SALES EFFECTIVENESS:

The B2B Sales

Leader’s Guide.
Table of Contents
Introduction

Turning Cold Calls into Warm Leads

Discussing Price: Handling the Conversation,

Early and Often

Success Story: How Deal Intelligence Solves

Top Prospecting Challenges

18 Success Under Pressure Isn’t an Accident

Introduction
When economic headwinds pick up, sales leaders are the first to sound
the alarm — and chart a new course. Longer sales cycles, larger buying
committees, increased price pressure, and smaller teams can quickly
combine to reduce your margin for error and increase the urgency to find
a solution.

To thrive in a challenging environment, sales teams need a rock-solid grasp

of the fundamentals and the biggest force-multipliers they can get their
hands on. Here’s the good news: The market intelligence, data assets, and
technology tools available today were unimaginable to someone who first hit
the sales floor 10 years ago.

It’s time to make the most of those built-in advantages and show that
unprecedented markets can forge uncommon leaders. Hone your focus
and process now, and you’ll vault past the competition when the wind is at
your back.

At ZoomInfo, we’re obsessed with helping businesses grow in ways they never
thought possible. This guide is designed to help today’s B2B sales leaders
ramp up their effectiveness in any economic environment. You’ll learn:

• Proven methods for warming up cold calls

• Coaching points for responding to price pressure early and often

• Front-line examples of how to win the battle for customer retention

Let’s get to work.

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Turning Cold Calls into
Warm Leads
Even in today’s data-driven sales landscape, cold calling remains a fact of life for
many sales professionals. Fortunately, today’s sales leaders have a crucial advantage over
their predecessors: market intelligence and outreach platforms that can warm up virtually
any introduction.

You might not have spoken to a prospect before, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be prepared
to forge a meaningful connection with them and help solve their problems.

While cold calls may be harder to work than pre-qualified leads that were carefully vetted by
your marketing team, cold calling can still be a rich source of pipeline for sales professionals who
know how to think on their feet.

These three proven cold-calling tips will help you:

Cold-call more productively

Overcome objections effectively

Maintain momentum during difficult conversations

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TURNING COLD CALLS INTO WARM LEADS

CO L D CA LLI N G T I P #1:

Use a Sales Engagement Platform

When a company
Whether your sales team is one person or 100 people, there
are limits to how efficient you can get without using modern
realizes they’ve
software solutions. reached the limits
of human efficiency,
When you consider the average sales professional spends less
their only choice is
than 40% of their work week actually selling, the pressure on
individual sales reps becomes that much more demanding. to turn to technology
and automation.”
Sales engagement platforms allow your reps to sell more
effectively by reducing the guesswork inherent to human- Michael Maimone
centric sales processes. VP at ZoomInfo

While specific functionality varies, most sales engagement

platforms offer similar features. They typically include:

Auto dialing Follow-up reminders

Intelligent call and

CRM integration
calendar scheduling

Some sales automation solutions go beyond the basic feature set and offer greater insights into
your sales team’s data. This includes conversational analytics technologies, such as Chorus, that
use natural language processing to analyze and evaluate areas of opportunity during sales calls.

Tools such as ZoomInfo Engage also offer deep insights into prospects, combining technographic
profiles, original research, and intent data to further contextualize your reps’ calls and maximize
the likelihood of a closed deal.

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TURNING COLD CALLS INTO WARM LEADS

CO L D CA LLI N G T I P #2:

Warm Up Cold Calls with Deep Prospect Research

The more you know about a prospect before picking up the phone, the more likely you are to
establish a meaningful connection. Using world-class B2B data for preliminary prospect research
is the most effective way to make every cold call count — the better you understand your
prospects’ pain points, the more effectively you’ll be able to sell your solution.

When presenting your product or service, focus on the prospect’s core areas of value that
you identified during your preliminary research. Supplement this with any relevant marketing
documents or customer profiles your organization may use. Be attentive and listen carefully to
what your prospect tells you, but try to center the conversation around the core value-adds your
solution offers.

Emphasize results. Specific product functions may be exciting, but you’ll get farther by
focusing on how individual features will make their life easier. You don’t have much time to
establish a connection with your prospects, so respect them by getting to the point quickly and
demonstrating how you can help them.

