Crafting an excellent elevator pitch is an art. You need to be able to convey your message in an easy-to-understand way, and you need to be able to do it quickly to keep your audience engaged. It isn’t as easy as listing off benefits or reeling off a scripted sales pitch like Steve Jobs, who mastered product launches. 

You’ll have to build a connection and get people genuinely interested in what you have to say. If this all sounds pretty challenging, don’t worry. We’ve put together this complete guide to help you learn the ropes. I’ll also share 10 examples that you can use for inspiration. 

Plus, I’ll share some actionable tips and best practices to help you get started writing your own pitches.

How long should an elevator pitch be?

Let’s start by addressing the most asked question. How long should an elevator pitch be?

A general best practice is to aim for a 30-second elevator pitch, which is a rough estimate of how long an elevator ride may take, but this isn’t a rule. It all depends on who you’re pitching to and in what context, and it’s easier to begin practising through networking events, virtual networking, or even job searching (if you’re looking for a new job). 

For instance, if you’re pitching to a customer in a B2C setting, you’ll need to be snappy to keep them paying attention. However, in a B2B negotiation where a business is actively seeking services like yours, you likely have some leeway to expand on your messaging. 

That said, you should make your pitch no longer than it needs to be and maintain eye contact. The longer you spend explaining your idea, the higher the chance your audience will clock out and lose interest.

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What are the benefits of writing an elevator pitch?

Here are four compelling components of an elevator speech that should help you create an engaging elevator pitch.

• Make a strong first impression: Elevator pitches catch the audience’s attention quickly. They’re ideal for making a good first impression and showcasing personal branding.
• Increases your confidence: Learning how to concisely communicate your value proposition will improve your communication skills, and develop your confidence to speak about your ideas. 
• Shows your professionalism: An expert elevator pitch shows that you understand the value of your company and also respect your audience’s time. This demonstrates your professionalism. 
• Opens doors to new opportunities: Ultimately, an elevator pitch is an impactful way to get people on board with your idea. Do it right, and it can offer you greater opportunities.

How to write an elevator pitch?

Let’s get into the reason you’re here. Here’s everything you need to consider when crafting an elevator pitch. 

Note that we’ve provided one possible structure in this section, but there are many opportunities for variety. In the next section, we’ll also provide plenty of pitch examples to inspire you.
Experiencing writer’s block? Generative AI can help you draft and write a pitch for your audience in less time. You can then refine the AI content to ensure it’s a good fit for your product or service.

Step 1: Introduce yourself

State your name, what you do, and, if applicable, your company’s name and industry. This is the bare-bones context your audience will need to piece together your pitch. It will also make you more approachable and relatable.

You’ll need to tailor your introduction to the context. For investment pitches and business negotiations, keep it formal. For networking, pitching and social gatherings, you can afford to be more casual and open. 

You can even start with a joke to set the tone and keep things light. Just be sure to keep everything brief at this stage. You need to get to your primary point as quickly as possible.

Step 2: Convey your primary point

What’s your key message? Get your main point across quickly to prevent your audience from losing interest. 

We recommend using a problem-solution structure at this stage. Simply put, present a problem your audience is having. Then, explain how your business is the solution to that problem. For example:

“Small businesses in {{insert country name}} often struggle to build an online presence due to a lack of SEO knowledge. Our platform offers an all-in-one set of business tools for owners to build, optimise, and deploy SEO campaigns with no technical expertise.”

This is short, sweet, and to the point. The more clearly and concisely you can convey how you are the solution, the easier it is to keep a potential client engaged.

Step 3: Demonstrate your value

This is the kicker that sets you apart from other businesses or individuals. Why should your audience choose you over the competition? Offer a sentence or two that lays your value out in an easy-to-grasp way. Refining our example in step two, here’s what we came up with:

“Small businesses in {{insert country name}} often struggle to build an online presence due to a lack of SEO expertise. Our platform offers an all-in-one toolkit for small business owners to build, optimise, and deploy SEO campaigns with no technical expertise. Our fixed price includes free masterclasses from instructors, who will walk you through SEO best practices tailored to your business.”

In that extra sentence, you’ve explained to your audience why you’re different from every other SEO platform. Now you’re making your pitch interesting.

Step 4: End with an interesting finish

Now, it’s time to explain why your value proposition matters. This is your chance to turn curiosity into serious interest.

There are a few approaches to achieving this. You can tailor your pitch to the target audience, provide a personal story, or end with a real-world example. That said, a simple and focused approach is to end with a statistic that proves you get results. Let’s head back to our pitch and round it off with a stat. 

“Small businesses in Australia often struggle to build an online presence due to a lack of SEO expertise. Our platform offers an all-in-one toolkit for small business owners to build, optimise, develop keyword strategies, and deploy SEO campaigns with no technical expertise. Our fixed price includes free masterclasses from instructors who will walk you through SEO best practices tailored to your business. Our customers experience an average of 50% growth in organic traffic within their first 12 months on our platform.”

Step 5: Provide an action item

Depending on the context, you may need to finish up with an action item — something that convinces your audience to make a decision, ponder something, or act. 

The simplest approach is to use contact information and a call to action (CTA). Saying ‘contact me,’ ‘schedule a tour,’ or ‘watch a demo,’ for instance, offers the next step for your audience to take. You should also reiterate the benefit of your service to hammer the point home. 

Alternatively, you could choose to end with a question that provokes thought. For instance, you might ask how the audience intends to solve the problem they’re facing. 

Ultimately, the goal here is to make the audience want to find out more. That’s the ticket to landing that second conversation.

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Elevator pitch template and examples for businesses

When starting to create your own elevator pitch, the best place to start is with some examples for inspiration. 

Elevator pitches are versatile, and I’ve aimed to reflect that in these examples. Let’s start with professional settings and then move to more personal scenarios afterwards.

Example 1: A startup founder presenting their innovative idea to investors

Investors and leadership teams have heard it all before, so you need to get to the point and list the problem you’re solving and the solution you’re presenting. You should also include a stat to show why your business idea makes sense. 

“We’re {{insert company name}}, and we want to address the fear that consumers have when growing their own fresh produce at home. Our automated indoor garden contains smart sensors that adjust light, water, and nutrient levels automatically for every crop’s needs. As our product is a self-contained ecosystem, all crops can grow indoors regardless of climate. Our initial customers have reported that 97% of their planted crops succeeded. We’re the first of our kind and are ready to push our product to a global market. We’d love to have you on board for the next step of our journey.”

Example 2: A business representative delivering a sales pitch

With a sales pitch to customers, you need to directly address the pain points your consumers are facing. Demonstrate empathy and show you understand the problem. 

Prioritise benefits over features when delivering your product overview to make sure your pitch has a clear CTA, as prospects need to know what to do next. This will help to make sure that you’re selling your product right. For example:

“75% of men say they struggle to keep their hairstyle in the right shape throughout the day. It’s annoying and embarrassing when a gust of wind can ruin the look you’ve spent 20 minutes perfecting. At {{insert company name}}, we’re putting an end to that frustration. Our spray provides a rock-solid hold without weighing your hair down, meaning no stray hairs and no more wind ruining your day. And unlike other hairsprays, it contains only beneficial ingredients, which will leave your hair looking and feeling healthier. We can honestly say it’s the best hairspray on the market, and 82% of our customers agree. Here’s one of my business cards.”

Example 3: A recent graduate highlighting their skills and experience

Recent graduates should focus on presenting their skills, professional experiences, and knowledge. They should also demonstrate their enthusiasm for the industry and, where possible, reference a specific example that proves they’re a good fit for the organisation. 

“Hi, I’m {{inset name}}, a recent graduate with a bachelor’s degree in marketing. I’ve spent the last year shadowing at {{insert country name’s}} premier marketing firm and helped the brand decrease its cost-per-lead by 27%. I’m seeking a position that will allow me to put my experience to work and reach my career goals. You’ll find my cover letter attached for your review.”

Example 4: A specialist providing a personal summary in a job interview

The dreaded ‘tell me about yourself question.’ As a job seeker with experience, you have more leeway to reference niche skills. As with all interview questions, you should lean into specific examples to prove your expertise to the potential employer. ‘Tell me about yourself,’ questions are open-ended questions that are aimed to get a response and test what you’re thinking off the top of your head.

“I’m {{insert name}}, a specialist in sustainability who has helped hundreds of businesses fine-tune their environmental initiatives to better align with customer values. I’m proud to say I helped reduce my last company’s carbon footprint by 35% in only a year. Now, I’d like to continue my career with a company that shares my ambitions for the environment. I’m confident I can add value to your organisation based on my recent successes in several green projects. If you’re ready to make a difference for our planet and your customers, I’m the professional that can get you there.”

Example 5: A seasoned professional pitching their services to a business

A good protocol here is to explain a problem a business is or may be having and then present yourself as the solution. This is especially powerful if you can back up your claim with your own research and data. 

“I noticed your competitors are outperforming your website when it comes to organic growth. I performed a competitor analysis of your top-performing keywords and found your most direct Australia competitor ranks for over 1000 additional words and phrases on Google. This presents a huge opportunity for your growth. I forecast we can increase organic traffic by 35% over the next 12 months, driving an additional 1,500 sales for you this year. Is this something you’d be interested in? If so, reach out, and I can talk you through my recommendations.”

30-second elevator pitch examples using different styles

Elevator pitches don’t have to be formulaic. There are plenty of opportunities to switch things up and inject your personality into your speech. Here are five elevator pitch examples with a twist that’ll help you win a new potential client.

Example 6: A humorous pitch

“Ever had a nightmare about your to-do list? I remember waking up in a cold sweat with a pencil in my hand to the sound of every email notification. Never again. I decided to build an AI-powered platform that would automatically optimise my calendar and prioritise the most important tasks. I’ve finally managed to get some of that mythical free time everyone keeps mentioning. Oh, and my nightmares are gone, too. If you want more sleep this year, too, I can show you a demo of how it works.”

Example 7: Playing on human emotions

“I struggled for years to prevent burnout on my team. I wanted to keep everyone happy at work without compromising on deadlines. And that’s a really hard balance to find sometimes. After finding nothing worthwhile on the market, I spent a few months building an incentive platform that would reward my employees with tangible benefits for good performance. I’m not talking about gift cards, either. I could instantly use positive client feedback to provide cash bonuses for my employees. I’ve seen a huge uptick in customer retention, but just as importantly, I’ve also managed to keep my employees secure and satisfied. I’m really proud of that.

Example 8: Leaning into statistics

“Are you aware that 72% of remote workers in {{country}} report experiencing loneliness since the pandemic? A further 35% say remote working has actively made socialising more difficult. And 22% have left a remote job simply due to the isolation. I created my platform to connect remote workers locally and fix this loneliness epidemic. We schedule local meetups to connect these individuals, and so far, we’ve helped 22,350 people across the country meet new friends for life through our initiative.”

Example 9: Drill the point home with repetition

“Did you know that people have an attention span of around 8 seconds? Just like I only have a few more seconds before you lose interest in my pitch, you, as a business, only have 8 seconds to capture attention in your blogs. That’s 8 seconds for a consumer to decide if they’re on board or jumping ship. No wonder most businesses get little to no conversions from their digital marketing. Fortunately, I can help with that.”

Example 10: Ask questions

“Ever worried that your team isn’t doing enough to manage customer relationships? I think every manager has experienced this at some point. But here’s something interesting. When we switched to customer relationship management software, we found that retention increased by 50%. It wasn’t the staff at all — it was a lack of organisation that was letting us down. Who knew? Have you ever tried something similar?”

Have these 10 elevator pitch templates helped you? If so, consider adding them to your project management software as a task for improvement or to your Slack Lists for easy access

12 effective elevator pitch tips

Let’s round things up with 12 fast tips to create and deliver an outstanding elevator speech.

