How to reach your Salesforce A-HA moment
I finally experienced my Salesforce A-HA moment. The realization that Salesforce is AWESOME and actually makes life 10x easier.
Before the BIG A- HA moment this was a pretty standard conversation at ToutApp.
TK: “Can you clean up Salesforce? Is Salesforce up to date?”
Me: “Yes... sorry I’ve been meaning to do that just haven’t had time. (my week excuse for avoiding Salesforce because it seemed like a beast to tackle. * I did see the end value, but the reality was I struggled to integrate Salesforce into my workflow, which resulted in it being “just another tab on my chrome”)”
My biggest piece of advice is take the time to set up Salesforce. Not halfway set it up, but go all the way. The hour or two (if you’re quick) or even the day you sacrifice will be worth it.
Three things to keep at the top of mind.
#1 You may need to tweak your workflow just a bit. Be flexible to change.
#2 Remember what has been successful in your sales process and incorporate these practices into your new Salesforce workflow.
#3 Mistakes are okay.
Let’s dive in...
#1 You may need to tweak your workflow just a bit. Be flexible to change.
Here’s how it all started. We sat down and decided to take advantage of the Salesforce Lead View. This is the moment my whole blog post was building up to!
Beforehand I’d been using opportunities and contacts, but without using leads these two views lost value.
Here’s how it works now:
The new lead comes in and another salesperson is about to discover how ToutApp will help them be more productive with their email and close more deals. Check out our tips on how to rock your lead gen here.
Whether it is a webinar lead or just one of our wonderful customers sending us a referral, the custom “New Leads” view shows me everyone who I should ultimately help be successful with ToutApp.
How do you manage leads and know who to follow up with?
Based on your own parameters here are some tips.
- Score leads. Some examples: qualified, unqualified, qualified- webinar lead, qualified- big deal, qualified- conference.
- Assign the lead owner to yourself or maybe it’s another person from your team. This makes it really easy to work from a lead list with your team. There is clear visibility to make sure all the leads are handled.
- Follow up with all your “qualified” leads at once by exporting a report from Salesforce and importing them into a ToutApp group. Then you can easily follow up with leads who are at the same stage of the sales process.
And finally convert qualified leads to contacts and create an opportunity (of course only if there is actually an opportunity there! Example... you’ve scored a demo.
Why is this such a game changer?
- It is easy for leads to go cold pretty quickly, so being able to create a streamlined process for handling leads is key.
- Scalability. When there is a clear, effective and simple process new guys can plug in.
- I tweaked my workflow and was flexible to change. In the end now our team can handle more leads effectively. On a side note, I do have to give ToutApp templates some credit here for eliminating the time spent writing the same emails over and over.
#2 Remember what has been successful in your sales process and incorporate these practices into your new Salesforce workflow.
The biggest change for me is I start my day logging into Salesforce and jumping into the view for “New Leads”.
Although, Salesforce has changed my sales process the important thing to keep in mind is to not lose sight of the small practices that worked before.
Maybe this is as simple as a great template or asking the right questions on a call.
For ToutApp, our mantra is “Be Human”. I’ve made sure to not lose sight of this.
#3 Mistakes are okay.
I may have oversimplified the Salesforce setup just a bit in my post. The reality is either you or someone on your team needs to be Salesforce savvy or have the drive to tackle the ins and outs.
Mistakes are inevitable. It may take a few tries to get the filters perfect, mismark a lead, navigate through FAQ’s to find an answer or clean up some of the earlier mess.
We had some minor road bumps along the way and I am sure we’ll run into others, but here’s what it comes down to...
The conversation after the Salesforce AH-HA moment.
Me: “TK, I’ve come to the conclusion... Salesforce is GREAT. Now I know why everyone has been raving about it including you! This change just made my workflow way better.”
TK: “You should write a blog post about it.”
If you’re already a ToutApp user check out why you should integrate with Salesforce here.
If you’re a Salesforce user be sure to start your ToutApp Trial here to see how we help make email follow up easier and save time with your day-to- day emails.
Feel free to email me at tara@toutapp.com with any questions or share any of your own Salesforce tips!
