One of the most common terms used in SaaS sales is the future of inside sales. Some of the largest companies are implementing high-velocity sales in their business processes to increase the productivity of their salespeople and accelerate their sales growth.
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What is High-Velocity Sales?
High-velocity sales integrate the approaches of a B2C sales model and applies them to B2B sales processes. It now also occupies a place in customer relationship management platforms as it helps to better monitor and control the sales process.
In general, inside sales reps review a long list of prospects, communicate with them through multiple communication channels, capture their information in their system, and do the additional follow-up.
A high-velocity sales model shows you what's next so you know your plan of action after each step. High-velocity sales is an efficient way to reach the best leads, convert those leads into paying customers, and create new opportunities all in one place.
Sales engagement has moved from traditional channels to digital channels. And since traditional sales automation solutions still value face-to-face interactions, today’s sales reps are using technology like emails, calls, texts, VoIP, and more in order to engage their prospects.
Today, sales reps spend 6x more time selling in front of the screen than they do in-person.
We've compiled some of the best practices to help you take advantage of the high velocity sales model.
Ways to Use High-Velocity Sales for Your Business
- Use internet lead generation methods
- Take advantage of organic search
- Nurture your sales leads
- Make use of a strong inside sales approach
- Establish key performance metrics
- Allow product sampling
Every company wants to save time and money. Therefore, it is important to introduce the high-velocity sales model early in your business, as it is economical and produces results faster.
To get the most out of a high velocity sales model, you need to know how to do it right. Here’s how:
1. Use internet lead generation methods
The most common lead generation method that every inside sales employee follows is the Internet.
These include web lead forms on your website, key landing pages, organic search strategies, pay-per-click programs, and email marketing campaigns, etc.
Source: HubSpot
The purpose of each of these practices is to drive a lead up the sales funnel, qualify as a lead, close the deal, and get referrals.
2. Take advantage of organic search
Improving organic search is an often underappreciated sales strategy. Increasing the likelihood that someone finds your website on the Google search engine results page (SERP) is not only immensely helpful, but it will cost you nothing.
Here are strategies to take advantage of organic search to improve sales.
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Defined keywords
It’s unreasonable to think that you can rank on Google for every keyword related to your industry. Your goal should be to secure high organic ranking for the most desired keywords.
This is a method that would take efforts from both the marketing and management. Think about how your target audience would search for your product or service, make a list of the keywords, and check the traffic on each keyword using keyword research tools like SEMrush, etc.
Keywords with high volume and low to medium competition are a sweet spot that you should be hitting- they have high traffic potential and are easy to rank for.
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Write quality content
Before you dive into more technical methods of driving more traffic and other ways to improve your SEO ranking, the first and foremost thing you should keep in mind is to write the content that hits the right spot.
Always remember that high-quality content attracts more traffic and compels people to look into what it’s about.
Good content has the best chance to be the viral content, and Google highly favors the content virality in its algorithms.
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Optimize your page titles
The <title> HTML tag defines a web page’s title and is meant to give a precise description of that page’s content.
It is the first line of the hyperlinked text that Google shows in its search result and it is what appears in the top frame of most of the web browsers for that page and tab.
Google’s algorithm consider this to be a crucial on-page SEO element.
When you write your page’s title, make sure it’s less than 70 characters, since any character beyond that will be cut off when listed on Google’s organic search result.
Use your primary keywords in the title, preferably in the beginning. If you have any space left, consider putting your company name in it for brand awareness.
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Write meta descriptions that drive clicks
The <meta name= description content= > HTML tag is meant to be a concise explanation of the page’s content. Google displays the meta description below the title on the search result page.
Although meta descriptions are not nearly as important as the titles for getting ranked on Google, they serve their own essential purpose.
Meta descriptions are precisely used for driving clicks from users.
People read descriptions as a preview to your page’s content and decide whether it’s worth visiting. Therefore, you need to provide a clear value proposition about what they’ll gain by visiting your page and reading your content.
Consider using more actionable words like “learn more” or “find out” or “get...”.
Here are a few examples of meta descriptions:
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Optimize your site for mobile
In 2015, Google announced that it would be using mobile friendliness as a ranking signal.
Hence, brands started optimizing the mobile versions of their sites.
Since then, Google gradually kept increasing the importance of mobile friendliness in its ranking criterion, so much so that in September 2020, it announced that it will index the entire web with a mobile-first model.
