Sunday, October 25, 2015

3 Sales Development Tips for Improved Messaging

By Michaela Cheevers


Throughout the creation of our guide The Sales Development Messaging Toolkit we took a hard look at the sales development function and the type of email, voicemail, and social selling strategies that are necessary to succeed in sales. With over 14 years of experience managing teams of SDRs for various clients, we have found the best strategies to write emails, voicemails, and social messages. However, finding the “easy” method of scripting these just doesn’t cut it anymore. There is a unique formula that requires a combination of skill and technology to ensure your SDRs are engaging with prospects and maximizing their efforts. The following is a redactment from our guide.
To get your SDRs started on the path to improving their messaging strategies, here are a few of our top sales development tips:

Watch Your Tone in Email Messaging

You may need to coach your reps, especially those who ar
e new to the business world, to maintain a professional tone in their emails. Our CEO and Co-Founder, Peter Gracey, went into great detail about the current trend in today’s sales development emails. If your SDRs have spoken with their prospect in the past and established a rapport with them, they can generally be more casual in their correspondence, but otherwise, it’s best to err on the polite side. Ensure that your reps are performing a routine spelling and grammar check. Also, make sure your reps avoid asking too many questions in introductory emails, as prospects will immediately recognize this sales tactic and will most likely pass over the email; instead, they should provide statements about their product or service’s effectiveness and ask when a good time is to speak with them.


Don’t Be Redundant in Voicemails


Don’t waste precious seconds on redundancy, as time is extremely valuable when leaving a voicemail. Also, avoid sentences like, “We are experts in the field of…,” or “We’re the world leaders in…” Your reps will come off as conceited, and nobody wants to hear jargon. Try to be more human. Using phrases such as “When we last spoke…” or “When we discussed this a few months ago…,” will personalize your conversation, and your prospect will be more willing to re-engage.


Take Advantage of Social Media


Unfortunately, only 5% of B2B sales teams consider social media a successful lead generation method (Ken Krogue). However, reps who use social selling are 50% more likely to meet or exceed their sales quota (Liz Gelb-O’Connor). In fact, 72.6% of salespeople using social selling as part of their sales process outperformed their sales peers and exceeded quota 23% more often (Aberdeen). The first message that your rep sends out to a potential prospect should be informative and not openly salesy. When you’re getting to know someone on social media, it’s good to incorporate social listening as well. Does the prospect publish on LinkedIn? What kinds of tweets do they post?


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