Consistently Win the Sales Race with Microsoft CRM and Sales Navigator

In a world where digital acceleration and disruption have exploded, the impact on the way we engage with people and customers changes every day. We need to learn how to stay consistently competitive in the market, attracting increasingly sophisticated customers with evolving demands using the right digital tools.

My years of sales experience and expertise have taught me that connection, trust, and understanding your potential prospect are critical elements to the success of your sales achievements and outcomes.

Executives typically buy from people they trust and have confidence in rather than from someone whom they cannot connect with or feel understands them. This often holds true even if there is a better offer from someone less familiar. That is why putting most of your sales efforts into cold calling is a strategy that typically has low success rates, despite the fact that it could still bring in some deals due to the “law of large numbers”.

Play Hard, Work Hard

As an avid sportsperson, I have learned that being consistent is the one thing that separates great and mediocre results. The best athletes in the world perform at a consistently high-level day in and day out, week in and week out for months and even years on end. To achieve your greatest goals, you have to continually train your body to stay at optimal fitness levels.

This notion of consistent high performance is so important to me because it is a key part of my definition of prime sport: Performing at a consistently high level under the most challenging conditions. This is the goal towards which I believe all athletes, whatever their ability or sport, should aspire to.

The same approach goes for sales: you need to consistently push the boundaries of your sales strategy in order to connect with new people and be steps ahead in this highly competitive game.

The most successful executives never underestimate the power of gaining consistency in the sales organization. Whether it’s in qualification, opportunity reviews, or customer conversations, the power of everyone executing in the same manner, with the same understanding can be a game-changer for your organization.

But how do we achieve this in our digital world?

The Digital Tools that Can Help you Accelerate your Sales

Digital selling serves as an intermediary between buyer and seller, allowing both potential customers and sellers to firstly become aware of each other’s existence, and then to conduct extensive research before initiating direct contact. This principle requires that salespeople are present at all stages in their customer’s and buyers’ journeys in order to build this sense of familiarity.

As part of the natural progression of digital selling and online research and the growth of social media channels as a form of information gathering, both parties can benefit from observing each other’s behaviors and priorities via social media. This builds trust in the long term.

LinkedIn has unlocked a world of possibilities for sales teams facing B2B buyers who are closing the door on cold calls and relying on social media to steer their buying decisions.

Interestingly, according to LinkedIn research, 75% of B2B buyers use social media when making buying decisions. That is why removing any obstacles between your company and potential customers is essential.

LinkedIn is a platform that enables you to forge relationships with these professionals — so you can reveal connection paths between your company and your target accounts that you can leverage for a warm introduction.

If you are saying to yourself “I am already on LinkedIn?”… just wait, there is more!

LinkedIn Sales Navigator has magic benefits that help you bring the strength of social selling and digital selling together, to find the right people faster, keep track of key leads and company changes, and engage with prospecting leads.

The Power of Two Titans

Salespeople and account managers know that managing sales accounts and pipelines can only be done effectively with a sophisticated CRM system. At Mint we drive our success with CRM, allowing our teams to integrate our CRM environment with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, bringing real benefits to a zealous sales professional.

Bring these two titans together and you can digitally enhance your efforts, achieving your sales targets quicker and smarter than you ever have before.

The Benefits for A Modern Salesperson:

Better targeting
Save leads and accounts to custom lists
Get recommendations based on sales preferences
Engage with data, alerts, and insights anytime, anywhere – right at your fingertips
Spend less time working on multiple platforms and put your focus on selling
Stay on top of recent contact news and activities
Connect with your prospects over shared interests and experiences

Some of the features you can enjoy:

Saved Searches

This is a must-have for prospecting. With Saved Searches, you can create dynamic lead lists based on geography, relationship, company size, title, number of years in current position, and more.

You can then filter results by:

Changed jobs in past 90 days
Posted on LinkedIn in past 30 days
Shared experiences with you
Leads that follow your company on LinkedIn

The best part is that you don’t have to be plugged into Sales Navigator all day to keep up with updates to your list. You will receive email notifications about new leads and lead activity.

InMail

Sales Navigator InMail allows you to contact anyone on LinkedIn without a connection or their contact information (Note: If you don’t see the option to InMail a user, it’s because they have opted out). It is straightforward, but a couple of benefits are being able to seamlessly save a lead directly from your inbox and being able to see whether your message was accepted or declined.

Smart Links

This may be one of the best features of Sales Navigator. A Smart Link is a link to a document (PDF, Word, PowerPoint or image file) or a downloadable (a video, zip file, CSV, etc.) that you can insert in an InMail message. You may be asking yourself, “Why not just send files via email?”. With Smart Links Insights, you can gather great analytics and track the following metrics:

Confirmation that the recipient clicked the link, and the number of times they clicked it
Amount of time the recipient spent viewing the content
The date and time that the recipient accessed the content
If the recipient was signed in when they viewed the content, information from their profile—name, title, company and profile picture
If the recipient was not signed in when they viewed the content, the name they provided to access it and their email if they chose to provide it

Lists

Lists are like Saved Searches in terms of filters, but they are static lists that you can add leads and accounts to. As a Microsoft Dynamics user, you can also use Sales Navigator’s CRM Sync to import your existing accounts and leads and track Sales Navigator activity in your CRM. The nice thing about lists is that you can collaborate with other team members by sharing notes and you can see your outreach activity.

Alerts

As I mentioned earlier, you don’t need to be plugged into Sales Navigator 24/7 to keep up with your saved search results or your lead lists. Sales Navigator will email you alerts, and you can choose which ones you want to receive.