Sales Productivity Tools at their Finest
Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days. -- Zig Ziglar
You're a salesperson. You have 24 hours. 24 hours to work towards closing another deal, pushing another opportunity down the pipeline and nurturing your 50 to 100 opportunities while mananging to keep this workflow productive and streamlined in the meantime. How are you spending those 24 hours? Are you using that time effectively? You're shooting off emails left and right, calling over 100 prospects a day. Do you know if your messaging is resonating? Or if you are even calling these prospects at the appropriate hour? Do you even have a process? Does your current process allow you to be successful?
Holy guacamole.
That's a lot to take in. But, just as the legend stated it himself, lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. So, which direction do we need to take in sales? What do we need in order to sell effectively? The answer is simple. Sales Tools, my friend. You need to be leveraging sales tools. Why? In order to effectively and productively prospect, build relationships, keep track of follow up and close more deals - you are going to need that extra leverage.
You want to be successful in sales? Listen up and start taking advantage of the following sales tools that are changing the game.
Find prospects with LinkedIn.
Start expanding and use your LinkedIn network to get those introductions and leverage those gosh darn common connections. LinkedIn is going to help make finding and attracting prospects a cinch, help learn about their levels of expertise and experience and what they need. For more tips and tricks around how to make LinkedIn your secret weapon check out How to Build a Kickass Sales Pipeline.
Engage Prospects with Twitter.
Find out what your prospect is up to on a personal and professional level and use social selling to reel them in. And why not engage them in a conversation over Twitter? For awesome best practices on how to do this check out How to Use Twitter for Sales Prospecting.
Stay up to date and in the know with Google Alerts.
These alerts are great for staying up to date on your leads and prospects company or industry. Google will email you daily or weekly updates by the latest relevant google news on the web. Test this out and use this valuable information to reach out to your prospect - they will be impressed you are in the know and care about their company.
Keep Track of everything with Salesforce.
Salesforce is one helpful beast that helps you manage everyone and everthing from customers to sales opportunities and product support to reporting. Salesforce keeps everything up to date in one place and helps you to remember the important things about people and tasks that you would normally forget. Check out how more Salesforce Best Practices here.
Get them on the phone with Time Trade.
Whether it's a demonstration, team training or prodcit informational call, Time Trade helps your prospects create online appointment from your schedule. It connects with your Outlook, iCal and even Google Calendar - so no worries around double booking. Just email your scheduling link to your prospect and let them book the appointment. Makes it super easy for them and you.
Follow up and close the deal with ToutApp.
It wouldn't be a complete list without the leading sales communications solution available today. Tout helps your sales reps process leads faster, land more meetings and inherently close more deals. How? Tout plugs in to your day to day sales process streamlining it with templates, tracking and analytics.
Everyone is trying to find that "new sales productivity-time-managment application" that will increase their productivity to the max. Well, let's face it. There is no one application that can do it all. But the tools above have been a game changer for so many and they tool can help you stay on track in your day to day sales workflow.
What are you waiting for? Start leveraging these puppies.
ToutApp + Highrise = Email Bliss
When people ask us for a simple CRM solution, we always recommend Highrise. Highrise is a simple CRM that helps you manage your contacts and helps you to remember the important things about the people you would normally forget.
I wouldn't be where I am today without ToutApp, and the integration with Highrise. -- Matt Rae, Tripzaar Inc.
Before the days of Highrise, managing and tracking your customers was no fun. Lacking visibility into your sales team's activity, your customer data was all over the place on sticky notes and reporting and analysis was painful. Highrise changed the game with visibility and collaboartion across your sales team and the ability to have reporting around progression. Essentially, Highrise helps manage your contacts, keep track of who said what when, schedule follow-ups, set reminders and convert leads into done deals.
Now before the days of ToutApp, your emails would fall into a black abyss. Lacking visibility into exactly what is happening to your emails after you hit send and lacking knowledge of whether your messaging resonated with your prospect or even was effective at all. ToutApp plugs right into your day to day workflow and helps streamline and crystalize your communications process with real time tracking, powerful templates and analytics around the emails you are sending. Lastly, ToutApp bridges the gap between your email and your CRM.
