In the world of sales, there are easy and hard-to-reach prospects. One isn’t better than the other. Having to work to reach a prospect doesn’t make them any less valuable or viable than one that can be contacted across a dozen channels.
It’s hard to grow when you’re small. Without a marketing budget you can’t attract new customers. Right?
If you want to know more about how CrankWheel got started, this interview just published on StarterStory is a good, long read.
How do you reach sales leads who aren’t online? How do you contact those hard-to-reach customers? Depending on your sector, products or services, this could be a challenge your sales team is struggling with every day.
Every sales manager wants a team of high achievers. Salespeople who pick up the phone, send emails and messages, attend meetings, and consistently close deals and bring in new business. Persistence, enthusiasm, and energy are crucial traits all successful salespeople share.
Sales people have always had an uneasy relationship with scripts. Many think they’re not going to sound genuine and convincing. And to an extent, they’re right to worry about that.
Outbound and inbound sales play separate roles in a business. Inbound is closer to account management, except these are new leads who’ve found you and want to know more.
In many companies, there is a policy “the customer is always right.” “Rule 1: The customer is always right. Rule 2: If the customer is ever wrong, re-read Rule 1”. – Stew Leonard
With 2020 upon us, now is the time when many sales leaders start planning for the year ahead. It’s also the time of year when those who’ve struggled will jump ship, so either you are scrambling to find someone new, or have a search already under way.
Confidence sells, as it improves the trust factor between a buyer and seller. As a salesperson doing an online demo, confidence gives you a sense of authority, knowledge and understanding. It tells the prospect that they’re talking to someone who can help them solve the problem they have.
Sales enablement should make it easier for salespeople to generate leads and close deals. Get sales enablement right, and your team should have less to worry about and can spend more time doing what they’re good at.
Sales skills need constant work. With a new year of prospecting, of winning and closing coming up, with new targets, salespeople need to think about where they can improve and how to get ready for the new year.
Following up sales emails or calls with another email is something everyone in sales does, almost without fail, every week. It’s rarely a fun task, and often follow-ups are frustrating.
LinkedIn, with over 660 million users worldwide, is without a doubt the most effective platform for sales professionals to connect with prospects.
Salespeople are no longer the masters of product knowledge. Buyers now seek to know as much about a potential solution to a problem they’re having as a salesperson trying to sell them it.
As 2019 draws to a close and 2020 fast approaches, now is the time when many sales leaders are thinking about the performance of the team and how to do better next year.
On LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional social platform, with over 660 million users, there is a vast opportunity of sales leads.
As 2019 races to a close, and 2020 moves ever closer, it’s natural for sales leaders to reflect on this year’s progress and think about how to achieve next year’s goals. Remember, you are only as good as your previous quarter.
Time is the enemy of every salesperson. When time is on your side, when you’ve got more prospects than you can manage and loads of time until the end of the month or quarter, it can feel pretty awesome to be in sales.
Some sales tactics need to be left behind. With 2020 fast approaching, the last year in the second decade of the twenty first century, we have put together a few that are worth forgetting about.
Sales in person has numerous advantages to sales over the phone, or across a screen. In person, sales people have the advantage of reading body language, listening and observing the many visuals cues we give when speaking to others.
The most effective sales teams use sophisticated sales cadences which are built on real data insights. The steps that you include and the timing of those activities are vital components of a winning cadence. From the number of steps that you include to the time durations between the various sales contacts that form part of your sales approach (everything from emailing to calling to chatting on LinkedIn or other social media platforms, for example), these are all important cadence considerations.
ChromeOS and the use of Chromebooks or Android-based devices can be ideal for sales teams that need a low cost tech solution. Easy-to-use and cost effective is what ChromeOS promises, and we know from experience that it delivers.
Salespeople are only successful when they have conversations with prospects. Every conversation serves as an opportunity to engage. A conversation is a chance to define needs, understand pain points, and come up with solutions. But you need to kick off a conversation for this to happen.
