Personalization is key in sales. Check out these tips to help you across the funnel.
According to McKinsey & Company, 76% of buyers are more likely to purchase from companies that provide a personalized buying experience. What’s more, 78% of buyers are more likely to repurchase from and recommend companies that personalize their buying experience. As such, it’s no surprise that companies that personalize see a lift in revenue of as much as 25%.
The top sales reps and leaders know this, which is why the best out there make the extra effort to personalize every interaction they have with their buyers.
If you’re a sales rep or leader looking to take your performance to the next level, this post is for you. Here’s how to personalize every step of your sales process.
Personalization is critical when prospecting. There’s so much noise out there, the only way to rise above it is to engage with your buyers in a personalized and relevant way.
It starts with doing your research. Head to your prospect’s LinkedIn profile to see if you have any mutual connections you can leverage for an introduction. Check out their work and educational history to see if you have any common experiences or interests you can reference in your outreach. Sift through their recent activity to identify priorities or pain points you can lean into with your value proposition. Include a personalized one pager in your outreach that speaks to how similar companies are using your solution to address similar needs.
The key is to transform your outreach from cold to warm.
During a discovery call, you at most have 30 minutes to both qualify your prospect but also develop enough interest to get them to commit to spending more time with you. Personalization is your path to achieving this.
As they answer your various qualifying questions and reveal their most pressing pain points, share the most relevant information about your offering and how it can be used to address their needs. Make sure to give a couple relevant examples of how customers in similar industries used your solution to overcome similar challenges and achieve similar goals.
Hone in on the one to three priority problems they’re looking to solve and position the next step as a tailored demo to show them exactly how this can be achieved with your solution. Don’t forget to send a short follow-up email with a couple bullet points re-stating those pain points and the agreed upon next steps. Include a couple case studies that you may have referenced during your call.
The most common mistake sales reps make with demos is showing every single feature available in their product. Instead, personalize your demos around one to three key “aha” moments that specifically show how your solution addresses your prospect’s priority problems you identified in your discovery call.
A good framework for doing this in an interactive way is to have your prospect rearticulate their problem and then show them how your solution solves it, tell them a story of how a similar customer solved the same problem with your solution, and finally ask them how they see themselves using your solution to address the need.
By now they should be convinced you can help them and the conversation should shift to getting other stakeholders onboard. Follow-up with a personalized sales deck they can use to start selling your solution internally.
You’ve now achieved the critical milestone of converting your prospect into a champion who will work hand-in-hand with you to sell your solution to the remaining stakeholders within their organization. It’s time to work with them to create a personalized Mutual Action Plan (MAP) that outlines exactly how you’re going to do this.
Schedule a call with your prospect to walk through the MAP. Fill in the information you already know ahead of the call, such as their priorities and how your solution will address their needs. This ensures you spend their precious time wisely but also further builds credibility and trust.
Then work together to fill in the remaining information, such as the steps that need to be taken to get to a decision and successfully implement a solution as well as the stakeholders that need to be involved at each step.
Align on a timeline and work with your prospect to complete each step. One of the critical steps should be to meet with the ultimate decision maker and economic buyer. Prepare a personalized proposal presentation for this meeting summarizing the information from your MAP, highlighting a couple relevant case studies, and providing an ROI calculation that establishes a business case for allocating budget and creates a sense of urgency for making a decision.
Congratulations, you’ve signed on a new customer! But the personalization doesn’t stop here. In fact, it’s just the beginning. After all, SaaS is all about recurring revenue.
Work with your post-sale team to build a tailored onboarding plan that sets your new customer up for success. Establish a cadence of check-ins, including quarterly business reviews where you revisit your customer’s priorities, present personalized data and insights demonstrating how you’re addressing them, and discuss any necessary adjustments.
By taking a personalized approach, you’ll ensure that continuing or even expanding the relationship is a no brainer when it comes time for renewal.
