What is one tool that is critical for helping your sales team close more deals faster?
The following answers are provided by members of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.
1. Law and Order
We use the good cop/bad cop approach with timing. The senior technical sales person, who will most likely be doing the project, describes their calendar and upcoming availability. The salesperson uses that knowledge to close the deal so that the new client can get on the calendar.
2. Yesware
The ability to track opens and their frequency allows us to strategically arrange follow-up messaging. For example, if a prospect hasn’t yet opened an email, we know to follow up with the same message but a different subject line. In the case that the prospect opened the email multiple times, we can assume she is interested or has forwarded the message to other critical decision makers.
3. Infusionsoft
Keep in touch and follow up automatically with email and social marketing. Get notified when prospective customers are ready to buy with their lead scoring features. Infusionsoft also allows integration with our website to connect forms and other lead capturing devices.
– Michael Quinn, Yellow Bridge Interactive
4. DocuSign
We are a services shop that thinks and acts like a software firm. Everything we do has been productized and streamlined. DocuSign is a tool that enables us to get SOWs out the door quickly and get them signed and returned. Forty percent of our SOWs are signed within 24 hours.
5. Jumplead
A light-weight CRM that’s made specifically for small to medium-sized business, Jumplead helps my team close deals faster than othertools in our arsenal. It helps keep all my customer data in one location across my contacts, analytics, landing pages and email. I’m able to spend less time clarifying the history with a client and more time providing them with value.
– Brian Honigman, BrianHonigman.com
6. Screen Sharing
With a product like ours, you need to see it to understand it. Screen sharing tools have allowed our sales team to easily show our product to prospective customers over the phone. This makes the sales process much more efficient for our team and the customer.
7. PandaDoc
I really like this tool when sending out presentations. You can track when people open, close and how long they spend on each page of whatever you sent them. It’s the uber creepy way of finding out if what you’re sending is working. We use it to track everything we send out. We have now figured out what doesn’t work and closed the gap.
– John Rampton, Host
8. A Strong Brand
Even when we do outreach to new customers, it’s much easier to close deals when our targets already know who we are. Your brand is your source of trust. Our sales team can spend much more time learning what customers need and creating real value if they don’t have to spend time convincing them they can trust us.
9. Special Deals
We regularly offer special deals for our software subscription, such as getting the first month free. Because these deals last only 30 days, our sales team is able to leverage this deadline to close more deals faster.
10. Boomerang for Gmail
This tool is critical to our sales’ staff success because it makes following up a breeze. When sending out emails using this tool, you can set the exact date/time you want to be notified if the customer does not reply. Additional functionality includes scheduling messages to send at any date/time and tracking when your customer opens your email.
– Anthony Saladino, Kitchen Cabinet Kings
11. Salesforce
Salesforce is the leader in sales automation for a reason — it helps to close deals. Poshly’s team members use Salesforce to organize our pipeline and keep track of tasks. It helps us to close deals faster because Salesforce eliminates confusion or miscommunication since everyone within the Salesforce account has all the information they need for each prospect, lead and client.
12. Streak
Having a CRM tool is crucial, but actually moving data around by hand is ridiculous in this day and age. Streak is a plugin for Gmail, which gives you CRM tools right in your email. Even better, Streak has Zapier end points so you can automate parts of your sales process very easily.