Nurturing, providing value, and building lasting relationships are at the core of every sales engagement process. Remember, how we connect with prospects is key to successful outreach.
Instead of transaction-based outreach, engagement should come from the perspective of our prospects’ needs. With the right strategies, we cut through the noise and go above the fold.
This article will tackle everything you need to learn about crafting your sales engagement process.
- What is a sales engagement process?
- Sales engagement tools you need to succeed
- Templates for a solid sales engagement process
- Sales engagement best practices
What is a Sales Engagement Process?
A sales engagement process is the steps you take when connecting with prospects. It could be your sales cadence, outreach process, or nurturing strategy.
Two of the most popular platforms for sales engagement are cold emails and cold calls. The biggest difference is that cold emails can easily be personalized, scaled, and automated.
However, that doesn’t mean email marketing is inherently better. Your sales engagement process must be holistic, adopting multichannel outreach strategies.
To succeed, you need consistency in your approach, whether you’re reaching out via LinkedIn Inmail, cold calling, or email marketing. Doing so requires the proper sales enablement tools.
Tools Every Sales Engagement Process Needs to Succeed
You’ll need outreach, analytics, and workflow enablement tools in every sales engagement process. Here’s a look at some of the tools we recommend:
Instantly.ai: Best Email Outreach And Sales Engagement Tool
Outreach, analytics, and CRM tools are the holy trinity of sales engagement. Instantly.ai has all. It’s a tool built by cold email marketers for cold email marketers.
Users can automate entire email sequences, use advanced scheduling, and run automated A-Z testing optimizations on the fly to ensure you’re using the best version of your sales email.
There’s also no need to pay for a CRM. Users can track prospects with Instantly Dealflow, view email marketing metrics on the analytics dashboard, and see campaign revenue opportunities.
Unlike most email outreach software, you can add unlimited email accounts from multiple email service providers and run unlimited email warmups for no extra charge.
And with the revamped Unibox 2.0, you get to see all emails in a single inbox and add custom filters, streamlining communication between SDRs and interested prospects.
Klenty: Best Tool For Cold Calling
Klenty is a sales engagement platform for those needing powerful cold-calling features. It can do everything from power to parallel dialing, ensuring SDRs have flexible workflow options.
There’s even no need to input numbers to call manually. Klenty has a 1-click-to-call dialer to streamline prospect engagement.
Users also get conversation intelligence. AI can review your call, summarize notes, and record calls automatically. Then, reports are made that score performance, allowing reps to improve.
Salesforce: Best CRM Tool
Salesforce is one of the most flexible and customizable CRMs you can get your hands on. It’s a powerful tool with thousands of use cases in almost all industries. The number of integrations makes it an excellent addition to any sales engagement process.
With Salesforce, you’re not just tracking leads. Users can keep track of things like payments, subscriptions, inventory, deliveries, and more. Then, integrate that data into other tools to automate an entire sales engagement process from the ground up.
Sales Engagement Process Template
The entire sales engagement process can be complex or simple depending on your industry, the average sales cycle of your prospects, and the sales engagement tools available.
Here’s a sales engagement process template that most small to medium businesses can use:
Engagement Pre-Requisites
Before reaching out to prospects, ensure you’ve researched them, segmented leads based on qualification frameworks, and set up automated follow-up schedules.
Step 1: Send Cold Email
Send personalized cold emails to a segmented and qualified prospect list using outreach tools like Instantly. Optimize subject lines, leverage lead intelligence to improve personalization, and monitor lead activity.
Step 2: Send a Follow-up Email
Always send a follow-up if prospects don’t reply to your initial email. Don’t be too aggressive with your sales follow-up emails. A soft reminder would do. If they respond positively, schedule a call—if there still isn’t a response, do a follow-up call.
Step 3: Call Prospect
Only call prospects who didn’t reply to your follow-up email if they perfectly fit your ICP or buyer personas. Calling solidifies your intent to work with them. You need to ensure that your solution fits their needs. But if they explicitly said they aren’t interested, remove them from your list.
Step 4: Send a Message on Social Media or Follow-up Email
After calling, prospects might say they’ll think about your offer if you’re persuasive enough with your value proposition. To stay top-of-mind, send a message on their public/professional social media accounts, like LinkedIn or another follow-up email.
Step 5: Follow-up Call
At this stage, prospects have gone from completely cold to warm. You’ve built trust, presented your product/service as a solid solution to their problems, and are ready to address any objections. All that’s left is to close the sale.
Step 6: Closing a Sale
Bottom-of-the-funnel prospects are primed for conversions. SDRs must implement sales closing techniques, address objections, and show how your product/service solves unmet needs. Revisit pain points, verify with your prospect that the solution works, and offer a sale.
Step 7: Re-segment Prospects
When prospects convert to paying customers, that doesn’t mean they’re out of the sales engagement process. Re-segment them for potential up-selling or cross-selling down the line. They should also be part of a post-purchase nurturing/onboarding campaign.
Key Takeaways
A great sales engagement process takes a strategic, measurable, and scalable approach to prospect outreach. To make the most of it, here are some best practices to consider:
- Always do pre-requisites like lead qualification and segmentation
- Leverage a multichannel approach to your sales engagement process
- Several touchpoints are required before making a sale
- Use the proper tools for engaging and managing/tracking prospects
When it comes to sales engagement through email marketing, nothing beats the ease of use, affordability, and scalability of Instantly.ai. Try it today!