Ask any salesperson what is the most important factor in a successful sales call and he is likely to respond "relationships." But knowing what to say to get to the key decision maker once you've leveraged those relationships is just as important. With a little up-front work to create "sales-ready messaging" for your sales force, you can shorten the sales cycle and close more deals, in less time.

Targeted Conversations Shorten Sales Cycles
Arming your salespeople with "sales-ready messaging" starts with understanding not only the job titles of those in a position to cost-justify, fund, buy, and implement your product in any given company, but also the business objectives or goals of those individuals. These business objectives can be revenue growth (for a CEO), improved forecast accuracy (for a CFO), and so on. Finally, you must understand how your product addresses these objectives and enables the customer to achieve his goals. Only then can you begin to influence and steer sales calls to your advantage.

How? By creating targeted, structured conversations for each decision-maker in the customer's organization. The companies whose marketing departments arm their sales forces with such "sales-ready messaging" will shorten sales cycles, increase revenues, and improve profit margins.

Turning "Sales-Ready Messaging" into Revenue
The key to "sales-ready messaging" is to understand your customer and his needs -- before your salesperson walks in the door -- so you can influence the conversations they have with buyers. If you've leveraged your company's relationship network well, you will have all the necessary information from which to create these "road maps". With these road maps, your sales reps can proactively guide sales conversations rather than reactively respond to customer questions, leading to a higher lead-to-sales ratio.

For example, say your company sells CRM software and your salesperson has leveraged a relationship to arrange a meeting with the CFO of a large, potential customer. Instead of waiting for the CFO to explain his pain points and then address each point in the meeting, what if your salesperson could refer to usage scenarios that listed the CFO's primary objectives (e.g., improve forecast accuracy and profitability through lower cost of sales) and all the features of your product that enable the CFO to meet those goals? So that when your salesperson walked into the meeting, he could drive the conversation by asking the CFO questions to which he already knows the answer, such as "Would it be useful to you if the software could track historical close rates for each salesperson by pipeline milestone, on an ongoing basis?" or "Would it be helpful to you if your sales manager could access your pipeline database anytime, from any location?"

"Sales-ready messaging" is the natural next step for companies that are leveraging relationships with enterprise social networking applications. With a little extra effort, you can turn your sales calls into a competitive advantage—and watch sales soar.