“Are you ready to go ahead?” Whatever way you bring a successful sales negotiation to a close, one of the most frustrating things a prospect can say is, “Yes, but . . .” and then they ask for a discount.
LinkedIn is an invaluable tool for outbound sales prospecting. We have published articles previously about how to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to shorten the sales cycle. Sales Navigator is designed with people in business development (and recruitment) roles in mind. Prices start at $64.99 per month (billed annually), or $134.99 per license when buying on behalf of a team (billed monthly).
In most B2B sales environments, summer is a quiet season. Decision makers are on holiday. Or even if they’re in the office, there are enough people on vacation that purchasing decisions are often delayed. Summer slowdown can be frustrating, especially if sales teams are behind on targets.
Sales is technology and data-driven. In many ways, sales hasn’t changed in decades: It’s still all about people. Making connections and building relationships, and solving problems.
Accounts where there are multiple decision makers can be difficult to manage. You might have one decision maker, even a budget holder, who wants to go ahead; while at the same time, others are blocking the decision.
Remember those really simple math problems from elementary (or primary) school? You know the ones. Where there is a picture with like, a certain number of apples in one pile and some more in another. Then, you either add or subtract the apples and see how many apples there are going to be in the end. Sales has a similar equation.
Your messaging - also known as a value proposition - is a key part of the sales process. A strong, clear message is how potential clients understand what you offer and how it benefits them.
Following up is rarely a fun activity. Compared to sales calls, demos, and meetings, following-up with prospects and accounts is something that everyone in sales does, but few enjoy. It’s a necessity and one of the few tasks in sales that often needs repeating.
Pitches can make or break whether useful sales conversations happen. Your communication channel matters, of course. Whether you’ve gone to a networking event, picked up the phone, sent an email or LinkedIn message: Your channel is going to have an impact on the response rate. So will a whole load of other factors, some of which you can’t control.
Assuming your current sales team is doing well, the next smart move is to scale the team. More skilled sales people should, in theory, close more deals and increase revenue, right?
Sales happen where customers are and customer conversations moving to apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger more often. Apps that aren’t easily integrated with CRMs. This article will help you stay organized and harness the power of messaging apps for sales.
Sales is problem solving. For sales teams in a B2B environment, sales isn’t about pitching. Sales people who pick up the phone, get through to a decision maker, and pitch, or who turn up to a meeting and fire off a pitch, don’t do well.
As Summer approaches, for sales leaders and managers this can be a time to recharge, re-think and re-tool knowledge and strategies for the rest of the year to come. If you are taking a holiday, or this is traditionally going to be a quieter time of year for your business, in the weeks and months ahead, now is the perfect opportunity to immerse yourself in useful new knowledge, new ideas and new approaches.
Being in sales is all about knowing how to advertise your products or services in the best light possible in order to make a successful sale. That requires developing a marketing strategy that can maximize your potential of sales. However, sales is all about generating more revenue relative to your expenditures, thus resulting in more profits.
Do you want to close more deals, faster? Do you want to get more qualified leads into the sales pipeline, and qualify them sooner? Assuming the answer to those questions is yes, this article is worth reading.
You probably see it on social media every day; “It’s 2019, why are we still doing [insert something that really shouldn’t be happening anymore]!?”. So when it comes to sales, there are some tried-and-tested methods that are always going to work. Not everything needs to change with the latest Instagram filter.
Generating leads is job one. Qualifying them is job two. Unless you know a lead is a potential client, you could spend weeks or months pursuing what looks like an opportunity, only for it to fall apart. Save yourself time and stress early on, with an efficient qualification process.
Closing is the final, crucial stage of every deal. At some point in every conversation, you need to ask the potential client for an answer. Often, in relationship-driven consultative sales negotiations, days, weeks or months of work have gone into this moment.
Hitting growth targets requires a consistency and predictability that most sales teams fail to manage. In the top 22 percent of companies, business development managers are consistent and predictable when it comes to hitting target.
Sales professionals expect to be paid well. Salaries for experienced salespeople are often larger than other career paths with the same number of years experience.
