Jan 15

Transform Your Sales with HubSpot: Modern Strategies for the Outdoor Industry

By Joshua Claflin HubSpot, Sales No Comments

For sales and marketing managers in outdoor, hunting, firearms and shooting sports industry, staying ahead of the competition requires more than just hard work—it demands smart strategies and cutting-edge tools. While traditional sales methods like cold calling, prospecting, and email outreach have their place, they often fall short when it comes to efficiency and scalability. And if your team is still relying on outdated methods like spreadsheets to manage leads, track customer interactions, and monitor deals, you’re likely facing significant challenges—manual errors, lost opportunities, and an inability to scale effectively.

But what if you could take those time-tested tactics and transform them into modern strategies that consistently close more deals? With HubSpot’s powerful CRM and sales tools, you can do just that. By integrating automation, data-driven insights, and streamlined workflows, you’ll not only save time but also create meaningful connections with your customers. Whether you’re reaching out to retailers, engaging with distributors, or connecting directly with outdoor enthusiasts, HubSpot equips you to manage your pipeline, track performance, and hit your targets with precision.

In the article below, we’ve outlined key tasks to help your outdoor, hunting and firearms sales team leverage HubSpot Sales Hub’s features, streamline daily activities, and drive more sales.

Start with your Target Accounts

1. Start with a Clear Plan

Define Daily Targets: Use HubSpot’s dashboards to set daily goals for calls, emails, and meetings.
Prioritize High-Impact Contacts: Leverage the “Lead Scoring” feature to prioritize leads most likely to convert and create a Target Account Dashboard.

2. Optimize Contact Lists

Segment Smartly:
- Use HubSpot’s contact segmentation to create tailored lists based on criteria like deal stage, location, or industry.
- Use custom properties (e.g., “Last Engagement” or “Industry Pain Point”) to segment contacts effectively.
Enrich Data Automatically:
- Use integrations like LinkedIn Sales Navigator or Clearbit to enrich contact data.

3. Structure Daily Sales Activities

Morning Routine:
- Review the “Tasks” tab in HubSpot to prioritize tasks for the day.
- Use the HubSpot Calendar Sync to align tasks with meetings.
Organize with Tasks

Call Blitz:
- Use the HubSpot Dialer:
  - Schedule a power hour for calls using the call queue feature.
  - Log calls automatically and use call scripts available in the notes section.
  - After each call, update contact properties or advance deals in the pipeline.
Personalized Email Outreach:
- Use templates: Start with pre-built templates in HubSpot for faster outreach while ensuring customization.
- Add personal touches: Include the contact’s first name, company info, or a specific pain point.
Mid-Day Check-In:
- Review your Deals Dashboard: Focus on moving deals forward.
- Update deal stages in the pipeline for clarity.
- Send automated follow-ups using sequences.
Afternoon Engagement:
- Focus on warm leads or contacts you’ve interacted with before.
- Utilize HubSpot Playbooks for consistent messaging.
- Check the “Activity Feed” to see who’s opened your emails or visited your site.

4. Use Automation to Save Time

Use Sequences and Workflows for followups

Email Sequences:
- Create automated follow-up sequences for leads.
- Ensure sequences include a mix of personalized touches and educational content.
Workflows:
- Automate lead assignment to team members.
- Set reminders for follow-ups if a lead hasn’t responded after a certain time.
Tasks Automation:
- Use workflows to create follow-up tasks when specific actions are taken (e.g., form submissions or email opens).

5. Leverage Analytics for Continuous Improvement

Track Email Performance:
- Use email analytics to monitor open rates, click rates, and replies.
- A/B test subject lines and content.
Monitor Sales Performance:
- Use the “Sales Dashboard” to measure daily activities against goals.
- Drill into reports to identify areas for improvement (e.g., low conversion rates at a specific stage).
Call Analysis:
- Use call recordings to review and improve performance. Train on real examples.

