Closing a deal for a SaaS product usually takes 2-3 months, and the duration extends by the size of the company or the size of a deal according to SaaStr. Why closing a deal takes a lot of time? It can be due to inadequate data gathering, a weakly prepared demo, having the wrong person as a contact, a slow contract management process, etc. Now we will focus on how your sales team can speed up the lead qualification process.
Select the proper communication tool
A sales team needs to have an effective communication strategy. As remote work reached its peak, the importance of communication tools thrived. But which one to choose when there are many tools out there? A communication tool needs to allow the sales team to work in harmony by giving access to the same information and having a shared view of work. Cold calling and emailing have already got outdated, and buyers prefer to engage with a Sales Development Representative (SDR) in a digital space instead of meeting face-to-face. According to Slack, sales teams using Slack Connect observe 4 times faster deal cycles. As Slack communities get more popular, partners, customers, and curious leads prefer to ask questions, learn from others, and share their experiences. So it wouldn't be wrong to say that a modern sales cycle starts and continues in Slack.
Gather the right information
The first touch is always crucial because your findings feed the following steps. The last person to qualify a lead, typically an Account Owner requires a BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) recipe. To fill the ingredients, Business Development Representatives (BDRs) and Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) must retain the answers to the questions below.
How much are they willing to spend?
The first thing to specify is the budget. Learning how much your lead is willing to spend for your product will help the Account Owner prepare for possible features, bundles, packages, number of users, etc. If your lead does not have enough budget, you close the deal.
Is the person you're in touch with the decision-maker?
You should know that it might not be worth spending your time on someone who does not have the authority to purchase. Because the process might lengthen, and the answers you get might be incorrect.
On the other hand, further engagements for convincing a decision-maker might also not be enough if the end-users in that company are not pleased with using your product due to an onboarding process.
Is there a company and product fit?
If your solution does not fulfill the needs, you should end the conversation there. You need to identify what problems they addressed or their experience with another product and the workflows they desire to create. These will give the most valuable hint for a demo scenario they can relate to.
When do they want to purchase your product?
A call can be exploratory for both the contact and the representative. One might try to understand the product and have time to decide whether to go with it. A contact might have a subscription for another solution ending in 2 months. There could also be an immediate need.
If the lead has the optimal budget, authority, need, timeline, and the required business workflow and product fit, Congratulations! You have a freshly generated lead. The thing to do is enter all that information into your CRM and eliminate the unsuitable ones.
Prioritize your leads
When you have a list of generated leads, it's time to identify ideal prospects. Creating score properties specified to your lead generation workflow allows the account owners to qualify leads quicker. An optimized lead scoring helps you properly list contacts, companies, or deals, so your Account Owner will know which step to take on first.
Every lead generation process differs. Inbound leads always have a higher lead score because they are curious and willing to learn, and they are the ones that reach out to you. Outbounds are the reached ones who maybe have not heard of you before or are not aware of a need for such a solution. It would be best to have a CRM that allows you to prioritize your leads. HubSpot allows you to set custom score properties such as outbound, inbound, subscribed to a newsletter, clicked Call-to-Actions(CTAs), submitted forms, etc.
Improve your sales workflow with Actioner
An ideal sales workflow consists of accurate data flow between your work apps, information transferred to the right person, notifications triggered when a specific event occurs, reminders received at the right time, and the next best steps suggested.
A fool-proof sales workflow is possible with Actioner.
Let's say you are using HubSpot as a CRM and your marketing team forms the landing pages with its landing page builder. You connect Actioner with HubSpot in a second.
Imagine an inbound lead that has organically landed on your webpage, signed up for the newsletter, and joined your Slack community.
- Actioner notifies the sales rep as the lead joins your Slack community. A new contact has been created in HubSpot and Actioner suggests sending a direct message to collect the BANT information we've mentioned above.
- After the sales rep sends a direct message, Actioner suggests logging a meeting to contact into HubSpot.
- When you log the meeting together with the notes, you enter or select score properties according to your conclusions.
- Lead turns into a prospect, gets scored according to the properties' weight, negative, or positive attributes, and let's say the prospect goes up to the first order in the list of prospects.
- Actioner notifies the Account Owner that a new prospect is identified and positioned at the top of the prospects. If there are multiple Account Owners, a notification drops into their Slack channel, and Actioner suggests assigning an owner to the contact. The assigned owner gets informed right at that instance.
- The assigned owner gets informed immediately, starts to prepare for the demo, and is ready to qualify and find out what opportunities can emerge!
Don't forget that you can connect Actioner with HubSpot, Salesforce, any CRM, or a specific lead generation/qualification app, set up your sales workflow in Slack, and start qualifying leads at the speed of light within Slack. Get started today with Actioner!
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