While at the Sales Hacker Conference last week in Boston, I listened to some seasoned professionals give advice on how to build a successful startup. I’ve been working in inside sales at Seismic for only eight months, so going to conferences like Sales Hacker have proven to be extremely helpful and enlightening. Two of the speakers really resonated with me, and the lessons I learned from them are below.
Ilya Semin, CEO at Datanyze
Ilya gave tips on emailing prospects that I found to be interesting:
- Email high-level executives on weekends. Since these people are so busy during the week, they don’t have time to get to half their emails. It is better to catch them in their downtime, when things aren’t so hectic. While it may seem invasive, chances are these executives are still working, albeit leisurely, on the weekends. Maybe they will be reading them on the golf course, while smoking a cigar and drinking a beer…just the mood I am looking to catch them in.
- Email prospects at 2pm on Thursdays. Ilya had no data to back this up, but he said that people seemed to open every email he sent at that time. I think I’ll give it a shot.
Emmanuelle Skala, VP of Sales at Influitive
Emmanuelle talked about some sales hacks that I had never thought of before.
- 60% of the sales process happens before sales reps even become involved with a prospective client. In this day and age, with access to the internet, our world seems to be shrinking. People can research companies and establish whether their offering will be a fit long before a conversation even happens. This puts the seller at a disadvantage, because we no longer have the upper hand in knowing more than our customer.
- Tailor your techniques to the customer. Most of the time, I’m trying to sell to somebody that has already heard of Seismic. This is funny, because a year, maybe even a few months ago, not too many people had even heard of Seismic. The game has changed, our name is on the map, and we need to treat every person we talk to as they have been relentlessly researching our software.
Boston’s Sales Hacker Conference proved to be very enlightening in the world of sales for this rookie. I met a lot of great people from some very interesting companies and had a blast in the process. Many thanks to all that presented, and I can’t wait to go back next year!