6. Use Integrations to Enhance Productivity

CRM Sync:
- Ensure integrations like Gmail, Outlook, or Zoom are fully operational.
- Sync meetings and activities directly into HubSpot for better tracking.
Sales Enablement Tools:
- Connect tools like LinkedIn, Slack, or Asana to streamline communication and task management.

Track and Optimize Pipeline

7. Collaboration Best Practices

Team Notes:
- Log detailed notes in the contact or deal records to ensure the team stays aligned.
Pipeline Reviews:
- Host daily or weekly check-ins using the shared pipeline view.
Mentorship:
- Use HubSpot’s tracking features to identify top performers and facilitate peer training.

8. End-of-Day Wrap-Up

Reflect and Document:
- Log all completed activities (calls, emails, meetings) in HubSpot.
- Update deal statuses to maintain accurate reporting.
Plan Tomorrow:
- Create a to-do list for the next day based on current activities.
- Set tasks for follow-ups and reminders.

9. Encourage Continuous Learning

HubSpot Academy:
- Enroll team members in relevant courses for better tool utilization.
Sales Insights:
- Regularly review analytics and customer insights to adapt strategies.

Every sales team is different, but by implementing this structured approach and leveraging HubSpot’s capabilities, your team will significantly increase productivity, stay organized, and maximize their outbound sales efforts.

Is it time to modernize your sales approach and take your business to the next level? With HubSpot, you can revamp old methods and leave spreadsheets behind, replacing them with powerful, results-driven strategies that work for today’s market. And as a HubSpot Solutions Partner, Garrison Everest specializes in helping businesses in the outdoor, hunting, and shooting sports industries maximize their potential.

Ready to see how HubSpot can transform your sales activities? Contact Garrison Everest today for a personalized demo and take the first step toward closing more deals, faster.

Interested in how HubSpot Sales Hub can work for your sales team?

SCHEDULE A DEMO

Jan 15

How To Do Traditional Firearms Advertising the Inbound Way

By Joshua Claflin Firearms and Hunting, HubSpot No Comments

There are several ways to construct a advertising campaign for your hunting or firearms product. Most of the time, you gather your team in a room, pound out some ideas—based around a new product release—and figure out a way on how to best bring it to the masses. Sometimes this is driven by your ad rep at Guns & Ammo or Field & Stream calling to make you aware that their full-page Spring ad deadline is looming (that costs $5,000 bucks) and that “there’s still space available.”

So you get busy creating the messaging, source the photography and get the designer to pull it all together to submit your files 2 minutes before the 5 PM deadline.

Few weeks go by as you wait in expectation for the ad to drop expecting a sales boost and… nothing. You see a slight bump in website traffic, but little to no sales. Sound familiar?

In this post, I want to give you three quick points on how to combine traditional “outbound” advertising tactics with inbound marketing tactics to help you create more effective traditional marketing campaigns that optimize your marketing dollars and sales.

1. Create a backbone strategy with inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is a long-term strategy that is formed around your ideal customer (or buyer persona) that focuses specifically on how to solve their problems or how to improve their job, hunting or shooting experience. This is a drastic departure from the typical marketing strategies were it’s all about how cool the product is, the latest review or how superior it is to other products. This kind of messaging is getting old and everyone uses it. Inbound is about building trust and being helpful. This allows your marketing and sales to stand out and has been proven to be more effective instead of the “say it and spray it” method of most “interruptive” traditional marketing methods.

An inbound marketing strategy then uses six web-based components that consist of: 1. Content (blogs, videos, webinars, ebooks and whitepapers), 2. SEO, 3. Email marketing, 4. Social media, 5. CTAs and 6. Landing pages. These components form the framework when marketing online. Since inbound is entirely web-based, it’s completely measurable. This allows your marketing team to analyze what pieces of content and messages are working and what are not.

Since inbound marketing revolves around goals, ROI and analytics—this gives your marketing team a highly effective strategy that becomes the hub for all your marketing activities, including print, T.V, trade show and radio.

