8 Steps for Developing a Sales Strategy With Advice From Leaders

Your business has a game-changing product. It’s different and effective. You know it’ll stand out from the crowd 💫

How do you ensure your outbound sales team can successfully sell everything it offers? 

The answer is: Develop a sales strategy that can generate leads, answer questions from prospects, and close more sales.

Below we’ll get into creating an effective sales strategy for the long haul.

Jump to:

• What is a sales strategy?
• The importance of a clearly defined sales strategy
• 8 steps (with examples) to develop a winning sales strategy 

What is a sales strategy?

A sales strategy is your business's plan to maximize product or service sales. 

This strategy uses principles based on a company’s competitive advantage to gain new customers. As well as growing their current ones.  

It doesn’t matter whether your sales team is 5 or 500 employees, having an effective strategy is a must. Without it, your team will struggle to quickly fill the sales pipeline and close deals. 

A sales strategy is a documented plan for outbound sales revenue in the short and long term. It also maps out how you will differentiate your product from competitors. 

Your sales team should use it as a guide to set themselves up for success 🏆

When you develop a sales strategy, make sure it aligns with other elements like your target market. For example, details of your ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer persona. Not to mention sales motions, go-to-market positioning, and other components. 

Your strategy should help your team determine your potential customer's pain points. And how the product or service will solve them. Remember you may need to evolve and change your inbound and outbound sales strategy as the business grows!

The importance of a clearly defined sales strategy

This doesn’t happen overnight. That’s why it’s so important that your team puts in the time and effort to build one. A defined sales strategy with clear and achievable metrics is crucial for the success of your sales team and the entire organization. 

David Bentham, Director of Sales Development at Cognism explains more in the clip below 🎬

Regardless of whether the strategy is through social selling or product-oriented selling. You need a defined approach to drive leads and build customer relationships. 

Lead generation strategies allow your team to navigate the future better and assess problems. They should also allow you to manage approaches throughout the company.

The strategy should highlight:

1. How you will sell across different platforms 
2. And, develop strategic partnerships with other businesses 

Doing this will ensure that all sales reps are on the same page and understand how to use the strategy.  

8 steps to develop a winning sales strategy

Ready to start creating a sales strategy to win more revenue?

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Understand what it takes to attract your target customer
2. Know when to add sales to a self-serve business model
3. Establish clear, differentiated roles on your sales team
4. Define your ideal customer profile
5. Act like a consultant and advisor to your prospects
6. Be deliberate when moving upmarket
7. Experiment with your sales strategy – before you pivot
8. Use channel partners to accelerate growth, not create it

1. Understand what it takes to attract your target customer

Step one is understanding how to attract your target customer 🎯 

To do this, you’ll need to pinpoint the best way to reach these customers for the best possible outcome. Which is an increase in revenue. 

For example, some leads will respond (and respond well) to outbound sales tactics like cold calls and cold emails. But others have a better chance of interacting with inbound tactics like content marketing about your product or service. 

This is the classic inbound vs outbound sales debate. We summarize some of the key points to consider in the infographic below 👇

When you know which direction will better attract customers, your sales team can move towards those efforts and fine-tune them for the utmost success.

2. Know when to add sales to a self-serve business model

This next step boils down to your average contract value. It may be challenging to have outbound sales in the equation if it’s on the lower end, like $1,000 for the year. 

But, if your team deals with a complex sale with a long sales cycle. For example, one that lasts longer than 20 or 30 days, with a sales cadence involving two or three calls with more than one person, sales is a must in a self-serve model.

Education and automation only go so far, at some point, your customers will want to talk to a sales rep.

3. Establish clear, differentiated roles on your sales team

When you build your sales team, it should start with establishing clear and differentiated roles for every sales rep. 

Create a list of attributes and responsibilities for sales managers to screen for. This will help them when they interview candidates for specific roles. 

Then, once you’ve hired the top talent for these roles, you can train and onboard them to sell efficiently and effectively. As you build a sales strategy, be specific about creating the right roles on your team. Make sure you prioritize the right skills within each role. 

For example, what’s defined for inbound sales reps will be different for outbound sales reps. 

Ben Ward-Cochrane, Head of Sales at Huq Industries, explains why being inquisitive is such an important quality for outbound in this clip 🎬

Inbound sales reps will need skills focusing on top-of-the-funnel trends. Such as aligning with the marketing team and using social media to bring in qualified leads. 

Meanwhile, the outbound sales team will focus on mastering the art of cold calling.

4. Define your ideal customer profile

The next step is all about establishing your ideal customer profile (ICP). Your team needs to create a detailed profile of the customer. 

This means looking at:

• Company size - often determines their budget and revenue, therefore how much they must spend on your product or service
• Industry - is your product or service industry specific?
• Geography - where can you do business?
• Legality - are there legal requirements that your company or the company you do business with must meet?
• Service level agreements (SLAs) - can you guarantee you’ll be able to meet the needs of your customer if they have these thresholds?

Use your ICP as a guide for your sales reps. It should help them focus on prospects who will convert and deliver repeat business. 

5. Act like a consultant and advisor to your prospects

It’s in your team’s best interest to act like an advisor to your prospects. Always offer a free demo of the product or service so prospects can see what is being offered in action. 

It’s up to your team to field questions and be ready with helpful answers. Sales reps need to find out more about their prospects, too. Learn exactly how a prospect intends to use your product and tailor the demo to their needs.

Educate your sales team so that your prospects can learn the ins and outs of the product from them. Tell the product's story from the prospect's perspective and their business. And always follow up. 

6. Be deliberate when moving upmarket

Growth within a business is an exciting time. One day you’re a startup and it can feel as if you blink and become a mature organization.

Growth can look like many different things. But make sure your team stays deliberate as your business moves upmarket and begins to sell to bigger organizations.

This means, not everything has to change as a company scales. The simplicity of your sales strategy can still be effective. After all, it likely is what allowed your business to grow in the first place.

7. Experiment with your sales strategy – before you pivot

A sales strategy isn’t a “set it and forget it” type of process. Your team will likely come up with new ideas or tactics as they encounter more prospects. 

Implementing too many ideas at once can turn your sales team on its head. When your team experiments with the sales strategy, have them start small with one or two ideas at a time.

Experiment with ideas before you unleash a full-scale pivot on your team. Pivoting before an idea is truly tested will only cause disruption. 

8. Use channel partners to accelerate growth, not create it

When developing your sales strategy, it can be tempting to leverage channel partners to help establish growth.

But don’t move too fast. Hold off on using channel partners until you need to accelerate growth, not create it.  Especially if your company is just starting out.

But what is a channel partner? They’re a company that partners with you to market or sell your products and services. For example, a reseller, vendor or agent.

If you’re a startup, you need to be smart. It’s best to have a steady stream of customers and monthly revenue before you turn to channel partners.

Once you do, channel partners will help take growth to the next level, but they won’t build it from the ground up. 

So when is the best time to bring in channel partners? 

• When your company has a product that is gaining traction with customers.
• When you’ve found success with both inbound and outbound sales.
• When you have a good flow of revenue. 

Final thoughts

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was a successful sales strategy. 

But don’t forget. When you invest time and effort to develop a sales strategy, you’re investing in your company as a whole.

Here are our final thoughts on developing a sales strategy:

• No matter if your sales team is 12 people or 120 people, having a sales strategy is an absolute must.
• Be patient, a sales strategy that works takes time.
• Know what makes your customers tick and tailor your product and sales technique to them.
• Your team is only as strong as your reps, hire and onboard effectively!