Outreach

In today's market, patience isn't just a virtue—it's a necessity 💯 Recent data reveals that sales cycles are stretching further than ever before. Globally, the median sales cycle stands at 120 days. But if you're dealing with Mid-Market and Commercial accounts, expect an even longer wait —150 days on average. And if your target is companies with revenues between $250M and $1B? The median sales cycle for this segment has soared to a staggering 408 days. That's over a year to close a deal 👀 Every industry and product has its own rhythm, but these numbers are a clear warning: long sales cycles are the new normal. It's time to adapt strategies and set realistic expectations for the road ahead.

Marketing 🤝 Sales Here is a harmony we LOVE to see. According to our recent Sales 2024 report, 73% of our survey respondents mentioned that at least 21% of their company’s pipeline is from inbound Marketing leads. Now, let’s go close those deals 😎

Recognizing buying signals is more important than ever 💯 You can’t close a deal without being proactive to understand the buyer’s intent and act fast on it. Luckily, mastering this skill is not about luck, intuition, or years of experience. It’s about mastering a 3-step process: 1️⃣ Knowing how to identify buying signals 2️⃣ Analyzing them with the right tools 3️⃣ Acting on them Learning how to identify buying signals is only half the battle. Without tools that allow your sales team to take action on that information, opportunities can slip away. First things first, are you currently monitoring all these buying signals with your sales intelligence tool?

Make them happen 👏

One summer, my mother made me read a book on self improvement. Don’t recall the name, mainly because it was in Spanish, but this one was about how to start a conversation with anyone cold - so you can get what you want. It emphasized developing the ability to really understand and relate to people with the least amount of information. To practice I had to go out on the street and start a conversation with anyone that lasted over 5 minutes. To win you had to figure out what matters personally to a total stranger - fast! It took discipline and a few tries until I got it right. It was unpleasant, but useful. In sales, it’s not the personalization that’s important (the weather in Seattle is fine, Go Mariners, no I probably don’t know your HBS friend). It’s about using context and connecting in a relevant way – and humans still do it best. Sales AI tools, including Outreach’s, are awesome. They save time and increase odds of success, but they aren’t a silver bullet. No sales AI is. Our Sales 2024 data analysis revealed that AI didn’t replace the SDR in the way the market anticipated. Because no matter how quickly AI has evolved, it still has a long way to go. Only human sellers - who take their craft seriously - can minimize the time between meeting someone for the first time and creating a bond rooted in empathy and understanding. The best sellers are using AI, but they aren’t being replaced. The best of the best are using Outreach AI.

Turning on dark mode in Outreach like:

What works best for you? 🤓

Let me get this straight… smaller deals move faster and win more often? 🤯 Our Outreach data demonstrated that deals below $10k were the only group to experience a year-over-year decrease in average days open and an increase in win rate. The aversion to bigger deals and attraction to smaller deals indicates the market is willing to buy, but cost and risk have to be low enough to answer to their boards and bottom line. What are you doing to target smaller deals? 👀

No more guesswork that impacts your email deliverability 📨 Our team of experts is here to help! After delivering thousands of technical audits, they’re ready to share their tips and tricks on how to improve email deliverability, including how to audit your data quality, content and compliance settings. Join our next Office Hour on August 28 for real-time guidance on: ✅ Whether links or images in your signature affect deliverability ✅ What to do if you think your domain has been flagged ✅ How to view bounce reasons in Outreach ✅ Which reports to use to check user deliverability Reserve your seat: https://lnkd.in/emJt9irS