When it comes to sales systems, there is no topic salespeople argue about more than automation. Some salespeople love it, some say it costs them sales.
Sales leaders understand how it can save time, but many are reticent to use them for fear of turning prospects away or lowering engagement.
There’s a middle road, and it’s the Bulletproof Sales method of building sequences that are well-planned. Instead of trying to save time writing an email, sequences should be designed so they save time in the sales cycle. Jason Beck, a sales leader who understands sales automation, means making them do double-duty while leveraging technology to speed up the amount of prospects we’re able to send direct messages, mail letters, and send emails to.
Sequences do free up time for more calls and meetings, in addition to driving more calls and meetings, but only if they’re systemized.
Because we’re trimming hope from our sales strategy, we’ll use the acronym TRIM to guide us through creating a system with a trigger, ensuring it’s repeatable, building in ways to improve it and of course, ensuring it’s measurable and getting us results.
T – Trigger: To stand up a sequence/automation, Jason recommends taking a step back and defining the end. Walking backwards from conversion, what are the things you need to know about a prospect or their company to send a proposal? What questions are within your needs analysis, discovery process, and understanding prospect challenges?
In order to maximize the impact of your campaigns, ensure your sequences help you answer those questions so even if you aren’t in a phone conversation or meeting, any response from a prospect gets them closer to a sale.
R – Repeatable: Making a sequence repeatable means leveraging technology, whether it’s as low-tech as a spreadsheet or checklist or as high-tech as a CRM that automates tasks and messages for you.
Jason advised us that making sequences repeatable can be broken down into two parts – first, the text of your emails, direct messages and direct mail. It’s critical that these messages be built with the end in mind and incorporate great copywriting that’s prospect focused.
Second, making sequences repeatable means actually sending the messages, making the calls and mailing the cards. That means having a calendar or task prompt to ensure that you execute the tasks that need to be done by a human and customizing every message template to the prospect you’re sending them to and hitting ‘send’.
I – Improvable: Jason recommends testing an entire sequence all the way through one and a half times, at least, before making changes to it. Without seeing the results from an entire execution cycle, it becomes difficult to know whether to leave the entire thing alone or improve the low-performing parts.
Salespeople are quick to make changes (sometimes unintentionally), so to improve a sequence it’s imperative to know which part of the sequences aren’t performing. And that’s where we get into measuring the sequences.
M – Measurable: Jason said that tracking the metrics and tracking the people are both important.
If we’re leveraging technology to execute our sequences, it’s easy to see the results of each message we send. We can track email opens, message views and responses, and seeing how many result in a product demo or proposal.
When tracking people, Jason said it was important to set key performance indicators for salespeople using these sequences at a level that is a ‘home run’. Setting aggressive goals ensure that even if you underperform, you’ll still surpass your minimum viable goals. This will encourage them to not only use the sequences, but also be eager to provide feedback after the sequence has been used so it can get them closer to that aggressive goal.