The sales process has evolved to buyer enablement. Successful sales professionals must be keenly aware of their target audience’s pain points, motivations, and needs. No longer do sales pros need to pepper a prospect with a bunch of “discovery” questions. Through buyer enablement, they simply need to meet a prospect where they are and help them along on the buyer’s journey.

This sales guide will help you improve the buyer’s journey — and help improve your own sales journey.

It’s understandable that businesses, especially startups and scaleups, make missteps when crafting their sales strategies.

Some businesses, for instance, might hire a bunch of sales development representatives at an early stage. Other businesses might bring aboard a vice president of sales before they’ve scaled up. Yet other businesses might not adequately pin down their market position or sales methods.

“A strong, adaptable sales organization thrives on a collaborative sales strategy that adjusts to market changes as it drives retention and growth,” declares Gartner, a technology research and consulting firm.

In the sales strategy category, let’s first look at sales personnel.

Welcoming a crop of sales development representatives or a vice president of sales might seem like a wise move, but this makes sense only if the timing is right. When developing sales strategies, startups and scaleups should initially focus on recruiting subject matter experts (SMEs) who are skilled at sales. Looking into hiring sales development representatives or a VP of sales can come later. You might even consider outsourcing some or all of your sales functions until, for instance, your startup has improved its cash flow.

The Importance of Subject Matter Expertise

So, why should you zero in on SMEs when it’s time to scale up your sales team? (And, no, your startup shouldn’t prematurely beef up the sales team from the get-go). Customers see SMEs — people who possess in-depth knowledge about a certain field — as trusted advisors rather than traditional salespeople.

SMEs “can help navigate the nuances of your field, providing invaluable insights for industry-specific research, process improvement, and project management,” according to the ClickUp productivity platform. “Since they’ve spent years honing their knowledge in a specific area, they can provide unique insights into a niche industry problem that you may otherwise struggle with.”

Before SMEs can start selling, they must figure out their organization’s market position. This could involve one of the following four moves:

• Augmenting a product or service. Through augmentation, you’re adding a feature or service. For a sales professional, augmentation provides the easiest sales path.
• Displacing a product or service. This is a bit trickier than augmentation. When a product or service is displaced, it’s being moved to a different category. Think of it this way: You want to buy the most up-to-date mattress, yet you don’t want to get rid of the mattress you bought three years ago for $3,000. So, you move the 3-year-old mattress to a guest bedroom — thus displacing it ​​— and put the new mattress in your primary bedroom.
• Replacing a product or service. When a customer is replacing a product or service, they’re ripping out something they spent money, time, and energy on and substituting it for something new. It requires a significant value proposition for a customer to shift into replacement mode.
• Disrupting a product or service. Innovative products and services are rare breeds, resulting in them being the toughest to sell. Uber disrupted the taxi industry with its rideshare service, for example. The company’s founders and investors assumed a high level of risk and faced a long road to profitability. But for truly disruptive products and services like Uber, the upside can be enormous if they attract enough customers.

Coupled with the market-position process is the need to settle on the right sales model (or models). Let’s examine the four types of sales models that your organization should consider:

The Four Types of Sales Models

Direct sales

Using this approach, businesses market and sell their products and services directly to other businesses. This is the most common B2B sales method. But it’s a time-consuming, costly method, given the time and money it takes to hire salespeople as well as high turnover in the sales force.

Channel sales

Channel sales involve offering complementary products or services through third-party companies. For example, Sellerant is a certified HubSpot HubSpot Solutions Partner, packaging HubSpot technology as part of our offerings. HubSpot’s AI-powered platform helps businesses connect their marketing, sales, and customer service functions.

Marketplace sales

Through a marketplace, a business sells its products or services alongside products or services from other businesses. For example, HubSpot and Salesforce sell other companies’ apps in their marketplaces that complement the brands’ core offerings. This method requires little in the way of direct sales unless high-dollar purchases are involved.

