In the past five years, the sales profession has undergone profound changes due to the rise of remote sales, the widespread adoption of AI and constantly changing buyer behavior and preferences. Despite these changes, prospecting advice from the world’s leading revenue executives remains remarkably consistent.
During interviews with over 350 sales and marketing executives across 300 episodes of “The B2B Revenue Executive Experience” podcast, each podcast guest was asked two fundamental questions:
- “As an executive, you’re a prospect for many sales professionals — what captures your attention and earns time on your calendar?”
- “If there’s one piece of advice you could share with revenue executives to help them hit or exceed targets, what would it be and why?”
These responses were analyzed, gleaning over 600 insights into key themes and practical advice essential for revenue leaders and their teams, including sales trainers and learning and development (L&D) professionals.
6 Prospecting Strategies to Secure Time on an Executive’s Calendar
When asked, “What captures your attention and earns time on your calendar?” sales and marketing executives’ prospecting advice boiled down to these six distinct themes that help sales teams operate effectively, not just efficiently:
1. Build Rapport and Trust: Establishing an open and honest connection with prospects is foundational. Authenticity, empathy and a genuine interest in the prospect’s business issues and success are critical to building long-lasting relationships.
2. Understand Customer Needs: Conduct thorough research to understand the prospect’s business, challenges and goals. Tailoring your approach to address these specific needs can differentiate you from competitors who take a more generic approach.
3. Follow Up Consistently: Persistence is key in sales prospecting. Employ strategies to keep prospects engaged over time, using multiple touchpoints and channels. The right timing and consistent follow-ups can make all the difference.
4. Use Creative Outreach Techniques: With executives receiving around 150 emails daily, creative outreach methods such as video prospecting, strategic gifting, and leveraging referrals and social proof can capture attention and open doors. Personal touches like thoughtful gifts or messaging that appeals to their interests can set you apart.
5. Clarify the Value Proposition: Clearly communicate how your product or service can solve a specific problem or add value to the prospect’s business. Concise and direct messaging that aligns with the prospect’s business priorities will resonate more effectively.
6. Personalize With Data-Driven Insights: Use insights from thorough research to engage more meaningfully with prospects. If you’ve discovered that a busy sales manager needs to provide the team with just-in-time learning to improve performance, share information on AI sales coaching tools that do just that.
Sales trainers can also incorporate an executive-focused module into their training programs to help secure meetings with executive buyers. Develop the business acumen of your teams to help them understand business terminology, think like an executive, predict potential business issues and then correlate how your company’s products and services impact financial metrics.
For anyone in your sales organization that doesn’t have a sound business background but is expected to have business conversations, provide a finance and accounting fundamentals course. There are many courses available from a wide range of organizations including colleges, universities and sales training companies to help salespeople learn how to:
- Read balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements.
- Understand the difference between gross profit and net profit.
- Know the disparity between debt and equity.
- Measure a business using financial and accounting terms.
- Draw conclusions about the financial health of a business using financial statements.
With this knowledge, your sales teams will be able to take the knowledge gained from annual reports or earnings calls and predict where there are opportunities to add value and improve prospective clients’ business performance with the products and services they’re selling.
Todd Caponi, Founder of Sales Melon and Author of “The Transparency Sale,” offered this piece of advice: “Remember with email, there’s a subject line and a preview of ten words — are you optimizing those? Are you making those sections about me or about you? Bottom line: Make me smarter about my business — and I’ll take your call.”
6 Insights for Exceeding Sales Quotas
In response to the second question, “If there’s one piece of advice you could share with revenue executives to help them hit or exceed targets, what would it be and why?” the advice centered on the importance of sales frameworks, team collaboration and continuous learning to drive sustained business growth.
1. Innovative Sales Frameworks and Tools: Embracing modern sales methodologies and technologies is a game-changer. Together, they provide a structured framework that guides sales professionals through each stage of the sales process and enhances efficiency, consistency and adaptability. The result is qualifying, advancing and ultimately closing the sale.
2. Collaboration Across Teams: Encourage collaboration between sales, marketing and other customer-facing departments for a cohesive approach to sales. Unified strategies and aligned goals enhance customer experiences and drive better revenue results.
3. Leveraging Data and Analytics: Build a robust analytics engine to improve strategic decision-making, optimize sales processes and get insights into market dynamics. Tracking leading and lagging indicators helps tie sales efforts to revenue performance, while metrics such as customer satisfaction and conversion rates help make data-driven decisions and adjustments.
4. Personalization and Authentic Engagement: Customize messaging and solutions for each prospect’s distinct needs and preferences. Genuine communication and interactions based on understanding the customer’s context create meaningful connections and strengthen relationships.
5. Buyer-Centric Strategies: Every stage of the buying process should be designed with the customer in mind. Customer-centric behaviors such as empathy, active listening and aligning solutions with a customer’s goals enable sales teams to uncover opportunities to grow relationships and increase value.
6. Adaptability and Continuous Learning: With 27% of sales and marketing executives highlighting the ability to adapt to change and the need for ongoing personal and professional development, staying ahead of market trends and evolving sales techniques is vital for maintaining a competitive edge and driving long-term success.
For L&D professionals, training sellers on approaches like the open-ended, probing and confirming (OPC) framework for asking questions questioning or using conversational intelligence tools can significantly enhance their performance and lead to better prospecting outcomes.
Conversational intelligence tools allow trainers to analyze patterns in sales calls. Trainers can look at key indicators such as who spoke more, the buyer or the seller, and how many questions were asked by each person. If the seller is listening more, keeping their speaking segments under 30 seconds and engaging the buyer with thoughtful questions, it signals that the training initiative drove behavioral change and was successful.
Cherilynn Castleman, managing partner CGI Executive Coaching and author of “What’s in the CARDS?” shared advice from her mentor on doing things differently and elevating your game: “If you criticize people, you raise their defenses. If you challenge them, you raise their game.”
Conclusion
Insights from this research highlight the importance of personalization and research, value proposition clarity and creative engagement techniques in successful prospecting. It also underscores the need for innovative sales frameworks, collaboration and continuous learning to enhance sales performance. By building trust, understanding customer needs and leveraging creative techniques, sales professionals can capture attention and secure valuable time on executives’ calendars. Moreover, fostering a culture of continuous learning and embracing change ensures sales teams remain agile and competitive in an ever-evolving marketplace. Training is often the crucial component in creating lasting behavioral change.
