Sales Hacking: The Ultimate Guide

You want an efficient pipeline that will help you close deals more efficiently–and whether you’re dealing with big businesses or private individuals, you have to do it fast.
Sales is always changing, but you can get ahead of the game by learning how to implement sales hacking in your everyday interactions with customers.

What is Sales Hacking?

Sales hacking is a strategy for using the resources already at your disposal more creatively. You don’t need to add resources or come up with completely new ways to do things. Instead, you can take the resources your company already offers and use them to move your customers down the pipeline more effectively.
It includes a number of strategies: using the right tools, automating vital processes, and embracing the psychological element, among others.

Where Do You Start?

With sales hacking, it’s important to start with the right tools. Inefficient tools can ruin your attempt before you even get started. There are a variety of tools on the market, and you want to be sure that you’re choosing the right tools for your sales strategy. Consider:

CrystalKnows: 

This app is designed to give you a better look at your customers’ personalities. How do they prefer to communicate? Would they rather have you reach out via phone, text message, or email? Do they have a particular communication style that they prefer?
While some prospects may prefer video content, others may still prefer the written word. With CrystalKnows, you’ll get a better look at your customers than ever before–and in turn, you’ll be able to reach them more effectively.

Ebsta Inbox:

This is a must-have tool if you’re trying to improve automation throughout your sales process. This vital app automatically downloads your sales emails to Salesforce, which means that you’ll have a better record of all of those vital customer prospects. It allows you to customize emails to send later in Gmail, so you can prepare your sales emails well ahead of time. Further,  it keeps your Salesforce email templates easily accessible in Gmail.
Also, it allows unlimited email and click tracking, improving your understanding of exactly what your customers are doing.

Metadata.io:

Metadata.io connects with Salesforce and your existing platforms to help expand your advertising reach. It doesn’t just select new target accounts and help specifically target your ads.
It also automatically conducts testing on ad placement and ad type so that you can better determine what your customers respond to and tailor your future campaigns accordingly.

BounceHelp:

Do you find yourself often wondering why customers are leaving your website? With an effective website, you can go a long way toward increasing conversions and improving the customer experience–but you can’t do that if you don’t know why customers are leaving. BounceHelp allows you to more effectively evaluate when and where customers are bouncing from your website so that you can change the experience.
Ideally, you want to automate the sales process as much as possible. There’s certainly always a human element to the sales equation. The more you can free up through automation, however, the more you can free up your sales team to deal directly with customers and handle those tasks that simply require a human, personal touch.

Know Your Customers

In order to become an effective sales hacker, you must first know your customers. When someone contacts you to learn more about your products, you want to be able to provide them with exactly the right information to help encourage them to make a purchase. Imagine a salesperson standing in a furniture showroom.
If someone comes in looking for furniture for a shared bedroom for children, you don’t want to show them an expensive master suite combination!
Likewise, as you get to know your target audience, including effective buyer personas that will help you differentiate between types of customers, you can deliver content at every level that will help move customers through the funnel and encourage them to make purchase decisions. Ask:

• Who are your buyers? Do you market, for example, to a specific position within a company? A family in a particular stage of life? What do you know about your customers?
• What do your buyers want? They’re coming to you for a reason. How can you offer them what they want?
• What are your buyers’ pain points? This may be different from what your buyers think they want. Get to know their pain points. Solve problems for them that they may not even realize that they have. Not only will this build trust, but it will also build their appreciation for your products.

A Customer’s Point of View

Once you know your customers, take the time to look at the entire process from their point of view. You want to know all the details of the customer experience. If you were the customer, would you appreciate the connections made by your company, from the emails you send to the calls you make? Is your content genuinely beneficial to your end user? Equally importantly, what is the customer experience with your product line? Is there a way you can improve the customer experience?
When you look at things from your customers’ perspective, your view starts to change. Often, you’ll realize deficits in your sales process that you never saw before–and in many cases, making those small shifts can improve your sales hack capability and send your numbers soaring.
Also, remember that not all customers are alike. In order to effectively answer your customers’ pain points, list segmentation is critical. Like that furniture store, you have different customers who are looking for a variety of different things.
List segmentation allows you to provide each different type of buyer with exactly what they seem to be looking for, rather than sending out generic marketing offers to everyone on your list without taking individual needs into consideration.

Know Your Metrics

Your company gathers a great deal of data about your sales every month. They know exactly who among the salespeople is selling high and who is selling low.
They know which products are doing well and which ones are under-performing. Likewise, you should pay attention to key sales metrics. It’s not just about meeting your numbers each month! Pay attention to:

• Obstacles in the sales process. Is there a particular point in the sales process when customers are more likely to fall away?
• The lifetime value of a customer. Do customers tend to make one purchase, then not come back, or are they likely to become loyal to your business?
• How long you need to spend with each customer before they make a purchase. This may include specific contacts from a salesperson as well as emails or time spent on the website.
• How many customers are in the sales pipeline. Does your team actually have access to enough customers to meet your numbers, or are you struggling every month due to a shortage in the market?
• Customer acquisition cost. How much is it costing the company to bring in each new customer? How can you help streamline that process?

Savvy salespeople don’t just look at their own metrics. They also pay attention to what others within the department are able to accomplish. Company-wide numbers matter, especially if you’re trying to learn how to sales hack more effectively.

Collaborate with Marketing

In many companies, sales and marketing are two drastically different departments–and there may be some more-than-friendly competition between them, especially if resources are short and you find yourself with competing views of what will help customers the most. If you really want to get to know your customers better and improve your numbers, however, try collaborating with the marketing department.
Get to know things from their perspective. Check their metrics. Work together to move customers through the sales funnel. Often, you will discover that the marketing team has a unique perspective on your customers and, as such, can help you make more effective decisions.

Add Value

Ultimately, customers are looking for products that will add value to their lives in some way. You’ve already looked at who your customers are and what they really want from your product. Now, take the time to consider how you can add value to your customers. Take a look at your existing products.
You may not have to alter them in any way to actively add value to your customer–you just have to let them know about it! Other times, connecting with customer service can help you better understand what customers really need from the product and provide it accordingly. Remember, listening to your customers is key.
As you listen, you’ll get a better idea of what customers really want, which will enable you to provide their desires for them instead of missing the mark. Adding value is meaningless if you add “value” that customers don’t really want.
On the other hand, when you add things that are genuinely useful for your customers, they’re more likely to be satisfied–both with this product and with the ones you offer in the future.

Learn More About Sales Hacking

Are you ready to start sales hacking, improving your numbers and helping you meet your goals as never before? Start by downloading this free trial of Inbox.
Over 10,000 Salesforce users are already using this add-on to improve their numbers and meet their goals. It installs in just 10 seconds, and in no time at all, you could be using it to help you meet your numbers.