From Call to Close: Three Strategies to Uplevel Your Entire Sales Process
Sales Development Success
1. The new standard in user feedback
Sales Hacker Series Amsterdam
Roel Jansen, CCO Usabilla
May 28th, 2015
2. Sales Hacker Series Amsterdam, May 2015
1. About Usabilla & Company History
2. Sales Process
3. Suspect Phase
4. Lead Generation Phase
5. Social Selling
6. The Power of Referrals
7. Structure of the Online Demo
8. Closing Learnings from Usabilla
Agenda
3. 3
• Founded in 2009
• HQ in Amsterdam
• 27 FTE
• Profitable
• Triple digit growth
• 15% revenue from NL, 20%
from US, rest globally spread
• Open positions…
Facts
About Us
Usabilla - the new standard in user feedback
4. 4
Company history
Usabilla
• Founded by Paul Veugen
• ABN AMRO Summerschool &
Tilburg University Starterslift
Founded
2009
• Seed Investment by founders of Funda
• Building first prototypes
• Small team of 4 FTE (2 in NL and 2 remote)
Start
2010
• 1M USD raised by informal
investors
• Scaled the team to 10 FTE
• Hired Marc van Agteren as CTO
Series A Investment
2011
5. 5
• Launch of a new product: Usabilla Live
• Commercial focus, downsize the team
• Change in management, Paul steps back,
Marc CEO, Roel Jansen hired as CCO.
Pivot
2012
• Enterprise software sales take off
• Focus on the Usabilla Live product
• Growth of the sales team with 3 FTE
Break-even & profitable
2013
• 300% growth in revenue
• Hire more engineers, replace and add
new sales reps, customer succes
• International growth
Exponential growth
2014
• Grow the team to 27 FTE, of
which 8 Sales and 2 Succes
• Open sales office in NYC
• 300% growth in revenue
Growth and expansion
2015
6. 6
Business Sales Process
Suspect Online Demo Trial preparation Trial Contract
Negotiation
OrderLead generation
• Industry (E commerce)
• Size (500K pageviews)
• B2C preferably
• Customer login
• Strategic value
• Marketing/ analytics budget
• Open to share DMU
• Open to share Business Goals
• Open to agree on added value
• Corrective website changes
• Care for feedback
• Resources, Personnel+
Financial for trial
• DMU
• Clear goals, smart for trial
(qual.+quant.)
• Completed value matrix for ctc
person
• Business Goals
• Ticked check list with timeline
• Our order value
• Halfway call scheduled
• Trial objectives clear and
smart
• Technical implementation
possible
• Completed value matrix for all
DMU
• DMU involved in trial set-up
• Allocated budget
• Security issue
• Results are fitting objectives
first set
• Offer approved
• Budget approved
• Terms and conditions
accepted
• Starting date contract known
• Signature/ PO Number
• Demo agenda
• Solution painpoints
acceptance
• Goalsetting
• Define success
• What if trial is a success
• Halfway meeting
• Optiomize trial or get order
• Proof of concept
• Proposal
• Contract signed
• Different departments legal/
• Getting in touch
• Identify painpoints
• DMU selection
• In Pipedrive
Criteria per phase
Customer contact
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Sales Process
@ Usabilla
7. 7
Business Sales Process where you outline everything:
- Prospecting
- The elevator pitch
- Activities - don’t be afraid to manage them (# outbound calls, # demo’s, etc.)
- Calling best practices
- Scheduling demos
- Demo scripts
- Email templates
- Daily and weekly schedules (salesmeetings, one-on-ones, blocks in personal agenda’s)
- Team structure
- CRM - If it’s not in there, it never happened…
Sales Development Succes
Outline everything in a ‘Playbook’
8. 8
“New customers come from the actions of past customers”
Industry & vertical
Funding & market cap
# employees
Geography
Role
Budget
LinkedIn, LinkedIn Groups
Crunchbase
Conference attendee/
exhibitor lists
Angellist
Similarweb
Suspect Phase
Define who you are targeting
Eric Ries
Ideal Customer Database
9. 9
1. Prepare before you reach out to someone.
2. In order to have engaged selling time, always check before contacting whether your prospects wants
to be contacted via phone, email or Inmail.
3. Look back: why did your customer choose for you? Than reach out to others with that reason.
4. What is the purpose of the first sentence in an email? To read the second…!
5. Don’t forget to always act as if you’re big…! Don’t say you’re a startup.
Why buy anything?
