6 tips for tech sales success

Selling in highly technical industries is very demanding. Not only are the products themselves more complex, but so are the people and targets you’re selling to. This often creates frustration in salespeople, which ultimately manifests itself in the form of poor sales numbers. In order to be successful, you need to understand sales strategies that specifically apply to tech industries.

The 6 tips you need to know

You have to spend some time in technical sales before you can come to fully appreciate its complexities. Sales professionals in other industries have no idea how challenging it is to close deals in such an advanced marketplace. But once you’ve been in the industry for a while, you start to think, “There has to be a better way.”

Implement the following tips and techniques into your current sales approach and you’re sure to see some healthy returns.

1. Create Detailed Buyer Personas

Buyer personas are extremely valuable for sales professionals. They allow you to understand exactly who’s on the other end of the line/table/email and instill some clarity in what’s otherwise an uncontrollable interaction.

However, as a sales professional in a highly technical industry, it’s not enough to have a single buyer persona. It’s very rare that you’ll only interact with one type of prospect, yet many reps think that it’s okay to have one standard persona.

You need different buyer personas based on every possible individual you could interact with. This includes CEOs, VPs, IT professionals, and more. Each of these individuals has a different responsibility. One is a decision maker, another is an influencer, and the other is a gatekeeper.

For example, the CEO will want to know about the big picture and bottom-line stuff. How will the return on investment be measured? The VP will be curious about implementation and impact on employees. The IT pro will want to know specifics about how the technology works and how it will impact current processes. This is why it’s so important to tailor your approach based on who you’re communicating with.

2. Become a better storyteller

In technical sales, you absolutely must become a good storyteller. Since the products and services you’re pushing aren’t exactly the most compelling at times, you have to do your best to offset these disadvantages by drawing people in.

In fact, storytelling is often the best way to make your initial sales pitch. By telling a brief story, you can frame the product in a particular light and grab the prospect’s attention before they tune out and move on with their day. By no means is it easy to become a good storyteller, but you’ll learn over time. The sooner you start developing this skill, the quicker you’ll see results.

3. Avoid premature selling

When you’re speaking with a prospect, your heart often starts racing and all you can think about is closing the sale. Unfortunately, this often leads to premature selling, which can be detrimental.

“‘Forced appointments and communications result in closed sales less than 14 percent of the time,” says Jacques Werth, president of High Probability Selling. “When feeling pressured, prospects who don't commit to doing business on the first visit are even less likely to ever buy - then, the probability of ever getting the sale drops to 5 percent.”

As Werth points out, premature selling does you no good. Resist the temptation to force communication and instead let the process happen naturally. As they say, patience is a virtue.

4. Focus more on value and less on specs

If you’re looking for one simple way to change your entire technical sales approach, then this is the best piece of advice you’ll ever hear: Focus more on value and less on specs. When you focus on value over product specifications, you’re able to speak directly to the prospect’s pain points.

For example, let’s say you’re selling a CRM solution to a small business owner. While you may feel inclined to rattle off specs – such as marketing features, data analysis capabilities, and employee relationship management – the business really just wants to know one thing. Is the solution going to reduce friction between the company and the customers?

Instead of listing off specs, you should be discussing the specific ways the CRM solution reduces friction and the benefits his business will enjoy as a result. That’s how you sell.

5. Choose your words wisely

Technical professionals are notorious for being hard sells. In fact, it’s quite rare for a sales personality to get along with a technical personality. However, you have to find a way to overcome this. One of the keys is to be careful with the words you choose.

“Technical professionals engage in rigorous academic and professional training to earn their degrees and certifications. Word choices are extremely important to technical professionals,” explains Babette Ten Haken, author of Do You Mean Business? “They interpret your words literally. They’re data points that can be designed against. They also think they’re the smartest folks in the room. You know what? They usually are!”

In other words, you have to choose your words wisely. Never throw around superfluous words in hopes that something will stick. Instead, deliver a very strategic message that speaks to who the individual is and what they need.

6. Use product configuration software

Part of sales success is being able to close the deal by offering the right quote and proposal. If you’re still taking a manual approach to pricing, then you’re risking losing sales as a result of your inefficiencies. What you need is a product configuration solution.

With product configuration software, you can implore dynamic pricing schemes that take into account dozens of different quantitative and qualitative parameters and deliver accurate prices every single time. And, somewhat surprisingly, these solutions are quite intuitive!

Try iQuoteXpress Today

If you’re looking for a product configuration software that will allow you to streamline the technical sales process and increase close rates, then look no further than iQuoteXpress. Our proprietary solution makes tracking, quoting, and closing as easy as possible, so that you can focus on building relationships with prospects.