What do you want your sales team doing every day? Selling! Closing deals! Hitting targets. Sales teams that aren’t closing, aren’t talking to prospects (calls, meetings, demos), aren’t bringing more prospects into the pipeline aren’t doing enough to hit targets.
Time and pressure. Sales teams never seem to have enough time, putting them under pressure to hit targets and keep driving growth forward. Any advantage you can gain, to shorten your sales cycle, is worth pursuing.
In Europe, the UK and even parts of Asia - including China - economists are predicting that growth is going to slow down. Not a recession, but GDP isn’t going to increase at the same rate as previous years.
Reviews and referrals are powerful drivers of new leads and sales. So why do so many salespeople forget to make them part of the process?
“How is your sales pipeline looking?” This question, or some variant on that theme, is something that most sales managers ask their sales team at least once a week. Sales managers need to know that a sales team is making every effort to keep the pipeline flowing with new deals.
Sales is, without a doubt, the key driving force behind the growth of every company. Growth is not rocket science. Sales teams do not need complex algorithms and AI-powered computers to drive forward growth.
Screen sharing is a big part of the modern sales process. Inside sales teams are increasingly using screen sharing as an invaluable sales tool. Compared to in-person presentations, screen sharing needs a different approach and set of skills to engage your audience.
Account management and strategic account management is one of the most effective ways to increase revenue from clients. It is always going to be easier increasing budgets from those you are already working with than completely new customers.
In every business, there are going to be times when some customers aren’t happy with the service. No matter how hard your team work to deliver great service, there will be times when they fail to meet expectations.
Sales outputs are closely aligned with activity. Hitting your targets is a lot harder when you aren’t taking enough calls and having enough meetings with accounts and potential clients.
Cold calling isn’t an easy game. It takes patience and persistence. Whether you are doing inside or field sales, your job is to make calls and hope a few of them result in meetings, demos or pitches.
In January 2019, we were delighted to announce the launch of CrankWheel Remote Control. Now an integral part of every CrankWheel plan, including our free-for-life plan, anyone can give their viewer control over anything from a browser tab to the full screen.
Unlike field sales agents, inside sales teams are in the office churning through calls, emails and social media outreach techniques to convert prospects into clients.
Hitting target, or quota, is at the forefront of everyone’s mind in sales. You are only as good as your previous quarter, and in high-growth environments, you need to keep hitting target to stay on the team.
Sales always feels like a race. Or climbing a hill. Now that last year is over, you’ve got a new hill to climb, a new race to run. With a new year started, you need to turn future potential into reality.
Have you ever wished that during a screen share, you could let your viewer take over control of the web page or presentation you are showing them, and all without a download? We’re happy to announce that now you can, thanks to the launch of CrankWheel Remote Control, which is included as part of all CrankWheel plans including our free-for-life plan.
At the start of a new year, sales people are either exhausted from closing the previous year, celebratory or looking for a new role. In sales, when someone fails to hit target, there is rarely enough time for a post-game analysis.
When it comes to developing new product features and services, who should have the power? Should your sales leads and pipeline get a vote or should companies stick to product roadmaps?
On the receiving end of a sales call it can be annoying. An unexpected interruption. Someone trying to sell you something you aren’t ready to buy, maybe haven’t even heard about, and that you don’t want. What are the chances they’re going to convert you into a customer? You try and get out of the call any way you can, or just hang up.
Everyone in sales is pushing themselves forward to hit target before the end of the year. Wherever your company is in the financial year, the end of one year and start of a new one crosses an important psychological barrier. Hitting target gives sales professionals a valuable confidence boost.
Do you know your 2019 number yet? Can you guess? For many sales managers, new targets for the year ahead are often larger than the previous year.
Selling to small and medium businesses (SMBs) is about proving that your solution will solve a challenge they are having. Providing you’re talking to a company with a challenge you can solve, they need this solution and have a budget, then you are talking to a potential client.
Qualification is one of the most important part of the sales process. Sales professionals who fail to qualify a lead can spend weeks or months chasing something that isn’t going to happen.