• Edit and refine: Once you’ve written your pitch, see if you can trim it down. The more concisely you can convey your point, the better. 
• Make it relatable: Incorporate anecdotes, humour, or a customer story to make your pitch more authentic and memorable. 
• Practise: Speak your written pitch until you feel comfortable and confident. 
• Speak out loud: Remember to speak your written pitch to check for any language that doesn’t flow as you present. 
• Be friendly: The real way to win over your audience is to keep it light. Make eye contact, smile, and maintain open body language. 
• Consider your audience: Adapt your speech to your audience. Based on the context of your situation, make it more formal or casual. 
• Reduce the jargon: Don’t rely on technical jargon. You need your audience to understand your pitch. Make it easy to grasp. 
• Recording yourself: Optionally, you can also record yourself to see how your speech sounds to others. 
• Speak slowly: When it comes time to deliver the speech, slow down your speaking. It’ll make you look less nervous. 
• Don’t overwhelm: Remember, your goal is simply to secure a follow-up. Stick to the key points, and don’t overwhelm your audience.
• Listen: Remember that an elevator pitch needs to be a conversation. Listen to your audience and respond accordingly.
• Be passionate: If you want to convince your audience, you need to show them why they should care. Let your passion shine through.

Are you looking for real visual examples? You could also watch past episodes of Shark Tank Australia, Shark Tank India, or Shark Tank Global to learn from those who have pitched angel investors and VCs on national TV and practice how to create an effective elevator pitch.

Summing up

Elevator speeches can sometimes feel a bit daunting. As a content marketer, salesperson, or business owner, you’ll have so much to say to an audience that may or may not be interested. And you don’t have much time to do it. That’s why it’s so important to create the perfect elevator pitch and practise your speech to get it right. 

And when you do make the perfect elevator pitch, you’ll make a memorable first impression, foster better customer relationships, create buzz around your idea, and set yourself up for success. If you still feel too shy to give a pitch, then consider networking events that’ll allow you to practice selling your product.

Need help with a sales team pitch? Let Einstein AI provide insights to elevate your sales conversations, helping you tailor pitches that resonate better with your target audience. Start making each interaction count with Salesforce Einstein AI.

The post Elevator Pitch: What is it? 10 Standout Examples appeared first on Salesforce.

A proforma invoice is a way for the buyer to show the seller how much they’ll need to pay once they receive their goods or services. They’re typically used when a buyer has confirmed the sale, but there are still a few details to iron out, such as quantity, materials, or delivery date. 

Businesses use proforma invoices between the confirmation of the sale and the point when the transaction actually takes place. They act as a gesture of good faith so the buyer knows exactly what to expect when they receive their final sales invoice. 

Proforma invoices look very similar to a standard conventional invoice, but there are several points of difference to consider that can impact the invoicing process. Let’s explore this in greater detail.

Proforma vs commercial invoices

The easiest way to understand a proforma invoice is to examine how it differs from the regular invoices you’re already familiar with. Here are four essential differences:

As you can see, proforma invoices aren’t a formal request for payment and don’t have any legal backing. They exist primarily to ensure the seller and the buyer are on the same page about the upcoming transaction. They also act as a gesture of good faith, giving the buyer confidence there are no hidden costs.

Quotes vs proforma invoices 

The difference between proforma invoices and quotes is a little more nuanced. On the surface, they look incredibly similar. Both come early in the sales process, neither are legally binding, and each provides an estimated total cost. However, there are some important distinctions.

A quote (or estimate) is a ballpark cost provided by the seller to the buyer. It is a preliminary document provided during the procurement process to help the buyer decide whether they want to buy from a business. 

In contrast, when a business sends a proforma invoice, the buyer has typically already confirmed they intend to buy the product or service. These invoices are more clearly defined and outline the final terms of a sale rather than just offering a ballpark estimate of costs.

A proforma invoice is more formal and definitive than a quote. They’re a way for business owners to formally outline the costs a buyer should anticipate without legally obligating them to pay. 

What is the difference between a proforma invoice and a Bill of Lading?

Important distinctions exist between a proforma invoice and a bill of lading that are essential for efficient business transactions. I’ve created this table below to help simply their key differences and roles in the shipping and invoicing processes.

When to use a proforma invoice?

At this stage, you might be wondering why it’s worth sending a proforma invoice at all. Aren’t they just a combination of a quote and a commercial invoice?

That’s partially true, but proforma invoices have important use cases that can help you when running your business. Here are some scenarios to consider:

• Internal purchase approval: Proforma invoices show the buyer the cost of goods or services in advance, allowing them to budget for the expense.
• Pre-payment agreements: While not legally binding, proforma invoices are more defined than quotes, making them useful for customers evaluating different businesses. 
• International trade: Proforma invoices are often required for clearing goods in international shipping due to their clear statement of estimated costs.

What are the benefits of a proforma invoice?

Why incorporate proforma invoices into the sales process at all? Let’s take a look. 

1. Clarification

Sending a proforma invoice ensures you and your customer are on the same page about the service you’re providing and the price to pay. This gives them confidence in the purchase and allows them to budget for the expense. 

2. Informal agreement

While a proforma invoice isn’t legally binding, it does act as a good-faith agreement between you and your buyer. This prevents the deal from ‘going cold’, making it more likely you’ll finalise the sale. It will also help to avoid disputes surrounding costs when the final invoice arrives. 

3. International clearance

Banks and government agencies typically require proforma invoices when attempting to ship goods across borders. They’re advantageous when securing export licences or obtaining trade finance. 

4. Showing professionalism

Aside from these benefits, a proforma invoice shows your customers that you’re professional and trustworthy. They’ll appreciate the fact you aren’t keeping your cards close to your chest, helping with customer loyalty. 

How to label a proforma invoice?

The proforma invoice should be clearly labelled to distinguish it from a conventional invoice. Customising your invoice with accurate details ensures transparency and avoids confusion during the transaction process.

• Date of issue: List the date when you issued the invoice. Note the proforma invoice doesn’t require a payment due date. 
• Seller details: The proforma invoice includes the details of the seller, like the company name and address, plus contact information. 
• Buyer details: The proforma invoice also needs to include all necessary buyer information. 
• Description of goods/services: Briefly outline the product or services you’re providing. 
• Total amount due: If you have a final cost, include it. If not, provide an accurate estimate for the buyer’s review. 
• Shipping costs: If applicable, list the shipping costs the buyer will pay for their order. 
• Payment terms: When the final invoice arrives, how will the buyer pay you? Including these details will help with the buyer’s preparations. 
• Terms and conditions: Include any TOCs, such as a validity period, delivery terms, currency requirements, cancellation policies, and applicable taxes.

If there are any details you can’t yet clarify, don’t worry. You’ll have the chance to negotiate any remaining details with the seller and fill in the blanks before you send your final commercial invoice. 

Remember to clearly label your document as a proforma invoice. As the proforma invoice looks deceptively similar to a conventional invoice, it’s important to distinguish between the two to avoid confusion. 

What about invoice numbers? 

A proforma invoice should not have an official invoice number — you won’t want it to get mixed up with your commercial invoices.

However, you should include some form of reference number so it’s easy for you and your customer to retrieve it if needed.

How to create a proforma invoice?

Now that you understand the essential components of a proforma invoice let’s walk through the process of creating one step by step.

Step 1: Work out the details 

Before you create a proforma invoice, you’ll need to understand the costs of your product or service. Estimate everything your committed buyer will need to pay, factoring in additional costs and fees. 

You should also determine any terms and conditions you’d like to present to your buyer at this preliminary stage. While you won’t have all the details on hand, the more accurate and clear you can be at this point, the better. 

Step 2: Include all key components 

Using a proforma invoice template or even a standard invoice template is the easiest way to start creating your proforma invoice.

From there, you can fill in all essential details, such as the issue date, contact details, product/service specifications, and cost. If you’re creating your proforma invoice to export your products, you should also specify the country where your goods were manufactured. 

Remember to specify that this is a proforma invoice rather than a formal commercial invoice. You should also specify that the invoice isn’t a tax document for the same reason. 

Step 3: Add terms and conditions

Add any additional terms that your buyer should be aware of. For example, you may like to include a validity period for the invoice. You can also specify how the buyer will need to pay and their rights if you fail to deliver within a certain timeframe. Lastly, include a cancellation policy. 

Step 4: Send the invoice and negotiate

Remember that the proforma invoice isn’t set in stone. Once you’ve sent it, be open to negotiation with your buyer. This is the best chance to work through any remaining details and ensure the transaction goes smoothly. 

What are the different types of proforma invoices?

There are three main types of proforma invoices that business owners can leverage to enhance transaction efficiency, clarify billing expectations, and improve client communication. These include the following:

It’s important to note that various proforma invoices are tailored for specific purposes, such as freight forwarding, customs, project work, down payments, estimates, and quotes. I’ve included the three most common proforma invoices in the table above to help keep things simple.

Proforma invoice templates

Below, I’m sharing three of the most commonly used proforma invoice templates for sales, services, and recurring revenue:

1. Standard proforma invoice template for the Philipines, Singapore, and Malaysia

[Your Company Name]

[Your Company Address]

[City, State, Postal Code]

[Phone Number]

[Email Address]

[Business Registration Number] (varies by country)

• Philippines: TIN (Tax Identification Number).
• Singapore: UEN (Unique Entity Number).
• Malaysia: SSM Registration Number and TIN.

Proforma Invoice

Invoice Number: [#]

Date: [Date]

Due Date: [Due Date]

Bill To:

[Client Name]

[Client Address]

[City, State, Postal Code][City, State, Postal Code]

Subtotal: [Subtotal Amount]

GST/VAT/SST (if applicable): [Tax Amount]

• For the Philippines: Include VAT at 12%.
• For Singapore: Include GST at 8%.
• For Malaysia: Include SST (Sales and Service Tax) at 6%.

Total Amount Due: [Total Amount]

2. Standard proforma invoice template for the Philippines, Singapore, and Malaysia

[Your Company Name]

[Your Company Address]

[City, State, Postal Code]

[Phone Number]

[Email Address]

[Business Registration Number] (varies by country)

• Philippines: TIN (Tax Identification Number)
• Singapore: UEN (Unique Entity Number)
• Malaysia: SSM Registration Number and TIN

Proforma Invoice

Invoice Number: [#]

Date: [Date]

Due Date: [Due Date]

Bill To:

[Client Name]

[Client Address]

[City, State, Postal Code]

Subtotal: [Subtotal Amount]

GST (if applicable): [Tax Amount]

• For the Philippines: Include VAT at 12%.
• For Singapore: Include GST at 8%.
• For Malaysia: Include SST (Sales and Service Tax) at 6%.

Total Amount Due: [Total Amount]

3. Recurring revenue proforma invoice (SaaS) template for the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia

[Your Company Name]

[Your Company Address]

[City, State, Postal Code]

[Phone Number]

[Email Address]

[Business Registration Number] (Varies by country)

• Philippines: TIN (Tax Identification Number)
• Singapore: UEN (Unique Entity Number)
• Malaysia: SSM Registration Number and TIN

Proforma Invoice

Invoice Number: [#]

Date: [Date]

Due Date: [Due Date]

Bill To:

[Client Name]

[Client Address]

[City, State, Postal Code]]

Subtotal: [Subtotal Amount]

GST (if applicable): [Tax Amount]

• For the Philippines: Include VAT at 12%.
• For Singapore: Include GST at 8%.
• For Malaysia: Include SST (Sales and Service Tax) at 6%.

Total Amount Due: [Total Amount]

What are the best practices for using proforma invoices?

Proforma invoicing is rather straightforward once you get the hang of it. Still, it’s important to keep a few things in mind while you’re getting started:

Clarity and accuracy

Proforma invoices may not be final, but it’s essential to be precise. This is your opportunity to give your buyer confidence in your business — if your final bill is too different to your proforma invoice, they may feel short-changed. Include all of the details you have available and try to get your costs as close to actual as possible. 

Negotiation

Equally, you should be willing to negotiate. Based on your buyer’s feedback, be prepared to adjust pricing, shipping costs, delivery dates, and any additional terms and conditions. Here are some tips for negotiating when using proforma invoices.

• Itemise your prices: Break down costs in your proforma invoice so your buyer can easily see exactly what they’re paying for. This lets your customer negotiate specific aspects of the costs rather than the entire service. 
• Keep it efficient: Don’t waste too much time negotiating if it isn’t in your best interests. If your buyer isn’t happy with the price and isn’t open to compromises, ask yourself whether they’re really interested in the service you’re offering. If not, you may be spending too much time on a cold lead. 
• Ask for a deposit: Buyers often negotiate payment plans for large projects rather than paying everything upfront. This is usually acceptable for most businesses, but you should request an upfront deposit to minimise risks. 
• Bundling additional services: One simple way to streamline the negotiation stage is to offer complementary services. You can use this to add financial value to your offering and boost customer satisfaction without compromising the price of your goods or services.

