Papirfly’s Client Director Sara Naveda takes up the story:  “Our business is doing very well.  There wasn’t really a problem we were looking to address. It was just taking a sales sense check, getting an expert to review how we are doing things and see if there are any areas we can further build on and strengthen.

“It was also to determine if what we are doing is the optimum Papirfly way, and to get together a blueprint, a best practice ideology on how we sell.   Therefore, when we are recruiting and training our sales people we will be very clear on the way we generate leads, influence our prospects and how we manage that entire ‘cold to sold’ cycle.”

Papirfly is in a niche market with no competitors.  Consequently, the target audience may be unaware at first of the opportunities of using the company’s self-empowering marketing solutions.  Prospects are engaged through emails via LinkedIn, and from there they are shown a demo in which there is a call to action.  It was this process that Natural Training was tasked first with reviewing.

“It was about looking at the correspondence our pre-demo guy sends out and looking at the nature of the demo.  Are they being done in the best possible way?  What are we missing?  What more could we be doing?  And then a big piece after the demo is looking at whether there is anything more we can do to engage and maintain their interest.  Basically, are we being as strategic and as clever about our sales process as we could be?”

To help answer these questions and more, Natural Training sent one of its leading sales consultants and coaches.  He started by talking to Papirfly’s lead generation person, reviewing the emails he sent out and providing some recommendations on how to strengthen them.  Then he turned his attention to the demos.

Sarah continues: “We recorded some demos and the Natural Coach listened in and helped us with some milestones, not scripts, and having a clear flow.  That is, knowing the key things we want to get across and achieve and what we want to understand from the prospects, at the right time, without it being a ’tell’ session.”

In the Papirfly sales process, the next step after the demo is the sending of a business case document to prospects.  The Natural Coach also reviewed this, making some amendments and advising on how Papirfly can dedicate its energies to the best prospects.  This included email templates on getting to ‘no’ or ‘not now’ a lot quicker.

“For example, one of the new templates says:  You haven’t replied to my recent emails, so I am going to assume for one reason or another that now is not the right time to engage.  If however, I am mistaken please get in touch, otherwise I wish you all the best.”

“This approach is quite passive, but it does actually get some really good results.  People are getting back to us and saying they were busy and so on which is why they hadn’t replied.  And if they don’t reply you know it is a ‘no’.  So really, it is just about being a little bit smarter in how we manage our time, focus and energy.”