Example of print ad with inbound offer.

2. Create relevant offers and include them in your ads

Buying ads or TV spots can build your brand’s awareness and can bring short-term sales, but often times it’s very hard to measure.

One of the ways you can gauge your ads’ effectiveness is by placing a free downloadable offer on it that drives your audience to your website.

By creating helpful downloadable offers like catalogs, spec guides, hunting tips or in this example: “The Beginner’s Guide to Pheasant Hunting” your personas will be enticed to exchange their contact information for your offer allowing you to communicate with them further. Use a vanity URL like www.yourfirstshotgun.com/hunt and a specialized call in number to track engagement.

PRO TIP: Add a QR code to track responses.

3. Track ROI, analyze and adjust

So what did that $20,000 full page get you in Guns and Ammo? The chances are that if you properly identified your audience, utilized a targeted publication and included a downloadable offer, you will generate traffic and sales. At the minimum you grew your email marketing list from prospects who downloaded your offer for future lead nurturing.

If you did not achieve the results you wanted, you might need to go back and rethink your positioning, message and drill more into defining your persona. If it worked, rinse and repeat.

By combining the tactics of traditional “outbound” advertising with inbound marketing, you will find you have more data to rely on to make your advertising campaigns more effective. Use these three points for your radio, trade show and TV campaigns as well.

Dec 18

7 Powerful Benefits of a Hubspot CRM for Outdoor Brands

By Joshua Claflin HubSpot, Outdoor Industry Marketing

It’s a well-known fact in the outdoor industry marketing circles that acquiring new customers costs more than retaining existing ones. This is why the most successful brands in our industry prioritize customer experience and service. So, how do they go about achieving this? It all starts with implementing a centralized Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system tailored for outdoor brands.

If you’re contemplating the use of a CRM to streamline your data management, this blog post will outline the advantages of using it for your outdoor, hunting, or shooting sports business. It will provide clarity, organization, and scalability to your operations, which is especially valuable in these uncertain times and amid the growing influence of artificial intelligence.

One of the most popular CRM systems available today is HubSpot’s CRM. HubSpot CRM offers a “single source of truth” that empowers your front-office teams (marketing, sales, and support) to strengthen their relationships with customers and deliver an exceptional experience.

Below, we’ll explore seven benefits that can elevate your business’s customer experience to a whole new level and contribute to more profound and widespread growth when using HubSpot.

1. A Comprehensive Dashboard CRM for Outdoor Brands

One of the key benefits of the HubSpot CRM is its comprehensive dashboard. The dashboard provides a complete overview of your customer interactions, sales pipeline, and marketing activities. You can see the status of every lead and customer in your system, including where they are in the sales or support process, what actions they have engaged in, and what communications they have received. This makes it easier for sales, marketing, operations and support teams to collaborate and work together towards a common goal.

Real industry application: You’re a business owner of a trigger manufacturing company and you have a lot on your plate. A CRM will make things easier by tracking your contacts and customers, automating administrative tasks, and sending email campaigns to keep online sales flowing — all using the same tool, with one login.

2. Easy to Use CRM for Outdoor Brands

The HubSpot CRM is user-friendly and easy to use, even for people who aren’t necessarily tech savvy like your customer service rep. It has an intuitive interface makes it easy to navigate and use all the features. You can quickly add new contacts, create tasks, set reminders, and manage your support and sales pipeline. The platform is also customizable, allowing you to tailor it to your needs.

Real industry application: Say “so long” to messy spreadsheets and time wasted on menial tasks. HubSpot CRM features a full suite of sales productivity tools so you can sell more and work less.

3. Centralized Database

With HubSpot CRM, you can store all your customer data in one central location. It becomes your “single source of truth” for your business. If things aren’t going well, or you start to feel some upward or downward trends, your CRM will be able to tell you. This means you can access all the information you need about a customer, including their contact details, past interactions, and communication history, returns and support requests all in one place. This saves time and eliminates the need for manual data entry—reducing the risk of errors.

