How To Close More Deals
Proven tactics to drive forward your company’s sales motion and win more deals
How is the start of Q3? How did your Q2 end?
One metric that matters the most for a sales professional in an Account Executive role is - revenue closed in a month or quarter. Recently, I asked more than 50+ Account executives what their big challenges were. Predominantly, I saw that the main issues were
Unable to hit monthly/quarterly quotas
Unable to hit 2x or 3x the monthly/quarterly quotas
So, last week, I brainstormed with my friend Prakhar Jain, Director of Global Sales at Whatfix. We discussed a bunch of ideas, but two really stood out to me. That’s why we decided to feature these two ideas in a webinar as part of the SeSaMint Webinar Series (S1E2), last Saturday.
#1 Do your math, trust the numbers
The key aspect of hitting the monthly or quarterly quota is being on top of the numbers and trusting the numbers in your CRM. Your CRM is your source of truth. Often, Account Executives get hyper-focused on demos, follow-ups and creating opportunities. But they neglect reviewing the dashboard once a week to see what the numbers are saying. This is a classic mistake as a Sales Profession. I’ve also made this mistake and sometimes still do it unwittingly.
The key to hitting your target quota is to do backward math. Really, it is as simple as that. But trust me, many of us don’t do it. Let’s look at backward math now. I will make some assumptions to show you how backward math works.
Assumptions:
Monthly quota is $50,000
The sales motion looks like the one represented below.
Lead → Discovery Call → Demo Meeting → Opportunity → Proposal Sent → Closed Won
Conversion rates:
Lead to Discovery Call - 10%,
Discovery Call to Demo meeting - 75%,
Demo meeting to Opportunity - 50%,
Opportunity to Proposal Sent - 50%,
Proposal sent to Closed Won - 50%.
A good metric to target for Opportunity to Closed Won conversion is 25%.
ACV - $10,000
Sales cycle - 30 days (for simplicity)
So to hit $50,000 a month you should win 5 deals. That means you should send at least 10 proposals, create 20 opportunities, do 40 demo meetings, do 54 discovery calls and your marketing should generate at least 540 leads.
So that means, if you haven’t created 20 opportunities that month, it’s 99% guaranteed that you will miss hitting your quotas. This is the backward math every Account Executive should do at the beginning of the quarter or month to see if the numbers are aligned. If the numbers are off then make sure you talk to your marketing team or search your CRM to resurface old opportunities.
#2 Self-Driven & To-be Driven
Now that the math is clear, how do you close deals?
All deals can be categorized into two buckets - Self-driven and To-be Driven.
Self-driven
The deals in this bucket do not require a push and they go at their own pace. Usually the prospect signs up for a free trial and starts exploring the product on their own. They inherently have some sense of urgency, and so all the Account Executive needs to do is be a facilitator. You need to be there when the customer needs help in answering any questions. Being there for them when they need to be assisted during the buying process, builds trust.
It’s like riding in a Tesla in self-driving mode. You’re just there to make sure that the car is not going off the road.
(pic source: tesla website)
To-be Driven
The deals in this bucket require your energy and expertise to drive the deal forward in the pipeline. You should be proactive and control the sales motion here. You should do thorough discovery and take it a step forward with every conversation you have with the prospect. You should plan things on behalf of the prospect. Sometimes, you need to challenge the prospect to understand their intentions.
For example if the prospect days ‘I like it’, it doesn’t really mean anything.
“A YES is nothing without a HOW”
- Chris Voss, Former FBI hostage negotiator.
Another classic example where most of the deals go dead is -‘I will talk and get back.’
What does that even mean? Does it mean the prospect is talking to the CEO in his/her team? You should ask the prospect ‘what does that mean?’, ‘Whom is she/he going to talk to?’, ‘What is the discussion about?’
The deals in this bucket are like a shiny Ferrari without tires and fuel. You need to fix the tires and add the fuel for the shiny Ferrari to hit the road :)
(pic source: google)
A great tactic here is to come up with a Close Plan to take control of the deal. The Close plan is nothing but a simple plan document that has all the steps listed as tasks. Each of these tasks has an owner and a due date. Here’s a sample of a Close Plan.
The idea behind creating a Close Plan is to collaborate with your prospect at a deeper level, in order to win their partnership and solve their problems. It’s about doing the heavy lifting and removing cognitive overload for your prospect. It’s about holding each other accountable and making a commitment to evaluate your solution thoroughly.
I have a Close Plan template that I can share with you. Reply in the comments to get your copy to drive forward your company’s sales motion and you can also additionally receive a recording of the webinar on, “How to win more deals” with Prakhar Jain of Whatfix.
Now that you have two powerful tactics in your arsenal go kill this quarter. Good luck!
Please share the Close Plan template. Thanks.
Suresh Babu.
ceo@smaabacus.com