8 Steps to Develop a Sales Strategy

Daisy Shevlin

8 steps for a winning sales strategy

1. Learn what attracts your target customers
2. Could you add self-serve?
3. Organize your sales team
4. Create your ideal customer profile
5. Be the guide for your prospects
6. Consider this when moving upmarket
7. Experiment with your sales strategy
8. Only use channel partners you accelerate growth

Your business has a game-changing product. It’s different and effective. You know it’ll stand out from the crowd. 💫

So, the next question is, how do you ensure your outbound sales team can successfully sell everything it offers?

The answer is: Develop a sales strategy that can generate leads, answer questions from prospects, and close more sales.

Below we’ll get into creating an effective sales strategy for the long haul.

What is a sales strategy?

A sales strategy is your business’s plan to maximize product or service sales.

This strategy uses principles based on a company’s competitive advantage to gain new customers, as well as to grow their current ones. It doesn’t matter whether your sales team is 5 or 500 employees; having an effective strategy is necessary. Without it, your team will struggle to fill the sales pipeline and close deals quickly.

Your sales team should use it as a guide to set themselves up for success. 🏆

When developing a sales strategy, ensure it aligns with other elements like your target market. For example, details of your ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer persona. Not to mention sales motions, go-to-market positioning, and other components.

Inbound vs. outbound sales strategies

• Inbound sales: This is about letting your customers come to you. They seek you out from the demand you create through various channels.
• Outbound sales: This is where SDRs actively seek out opportunities. Outbound sales means you can capture a large segment of the market that might not be openly looking to buy but would be open to it if someone were to educate them about other options.

The importance of a clearly defined sales strategy

This doesn’t happen overnight. That’s why it’s so important that your team puts in the time and effort to build one. A defined sales strategy with clear and achievable metrics is crucial for the success of your sales team and the entire organization.

Regardless of whether the strategy is through social selling or product-oriented selling, you need a defined approach to drive leads and build customer relationships.

The strategy should highlight:

1. How you will sell across different platforms
2. And, develop strategic partnerships with other businesses

Doing this will ensure that all sales reps are on the same page and understand how to use the strategy.

Effective sales strategies and styles for 2024

Value-based selling

The days of quantity over quality are over. 🫡

Core characteristics of value-led selling include:

• Actively looking for prospects that aren’t in the market to buy right now.
• Adding quality prospects to the pipeline.
• Sending hyper-personalized outreach.
• Following up regularly with prospects.
• Reps position themselves as experts.

PACTT and SPIN selling

PACTT stands for:

• Pain - What your prospects challenges are.
• Authority - How much buy-in you have in the account.
• Consequence - The pain point the solution will solve if it’s bought.
• Target profile - Considers prospects that might not be ready to buy yet.
• Timing - Looks at the budget cycle, annual plans or end-of-year.

SPIN selling stands for:

• Situation - What is the prospect's current situation?
• Problem - Is there a specific problem that you can help solve for your prospect?
• Implication - What would the implementation of your product look like?
• Need-payoff - Is your product right and is the prospect ready to buy right now?

This approach also enables reps to lead with value.

Social selling

There are so many channels to connect with prospective customers now. Social selling is such an effective channel for reps. It almost goes hand-in-hand with your marketing strategies - SDRs become mini-marketers!

8 steps to develop a winning sales strategy

1. Learn what it takes to attract your target customers

Step one is understanding how to attract your target customer 🎯

To do this, you’ll need to pinpoint the best way to reach these customers for the best possible outcome, which is an increase in revenue.

2. Could you add self-serve?

This next step boils down to your average contract value. It may be challenging to have outbound sales in the equation if it’s on the lower end.

3. Organize your sales team

Create a list of attributes and responsibilities for sales managers to screen for. This will help them when they interview candidates for specific roles.

4. Create your ideal customer profile

Your team needs to create a detailed profile of the customer looking at company size, industry, geography, legality, and service level agreements (SLAs).

5. Be the guide for your prospects

It’s in your team’s best interest to act like an advisor to your prospects. Always offer a free demo of the product or service so prospects can see what is being offered in action.

6. Consider this before moving upmarket

Make sure your team stays deliberate as your business moves upmarket and begins to sell to bigger organizations.

7. Experiment with your sales strategy

A sales strategy isn’t a “set it and forget it” type of process. When your team experiments with the sales strategy, have them start small with one or two ideas at a time.

8. Only use channel partners to accelerate growth

But don’t move too fast. Hold off on using channel partners until you need to accelerate growth, not create it.

Final thoughts

When you invest time and effort to develop a sales strategy, you’re investing in your company as a whole.

• No matter if your sales team is 12 people or 120 people, having a sales strategy is an absolute must.
• Be patient, a sales strategy that works takes time.
• Know what makes your customers tick and tailor your product and sales technique to them.