A strong sales strategy plan creates the foundation for a cohesive and successful sales organization.

Sales strategies and initiatives also align salespeople on shared goals and empower them to do their best work — keeping them happy and successful, too.

In this guide, we’ll dig into some sales strategies and initiatives that helps you generate more leads and close more deals.

Most strategies involve a detailed plan of best practices and processes set by management.

The most important component of choosing and implementing your sales strategy is your customer. For this reason, a sales strategy shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all. Every customer is different; therefore, different organizations should draw up and implement different strategies.

Let’s cover some popular sales strategies — including inbound sales.

1. Properly Researching and Qualifying Prospects

Even the strongest sales strategy can’t compensate for targeting the wrong customers. To ensure your team is selling to the right type of customer, encourage them to research and qualify prospects before attempting to discuss your product. They’ll find that more work on the front end can lead to smoother closing conversations later on. 

Outline what criteria a prospect meets in order to qualify them as a high-probability potential customer. This should be based on a prospect’s engagement history and demographics.

2. Cold Calling

In Sales, cold calling is unavoidable. But it doesn’t have to be miserable. There are a number of cold calling techniques that really work, including our bulletproof cold calling template. Have your sales team practice cold calls on one another before making actual calls; it’ll boost their confidence and get them comfortable with the script.

3. Giving a Sales Presentation or Demonstration

Pitching can be the make or break moment in a sales strategy. The sales pitch has to be a powerful, compelling presentation …  but it also can’t come on too strong lest your team scare away the prospect. Study the elements of a successful sales pitch and have your team practice these amongst themselves, too. Better yet, test your presentations on a few loyal customers and gather feedback from their perspective; they can speak to prospect point-of-view.

Inbound sales teams should lead with a tailored message to the buyer from their specific context or point-of-view rather than a generic elevator pitch.

4. Closing Techniques

How you close a sale is just as important as how you start the conversation. From the next steps you discuss to the phrases you use, closing is a very important sales strategy. Encourage clear, concise, and firm closing techniques to ensure your sales team sets the right expectations and delivers on their promises.

Keeping a list of proven, go-to closing techniques will help salespeople routinely win deals. Such techniques can include the now or never close, “If you commit now, I can get you a 20% discount,” or the question close, “In your opinion, does what I am offering to solve your problem?”

5. Account Management Policies

Once a deal is done, there’s no need for a sales strategy … right? Wrong. Account management is an incredibly important part of the sales process, both to encourage loyal, happy customers and to leverage cross-selling and upselling opportunities.

In addition to these, there are two important types of sales methodologies: inbound and outbound.

In outbound sales — the legacy system of most sales teams — companies base their sales strategy on seller actions. They rely on manually-entered data to monitor the sales pipeline and coach their salespeople, and they run sales and marketing independently, creating a disjointed experience for buyers.

In inbound sales — the modern methodology for sales teams — companies base their sales process on buyer actions. They automatically capture seller and buyer data to monitor the pipeline and coach salespeople, and they align sales and marketing, creating a seamless experience for buyers.

In the past, buyers suffered through evaluating a product and deciding whether to buy it using only the information provided to them by the seller.

Today, all of the information needed to evaluate a product is available online and buyers are no longer dependent on the seller.

If today’s sales teams don’t align on the modern buyer’s process and fail to add value beyond the information already available to the buyer, the buyer then has no reason to engage with a sales team.

Inbound sales benefits buyers at each stage of the buyer process: awareness, consideration, and decision.

Inbound sales teams help the buyer become aware of potential problems or opportunities, discover strategies to solve the buyer’s problems, evaluate whether the salesperson can help the buyer with the problem, and then purchase the solution. They’re helpful and trustworthy, creating partnerships rather than power struggles.

Sales Planning: Building a Sales Strategy Plan

Every sales team should have a sales strategy plan outlining its goals, best practices, and processes designed to align the team and create consistency.

Here are the essential components of a sales plan:

1. Organizational Goals

Each goal should be specific and measurable, such as “to sell 150% of the projected sales quota in Q2.”

2. Customer Profile and Product Offering

This entails a detailed profile of the target customer — a buyer persona — including their company size, psychographics, and buying process. The product offering should outline the product benefits and features, with emphasis on those that solve the target customers’ pain points.

3. Hiring, Onboarding, and Compensation

Developing a list of criteria and attributes for sales managers to screen for when interviewing candidates is essential to recruiting and retaining top talent.

The next step is to develop a training and onboarding program that will prepare them to start selling effectively and efficiently, followed by a compensation and rewards plan that will motivate them to continue performing.

4. Demand Generation

This section should include a detailed plan for how to target potential customers in order to increase awareness of your offering, such as using paid social acquisition channels, creating e-books and hosting webinars, hosting events, etc.

5. Performance and Measurement Procedures

Time to track! Once the infrastructure is set up, create a procedure for tracking performance on the individual, team, and company levels. This measurement can take the form of quarterly KPIs, weekly dashboards, monthly reviews, or some combination of all three. This section should also highlight the specific metrics that the team should focus on.

6. Sales Activities

This should span everything from the sales presentation to closing techniques. We discussed some of these activities in the “Sales Strategies” list above. 

Featured Resource: Sales Plan Template

Download the Template for Free

Sales Initiatives

Businesses should always be looking for ways to innovate their approach to sales. Here are some creative things sales reps and teams can do on their own to jumpstart their performance, stand out from competition, and boost team productivity.

Refresh your buyer personas regularly.

Buyer personas inform all kinds of activity at your business, including (and most importantly) who your marketing and sales teams pursue as customers. However, as things in the market and at your company shift, your buyer personas can become out-of-date — which can cause your sales team’s work to become stagnant and ineffective. Work with your marketing team to refresh your buyer personas to best equip your sales team for prospecting and outreach.

Actively align Sales and Marketing.

Speaking of Marketing, create and honor a service-level agreement (SLA) between your Sales and Marketing teams. This agreement will detail how each team can support each other, contribute to the other’s goals, and honor boundaries in a way that still moves prospects toward conversion.

Download our free SLA Template for Sales & Marketing to align Sales & Marketing goals and activities.

Use a CRM.

Successful sales teams and strategies require the right tools. HubSpot free CRM eliminates manual work and streamlines your sales activity and data. It also keeps your sales team up-to-date about all relevant activity with your prospects — an important transparency factor that helps motivate and align your team.

Listen to your prospects.

Just because prospects aren’t customers doesn’t mean they can’t provide valuable feedback. As you move prospects through their sales funnel and (especially) when they drop off, ask for candid feedback about their experience with your team and products. You may learn something that can help convert them or your next prospect.

Invest in sales development and team-building.

The very best sales teams not only align with customers but also with their coworkers. Sales is a difficult career and can lead to burnout without proper encouragement and camaraderie. Invest in sales development and team-building activities to keep your sales team feeling satisfied and supported.