ToutApp has been a fantastic sales tool to monitor who has and hasn't opened my personal emails and clicked on the links, this helps me see who is more engaged with what I am saying and who to keep in contact with. It also saves me time copying my emails to Highrise, ToutApp does it for me. Very useful, highly recommended. -- Nick Storr, Sales Manager at Connected
ToutApp + Highrise
Now, combined the two and bam...something magical happens. Mergence of the two = pure email bliss. Giving you the ability to send trackable emails from within your Highrise and get reporting around those emails. Imagine the effectiveness and time saving capabilties here.
You want to know more you say?
ToutApp will automagically update every single email sent through ToutApp to Highrise and assign it to the proper contact. You honestly will never have to worry about copying your CRM's BCC address again, because Tout will always take care of that for you.
Beautiful, we know. Beyond copying all your emails, Tout will bring a whole new level of data to your CRM that will truly help you understand the interaction with your contact, and once again make Highrise a valuable source of information that shows the value of your relationships.
Everytime your contact is viewing, clicking or has replied Tout will send a notification of the activity to Highrise.
We know how tiresome it can be having to create a new contact in your email client and your Highrise each and every time you want to send an email. ToutApp takes that pain point away in a snap. Each time you shoot off a Tout email to a recipient who is not in your Highrise, ToutApp will create a contact for that person with their name and email, and copy all associated emails to that contact.
All done seamlessly and automatically. Don't believe us? Check out what our happy ToutApp and Highrise users are saying...
ToutApp's integration with Highrise makes me life much easier! I can see when my contacts open and read an email and what better time to reach back out and engage with them than right after that! -- Callie Harris, Public Relations Manager at uKnow.com
ToutApp with Highrise is magically efficient! You haven't seen efficiency until you have used ToutApp with Highrise. -- Matt Rae, Tripzaar
If you want to scale the way you track your leads and customers to stay competitive and close more deals start Touting... in Highrise of course. Of course, for those of you who something even simplier than Highrise there's the ToutApp Lab Spreadsheet CRM.
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The Complete Sales Communications Platform is Hiring…Salespeople
Here at ToutApp, we’re all about helping salespeople and sales managers get better at selling. So, in addition to our book and our sales school content, we also feature awesome sales jobs at companies that use our platform. If you would like your company and position to be featured in the future, you can fill out this form.
ToutApp all began by building simple software to help people communicate better. Today, we help over 45,000 customers crystalize and streamline their day-to-day communications process as one of the leading sales communications platforms. We're just getting started in leading the change in how salespeople communicate and we want you.
Over here at ToutApp, we're building a communications platform that helps sales and business development professionals communicate faster and close more deals.
ToutApp has been featured in numerious publications. Most recently in TechCrunch, Mashable and on Bloomberg TV. Entreprenuer Magazine featured ToutApp as Seven Essential Apps for your Sales Team. Forbes featured ToutApp as a part of A Trip of Cool PR Tools.
Day in the Life of ToutApp
We speak with a lot of top performing sales reps to help them leverage ToutApp, so we're looking for a lot of the qualities our users have in our sales hire.
- We want a go-getter.
- Looking for growth and to be challenged everyday.
- Be able to hit the ground running.
- Have a killer drive to exceed your quota.
- Have a true passion to sell.
- Motivated to break into new opportunities.
- You must be motivated to sell
- You must not be afraid to be aggressive to get your foot in the door
- Be able to build a solid process and execute successfully.
As a ToutApp sales rep you will be meeting and working with large companies. We want someone that can take a list of fortune 500 companies, work his/her network, and literally go out there meet people, give presentations and spread ToutApp goodness into sales teams everywhere.
We're a small startup company, and our days are fun and intense. We are passionate about what we do and believe in order to be successful in our day to day functions you have to be happy and have a great positive team culture.
Perks
We're located right downtown in San Francisco, so a pretty awesome spot to be working. Easy commute and best of all some great lunch spots nearby. On an average day you might find us at Mixt Greens, Chipotle, CPK just to name a few of our favorites or stocking up on coffee and candy. Our building, WeWork, has a lot to offer. Happy hours, yoga, monthly brunch and a whole game room.