Real industry application: If you’re a retailer, media company, distributor, OEM, or manufacturer, having your contacts all in one place will allow you and your team members to take action on sales, marketing, operations and support activities more clearly and centralize your internal communications for your team, especially for sales calls, events, campaigns, show projects, product launches and business development.

4. Sales Automation

HubSpot CRM automates many of the repetitive tasks involved in the sales process. For example, you can set up automatic email sequences, schedule follow-up tasks, and create custom workflows that trigger actions based on customer behavior. This streamlines your sales process, making it more efficient and effective.

Real industry application: Sales leaders can easily follow-up with calls, create and send meeting invites, and send contracts and payment links that save time. Use automation to speed up the process and create a more professional sales experience.

5. Seamless Integration

The HubSpot CRM integrates seamlessly with other HubSpot tools, including Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub. This means that you can create a unified customer experience across all touch points. For example, you can create targeted email campaigns using the Marketing Hub and track their performance using the CRM. You can also integrate with other systems like your ERP, ecommerce store and countless other apps.

Real industry application: As your enterprise grows and inventory management becomes more complex, you can utilize HubSpot to sync orders, pre-orders, online orders and other data points for easier inventory management.

6. Valuable Insights

The HubSpot CRM for Outdoor Brands provides valuable insights into your customer interactions and sales pipeline. You can generate reports on sales activities, track the performance of your marketing campaigns, and gain insights into customer behavior. HubSpot now features CoPilot that allows you to generate sales reports in minutes, not hours. This information can be used to identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions that improve customer engagement.

Real industry application: Sometimes, one major deal can make or break this year’s sales goals. HubSpot provides actionable insight into leads/prospects so your follow-up calls can be approached with more understanding to close the deal. Built in reports allow you to also understand customer sentiment through Net Promotor Score (NPS) which can help you forecast sales.

7. Cost-Effective CRM for Outdoor Brands

HubSpot CRM is a cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes. The platform offers a free version with basic features, making it accessible to small businesses and startups. Then, as your business grows, you can upgrade to the paid version to access more advanced features. You can begin to calculate ROI on customer service improvements and increase in repeat and new sales.

Real industry application: Smaller businesses don’t have to break the bank on software that doesn’t deliver ROI. HubSpot offers flexible plans to scale with your organization when you’re ready. By starting now, you’ll be well-positioned in 1-3 years from now when you break 1M in sales.

In conclusion, the HubSpot CRM for Outdoor Brands is a powerful tool that can help businesses of all sizes manage their customer relationships more effectively. With its comprehensive dashboard, user-friendly interface, centralized database, sales automation, seamless integration, valuable insights, and cost-effectiveness, the HubSpot CRM is a worthwhile investment for any business looking to improve customer engagement and drive growth.

Ready to see what HubSpot CRM can do for your business? Sign up below or contact us with your questions!

Sep 08

3 HubSpot Tips for Firearm Industry Marketers

By Joshua Claflin HubSpot

HubSpot is the leading marketing automation tool for inbound marketing. Heck, they coined the term “inbound marketing.” If you’re using the system or are interested in HubSpot and how it can bring a much-needed understanding to your online marketing efforts, then in this post—I’ll give you 3 tips I’ve learned along the way to keep your HubSpot portal organized and running smoothly as you build traffic, leads, and sales for your outdoor, hunting or shooting sports company.

1. Keep your CTAs organized

“CTA” stands for Call-to-Action. CTAs are those little (or big) bright buttons (see the bottom of this page) or small ads on your web pages, blog posts and emails. They are like beacons that lead your visitors through the buyers journey and tells them what action you want them to take and where to go on your website.

Here’s why CTAs are important:

More than 90% of visitors who read your headline also read your CTA copy. (Unbounce)
Emails with a single call-to-action increased clicks 371% and sales 1617%. (WordStream)
Adding CTAs to your Facebook page can increase click-through rate by 285%. (AdRoll)

We live in an attention deficit world. CTAs help you focus your website visitors on what to do next. If your goal is to convert your website visitor to a customer, lead or subscriber—CTAs are how you do it.