Master agent sales

Under this sales approach, a reseller or managed service provider assembles a toolbox of items for customers. In effect, this serves as a one-stop shop. For example, a systems integrator might combine various tech systems and apps into an efficient, uniform system.

If you skip a step when you’re baking, your cookies or cake might wind up being inedible. Similarly, if you skip a step in the sales process, your efforts could flop. Therefore, it’s critical to not overlook the four phases of the sales process. But that’s not enough. You also must effectively execute all four phases.

All of these phases align with your sales funnel. The funnel, which mirrors the customer journey, narrows as a salesperson moves from lots of prospects to a few closed-won or closed-lost deals.

Not all sales organizations use a traditional sales funnel, though. Some rely on a customer-centered approach known as the sales flywheel to generate inbound leads. Under the flywheel model, a business seeks to attract, engage, and delight customers.

“With the flywheel, you use the momentum of your happy customers to drive referrals and repeat sales. Basically, your business keeps spinning,” HubSpot explains.

Four Phases of the Sales Process

Now, let’s dive into the four phases of the sales process.

1. First Touch

The first phase of the sales process involves what’s known as the “first touch.” This could be inbound communication, such as an initial phone call from a prospective customer to a sales professional, or outbound communication, such as an introductory email from a sales professional to a prospective customer.

The first touch enables a sales professional to “establish trust, provide value, gather key information, and perhaps even secure a follow-up meeting,” according to HubSpot.

In many cases, an introductory email initiated by a sales pro yields the best results. But that doesn’t mean you should overlook outreach methods such as a phone call or even a mailed letter.

Whatever the communication method, inbound lead generation typically delivers better results than outbound lead generation. Inbound leads are those that come to you, while outbound leads are those that you initiate.

2. Lead Qualification

Whatever “first touch” method you choose, your goal is to determine whether a legitimate buying opportunity exists. As a sales professional, you want to ensure the potential customer has the need, budget, intent, and motivation to move forward.

This step is called lead qualification.

To help guide you through this step, consider relying on the BANT framework for qualifying prospects. BANT stands for:

• Budget. How much money is the prospect prepared to spend?
• Authority. Who’s the ultimate decision-maker? Can the person you’re communicating with make the purchase?
• Need. Can your product or service solve the prospect’s problem?
• Timing. How urgent is the need to buy your product or service?

Pro tip: A savvy sales professional will recognize when a lead is properly qualified. How? By listening for validation or affirmation from the prospect. If a sales pro doesn’t hear any words of validation or affirmation, then the lead probably hasn’t been properly qualified. Let’s say a prospect asks, “Can I see a demo of your product?” This affirmative question signals that a sales pro is dealing with a properly qualified lead.

3. Demonstration or Presentation 

Once a properly qualified lead is in the pipeline, the next step is a product or service demonstration or presentation. The demo or presentation should be a high-level overview of your product or service, not an in-depth exploration.

For instance, you might walk a prospect through a slide deck that goes over your company’s software platform.

In this example, the slide deck should begin with a sales impact statement — a short elevator pitch about your platform. In addition, the slide deck should highlight how the platform works, along with the value it brings and the platform’s costs. The slide deck should end with a strong conclusion about why your platform is the ideal solution for the prospect’s business. Be sure to sprinkle images, testimonials, and case studies into the slide deck to underscore the platform’s value.

4. Delivery of the Offer

Once the demonstration or presentation has been completed, it’s time to put together your sales offer. The offer should summarize:

• Pricing
• Implementation
• Onboarding
• Terms and conditions

As part of creating and delivering the offer, always ask for the customer’s business. Even the best sales representatives forget to do this.

Once the customer has accepted the offer, be sure they’re set up for onboarding, and make the hand-off from the sales team to the customer success team as smooth as possible. After all, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

The E3 Offer

Pro tip: Make sure your offer follows the E3 principle. It should be easy to understand, easy to try, and easy to buy.

