Winning Today as a Small and Medium Business Seller: 5 Proven Best Practices and 5 Essential Stats

If you’re responsible for bringing in new business at a small or medium-sized business (SMBs) — whether you’re solely dedicated to sales or wear multiple hats — then we know that increasing the velocity of your growth is the name of the game and time is your most precious resource. If you are feeling the heat, then rest assured that you’re not alone. Nearly 80% of top performers in SMBs felt more pressure to close deals than last year and 75% said that they were getting pressured by their management team to close bigger deals, which is significantly higher than top performers in enterprise organizations (ENTs) at 62% and 60% respectively.

In celebration of May’s Small Business Month in the U.S., we’re excited to share some new cuts of the Deep Sales Playbook data that we launched earlier this year, in partnership with globally renowned research firm Ipsos. In this report, we identified 10 behaviors — consolidated into three habits — that are highly correlated to sellers exceeding their quotas. In fact, we found that top performers who did most, if not all, of the 10 behaviors had nearly 2x the chance of crushing their quotas. On the flip side, we found that poor performers, who did a few or none of these behaviors, had more than 6x the chance of missing their quotas. If you don’t want to read the full report, then there’s a handy infographic that shares the top takeaways.

Today, we’ll explore the current state of SMB sales globally in organizations with less than 250 people (unless otherwise noted) and compare these key metrics to enterprise organizations, or those with more than 1,000 employees. 

5 Proven Best Practices that Separate Top Performers from Low Performers.

When we looked at the SMB slice of the seller population and identified how many of the deep sales habits they did, we found that only 13% of SMB sellers are what we would call “deep sellers” or top performers were the ones that had the highest chance of exceeding their quota and nearly two-thirds (62%) were what we would categorize as shallow sellers or low performers. 

Here’s where the rubber meets the road for SMB sellers. The top performers who did most, if not all, of the 10 behaviors had nearly 2x the chance of crushing their quotas. On the flip side, we found that poor performers, who did a few or none of these behaviors, had more than 5x the chance of missing their quotas. 

Here’s the good news. The deep sales habits are relatively easy to do and — in a world where the pressure that SMB sellers have to accelerate growth is enormous — not time consuming.

In this blog post, we explore 5 key areas that are true difference makers: the most effective type of personalized emails, the power of multithreading, the impact of researching people, companies, and industries, busting the myth that warm introductions don’t work, and how sales intelligence tools are a top performers’ best friend.

1. Types of research: When researching prospects, top performers focus on industry research. And when they reach out, they showcase that industry knowledge.

Although ChatGPT and AI-powered sales intelligence tools like AccountIQ in LinkedIn Sales Navigator can make researching prospects and customers easier and faster than it was years ago, there’s still a big question as to what types of research are most effective. As it turns out, the answer is different depending on what type of opportunity an SMB seller is researching.

When going after new business, nearly every SMB seller looks at the company’s website and does at least a cursory news search on the organization. That’s not differentiating. We found that low performers also tend to conduct research on the person (26%) that they are reaching out to and top performers focus on industry research (30%). When it comes to luring in new customers, demonstrating an understanding of the business problem that your prospective customer is facing is a much more compelling value proposition than sharing that you’re also a Giants fan.

When it comes to current customers, top performers are already familiar with the company, so they go much deeper on industry research (54%) and use it as a way to create more relevant outreach or a more nuanced conversation about their challenges, competitive environment, or potential industry trends that may impact their business. In other words, industry research helps them become a more valuable business partner to their customers.

2. Email personalization: Top performers personalize their emails based on their understanding of the company or industry, versus the person they are reaching out to.

You’ve already heard an earful throughout the years that cold emails don’t work. We’ve all been on the receiving end of them and we almost immediately relegate them to our spam or trash folders. However, about a fifth of SMB sellers still continue to send them, regardless of how they perform against their quotas.

Personalizing your email outreach is definitely a better way to “break through” the noise and increase your chances of getting a response, but the question is, “What kind of personalization works the best?”

Over half of SMB sellers report that they personalize emails by utilizing information they glean from researching the person they are reaching out to, but there’s little differentiation between the number of top and low performers who do that (57% and 54% respectively). This indicates that SMB sellers do have some success using this approach, but it’s not a difference maker.

The winning tactic — that 69% of top performers use — is personalizing emails based on relevant industry or company data. This finding only underscores the insight we uncovered in the previous section. Industry research should be a regular part of your daily routine to increase your chances of exceeding your quota.

3. Multithreading: Top performers seek to make between 4-9 connections with key buyers.

According to a recent LinkedIn blog post, “Multithreading is building multiple relationships within one account.” Why is this important? Think of it like an insurance policy. If your only contact leaves the company you’re prospecting, or there’s a reorg, you’re left flat footed — without other people to continue the deal momentum. And, by building relationships with multiple people in an account, you also get more intel on their business challenges and how to frame your offering to help solve them.

