10+ Simple Tips To Help Any Account Executive Close More

Q: How can I boost my sales if I am in B2B sales?

My top tips for AEs:

• Grab your CEO and bring her into bigger deals. Ask your CEO to join you on a few sales calls a month. Deals will close at a higher rate if the CEO joins. Customers love to talk to the CEO. Even the CEO of a 4 person startup.
• Slow it down and hyper-personalize your emails and communication. Don’t misuse tools like Mixmax and Salesloft and Outreach. Slow down, research the customer, get to know their needs, and who they are. Tell them how your product truly will solve their problem. Watch your hit rate go up.
• Pitch >all< the stakeholders. Take the time to do a personalized demo and pitch for everyone that might use your product. Make the time.  Be proactive.  Ask who else would benefit from a demo, or a review of the app.  And prepare a personalized demo and slides for them.  Yes, it may take 5 demos to close a tiny deal.  Learn to do this though, and you will become a better rep.
• Start a weekly webinar for your (or ideally, all) prospects. If the company isn’t doing one, you just do it. Invite all your prospects each week. This is a great way for them to continue to engage, even if they don’t want to do a traditional sales call this week. More here: Webinars Almost Always Work | SaaStr
• Listen to each others’ calls. Get Gong or Chorus or whatever and listen to the calls of the top closers.
• Deeply, truly understand the product. Know every feature, every use case. That’s who customers really want to talk to. And why they sometimes buy from one vendor over another. Study up here.
• Work harder. This isn’t as trite as it sounds. Are you really working as efficiently as you can? As hard as you can? Are you wasting a lot of time? The best reps really do get more done with each hour.
• Treat each prospect like a king or queen. Especially the smaller ones. Don’t talk down to smaller customers or deals. Every customer cares about their business, small or large. Treat even the smallest customers with the same respect as the big ones, and watch your close rates go way, way up here.
• Always add value with each email, call, Zoom, etc. Are you sure that email you are about to send adds new value? Make every interaction count. Make sure each one adds value. If it doesn’t, slow it down and figure out how to add value.
• Be hyper-responsive. No one wants to wait 24 hours for a sales rep to call them back. No one. Email or call them back within 90 seconds. Watch your close rates go up. Especially, when the competition doesn’t.
• Help your customers more after the deal closes. You’ll be tempted to move on to the next deal. But if you keep helping after, that dramatically increases the odds they refer you to other potential customers.

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Published on June 19, 2020