This is not about ChatGPT and still about sales

Well, the hype about GPT has already subsided, everyone has got the necessary prompts and various automation tools for content writing, and the stormy stories about the revolution in sales have just made a noise! And that's great because the hysteria began in the chats about the fact that now this will deprive everyone of their work. Of course not, but only help and speed up. Those who did their job in writing poorly and had to pay for it also lost their jobs. These are the masters that will be moved during the year! But most likely, they will start to use the tool better and start getting money justifiably.

I am not writing this article about the ChatGPT, although it would be cool to catch up with traffic because of the hype! All of you felt in a couple of quarters that there was an outflow of customers. The wave rose up not when everyone was sitting without electricity and water. Still, when the electricity turned up, lawyers, as always, did their work slowly, and starting in January, large clients went to break contracts. For what?

The war has not ended, and the performance has fallen sharply, and even those who are not at war are sitting fully with the light right now. Most of the large clients began to look for a replacement and created a plan B since the summer, just founders and sales held on as long as they could until the client put an end to it.

What is the planning horizon now? When will everything return? I don’t know, but judging by the way negotiations are going on in the companies – contracts are being started, not yet large. But the large ones that stay in other warm places – will come back to us in 2-3 years, until the performance of the current IT vendor is reviewed.

But there is nothing to become limp, all this is possible to overcome and catch up with the desired speed! Those who decided to leave, and want to leave with all their might, do not react to your arguments, and it is clear that this is a 100% break in relations – it is better to let go and find new and loyal customers. So let's start a new thread.

What was and what has become? Yes, in principle, nothing has changed much in some approaches; instead, they have begun to go more and more into hyper-personalization and finally move away from banal patterns and phrases. The whole world is a show and everyone wants to see it, both on TV and on LinkedIn. The pendulum will swing in the other direction – everyone will start to be afraid that everyone knows too much about everyone and we don’t need such transparency, and they will close profiles and so on. But for now, we are somewhere in the middle, we use these moments.

You can always start by asking, “Why?” and from there on, start the whole outreach journey.

What are the main problems I see?

• Messages are still super sales-y
• Messages do not carry any clarity in terms of logics
• Outreach is built very clumsily – without preheating
• The quality of the database is still one of the leading problem 

Team

The same questions about conversions and the team. Let me step here again from what I saw working and systemic, and not random in achieving a result.

You must have a team if you want to have quality in the process:

• Data researcher – collects data according to your criteria
• SDR – launches campaigns, works on qualifications
• Sales – catches qualified leads, works on prospecting, turns a lead into a company client
• Sales Ops – sets up the entire infrastructure to work in outreach. Buys domains, warms up accounts, sets up CRM or custom analytics, integrates between applications
• Sales Team Lead / Head of Sales – maintains workflows, plans results, monitors analytics, works on creating new ideas, works with the marketing department and requests new research, updates ICP parameters with the marketing department, tries to develop new channels, monitors learning, plans new upgrades in the skills and abilities of the team, reviews monthly results, plans annual plans, plans onboarding and the program, monitors the high level of motivation in the team, improves and develops motivational programs.

Rules and Principles

If you:

• Meetup only occasionally and do not plan anything special, the results are clear
• if you are going to meet up anyway, but there is no clear agenda regarding the end goals: where we are looking and what we are analyzing, the results are clear
• if you have no data in the CPM, no notes, no history of communication, and everything is in words, the results are clear
• if you don't have time for data management and you only use fast conversion outreach to get replies, the results are clear
• if you have one person doing the whole outreach, the results are clear
• if you make a new ICP and templates once a year, the results are clear
• if you update the presentation once a year, the results are clear
• if you use only one approach, the results are clear
• if you use 1 LinkedIn profile and 1 e-mail, the results are clear
• if you don't know what personalization is, the results are clear
• if you don't want to delve into analytics, the results are clear
• if you do not want to spend money on new tools, training and development of the department, the results are clear

New tools and approaches

1. There is a new Clay.com tool. If you are a little tired of Apollo and looking for any other optiohs, look at this tool.
2. If you haven't seen the new design of Expandi yet and you would like to become a beta tester of the new feature related to content generation – you are welcome to visit Expandi.io
3. If you do not know how to work with personalization and prospecting, these courses will be helpful to you – SalesLabs 

GTD

Push:

• If you start to dive deeper into ABM and ABS, you will get 100% results. It's only a matter of time.
• If you start thinking more about personalization, even in outreach, adding at least a small part of customization, your conversions will be 5-10% higher, user Hyperise or SendSpark.
• If you start researching more about the client's needs and form their image holistically, and not just on the basis of your completed projects, you will begin to understand how close you are to being in this niche and you can save a lot of time and energy, and finally decide at which stage you are.
• If you start collecting data not by machine scraping, but also by cleaning the database with high quality, your conversions will be honest, and the time to confirm the hypothesis will be much faster due to the reaction of the answers.
• If you work across multiple channels and catch up with clients not only by mail or LinkedIn, you will grow your audience over time and regain the losses you made during the first run of your hot response outreach campaign.

Meanings

I remember in my 20s when I went to work so I could buy my clothes and go to clubs on Fridays and Saturdays. It was the coolest time ever! And I had such meaning until the age of 24. Then everything changed dramatically and global goals began to appear, and I already understood what I want and how I should move. I remember how much it drove me that I would be in an environment where everyone is doing exciting and specific things. I never thought later that when I got into the sales department and started selling outsourcing, then outstaffing, the most exciting part for me would be business trips, meeting a client in the office, and again parties. The routine that was hidden in the backend could not naturally drive me. Three hundred approvals, clarifications within and with the client, then a long process of waiting for signing and receiving the first transaction. But this was the part that needed to be done 60-70% of the time, and this was the part of the work that just had to be done correctly, systematically, and with high discipline. Over time, I began to get high from this, too) Since after 30, I had already stopped going to bed at 6 a.m. and getting up at 8 a.m. for work, I could not meet two clients a week at once and give everyone time to discover the city. Routine drives me to change my mindset to other things, and I found the meaning in them. To delve into the effectiveness of the time spent, plan more precisely, and look for your mentors to close children's and adult problems. What advice would I give to myself at 20 now? In the same way, to hang out, to have fun – 100% and most likely, I would find a mentor to tell me some primary stages of what would help me quickly figure out what I like or dislike about what I want.

I wish you all energy and faith!