Let's get to know eachother
If you want to be selling for one of the most exciting companies in the SaaS, B2B, Sales space, fill out our application form and lets get to know eachother.
If you'd like your company to be featured as a Sales Job of the Week, just fill out this form for consideration. Being a ToutApp customer obviously increases your chances!
How to Build a Kickass Sales Pipeline
Over here at Tout, we've talked to numerous sales influencers in the space. So when it comes to what moves a successful salesperson makes, the tools they are leveraging and what is working in their sales process - they know it all. Here is their two cents on how to build a kickass sales pipeline and execute.
Let's build your sales pipeline
Being a salesperson today is kind of like running your own company. You decide the fate of your success. You sink or swim. Either you lose a lot of deals (your company fails) or you close a lot of deals (your company thrives). Selling today means you must have a solid plan that focuses on building your opportunity pipeline and development of a bomb.com prospecting plan. Now, building your pipeline is not a one-step process by any means. It takes some time. Let's start with some tips and tricks from Scott Britton on where to begin.
Scott's Tips
- LinkedIn, for starters. Take time to research. Linkedin is powerful. And it will help you find the right people and companies to contact.
- Identify decision makers. This is huge.
- Mine your personal and professional networks to target these folks.
- This one might seem obvious, but it's often skipped. Check corporate websites.
- Do an informational cold call or two. Scott says the goal of the call is to scope out the decision maker for your initiative. Don't try to pitch to the gatekeeper!
- Try a basic LinkedIn search or, when in doubt, use good ol' Google. Example search: "CEO of ToutApp".
- Ask for an email introduction to avoid going in cold
- When going in cold, do it right! Keep your email or call short, relevant and conversational.
Your prospects are busy bees
So you need to send them a cold email that will knock their socks off. An example of this: "The best cold email I have ever recieved." Give them a compelling reason to speak with you. Let me know that this conversation around your service will add value to their life. Try social selling. An example of this: I dug into my prospect's LinkedIn profile to find that he had expertise and was endorsed for "trolling."
Reached out to him...
After a few weeks of email communication and following up...got him on the phone for a walkthrough of Tout. Social selling folks. Even if it's as subtle as a personal comment on the first line of your initial outreach email. Make it about them.
As a salesperson your job is ultimately to sell things and grow revenue. Social networks open up an entirely new game for you to play and it's a very profitable one. -- Koka Sexton
Just as Scott pointed out, LinkedIn is powerful. And how you leverage this power is what is going to be key. When it comes to endless knowledge of leveraging LinkedIn to drive lead generation, create new opportunities and engage customers Koka Sexton is your man.
Koka's LinkedIn Tips
A LinkedIn profile should be as mandatory as an email address and a phone number for sales people.
- Expand your network and leverage common connections
- Curate relevant content and share insight to engage your prospects
- Prioritize your prospects and build better lead lists.
- Use LinkedIn Advanced Search.
- Engage decision makers directly and shorten your sales cycle
What does it take?
You have all the mechanics of selling in place. Now it's having the skills to sell effectively that come into play.
In order to get some leads in that gosh darn pipeline, you are going to have to make some cold calls or cold emails. In order to qualify one lead you'll need to reach out ten prospects. Ultimately, 10% of your initial list will qualify as valuable prospects.
Here are some great tips from Sean McPheat and the ToutApp team about what it takes to build your sales pipeline:
- Commit your time to aggressive prospecting.
- Keep an eye out on your pipeline. It's constantly changing as you find, qualify and lose prospects.
- Spend time finding prospects that will value what you have to offer.
- Make sure you are focusing your time on the hot leads. You should be able to guestimate the compatibility of a prospect. This will help you focus on the ones you should be focusing on.
- Give them a compelling reason to speak with you, not an airy - fairy marketing pitch.
- Be a winner. Ask more questions, make it all about them and express how your product or service will be incredibly valuable. Win them over with your skillz.
- Customize, personalize, individualize and optimize your calls and emails.
Build your pipeline, be a social seller, leverage LinkedIn, be aggressive and execute.
Want some more tips and tricks? Check out our iBook: How to Write Kickass Sales Emails.