Conversion to final invoice

Converting your proforma invoice to a formal invoice is straightforward. Remember to add an invoice number and specify a due date for payment. You’ll also need to detail any regulations, rules, and TOCs you left out of the proforma document. 

If you’ve changed any details, such as the final cost, it’s important to inform your buyer to avoid any unwelcome surprises. 

Technology and proforma invoices

Some businesses ignore proforma invoices because they think the process takes too long. But this is no longer the case. 

You no longer necessarily need an accountant or bookkeeper to arrange your proforma invoices. Invoicing software simplifies the process and lets you create accurate, professional documents using predefined templates. 

This means you won’t need to waste your working day manually creating fields and tediously inputting data. You can simply find the ideal template, fill it out with your information, and export it to send. The software will also catalogue all of your documents so you can easily find them at a later date.

Invoicing and accounting software will also sync with your CRM software. This means you can bill customers directly from your CRM interface, allowing you to control the entire customer journey from lead generation to conversion. 

With Salesforce, you can integrate invoicing software directly into our CRM platform. This streamlines your sales funnel, meaning you can take customers from brand awareness to the point of sale and beyond with complete visibility over the entire journey. 

Summing up

Proforma invoices are an easy way to keep your customer in the loop before finalising the transaction details. They alleviate doubt, instil confidence in your potential buyer, and increase the likelihood that they’ll see the sales process through to the end. 

The best part about proforma invoices is that they’re easy to set up with the right invoice software. And when you link that software with your CRM, invoicing will become a seamless part of your sales pipeline. 

Salesforce can help you manage the entire sales process from start to finish. Our AI-driven platform links all of your data and each of your teams in one place, giving you a 360 view of the customer journey. With thousands of apps that integrate seamlessly into our platform, you can guide customers to the point of sale and create effective invoices that get you paid on time. 

Ready to simplify your invoicing process? Salesforce CPQ streamlines the quoting process, enabling sales teams to quickly generate accurate quotes and proforma invoices. With Salesforce CPQ, you can configure products, set pricing, and create professional-looking quotes, ensuring consistency and reducing manual errors in invoicing. 

FAQs

When should I send a proforma invoice?

Unless your buyer requests it earlier, you should send the proforma invoice you’ve agreed on for the final price — typically after the quote but before the final invoice. You can also send out a proforma document as part of your export documentation for customs purposes. 

Is a proforma invoice a legally binding agreement?

Proforma invoices are not legal documents, which is why it’s important to label them correctly. You don’t want your buyer to think you’re demanding payment and that they’re legally obliged to act on the proforma invoice. This could cause unnecessary confusion. 

Can a proforma invoice be cancelled?

Yes. A proforma invoice isn’t legally binding, and it can be cancelled at any time. If your buyer backs out of the deal, there’s no need to take action to edit the invoice or cancel it. 

Can I use a proforma invoice for tax purposes?

You can’t use a proforma invoice for tax purposes as it isn’t considered an official sales invoice. This means it has no legal standing or impact on VAT or GST.

The post What Is a Proforma Invoice? [With 3 examples] appeared first on Salesforce.

In today’s rapidly evolving market, where consumers have access to abundant information, new roles have emerged to meet changing demands and enhance the buyer’s journey. To provide clarity on this topic, we’ve compiled a comprehensive guide explaining the role of a sales consultant and their place within the sales team. Let’s dive in!

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What is a sales consultant?

Consumer habits have been changing rapidly and systematically in recent years, in line with digital transformation, which facilitates and dictates the pace of today’s buyers. Before making a purchase, customers now conduct extensive online research, comparing products, prices, and conditions and reading reviews.

While this behaviour is particularly noticeable in B2C markets, B2B customers also adopt this proactive approach. They seek relevant information about potential partners before, during, and after closing a deal. It’s crucial to recognise that Customer Success extends beyond the point of conversion.

READ MORE: How to Build a Sales Process

The sales consultant’s role becomes crucial once a lead is ready to consider purchasing. In complex transactions with longer sales cycles, the consultant steps in to guide the potential customer through the decision-making process.

In other words, the sales consultant will work closely with the future client, answering their questions, helping the consumer along the final path of the purchasing journey and building a path that is conducive to closing the deal. 

Therefore, they need to be aligned with the needs and problems of the target audience, focused on creating and strengthening the relationship between the company and the consumer. 

From this perspective, it is possible to say that the sales consultant is an “evolution” of the salesperson position, which requires a complete view of the client’s situation.

The sales consultant must be fed with information by the marketing and pre-sales teams – covering everything from the lead’s entry into the sales funnel to its current moment.

READ MORE: What is a Sales Funnel? Stages and How to Build an Effective Sales Funnel

What does a sales consultant do?

You might wonder what role a sales consultant plays in the purchasing process. The professional’s daily work is comprehensive, studying the target audience and consumer journey. They are responsible for making a complete diagnosis of the client’s market.

This study will provide insights into the audience’s needs, pain points and desires. In addition, the diagnosis obtained by the sales consultant also covers opportunities and improvements in the negotiation process that can boost flows and exchanges between the company and its prospects.

It’s also worth noting that the sales consultant is responsible for qualifying the sales team. This brings up an important question: what distinguishes a sales consultant from a salesperson?

Sales consultant vs. salesperson: What are the differences?

While a salesperson’s primary goal is to close deals, a sales consultant takes a different approach. They focus on deeply understanding the customer and their business environment. This creates a favourable situation that can ultimately facilitate sales.

A sales consultant is someone who connects with potential customers. They focus on consultative selling, diagnosing the customer’s problem before making a sale. This approach helps them convert prospects into clients.

A sales consultant is adaptable and focuses on finding the best solution for each client. They study the client’s needs, leverage their market knowledge, and aim to recommend the most suitable investment or product.

Sales consultants can also be separated into internal and external, who have different actions, but who work in harmony to optimise the customer journey and make the sales process more profitable for the company.

READ MORE: Sales Analysis: The Complete Guide

What types of sales consultants are available on the market?

Having defined the role of a sales consultant, let’s examine the most common types in the industry.

Internal sales consultant

The internal sales consultant focuses on attracting new customers and managing internal sales. In other words, this professional is responsible for prospecting new opportunities, studying and determining the ideal customer profile (ICP), sending commercial proposals, etc. In this sense, the internal sales consultant has the obligation to be the bridge between the sales and marketing teams, focusing on sales strategies and working on all customer relations and service.

External sales consultant

This role focuses more on closing deals than an internal consultant does. The external consultant:

• Visits clients to complete sales processes initiated earlier.
• Uses consultative selling techniques like SPIN (Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff).
• Conducts external prospecting and relationship-building activities.
• Performs market analysis.

Unlike internal consultants who build relationships within the company, external consultants primarily work with clients outside the organisation.

Why hire a sales consultant?

A sales consultant brings value to your business through their communication skills and market knowledge. They use these abilities to help your company close sales more effectively.

Furthermore, based on consumer behaviour, seeking information before closing the purchase prevents the same customer from seeking another source of information, meeting all needs while still trying to guarantee the final action.

The sales consultant is also able to observe a company’s entire process in a broad and optimised way. He is also responsible for researching, learning, and inserting market trends, actively working to create an action model more efficiently and effectively.

In this way, sales consultants can significantly reduce company costs. For example, unprofitable or time-consuming sales approaches can be replaced by others that are more relevant to the target audience. In this sense, sales time is also shortened since the sales consultant can observe the customer’s real needs and avoid rough edges in the process.

READ MORE: What are Marketing Metrics? – Why They Matter

After gathering all this information and learning, an action plan is designed to help your sales team in their daily work. In addition, as mentioned earlier, the sales consultant is responsible for actively prospecting customers, which is also a market trend due to growing competition.

Also, a sales consultant correctly qualifies your company’s leads, cleaning the base by identifying the contacts most likely to close a deal. Thus, you avoid wasting time and money on prospecting that will probably not be converted into a sale at that time.

From this broad vision and growing relationship, the professional consultant can have an in-depth understanding of the client’s needs and, as a result, offer the best and most profitable solution, negotiating the best terms and values.

READ MORE: 5 Sales Skills Every Rep Needs To Master Right Now

3 signs that show you need a sales consultant

Not yet convinced about the value of a sales consultant for your company? Consider these additional reasons to seek the right professional for your business:

1. Difficulty in prospecting or retaining customers

Prospecting new customers is a more expensive process for a company than retaining an existing customer. Therefore, it is essential that your business has a person focused on the relationship and retention of this audience.

2. Low productivity of the sales team

Your sales team might need help with effective strategies, such as focusing on leads who aren’t ready to convert or misunderstanding your business’s buyer personas. If these issues sound familiar, you need a sales consultant. They can guide your team toward the right audience, improve prospecting techniques, and refine your overall sales approach.

3. Lack of processes or difficulty in monitoring actions

If your sales processes and internal organisation lack clarity, your team may struggle to find, nurture, and close deals effectively. This is where a sales consultant becomes valuable. They can analyse and optimise these processes, designing clear steps to guide your sales team toward success.

READ MORE: 9 Sales KPIs Every Sales Team Should Be Tracking

Did you enjoy learning more about Sales Consultants?

Our blog and Resource Centre are always up to date with news and content about CRM and sales. Below, we suggest other readings that may be useful to you:

• How To Make a Good Sales Pitch: 9 Tips
• 50 Sales Statistics that Reveal How Great Teams Sell
• What Is Sales Reporting? Steps and Tips for Success
• What is Sales Projection?

Take the opportunity to check out all the features of Sales Cloud and understand how our CRM transforms your sales routine. Good work, and see you next time!

The post Sales Consultant: What do They do, What Types And Why Hire One? appeared first on Salesforce.

Sales incentives can be a valuable tool to get your team fired up, but they’re not one size fits all. Figuring out the best sales incentives structure to motivate your reps can make a big difference in some cases — helping them come to work energised and eager to get results.

Below, we’ll cover different types of sales incentives to consider, how they can motivate your team, and best practices for implementing an effective sales incentive program that drives results.

What you’ll learn:

• What are sales incentives?
• Types of sales incentives
• How sales incentives can help motivate your sales team
• 10 sales incentives that actually work
• Best practices for implementing sales incentives
• Measuring the impact of sales incentives on performance

State of Sales

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What are sales incentives?

Sales incentives are rewards sales reps receive on top of their base compensation for exceptional performance. This typically means meeting or exceeding sales targets. Sales incentives most commonly come in the form of monetary rewards such as performance-based bonuses, but they can include any type of reward designed to motivate salespeople toward a specific result.

Types of sales incentives

There are five common types of sales incentives. Here’s a quick rundown:

1. Role-specific sales incentives: Performance goals vary depending on the role, and role-specific incentives motivate reps to exceed the base goals set for them. For example, a sales development rep (SDR) may earn incentives for surpassing their booked meetings goal for the month, while an account executive may earn incentives for closing more sales than their monthly quota. This can help keep top performers motivated even after they achieve their original goal.
2. Split sales incentives: With a split incentive structure, multiple reps working on the same deal earn an incentive reward that is split among them — either evenly or based on predefined criteria related to their roles or contributions. That ensures everyone involved gets rewarded for their part, and reps are encouraged to work together rather than compete against each other.
3. Presales incentives: Most sales require multiple steps before a deal is closed. Presales incentives reward the reps involved in these steps and can be a valuable way to keep reps motivated throughout longer sales cycles.
4. Omnichannel sales incentives: The Salesforce State of Sales report found that reps interact with prospects across an average of 10 different channels. Omnichannel incentives involve tracking all those interactions to ensure every rep who contributes to a sale is rewarded.
5. Analytics-based sales incentives: These incentives are based on your sales analytics. They reward specific, data-backed goals based on what your data reveals to be the most valuable behaviours for closing deals.

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How sales incentives can help motivate your sales team

Sales incentives help you reinforce the behaviours you want employees to prioritise. They set you up for mutual success: Your company achieves higher sales and profits, while your reps get an extra treat (most often money, but not always).