CTAs however in HubSpot can get quickly out of control. By not organizing your CTAs properly, you’ll start to get lost when it comes time to analyze the data.

A simple suggestion is to label your CTAs in this syntax: LOCATION: TITLE OF POST/OFFER. See example below.

By keeping your CTAs organized by where they appear on your site and by title, you can quickly analyze which pieces of content are working and which ones are not. You can also use the various sort functions and charts within HubSpot.

2. Start your persona and list segmentation early

One of the biggest mistakes I see when companies begin an inbound firearm marketing program is they start with unsegmented lists that they built from their previous email marketing program like MailChimp or Constant Contact.

This is problematic because they failed to capture key prospect information like hunter or shooter type, company name, and essential buyer persona interests. This leaves you with a mixed bag of contacts that doesn’t provide you with the understanding of who makes up your contact list, which is foundational to personalization or “one-to-one marketing.”

Personalization statistics:

When asked to prioritize one capability that will be most critical to marketing in the future, one-third of marketers answered: “personalization.“
Marketers see an average increase of 20% in sales when using personalized web experiences.
Personalized CTAs resulted in a 42% higher conversion rate than generic CTAs.
74% of consumers get frustrated when website content appears that has nothing to do with their interests.
76% of marketers define real-time marketing as personalizing content in response to customer interactions.
78% of CMOs think custom content is the future of marketing.

If you’re planning on starting an inbound marketing campaign in the near future, start your segmentation efforts now if you’re still using a standalone email or form marketing application. Define your buyer personas and add in form fields that allow your prospective customers to self-identify when they provide their contact information when exchanging it for one of your downloadable offers.

Buyer Personas

3. Build 10-15 landing pages to supercharge your lead generation efforts

Without a focused and persuasive landing page, your lead capture efforts will fall flat. But also just as important is that you have enough.

Landing page facts:

48% of marketers build a new landing page for each marketing campaign.
68% of B2B businesses use landing pages to garner a new sales lead for future conversion.
16% of landing pages are free of navigation bars.
A whopping 68% of B2B organizations have not identified their funnel.
(Source: HubSpot)

While most companies don’t see an increase in leads when increasing their total number of landing pages from 1-5 to 6-10, companies do see a 55% increase in leads when increasing their number of landing pages from 10 to 15.

And look how that leads index number spikes, even more when a company has 40 or more landing pages on their website. And here’s how it breaks down for B2B and B2C businesses:

Source: HubSpot

Make sure to clone each form for each landing page so that you can label and test for maximum effectiveness, especially when working with workflows.

By keeping your CTAs organized, segmenting your contact list from the beginning and creating more than 10-15 landing pages—you’ll keep your HubSpot subscription running like a well-oiled M4.

Have a question about HubSpot, schedule a call!

Jun 23

storybrand hubspot for the hunting outdoor shooting sports

Grow Your Outdoor Company with StoryBrand and HubSpot

By Joshua Claflin HubSpot, StoryBrand

Creating your BrandScript and getting your sales and marketing teams aligned is a great feeling.

However, a clear message can only take you so far in the digital world. You have to communicate your message to your target audience and have the right tools in place to help you track, optimize and improve over time.

In this post, I want to highlight how StoryBrand and HubSpot—that when combined, will help your business achieve the growth result you’re looking for. HubSpot is a CRM platform that connects everything scaling companies need to deliver a best-in-class customer experience in one place. HubSpot’s crafted, not cobbled solution helps teams grow with powerful tools but better together.

With HubSpot, customers come first, customization is simple, and teams are unified through a connected CRM.