Here are some tips to make your website mobile-friendly:
- Test your site using Google’s mobile friendly tool
- Design for touch- fingers come in all sizes and it’s easy to make a wrong tap
- Make your CTA buttons accessible for mobile users
- Redesign your pop-ups for mobile devices
- Enable Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
- Implement caching
- Compress your images to improve loading time
- Use heat maps and mouse tracking tools to understand how users use your website on mobile and make optimizations accordingly
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Avoid black hat techniques
Black hat SEO means the practice of trying to trick search engines into giving you high rankings by using unethical methods such as buying links.
The risks in such methods are way too high. Even if you enjoy a temporary boost in ranking using black hat tactics, it’s likely to be short-lived.
As Google gets better and better at spotting these dirty tricks, sooner or later the progress that you made will be wiped out, or even worse, your website will be removed from the index altogether.
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Increase your social presence
Social signals are impacting organic search engine rankings, and the experts say that it will increase with time.
So, if you haven’t already, start putting efforts into creating a social media presence for your company- create your company’s pages on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., and start engaging your audience there.
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Employ a link building strategy
Link building is a practice of acquiring new links to your site from external domains. Beyond creating quality content that people want to read and share, you can opt for guest blogging and generate new links for your website.
Check the domain authority (DA) of the website you are getting the link from- the higher the DA, the better will be your ranking. These sites pass the authority from their site to yours through those backlinks.
Use relevant keywords for your backlinks so that it sends a signal to Google that your site is relevant for those terms.
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Track your leads and visitors
Ranking high on Google organic search is just half the battle won. To prove your value and optimize your results, it’s important to measure the impact of your efforts on website visitors and lead/sales generation.
Google search console can give you important insights into how your site is functioning and identify potential errors that you should correct.
A tool like Google Analytics is helpful for measuring changes in search traffic as well as tracking visitor’s interaction with your website that are a direct result of SEO. You can set up
Google Analytics reporting to measure how well your organic traffic is converting to subscribers, leads and customers.
By using high velocity sales, you can reach the best leads with the help of your CRM and convert them quickly. By using the top lead capturing software, you know you can be unstoppable!
3. Nurture your sales leads
“The way you sell is important. What is your process is important. But how your customers feel when they interact with you is more important. " Tiffany Bova
Do you ever go to a shop and buy the first thing you get your hands on? We suppose not.
Shoppers these days tend to look around before settling on a product. They educate themselves and then get involved in a sale.
Especially at a time where there are a hundred options available right at their fingertips, it’s easy for anyone to do thorough research and then make a buying decision.
It is difficult to find the best potential lead quickly, because your potential customers will not accept your offer in the first conversation itself. Selling it, therefore, is a long process.
Your leads need deep nurturing, just like you would nurture a plant. You water it until the day it begins to bloom, and then you take care of it even further. But to get the flower to bloom its first bud is the longest and most important step.
Your prospects should also be served in the same way. They need your constant attention and expect a rigorous discussion before closing the deal.
Lead nurturing is so powerful that statistically, 15-20% of leads convert to a sale after not wanting to commit at all!
With a high velocity sales model, you can capture the buying signals of your potential customers, no matter how feeble they are, and turn them into satisfied customers.
4. Make use of a strong inside sales approach
Sales teams keep evolving every single day. You have to remember that your ultimate goal is to find the right potential lead and ultimately convert them to paying clients.
Your approach will be different for each prospect, so you need to understand exactly who your prospects are and how to use your approach to make a sale.
Use the power of storytelling to engage your prospects. Dive into the minds of your buyers, understand their behavior and let them think about how your product is best for them, or even use negative reverse selling techniques.
Psychology of selling is a powerful medium that, if leveraged, can get you the best deals closed in no time, and even convert the lost cause leads into loyal customers.
In the end, with high velocity sales, you can take advantage of each of your approaches and close the deal as soon as possible.
5. Establish key performance metrics
Every business runs on numbers.
Hence, you need to understand the sales KPIs that drive your team's efforts.
Therefore, the use of metrics is essential. Sales reports can help you keep track of the time and overall productivity of your sales team and also help you plan for future sales.
With a visual representation of your sales numbers and figures in front of you, you can make sure that your sales reps know where they stand in terms of reaching their goals, and you can help them out wherever they lack in productivity.
6. Allow product sampling
Have you ever been to a store, saw something that you liked, and bought it without trying it on? We doubt you would ever do that!
So, why would your customers? You cannot expect your prospects to buy from you unless they have experienced what they are getting into.
Any buying decision gets stronger once the prospect has tried on your product.
So, offer your customers a sample of your product, show them the benefits that come with it and then you can expect them to sign up.
How Does High-Velocity Sales Help Inside Sales?
