbsp;</li></ul>

<h1>Twitter&nbsp;</h1>Unlike LinkedIn, you do not have much to work with. So, here’s what you can do to revamp your Twitter profile:&nbsp;<ul><li>Use a high-res, professional photograph. &nbsp;</li><li>Mention what you do and who you help in the bio. &nbsp;</li><li>Include a link to your LinkedIn profile. &nbsp;</li><li>Add relevant hashtags to your bio.&nbsp;</li></ul>

<h1>How To Measure Social Selling Success?&nbsp;</h1>Your social selling efforts are only as effective as the social selling strategy you use. Tracking your success is an integral part of formulating an excellent social selling strategy. But, how do you know if social selling is working for you? We shall take a look at the most important metrics to track as you fine-tune your social selling efforts:&nbsp;

<h2>Inbound Connections&nbsp;</h2>Sure, you could send out as many connection requests as possible and expect 40-50% of them to accept them. However, this strategy doesn’t yield much in terms of business growth. Inbound connections are connections that come to you. If you receive connection requests, it means people are requesting to connect with you.They may have found you in the search bar or through mutual connections. But, they’re finding you. A high frequency of inbound connections could mean that your social selling strategy is paying off.<h2>LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI)&nbsp;</h2>LinkedIn’s SSI is an excellent tool to get a quick, overall analysis of your social selling strategy and efforts. Of course, this only applies to LinkedIn. You cannot gauge your performance on any other platform using the SSI.The <a href="https://business.linkedin.com/sales-solutions/social-selling/the-social-selling-index-ssi">SSI</a> calculates your score based on your efforts to:&nbsp;&nbsp;

<ul><li>Find the right people&nbsp;</li><li>Establish your professional brand&nbsp;</li><li>Engage with insights&nbsp;</li><li>Build relationships</li></ul><h2>Click-Through-Rate (CTR)&nbsp;</h2>CTR is another vital metric to track because it is an indicator of how engaging your content is. The best and easiest way to calculate your CTR is by using a social selling tool for analytics.<h2>Message Response Rate&nbsp;</h2>This one is a no-brainer. In your effort to forge solid relationships with prospects, you need to continually optimize the way you reach out to them. Tracking the message response rate - the rate at which your prospects get back to you, is an excellent way to find out if your openers are good.&nbsp;If you have a low message response rate, it probably means you aren’t warming up the prospects enough and need to change your strategy.<h2>Follower Engagement Rate&nbsp;</h2>The follower engagement rate is an indicator of how effective your social selling strategy is. When you reach out to people on social platforms, do they follow you and engage with your content? If so, what’s the rate? The higher the follower engagement rate, the greater your chances of building a solid relationship with more prospects.<h2>Revenue&nbsp;</h2>Seeing how boosting sales and revenue is the ultimate goal, it would make sense to include this as a metric that you ought to keep track of. Considering you're closely tracking the other metrics mentioned here, you probably have a good idea of how many leads you are nurturing and how your social selling pipeline looks overall.&nbsp;Then, ask yourself if it makes sense to set aside money for social selling. However, if you are employing the social selling techniques in this article, you can be sure to build an online presence and reap the benefits of social selling.&nbsp; &nbsp;

<h1>Common Social Selling Mistakes To Avoid&nbsp;</h1>As you begin selling on social media and iron out your social selling strategy, you will inevitably make mistakes along the way. The key, however, is to be aware of them and avoid them as best you can. Here are some common social selling mistakes you should avoid: &nbsp;<h2>Creating Content Without Understanding Pain Points&nbsp;</h2>A firm grasp of the prospects’ pain points is crucial to creating valuable, compelling content. If your content doesn’t appeal to your prospective customers, who are you creating content for? If you want to build credibility online, doing your research and understanding your prospects’ pain points is paramount.&nbsp;<h2>Not Setting Up a Social Media Content Calendar&nbsp;</h2>You need to be organized in your content creation and posting. A social media content calendar will alowyou to do this. However, if you do not have a social media content calendar in place, you will: not know what kind of content to post and when to post it.<h2>Not Building Relationships&nbsp;</h2>Ultimately, it’s about building relationships with prospects on social media, not cold, hard closes. Having the best product or service to sell will not suffice because your prospects do not trust you yet. You will need to give them value first and establish trust before you sell them anything. In this respect, providing them value refers to addressing and solving their pain points.&nbsp;<h2>Not Optimizing Your Social Media Profiles&nbsp;</h2>There’s no excuse for not optimizing your social media profiles. It is the easiest thing you can do right now to increase your message response and follower engagement rates. (Plus, we’ve already told you how to do it. Scroll up!)&nbsp;<h2>Not Tracking Your Social Selling &nbsp;</h2>Not tracking your social selling efforts is a surefire way to ensure you walk around in circles. While it is a good thing to experiment and take shots in the dark, there’s only so much time and money you can invest without putting a reliable social selling strategy in place. The best way to do that is by tracking the metrics we’ve mentioned in this article.&nbsp;

<h1>Conclusion&nbsp;</h1>So there it is - everything you need to know about social selling.&nbsp;As you know by now, social selling is a real and lucrative strategy. Your competitors are already selling to customers on social media, so why aren’t you? This article should tell you everything you need to know about social selling to get started. If you want to expand your horizons on everything sales-related, be sure to check out our <a href="https://outplayhq.com/blog">blog</a>, and if you decide you want to give our product a try, request a demo <a href="https://outplayhq.com/request-a-demo">here</a>.&nbsp;

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