Seasoned sales executives know that growth isn’t about closing more business alone. It’s also about increasing the value of the deals that you close.
But telling your team, “We need to close bigger deals” and actually raking in the big bucks are two very different things. Increasing deal size means striking up business with enterprise-level accounts. So to reel in those bigger deals your reps need to bring a higher level of professionalism and strategy than they would with a small or mid-market account.
Before you toss your account executives into the deep waters after the larger fish, you can guide your AEs sales styles to fit the needs of enterprise companies. Here are three techniques you can provide your AEs to increase deal sizes.
Grant Total Account Visibility
The first step to increase deal size is knowing which accounts your reps should target. Having relevant account details, like deal size, noted within your Salesforce account makes it easy to put together your rep’s pipeline.
But the importance of data doesn’t stop at knowing the deal size of your target opportunities. You and your reps can easily keep track of an opportunity’s progress with account details like where the account is within the sales process. Also, when working with enterprise accounts your AEs need the ability to reference activities and data related to a single account in one view.
Align with your sales ops team to ensure your CRM data is clean, concise, and accurate. Then, platforms like Salesloft can offer the account visibility your team needs wherever they are working. They can see previous activities, account information, contact details, and additional insights. By having all of this information readily accessible, your rep can confidently execute any task and impress their prospects with their prepared knowledge.
Codify the Process
The sales process for larger deals is complex. Purchasing decisions can involve many stages of evaluation between multiple stakeholders and departments. According to TOPO, enterprise deals can go through six to ten sales stages over the course of eight months before a deal is closed. Your reps need a systematic process in place that will engage multiple stakeholders through all of the stages of the sale. Larger deals will require more from your reps across the board; more demos, more resources, and more engagement within the account. Without a process in place, communication can slip up and cost your rep the entire deal.
Team cadences provide your AEs with the strategic process to keep them actively engaged with their prospective accounts. So when your rep is working with business and technical stakeholders, they can divide each person into a cadence specifically built for each buyer’s persona. The content will be catered to each buyer’s role while the strategic manner of the cadence will keep each person consistently in the loop as the deal progresses forward.
Encourage the Strategic Upsell
When increasing deal size with an upsell, your reps should target the opportunity with account-based strategies. Selling with the account-based method offers a scalable sales process that aligns your sales rep’s efforts with your customer service and marketing teams. Through this aligned process, your customer — and upsell opportunity — will get the personalized, targeted engagement they received during the initial sales process and prompt them to purchase again and again.
Create a team cadence specifically for enterprise level upsells. The cadence acts as a fail-safe way for your reps to keep in touch with the customer, even while they are working new deals.
Also, one best practice within an upsell cadence is to create “Other” steps for collaborating with customer service and marketing. When your rep runs the tasks the step could involve creating personalized content or video with marketing or jumping on a call with the customer and their service rep to discuss the best upsell options for them. Whichever tactics your sales team uses, with the upsell cadence everyone’s efforts are aligned and progressing towards the upsell.
Increasing deal size doesn’t have to feel like you are putting your sales reps in a David versus Goliath situation. With the right knowledge, strategy, and targeted efforts, your reps will bring in the bigger deals and increase your company’s revenue and overall value. An enterprise-level customer who feels the love from your company will be a loyal partner for the long haul.
Download a copy of the eBook today and take your account executive team into the modern sales era.