For more information regarding iQuoteXpress – or for a free demo – please reach out and contact us today. We would be happy to answer any questions you may have!

How to Shorten the Sales Cycle in 5 Steps

In business, time is literally money. The longer it takes your company to close a sale, the more money you lose. On the flipside, the less time it takes, the more you make. That’s why it’s essential to target efficiencies that’ll make your sales cycle as short as possible. However, you’re not the only business to have this thought. This is an extremely common problem among businesses, and it’s not an easy one to solve.

As you approach this issue, recognize first that it’s not the customers who let the sales cycles drag on, but the salespeople. It won’t take long for a customer to decide to buy a product or not if the sales team does their job correctly.

In addition, once the customer decides that they want to purchase a product, it’s the salesperson’s responsibility to see the process through the end. The longer it takes to hold up your end of the deal, the more money the company will lose.

When it comes time to root out the problem with your sales cycle and to take definitive action to fix it, there are some considerations to make. Here are some tried and true ways that you can shorten your sales cycle and see better returns.

1. Present a Clear Proposition

The first rule of salesmanship is that you must make the customer see the value of the proposition that you’re making. “A value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered. It’s the primary reason a prospect should buy from you,” says Peep Laja of Conversion XL, an optimization company.

Laja points out that your value proposition must be the very first thing that a customer sees. Otherwise, he or she won’t be interested in learning more about the product or service. In addition, it must be something with which actual people can relate.

“Value proposition is something real humans are supposed to understand,” Laja continues. “Your value proposition needs to be in the language of the customer. It should join the conversation that is already going on in the customer’s mind.” Speaking to the customer in terms that they can appreciate and value is the surest way to close a deal quickly.

2. Utilize CPQ Software

Presenting the price is ultimately one of the most valuable aspects of your sales process, but it can often be time consuming. In addition, when consumers are given a price that they feel is unreasonable without clear logic behind it, it can encourage them to shut the door on the sale.

Using Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) software is one of the best ways to present a price that customers can get behind as well as to speed up the sales process. CPQ software can not only give you a quick quote for products or services rendered, but it can also show the logic behind the price, revealing the accuracy of the quoted price.

As a general rule of sales, lower priced items will sell quicker, but when a high-priced item is presented in a credible fashion that accompanies a clear value proposition, consumers will look past the price and consider the ultimate value of the sale.

3. Get the Right People Involved

Some people have made up their minds to avoid salespeople. Others aren’t in a position to purchase your product, no matter how convincing you are. When you come across these consumers, don’t waste your time and efforts. If you do manage to sell something, it’ll likely take more time and effort than the sale is worth.

“When your customers are ready to buy, they will tell you,” says an article from ChangingMinds.org. “Sometimes they will immediately place the order, but mostly, they will tell you by subtle signals in their verbal and body language, along with specific things they say and do.” When you’re closely observing the actions and language of your customer, you’ll see who’s interested in purchasing and who’s already made up his or her mind to say no.

4. Speed up the Proposal Process

Writing good proposals is often the key to closing a quick sale in business-to-business settings. Speed is always an important aspect of writing your proposal, but the stakes are raised when you receive a request for proposal (RFP). At that point, it becomes essential to deliver a speedy response to improve your chances of getting the sale.

“There’s more of an advantage to a speedy response time with your RFP than many people realize,” says a blog post from iQuoteXpress. “It’s like getting a 10-second head start in a race. It may not be much, but it could mean the difference between your proposal being accepted and it being thrown out. Having your proposal take the first place in the queue ensures that the requester will read yours with a fresh set of eyes without comparing its weaknesses to other proposals. It’s the advantage that you may need in order to be chosen.”

When you don’t use the right tools, the entire process of writing your proposal, being chosen above other proposals, negotiating terms, and closing a sale can take a month or more. That time frame is simply unacceptable, particularly when you can use CPQ software and other tools to speed up the proposal process. This gives you accurate quotes at the blink of an eye, ensures that your proposal drafts are never lost, and stores everything securely on the cloud.

5. Address Objections at the Beginning

Too many sales people believe that the objections should be left out of the sales pitch, and that only the benefits should be discussed. But this could be the reason why their sales haven’t been very successful. Addressing objections can significantly shorten the sales cycle, particularly if they’re mentioned early on.

The effectiveness of including objections can be illustrated in terms of writing techniques. When someone focuses only on the positive aspects of a topic, that’s known as the straw man fallacy. Essentially, this means that your argument is too fluffy and weak to stand up against the opposition. When someone presents an objection to the argument – and they always will – yours won’t be able to hold its ground.

