Promoting any business, selling products or services, and closing deals is not easy. There’s no two ways about it. It’s a constant challenge.

So any help that you can provide to your sales reps is always going to be appreciated.

One of the best ways you can help improve their lead generation, their relationship building, their deal closing and their overall potential within your organisation is by implementing a personalisation strategy.

What is a personalisation strategy?

 A personalisation strategy is all about transforming the sales funnel – from the generic, mass approach to one that’s highly targeted, highly individualised.

The traditional sales funnel focuses on attracting as many leads as possible, and then often revolves around a somewhat naïve assumption that once they’re in the funnel, they’re on the automatic path to conversion.

Unfortunately, it rarely works like this. With all the competition and demand for a prospect’s attention, leads in your sales funnel will often drop out.

A personalisation strategy works to cut through that competition and grab the attention of your prospects one by one. It puts the focus back onto each lead individually. It makes communication within your sales funnel as personal as possible.

Simply put, it’s the prospecting, messaging and selling to an individual – rather than a demographic. 

How do you implement it? 

The key thing to remember about a personalisation strategy is that it’s about being personal. One size does not fit all.

You need flexibility to allow you sales reps to be personal, and you’ll want to give them the freedom to do what they need to do to build connections with individuals.

But you also need a plan in place, along with necessary tools, to help you execute a personalisation strategy effectively. Without these, how will your sales reps improve their potential?

Here’s our top tips on getting started:

1)   Research, research, research

This is the most important part of a personalisation strategy, because you need to learn about your prospects and leads in order to be personal.

Encourage your salespeople to spend as much time as possible researching the companies they are about to connect with and the new names that drop into your pipeline. It’s time well spent.

The more they can learn about a business before they make that first contact, the easier it is to be personal. It’s also more likely they’ll advance to the next stage of the funnel. 

2)   Don’t be obvious 

Avoid the temptation to impose generic processes on personalisation, trying to maintain a mass approach. Quick, simple personalisation is easy to spot – and is likely to count against you now.

Organisations know it’s easy to mail merge a first and last name. That doesn’t count as true personalisation. Only 8% of customers would engage with marketing that address them by name only, according to Pure360 research.

Neither does a standard automatic email on a prospect’s birthday. 

3)   Don’t be creepy 

Generic birthday emails can feel a bit creepy too, if not handled delicately. Why do you need to know a prospect’s date of birth?

There’s a danger that you can go too personal with your communication and contact. Avoid prying into personal lives or indicating to prospects that you’ve looked up everything you possibly can about them.

For your sales reps, a personalisation strategy is about using what you know to tailor your messaging to a prospect. Use it to support your traditional approach. 

4)   Imagine you’re talking face to face 

And that’s a key thing to remember. Personalisation shouldn’t replace your current sales practices or the skills your salespeople have. It should enhance them.

A smart personalisation strategy is all about using tools to help you re-create the feelings and experiences of a face to face conversation. Because that’s exactly what sales people do best.

Be strategic with your personalisation to give salespeople the opportunity to thrive. It doesn’t replace the art of selling. 

5)   Use personal sales videos 

One of the biggest assets for your personalisation strategy is sales videos. They can transform the potential of your salespeople, helping them make that first connection, build a relationship and close a deal.

By recording a quick, 30 second video that speaks directly to the prospect, your salespeople will already be starting that personal conversation. They can engage a cold lead on a warmer, friendly level, and stand out against other plain, impersonal emails in their inbox.

And once your reps have established that rapport, personal sales videos help them to maintain it. They help to answer any questions a prospect might have personally, address specific concerns, and overcome hurdles.

And most importantly, when your sales reps send a personal video with their final proposal, prospects are far more likely to choose your company and will sign that contract faster.

Want to learn more about how you can make personalisation a part of your sales funnel and help your salespeople succeed? Click here to book a demo.