Show don’t tell is a powerful option to have when talking to sales prospect. Sure, you can tell them all about your product, its wonderful features and benefits: or you can show them.
Selling a complex product can make it a challenge for a sales team to hit targets. Top line numbers can stretch into the distance and sales cycles can get longer as salespeople struggle to sell the value of the product to potential clients.
“Referral leads convert 30% better than leads generated from other marketing channels”, with B2B referrals closing at rates above 70%, according to the latest research.
Entering a new market can be a longer and more challenging journey than many founders imagine. In our always-on, hyper-connected world, we imagine that engaging with people in other countries gives us an insight into new markets.
Keeping sales prospects engaged is not easy. Cold calling is increasingly inefficient and ineffective. It can take as many as 18 calls to get a potential buyer on the phone.
As soon as a startup closes a funding round the clock starts ticking. As a founding team, you have targets to hit. It is almost impossible to do that without dedicated full-time salespeople.
Cold calling is not an easy game. Getting who you want on the phone is a time-consuming task. Despite increasing reluctance and a mistaken belief that “cold calling is dead”, speaking to a potential sales lead is still more effective than sending an email or making contact using social media.
Customers love getting something for free. Since the early days of software startups, SaaS companies in particular encourage new clients to sign-up with Freemium pricing models.
Generating sales leads from cold calls isn’t easy. And in many ways, inside sales is getting tougher.
Sending a text. It’s quick, convenient and unobtrusive. You don’t need to worry about interrupting someone’s work or meeting when you send a text.
Summer, especially during August when buyers and decision makers go on holiday can be a slow month for sales teams. Decisions get delayed. Momentum is lost. Deals can even evaporate in the heat.
Customers are constantly on the hunt for bargains. Whether it’s scouring the web for coupon codes or cashing in on last minute deals to save some money, retail shoppers love to save.
This brief guide shows how to integrate events from Instant Demos into Google Analytics. A similar approach can be used for other analytics systems.
For sales leaders, there is nothing worse than knowing your team is off-target. In high-growth companies, failing to hit a monthly or quarterly goal can have a huge impact. You could even risk missing an annual target that could make the difference between breaking even or going under.
Sales is evolving. Not only are we operating in a low-growth economy in most developed regions of the world, but how buyers behave is changing. Sales managers and account managers need to evolve and adapt to survive and thrive.
Sales is a numbers game, as any seasoned professional knows. Hitting your number, and making sure your team hits target, is the name of the game. In software companies, maintaining that consistent growth momentum is an even bigger challenge.
Several years ago then I worked as a Sales Manager at Omada I learned the value of using online meetings to qualify my opportunities and I experienced how it helped me to increase my sales productivity with 5x.
What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the words “business networking”? If it’s of awkward small talk, nervous laughter and sweaty palms then you’re certainly not alone.
If you’re a small business trying to make a name for yourself online, inbound marketing is seen as the go-to tactic.
We recently hosted a well-received webinar covering lessons we’ve learned from using product demos in our own sales pipeline, as well as lessons learned from seeing how CrankWheel customers use Instant Demos in different sales models.
When it comes to B2B sales, everything is focused on the ideal customer. Company ethos, mission statements, marketing campaigns and sales materials are all crafted to appeal to the target audience. And rightly so.
Most side projects and companies start with a couple of founders: hard working, committed, believing in a grand vision… Then comes the time to hire your first employees, which can be a daunting process. Who should you hire first? When is the right time? How exactly can you convince great people to join a company they’ve never heard of?
GDPR. Four letters that have struck fear into marketing teams across Europe. What’s been an elephant in the room for so long finally comes into force on May 25, 2018. But what exactly is the General Data Protection Regulation and how is it going to affect you?
79 percent of all marketing leads never convert into sales. For all of the good work marketing does in producing content and engaging website and social visitors, only 21 percent of leads are any good.
When Amazon launched in 1995, it flipped the B2C market on its head. Consumers had a new way to shop, and other companies were forced to react. Over two decades on, many brick-and-mortar stores that failed to adapt to digital technologies are no longer around, while others struggle to compete.