Bringing objections into the sale early on is like building up an “iron-clad” argument. You can approach the objections head on, and then explain with the positive highlights of the sale why that objection is irrelevant or unfounded. Iron beats straw any day, after all, and the fight will be over much quicker if the objections are covered from the very beginning.

Speed Up the Sales Cycle with a Free CPQ Software Demo from iQuoteXpress

When you’re ready to cut time without cutting corners in the sales process, CPQ software is an essential investment. At iQuoteXpress, we offer a free, no-obligation demo of our online CPQ software. Try it for free today!

Understanding Sales Enablement Tools.

There are an incredible number of sales enablement tools currently available on the market, to the point where there may simply be too many. That’s why it’s important to choose your sales enablement tools wisely: trying to use too many of these tools can leave you overwhelmed and make your business less efficient. But, the question remains: “How do you choose?”

Getting To Your Goals

Part of choosing sales enablement tools is knowing what your ultimate goal is; what do you hope that using these tools will help your business accomplish? If you’re using Configure Price Quote (CPQ) software, for example, your focus may be on increasing quote production efficiency. That’s an important part of sales enablement, but what else can the software do? Investing in a program to do one task when it can really do many is a poor choice.

Before you pay for CPQ software, talk to the experts to find out what else these programs can do. You may find that the software can displace other systems that you already have in place – doing the work of collecting and archiving client information more efficiently, for example. What’s more, such software often does this work nearly automatically, so it’s important to make sure that you aren’t duplicating work as you go about your daily business.

Additionally, many sales enablement programs, including CPQ software, can be integrated with other programs already in use. The better integrated your sales enablement program is, the more staff will utilize it. Don’t allow the considerable power of these programs to be set aside because they integrate poorly with your current systems. A smooth combination of systems is vital.

Start Big, Not Small

With the new emphasis on software as a service, it’s standard practice to allow companies to try out a new service – typically for a 30-day period – before they commit to a subscription. Use this fact to your advantage. Pick up several new strategies, and give them a go all at once. This can give you a clear sense of what strategies work well for your business. The fact is that not everything will be successful. By putting more strategies out into the world, however, you multiply the likely number of hits. Then you can weed out the unsuccessful systems before your trial is up.

Another way that size and scale matter when choosing sales enablement tools is related to growth concerns. Your sales enablement tools should be able to grow with your business, since, if they’re working correctly, you should be increasing sales at a significant rate. Luckily, since many of these programs are software subscriptions based in the cloud, they tend to scale easily: just increase your subscription, and the program can grow with you.

The Human Element

When using sales enablement tools, it’s important to remember that it’s still just a tool. At the end of the day, even if you work on a B2B basis, sales is still the process of humans selling to other humans. This means that your sales team needs to have a good handle on how to use the tools that your company has adopted. Commit to training your team properly in order to get the best results.

Great trainings tend to start before staff enters the room. By giving them work to do before training starts, everyone is engaged and ready to go on training day – or, rather, training days. Effective training takes more than one session. You want your team to feel confident using your sales enablement tools so that, when they interact with clients, they can comfortably navigate the programs and speak with authority.

Math And Maps

In addition to crafting a broad spread in your use of sales enablement strategy, it’s important that someone on your sales team be able to do a little math. Calculate how many sales you need to execute in order to be successful, how well each system seems to work, and what the gap between those two things might be. It also helps to have a calculation of how well your sales were going before implementing these tools; this allows you to measure growth properly.

Alongside the numbers, a clear map of all of the steps in the sales process can help your staff facilitate the process more effectively. What steps does a sale need to move through to get from initiation to completion? Hand out these maps to all sales team members, noting key contacts throughout the process and areas where there have historically been problems. Figuring out how to overcome these problem areas is an important part of making your sales enablement tools work for your business.

It Takes A Village

How is your sales team broken down? Are there members who are specifically committed to sales enablement? While you don’t need a large force committed to this task, 59% of top performing companies report that they have a defined sales enablement sector, although the majority of companies with such a function have fewer than four employees doing this work. It doesn’t take hundreds of people to increase your sales capacity – just a small, committed group that fully understands the process from start to finish.

Emphasize Analytics

Part of what makes sales enablement tools so powerful is that they not only improve your business’s efficiency, but they also feature strong predictive capacities. Make sure to assess the tools available to you based on what they can tell you about what comes next. Too many companies focus exclusively on what’s already happened, on manipulating knowledge of past results to make predictions. If you choose the right sales enablement tools, you won’t need to make these predictions. The software will do it for you.

The iQuotexpress Advantage

At iQuoteXpress, we specialize in software as a service programming with an emphasis on sales enablement. Are you unsure of which programs will work best for your business? Contact us today to speak to a representative. We can help to guide you through selecting appropriate software, managing training and implementation, and transitioning and integrating old practices.