The StoryBrand sales funnel requires four elements to make your website work:

One-liner
StoryBrand Wireframe/Website
Lead Generator
Sales Funnel (Email Welcome Series and Segmentation)

These four elements work to engage your prospects, build trust, brand your message while simultaneously warming your prospect up to the idea of buying from you which turns your website into a 24/7/365 growth engine.

By combining the StoryBrand sales funnel with HubSpot, you’ll have a powerful marketing program that will grow your business faster and better. It’s amazing to me how so many companies don’t implement this. The ROI over 6-9 months grows to over 5x!

1. Sales Funnel: Lead Generator, Email Automation Series and Segmentation

HubSpot comes with built-in landing page tools, forms and email automation that make it easy for you to set up and track results. The intuitive interface is simple to understand and segmentation is also easily accomplished by setting up your buyer personas. By utilizing the email automation steps in the StoryBrand sales funnel framework, you can create a 24/7/365 marketing program that delivers qualified leads to your in-house sales team or if you’re more D2c – more contacts for your profitable email marketing program.

2. CRM

HubSpot’s free CRM allows you to organize your prospects, direct leads to members on your sales team, set up meetings, record conversations, set goals, and keep your sales goals on track in realtime. The CRM also includes video integration and integrates with countless ERP systems that most manufacturers rely on. You can also create playbooks that coach your team to maximize their sales process and calls. Another powerful component of the CRM is conversations. Having the ability to chat with your prospects when they are actively searching for solutions is a powerful way to increase sales. In our own studies, we’ve increased direct sales by over 15%.

3. Data: Understand what’s Working and What’s Not

You can’t track what you can’t measure. One of the biggest mistakes we see companies make when they implement their BrandScripts is that they don’t monitor their website to see if it made any difference. They fail to track an increase in dwell time, leads, and if the bounce rate went down or up. HubSpot brings numerous reporting tools that you can use to steer your growth efforts in the right direction. It helps you create pillar pages that aid in your SEO efforts as well.

StoryBrand-and-HubSpot-Marketing-Reporting

4. Delight Customers at Scale

With more and more customers demanding better service, you will need to focus on how you deliver your brand’s customer experience. Here are a few vital statistics:

90% of Americans use customer service as a factor in deciding whether or not to do business with a company. (American Express)
Investing in new customers is between 5 and 25 times more expensive than retaining existing ones. (Invesp)
49% of American consumers switched companies last year due to poor customer service. (New Voice Media)
81% of Americans believe that business are either meeting or exceeding their customer service expectations. (American Express)

HubSpot’s Service Hub measures customer experience, helps delight them at scale, and helps customers help themselves. 50% of customers have left a brand for a competitor who was able to stay more relevant and better satisfy their needs. (InMoment)

StoryBrand is a powerful way to create a message that breaks through the distraction and clutter of the marketplace. Combined with the powerful tools of HubSpot you’ll have a powerful one-two punch to grow your business at scale and achieve the next level of growth. (See these case studies)

If you’re interested in learning how StoryBrand and HubSpot can help grow your business faster and better, please give us a call. We’ll answer any questions you have and give you a few helpful tips to improve your marketing.

Photo credit: Chris Dorsey

Clear Messaging Tasklist for Outdoor, Hunting and Shooting Sports Business Leaders

How much is unclear messaging costing you?
The following tasklist will help you (the business leader, director or executive) determine if your message is clear. It will help you and your team think about how to make your customer “the hero,” and position your brand as the “the guide” that will revolutionize your marketing.

What you will learn:

Introduction to a 7-part framework to clarify your message
Know what to say and what order to say it in
Give your team a messaging process that can be implemented across all your marketing materials

GET TASK LIST

Jun 14

Adapting Sales Strategies for the Changing Consumer Market: Insights from HubSpot Sales Bootcamp

By Joshua Claflin HubSpot, Sales

Throughout my 20+ year journey in sales and marketing, with a strong focus on the HubSpot Sales Methodology, I’ve witnessed significant shifts in the industry. However, like many professionals caught up in client work, I realized that my sales skills needed a boost, especially considering the evolving landscape over the past 7 years as a HubSpot Solutions Partner.