Don’t overlook technographic data

Technology and software systems are mission-critical to every company, which
is why up-to-date technographic data is every sales team’s secret weapon.
Technographic data doesn’t just tell you what your prospects are using, it creates
unique, actionable opportunities for you to discuss specifics, such as:

The capabilities and limitations of current tools

Budgetary considerations and constraints

Quarterly and annual planning priorities

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TURNING COLD CALLS INTO WARM LEADS

CO L D CA LLI N G T I P #3:

Maintain Your Momentum with Alternative Touchpoints

You did your homework. You connected with your prospect, demonstrated real value, and left the
cold call feeling positive about its potential. Then weeks go by with nothing but silence.

There are many factors that can derail even red-hot prospective deals, such as legal headaches,
complex procurement protocols, and personnel moves. It’s important to mitigate this risk by
pursuing alternative touchpoints at the conclusion of a cold call.

LinkedIn Connections
Rather than lose momentum by waiting weeks to send a bland follow-up email, your sellers can
send a LinkedIn connection request to prospects. This creates an opportunity to not only expand
their network, but also paves the way for a gentle social nudge if things go quiet.

And don’t forget: your sellers should be real people when they’re building their networks. There’s
nothing less memorable than a robotic inbox — and that means you can easily stand apart by crafting
a simple, personal touchpoint when you reach out. Remind sellers to approach social touchpoints as if
they were building their own network — not simply checking a box on the sales playlist.

Engaging a Level Up
Reaching out to the prospect’s manager is another way to reignite a stalled conversation, as is
attempting to connect with someone else on their team.

If you choose to adopt this approach, frame the communication around how you can help their
company. Reiterate why the original prospect found your offer compelling, and try to keep the
focus of the conversation around their core values that were identified during initial research.

Use a friendly, approachable tone, and give your prospects’ colleagues an out by reminding them
you can always revisit the conversation at a later date if the timing isn’t right today.

While mixing things up can be effective, be aware that this technique isn’t without risks.
Contacting your prospect’s manager could be seen as an end-run around your original point of
contact, which could sour the relationship and jeopardize the deal. It could also be perceived as
pushy or aggressive, which can also harm the likelihood of closing the sale.

Pave the way for level-up outreach by asking the prospect if they face internal roadblocks. If
sellers can offer to be an advocate, they’re building trust and a team approach — and it shows they
truly believe in the solution they’re selling.

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Discussing Price:

Handling the Conversation,

Early and Often
You’re finally on the phone with a qualified lead. Things are going great. They’re laughing at your
jokes, they’re nodding at your sales pitch. Then “Alright, how much is this going to cost?” suddenly
enters the chat. Talk about a screeching halt — you haven’t even shown them the best part of the
demo yet.

It’s not surprising that salespeople and prospects diverge when it comes to the best time to
discuss pricing in a deal. The result is a push-pull dance between buyers who don’t want to waste
their time on a solution that’s out of their budget, and sales reps who are confident that their
product is well worth the investment.

You have to use your judgment as a salesperson

and it takes practice to know when and where in
the conversation to go for it. Never stumble into
pricing conversations.”

Matthew Kusch
Enterprise Account Executive Team Lead at ZoomInfo

Want to nail this part of the conversation with your prospects? Here’s our sales leaders’
best advice for when, how, and how not to discuss price.

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DISCUSSING PRICE

The Dos and Don’ts of Discussing Price

in Early Sales Calls

DO

Understand the cost of your prospect’s problem. Which problem are they trying to
solve and what impact does it have on their business? With this understanding, you
can show your solution’s return on investment in terms of time, money, or another
important dimension.

Without pain and a problem to solve, you can’t drive the solution and
deliver pricing. You’re just a number on a piece of paper.”
Sean Bartlett
Sales Director at ZoomInfo

DON’T

Deliver pricing before you’ve earned the “right” to do it. Bartlett recommends
capturing a “wow” moment in your sales presentation — where the prospect seems
genuinely excited about an offering or feature.

Your job is to get people on the island. Don’t deliver a price until
you’ve delivered value.”
Sean Bartlett
Sales Director at ZoomInfo

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DISCUSSING PRICE

The Dos and Don’ts of Discussing Price

in Early Sales Calls

DO

Get an idea of the approval and decision process for purchasing your type of
solution, and identify who needs to be involved in pricing discussions. During
your discovery call, ask about the prospect’s procurement process. How do they
purchase products or services like yours? Is there a legal process for vetting vendors
and contracts?

Identifying all the key players (by using the org chart feature within ZoomInfo, for
example) allows you to accurately forecast your deals because you’re not leaving
key decision makers off your sales calls.