With more and more sales teams starting to adopt the high-velocity sales method, we see a hike in the success rate of such teams. Inside sales teams are experiencing significant improvements in the efficiency and potency of their sales reps.
This has only been possible because the high velocity sales module revolves around the two critical challenges that every inside sales team faces the most.
First, sales teams can plan, control and track the sequence of activities and tasks that are relevant to each lead or contact.
Second, high velocity sales enable each and every individual member of the sales team to organize their activities and schedule their time in a more meaningful way.
For example, every member of the team would be able to prioritize their tasks and would know which tasks they need to take up today or within a week.
Consequently, high velocity sales help the inside sales reps to engage with their leads and prospects in the right manner, at the right time.
For most sales teams, there are hundreds, if not thousands of sales leads in play simultaneously. These leads come from many different sources, like the contact us page, web forms, webinars, eBook downloads, digital channels, and sometimes, even the purchase lists.
It’s the role of the inside sales teams to turn these hot leads into selling opportunities, and them into deals.
Inside sales reps are also responsible for building good rapport with the leads for any future sales opportunity.
For example, many a times, inside sales reps support the field sales reps by seeking out and building rapport with stakeholders that were previously unknown, and have an influence on the buying process.
This leads us to the two vital challenges that the inside sales teams face while building and maintaining good relationships with their clients and seeking out new selling opportunities.
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The inside sales horizontal challenge
The very first challenge for the sales reps is to decide on the right sequence of activities for each lead.
For example, a lead that came through “Get in touch with us” form may be ready for a direct sales qualification call.
However, the webinar attendees might not be ready for a sales call right away, and need a little nurturing before they can decide whether they want to go ahead with the purchase or not.
For such leads, the most effective approach would be LinkedIn connections, educational emails and phone calls, and even social media messages.
In other words, the ideal series of activities will vary for each lead that enters your CRM system via different lead generating channels that we stated above. It may even differ for different countries and cultural backgrounds.
High velocity sales solve this challenge with the help of sales and marketing automation.
It allows the inside sales team to access pre-defined templates that can be used for emails and texts respectively.
A sales rep can set up different email/ text templates for each lead type, or according to the lead generation channel, as it seems fit to them. Then, they can reach out to these leads at the right time and make a sale.
These sales reps can even set up sales sequences inside their CRM, that would allow them to perform each activity in the sales process as per the requirement of the lead.
Sales sequences are pre-defined arrangement of communication activities designed for leads and contacts that meet a specific criterion.
For example, you can set up a sales sequence and add every contact that downloads your eBooks in it, and then define what should be done with them. The ideal response in this case would be to send more personalized educational material via emails and texts before you reach out to them for a sales call.
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The inside sales vertical challenge
In many inside sales reps, there is no consistency in how they keep a track of the routine sales activities. Maybe some of them use spreadsheets, or some just perform random activities, relying on their raw memory.
But the problem arises here- How can each member keep a track of every email or text sent, phone calls made, LinkedIn connections, or other tasks that they should be doing in a day, every day?
This problem becomes graver as you keep adding new leads into your system.
High velocity sales solves this challenge with the help of automation such as smart queues, or power dialer, etc.
In such automotive features, inside sales reps find a reliable and more robust way of viewing planned tasks across multiple sales leads and contacts.
This means that the teams can have a quick view of their due tasks, and can even queue them one after the other, so that they don’t have to give any time to the repetitive tasks, while they nurture the leads and look out for more.
With the help of templates, call scripts, and more, a sales rep can fast-track their sales process, eliminate manual labor, and come up with new lead while the system takes care of the rest.
In Conclusion
High velocity sales are the future that you should look forward to!
“Don't be afraid of the future; become part of it.”
High velocity sales enables the sales rep to do the following:
- Help them attract better customers
- Reduce manual labor with innovative tools
- Automate every step of the sales process for overall success
With model high velocity sales by your side, take a step into the future of sales. Leverage the technology and use smart sales and marketing automation tools such as a CRM. This will just add the right amount of magic you need to get ahead in the game.
Inside sales is trending. So, give your sales reps everything they need to succeed today and tomorrow.
Get a customer relationship management platform that gives you an edge over your competitors to keep your customers happy and take your business to the next level.
About the author:
Raaquib Pathan is a content marketing specialist having expertise in providing insights into the latest sales and marketing trends.
Honing his skills in SEO coupled with content marketing, he helps brands increase their reach and dominate search results.
He is currently working with Salesmate, a CRM that helps people boost productivity and create swift workflows. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.