Understand:

• Clearly state what you’re offering.
• Define outcomes within a specific timeframe.
• Demonstrate ROl by showing value.
• Highlight measurable success metrics.

Try:

• Ensure simple setup for easy adoption.
• Offer self-service options for convenience.
• Incorporate a timeline to illustrate the buyer’s journey and results.
• Tailor the experience to meet the customer’s unique needs.

Buy:

• Prepare the offer for key decision-makers and understand their roles.
• Offer simple pricing and service options.
• Provide fair contract terms.
• Maintain good documentation and responsive support.

During the California Gold Rush, which lasted from 1848 to 1855, thousands of prospectors searched for nuggets of the highly coveted yellow metal. Our modern-day prospectors are sales professionals who search for golden leads.

Sales prospecting unlocks potential targets for selling your startup’s or scaleup’s products or services. Unfortunately, prospective customers typically aren’t knocking down your door. You’ve got to go out and find them.

Before you hunt for prospects, though, you must gain a firm grasp of your target market:

• Who are they?
• Where are they?
• What are they thinking about?
• What are they worrying about?
• How are they spending their time?
• Where do they consume information?

This type of market research narrows your prospect list so that you’re not wasting time reaching out to folks who have no interest in your products or services.

Once you’ve identified your target market, it’s time to curate a list of people who are potential buyers of your products or services. Use database tools such as Apollo or ZoomInfo to find names and contact information for these people. You can even mine LinkedIn for this information.

Rather than storing this data in spreadsheets or emails, invest in customer relationship management (CRM) software from companies like HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zoho. CRM software enables businesses to organize and track data and interactions involving prospects and customers. Fortunately, you don’t have to spend a ton of money to buy robust CRM software.

Now that you’ve collected prospect and customer data, and have loaded into your CRM software, you can start outreach efforts via routes such as email and LinkedIn.

Initially, each outreach message should zero in on the prospect (and not on you) — the problems they’re experiencing, how these problems are affecting their business, and your knowledge of solutions to these problems. Artificial intelligence can help simplify this process, but it shouldn’t drive the process.

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It’s one thing to have a lead in hand. It’s another thing to have a qualified lead in hand. As a sales professional, it’s your job to qualify leads so you can determine whether prospects are legitimate and are prepared to make a buying decision.

Lead qualification plays a big role in sales efficiency — getting the most with the least amount of time, effort, and cost.

Savvy subject matter experts know the right qualifying questions to ask in order to weed out weak leads and focus on strong leads.

HubSpot offers these examples of good open-ended qualifying questions:

• Initial question: “I see your business is in the widget industry. What has been your biggest challenge when keeping up with your competition this year?”
• Follow-up question: “I see. How do you plan to tackle your competitors’ increasing market share next quarter?”
• Final question: “That’s an excellent plan! You have a pretty small team, so launching that plan could prove challenging. Which types of tools will you leverage for successfully executing your plan?”

These sorts of questions can prompt answers that help determine whether a prospect is qualified or unqualified. As noted by digital software provider Adobe, lead qualification “is a critical part of any sales strategy.”

It’s so critical, in fact, that failing to properly qualify leads could cause your startup or scaleup to miss out on revenue. It’s estimated that more than two-thirds (67%) of lost sales arise from sales representatives improperly qualifying leads.

If you effectively qualify leads, you can eliminate those that aren’t a good fit (at least for now). As a result, you don’t end up wasting prospects’ time or your time. You can certainly revisit an unqualified lead three months, six months or 12 months down the road. But for the time being, this isn’t a lead you’d want to chase.

Of course, effective lead qualification can also generate prospects that are worth pursuing now. In effect, qualified leads represent a pot of gold.

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The B2B sales process keeps evolving. At one time, B2B salespeople relied heavily on the “push, push, push” of persuading a customer to buy a product or service. Now, we’re witnessing a shift toward a fresh approach — “enable, enable, enable.”

When looking at enablement, it’s important to understand sales enablement and buyer enablement.