I’ve found that many people who are drawn to sales are intrinsically motivated to hit high sales numbers because they’re competitive and like to win. Adding sales incentives to the mix gives them an additional reason to give it their all. For sales reps who aren’t as driven by competition, incentives give them something tangible to work toward. Some people love the game, but everybody likes the prospect of extra money or rewards.

Plus, incentive compensation can improve employee satisfaction. Getting a valuable reward because you earned it feels good. It’s a constructive way to show your team you value their hard work. Employee turnover is expensive. Sales incentives are a vital tool to help you keep your top performers and avoid the cost and labor of recruiting and onboarding.

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10 sales incentives that actually work

Money is the most obvious type of sales compensation to consider. And in my opinion, it’s the best type of incentive to motivate salespeople. It’s clear, straightforward, and universally popular.

But you can also shake up your incentive program by adding more creative ideas to the mix. Here are some to consider:

1. Sales contests

Using sales contests as an incentive can be a powerful way to leverage the competitive spirit. That could mean posting a leaderboard that’s updated regularly to show who’s closing the most deals. That may be enough to motivate some of your reps. But you can sweeten the deal by offering the winner a prize — monetary or otherwise — at the end of the month or quarter.

2. Recognitions and awards

Public recognition for big achievements can make a huge difference for some. You can provide bragging rights for reps with titles like “salesperson of the month,” or hosting an annual ceremony where high achievers are recognised and given awards. You could also set up a “President’s Club,” so employees have a prestigious honour to work toward that comes with special benefits, like an annual trip.

3: Stock options

Stock options are a type of monetary compensation that give employees more reason to be invested in the company’s success. They’re a good cash alternative if you want to reward employees in a way that encourages them to care about the long-term success of the business.

4: Extra paid time off

Employees who work hard deserve time for rest and leisure. Offering additional paid vacation time in exchange for meeting performance targets can be a strong motivator.

5: Team rewards:

Selling isn’t a solitary activity, and many successful sales are the result of a team effort. Rewarding your team with a group activity such as a retreat, a nice dinner out, or an escape room experience can double as a reward and a way to encourage further bonding outside the office.

6: All-expense-paid vacations

Vacation packages are a game show standard for a reason — it’s an exciting prize to get. For big wins, offering reps a free trip to a coveted location, or travel vouchers that let them choose their destination, can be an attractive offer for many.

7: Event tickets

Whether it’s season tickets to their favourite team’s games or a hard-to-snag ticket to a concert or play, helping your top sales reps enjoy a cultural activity that matters to them can be a good way to boost their motivation.

8: Gift cards

Like cash, gift cards give sales reps a way to choose how they spend their reward. Something like a Visa or Mastercard gift card can be used almost anywhere, while gift cards from widely used retailers can be put toward a need or an indulgent purchase they might not buy for themselves otherwise.

9: Hot-ticket tech gifts

If you’re going to provide a specific item as a sales incentive, you should choose something that’s high value and universally useful. In today’s world, it’s hard to go wrong with a tech item like a new tablet, laptop, or smartwatch. You can buy a specific item to offer employees or give them a choice of gadgets (which could be valuable for those loyal to specific tech brands).

10: Executive access

Offering top performers a chance to enjoy a nice dinner or event with the company’s executives can be a powerful motivator. It gives them a chance to connect with the company’s top stakeholders, receive positive recognition, and provide direct feedback to those with the most power to implement change.

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Best practices for implementing sales incentives

To get the best results from a sales incentive program, the right design and implementation approach is important. Some of the best advice I can offer is:

Keep it simple

At organisations I’ve worked with, I’ve seen a common tendency to make incentive plans complicated — to add more rules and different ways for reps to make money. That can backfire. If it’s hard for a salesperson to understand how the sales incentives work, it will be hard for them to know what to prioritise.

Seek to craft a straightforward incentive program that people can easily grasp. Write out your commission plan on paper. How many steps does it have? How many caveats are there? Minimise unnecessary complications around reward structures.

A good rule of thumb is to consider whether someone could work out their commission rate with just a calculator. If not, it’s probably too complicated.

Listen to your team

Those with the best insights into what will effectively motivate your sales team are the people on it. Actively solicit their input when developing or updating your incentive program. Understanding what they would go the extra mile for can make a huge difference when it comes to results. So, ask your team what types of rewards matter most to them and what incentive structures feel motivating.

For example, some people thrive on competition, but it’s not for everyone. Switch up your incentive structure periodically to appeal to different preferences. Don’t always force your team into competition with one another for bonuses. Encourage a collaborative approach — like split sales incentives or team activity rewards — for those who enjoy teamwork.

I recommend setting up a feedback roundtable to hear reps’ ideas and suggestions. You can make it clear that you may not be able to use every recommendation they offer, but knowing what matters to them will help you develop a program they’ll respond to.

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Use the right tools

Tracking earnings and making sure team members receive the sales compensation they’re owed can get complicated. But the right technology can make incentive compensation management much easier and give employees the peace of mind that they’re getting the incentives they’ve earned.

Well-designed sales incentive software can make many aspects of running a sales incentive program much easier. Some features that make a difference include:

• Automation and workflows: Let your tech handle some of the work for you by automating even the most intricate commission structures and nuances like accelerators, tiers, triggers, and more.
• In-app comments and notifications: Manage questions, comments, and disputes efficiently, all within a single platform. Encourage cross-org collaboration with real-time comments and notifications for quicker alignment.
• Customised rep statements: Align organisational priorities to seller motivations. Plus, make it easy for your reps to see commission statements, monitor their progress against goals, and track potential earnings.
• Automated expense reporting: Maintain compliance under ASC 606 and IFRS 15 with automated, audit-ready expense reports. Manage exceptions, fringe benefits, varied commission types, and more.
• Integrations: A tool that connects with other products like your customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), human capital management (HCM), and payroll software will help you create a real-time, single source of truth for all commission needs.

My preferred incentives tool is Salesforce Spiff. For salespeople, it can work as a go-to source for reviewing how the reward structure works, the target achievements to aim for, and the commission rates associated with each one. For admins and sales teams alike, it’s easy to use and helps you track the number of performance targets achieved and payouts completed.

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Communicate the plan to your team

Your sales reps must understand the incentive plan for it to have an impact. Communicate how it works clearly, and figure out how best to distribute the plan details to your team so they all see it and know where to go to review it as needed. If you have a central knowledge base the whole team uses, such as a CRM, that’s a good place to put it.

While I recommend keeping your plan simple, if you end up developing a more complex program, it’s especially important to make the details of the plan easy to find. Your reps will want to refer to it to remember which goals to focus on. Their ability to understand how the incentives work is crucial for getting the results you want.

Be transparent

The last thing you want is for salespeople to question whether they’re receiving the commissions they’ve earned. I once heard from a sales rep who was convinced they’d never been paid the correct bonus amount. If any of your reps feel that way — even if it’s not accurate — they’re unlikely to remain motivated by the incentives being promised. Worse, they’re more likely to defect for the first job opportunity to come along.

The best way to avoid that is to keep the plan transparent. Make it easy for salespeople to track the specific performance targets they’ve achieved and commissions they’ve earned. And strive to keep all the data in your sales tool clean and accurate, so the sales team knows they can rely on that information.

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Measuring the impact of sales incentives on performance

While beneficial motivators, sales incentives come at a cost — an important factor to consider when planning your sales budget. Establish the key performance indicators (KPIs) you want to track for your sales incentive program to ensure you successfully align incentives with your main business goals.

Some metrics that can help you measure the success of your program include:

• Overall sales: Track your total sales to determine whether incentives are contributing to an overall increase in sales over a set period.
• Number of new customers: Determine how many of those sales are from new customers to help measure whether your incentive program is driving conversions.
• Number of returning customers: Also pay attention to how many existing customers stuck around during the incentive period, so you can gauge how well your sales team is building and nurturing relationships.
• Incentive program costs vs. ROI: To ensure you don’t overspend on your program relative to what it helps bring in, keep track of how much you spend, as well as how many sales you close and how much revenue you generate during a set period.
• Employee turnover rate: In addition to increasing sales, incentives are about rewarding employees for their hard work and successes. Tracking your employee turnover rate before and after implementing an incentive program can help you compare its impact on employee satisfaction.
• Employee satisfaction rate: Also look for ways to gauge overall sales team satisfaction. This can be difficult to measure effectively, and you may be tempted to stop at running employee satisfaction surveys. Surveys can be a good temperature check, but they work best when paired with anecdotal impressions. Spend time with your sales team, listen to their feedback, and pay attention to how they act at work to help round out the picture.

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Sales incentives can encourage results and improve morale

The most important takeaway I can impress upon anyone designing a sales incentive program is this: Give your team the information they need to make the decisions you want. And when in doubt, keep it simple. The easier your program is to understand, the more likely salespeople are to get how it works and act accordingly. With the right plan and the right tools to implement it effectively, you can grow your sales and improve job satisfaction for your sales team at the same time.

The post Top 10 Sales Incentives That Actually Work appeared first on Salesforce.

To answer that question, Dreamforce offered a firsthand look at Salesforce’s latest AI-powered innovations — including Agentforce, a new collection of autonomous agents that fulfill the promise of AI and human collaboration — and how these, alongside community, power sales success.

Here are the highlights:

Highlight #1: AI is table stakes for sales productivity

As our State of Sales report revealed, AI is everywhere. Roughly four in five sellers use it, and among those that do, 83% saw revenue growth last year. 

The question is: Why? The same report revealed some key benefits, echoed by Salesblazers during this year’s Dreamforce: Improved data quality and accuracy, reduced manual work, streamlined customer research, lead prioritisation, improved forecasting accuracy, and personalisation for customers. 

We saw this underscored during the Sales Cloud keynote, which showed the time-saving work of Sales AI action, highlighting big-win deal opportunities, automatically transcribing and analysing sales call, and updating deal records with the latest customer information — all inside Sales Cloud. (This is only a taste of what AI is already doing. Take a deeper dive into Sales Cloud’s AI features here.)

Of course, the benefits of AI can only be realised when the data feeding AI models is accurate and complete. Which brings us to…

Highlight #2: Integrated data and simplified tech are the way forward

While there were many AI innovations revealed at Dreamforce this year, the preface was clear: The only way to deliver accurate, impactful AI outputs is to make sure your data is clean and consolidated. 

That starts with an integrated tech stack. When you bring the functionality you need onto a single platform, like the Salesforce platform, you bring data into one place. That means whatever AI features you roll out will have access to the most complete customer information available. Clean, complete data = high-quality AI outputs.

Even better, this consolidation makes your sellers’ lives so much easier. No more swivel-chairing or tab juggling.

We chatted with some top-tier sales leaders at Dreamforce about this critical piece of AI use. They shared examples of consolidation in action, and how it’s improved seller performance. Watch a recording here.

Highlight #3: Humans + autonomous agents = the new formula for growth

First, we saw predictive AI take the scene. Sales forecasters were giddy, watching artificial intelligence comb through heaps of data to find trends and tell us the future. Then, generative AI launched, creating emails from simple prompts and call scripts from simple outlines. 

Now, it’s time for autonomous AI. 

Welcome, Agentforce. This Salesforce-wide innovation, revealed at the main Dreamforce keynote, is a collection of autonomous Agents across the Customer 360 platform. 

What are these fully customisable Agents used for? Think of them in two distinct categories: 

• “Complete a job for me” (Autonomous): Autonomous Agents can be set up to perform pipeline-driving tasks entirely independent of a human salesperson, like qualifying leads and sending sales outreach messages.
• “Help me complete a job” (Assistive): Agents can also serve as valuable companions throughout the day-to-day grind of working in sales. An Agent can train salespeople with personalised sales coaching, or answer technical questions on the fly directly in the flow of work.

For sellers, two Sales Agents were unveiled that will improve productivity dramatically:

Agentforce SDR. This prospecting Agent can qualify inbound leads using criteria, permissions, and guardrails set sales teams. For example, a seller might ask Agentforce SDR to send along only those leads with a potential deal value of $10k with a likelihood of closing in the next quarter. Agentforce SDR engages prospects via SMS, email, or their preferred channel and asks questions to qualify them according to preset criteria. Once qualified, leads are sent to sellers to continue the conversation and close.

