3 Things Every Sales Team
Needs to Be Thinking About in 2017

Sales & marketing have been
using the same playbook since the 2000s.

1. Drive traffic to your
website.

2. Force people to stop
& fill out forms.

3. Follow up when you
feel like it.

For years, that was the
playbook. But here’s the thing…

It’s 2017. Times have changed.
Technology has grown up.

The plays in that old
sales playbook don’t work so well anymore.

So we asked our VP
of Sales, Armen, “What do you recommend that sales teams start doing differently?” Armen Zildjian VP of Sales @ Drift

Here are his top 3
things sales teams should be focusing on in 2017.

1) Adding Messaging to Your
Sales Process

So you've got the phone,
and email, and maybe you’re even using social as an outreach tool.

But these days, more and
more of your prospects are using messaging.

Just look at the numbers…

Share of Usage Time Spent
in Top 5 Email & Messaging Apps Source: Andrew Wagner. #Converted16 Conference. Figures from 2015 and U.S. only. Email Messaging 13-24 25-44 45+ 8.00% 6.00% 4.00% 2.00% 0.00% ages

The takeaway here isn’t that
you need to replace those other channels with messaging.

But with billions of people
now using messaging worldwide, it should at least be a part of your sales motion.

Pro tip for getting started:
Add live chat to your site’s pricing page & other high-intent pages.

And if your sales reps
are already using Slack, they can respond to chats right from there.

You can also integrate live
chat with your existing CRM, marketing automation software, etc.

The bottom line: You don’t
have to change your current setup in order to start using messaging for sales. You can simply plug it into what you’re already doing.

2) Fixing Your BDR
Process

Most companies are running a
BDR process that is stuck in the 2000s.

Remember the 2000s?

• Grab a list of
the latest leads. • Spend the next 2 weeks calling them. • Repeat. That process looks something like this:

From a buyer's perspective, the
timing is usually terrible when a BDR reaches out. Just think about it:

After being forced to fill
out forms, buyers don’t sit around waiting for follow-up phone calls.

That’s why on average it
takes BDRs 9 touches over 2 weeks before they're able to qualify a given lead.

These days, buyers would rather
have those sales conversations when it’s convenient for them…

…while they’re live on your
website.

So here’s a simple change:
Start having your BDRs run weekly chat shifts.

We do this at Drift
and call it chat duty. Everyone has a certain day & time when they’re responsible for responding to chats.

And remember: You don’t need
your BDRs online around the clock in order to drive results.

You can have them do
a few hours per week on chat, and then let bots do the rest.

For example, at Drift we
have a bot that qualifies leads for our sales team on our pricing page.

That way our sales team
is only talking to people after they’ve been qualified.

3) Doing Account- Based Marketing
the Right Way (So You Can Stop Leaking Money)

Account-based marketing (ABM) is amazing.
But there’s now a growing disconnect between… A) the investment companies are making in attracting leads B) the investment they’re making in engaging those leads &

Cost-per-lead (CPL) has gone up,
but sales reps aren’t always closing those pricier leads at a higher rate.

So companies are spending all
of this time & money getting the attention of these super-valuable targets…

But then when they actually
have their attention, they serve them up the same-old experience:

Even if you’re driving leads
to targeted landing pages, think about how that translates to an in-store experience…

If your best lead walked
into your store, would you give them a pen and a clipboard with a form to fill out before you started talking to them?

Or would you, ya know,
treat them like a human and say hello?

Instead of making people fill
out forms, give them the chance to chat in real-time.

With messaging, you can make
the sales experience simpler, more enjoyable, and more human.

Using this new approach, you
can give your quality ABM leads the quality experiences they deserve.

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with their customers.