With changing customer behaviors and search patterns, it’s essential for us to adjust our sales methods accordingly. That’s why I was thrilled to have the opportunity to attend the HubSpot Sales Bootcamp, where I gained valuable insights to sharpen my sales efforts.

In this brief blog post, I’ll share four key takeaways from the bootcamp that have helped me adapt to the dynamic consumer market. These tactics are seamlessly integrated into our coaching methodology and sales hub solutions, ensuring that when you work with us, you’ll experience the same level of effectiveness and alignment with the changing sales landscape.

hubspot video prospecting

1. Utilize Video Prospecting

One highly effective strategy in sales prospecting calls is incorporating video. By creating a brief video that highlights 2-3 ways you can help prospects increase leads, traffic, or sales, you can grab their attention and prompt them to schedule a call. Prospects appreciate the effort put into researching their needs and offering valuable advice to help them achieve their goals.

2. Embrace the Inbound Sales Process

The inbound sales process is structured around a 3-stage buyer’s journey, which includes Awareness, Consideration, and Decision.

Identify: Find businesses that align with your offering, niche, and industry.
Connect: Engage with leads to determine if they’re worth pursuing and gain insights into their goals and challenges.
Explore: Delve deeper into their goals, challenges, and related implications to gain a comprehensive understanding.
Advise: Present different options and position your solution as the best choice.

3. Optimal Times for Lead Engagement

When it comes to prospecting for leads, it’s important to reach out at the most opportune moments. According to a study by sales professional Marc Wayshak, the phone remains a highly effective sales tool, with 41.2% of respondents recognizing its value. The best times to contact leads are typically Thursday and Friday afternoons. The Lead Management Study revealed that the optimal time to qualify leads is between 4:00 PM and 5:00 PM in their local time zone, with the second-best time being around 8:00 AM. Conversely, it’s advisable to avoid contacting leads between 11:00 AM and 2:30 PM in their local time zone.

4. Harness the Power of the Pause

The pause is an incredibly powerful tool when engaging with prospects. By strategically using pauses during conversations, you convey confidence and encourage the prospect to participate more actively in the discussion. This tactic can significantly enhance your ability to connect with leads and make meaningful progress.

In summary, by implementing video prospecting, following the inbound sales process, timing lead engagements effectively, and utilizing the pause technique, you can elevate your sales performance and forge stronger connections with potential customers. The bootcamp was challenging with daily sales role play and prospecting that pushes you out of comfort zone. The instructors were top notch and overall it was fun. As Garrison Everest moves into the fall and what is sure to be a busy sales season, we’re out hunting for new leads and ready to help businesses who want to grow better.

Jun 13

How To Win More Business By Helpful Selling

By Joshua Claflin Inbound Marketing, HubSpot, Sales

When it comes to winning more business—it can sometimes be difficult not to blow your own horn when communicating with your customers and prospects.

By understanding how to talk to their level and helping them think differently about their business by solving their problems first, you will have greater success in moving them further down your sales funnel and converting them into a customer.

As professionals, we eat, sleep and breathe our vocations. What has become second nature to us—can be jibber-jab to our prospects. We ultimately believe our products or services are the best and everyone needs them. However, what is apparently obvious to you, may not be to your customer.

If you find yourself losing sale opportunities for no apparent reasons, it may be time to take a look at how you may (or may not) be talking to your customers.

To start, you need to understand how consumer behavior has shifted in the past 2-3 years.

Research has shown that your customers will go to the internet (search engines, social media, local directories, review sites) to consult on average 10.4 pieces of content—before they even contact you. The internet is the first place where over 90% of all B2C and B2B prospects will go when beginning research for a potential purchase.

To win more business, business owners, marketers and business developers need to know how they can maximize their sales processes within this new paradigm.

Below are 8 points to keep in mind when talking to your customers so you can win more business.

