When it comes to developing a sales strategy framework for your business, it requires consistent effort and constant feedback from the markets you want to enter and target clients so you can make slight tweaks in your messaging and approach to get the best outcome.
Today, I’m going to discuss the various levels of automation a business can implement when it comes to sales strategy frameworks.
The dangers of automating too quickly and when is the right time you to start
The golden rule for automating your sales process or strategy is.
You should only Automate what you can already do!
There are 2 reasons for this.
- If anything breaks, you need to be able to take over
- You need to know if you are getting the right outcome from automating
There are many levels to the topic so let’s start from the top.
The Founder who struggles to sell so they bring in a salesperson.
The problem is here, how do you know they are effective because there are plenty of bad salespeople out there and by the time you realise this, it could be 12 months.
To prevent this, you need to have the right sales strategy that a salesperson can add to from day 1 and teach you along the way…You can actually teach each other.
Founders’ technical knowledge is the single most critical skill needed to build an effective sales strategy.
This is a tricky one but you need to know how to sell and be able to take over or step in if a salesperson isn’t working out or leaves.
The last thing you need is to be none the wiser about how to sell if someone leaves after 6 or 12 months with no clients close to buying….what a waste of money and runway.
Outsourcing lead generation activities
This is a pretty common error which is understandable as you want to scale quickly so why not bring in the “professionals”.
Generating genuine interest with your target markets and clients take time.
Time is required because your business needs consistent effort and feedback from people in the markets you speak with the see what message resonates.
You need to know what messaging outsourcing companies should use and how to amend it as required to get the right outcomes for your business.
Often these companies have different objectives and you can miss this if you aren’t in tune.
- Sometimes their objective is to just book you meetings
- While your objective is to have meetings booked with people genuinely interested in your product because they have the problems you solve in their business
This is why you need to be able to know what your doing before outsourcing and also be able to step in again if something goes wrong.
Using Automating software for outbound email sequences, LinkedIn messaging or connections
The most common form of automation and easily misused.
First of all, I think this type of automation is critical for a business, they give you so much time back and help generate conversations that are critical for sales strategy success.
But like any powerful tool, it takes a while to master it.
These tools should be used to give time back to your schedule.
Trying to automate too quickly without getting the right outcomes from email, we just see you get even worse outcomes when you use this software.
- You need to get the right outcomes in this space before fully automating
- You need to be able to step back in if anything changes
All these 3 areas are critical for scaling your business but can easily fail if not done correctly costing valuable time and resources.
Remember the Golden RULE…
You should only Automate what you can already do
There are 2 reasons for this.
- If anything breaks, you need to be able to take over
- You need to know if you are getting the right outcome from automating