You have tried everything to increase their close rate to close more deals. But have you focused on how to increase your sales engagement?
Although some experts like Grant Cardone tells you not to worry about your close rate, it is a number you definitely need to keep a close eye on. It lets you know how efficient and effective you are as a sales rep, team or organization. The higher it is, the better you are at converting opportunities in the pipeline into revenue. Actually even a slight improvement might have a huge impact on your revenue.
Closer vs. win rate
But before discussing how to increase it, let’s begin with some definitions. Your close rate is the number of opportunities you win, compared to the number of opportunities you create, or in other words, number of proposals you have sent in the same time period.
Sometimes it is confused with win rate, which is the number of won opportunities, compared to the number total number of closed opportunities (won + lost).
Let’s make an example. In the last 30 days:
- you created 100 opportunities, and sent proposals to all of them
- you won 20 of them, lost 20 of them, and never got any response from 60 of them (aka. the black hole of sales)
- your close rate is 20/100 = 20%
- your win rate is 20/40 = 50%
Generic tips on increasing the close rate
Sales literature is full of articles, training, methods, tips and tactics on how to improve your overall sales process, so that you will have a higher close rate, such as:
- Know who your ideal client is
- Address common objections through your marketing
- Improve your sales scripting
- Optimize your offer
- Get better sales training for your team
- Get all the decision makers involved
- Learn about your customer’s most pressing challenges
All of the above are valid and valuable suggestions, and you should definitely implement these tactics. But there is one more area, where you should focus on: sales engagement!
Why to focus on sales engagement?
Sales engagement is defined as the set of measurable interactions that occur between you and your prospect. More than the quantity, it focuses on the quality and efficiency of this communication between your sales team and your customers.
We said `measurable interactions` but what are those interactions and how do we measure them? Now think about a proposal you have sent to one of your prospects. Engagement metrics might be the following:
- How many different decision makers viewed it?
- What percentage of your sales document have they read?
- How much time have they spent reading the proposal?
- Have they forwarded, downloaded or printed your proposal?
- Have they watched your personal video to introduce the proposal?
You might say you don’t have access to such real-time data, but thanks to modern sales technology, now it is possible to track all these metrics with a sales engagement platform.
How to increase engagement
Here’s the real question for you. If you can improve these engagement metrics, do you think you will have a better chance to close that deal? Of course, yes! For example, if you keep optimizing your sales collateral and make sure your prospects read it through the end, you will certainly increase your close rate.
So naturally the next question is, how can you improve these metrics? Read our 9 digital sales hacks for a more engaged buyer article.
Find out how you can increase the sales engagement with GetAccept Sales enablement platform. Our solution combines email, video and chat, proposal design, document tracking and e-signature. The platform allows B2B sellers to interact with their buyers in a personal and engaging way, making business easier and faster.
