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What is a sales strategy?

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Without a sales strategy, account teams or reps waste valuable time and resources, guessing when and how to approach highly-targeted prospects, and what those customers truly want.

In this guide, we’ll explain what a sales strategy is, how sales teams can choose between different methodologies to provide value, and how to develop a sales plan strategy to build strong customer relationships and close more deals faster.

Learn more about sales strategy:

What is a sales strategy?

Why do businesses need to create a sales strategy?

Inbound vs. outbound sales strategies

Best practices for using AI tools in sales

How to develop a sales strategy

Every sales strategy needs the right tools to succeed

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What is a sales strategy?

Effective sales strategy plans help businesses put their customers at the center of everything they do. It uses proven methodologies to create a revenue growth roadmap incorporating ideal target markets and customer behaviors, historical sales and relationship intelligence data, and account team alignment.

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Why do businesses need to create a sales strategy?

Businesses that create sales strategy plans will better understand account team responsibilities and goals. They can also develop key performance indicators (KPIs) that demonstrate value, help grow sales revenue, and track measurable success. After creating a customer-centric sales strategy, businesses can better train and empower account teams to understand their ideal client needs with data-driven sales forecasting and analytics.

In turn, sales teams can target the best customer segments and create effective positioning to generate more qualified leads. This approach also boosts sales productivity and more closed/won deals. Additionally, it provides long-term customer satisfaction and relationships, increasing profitability while helping sales organizations adapt to shifting market conditions, competitive strategies, and customer challenges.

B2B vs. B2C sales strategy

A B2B sales strategy focuses on targeting and selling to other businesses benefitting from a product or service. For example, recruiting products and services, or software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms, typically serve other businesses that need them to run their companies or hire new employees.

A B2C sales strategy, on the other hand, focuses on direct selling to consumers for products like phone plans or services, real estate investments, automobiles, and insurance or other financial products.

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Sales strategy vs. marketing strategy

A marketing strategy aims to research and define B2B target audiences and develop effective tactics using highly-effective sales channels (e.g., advertising, content marketing, and email outreach). The goal is to create opportunities that attract, capture, and nurture qualified inbound leads to pass along to sales teams. A sales strategy, on the other hand, helps account teams achieve their inbound and outbound qualified lead outreach, relationship building, and sales revenue goals with more clarity, speed, and ease.

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Inbound vs. outbound sales strategies

Developing a sales strategy helps teams identify ideal accounts, handle objections, sell against competitors, and effectively determine how to approach inbound and outbound sales.

Inbound sales strategy

Many prospective customers prefer researching products and services online before contacting a salesperson. With inbound sales strategy plans, B2B marketing teams can use digital channels to help account teams connect with and convert prospects – no matter where they are in the buying cycle.

Inbound sales tactics attract clientele, without pitching them, through content marketing or social media to collect qualified lead information through contact forms on a website, landing page, or email link. Sales teams can then develop a contact plan to connect with those leads to identify active buyers and nurture new prospective customer relationships while providing personalized solutions that address their most significant pain points or needs.

Outbound sales strategy

While digital marketing helps with lead generation, sales organizations don’t rely solely on inbound strategies to grow revenue. Using outbound sales strategy plans, account teams can also identify ideal customers or accounts at industry events, via cold calls, and online using relationship intelligence software like LinkedIn Sales Navigator. This tool can help salespeople build a list of prospects for outreach, start an online or in-person conversation to fill their pipeline with prospective buyers, and create a personalized sales solution and pitch.

Types of strategic sales methodologies

Businesses often adopt a few different sales methodologies to create a customer-centric sales plan strategy using both inbound and outbound tactics. Account teams can follow these methodologies to build relationships during each sales funnel stage. Below is an overview of seven of the top methodologies to consider for sales strategy planning.

Target account selling

With target account selling, sales organizations must research and identify ideal target customers and markets or industries to approach with new opportunities. This approach requires businesses to develop buyer personas and use sales automation and relationship intelligence software to quickly identify and communicate with highly-targeted account prospects by industry and by qualified leads.

Because this work requires a significant time investment, target account planning should be done early in the sales strategy development process to save teams valuable time and resources. This way, they’ll be better equipped to support and nurture leads with highly-valued customers and grow long-term sales revenue.

Many B2B sales organizations use this approach to varying degrees today. The more up-front time and investment in resources an outbound sales team puts in, the more they’ll benefit from higher sales revenue growth and customer satisfaction in the long run.

Solution-based selling

B2B solution selling requires account teams to understand their customers from a 360-degree perspective, including their product or service, unique selling points, and market-specific challenges, needs, and strategic goals. This methodology works well with target account selling, as sales leaders can build teams to support specific customer markets or industries.