According to Transparency Market Research (TMP), the SaaS market will reach $164.29 billion by 2022. The IDC says that SaaS delivery is growing five times faster than the traditional software market, with cloud software accounting for $1 of every $4.59 spent on software.
Watch a recording of our webinar to get an inside look at our deep integration with Talkdesk.
Customers don’t appear out of thin air. In fact, the process of turning a stranger into your customer includes a great number of actions, where lead generation is a core element. There are some proven lead gen methods like newsletters, PPC advertising, or webinars. That said, you shouldn’t be limited to these tactics.
When Google unveiled its Chromebook in 2011, it was met with skepticism. Would an operating system that is primarily web-based be any good? Relying on internet access to run the majority of applications hardly seemed practical, especially when dependable WiFi was hard to find.
A long time ago in a land far away, I was a Sales Rep for a company that was transitioning from offering traditional break/fix computer services to offering 24×7 monitoring and support (aka managed services) for a flat monthly fee.
How well do you know your customer? Well enough to know what they’re willing to spend money on, what they like and dislike about your products?
In the early stages of growth, pricing is one of the defining features of any software startup. Going to market with a product that isn’t priced to offer value is a fast track to failure.
We partnered with Talkdesk, a leading intelligent contact center cloud platform, to become a featured screen sharing solution in their AppConnect marketplace. From now on you can use both apps together as one seamless sales platform that offers telephony and screen sharing with integrated lead capture.
In an ever-increasingly technologized world, artificial intelligence is already in use in several ways. And whether you like it or not, A.I. will be a part of everyday life, sooner or later. Business will be revolutionized (this is already taking place as we speak) and it’s time for us to prepare.
Sales training is built on a billable hour business model. The sector alone, composed of freelance consultants and multinational firms, is a multi-billion dollar industry.
I saw this on LinkedIn the other day. Is it relevant for sales professionals in startups?
Sales professionals in any sector don’t have it easy. But when you’re up against established legacy competitors or trying to gain traction in a new market or vertical, you’ve usually got a tough journey ahead.
Sales managers in software startups face multiple challenges every day. Maintain growth. Hit target. Manage people. Source leads. Close deals. Look after key accounts and partners. It never ends.
Sales teams need to keep pipelines busy and active. A quiet pipeline, one without enough prospects, or enough likely prospects, should be seen as a red flag to managers and co-founders. Boards and investors often need to be kept informed about the state of the pipeline.
Scaling means committing to growth. Growing means staffing up in sales and marketing departments. You do need a sales team. The clock has started ticking. From the moment investor funds hit your account, you are in a race against time.
Software is created to solve problems. Salespeople work to make sure that as many potential clients see how your software solves their problem. Saves time. Saves money. Makes a process more efficient.
When it comes to scaling a Venture-backed startup, figuring out staffing numbers isn’t an exact science. Founders are keen to increase marketing and sales team numbers since these directly contribute to revenue. Or at least, that is the idea.
Potential clients want to see how your software can do what you claim. Demos are an effective and popular way to give prospects a tour, wherever they are in the world.
When you work with and around enough software startups, you often hear similar phrases, from staff and founders confident that a free trial is a final stage in the sales funnel.
For a long time there’s been an intense debate between onsite and online sales presentations. Is it better for your team to be in the field, meeting customers face-to-face? Or putting them on the phones, calling and presenting demos online?
No, not the type you’re thinking of! We were hosting UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School students for International MBA Consultancy Week (from the 5th to 8th of June).
Digital marketing, thankfully, is playing a role in ensuring you can reach a much wider audience of potential buyers. Websites and digital sales funnels make it easier to reach a wider group of buyers. With social media, content, email marketing, landing pages, and digital advertising, your product can reach hundreds or thousands of potential buyers every day. Reaching them is only the first step.
David Skok, a serial entrepreneur turned VC, with Matrix Partners, coined the phrase, “touchless conversion sales model” around seven years ago, with an article that neatly summed up the low-touch sales model. Something software founders and entrepreneurs should aim towards, since the lower their customer acquisition costs, the more they will make over the lifetime of each customer.
