How to Collaborate with Prospects to Close More Sales

Mark Fershteyn

CEO & Co-founder

Sales leaders around the world are driven by the same set of goals.

Generate new business, increase revenue, increase profitability, and ultimately, close more sales.

To increase win rates, you must first learn how to collaborate with your prospects and build meaningful relationships along the way.

The key to successful collaboration is understanding your prospects' needs. It requires close communication and careful listening. Salespeople must thoroughly understand the customer's pain points, end goals, and values.

Ask questions that will help you gather information about how they like to work, what type of decision-making process they use and any other information that can be relevant for closing the sale.

It seems complex, but with the best practices we'll cover today, you can win more deals by collaborating with prospects.

‍

How does prospect collaboration help close more sales?

Before we begin, let's discuss prospect collaboration and its impact on close rates.

Prospect collaboration, also known as social selling, consultative selling, or customer-centric selling, is the sales method devoted to developing and nurturing relationships throughout the sales process. It's about going beyond traditional and transactional sales techniques to build relationships and trust.

Businesses adopting this methodology close more sales because social selling allows salespeople to use their sales process to demonstrate value. They can connect with prospects on an emotional level and help prospects make informed decisions that are the best fit for them.

The growth realized from collaborating with prospects is profound. Studies show that companies that focus on customer-centric processes are 60% more profitable.

Now that you understand the value of prospect collaboration let's look at how to do it.

‍

Develop a trustworthy relationship

Before the collaborative sales process begins, a foundation of trust must be built. Collaborative sales processes cannot be successful without it.

Start by understanding your prospects. Research their background and get to know about their interests and preferences. This will help you have meaningful conversations with them and make a strong first impression.

Becoming a trustworthy figure or consultant, as opposed to a salesperson, will benefit you in the long run. Prospects are more likely to close the deal if they perceive you as someone who cares about their best interests and not just their money: 88% of B2B customers only buy when they see a salesperson as a "trusted advisor."

To become that trustworthy advisor, you must collaborate with your prospects by providing value through content and advice throughout the sales process - offering a consultative approach instead of a transactional one.

‍

How to collaborate with your prospects

Collaborating with prospects is all about continuous engagement and enhancing the customer experience. With the right tools and techniques, sales teams can effectively nurture their customers and create meaningful customer relationships to close more deals.

Here are our top tips on how to collaborate effectively:

‍

Make client communication easy

The sales process should be as smooth and seamless as possible. Make sure prospects know how to contact you, and ensure your communication is prompt and clear. The easier it is for prospects to reach out and review the information they need, the more likely they'll close the sale.

Streamlining your communication and resources makes it easier for prospects to access and review the needed data. Plus, you can use your communication as an opportunity to show off your knowledge by providing the right material at the right time.

This is what communication looks like during a deal cycle without a centralized hub.

Help the clients identify major pain points and personalize accordingly

Working through the sales process, listen closely and ask questions to identify any significant pain points the customer faces. Then use this information to customize your pitch and create tailored solutions specific to their needs.

Working with "champions" or those reporting to key stakeholders to ideate and provide tailored solutions to close the sale is a great way to build relationships with clients and speed up the buy-in from executive decision-makers.

‍

Engage with every stakeholder involved

Most sales deals involve multiple stakeholders who all need to be on board. Engaging with each of them will help close the deal faster and more effectively. Understand different decision-makers goals, timelines, and communication styles, so you can quickly come up with the right solution. Doing this requires creating meaningful relationships at multiple levels and conversing with each stakeholder to speed up the entire process.

Mutual action plans are a great way to stay on track of timelines for the seller and buyer.

Provide the customer with a hands-on proof of concept pilot program

If your product or service surrounds a long-term commitment, it's important to provide the customer with a trial period or proof of concept pilot program. Effectively proving value through a "test run" can give the customer added confidence in the value and ROI of your product or service.

Using these guided trials, enabling and educating your customer throughout the proof of concept period can help customers make better decisions and experience the benefits of your product.

For more information, access our free resource: Ultimate Guide for Managing Proof of Concepts.

‍

Enable customers with centralized engagement hubs

Providing customers with a common platform to access essential information and resources helps streamline ongoing conversations with all stakeholders. By having an organized hub, customers can have a centralized digital workspace to access all the necessary information throughout the entire buying journey. A centralized system for your entire process will help your team close more sales and create better customer experiences.

One professionally branded workspace that sellers and buyers can go to access sales collateral, content, and more.

To recap

At the end of the day, customers are willing to buy when they understand the value in what you offer. Remember to make client communication easy, help them identify and address pain points, engage with all stakeholders involved, provide an ROI-revealing proof of concept pilot program, and enable customers with centralized engagement hubs. Following these steps will help close more sales and create better customer experiences.

Using customer-centric platforms like Recapped, businesses can close more sales by driving customer engagement and offering relevant, up-to-date resources. With our easy-to-use workspaces, businesses can continuously track the buyer journey, monitor the status of deals, activities, and timeliness, and adapt to any changes quickly.

Close more sales, deliver an incredible customer journey and build better customer relationships with Recapped today: https://www.recapped.io/demo.