Once you start enhancing your sales enablement process, you’ll be amazed at how quickly your business can grow. Start streamlining your sales process today, and don’t delay; your competitors are embracing the power of sales enablement. It’s time for your business to get on board.

Best Practices for Crafting a Killer RFP Response.

When a request for proposals (RFP) goes out, it’s not long before the requester starts receiving an influx of proposals. Of course, the requester won’t accept all or even most of them.

Unfortunately, if your RFP response doesn’t meet criteria or get straight to the point, it’s unlikely that the requester will even read further than the first two sentences. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen with the following tips.

1. Read the RFP Requirements

And then read them again.

Your proposal should follow the precise formatting requirements outlined by the requester. For example, if it arrived via USPS, the requester may expect all replies to be sent via snail mail in return. The vast majority of RFP responses can be submitted electronically, but you should always check – and check again before you send them off.Take a look at other criteria as well. Many RFPs will include a document that explains how your proposal will be “scored,” similar to the way a professor might grade an academic paper based on a rubric. Pay attention to these criteria to strengthen your proposal across the board. If you must, treat it like a to-do list, and only check off the tasks when they’re the best they can be.

2. Put Your Team Together

Once you have a sense of the requirements, it’s time to take a good look at your internal resources. Are you up to the task of taking on the work you propose? Many requesters will treat RFP responses as business agreements. Should your proposal be approved, it’s bad form – not to mention bad business – to cancel. Make sure you have no conflicts and that enough experienced team members are available during the time you’ve set.

When you’ve decided that you plan to respond, it’s time to put a team together. The members of this team should be the same people who will provide the service to the client – especially if you plan to include brief profiles of your team members (as you should) in the proposal itself. Then, designate a person or persons who will handle client relations and other communications down the line.

Finally, once your team is ready, read the requirements – yes, again. This time, you’ll have several fresh pairs of eyes on the RFP. Team members will have the opportunity to provide input about where their expertise might best be allocated, which can be valuable insight as you move forward.

3. Address All the Details, But Don’t Drag It Out

Now it’s time to write the proposal, which is a delicate balance of highly detailed information and concise, accurate writing.

First, let’s talk about detail. As you create your document, make notes of every detail in the RFP itself and address those points explicitly in the writing. Prospects want to know that you can and will hit every nail on the head, even the little ones that other proposal writers might ignore. It’s not unheard of for prospects to disregard proposals that don’t include the most devilish of details.

However, it’s also important to write concisely. Many agencies write longwinded proposals that detail every selling point from start to finish. This is terrible practice. When you ramble on and on, you’re giving the prospect the impression that you only care about how great your product or service is – not how well you’ve taken their needs into consideration. If the prospect can quickly scan your proposal and get a sense of what you offer right away, all the better.

4. Remember – It’s Not All About You

In fact, very little is about you. Every single talking point should somehow relate back to the client. If something in your proposal doesn’t directly address one of the criteria in the RFP, either delete or rewrite it so that it does.

Unfortunately, many agencies attempt to impress by “improving” on the criteria outlined in the RFP. But it’s not about what you think the client wants. The client knows what’s important to them, and it’s not your job to tell them how to do theirs. Put your agenda and ego aside and focus on how your solution answers their questions.

If you have a unique, creative idea, feel free to include it – but only after you’ve addressed every point the client has identified as important to their decision-making process. Always include the caveat that these are only preliminary ideas that can be further explored or, alternatively, discarded when you finally meet to discuss the project.

5. Be Genuine

Nothing is more obvious – or more annoying – than a form letter. Every agency has standard language they use to communicate their message, philosophy, and other industry information. But the last thing you should do is cut and paste from a submission you’ve submitted in the past – especially if that submission was rejected.

A customized response is an opportunity, not a chore. Use the proposal to show how well you understand the prospect, their industry, and their needs. Demonstrate your knowledge of the client in particular, and offer insights about their audience.

With the right combination of information, responses, and examples of your work, you should be able to give a comprehensive solution to the client’s problem. One detail you should include is why you’ve highlighted particular examples of your work. Tell the client, literally, why this example is relevant to their request. It’s not presumptuous to do so; it’s good writing.

Learn How iQuoteXpress Can Help

Keeping RFPs straight is no small task. You can make the job easier for yourself by using business proposal software to keep track of all the information you need to send complete, accurate proposals. At iQuoteXpress, we’ve created a web-based software application designed to make your job easier. Use it to keep tabs on up-to-date client information, proposal requirements, deadlines, and more.

Want to learn more about what we can do for you? Contact iQuoteXpress today for access to our obligation-free software demo, or to speak with a member of our team.