We have learned that flexibility and agility are key to our success in the past year. The year was filled with uncertainty which was far from ideal for prospecting sales.   

Marketing and sales strategies are needed to adapt to economic changes, changes in demand and supply, and decreased budgets.

What new trends in sales can we expect to see in the coming months? And what strategies should we implement as the year progresses in 2022, based on the lessons learned from 2021?

Automation Is Essential

While many sales trends change, automation is the one that will remain. This is not a trend. It’s a vital element in your sales strategy that will allow you to retain a competitive edge.

EY reports that 41% have invested in accelerating automation to adapt to the changing business environment caused by the pandemic.

Automating the prospecting process to maximize results is a great way of ensuring that your efforts to prospect are efficient and don’t take too long.

Automating your sales process can be a great way to help you from providing leads to closing deals and leading them through the sales funnel.

Personalize Your Outreach 

Many people believe that automation takes away creativity and personalization. 

Automating repetitive tasks and delegating them into dedicated software will allow you to spend more time personalizing your approach.

Automation software does not mean that you should just send generic emails to your prospects or ignore your prospect research. It is important to fully understand your prospects and adapt your outreach strategy accordingly.

Choose email campaign software that lets you use information about prospects to customize your templates and create highly personalized messages.

Referring to prospects by their names and other personal information, such as company name, industry, etc., will increase your engagement. You will increase your response and engagement, as well as avoid spamming and improve deliverability.

The gap between marketing and sales can be bridged

No matter how personal and effective your marketing strategy is, it’s only the beginning of the process that will help to attract large numbers of people and increase awareness. It’s still a long road to convert leads into customers.

This requires careful lead nurturing. Personalization is crucial here, as are efficiency and speed. You need tools that allow sales reps to sell, and not just personalize.

You need to ensure that you find the best sales engagement platform which covers multiple features like call scripting, queue-based lead routing, and call recording.

Your sales team will have all the features they need and a solid data management system so that they can close more deals and get the most out of each lead.

Use a data-driven approach

Personalization is becoming more important than ever. You must have the right prospects in your pipeline. Focusing on leads that are most likely to convert into potential customers is the best thing. You need all the information you can to identify them.

Data-driven approaches will allow you to better understand who and when you should reach them. But, not all companies use data to their full potential. Even 40% of organizations report that limited visibility and scattered information negatively impact their sales organization.

You must have a central database to allow you to access this information at all times. This will make customer interactions seamless and personal.

You should take notes during customer interactions and look over the information you have. Notify your customers of any information that may be helpful. To improve your sales prospecting efficiency, you can use the data that you collected during sales to identify possible issues and tweak your ideal customer profile.

Profit from Social Selling

Social selling continues to grow in popularity. This is a sign that traditional sales approaches can be too intrusive or aggressive. Instead of looking for immediate results with “obvious” selling strategies, it is better to be subtle and gradually instill the idea into your prospects’ heads.

Social media allows you to be available to your prospects at all times, answer their questions and share relevant content. Your business should always be their first thought when they are looking for a product.

LinkedIn is the perfect platform to social sell. It allows you to share relevant content with your audience and also allows you to connect with prospects directly. You already know that LinkedIn contacts are interested in your business. By filtering through these contacts, you can organize LinkedIn and connect with prospects.

Most likely, you already have business profiles on social media platforms. You just need to figure out how to use them to locate prospects.