DON’T

Deliver pricing to anyone that doesn’t have the power or authority to make a buying
decision. At ZoomInfo, for example, we win 40% of opportunities when decision makers
are involved, but only 8% when they are not.

Without power, we’re just throwing numbers out there. If we don’t have
everyone in the room that can decide, we simply won’t be able to get a deal.”
Sean Bartlett
Sales Director at ZoomInfo

What should you do if the conversation turns to pricing without those stakeholders present?
Bartlett and Kusch recommend acknowledging your prospect’s enthusiasm for your product. Let
them know that you’re as excited as they are and can’t wait to get the rest of their team involved.

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DISCUSSING PRICE

The Dos and Don’ts of Discussing Price

in Early Sales Calls

DO

Come prepared to give a price range to someone who is insistent but can’t make the
final decision. Let them know that you’re in the same boat, that you don’t know all
the factors that could go into closing a deal, so giving them an exact cost right now
is difficult.

Don’t make an enemy out of a champion. If they ask two or three times and
it’s becoming a sticking point, give them a range, let them know there are
many factors that go into the deal, and that we would love to get someone
else on the call to discuss further.”
Matthew Kusch
Enterprise Account Executive Team Lead at ZoomInfo

DON’T

Get backed into a corner to discuss price. Reorient the conversation back to value,
what excites your prospect about the product, and how to get decision makers in the
room.

Not sure how to do this without putting potential deals at risk? Try taking calls with bad
fits — prospects who land in your queue who don’t quite fit your ideal customer profile.
For Kusch, this is one of the best ways to learn how to handle different scenarios
around pricing and other common objections, because of the low risk.

You can go through the motions, practice your demo skills, and get put to the
test answering questions with less pressure to close a deal. Once you hear the
same objection or question a few times, it’s hard to get stumped later on.”
Matthew Kusch
Enterprise Account Executive Team Lead at ZoomInfo

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DISCUSSING PRICE

The Dos and Don’ts of Discussing Price

in Early Sales Calls

DO

Keep things simple. If your solution involves multiple products or product lines, it can
be tempting to go over every single feature and benefit in every package. But this is
overwhelming to your prospect.

Don’t overcomplicate the deal. Focus on the

handful of things that are the most important
to your prospect and then stop talking.”
Matthew Kusch
Enterprise Account Executive Team Lead at ZoomInfo

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Success Story:

How Deal Intelligence

Solves Top Prospecting
Challenges
Finding out that one of your accounts is already deep in conversation with a competitor ranks
high on the list of bad-news scenarios for an account or revenue team leader. That’s exactly what
happened to ZoomInfo account manager Katelyn Boutelle.

Part of Boutelle’s account management workflow involves actively scouring Scoops — a deal
intelligence feature within ZoomInfo’s SalesOS software platform that offers bite-sized actionable
insights about accounts, culled from ZoomInfo’s proprietary research.

That’s how Boutelle learned that one of her clients — a growing software company — was in the
market for a competing website chat product. Here’s what she did next, and why her story is a
perfect lesson for account execs who find themselves in the same position.

Key Takeaways:
Lean on a business intelligence partner to deliver data and deal intelligence
so you can focus your time on making a human connection.

Don’t be discouraged by being the last to pitch. The hard part is over — your
client already knows they want a solution. Show them that yours is the best.

Explore lateral needs by opening up the conversation to a wider view of the

client’s business. What else can you solve for them?

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HOW DEAL INTELLIGENCE SOLVES PROSPECTING CHALLENGES

CHALLENGE #1

Reaching clients and prospects at the right time

In an account manager’s dream world, their clients would simply reach out and offer
to spend more money. But as companies scale and become more siloed, the buying
committee you’ve worked so hard to build a relationship with could be completely
distinct from the team looking for an additional service.

Even worse, your customers might not even know you offer what they’re looking for.

Beyond that, as your company grows its account base or total addressable market,
it becomes more difficult to stay on top of everything that’s happening with your
accounts. Without becoming full-time snoops, today’s salespeople can get left behind
when they miss small but salient bits of information — like the fact that a client is
shopping for a competing service.

SOLUTION

Stay close to your top accounts’ news and activity

This is where Scoops gives busy account executives a tremendous edge.