Software companies don’t always adopt the same pricing models, even when they are selling a similar service to competitors in the same market or sector. There is a psychology behind why different pricing models are adopted, which is what we will explore in this article.
Software is big business. Gartner estimates that IT spending will exceed $3.5 trillion in 2017, with $357 billion of that spent on software services, a 7.2% increase in 2016 global software revenues, which were around $333 billion.
Calling a potential lead within 5 minutes of an inquiry (or them handing over an email or phone number through a landing page) increases the chance of successful contact 100 times. This lead is 22 times more likely to enter the sales pipeline, according to the Lead Response Management Study.
CrankWheel just surpassed 10.000 weekly installed users on the Chrome Web Store, and with great scale comes great responsibility. The last few weeks were a lesson in humility in regards to customer success management at scale.
Responding to a customer request within 1 minute increases conversion effectiveness 22x. It’s so intuitive yet at the same time we, the software industry, make customers jump through hoops to get our attention. Here’s one way to make that problem go away.
Come and witness live how fresh and exciting sales can get when you put your heart into developing innovation that works every time!
You all know that at CrankWheel, we are absolutely insane when it comes to collecting sales data and sharing the our experience.
CrankWheel is growing based on user feedback. We seize every opportunity to talk with our buyers. We meet them everywhere! From attendees of events like Slush to other participants of startup competitions like Vodafone Stökkpallur, Deloitte Fast Rising 50 (both of which we won, by the way!). We talk in order to do proper research about screen sharing usability.
In every sales follow-up call hides the dreaded „how does it work?” question. How does one cope in these „I want it now!” times?
Hey there! We are CrankWheel, an international startup from Iceland. We are going to Slush 2016 and we want to meet you there!
This interview was originally published in Icelandic at Vodafone.is under the name “CrankWheel - From Google and a Sales Career to an International Startup in Iceland”.
Deloitte’s jury has finished debating and announced, among others, that CrankWheel was chosen to present on the Fast 50 - Rising Star event on 16th November, on the 20th floor of the Deloitte Tower in Reykjavik, Iceland.
A picture is worth a thousand words. A thousand words when spoken at an average speed require 7 minutes and 42 seconds. You can save your customers that much time by simply adding screen sharing to your telesales campaigns!
Surely your company has great sales professionals with all of the tools it needs to get people interested in the product itself. After all, sales professionals have a wide variety of tools, but according to a recent study (and just plain intuition!) delivering sales presentations is the primary deal closer for most.
It is our great pleasure to announce today the launch of an innovative project one of our customers started several months ago, where CrankWheel plays a key role.
If you’ve ever been involved in sales, you’re sure to have noticed one thing that is critical: sharing. Whether you’re the buyer or the seller, sharing forms the bedrock of your conversation. Prospects share their business challenges and their ideas of how they want to address those challenges. They share how they create value for their customers and how they’re constantly seeking to improve. Flip it around, and the sales team shares their value proposition, and they share proof of how their solution can help solve the prospect’s challenges.
One of Google’s early mottos, part of their “10 things” mantra, was that “It’s best to do one thing really, really well.” Our founder drank a lot of Kool-Aid in his ten years at Google, plus it’s just one of the most sensible mantras we’ve heard. That’s why we designed CrankWheel to be a simple tool that does one thing really, really well, namely screen sharing.
Imagine this phone call between Bob, a very well off older gentleman, and Maude, a salesperson at a high-end travel agency:
The last few weeks have been quite hectic here at CrankWheel HQ. Two things kept us busy: Making our product generally available on our website on Friday, November 6th, and preparing for the Slush conference in Helsinki, which happened last week, November 11th and 12th. Our plan was to launch just before Slush, and then publicize our launch at the conference, as well as meet with prospective customers in Finland during our trip.
You may have read about CrankWheel before, on our founder’s blog or the Startup Iceland blog. Today, CrankWheel is coming further out of hiding, launching a new website and this new blog.
