The Beutler Ink Guide To Selling Remotely
Tips for maximizing your sales team success from home
The COVID-19 pandemic isn't going to end anytime soon. Can your business afford to stop selling?
It may seem crazy, but you can sell remotely. We have been doing it since 2013 with great success. Don't be afraid to try new things and figure it out as you go. When it comes to sales, done is better than perfect.
Here we've listed our best general tips for succeeding in digital sales. Some of these are pretty basic, but if you're not in the business of selling remotely then they may be new to you. That said, we've tried to give even our simple suggestions a distinct spin for our present pandemic. If there's interest we'll create a part two, where we'll dig deeper on the specific tools you need to really sell like a pro. But for now, let's start from the bottom:
Email and LinkedIn are your best friends
With networking events out the window, you have to find prospects online. That means your email lists are more important than ever before. And if you're not already, you should definitely be leveraging LinkedIn, which is where 80 percent of B2B social media leads are coming from nowadays. These digital channels are often the most professional way to directly reach your decision maker. That said, for the right audience a Facebook or Instagram DM, a phone call, or even a text certainly have their place.
The most important thing when deciding how to reach your audience is considering how it will affect the relationship. We all live in a world of texting, but will a cold contact find it creepy you texted them? Do you feel comfortable sending an email to this person if they never shared it with you or would a LinkedIn message feel more appropriate? Ultimately, you know your audience best, but keep in mind that while it can be tempting to do anything to get a lead's eyes and ears ultimately not all attention is good attention in sales—so be strategic!
Push for calls and always have a link to your calendar available
Always Be sCheduling… calls. Well, the initialism doesn't entirely work, but you get our drift. Emails and LinkedIn messages are perfect for introductions, but you're not going to get a signed contract unless you get on the phone. You want to make scheduling as frictionless as possible, so make sure you have your calendar set up to show open slots and schedule calls (we recommend Calendly).
Digital pitches are different from in-person sales pitches
In-person sales pitches give you a chance to "read the room" and get a pulse on which decision makers are interested in your solution, and which ones need more convincing.
What digital selling lacks in body language cues, it more than makes up in other signals that you can learn to interpret. Digital sales allows you to monitor, measure, and track everything.
With a decent CRM or even free tools like HubSpot, you can measure open rate, click-through rate, audience size, and bounce rate. You can go one step further with tools like Better Proposals that show what parts of your proposals are most viewed and when they are viewed so that you know when your lead is likely having trouble with a certain part of your offer, or at least showing ongoing interest.
For example:
Does one of your emails have a low open rate? Try a new subject line to see if the rate improves. If still no luck, maybe your email list isn't the right fit.
Is a LinkedIn ad getting high click-through but no conversions? Work on your landing page—what is keeping visitors from taking an action?
Is your proposal repeatedly being opened but the lead isn't emailing you? They likely are having trouble with a certain part of the approval process. Reach out proactively and offer help moving things forward.
Pro tip: try not to rely on anecdotal evidence. You may love the "value prop" slide in your in-person pitch deck, but if no one is clicking on your LinkedIn ad using the same language, then it's time to shake things up and try something new.
Make it easy to say yes
For a digital proposal you want to make sure you put everything your lead and every stakeholder at their organization needs to see. The trick, though, is doing this without creating an exhaustive document. We've seen other agencies put out 60+ page proposals that have every little detail but at the end of the day what matters to you may not matter to your lead.
Instead, make it easy for them to say yes. Keep your proposals to the point and ensure they answer the following questions:
Why should they trust you?
What experience do you have solving their problem?
How will you solve their problem?
What are the deliverables, budget, and timeline?
Don't. Make. People. Uncomfortable!
Lots of people love to push very aggro sales techniques but these hurt relationships more often than they make them. And if you're selling a long-term commitment or an expensive service you need that relationship. So ask yourself early and often when engaging prospects and leads "will this make them uncomfortable?". For example, pushing someone to book a follow-up call at the end of your current call may seem tempting, and they might say yes to avoid awkwardness, but have you made them feel differently about you?
Ultimately, this pandemic is unprecedented and forcing everyone to rapidly adapt. You likely don't have time to put together a perfect digital sales process before you can start outreach and sending proposals. That's fine. Digital allows you to collect feedback as you go—each email, call, and proposal is another datapoint to help you improve.
Hopefully at least one tip in this post was helpful as you refine your digital sales process. That said, we know every sales process is different. If you have a question about any of the above or if we didn't hit something you want to learn about please reach out and let us know.
We've been selling remotely for years and have plenty more to share. Likewise, we offer tailored digital sales consulting where we help create a process specific to your team and goal, for more on that reach me at andrew@beutlerink.com.
Best of luck and stay safe!