Relationship intelligence data is vital for helping sales organizations gather individual customer and target account insights. Using this data-driven approach, account teams can develop and pitch customizable solutions that are tailor-made for each prospective customer.

Many HR, education, technology, and software-as-a-service businesses use this approach because they can customize products and services or solutions to their client’s needs.

Consultative selling

Using this sales strategy, account teams act more as advisors and educators than traditional salespeople. They aim to assist customers by answering questions and guiding them to use a product or service to maximize business outcomes. Consultative selling works well in conjunction with solution-based sales.

When dealing with customers in person, sales reps will often lead with questions that help to uncover all customer challenges or concerns related to a product or service. Armed with inbound content tools from marketing teams, consultative salespeople can also present industry insights or provide valuable resources that support the customer’s decision-making process.

Technology, recruiting, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses often adopt a consultative sales approach because their products offer many features and benefits from which customers can choose.

SPIN selling

“SPIN Selling” is a strategic sales approach derived from a book written by Neil Rackham. It can be applied to prospecting, nurturing, and closing large target accounts. SPIN is an acronym for:

Situation: Situation questions help salespeople understand a prospect’s current business state. These should be used with account research or relationship intelligence data analysis. For example, a rep might ask, "How does your current customer acquisition process work?”

Problem: Problem questions are posed to uncover a customer’s most significant challenges or needs. In this case, sales reps might ask, “Is any part of your sales process slower than you would like?”

Implication: Implication questions help to reveal what would happen if the prospect doesn’t find a solution. For example, “Are there any acquisition barriers or bottlenecks that lead to increased costs?”

Need pay-off: Need-payoff questions help the prospect understand how their life would improve by adopting the new solution. For example, “How much could your business save if you found a better solution that removes those barriers?”

SPIN helps salespeople identify pain points, establish rapport early, and offer customized solutions. Additionally, it makes prospects more self-aware of their challenges and how the solution might improve their business.

N.E.A.T selling

The N.E.A.T. methodology is a sales framework developed by The Harris Consulting Group and Sales Hacker. The acronym stands for:

Needs: Rather than blindly pitching a product, sales reps do extensive account research and ask appropriate questions to actively listen and uncover a prospect’s greatest challenges and needs.

Economic impact: Next, salespeople will work to provide a financial picture of the implications of adopting a new solution versus sticking with the status quo.

Authority: Salespeople using this technique should identify and ask internal champions or stakeholders (even if they are junior-level staff) to speak to the highest decision-maker in their organization on their behalf or make a warm introduction. For example, the stakeholder may advocate for the sales rep by speaking with a C-level executive.

Timeline: Account teams should qualify their deadline with the customer and create opportunities for them to benefit from meeting the deal-closing timeline (e.g., exclusive offers and time-limited deals).

By adopting the N.E.A.T. selling system, sales professionals can quickly identify a prospect’s core needs and have better sales conversations with key stakeholders. This process leads to a faster timeline to close deals that greatly benefit the customer.

SNAP selling

SNAP aims to make the decision-making process quick and easy for time-starved customers. The acronym stands for:

Simple: Make the sales process simple and straightforward for customers to buy from a sales rep. Keep conversations or pitches short and to the point.

(In)valuable: Become a trusted advisor who specializes in a customer market or industry, and offer insights, case studies, and customer referrals to help them make a quick but informed buying decision.

Align: Keep sales questioning and customer communications aligned to their biggest pain points or challenges, demonstrating that you understand their needs.

Priority: Focus pitches on a customer’s greatest priorities and end goals, and offer only a few solutions to close deals faster.

SNAP works better for getting busy customers to say yes quickly, whereas SPIN works better for longer sales cycles that allow reps to build relationships and focus on customized solutions.

How to develop a sales strategy

Once businesses have identified the methodologies they believe will work best for their sales organization, they can incorporate them when developing a sales strategy.

1. Identify target customers using ideal customer profiles and buyer personas

Starting with target audience research is essential to identify ideal customer profiles (ICPs) to which sales teams plan to sell.

The marketing team should play a role in this process by using market research and analyzing internal and third-party industry data to develop ICPs or buyer personas. These profiles should include key target demographics and behavioral and psychographic customer traits of the prospects likely to benefit from a company's product or service.

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2. Analyze past sales analytics and CRM data

Once sales teams have an ICP or a set of buyer personas, they can connect the information with historical sales data from customer relationship management (CRM) and web analytics platforms. It'll help to determine what tactics have already worked and what specific actions or methodologies can boost sales growth.