HubSpot defines sales enablement as providing your sales team with the resources required to sign more deals. These resources might include content, information, knowledge, and tools to help your organization effectively sell products and services.

(It’s worth noting here that a survey by the Sales Enablement Collective showed nearly 4 in 10 sales professionals were unsure what sales enablement is or does. Bottom line: You and your sales team likely would benefit from a basic course about sales enablement.)

What can you do to boost your organization’s sales enablement? Among the steps you might take are:

• Incorporating AI into the sales process.
• Streamlining your tech stack.
• Arming your team with sales analytics.

Sales enablement, which is part of the internal sales process, goes hand in hand with buyer enablement, which is part of the external sales process.

These days, smart, successful B2B salespeople practice the art of buyer enablement. Through buyer enablement, salespeople ride along on the customer journey, equipping a customer with the knowledge, resources, and tools needed to make wise purchases. Think of these enablers as guides who help customers trek through the B2B sales jungle.

Customers will come to you when they’re ready to come to you. And when they do come to you, it’s imperative to help customers understand your offer. What will your product or service do for them? How much will all of this cost? What ROI can they expect?

“I believe buyer enablement offers a more effective path to engage prospects and convert them into loyal customers,” observed Maran Hogan, CEO of Red Branch Media, a marketing and advertising agency.

The same observation could be applied to sales enablement.

Both sales enablement and buyer enablement are designed to move sales teams away from the outdated “push, push, push” strategy. This strategy irritates potential and current customers. And an irritated potential or current customer might scratch your company off its list and do business with one of your competitors — competitors where salespeople could be well-coached advisors who enable buyers to grasp the value of your products and services.

To underscore how critical buyer enablement is, consider these two statistics:

• A survey of B2B buyers conducted by consulting firm Bain & Co. found that 80% to 90% of them already have a set of vendors in mind before they dive into vendor research.
• 90% of B2B buyers questioned by Bain ultimately pick a vendor from the list they created on Day One.

If your startup or scaleup is handling B2B sales the right way, your salespeople are relating to buyers and their needs. These salespeople are providing a service. They’re not hellbent on meeting sales quotas.

For salespeople to be viewed as customer-friendly advisors rather than money-driven sales pros, sales enablement and buyer enablement must be key aspects of your B2B sales process. Otherwise, your

Zig-zagging across the U.S., pipeline networks transport vital oil and natural gas. Pipelines are also vital in the sales sector. Simply put, a sales pipeline organizes and tracks prospective buyers as they move through various stages in the purchasing journey.

Most businesses rely on CRM software to monitor their sales pipelines. Among other benefits, a sales pipeline can help forecast revenue, project cash flow, pinpoint sales snags, fill sales gaps, and identify top sales performers and poor sales performers.

Salesforce outlines the seven stages of a sales pipeline:

1. Prospecting.
2. Lead qualification.
3. Demonstration or presentation.
4. Proposal.
5. Negotiation and commitment.
6. Closing of sale.
7. Post-purchase customer service.

According to Salesforce, data to include in a sales pipeline includes:

• Lead source.
• Industry.
• Key decision-makers.
• Deal size.
• Probability of deal closing.

Proper management of sales pipelines is particularly crucial for startups and entrepreneurial companies, according to Jeremy Vickers, associate vice president of innovation and economic development at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

“Sales are critical in all business ventures, but for startups, there is no ‘next quarter’ to cover up mistakes,” Vickers says. “If you can’t manage your pipeline, you’re going to be flying blind as you try to grow your company.”

Gartner, the technology research and consulting firm, cautions that building and managing a sales pipeline is tougher than ever as buyers shift toward self-guided digital buying tools. Three-fourths of B2B buyers prefer a sales experience free of sales representatives over a sales experience dealing directly with sales representatives, according to Gartner.

