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A recurring question we’ve been hearing from sales managers as the market continues to evolve: do we actually need to change everything? (Spoiler alert — the answer is no.)
Reassess? Sure. But don’t fix it if it’s not broken. Sometimes, being strategically reactive, and even proactive, means you make the intentional decision to keep doing what you’re doing.
Daniel Hebert touches on this theme as our latest guest in our “How We’re Managing Sales Teams Right Now” series. Daniel is the Director of Sales at Proposify, a leading proposal software that modern sales teams use to create, send, track, and e-sign winning proposals, contracts, and agreements.
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Like every other sales org in recent months, Proposify has reevaluated — but not overhauled — their sales management and sales coaching strategy. Read on to see where Proposify has made shifts and where they’ve intentionally doubled-down on existing practices and processes.
1. Increased visibility across the board
Proposify has always prioritized data visibility. When the pandemic began impacting existing customers, they extended this visibility so that they knew exactly which customers were churning due to Covid.
Daniel said his sales team has made a point to stay in touch with customers who are dealing with budget freezes — because eventually, those freezes will be lifted. It’s imperative that they stay top of mind, continue providing value, and ultimately ensure customers don’t move in a different direction when their budget inevitably opens up.
2. Staying focused on their message and their ICP
A few weeks into our “new normal,” Daniel says his team was incorporating new messaging, focusing on how people were doing, leading with a softer, “Hope you’re doing okay,” kind of message.
But now, Proposify is seeing one of two primary scenarios:
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Buyers have either figured things out and made most of their adjustments — so that “new” messaging feels stale and even insincere; OR
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Buyers are simply not in a great place and it’s just a bad time to approach them.
That means Daniel’s team is largely sticking to their tried-and-true messaging and methodology.
They’re also narrowing their focus so that they’re outbounding to leads who are squarely within their Ideal Customer Profile. In normal times, their team may experiment and test beyond the typical boundaries — but now is not that time.
And in fact, even though they’ve reduced the number of leads they’re reaching out to by 50%, they just tied their best week for their year. Which, Daniel says, is something that they’ll keep in mind even as the market rebounds.
3. Maintaining the same connections (in new ways)
With everyone working from home now, Daniel says they’ve achieved a cadence of communication that has maintained (and in some ways, strengthened) connectivity among his reps.
More meetings seem to be a necessary evil when your team is distributed, but Proposify has struck the right balance and avoided overbooking. Daniel says they’ve kept some of their regular meetings that they always had, including:
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Weekly sales team meeting
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Weekly 1:1s with direct reports
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Tuesday-Friday morning stand ups
They’ve also added in:
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Weekly 1-hour Account Executive training, to help the team brush up on specific areas of their methodology and sales cycle
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1-hour film review, where attendees give positive and constructive feedback
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Additional pipeline and deal reviews, which include the whole team (whereas previously, these were meetings with individual reps)
Want more insight into how Proposify is managing right now? Watch the full video below!
