Today’s sales cycle is complicated regardless of the product or industry. And as a result, it’s increasingly more challenging for sales reps to create engaging experiences on the behalf of the customer.
Fortunately, sales teams and organizations have sales acceleration tools and processes on hand to boost and simplify their sales cycles. And ultimately, these types of tools and processes are designed to help sales reps have better sales conversations and close deals faster.
In this article, we’ll take a comprehensive look at the definition of sales acceleration and the tools your sales team needs to close more deals and win the hearts of customers.
What is sales acceleration?
Sales acceleration is a function of sales enablement — sales acceleration utilizes data and other statistical insights to lay the groundwork for sales reps so they can navigate sales cycles and funnels more efficiently and effectively. In turn, this boosts and “accelerates” the productivity of your sales team, and of course, this accelerates the revenue of your company.
One of the most essential factors in sales acceleration is sales enablement. Rather than monitor the overall activity of sales, sales acceleration (as well as enablement) instead shifts focus to building and nurturing relationships with buyers.
Because when sales reps build relationships with customers, they’re able to identify patterns and preferences — and then translate this information into tangible data, so your customers can then be documented accordingly within your CRM, so you can deliver the best, most tailored experience.
To make your sales acceleration strategy feasible, your sales team needs integrated technology solutions that are versatile, comprehensive, and effective.
Sales acceleration technologies
To make sales acceleration effective, you need technology and software that will help sales reps close deals at a faster-than-average pace. These types of solutions ideally should provide detailed insights that both the sales and marketing team can leverage to create memorable content and customer interactions. Plus, you want the software solutions to connect the insights with customer indicators (e.g. search results, queries, or demo requests) and use this to seal the deal.
When push comes to shove and you need to select the best acceleration platform for the job, be sure to consider the following:
- Email service — One of the most invaluable tools you have at your disposal is email, and email is a crucial component of sales acceleration and automation. It’s important to know that a majority of automation software today will provide an automatic email sending service. The service itself will automate campaigns that are based on predetermined events that act as a trigger. From there, you can track all levels of engagement, and strategies can also be built and elaborated on based on the success of email campaigns.
- Research tools — While the value of quantitative data should never be underestimated, qualitative information (like research findings and supportive articles) also has its place in space. Having access to qualitative data will arm sales reps with everything they need to prepare for productive communications.
- Quote-to-cash solutions — Quote-to-cash solutions help sales reps efficiently create sales quotes based on a pre-determined pricing structure or guideline. Having a quote-to-cash solution helps reps overcome any sales-related hurdles by showing them potential customer savings early on in the sales process, removing the risk factor for slower-moving customers.
- Real-time alerts — In today’s world, arming your sales reps with real-time alerts is essential. Having something as simple as this helps alert your reps to customer events as they happen, so they can make the most of the work hours in their day.
- Lead databases — Most companies collect data in a CRM system, but nowadays you have to dig as deep as possible in order to drive future lead generation. Lead databases can help bolster your CRM system and convert more customers. Plus, this type of sales acceleration software will qualify prospective customers based on your reps’ actual, tried-and-true criteria. So once the potential customer has gone through the qualification process, the data is then double-checked and filtered so that only the highest qualified leads remain.
- Content creation — No matter who your prospect is, you want your content to look and feel as though it’s custom-made to fit their wants and needs. So you’ll need a program or tech that provides customization (without going off-brand). Because whether the content is as simple as an infographic or long and detailed like an ebook, your reps need it to reflect the customer accurately.
What is the best sales acceleration solution for B2B & B2C industries?
Keep in mind, (with sales acceleration tactics) the faster your sales reps can establish a connection and build a relationship with a prospect, the quicker the sales journey will be, which can also increase the chances of a repeat customer.
At a granular level, what’s best for your business likely changes on a daily basis. However, from a high-level overview, it’s easy to see the overlap and recognize that, well, content is king as it helps bridge the gap between communication styles and preferences no matter if you’re B2B or B2C. Content helps you build trust and reinforce your authority.
So, when it comes to choosing the best solution that will absolutely work for both business to business and business to customer sales acceleration, you should always be looking toward content-based solutions.
The best sales acceleration software
Now we are going to look at some of the best solutions when it comes to sales acceleration software. On this list, you will find everything from CRM systems to sales enablement tools. While alone these tools are great, in the hands of an amazing sales and marketing team, the possible increase in sales figures is unimaginable.
Lead Connect is a great piece of software as far as sales acceleration tools go. Lead Connect is a tool that unifies your LinkedIn workflow, and it allows you to produce leads from LinkedIn by automatically searching through the catalog of profiles. Using Lead Connect has been shown to increase productivity with sales reps as it generates warm prospects with ease.
With over 7 million users, Lucidpress is a brand templating platform that empowers teams or individuals to easily create professional marketing content and sales enablement collateral. If you are looking for a solution to develop templates and customizable content (both for digital distribution or print), Lucidpress could be the right solution for you. While the concept is simple, the solution is beautiful — Lucidpress helps reduce pressure and work requests from your creative team and really gives your content a new lease of life.
Looking at an email tracking tool that helps sales reps nurture leads? Check out ToutApp. ToutApp provides users with real-time insight and data regarding the engagement of all email campaigns. ToutApp lets you know whether the email has been opened, deleted, clicked, or even marked as spam. This handy piece of software offers analysis on client calls, calendar events, and your CRM data — and can then be converted into raw data.
Groove helps you analyze all of your Salesforce data in one location. The great thing about Groove is compact and can be easily integrated with Gmail. So you don’t need to go anywhere but your inbox to access important information.
LeadSquared takes your lead creation efforts and ensures that they won’t go to waste. The tech utilizes automation, customer relationship management (CRM) integration, and AI prediction data to help your reps make the most of the leads you’ve got. The LeadSquared software has a large suite of features, including lead tracking, nurturing, and lead management. So, if you’re looking to convert leads to sales quickly, look to LeadSquared to help you get on your way.
Xant Playbooks is an AI-application that assists sales reps by increasing their efficiency through predictive analytics. The technology uses pattern analysis and walks sales reps through a pre-set group of custom strategies. From there, reps are able to gain insights that assist them in closing — the important sales cues of who, what, when, where, and why, allowing reps to engage customers more effectively and efficiently.
When it comes to B2B selling, not all of the companies out there will fit your ideal customer profile — which is where DataFox comes into play. DataFox finds the best customer matches for your reps by leveraging artificial intelligence and advanced machine learning. DataFox searches a smattering of data sources to identify prospects that are most likely to respond to a sales rep’s outreach.
Sales acceleration: the wrap-up
Well, that was an ear-full, to say the least. But if there’s one thing takeaway you should glean, it’s that the right tools can make all the difference in ensuring the success of a sales acceleration strategy. So whether you need a brand templating platform to equalize the workload between teams (not to mention give your sales team the enablement collateral they need), or you’re in need of an AI solution to help you analyze leads, let our guide lead the way.