Agentforce Sales Coach. We’ve heard it many times (including from our State of Sales report respondents): Managers don’t have enough time to coach their reps on sales calls, and sellers don’t have enough time to practice calls with their peers. In fact, roleplaying is one of the least commonly used enablement tactics. Agentforce Sales Coach to the rescue. This new autonomous Agent can roleplay sales calls with reps, providing personalised and objective feedback. How does it make these roleplays realistic? By pulling real-life objections, questions, and conversation details from past deals in Sales Cloud.

These are just a few examples of the fully customisable AI Agents available within the Salesforce platform – and they represent just a small fraction of the many unique Sales AI use cases to come in the near future. (Watch the Sales Cloud keynote for more on the Sales Agents available now.)

Highlight #4: Community will always be the beating heart of sales 

Is AI the future of sales? Yes. But not without people.

In the spring of 2023, we launched the Salesblazer Community. We knew — from conversations with customers, prospects, and sellers we admire — that community (+ technology) was needed to help sales professionals learn, grow, and succeed. 

So we delivered. We created and curated the best sales content anywhere. We offered opportunities to network and connect — from in-person gatherings at World Tours and Dreamforce, to virtual Coffee Chats and AMAs. We delivered sneak peeks of product innovations. And we listened while you shared your vision for this fast-growing community.

In a relatively short time, we’ve grown to almost 10,000 members, representing every conceivable sales role (from SDR to CRO), countless industries, and now, countries across the globe. (Just announced at Dreamforce: We’re adding new channels in our Slack Community for our French and German #Salesblazers.)

We even had the chance to give the much-deserved spotlight to leading #Salesblazers at the Sales Cloud keynote this Dreamforce — applauding THNKS, Veeam, and Accenture for being models of #Salesblazer values.

The best part? We’re just getting started. More innovation, more engagement, more fun is coming. If you’re not a part of the Community yet, you can learn more here and join. (Bonus: You can see photos and videos of #Salesblazers favourite moments at Dreamforce — and all of our events.)

Dreamforce TL;DR: AI + humans is the future of sales

AI was, perhaps not surprisingly, the biggest talking point at this year’s star-studded Dreamforce. But the AI revolution isn’t just about new technology. It’s about how humans, empowered by technology, can grow predictably, sustainably, and safely. That’s the future — and Salesforce is leading the way.

Boost sales productivity with trusted AI

See how AI tools from Sales Cloud can take on everyday tasks and point you to the best action for every deal.

Watch the demo

The post 4 Key Sales Takeaways from Dreamforce 2024, the Biggest AI Event of the Year appeared first on Salesforce.

We’ll discuss what this career looks like, how to build your skills, a typical day for a territory sales manager, and metrics for success, so you can decide whether it’s the job for you.

What you’ll learn

• What is a territory sales manager?
• What does a territory sales manager do?
• How to become a territory sales manager
• Skills you need for territory sales management
• Sales AI software for territory management
• Success metrics for territory sales managers

What trends drive sales productivity today?

We believe that business is the greatest platform Get the State of Sales Report to discover AI and productivity insights from 5,500 sales professionals.

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What is a territory sales manager?

A territory sales manager is responsible for overseeing sales and sales volume — including supervising teams of sales reps and support staff — within a defined geographical region. However, these regions (or territories) aren’t always defined by their physical location. They are often determined by things such as industry, market potential, relationship history, or number of accounts. Some businesses require in-person sales and regular visits to customers; others can be handled virtually. Territory sales managers are ultimately responsible for the sales volume achieved by their team.

What does a territory sales manager do?

Territory sales managers coordinate with their sales and support teams to find and develop new opportunities. They set sales goals and are responsible for ensuring targets are met. Empowering reps to build relationships with customers, hiring new team members, and strong leadership skills are all important parts of the job. Territory sales managers operate in a variety of industries, from consumer goods to manufacturing and technology.

Key job responsibilities include:

• Developing sales strategies: Analysing market trends, reviewing data, and setting sales goals for their teams.
• Educating and training sales teams: Organising training workshops and coaching opportunities for new and existing reps.
• Building and maintaining customer relationships: Scheduling visits with key clients to understand their needs, following up about products and services, and gathering feedback.
• Creating reports and budgets: Monitoring industry news and competitor activity, then creating reports with that information. This internal data is key to setting budgets for the team.
• Forecasting sales: Using historical data, market analysis, and feedback from the sales team, territory sales managers generate sales forecasts, which help them set realistic sales targets.

A typical day for a territory sales manager may include calling prospects, qualifying leads, and working on established accounts. Territory sales managers are always on the hunt for new leads and may prospect using third-party tools such as LinkedIn to connect with potential customers.

Territory sales managers are typically focused on a few large, high-priority accounts. Consequently, they spend a lot of time talking with potential and existing customers. They use customer relationship management (CRM) software — typically equipped with AI and automation tools — to schedule calls, update customer and lead details, and keep track of outreach.

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How to become a territory sales manager

To become a territory sales manager, you need a track record of closing sales. In addition, you will need managerial or leadership experience. A college degree is not always necessary, but many employers prefer a bachelor’s degree in business or a related field. In fact, relevant work experience can replace a college degree in some cases.

Sales experience is an essential skill for the role, so starting your career in an entry-level sales position is a good way to gain confidence and practice various sales skills and strategies in a relatively low-stakes environment. After a year or two in an entry-level sales role, you can begin to work your way up to sales development rep (SDR), business development rep (BDR), or sales engineer.

Once you land that first job, look for opportunities to demonstrate your ability to manage people or projects. Work on your confidence at selling, both in-person and online. In particular, focus on relationship building, upselling and cross-selling opportunities, and hitting your sales quotas.

As I said earlier, demonstrated leadership experience is a must. This means having at least a few years (three to five) of experience in supervisory roles. Because territory managers regularly engage in face-to-face and virtual sales with customers and prospects, you must be willing to travel and comfortable with pitching and presenting.

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Skills you need for territory sales management

A successful territory sales manager needs a range of hard and soft skills. Because the role often involves managing fewer — but larger — accounts, it’s important that you are highly self-motivated, ambitious, and a skilled communicator. Additionally, you must understand how to interact with different management levels within an organisation.

The top skills needed to become a territory sales manager include:

Sales experience

The ability to close deals consistently is the main requirement of this role. This typically means having strong negotiation skills and a clear understanding of effective sales techniques.

You can develop these skills in earlier sales roles like SDR and BDR, where you interact with clients daily. In order to succeed, you must also have deep product knowledge and be comfortable handling objections.

Strong communication

Verbal and written skills are critical. You should be able to write an email and deliver a presentation that conveys your thoughts clearly and persuasively, in a way that’s personalised to your prospect or customer. Practicing active listening, learning how to recognise and respond to nonverbal cues, and mastering the art of storytelling will give you an edge as a territory sales manager.

Interpersonal skills

A territory sales manager’s main focus is building and maintaining positive relationships with customers. Happy customers tend to be loyal, may refer you to others, and can be more receptive to cross- and upselling opportunities.

Improve your relationship-building skills by taking the time to research each of your prospects and customers. Learn about their businesses, goals, needs, and pain points. When you communicate in an authentic way that shows you’re interested in their success, you set the stage for a mutually beneficial relationship.

Leadership

Motivating your team to hit sales targets is a big part of a territory sales manager’s job. The best way to gain leadership experience before stepping into a managerial role is to demonstrate your ability to lead projects or teams and contribute to the company’s overall success.

You can do this by volunteering to lead small projects as part of a S.M.A.R.T goal, identifying areas of improvement within your team or organisation, taking the initiative to tackle issues, and presenting your results to leadership. Think outside the box and look for opportunities where you can go above and beyond the everyday responsibilities of your position.

Data analysis and strategic thinking

Territory sales managers review sales data and market trends and interpret implications for their company. To anticipate market changes and adjust strategies on the fly, strategic and critical thinking skills are essential. Develop these by asking more questions, seeking advice from experts, focusing on the “why” over the “what,” and considering things from multiple angles.

A strong understanding of budgeting and financial management is also important. To improve your financial literacy, subscribe to business journals, listen to expert-led finance and sales industry podcasts, and read books on the subject. Join sales communities where these topics are regularly discussed to learn from your peers.

Technical literacy

Today’s territory sales managers must understand how to use evolving technology as part of their job. For example, CRM software helps them track customer interactions, manage sales pipelines, and analyse data for forecasting, goal setting, and more.

AI-powered coaching tools support sales training efforts. These tools can analyse conversations, emails, and other interactions to provide feedback on techniques, suggest improvements, and predict outcomes.

Territory mapping tools help managers divide and assign accounts to sales reps. They can use this software to optimise travel routes, target the right markets, and adjust territories as market conditions change.

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Success metrics for territory sales managers

As a sales territory manager, specific metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) are used to measure your success. Some common ones include:

• Sales pipeline velocity: The speed at which opportunities move through the sales pipeline, from lead generation to close. This helps you estimate how fast your team can generate revenue, how much revenue you can produce from your sales pipeline, and how well your sales process is working.
• Territory coverage: This measures how well your sales teams connect and engage with prospects and customers in their assigned territories. It helps you assess penetration, the reach of your sales activities, and identify opportunities and gaps in each territory.
• Revenue per territory: This represents how much income each territory generates for the larger business. It helps you evaluate each territory’s potential and profitability and identify your highest- and lowest-performing regions.
• Customer acquisition and retention rate: The number of new clients gained — and kept — within a set period demonstrates customer satisfaction and loyalty. Understanding your customers’ experience with your offering or sales team can help you make meaningful adjustments.
• Quota attainment: This is the percentage of sales targets or quotas a territory manager’s sales team meets within a specific period. Tracked monthly, quarterly, and annually, it helps you measure the effectiveness and efficiency of your team.
• Profitability: Gross margins — or the pofitability of sales after deducting the cost of goods sold — along with the average profit generated per customer is an indicator of cost management and sales success.

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Sales AI software for territory management

AI-powered sales software helps territory sales managers automate workflows and streamline operations for higher efficiency. For example, AI tools can analyse large amounts of data quickly, providing insights into customer demographics and market trends and changes. This ensures managers have access to accurate data no matter where they are.

AI can monitor and analyse sales calls and support managers by offering coaching tips for sales reps — things like targeted talking points and objection responses.

It can also help with lead scoring and predicting which deals are most likely to close based on past deal data, customer behaviour, and engagement metrics. This helps territory sales managers and their teams save time by focusing on high-priority prospects with more potential.

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Sales success comes with the territory

Territory sales managers play a vital role in driving sales for a company. They possess a relationship-building mindset and a more strategic skill set than someone who simply enjoys selling. A successful territory sales manager is great at closing deals, managing high-profile accounts, building and maintaining relationships, and leading their team to success.

So, if you’re interested in becoming a territory sales manager, it’s important to develop these skills to stand out at your sales organisation and take the next step in your career.

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Challenger Sales got its name because it emphasises challenging your customer’s thinking. Read on to learn how this methodology can benefit your sales team.

What you’ll learn

• What is the Challenger Sales methodology?
• How does Challenger Sales work?
• Challenger Sales example
• Key differences between Challenger Sales and other techniques
• The five steps in Challenger Selling
• Tips for training your team to use Challenger Selling
• How to stay ahead with Challenger Sales

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What is the Challenger Sales methodology?

The Challenger Sales methodology emphasises challenging a customer or prospect’s thinking and assumptions. The goal is to bring new insights and value to their business so they can make informed decisions. Above all, Challenger Selling focuses on teaching your customers rather than building relationships with them. The seller is positioned as an expert in their field, and they immediately begin sales interactions by showing the customer what their problem is instead of asking questions to uncover the problem.

How does Challenger Sales work?

The Challenger Sales methodology, first introduced in the book The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson, stems from research on the attributes, skills, and competencies of successful sellers. The research identified five profiles based on clusters of seller behaviours:

• The Problem Solver: Detail-oriented and reliably responds to customers.
• The Lone Wolf: Self-assured, independent, and follows their instincts.
• The Hard Worker: Self-motivated and will always go the extra mile.
• The Relationship Builder: Builds strong customer advocates and gets along with everyone.
• The Challenger: Pushes the customer and understands their business.

Among these profiles, the Challenger emerged as the one with the best-performing salespeople. The behaviours the Challenger excels at — teaching, tailoring, and taking control — form the basis of the challenger sales model.