“To compensate for this shift, many sales leaders demand a higher volume of activity from the sales organization to make up for lower engagement rates — more calls, more emails and more social touches,” says Gartner. “This can create tension among sellers and marketing partners, not only because bandwidth is limited, but because more touches lead to diminishing returns and potentially annoyed prospects and customers.”

In light of this new dynamic, it’s more important than ever to create and maintain a sales pipeline that properly serves salespeople and sales prospects.

At its core, a sales forecast predicts what sales will be for a certain period, according to HubSpot. The best forecasts include metrics regarding weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual sales projections, along with metrics such as conversion rates, dropoff rates, number of potential deals, and deal values.

“Most sales forecasts draw from historical sales data and take demand fluctuations into account,” HubSpot says. “While these can be created manually, most firms use some type of sales forecasting software to help automate the task.”

Among the advantages of creating sales forecasts are the ability to:

• Monitor progress.
• Celebrate successes.
• Detect areas for improvement.
• Make changes in workforce and resource allocations.

Pro tip: Sales forecasting can’t be done well if your organization hasn’t embraced sales KPIs. Sales KPIs track key data points like the number of leads generated in a given period, the number of potential deals in the sales pipeline and the number of deals closed. These and other KPIs equip leaders of startups and scaleups with valuable information that contributes to better decision-making.

The most effective sales KPIs are:

• Number of outreach attempts.
• Number of conversations that turned into conversions.
• Length of the sales cycle, or how much time goes by from the first contact to the final decision.

A free template for producing sales forecasts can be downloaded from the HubSpot website. Or you can try forecasting software sold by a number of vendors.

No matter the setup, sales forecasting is hardly a perfect art or science.

A survey by Xactly, a provider of revenue software, found that four-fifths of sales and finance leaders had missed a quarterly sales forecast in the past year. Worse yet, more than half of them had missed at least two quarterly sales forecasts during the same period.

Arnab Mishra, CEO of Xactly, calls the accuracy of forecasting “the sales industry’s biggest hurdle.”

You and your sales team can overcome this hurdle, though. Some of the ways to do this include:

• Investing in technology, such as AI-enabled software, that sharpens your organization’s sales forecasting.
• Increasing automation of pipeline data.
• Boosting collaboration between the sales and finance teams.

Regardless of how you forecast sales, make sure you do it accurately, consistently, and effectively. Otherwise, your organization could face dire consequences.

“I’ve seen sales organizations without detailed forecasts, or with sloppy forecasts, file for bankruptcy when their cash flow predictions failed,” says Aja Frost, director of global growth at HubSpot. “Some had to lay off a huge chunk of their staff just to remain operational.”

Welcome to the new frontier in sales — the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) to the sales process.

If you swallow all the hype, you’d think that AI is radically transforming how salespeople do business. To some extent, it is triggering major changes in the sales sector.

For instance, sales AI can simplify the sales process. Careful use of AI can save time and energy when you’re researching target markets for your products and services. This can enable a sales professional to devote more time to nurturing relationships with current and prospective clients, and to closing deals.

However, sales AI doesn’t erase the need for humans to guide the sales process.

Harnessing AI in Sales

At its core, the sales process is anchored by building and maintaining relationships. This is particularly true if you’re dealing with high-value offers in B2B sales. Nonetheless, sales AI deserves a seat at the sales table.

What sales AI doesn’t deserve is a key role in outreach. For instance, sales professionals should not rely on AI to put email outreach on autopilot. In other words, sales professionals should never use AI to crank out “spray and pray” sales emails that all sound alike. Many recipients can tell the difference between a genuine, well-crafted, human-created sales email and a cookie-cutter sales email generated by AI. And if they do notice the difference, they’ll probably be less inclined to buy the product or service you’re selling.

Don’t let technology do the job that you should be doing. Yes, AI can help you identify prospects for sales outreach. But AI shouldn’t be steering your outreach. You’re one who should be sitting in the driver’s seat.

