What’s a Sales Motion and How to Support One

Sales is the lifeblood of your business. It doesn’t matter what your industry or niche might be; without new sales, your company will stagnate and eventually fail. You want to ensure that you enjoy a steady stream of ongoing sales to both new and current customers. 

That requires more than just throwing money at your marketing team. It requires a sales motion. Not sure what a sales motion is, why it matters, or how to support one once it’s in place? We’ve got you covered.

What is a sales motion?

If you’ve never heard of a sales motion before, don’t feel bad. Many business owners and decision-makers without an in-depth background in sales haven’t. So, what is it?

According to HubSpot, a sales motion is “the combination of the actionable steps and general sales philosophy an organization employs to sell a product or service to prospects and customers. Sales motions often vary depending on the nature of the company enacting them and the buyer persona that business is trying to appeal to.”

From that, we can extrapolate that a sales motion is a combination of steps that form overall processes, coupled with the ethos that backs the company in the first place. Given the centrality of the business’s culture and personality within the sales process, they look dramatically different. A sales process within Apple would be utterly different from one within Nike or Patagonia, for example.

What’s a sales process?

A sales process is a combination of specific steps that a sales team takes to move a lead through the funnel and closer to the conversion point. You can think of it as a road map with replicable actions that reps can use, along with rebuttals and points to bring up when friction occurs within the process (usually due to hesitance on the part of the lead). One or more sales processes go into creating a sales motion.

Why is a sales motion important?

By this point, you can probably guess why a sales motion is important, but let’s go ahead and spell it out. Your sales motions provide:

• An opportunity to increase revenue

• The ability to boost profits, which are tied to but not the same as revenue

• Enhance your business’s reputation

• Educate leads and customers about how your product/service addresses their pain points

• Adapt to the ever-changing needs of your customer base/audience

• Outcompete other businesses in your industry

Those benefits are pretty critical. So, how do you support a sales motion within your organization?

Supporting a sales motion

Supporting a sales motion requires taking specific, informed steps.

Setting sales goals

The first step in supporting a sales motion is simple. You must set sales goals. However, resist the urge to make those goals too lofty. If goals aren’t achievable, it’s impossible to measure progress toward them and they also act to demotivate your sales reps. After all, who’s going to “give it their all” if there’s no way they can achieve what they’re being asked to do? Important sales goals include:

• Realistic KPIs

• Attainable desired outcomes

• How you’ll measure progress toward those outcomes

• Guides to help sales teams align their efforts with KPIs

Know your audience

Once you’ve established a goal, it’s time to dig into your audience. How well do you know them and the pain points that drive them to seek out a product or service like yours? Who are your ideal customers? What makes one lead ideal and another a less-than-perfect fit?

Identifying your ideal customers involves some research. You need to create accurate buyer personas and then create segmented marketing that speaks to each persona’s unique characteristics, needs, and goals. 

Get with the strategy

Of course, you’ll also need to create and implement the right sales strategy. It’s also important to understand that your sales strategy may vary across product/service lines, geographic areas, and in other instances. In a nutshell, your strategy should spell out how you position your offerings for your audience segments, as well as relative to those of your competitors. 

Pay attention to the message

Your sales message is a key component here. That message should carry the same core information but present it in unique ways based on your audience segment, geographic location, and other variables. It should be based on your business culture, ethos, and personality while communicating the benefits of your product or service to the specific audience segment you’re targeting at that time. There’s no one-size-fits-all sales message. You’ll need to build different messaging based on the steps that we’ve already discussed.

Be prepared for the influx of leads and repeat customers

With a robust sales motion in place, your sales teams’ actions will bear a lot of fruit. Make sure that your business is prepared for the influx of phone calls and other communications. This involves more than just ensuring that there’s someone to answer the phones. 

You need an experienced specialist to answer phone calls, text messages, and online chats who can answer questions and provide information, and then hand over warm calls to your sales personnel at the right time. 

At Smith.ai, our experienced virtual receptionists have the knowledge and expertise required. Whether you need a 24/7 answering service, want to make sure you can transfer leads to your senior sales specialists, or ensure that leads can book appointments or consultations easily, we can help. 

We can also support your efforts with our web chat offering. It combines the benefits of our industry-leading AI with our experienced human agents to ensure that every touchpoint with your brand is positive. 

Ready to learn more? Schedule a consultation or reach out to hello@smith.ai.

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