• Teach: A Challenger Sales rep possesses a deep understanding of the buyer’s industry. They use this expertise to offer unique perspectives and insights that the buyer had not yet considered and gets them to think differently.
• Tailor: They adapt their message to align with the buyer’s specific challenges, goals, or value drivers, ensuring relevance and resonance.
• Take control: A challenger sales rep uses their comfort with discussing money and applying pressure to guide a buyer toward closing the deal.

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Challenger Sales example

I once sold a session replay product that reproduces a user’s online experience. Despite many similar products in the market, ours stood out for its unique ability to capture everything that happens on a website rather than sampling only parts of it. The feature helped uncover any website issues that could cause the user to have a negative online experience.

For example, my customer had problems on their website’s checkout page that were causing issues with payments. However, they were not aware of the issues because their tool did not sample this section of the site.

With my high level of expertise in session replay, I taught buyers the importance of analysing the entirety of their website instead of just samples. I used the methodology to challenge my buyers to think differently about how this information was presented to company stakeholders and communicated in internal meetings. As a matter of fact, I tailored my message to the buyers’ specific needs instead of only highlighting product features and capabilities. By taking control of the conversations, I was able to compel the buyer to take action based on where they were to get where they wanted to be.

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Key differences between Challenger Sales and other techniques

Challenger Sales techniques are best suited for complex sales scenarios rather than simple transactional selling, especially in business-to-business (B2B) environments where there are longer sales cycles and multiple decision-makers.

In my experience, buyers in a Challenger Sales situation typically already know of the existing problems within their business. However, they suspect there are other issues they don’t know about. They want to grasp what they are missing. The buyer appreciates it when a seller can use their expertise to teach them about their unknown problems and provide a new way of looking at how to solve them.

A Challenger seller starts the sales call by immediately educating the buyer. They are telling, not asking, about the buyer’s problems. This is different from other sales techniques where you’d begin by engaging in relationship-building chatter, such as inquiring about the buyer’s weekend plans.

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The five steps in Challenger Selling

The Challenger Sales methodology is easier to adopt for large sales teams because it allows sales reps to personalise their interactions with buyers without requiring changes to the team structure. These are the five key steps to the Challenger Sales approach for a seller:

1. The warm-up

You begin by sharing knowledge of the prospect’s challenges and problems. Consequently, the goal is to build credibility with the prospect and show that you understand their needs.

2. The reframe

Next, you take the prospect’s challenge and reframe it in a way they may not have considered. You are shifting the prospect’s perception from what they initially thought was their problem to something much bigger, scarier, and more problematic.

3. The emotional impact

Now you tell a relatable story about a customer or company that faced similar problems but didn’t solve them. This helps the prospect see themselves in the story and realise the potential consequences of continuing on their current path.

4. The value proposition

At this stage, you still haven’t mentioned your product as the solution. Instead, you emphasise your product’s value proposition to show the prospect how it could solve their problem.

5. Your solution

In the final step, the prospect is convinced of the need for a solution. Now, you present your product as the perfect answer to the problem.

The five Challenger Sales steps should form a wave of positive highs and negative lows for the prospect. The wave starts at the neutral position of the warm-up, rises to the high of the reframe, lowers to the emotional impact, returns to the neutral value proposition, and ends on the high note of your solution.

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Tips for training your team to use Challenger Selling

Sellers often begin sales conversations talking about their product or service because it’s what makes them comfortable. That’s why the warm-up and the reframe are hard to train a sales team to do, as these steps do not focus on the product.

One way to get your sales team comfortable with the Challenger Selling approach is to consider managing the content of your sales presentation. A traditional sales deck typically includes details about who you are, what you do, and how your product can benefit the prospect. But a Challenger Sales deck only introduces the reframe and includes no mention of your company or product. The deck enables your team to get closer to having the type of meaningful conversations with a prospect that are essential for Challenger Sales.

Another strategy is to train your team to be knowledgeable about the prospect’s business so they can confidently educate as part of the warm-up. These are some ways to research the prospect and their business and industry:

• Job descriptions: Read the job description of the person you are selling to. Consider why they were hired and what they would most likely be fired for.
• Product review sites: Examine the products your prospect is purchasing and why they like them. This helps determine the problems they are trying to solve with these products.
• Industry conferences: Investigate the major conferences your prospect attends. Analyse the agenda and sessions to identify the topics that attract attendees and get an idea of what the industry is focused on and cares about.
• Customer interviews: Some companies do not allow their sellers to contact a prospect’s customers directly. A workaround could be to see whether your marketing or product team could make the call instead. The goal with this research is to find out more about the buyer’s end user.
• Focus on the prospect’s personal values: These might include being liked by their team or becoming influential within the company. Personal values tie in with Step 3, where you create the emotional impact by guiding the prospect to envision themselves in a familiar story. When you do this effectively, you increase the likelihood that your buyer will be an internal champion of change within their business.

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How to stay ahead with Challenger Sales

Reps spend only 28% of their week actually selling, according to the Salesforce State of Sales report. The rest of the time is spent on critical but tedious tasks such as researching prospects (9.3%) and manually entering customer and sales information (8.8%).

To be more efficient and effective with their time, challenger sales reps use sales software tools such as:

• Customer relationship management (CRM) system: A CRM manages a seller’s interactions with customers and prospects. The system unifies customer data and tracks progress across the long sales cycle that is typical in challenger sales. You can unify all sales activities such as emails, phone calls, social touches, and tasks into a single to-do list.
• AI: Use artificial intelligence to automate the prospect and account research that are critical for the challenger sales warm-up. You can summarise leads and opportunities to identify the likelihood of closing a deal and pinpoint which competitors are involved. Pull in real-time data to understand relevant industry updates happening in the news.
• Conversation insights: Have your CRM create a playlist collection of your challenger sellers’ successful calls so your other reps can replicate what works. Highlight the challenger sales best practices and skills in the calls to coach sellers on how to teach, tailor, and take control with the model.
• Onboarding: Need to quickly get new sales reps up to speed on your challenger sales approach? Gather your winning sales strategies in a library of pre-built, customisable templates for sales processes such as account planning, mutual close planning, customer briefings, and more. Use the library as a resource to onboard and train reps so the entire team works from a standardised set of materials that can be tailored to the customers’ challenges.

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Are you a Challenger?

Consider this if you’re still wondering whether Challenger Sales is right for your sales team: The research done for the Challenger Sales book found that nearly 40% of sales team star performers were in the Challenger category. Take the proven methodology, implement the five steps of the Challenger Sales approach, and train your sellers, and you’ll be on your way to fielding your own team of star performers.

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The post What Is the Challenger Sales Methodology? Steps, Examples, and Tips appeared first on Salesforce.

If you’re not sure where to start, you’re in the right place to learn. We’ll talk about what sales prospecting tools are, key features to look for, and the biggest benefits.

What you’ll learn:

• What are sales prospecting tools?
• The importance of sales prospecting tools in modern sales
• Benefits of using sales prospecting tools
• Key features to look for in sales prospecting tools
• Types of sales prospecting tools

What are sales prospecting tools?

Sales prospecting tools are software and technologies designed to help sales teams identify, engage, and convert potential customers. With these tools, salespeople can improve their sales prospecting by more quickly and efficiently reaching out to buyers. These tools vary in terms of type, depending on where you want them to integrate with technologies such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and email marketing. Sales prospecting typically refers to outbound marketing — where a salesperson is trying to get someone who has possibly never heard of them (or sometimes not even their company) to take a meeting.

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The importance of sales prospecting tools in modern sales

Your prospects are also being contacted by your competitors, and the odds are high that those competitors are using sales prospecting tools. It’s challenging (if not impossible) to remain competitive without sales prospecting tools in today’s environment.

If you’re simply reaching out to names on a list, you are working at a significant disadvantage to sales reps who have these tools at their fingertips. To level the playing field, you need to have the same (or better) technology as the other sales representatives reaching out to your prospects.

With the right tool, you can streamline your prospecting process with AI-powered research and outreach (more on that below). Making connections with the right prospects at the right time is critical to beat the competition.

These improvements alone are game-changing, but the sales processes your team puts into place around those tools are what turns your desired numbers into reality. If the tools aren’t used correctly, you can burn your market, upset potential customers already in the sales funnel, and damage your conversion rate. Because the tools make it possible to contact more people in the same amount of time, many representatives make the mistake of skipping the targeting and personalization step. They contact more people, but they close fewer sales.

To overcome this common mistake, sales representatives need to make sure they are personalizing their approach throughout the process. A feature shouldn’t supersede the importance of the channel and approach you take. Use the data and insights to gain more knowledge, but apply your hard-earned understanding of your target market and specific prospects to tailor each message.

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Benefits of using sales prospecting tools

Companies that use sales prospecting tools typically see significant benefits, often in a relatively short amount of time. However, simply purchasing and using the tools does not give you the benefits. Sales representatives must fully integrate the software into all their processes to reach more people who are likely to purchase the product.

As you look at the following list, you may notice that increased conversations are not among the benefits. They’re not included because not all businesses see this benefit. However, companies that fully integrate the tools into their processes and take advantage of all functionalities to increase productivity and spend more time building personal relationships with prospects often increase their conversion rate.

Here are more top benefits of using sales prospecting tools:

Better targeting

A sales prospecting tool can help prioritize which prospects are more likely to convert and can provide specific messaging that is more likely to appeal to the customer. In my experience, when reach out to the right people through their preferred channel, their conversion rates tend to be higher.

Lower costs

When salespeople can get more done in less time, you can be more successful with a smaller team and often can save on hiring costs. Additionally, sales representatives who are less stressed and able to target the right prospects are more likely to experience high job satisfaction. By reducing turnover, companies also save on hiring and training.

More time and ability to build customer relationships

Relationships take time, which is often hard to find in a busy calendar filled with busywork. In fact, the State of Sales Report found that reps spend nearly 72% of their day on non-selling activities. Because sales prospecting tools save a lot of time, the representative can now spend more time building a prospect’s trust. With the foundation in place, the customer is more likely to turn to the representative in the future and have a career-long relationship with the company.

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Key features to look for in sales prospecting tools

A sales prospecting tool can sometimes cause more problems than it solves. A business may become overrun with too much data if its tool doesn’t help it effectively manage sales data. Or a company may get inaccurate results if the tool doesn’t easily work with other existing systems. That’s why it is important to start with a tool that meets your specific needs.

AI-powered analytics

Every task you perform in the sales process generates valuable data on the process and the customer. You need a tool that makes it easy to collect that data throughout the process (such as when someone responds and how). A tool with AI-powered analytics can create action-based insights to help you make the best prospecting decisions. For example, the tool may provide insights that a prospect may be more likely to respond on social media than to an email. Or it could give you the time of day that your phone call is more likely to be answered instead of going to voicemail.

Ease of use

Your sales prospecting tools should make your workflow easier, not complicate it. By selecting a tool that is easy to use, you can spend less time getting up to speed and troubleshooting. Look for an interface that simplifies powerful functionality so you can click a few buttons and make numerous calls simultaneously. A tool with a dashboard provides the insights you need to guide all your prospecting and next steps.

System integration

Your company likely uses many different types of technology in your workflow — billing software, CRM tools, and marketing automation. Each tool creates valuable data that can provide key insights to help improve your prospecting workflow. To get the most use of your analytics feature, you need all your data to flow through all your tools. When you have a standalone tool that does its own thing, you lose valuable time and information. Because prospecting isn’t the end goal, but the means to closing more deals, you need your tools to talk to each other and work together.

Compliance

It’s often hard to keep all the rules straight when prospecting (and they are constantly changing). You need to make sure your emails and phone calls aren’t flagged as spam. You also have to tread carefully to keep from getting flagged on social media. A single error in prospecting can mean that your message never makes it to your potential customers, which means wasted time — or worse, damage to your reputation.

Sales prospecting tools can automatically verify that your prospecting workflow meets best practices and regulations. However, not all tools include this feature, so you want to make sure the tool you choose does. With a tool that takes this task off your plate, you no longer have to remember what to do on each social media platform, and can instead focus on building relationships with your potential customers.

Customizable and scalable solution

Your organization’s sales process is likely different from that of your competitors. It’s not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. Because your sales prospecting tools need to fit into your existing workflow, you need a flexible tool that can be modified to your needs. For example, your organization may run campaigns differently than other businesses. A customizable solution makes it possible to get the most ROI from your software. Additionally, look for a scalable tool that can grow as your business needs change.