“Using Scoops is part of my day-to-day workflow. I set up alerts for accounts that are
assigned to me, and I can narrow them down to what I care about, like new project
initiatives, surging priorities, pain points — information that isn’t public knowledge, that
only we have because of our research team,” Boutelle says.

Instead of waiting for her client to call her about adding ZoomInfo’s chat solution,
the Scoops alert prompted Boutelle to call them. Good thing, too, because her client
wasn’t just in the market — they were in final negotiations with a competitor.

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HOW DEAL INTELLIGENCE SOLVES PROSPECTING CHALLENGES

CHALLENGE #2

Client is ready to buy — from someone else

Already having a call on the books, Boutelle jumped on the opportunity to dive right
into an upsell conversation. “I wasn’t shy about mentioning that I saw they were
looking for a chat feature through ZoomInfo’s Scoops. I think it’s a huge value-add
that we have this information and if anything, it builds our case. I use intent data all the
time,” Boutelle says.

When the client informed Boutelle that they were in the final stages of signing with a
competitor, she leveraged the health of the relationship to get a last-minute pitch for
ZoomInfo’s chat offering.

“Even though they were close to signing, we had a significant existing relationship, so I
asked who I could talk to anyway — and they gave us a chance,” Boutelle says.

SOLUTION

Intercept and support customers before they churn

Instead of giving up on a deal that looked lost, Boutelle was able to swoop in at a time
when the client had already involved internal stakeholders and allocated a budget to
acquire a chat solution.

“Initially, it looked like a bad time, like we might have missed our chance,” she says.
“But it turned out to be the perfect time, because we didn’t have to convince them
they needed a chat feature or to find a budget for one, they were already there.”

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HOW DEAL INTELLIGENCE SOLVES PROSPECTING CHALLENGES

CHALLENGE #3

You’re the last one at the bake-off

Is it better to be the first sales pitch to a potential customer or the last? While most
salespeople will allude to an advantage of being first through the door, there is
potential upside to coming in right at the end — especially if you’ve done the work to
establish and maintain good relationships.

SOLUTION

Leverage a customer’s own research to your advantage.

“I thought it was going to be a challenge because we were coming in so late in their
process. But it meant that the client’s team knew exactly what they wanted and the
questions to ask about whether our solution could fit their needs. We were able to have
very efficient demo calls and hit on every point they were looking for,” Boutelle says.

Boutelle and her team of demo specialists didn’t have to help her client figure out
what their problems were and how ZoomInfo could solve them. Instead, they had
tightly focused meetings with stakeholders who had a clear vision of what they
wanted and were ready to buy.

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HOW DEAL INTELLIGENCE SOLVES PROSPECTING CHALLENGES

CHALLENGE #4

Using a conversation to uncover other business needs

Timing is everything. Boutelle was able to get her foot in the door about the chat
solution. But if there’s an opportunity to cross-sell, why stop there?

“As we’re talking about chat, our teams started talking about the client’s website
and what they’re trying to accomplish from a demand-generation perspective.
Being curious about their business opened up the conversation about how
ZoomInfo’s MarketingOS platform could help them increase conversions from the
web,” Boutelle says.

In another plot twist — because why would it be easy? — the client was also about to
sign with a competing demand-generation platform when ZoomInfo got a chance to
present MarketingOS.

SOLUTION

Integrated tech that serves up insights when and where you need them
Boutelle and a cross-functional team of account executives emphasized the benefit
of ZoomInfo’s single platform that offers a seamless, centralized solution and
integrates with the client’s other business tools, including Salesforce.

“From an end-user perspective, having everything in one place and our easy
integration is a huge benefit, but there’s a major upside for decision makers, too. One
platform that can solve for multiple business needs means fewer vendors to manage
and it’s more cost-effective,” she says.

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Success Under
Pressure Isn’t
an Accident.
You can’t prepare your team for every situation that might occur. But giving
sales professionals the right guidance, the best tools, and the room to grow
under pressure can reveal strengths that you wouldn’t have seen under
different circumstances.

More than 30,000 businesses worldwide trust ZoomInfo to help them increase
productivity, reduce administrative overhead, and run the most efficient sales
motions.

In a recent survey of our customers, sales reps reported that they cut
prospecting time in half and doubled their phone and email connect rates by
using our tools. Moreover, 67% of sales leaders reported immediate topline
revenue gains after implementing ZoomInfo.

You don’t have time to waste — count on ZoomInfo to help you unlock your
revenue potential.

Find out more today by visiting ZoomInfo.com

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