For example, sales leaders can analyze existing customer account data, sales reports, and data visualizations from previous years to identify quarterly trends, patterns, and potential roadblocks related to each buyer persona or ICP. Try to uncover whether target accounts require a short or longer sales cycle, need a consultative or solution-based sales approach, or prefer to make quick SNAP decisions.

Sales leaders and B2B marketers can also look for current products or service “super users” who fit their ICP or buyer persona profiles. Then, conduct in-person interviews or survey these customers online to learn how to approach similar prospective buyers as part of their new sales plan strategy.

Ask “why”’ these customers love the product or service, which markets or industries they serve, the key features or benefits super users like most about a product or service, and whether they would recommend it to a friend.

Also, uncover how customers make buying decisions, what criteria they need to evaluate solutions, and who will most likely be their organization’s internal champion or critical decision-maker. These insights can help with both inbound and outbound sales and marketing strategies and allow account teams to select the most appropriate sales methodologies.

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3. Set SMART sales goals or targets

Sales teams play a critical role in achieving a company's revenue objectives. To ensure alignment and accountability, businesses typically set quarterly and annual sales targets or quotas. These targets are assigned at various levels:

Company-wide: Overall sales revenue goals for the business.
Account teams or individual representatives: Targets based on specific industries or verticals (e.g., retail, travel, automotive, technology), geographical regions (e.g., by state or country), or high-priority company accounts.

To create effective and achievable sales targets, sales leaders often use the SMART goal framework:

Specific: Create a set of clearly defined goals or sales targets.
Measurable: Identify key metrics to track and monitor progress over time.
Achievable: Goals or sales target metrics should be realistic and feasible.
Relevant: Goals or targets should align with overall business objectives for sales revenue growth.
Time-bound: The goals or targets should have a deadline or time frame (e.g., quarterly or annually), which holds sales teams accountable for meeting them.

By integrating SMART goals into sales strategy planning, businesses can:

Foster alignment across teams.
Set clear expectations.
Enable data-driven decision-making.
Drive accountability and measurable outcomes.

This structured approach empowers sales leaders to guide their teams effectively, track progress, and refine strategies for consistent growth.

4. Establish a sales process and train teams

Next, build the right methodologies into sales strategy planning to help marketing and sales teams or reps meet their inbound and outbound OKRs. Each methodology requires different lead generation, prospecting, outreach, relationship management, and customer support processes, which need to be developed and documented by sales and marketing team leaders.

If teams or reps are new to the business or to sales, leaders should hold training sessions to teach them how to achieve their goals using these new processes or methodologies. Teams may also need to learn how to use new software platforms like CRM, web analytics, and relationship intelligence tools to prospect new accounts and track their calls, customer insights, and progress over time.

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5. Create benchmarks and measure results

It’s essential to set sales team benchmarks, or key performance indicators (KPIs), and track results to finalize the sales strategy planning. Below are some high-level KPIs or benchmarks to monitor.

Total revenue: The total amount of money a company generates through sales for a specific period (e.g., quarterly or annually), which can be further broken out by rep or account team.
New business revenue: Revenue from new leads or accounts rather than from existing customers for a specific period.
Percentage of total revenue: The growth, measured as a percentage, of total revenue generated by a specific account team or industry rep for a specific period compared to the total revenue generated from that same period the year before.
Average customer lifetime value (CLV): The estimated value of a new customer or account to a company over the entire duration of their business relationship.

Sales leaders should also set goals for and monitor individual sales teams or representatives’ activity metrics for a specific period. These goals can include the health and growth of their pipelines, sales cycle length, lead response times, outreach efforts, and total closed/won deals.

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6. Use relationship intelligence data for prospecting and outreach

Finally, businesses can integrate CRM tools like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics with deep sales technology, such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator, to start prospecting target accounts and leads for personalized, individual outreach.

Sales reps and teams should be able to save their new customer leads and target accounts to their relationship intelligence software account. This LinkedIn Sales Navigator feature also allows account reps to identify the right time in a customer’s buying cycle to reach out or reconnect to close more deals faster.

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Every sales strategy needs the right tools to succeed

Both inbound and outbound sales and marketing strategies are essential to the success of any B2B organization. Using suitable sales methodologies to serve target customers better also helps sales team leaders establish appropriate goals or targets, processes, and success metrics. Combined with appropriate methodologies and tools, these strategies will help sales teams identify and target the right buyers, align outreach and relationship-building tactics, and increase conversions faster and efficiently.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is an integrated sales tool that helps businesses capture highly-targeted, real-time customer data to turn social media insights and connections into warm introductions. Sales teams can use it to personalize their account outreach and relationship-building approach.

Additionally, they can gather intel about target accounts or leads to pitch and close tailor-made sales solutions using appropriate sales methodologies and strategies for priority customers.

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