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Types of sales prospecting tools

Sales prospecting tools refer to all types of tools that help with making connections with potential clients. A common mistake is selecting a tool without carefully considering what type of prospecting you are currently doing and what type you want to expand based on how your target customer spends time or is most likely to engage.

Lead generation tools

Lead generation tools make it easier to find prospects who are ready to purchase. In addition to improving the selling workflow and experience for the salesperson, these tools also increase productivity. Companies typically look for these tools when they want to increase their sales in a new market or significantly increase revenue in a current market.

For example, these tools can flag when a prospect searches for topics related to the business problem your product solves. Other lead generation tools also make it possible to reach out to prospects in a mass volume, like a power dialer that lets you call five people at the same time.

The most effective lead generation tool depends largely on your target customer. If your conversation rates are higher through social media than phone, then purchasing a power dialer is not the best choice. Carefully look at your analytics as well as your future goals to determine what tool will help expand the areas where you are currently most successful with prospects.

CRM software

A CRM manages all your company’s interactions with customers and prospects, including sales calls, customer service interactions, social media, and marketing emails. Sales teams often refer to the CRM data as the record of truth. By staying connected to your customers and improving relationships, sales representatives are able to streamline processes, improve profitability, and grow the business.

A CRM is a single source of truth for your sales team. Instead of separate lists and spreadsheets, all sales activities are captured in a central hub and used to create a master to-do list. With the right CRM tool, leaders can easily assign prospects to representatives, which makes prospecting feel more manageable.

Sales teams can also more effectively use analytics to target prospects most likely to convert. An AI-powered CRM tool can provide step-by-step guidance on the next-best action to take with specific prospects and customized workflows for each representative.

Social media prospecting tools

Social media is a powerful platform for business. Some prospecting tools can scrape social media for data that helps you find specific prospects that have a need and demonstrate a readiness for your product. For example, they can identify a social media post that is relevant to the business problem your product solves and then reach out to all of the users who commented on or liked the post.

AI capabilites have made these tools even more popular. Companies are using these tools as an additional channel to phoning prospects and are seeing solid results in this area. As new innovations continue to happen in the AI and social media realm, expect the functionality and capabilities of this type of sales prospecting tool to increase rapidly.

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Make prospecting work for your business

If you are sending your team out into the world to prospect without a sales prospecting tool, they are at a significant disadvantage to representatives at other companies. By finding a sales prospecting tool with the latest features and customizing the tool for your needs, such as pricing structure and campaigns, sales representatives can get more prospecting done in less time with better results.

The post How to Use Sales Prospecting Tools to Sell Faster appeared first on Salesforce.

They’re all digital products, and they’re taking a big share of consumer wallets. Whether you have a successful business and are looking to capitalise on lucrative new sales channels, or a side hustler hoping to trade their talent for recurring passive income, you can make digital products work for you.

What you’ll learn:

• What are digital products?
• Types of digital products
• Benefits of digital product sales
• 6 steps to start selling digital products
• Common digital product sales roles
• What to look for in digital selling tools

What trends drive sales productivity today?

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What are digital products?

A digital product is an intangible thing that customers can use on their electronic devices. While you can’t hold or touch it, a digital product is still something you can see, purchase, and consume. Making more is as simple as copying and pasting. And they’re accessed by customers through downloads, streaming, or logging onto a website.

Types of digital products

Digital products come in all shapes and file sizes. If you’re trying to make one, review the following types of products to help you understand and decide which makes the most sense for you, your abilities, and your audience.

Courses and online education

Building new skills is important for your career and passions. Online courses in everything from yoga to digital marketing can draw in big crowds. A common approach is to create a series of paid-subscription online videos hosted in a learning management system, which can include downloadable worksheets and notes. Some take the form of webinars, which are attended live and solicit donations from attendees.

Go the extra mile by offering premium office hours and live lessons to connect with students. It’s easiest to sell courses if you’re already a somewhat well-known figure in the industry, but you can always build up your reputation through a few free giveaways and trial classes.

Coaching and consulting

If you have expertise in anything, your time is valuable. Go one-on-one with paying customers to help them get off the ground in whatever their pursuit is, such as the fundamentals of business operations for a startup founder or digital transformation for a more established business.

Or go one-to-many with virtual group workshops. In this case, the digital products might be content that leads free users to this ultimately paid experience, with more paid content available to them after the fact. Show your knowledge on social media and industry forums, and lead fans back to a landing page to book coaching sessions.

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Digital templates and themes

Many entrepreneurs and businesses want to make things themselves that look good and function well, without having to build from scratch. If you have the graphic design, development, or organisational chops, products you might sell include:

• Themes for popular blogging content management systems (CMS) that make it easy to set up a brand-new, professional-looking website
• Templates for presentation decks, professional documents, and highly functional spreadsheets
• Templates for beautiful notebooks, day planners, or birthday cards
• Presets for the perfect lighting balance for photos or videos in major creative software
• UX, icon, and font kits that enable product and graphic designers to build something professional quickly

These can be sold on independent websites, through marketplace platforms, or directly through the apps they’re made for.

E-books

E-books are electronic books that can be read on a tablet, laptop, or phone. Make yours stand out through a combination of high quality, unique information, and good design. If you have a solid reputation in your field, the hook might be your perspective. The hook could also be the result of an actual study you conducted, which provides new data and statistics.

E-books can be sold through major book marketplaces and e-commerce platforms. E-books are often called “lead magnets,” a giveaway that potential customers get in exchange for filling in forms and agreeing to receive your marketing emails.

Games

Video games and mobile games need no introduction. Between app stores on everyone’s smartphones, PC marketplaces, and stores built into modern consoles, they take many forms and are being played more frequently by more people than ever before. Some have an upfront cost to buyers, some are licensed to subscription platforms (and pay developers based on playtime or downloads), and some are freemium, with in-game purchases down the road.

Licensed digital content

Not everything is made to be enjoyed on its own. Sometimes, the smart move is to sell small pieces of much larger products. Stock photography, music, designs, and videos get used in everything from ads and websites to concept art and packaging.

Marketing and film professionals dig through online marketplaces trying to avoid corny corporate stock assets, so you can stand out by making something unique and beautiful. Simply create your library, license it to the stock websites, and let the sites sell it again and again.

Memberships and communities

Information and discourse are available on social media, forums, blog comments, and countless sites trying to share content, all for free. Some free sources are amazing, but there’s also a lot of junk to sift through. Niche communities might prefer something more curated and exclusive.

That’s where the membership site comes in. You have to pay to get in, but you get what you pay for. Free of ads, free of trolls, free of bots, with every member having a literal financial stake in the community staying high quality and civil. Examples include “masterminds,” where business owners share struggles and swap leads, or communities that are built around an expert in a topic.

Music and audio

Most musicians license music to streaming platforms. They are paid based on subscriber listens, or receive a portion of ad revenue from free users. Podcasts are another popular audio product. There are platforms for premium podcasts with dedicated fan bases that offer exclusive episodes to patrons who donate monthly. The vast majority are free to listeners and collect ad and sponsorship revenue.

Premium content libraries

If you’ve had success selling individual digital products, you can offer subscriptions to a big library of all your past and future products. For example, if your e-books always deliver, past buyers may see the value in simply subscribing to your library to get early and perpetual access to future ones. The same goes for the creator who always makes new UX kits that speed up app production. Prove value and then improve your offer.

Software and apps

Once created, software can provide you with reliable subscription revenue if it serves a real market need. Apps for consumers include everything from photo and video editing to family budgeting. Apps for businesses might include complex accounting, project management software, productivity suites, and shipping coordination. If you go this route, note that tech sales is a complex and nuanced discipline that requires experience to get right.

Videos

Whether it’s an ad-supported video on a popular video streaming website or a paid exclusive sold to a major publisher, video content is among the fastest-growing formats. Production quality is important for some formats, like narratives, and less stringent for quick social media skits.

Visual art and prints

Original visual artwork with an artist’s unique stamp and style can be valuable with the rise of generative AI. It’s all about how you package it. You could sell the original file through a marketplace. You could also create on-demand coffee table books and T-shirts, or sticker sheets and posters that customers print themselves. Build a following and community through social media, and then release exclusives for your fans.

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Benefits of digital product sales

Many of us try our best to avoid paying for online information that feels like it should be free. However, creating and distributing digital products must bring in revenue to facilitate continued production. Here are some of the reasons why big companies and small players alike make the investment in digital products.

Lower upfront costs

There’s a large cost difference between a text document and a multi-platform fully featured app, but neither one needs a factory to make more of them. Once a digital product is created, it’s infinitely duplicable. Your cost of goods sold is close to zero.

Easy to distribute

You can sell digital assets directly through a website you own, or take advantage of one of hundreds of popular platforms. Many creators and businesses cross-distribute to competing channels to cover all their bases.

Flexible to challenges and opportunities

Digital products’ strengths always come back to their digital nature. They’re easy to update and adapt in response to feedback (and market changes).

Your e-book sold poorly last month? Tweak it and advertise the new change.

Have your fall stickers stopped getting preorders? Add red and green holiday themes and relaunch them.

Digital creators also benefit from being able to add more types of digital products to their offerings over time. For example, a popular graphic designer who makes ad-supported video tutorials might be able to start selling templates to their fans, selling deeper courses, and building a premium community that requires a monthly subscription.

New passive income streams

Passive income refers to revenue that doesn’t require new inputs such as labor or equipment after the initial investment. A simple example would be rent collected from a rental property.

Some digital products lend themselves to true passive income more than others. Consultations require your time, but more subscribers to a course you uploaded have very little time investment after creation. If you already sell physical products, digital ones can open up new markets while trading on the reputation you made with your traditional offerings.

It’s important to remember that every product still has costs. That same course might start running out of customers, which means you’d need to either update the product for repeat business or market it to get new business. If you can automate that marketing process, you can get closer to real passive income.

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6 steps to start selling digital products

Maybe the last section got the ideas flowing and you’re excited to get started. Or maybe the idea of actually making a digital product feels intimidating and you’re not sure how to begin. Depending on your talents and whether this is a side hustle, it can be as easy as making a new version of something you always make, or as complex as learning a skill and how to build a business at the same time.

No matter how it strikes you, this process can help you organise your efforts.

1. Brainstorm, research, and choose your products

If you’re a creative or developer, it might be obvious what you’re going to make. A photographer will take photos, though they still need to find their niche. But if you have a less obvious talent, finding the right type of digital product can take more time.

What you make depends on your knowledge, skills, and interests. Do you have an eye for fashion or a knack for speed-running games? Are there accounting mistakes that always get on your nerves or design trends you think are overblown? Play to your passions if you can.

Market research

Let’s say you settled on fashion videos. What else is out there? Who are the top creators? What are they doing? More importantly, what are they not doing? Or let’s say you decided to make a DIY accounting e-book. Does anyone else give that same info away for free? What’s their angle?

Here’s how to approach market research:

• Use social listening tools to search for relevant conversations on social media platforms and see what the general attitudes and issues are in the market.
• Dig up published research from authoritative sources, industry news outlets, and others to understand trends and get some data to work with.
• Set up a CRM to gather information gained from actual customers and leads and keep your notes current.

Choose your product

Whatever you choose, land on your first product and commit to making that one as well as you can before expanding. Focus on your differentiation, such as the target market, the quality of the product, your design, your pricing, and your personal brand.

2. Define your target market with a persona

A buyer persona is a fictional customer who has traits that represent a unique segment of the population. For example, they might be divided out by age, hobbies, income, places they like to frequent, and, importantly, the things they really believe. Here’s how to create a persona for your product:

• Use data to find basic demographic traits: See how many undergraduate accountants in southern California younger than 40 there really are to sell to before you build that ebook on building your own practice.
• Use surveys and research to understand their work: Find people to survey yourself or look for old studies, and see how they relate to their work, what skills they need to succeed, and what they believe success means.
• Go deeper with interviews: Invite a few to speak with and learn about what they worry about, what they desire, and what motivates them to challenge assumptions and uncover secrets that will help you sell to them.
• Build a starter persona: Use what you learned to make a collection of these traits that’s easy to pull up and consider when creating digital products to serve them. It helps to frame it as a story (i.e., “Mark is trying to get promoted in his accounting firm and spends a lot of his free time figuring out ways to impress his bosses”).
• Refine as you learn: Personas are a representation, so they should be subject to change as you try, fail, and succeed in the marketplace.