Why buy from your company?
Why buy now?
Hyper personalise
Template (with dynamic fields)
Personalise with dates
Lead Generation
Outreach
Sales 10 / 80 / 10
Some ‘hacks’…
10. 10
1. Appeal first to the emotional part of the brain:
- Personal interests
- School pride
- Articles and posts
- Recommendations
- Achievements
can also be ‘warm’.
A cold outreach
2. … before challenging the logical part of the brain:
- Insights
- Data
- Rankings
11. 11
Question:
By spending 10% more time on what can you increase sales revenue by more then 10%?
Sales Time
is the most precious commodity.
Q
A
Answer:
Engaged selling time per seller
= engaged selling time
Establish a professional presence on LinkedIn
with a complete profile
Prospect efficiently with powerful search
capabilities (LinkedIn SalesNavigator)
Discover and share valuable information to
initiate or maintain a relationship
Expand your network to reach prospects and
those who can introduce you to prospects
Create a
professional brand
Find the right
people
Engage with
insights
Build strong
relationships
Prospecting
12. 12
Selling trough relationships - introductions
Remember: we are asking for a
Social Selling
Disrupt the ways you conduct selling
Request intros when
they have the most
impact
SILVER
BULLETS
Offer to ghost-write the
intro email
MAKE IT
EASY
Close the loop with the
introducer
FOLLOW -
THROUGH
favour
13. 13
Fast and lightweight, yet powerful
Best used on less senior prospects or if connection is tenuous
Appropriate to namedrop without permission
“I saw you’re connected with… how did you meet?”
Selling trough relationships - name drop
Get the value of an intro with a fraction of the effort
14. 14
Referral leads convert
30% better
5 times happier with
B2B purchases.
than leads generated from other
marketing channels.
Peer recommendations make
buyers
84% of the B2B
decision makers 16% higher lifetime
value.start the buying process with a
referral.
Referred customers have a
(Most Important Leads)
Your customers are your only unique asset…
Are you investing enough to strengthen that relationship?
Customer
Marketing
Referrals are your MILs.
The Power of ReferralsSurround selling
15. 15
Track advocates in
your CRM
Connect with
customers and end
users
Surround prospects
with social proof
Building the Referral Engine
1
Use connections
Use your existing connections, to refer to
your prospects. Note: you don’t need to
be in the middle.
2
Use history
Try to get introduced via a former
employee of your prospect to whom you
are connected.
3
Use geography
If you’re planning a visit to a certain city,
ask your contacts for recommendations.
4
Be a matchmaker
Introduce similar profiles to one another
(without a direct personal gain).
5
Share THEIR content
Share ‘connected’ content. Send
blogposts or comments on them, to your
prospect.
6
The best logo slide ever
Use relevant and happy logos.
Encourage prospects to reach out to
these customers who are in the same
industry, geography or at prior
companies.
6 ‘hacks’ for getting referrals
The Direct Ask
The Indirect Connect
16. 16
When a prospect says ‘NO’ to you…
Ask for a referral! Who would be a good contact (at company x) to talk to
about our solution…?
When asking for referrals, make it easy.
Be very specific with whom you want to get in touch, ‘ghost write’ the email
and always ‘close the loop’ (thank them for the referral).
Some referral ‘hacks’…
17. 17
Online Demo - Structure GROW ROI
G
Goals
What objectives does
the prospect have for
himself? For the
business line? For
the organisation?
Roadmap
R
What does the path
to accomplish these
goals look like?
Obstacles
O
What challenges
does he anticipate
along the way? Are
there challenges he
might be unaware?
Widen
W
Reframe the
conversation. Help
understand that the
problem and solution
are larger and more
significant than
anticipated.
Reference
R
Teach trough
storytelling. Be
relevant.
Outcome
O
What impact did your
solution have?
Introduce
I
The process, the
expectations (ROI)
and the next steps.
TeachLearn
18. Sales Hacker Series Amsterdam, May 2015
18
What have we learned…
Some closing remarks from Usabilla
EU countries are segmented and it takes a long time to develop
your sales, US is more ahead and is an easier sell.
International Focus:
Why not?External coaching.
Team Fit.Crucial when hiring: And make sure sales & operations actually bond.
Focus early on renewals and start with a Customer Succes Team.
Trade shows:go for them or not?
Increase deal sizes: crucial for exponential growth!
Demo’s and client meetings via screen sharing or in-person?