1. Create buyer personas

Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers. They are based on real data about customer demographics and online behavior, along with educated speculation about their personal histories, motivations, and concerns.

We sometime lose sight and think we know our customers fairly well, but it quickly becomes apparent—once we begin to peel back the layers—how much we think we know is based only on assumptions—not facts.

In order to talk to your customers level and win more business you must put yourself in their shoes and get to their level of understanding and motivations of what their challenges are and identify the solutions that can best help them. This can only be done by researching and identifying your buyer persona.

2. Research your prospect on social media

If you don’t have a buyer persona strategy in place, the next best thing is LinkedIn. If you have time in between your first contact and sales meeting—it’s good to check who the prospect is on LinkedIn and on other social media networks. Top sellers use LinkedIn 6 hours per week. (SOURCE: Jill Konrath, Author of Snap Selling)

Knowledge and familiarity of your prospect will allow you to break down any mental barriers in your mind before speaking to your prospect, which can build confidence. Knowing something personal about them is good so you can determine if you have something in common (sports, hobbies, contacts, locations etc.). It’s always better to talk about a common interest than the weather to break the ice. People ultimately choose to do business with people they like, and everyone likes someone who appreciates them. (Source: Forbes)

3. Assume nothing

You should always assume your prospect knows nothing about you or what you offer and vice versa for the first call. Assumptions can taint the waters in sales meetings/calls and can make you look uninformed.

4. Help them think differently about their business

A few years back, CEB came out with a new sales model called the Challenger Sale that has been adopted by top companies. This model is based upon sales people helping customers with their problems first—which builds trust, leads to higher customer satisfaction and faster closings.

“The way to effectively sell your product is to make sure your customer believes you are there to help them win in the market.” — Tyrone Edwards, SVP of Sales and Marketing, Merck Pharmaceuticals

This is a radical departure from the past were sales was more about promotion. By helping your customer understand their problem and identifying those drivers, you can help your customer succeed, which is ultimately why they are contacting you.

5. Scrap the jargon

No one cares, especially your prospect that you know your industry’s terminology—better to save it for the trade show. By knowing your buyer persona, you will know their industry lingo. However, it’s still better to speak professionally with articulation and intelligence and keep the jargon to a minimum.

6. Utilize marketing automation to better qualify your prospect

One of the greatest benefits of sales and marketing automation is that you have the ability to potentially warm your prospects up to your products and services prior to having a conversation with them. This allows you to see—through web analytics (email, clicks, downloads, likes, tweets etc.)—if your prospect has interest in your offerings. This allows you to gain insight into how to better help them. Most tools will also allow you to capture information about your prospect so you can know exactly who they are and if they are a viable lead.

7. Create a process

All good sales people have a process to help them win more business. By utilizing a questioning process, you get your prospect talking about their business, problems and challenges and how you can help them—versus rambling on about how great your solutions are. A good process follows Challenges, Goals, Plans, Timing, Implications, Consequences, Budget and Authority through the buyer stages of Awarrness, Consideration and Decision Ask questions that cover their company and their organization (internal). For example:

What are your biggest challenges?
What is your secret sauce?
Who are your competitors?
What is your average sales price?
What are your company’s revenue targets?
How do you fit within your company?
What is the decision making process?
What are your goals?

… are just a few good questions to ask.

8. Help. Don’t sell.

Lastly, ditch the pitch. Assuming your brand and website has done its job—your prospect will already be convinced that you can help them. Be prepared to show a little transparency and authenticity. This will go a long way in earning trust and credibility.

Marcus Sheridan of The Sales Lion states: “Consumers of all types expect to find answers on the internet, and companies that can best provide that information garner trust and sales loyalty. Success flows to organizations that inform, not organizations that promote.”

In conclusion, to win more business you must be helpful, you must create and understand your buyer persona, research your prospect on social media, assume nothing about your prospect, help them to think differently about their business, scrap the jargon, take time to better qualify them and above all—help, don’t sell.

HubSpot