It can happen in an elevator, or at a networking event, or when you write a prospecting email. You need to say what you do.
Unfortunately, what many people say, especially if they work with tech, does not mean much to the listener, or it sends the other person into a mild snooze. Here are some tips to change that.
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According to recent research from SalesLoft best-performing senior salespeople (like Account Exectuives) need to self-source around 48% of their pipeline–rather than having leads come from a sales development rep (BDR, SDR etc.) or inbound via the efforts of their marketing department.
This uptick in the need for AEs to self-source deals has likely been driven by economics, the need to “do more with less”, but is I trend that may continue as AI tools free up AEs from admin tasks.
If AEs are going to self-source their deals, I believe they are going to have to be good at certain skills.
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“The money is in the list” is an old direct marketing adage going way back to the development of the envelope. Despite all the digital changes in in sales and marketing, if you’re running a business and trying to use outbound to grow it, the money is still in the list.
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I recently had a conversation with a business owner about how to improve their CRM data. It’s a conversation I’ve had many times over the years.
It’s not that this business needs more data in its CRM or is missing an important prospect list. The CRM in question has plenty of contacts and accounts–think nearly a hundred thousand contacts. It’s that with this huge list of potential customers, the business is not actually easily able to sell. There is too much data and not enough useful information.
If you find yourself with a CRM that is full of data but not easy for you to use to make actual sales and nurture relationships, consider some of the following ways to organize it. Think of this like Marie Kondo for your CRM.
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We may be entering a “new, new era” of selling—an era that takes us back to good old-fashioned relationship selling.
Up to this point many of the tools available to sales teams have encouraged volume-based sales techniques, like mass emailing and cold calling. But as more and more salespeople use these tools, buyers have become inundated with low value communication. Inevitably connection rates and conversion rates have dropped quickly.
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Data has been called the “new oil” because of its value to today’s computer systems. When it comes to AI, data is critical. AI needs huge amounts of data for training.
Essentially ChatGPT is now giving us access to a portion of the knowledge out there on the Internet (which is a lot—at least 1,200 petabytes.)
For many of us our focus over the last several months has been how to develop the best prompts to get the best responses from ChatGPT. Prompts have been getting longer and more complex, some of them essentially turning into a form of computer programming language. “Experts” are designing prompts that squeeze just a little bit more out of ChatGPT each time by “talking to it” in a way that makes it work more effectively (or just harder.)
Here’s my forecast though: Prompt engineering will not be enough to give any business a lasting competitive edge.
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