Sales and Fulfillment
Key strategies for effective pre-sales managed services
Although closing the deal often gets the most attention in a sales pipeline, anywhere between 50% to 90% of a buyer’s journey is complete before they even interact with a sales rep. People no longer go straight to the source when making decisions but instead comb through online content and compare different solutions to create a longer sales cycle. This shift highlights the fact that a closed deal is a cumulative result of pre-sales efforts, from lead qualification and discovery to implementation and follow-up.
Let us explore the role pre-sales strategy plays in building a strong sales pipeline and key strategies to ensure effective pre-sales services.
Understanding the pre-sales process
A pre-sales process encompasses the preparatory phase before closing a sale. Requiring a blend of sales and engineering capabilities, the pre-sales process takes the customer through lead qualification, discovery, product demo, and proposal to a “closed deal”. However, effective pre-sales services continue even after a salesperson closes the deal. They play a vital role in customer retention as well, extending into implementation and post-sales follow-up for an ongoing relationship.
Why are effective pre-sales services essential?
Not every lead a business receives converts into a sale. In fact, many sales professionals acknowledge that only about half of the leads truly align with their offerings and are high-quality prospects. Pre-sales strategies play a key role in filtering qualified leads to ensure the sales team only focuses on high-quality prospects for more closed deals. Apart from that, pre-sales services are also important for:
- Understanding the customers’ needs to offer tailored solutions
- Building a positive relationship and trust with prospective clients
- Reducing sales cycle for resource optimisation
- Enhancing product value through feedback
- Building a predictable sales pipeline
- Minimising uncertainties and mitigating risks
Building an effective pre-sales strategy
Effective pre-sales services are the building blocks of a strong sales pipeline. The more strategic and robust approach you take to pre-sales processes, the more resilient the sales pipeline will be. Here are six key strategies you can incorporate at the pre-sales stage:
Foster mutual respect and collaboration
Pre-sales is not a stand-alone process but needs collaboration and coordination between the engineering, marketing, and sales teams. Fostering a culture of mutual respect and collaboration can be the foundation of an effective pre-sales strategy, which can also help you build a compelling sales pitch.
Implement clear processes
Clarity in the process is crucial for a pre-sales strategy to work. Every team member must be clear about what steps they need to follow when interacting with customers at different stages and the corresponding activities involved. Such clarity is essential to ensure everyone is on the same page, especially when it comes to complex and long sales cycles.
Define clear roles and responsibilities
An extension of the point above, clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of different team members, ensures no misunderstanding or miscommunication can result in missed opportunities. Additionally, mapping the skills and availability of different team members can also help ensure resource optimisation and opportunity prioritisation for a robust sales pipeline.
Ensure seamless communication
A sales pipeline will crumble without effective communication between teams. Ensuring seamless communication between pre-sales, sales, and engineering teams – from contact to close – will ensure you understand the customers’ requirements and offer them the best possible solution.
Understand your customers
Understanding your customers is the key to a successful pre-sales strategy and a closed sale. Prioritising knowing your customers – their needs, preferences, and pain points – can help you understand their buying behaviour and tailor your strategy accordingly. This way, you can offer custom solutions tailored to the unique needs of each customer. Additionally, you can leverage real-time feedback from customers and insights from customer interactions to refine your pre-sales process and optimise your sales approach with data-backed insights.
Leverage sales process managed services
Equip your team with the right sales process managed service to empower them with next-gen technology and data-backed workflows that can help optimise sales efficiency. This way, you can focus on the right customers at the right time and move prospects forward strategically for a sustainable competitive edge.
How can Infosys BPM help optimise pre-sales strategy?
With a majority of a buyer’s journey ending before they interact with a sales rep, effective pre-sales services are essential for any business to survive. Sales process managed services can help companies optimise their pre-sales processes with data-backed insights for a sustainable competitive edge.