Another reason you shouldn’t put too much stock in AI: Artificial intelligence draws from an existing pool of information. It’s information that’s already out there, not information that’s updated in real time. AI can’t determine what’s going on right now with your prospects. But you can.

So, while AI can be beneficial, you shouldn’t lean on this technology like a crutch. This technology can and should supplement your sales strategy, but it shouldn’t drive your sales strategy. For example, artificial intelligence can automate certain tasks or help identify sales prospects, boosting productivity and efficiency. Yet AI can’t shake a potential client’s hand or close a sales deal. The human touch still matters in B2B sales.

With AI eventually automating “most procedural or routine tasks, sellers will have more time to center on what they tell us is most important: building trust-based relationships with customers,” the McKinsey & Co. consulting firm points out. “They can focus on functions that require empathy, deep critical thinking, and complex problem-solving skills, such as serving as customer advocates, supporting clients through complex decisions, and helping customers realize value from the products or services that they’re selling.”

It might take some time for salespeople to catch up with AI, though.

A survey of sales professionals by the RAIN Group Center for Sales Research found that just one-fifth of them relied heavily or frequently on AI sales tools. While it’s understandable that some sales professionals are reluctant to depend too heavily on AI sales tools, it makes little sense that the vast majority of sales professionals occasionally or rarely used these tools — or didn’t use them at all. Sales professionals who don’t carefully embrace AI in some form run the risk of being outdistanced by their competitors.

If you need just one reason to at least test AI sales tools, consider the findings of a survey by Gartner. The survey showed B2B sales professionals who effectively used AI tools were 3.7 times more likely to meet their sales quotas than those who didn’t use AI tools. That’s a powerful testament to the value of AI sales tools.

Just keep in mind that AI sales tools shouldn’t dominate the sales process. They should complement the sales process.

A report from HubSpot notes that many salespeople worry about AI jeopardizing their jobs, with the technology acting as an independent salesperson. That may happen well into the future, but it’s not something to obsess about right now.

The report concluded that “AI-powered sales is already becoming a reality. To keep up, we’ll need to adapt with a curious mindset and an optimistic outlook.”

Curiosity and optimism can serve B2B sales professionals well as we navigate the new frontier of sales AI. Behaving as if sales AI is not here to stay is the wrong way to explore this new frontier. cited by CRMSearch.com indicates the average ROI for a CRM is 211%.

In this sales guide, we identified eight key elements of sales:

• Sales Strategies
• Sales Process
• Sales Prospecting
• Sales Lead Qualification
• Sales Enablement
• Sales Pipeline
• Sales Forecasting
• Sales AI

Of course, this guide doesn’t cover everything there is to know about sales. Entire books cover the topic. But this guide does highlight some keys for startups and scaleups to build a successful sales program:

• Don’t hire a bunch of sales professionals at the outset. Instead, gradually add salespeople to your team. Consider outsourcing at least some of your sales functions during the early stages of your business before committing to new hires.
• Properly execute lead qualification to generate hefty sales rather than weak sales. Never dismiss the importance of lead qualification to the health of your startup or scaleup.
• Do your homework. Conducting market research whittles down your prospect list so that you’re not wasting time contacting businesses that have no interest in your products or services.
• Ask the right questions to unearth the best leads. Effective salespeople know how to pose questions that draw vital information from prospects.
• Carry out sales prospecting accurately, consistently, and effectively. Without solid sales prospecting, your startup or scaleup could miss revenue targets or even be forced to shut down.
• Stay on top of overseeing your sales pipeline. As one expert says, if you’re unable to adequately manage your pipeline, “you’re going to be flying blind as you try to grow your company.”
• Use AI as one tool in your toolkit. Don’t let it drive your sales process.

Successful sales programs are unique to each company, but following a framework for planning, developing, and growing your sales success can help you get there with more predictability and better outcomes. If you’re interested in working with a trusted partner who’s successfully developed sales strategies for startups and scaleups across many industries, let Sellerant be your guide to ultimate sales success.