The 5 Habits Your Sales Team Needs to Be Successful

How outdated is your sales team's approach?

If your marketing has gone inbound, and your sales hasn't gone anywhere, it's likely that you're running into some troubles. 

After all, in order to be truly successful, both departments must take the plunge together. 

With your marketing team working to create remarkable content designed to attract your ideal customers, sales has to stop talking at prospects and start talking with them. 

If your salespeople lack an understanding of what it takes to close inbound leads, we've detailed some suggestions worth making note of. Below are 5 habits every inbound salesperson needs to adopt if you want to ensure that your prospects are being properly handled.

They understand the buyer

By the time one of your salespeople gets on the phone with a prospect, it's likely that they know more about you, your team, and your product or service than you'd imagine.

The key to sales success is to not only recognize that the prospect has done their research, but to prove that you have done the same.

By making it your sales team's mission to learn the ins and outs of your ideal prospect's behavior and expectations in terms of a buying experience, you can plan for a more buyer-centric connect. 

They understand effective copy

While in the past sales outreach relied heavily on cold calling, inbound sales require salespeople to write a lot more than they're used to. 

With that being said, your team must be well-versed in the basic fundamentals of effective copywriting in order to succeed with their engagements. This means understanding what type of approach is going to be persuasive, as well as what type of approach is going to scare prospects away. 

In order to put forth copy that is going to convince recipients to take the action you want them to take, they must keep in mind that less is more. When trying to convey a message, we suggest that they call upon bullet points and simple sentences to ease readability.

In order to be effective, sales copy must be clear, concise, and free of errors. 

(Quick Tip: Looking for some email templates to help your team get started? Your wish is our command. We're giving them away for free here.)

They're active on social media

Social selling shouldn't be taken lightly.

If your salespeople aren't participating on social media, your business is missing out on a valuable opportunity to engage with prospects in an online setting.

This doesn't boil down to them sharing a few articles and calling it a day, but rather using their social presense as a platform to answer prospect's questions and display their expertise. 

If you're a HubSpot user, your salespeople have the ability to set up a custom stream that sends out a notification to a designated group of recipients every time a qualified lead from you database mentions you on Twitter, or tweets a link from your website. This allows for a more timely, relevant follow up. 

They build rapport

Simply put, one-sided conversations aren't stimulating.

In order to convince a prospect that your company is one that they want to do business with, your salespeople must be able to establish a personal connection right off the bat. 

Why?

People are more willing to open up when they feel comfortable. By building rapport before diving into a call, prospects will be more likely to open up about their aspirations and tribulations. With this information in tow, your team can more easily establish common ground, and guide the conversation in the right direction. 

(Quick tip: Check out the Refresh App. This free app provides users with the type of insight they need to uncover real connection points with prospects, which ultimately will lead to deeper conversations.)

They communicate with marketing

In order for your salespeople to be truly successful, it's imperative that they open up a line of communication with the marketing department. 

While sales and marketing are known for their finger pointing, there is a lot that the two can learn from one another. 

Through frequent communication, sales can inform marketing of reoccurring questions and conversations that they are running into with prospects so that marketing can create more relevant content for them to call upon in terms of resources. (This is called "sales enablement" content and it's great.)

Essentially, the less time the two teams spend arguing, the more time they'll have to attract and close business.