3. Validate your idea

This is where “failing fast” comes into play. Having a digital product idea and the skills to back it up is one thing, but seeing whether the market will support it is another. An easy first step is to ask people in your life and your target market. Show them your idea and what you have so far, and see what they think is missing and what’s working.

You can also approach this in a more standardised manner, such as running digital surveys asking about the problem you’re trying to solve. The final way to validate would simply be to check relative interest in this topic or product over time. Look at online search trends to see what’s generating interest.

4. Make an online storefront

You need a place for your potential customers to find you online. There are several routes to take. Social media marketplaces are great for reach, but your visibility is subject to private algorithms. Another option is templated website builders that include storefront functionality. They’re convenient, but many competitors will also use them, so you may have a hard time standing out, and analytics and leads are often locked down. Your last choice is to build your own site and use a sales platform on top of it. It lends itself to automation, personalisation, and a better customer experience, but of course it will require a bigger upfront investment.

Many digital product creators opt for a combo, luring in leads from social platforms and handling most of their selling on their privately operated websites to control customer information and reduce transaction fees.

5. Market to drive traffic

If you’re selling digital products, you’ll need to work to stand out. Use your website and social analytics to determine where interested traffic, if any, is coming from. Try to find patterns between where they come from, what they do on your site, and when they ultimately buy. You can also find places in your buying flow where they drop off before making a purchase.

Using this data, decide on channels to invest more in, like organic content you post to your social profiles, advertising placed on search engines, or referrals from partners and groups. Part of the investment will be running these different marketing campaigns, and part of it will be creating the content you’ll use in the marketing.

Connect your CRM and sales tools to your marketing efforts to help you make stronger connections between the types of marketing a lead was exposed to, and the likelihood of buying. Marketing is a game of continuous improvement, so study your results and try tweaks as you go.

6. Test and learn

Your product and marketing efforts both require you to look at the data and adjust as needed. Always gather and be open to feedback, and investigate problems.

You will likely have to adapt to increase revenue. Since digital products are relatively low-cost to make, you need to consider your breakeven point and your time to profitability.

How many units do you need to sell to earn back everything it costs to make it, including your own labor? Also, how long did it take for that to happen?

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Common digital product sales roles

To sell a digital product, many tasks have to get done. Big product development teams have staff for each job function, whereas side hustlers have to do it all themselves. A quick overview of each role can help you see what goes into selling digital products, and figure out if you have any gaps in your team or personal skill set. Study these to help you launch successful products.

Product manager

The PM is like the CEO of a product or product line. They take the vision and break it into achievable sprints and goals, take customer feedback into account, and promote the success of the product throughout the business.

Engineer/creator

A digital product has to be created. Photographers snap pics, software developers build apps, and influencers talk, present, and film (mostly themselves). This person or group is the most important, but their work can be outsourced, too.

Design and user research

Digital products are sold in a world that’s mainly visual. If the main product isn’t made by a designer, a designer still needs to package it into something slick, sellable, and branded. User researchers have to get involved to understand how people interact with your site and content (and to see if the design is working).

Customer support

You can’t leave your buyers in the cold. Once they’ve given you their money, you need to honour your promises, including helping them figure out when something isn’t right. This goes doubly for interactive digital products, such as courses, apps, and games.

Marketer

Someone must schedule social media posts and decide what to say. They also need to film those videos, put together those early-access, buy-now timers, and set up that email sequence once someone signs up for the newsletter.

Sales

Sometimes, marketing and sales go hand in hand for digital products. But if you have higher-ticket items, you might have to do personal one-on-one selling to close the deal. Digital sales professionals also input information in customer relationship management (CRM) software.

The ‘Face’

Oftentimes, this is the creator or thought leader themselves. For independent digital products, someone has to put their creative or personal brand on things to help it stand out from similar competing products.

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What to look for in digital selling tools

Just as the products are digital, so too are the tools needed to make them and move them. In fact, some of this infrastructure can be the largest expense in the process outside labour, so it’s important to determine what you need in your tech stack. All of the following can help with online selling:

• Market research: Whatever website and social platforms you use, make sure you get access to analytics to see what’s working. You also need tools to research your competitors and target markets, like surveys.
• Content creation: You need to be able to build your digital products, using things like creative suites for graphic designers, productivity suites for slides and documents, and generative AI platforms to help speed things up.
• Hosting and storefront: Host your digital content in a secure place with a shopping function to collect payments and gate access to the product.
• CRM: Keep track of past and potential customers with sales software that keeps a database and helps automate your outreach, too.
• Marketing automation platform: Collect lead information through forms on your site, build quick landing pages for your marketing campaigns, personalise web content based on each user’s interests, and send custom email and SMS campaigns.
• Sales forecasting: The best way to make future sales strategies is to understand what’s already happened. Measure digital sales through your storefront over time, so you can begin to predict your sales cycles.
• Customer service management: Save time reading through emails of customer complaints with a platform for tracking and resolving issue tickets. After all, happy customers spread better word of mouth.

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Start selling digital products today

The market may seem stuffed with options, but new people start selling digital products daily, with breakaway successes cropping up constantly. You never know if you don’t try, and you’ve just taken a great first step by reading this guide.

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The post How to Start Selling Digital Products in 6 Steps appeared first on Salesforce.

Read on to discover the most important sales statistics that reveal how the greatest teams are pushing forward. The data shows there are many bright spots to be found, but a nuanced picture emerges when we look more closely. Yes, revenue is up, but reps are struggling to meet quota. AI is yielding benefits, but data concerns remain. Employee retention is high, but fragile and dependent on high pay. 

What trends drive sales productivity today?

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Sales statistics about revenue growth

In the previous State of Sales report, conducted during the pandemic, 82% of sales professionals said they had to quickly adapt to new ways of selling in the face of economic headwinds. Today, that hard work has paid off. Sales are growing this year, partly thanks to recurring revenue and partner sales.

Growth is on the rise

1. 79% of sales leaders and managers say revenue increased over the past year.

2. 78% of sales leaders and managers say new customer acquisition increased over the past year.

3. 82% of sales leaders and managers feel confident about their company’s 12-month growth strategy

4. The top 3 tactics for growth among sales leaders: Improving sales enablement and training, targeting new markets, and improving use of tools and technologies.

One-off sales take a back seat to recurring revenue

5. Over 90% of sales teams use more than one revenue source.

6. 42% of sales leaders and managers say recurring sales is their top revenue source.

7. Sales leaders and managers say one-off sales is their third top revenue source, after recurring sales, upsells, and cross-sells.

Within 12 months, nearly every company expects to use partner sales

8. 83% of sales pros say partner selling has a bigger impact on revenue than a year ago.

9. 89% of sales teams currently use partner sales.

10. Of those sales teams who don’t use partner sales, 58% expect to within a year.

Sales statistics about challenges

Changing customer expectations is the number one challenge today. Increasing marketplace competition is adding to the squeeze. Meanwhile, buyers are demanding more personalization than before. But even as sellers are asked to deliver more value, they get trapped in non-selling tasks.

Sellers feel the pressure

11. 67% of sales reps don’t expect to meet their quota this year, and 84% missed it last year.

12. 53% of sales pros say it’s harder to sell than a year ago.

Changing customer expectations and marketplace competition are coming in hot

13. Sales leaders and managers say their top challenge is changing customer needs and expectations (for example, demanding lower costs, deeper understanding, and greater value).

14. 57% of sales leaders and managers say competition has increased since last year.

15. Similarly, macroeconomic conditions and inflation still pose a major challenge but is decreasing, with 27% of sales leaders and managers saying it’s a challenge compared to 39% in 2022.

16. 78% of business buyers say their company is more careful about spending money than before.*

17. 76% of business buyers say their company extracts maximum value from every purchase.*

*This data comes from the Salesforce State of the Connected Customer report.

Buyers demand personalization*

18. 86% of business buyers are more likely to buy if companies understand their goals.

19. But 59% say most sales reps don’t take the time to understand them.

20. 84% of business buyers expect sales reps to act as trusted advisors.

21. But 73% say most sales interactions feel transactional.

*The data in this section comes from from the Salesforce State of the Connected Customer report.

Sales reps still have productivity woes

22. Reps spend 70% of their time on nonselling tasks — a figure that is virtually unchanged from the 2022 State of Sales report, when reps spent 72% of their time on nonselling tasks.

23. The tasks that take the most time to complete are meeting customer budget needs, personalizing communication, and building a strong personal relationships.

Sales statistics about data and AI

Four in five sales teams use AI today. As adoption becomes widespread, sales teams are experiencing powerful benefits like accelerated growth and productivity gains. But data concerns like trust and training gaps are preventing teams from making the most out of AI, and many sales pros fear they’re missing out.

Sales teams are benefiting from AI, but obstacles remain

29. 81% of sales teams are investing in AI. Of those, about half are experimenting with AI and the other half have fully implemented it.

30. 83% of sales teams with AI saw revenue growth in the past year — versus 66% of teams without AI.

31. The top 3 areas that AI is improving are sales data quality and accuracy, understanding customer needs, and personalization for customers.

32. AI-using sales teams are 1.4x more likely to say headcount increased over the past year

33. 33% of sales ops pros using AI say they have insufficient budget, headcount, and training on how to use it.

34. Among teams currently using AI, sales ops pros say the top tactic to prepare is to consolidate tools and tech stacks.

The focus turns to building a foundation of trustworthy data

35. 98% of sales leaders say trustworthy data is more important in times of change.*

36. 94% of sales leaders say their organization should be getting more value from their data.*

37. 78% of sales leaders say they’re concerned about missing out on generative AI.*

38. Only 35% of sales professionals completely trust the accuracy of their organization’s data.

39. 73% of sales pros say generative AI introduces new security risks.**

40. 49% of sales pros say they’re not sure how to safely use generative AI at work.**

41. 39% of sales pros say accurate forecasting is hindered by poor data quality.**

42. Among sales pros who don’t trust their organization’s data, 38% say the reason is incompleteness, 37% say it’s because it’s stored in multiple formats, and 37% say it’s because it’s not regularly updated.**

*This data comes from the Salesforce Trends in Data and Analytics for Sales report.

**This data comes from the Salesforce Trends in Generative AI for Sales report.

Sales statistics about enablement and training

Sales teams are improving their training programs for direct sellers and partners alike, a key strategy for delivering more value to customers. Most reps say their company’s enablement programs prepare them to meet quota, rating these activities as the most impactful: support materials, product-specific training, and one-on-one coaching. 

Enablement is the top tactic for growth

24. The number one growth tactic for sales leaders and managers is improving sales enablement and training.

25. The top enablement activity is sales strategy reviews, which 53% of sales teams use. The least popular activity is one-on-one meetings with managers, which only 32% have regularly. 

Enablement helps reps meet quota, but isn’t perfect 

26. 76% of reps say their enablement prepares them to make quota.

27. But only 29% of reps say they are completely satisfied with enablement materials.

Enablement gets a lift from AI

28. Among sales teams who use AI for enablement, 70% offer real-time selling guidance, 67% offer customized enablement for individual reps, and 47% offer call coaching. 

Sales statistics about the employee experience

While employee retention has grown overall, it remains fragile. Sales pros say the top reason they’d consider changing jobs is a lack of career advancement opportunities, and the second top reason is uncompetitive pay or benefits. 

43. 76% of reps say leadership makes employee satisfaction a priority at their company.

44. Sales teams report an 18% average turnover over the last 12 months — down from 25% in 2022. 

45. 81% of sales professionals say their pay has increased over the past year.

46. 82% of sales reps saying they understand which metrics affect their pay. 

47. 71% of sales leaders and managers say overall budget is up.

48. 63% of sales leaders and managers say employee headcount is up.

49. 64% of sales professionals say they would leave if offered a similar job elsewhere with better pay.

50. The top reasons why sales reps are considering leaving their current job are lack of career advancement, lack of clarity from leadership, and uncompetitive pay.

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The post 50 Sales Statistics that Reveal How Great Teams Sell appeared first on Salesforce.