6 Ground Level Sales Tactics You Need
Easy to Apply Tips You Can Apply Today
Wanted to thank everyone for getting Hacking Sales up to 800+ subscribers. A few announcements coming off of “radio silence” the past couple of months. If you want to skip this part, just jump straight to “What I’ve been seeing in the market”.
Announcements:
Firstly, for long time subscribers, if you haven’t already - check out Claymation Automation Substack by . The most recent article on account research is absolute FIRE. The tool is amazing and you can get it free credits by clicking on the link below:
If you’re a founder of an early stage startup, or AE at a younger company (ie series seed, series A or B), I’m taking FREE calls to provide advice and learn more about how I can add more value to current and future subscribers. You can book time FOR FREE below:
Moving forward, I’ll continue to post tactics and strategies that I’ve been learning, applying, and incorporating into my day to day. Win or fail. Moving forward, the overall cadence will be altered. Every week I’ll post about specific tactics and strategies, followed by a post with curated thoughts on what I’ve been reading and seeing in the market (similar to today). So on and so forth. (Thank you for this tip).
What I’ve been seeing in the market
I’m fortunate to be coming off of a massive Q3 with a ton of momentum going into Q4. In today’s post, I’ll share some of my own thoughts on interesting tactics and opinions I’ve come across from LinkedIn and X.
Putting a face to the name
TechSalesGuy has posted about this previously and since then, I’ve incorporated it into all of my outreach. This has lead to lines in with executive leaders and even sales cycle acceleration. In some instances, I haven’t been necessarily able to attribute directly, but it’s a massive coincidence we get the green light on a decision to move forward with us shortly after a relevant email from what I’ve learned about a problem, and a LinkedIn touch like this:
The takeaway?
There’s no harm in just being a person. A simple “hello”, with the right context goes far. I apply this even if the person isn’t active on social. My goal is just to build awareness and ultimately, a relationship.
Why I like it?
It’s simple, easy, and takes zero effort.
Text Your Clients
I recently met up with one of my former VP of Sales. The topic of outbound came up on how many sales reps *don’t* have clients texting (or even calling) with their prospective customers during sales cycles. I won’t act like I’m the messiah of texting, but more often than not, it’s yielded positive outcomes for what every sales rep needs to win a deal: insider information.
Note that I said “clients”, or “highly engaged” prospects, ie far down the funnel and considering a purcahse. Generally, I haven’t texted prospects at the top of the funnel, only in rare circumstances. This may change in the future but from a data point, texting converts.
I’ll expand on this in my post next week and how opening up the line of communication via text gave me a TON of insight that led to an RFP win vs an incumbent.
Sales Leadership vs Sales IC
During the conversation with my former VP of Sales, another topic came up:
Being a sales IC is NOT the same as being a sales leader.
I’m comfortable with the fact that I’m a sales guy, maybe that changes in the future. Self awareness is a skill set in itself. It’s on you to be aware of what a role entails.
Too many sales folks want the prestige of getting into sales management. Logically it makes sense since on paper it looks like upward career mobility. Not realizing that you’re now out of a sales role, and in an operations role - two *very* different skill sets
Sales Metrics & Culture
This topic segues nicely into an interesting discussion on X pertaining to the evolving landscape of sales methodologies embedded into sales teams via The Deal Director. Books like John McMahon’s, “The Sales Qualified Leader” are great sources of information.
BUT - they’re not the end all be all. Like with all sales advice, including my own observations, there’s just no silver bullet (if there was, sales wouldn’t pay well).
You can read the thread but the reality that Deal Director touches upon:
You can’t MEDDPICC your way to closed won deals. It’s a common sales language, a guide, for organizations. And although important to have a process as a sales person, you need to be driving towards customer problems and solutions. The nuances of obtaining these “unlocks” in the sales cycle, is the art, rather than the science, of sales.
In order to be truly sales enabled, you need to have the perspective of what the value of the tech is and the problems that it’s solving for customers. Easier said than done.
Categorizing Personas
Kellen Casebeer just put out a fire post on LI about how he used ocean.io to categorize personas. This is why AI is and should be leveraged as a way to get quicker outcomes. But you still need a human to think through “the last mile”. Without AI this would probably take days, maybe weeks.
What I also like about this is that you can put pen to paper to come up with hypotheses on how to categorize messaging and what resonates with buyers, who are ultimately humans themselves, especially in early stage companies.
Sharing content isn’t a bad thing.
Harris Fanaroff recently posted about best practices on LinkedIn, regarding sharing and one of the comments caught my eye:
Sales is about capturing demand - no dispute there. If you’re in the position where you can lean on marketing teams doing their job and creating good content, assuming it’s relevant to a problem, then why not use it? ESPECIALLY if you’re able to provide a unique POV.
With so much noise that prospects have to sift through, I don’t see why this would not be utilized. As the poster pointed out - it’s all about timing. So not sure why you wouldn’t share content?
Hope that these takes were useful.
As always, thanks for reading and see you all next week. If you have any questions or thoughts, shoot me a DM or email andrew@hackingsales.xyz.
-Andrew K
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