Skip to main content

Sales tips and techniques to find leads

Relationship selling has evolved alongside technology while incorporating time-tested essentials. See how these sales tips come together to help you find and cultivate sales partnerships—along with data that shows the imperative of relationship selling. These sales techniques will help you take advantage of social developments and find leads that are ready to buy.

Before you start building sales relationships

Here’s a quick relationship selling roadmap that will help you focus on the tips and techniques you’ll want to use. It’s important to know why you’re looking before you start building sales relationships with buyers.

1

Identify

What leads do you want to reach out to and why? Can you offer solutions, or do you want them to buy from you right away? Once you know what type of leads you're looking for, this will help narrow your search. Companies often cast a wide net at the beginning of a lead search without clearly identifying what they’re fishing for. The result is that they have quantity, but not a lot of quality.

2

Offer

Once you’ve identified the leads you want to reach out to, it’s time to curate or create content that would appeal to them. It’s one thing to tell potential leads how you’ll help them; it’s much more powerful to have ready-made solutions available. Your targeted lead should take one look at what your company offers and think, “They understand my industry, and have created recommendations and content that I can use.”

3

Engage

Now that you’ve identified who you want to make contact with, and can offer ways to help them, you’re ready to reach out. Many companies start with step three without doing their research, and this can turn off potential leads. Better yet, when companies see you as a thought leader, they’ll search for you.

Once you know why you’re looking, these helpful sales tips and techniques will be more effective.

How to use the power of technology to expand the field

Innovations like personal computers, modern databases, smart phones, and social media have created new opportunities for relationship selling. Here are some key takeaways for taking advantage of the digital intelligence that’s out there:

  • Connectivity—get more time to sell. Potential buyers are always looking into opportunities to create new relationships that let them connect at any time.
  • Visibility—use social tools to create strong profiles, taking part in ongoing social conversations. In turn, you develop one-on-one relationships based on customer needs and shared interests.
  • Be knowledgeable—amplify your thought leadership presence. One of the ways you can do this is by showing off your expertise with blogs and social media posts that demonstrate you’re in tune with trends, which can help develop new leads.
  • Think virally—once you have your relationship selling engine up and running, your reach is magnified. Be prepared to capitalise by staying organised and engaged. The longer you build your online brand, the more dividends you'll reap.

TIP: Each company has an online persona. It’s important to know how potential leads might see you. If you offer more personalisation and less sales pitch from the get-go, you’ll leave a better first impression.


Bring the human touch

Certain sales skills are timeless. It’s easy to forget that along with all the technology at your fingertips, you still have to employ tried and true sales techniques like finding, engaging, and building sales relationships with customers. The combination of technology along with the human element is a powerful one. That means:

  • Researching—know your potential buyer's business inside and out to provide solutions that are relevant and solve multiple challenges.
  • Finding—discover similarities between you and your buyers that create a personal connection.
  • Listening—show you heard what leads say by creating offers truly relevant to their needs. Make it about them, not you.
  • Knowing—capitalising on buyers when they are interested. Timing is everything in relationship building.
  • Persevering—Rome wasn't built in a day, and a strong sales relationship can't be, either. See the process as an opportunity to learn more about customers and deliver more long-term value.

TIP: Building social relationships requires more timing, listening, and personal engagement with buyers than the old way of doing business. Once you identify and learn more about targeted leads, you’ll be able to create and offer the answers they’re looking for.


Why you should build sales relationships

There’s no better way to nurture authentic and lasting sales relationships with leads than to show them you understand their challenges and can offer solutions. It’s important to have tools at your disposal that allow you to:

  • Keep track of buyers and their needs
  • Create personalised content for leads
  • Use digital intelligence and data insights to move the sales relationship forward

Get proof of the strength of relationship selling

Combine timeless personal skills with strategic social engagement to convert more leads. The State of Sales in 2016 report from LinkedIn has data that shows just how important it is to engage with modern relationship selling.

  • Sales professionals spend most of their time working with social selling and CRM tools, as they believe they deliver the highest value
  • More than 70 percent of sales professionals use social selling and see relationship building tools as having the highest impact on revenue
  • 90 percent of top sales professionals use social selling tools, compared with 71 percent of overall sales professionals

It’s also important to know there’s a right and wrong way to reach out to buyers and that having a clear set of tools and techniques is the key in helping you find relevant leads.

TIP: Become one of the few companies that try to build customer relationships, and you’ll stand out.

Start with the most up-to-date tips and techniques

Seize the opportunities of relationship selling and request the Microsoft Relationship Sales solution demo, which combines LinkedIn Sales Navigator with Dynamics 365 Sales in a robust selling tool.