HubSpot has evolved to become an Enterprise level Growth Platform with a ton of features and functionality.
In turn, It can be difficult to identify the best areas of the platform to leverage for success. That’s why we’re delivering regular HubSpot Tips & Tricks to help guide your decisions.
In this HubSpot Tips & Tricks post, we’re tackling Sales Sequences and providing you with five compelling reasons to use them.
One of the best tools in the HubSpot Sales stack, Sequences allows you to automate your most effective and repetitive sales communications by transforming them into personalized templates. These templates are then delivered in a series of timed emails that ensure you’re not letting prospects fall through the cracks.
Sequences leverages HubSpot’s awesome personalization token technology, allowing salespeople to automatically include company and contact details in templates. The tool is also connected to HubSpot’s reporting software so teams can continuously improve the process.
On the surface, it’s easy to see how Sequences can be useful to a sales team. Need a bit more convincing? Here's five compelling reasons your sales team should be integrating Sequences with their daily workflow:
Nurturing is not the exclusive domain of the Marketing team. Salespeople have always performed nurturing activity, but rarely have they taken a defined, systematic approach designed to maximize the benefits of consistent communication.
When your organization adopts the Inbound Sales philosophy, you pledge to deliver a more personalized sales cycle experience. You acknowledge that buyers are human beings, subject to their own stresses and pain points, and that you need to usher them through the complexities of your sales process.
Sequences is one of the best tools in a salesperson's toolbox for nurturing leads through the sales cycle with a personalized, consultative approach.
Custom sequences allow sales to deliver a regular cadence of messages. This gives the prospect multiple opportunities to go deeper down the sales rabbit hole, amplifying the chances of converting a sale.
HubSpot's 2018 State of Inbound Report revealed that 27% of Sales Reps are spending over 60 minutes per day on data entry instead of prospecting or selling. We tend to think of this data-entry time as CRM maintenance and note taking on accounts, but a surprising amount of time is spent rewriting and personalizing email follow up.
With HubSpot’s Sequences Tool, you can automate the process of email creation and timed delivery, complete with personalization.
You’ll spend less time in the connect phase trying to get candidates to “bite” on your messaging and signal their intent to engage. This frees up the sales teams to concentrate more effort on prospecting and closing new business.
Simply put, Sequences add touch points to the sales process. When salespeople enroll prospects in a sequence, it’s a “set it and forget it” process that is sure to keep your company in the top of your prospects’ minds.
With sequences, you no longer have to hunt for reasons to touch base with active prospects. You are reaching out because you have something valuable to add to the conversation.
And most of the time, sequence messaging is NOT asking prospects to take the next step in the sales cycle. They are simply interjecting value-added content and perspective into your engagement conversation.
You can track opens, clicks and engagement for each prospect in your sequence, and gain a better understanding of the types of content that drive behavior.
Armed with specific information about the pain points and/or solutions that your prospects engage with, salespeople can go into their next conversation with a specific strategy to solve for the customer's needs.
It’s not just the cadence of touch points that make sequences effective - they are also great at establishing credibility and trust. Throughout your sequences, you should be delivering value-added content at every opportunity.
A link to a recent and relevant blog post, an un-gated white paper, a customer case study, customer testimonials - all of these elements can be delivered in sequence for your prospects to read and share on their own time.
With each proximate sequence delivery, you further establish alignment with their needs, expertise in their vertical, and a track record of successful engagements.
Many Sales teams identify the Connect phase as the most valuable place to start leveraging Sequences. In this phase, Inbound Salespeople connect with leads to help them decide whether they should prioritize the goal or challenge that they are facing.
The Connect Phase deploys sequences to pose a series of questions related to the pain points of our target prospects. If a target identifies with the pain, and you’ve given them a logical next step to signal their interest, these leads become qualified. Congrats - you’ve now escalated the relationship with your prospect and added them to the deal pipeline. This is where most teams stop using sequences.
But while most teams are only leveraging sequences for deal origination, we argue that Sequences can be just as effective in moving a deal through the pipeline. “Explore Phase” sequences can be designed to deliver educational collateral about how your products and/or services can solve for the prospects specific challenges. This is especially effective when your company is selling into verticals where you’ve developed expertise or proprietary IP.
In the “Advise Phase”, you can use sequences to deliver customer testimonials or references, helping to close the communications gap during long requirements gathering or strategic phases.
Here at Business Solution Partners, we even leverage Sequences to deliver internal employee training in a regular cadence. Once you get your hands on the Sequences tool, you too will discover new and innovative ways to deploy it for your needs.
But be careful! The sequence tool was designed to nurture sales leads - its functionality is limited to this specific task. As with all things HubSpot, learning through trial and error is a part of the process. There have been times where we sought to leverage sequences for outside of the box ideas, and they just didn’t pan out.
Sequences is a powerful tool that enables salespeople to automate the follow-up process, inject value-added content and perspective into the sales conversation, and free up valuable time to pursue more important sales activities.
Whether you simply use Sequences in the Connect Phase, or incorporate a more holistic approach to the tool, we’re positive that sales teams will find value in the product, and adopt its use enthusiastically.
Want to learn more about HubSpot Sequences and how Business Solution Partners can empower your company with HubSpot Strategies? Contact us today!