What are successful techniques for improving sales?

Take-aways from a talk in the Trust Center on 7/19/16

Sales techniques 

• The key is - test test test! Have a hypothesis. Know what you are testing and set a standard of what is a good/ bad outcome upfront.
• Cold call emails: write only three sentences:
• Something about them – “I love the article that you posted about xxx”
• Something about you and your connection to them – “I reach out to you because I deal with this xxx and have some interesting points that might be relevant to you about yyyyy”
• Ask an open ended, easy to answer question – “what’s the best way for us to connect for a 10 min conversation?”…
• Ask a question that cannot be answer with Y/N
• Avoid do/is/would…
• Open with Why/What/How…
• Another tip: send it first to yourself and read it through your phone to make sure its short and concise!
• If you face a “gate keeper” that prevents you from connecting with someone, use the broader network.
• Ask other people in this network: “who’s the best person to talk to? What is the best way to reach out to this person?”
• Then, reach out to this person and say: “xxx recommended that I reach out to yyyy.. What is the best way to get to yyyy?”

Tips for getting a meeting

• Learn about the company. What do they care about? Read their 10K! Know what their problems are, do the research. Focus on the problem, not your solution.
• Offer to add value and demonstrate how others got value out of your product/ partnership
• Ask really good questions - ones that give you deeper understanding of their needs.
• Don’t be afraid to qualify out.
• 100% focus on getting the next step – is it an intro? Proposal?
• Focus on traction first, not scale. Only ones you get enough traction you can think about scale.