We know that top performers multithread as a regular course of business, but the numbers give additional color to that story. While over two-thirds (68%) of low performers stop at befriending one to three decision makers, top performers go the extra mile with nearly half (49%) saying that they have between four and nine decision-makers. You see a similar pattern when it comes to connecting with buying committee members.

4. Warm introductions: Top performers use warm introductions to dramatically increase their chances of receiving a response from a prospect.

Warm introductions are pure gold when it comes to increasing your chances of a response from a first touch with a prospective customer. Whether mentioning a mutual connection in your first outreach, or having that mutual connection make an introduction on your behalf, warm outreach is used significantly more by top performers (43%) versus low performers (32%).

Here’s the reason why taking the time to identify that mutual acquaintance pays off. We found that SMB sellers have a significantly higher success rate of receiving a reply with more than 50% of their warm outreach (15%) compared to enterprise sellers (8%).

Imagine increasing your chances of getting a response from a first touch 50% of the time! It’s easy — just work your network connections and watch the magic happen.

5. Sales intelligence tools: More than 40% of top performers use sales intelligence tools to identify white space, decision makers, and buying committee members.

According to Gartner, a sales intelligence tool provides the information that salespeople use to make informed decisions in the selling cycle including data and insights into customers, prospects, and leads. As it turns out, these tools — such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator — are the secret weapon that clearly separates the low performers from the ones that have the best chance of going to Club.

We found that more than 40% of top performers say that they use sales intelligence tools to identify, white space, decision makers, and members of a buying committee and there’s roughly a 13 point difference between low performers and top performers across all three use cases.

State of B2B Sales for Small and Medium Businesses

Who doesn’t love a good set of benchmarks to see how you stack up against your peers? We love benchmarks too, which is why we’re excited to give you a snapshot of key metrics in SMBs globally in 5 areas: top challenges, levels of quota target attainment, average deal sizes, average length of sales cycles, and how success is measured.

1. Target Attainment: It was a tough year for SMB sellers, with over a fifth missing their numbers.

It should come as no surprise that a highly competitive sales environment is the #1 challenge for both SMBs and enterprises. But, when we peruse down the list, it gets more interesting. For SMB sellers, making contact with decision makers (29%) is 5 points higher than what enterprise sellers report (24%) and longer buying cycles for SMBs (29%) are 7 points higher than for enterprises (22%). 

What caught our attention was the fourth item down — wasting time on unqualified leads. Twenty-six percent of SMB sellers list this as a top challenge versus only 20% of enterprise sellers who say the same. This is a critical challenge, particularly when time is literally money.

2. Top challenges: Increased competition, making contact with decision makers, longer buying cycles, and wasting time on unqualified leads.

It should come as no surprise that a highly competitive sales environment is the #1 challenge for both SMBs and enterprises. But, when we peruse down the list, it gets more interesting. For SMB sellers, making contact with decision makers (29%) is 5 points higher than what enterprise sellers report (24%) and longer buying cycles for SMBs (29%) are 7 points higher than for enterprises (22%). 

What caught our attention was the fourth item down — wasting time on unqualified leads. Twenty-six percent of SMB sellers list this as a top challenge versus only 20% of enterprise sellers who say the same. This is a critical challenge, particularly when time is literally money.

3. Deal size: Most SMB deals are under half a million dollars.

We know that average deal sizes can differ greatly across different products, services, and industries, but one thing is resoundingly clear. SMBs have markedly smaller deal sizes than enterprises. In fact, 65% of SMB deals are between $10,000 and under half a million dollars with over a third (34%) in the $100K-$499K range. Compare that to enterprises whose lionshare of deal size (54%) is between $500K - nearly $5M. And, we don’t know who the 1% of SMB sellers are who shared that their average deal size is over $10M, but we applaud you (and want to talk to you, too).

With smaller deal sizes, that’s one reason why the length of sales cycles is so important to meet aggressive revenue targets. So, that’s where we’re going next.

4. Length of sales cycle: Nearly half of SMB sellers report that they have an average sales cycle of less than 3 months.

There seems to be a never-ending list of reasons why a deal drags on. They range from a change in decision makers to a shift in prospect or customer budget priorities to an ever growing list of people on a buying committee who need to weigh in. Regardless of what obstacles come up, SMB salespeople have smaller size deals because greenlighting a $50K agreement versus a $5M one is presumably faster and easier for any organization to sign off on. 

That’s a big reason why nearly half (45%) of SMB sellers close a deal in less than 3 months while only 20% of ENT salespeople say the same. Unsurprisingly, SMB deals generally conclude faster than enterprise ones, particularly considering the lower average price tag of those deals versus enterprise opportunities.

5. Success measures: The most important metric for SMB sellers is meeting revenue targets and the top metric for ENT sellers is customer satisfaction.

“You can’t change what you can’t measure,” is often attributed to business icon and author Peter Drucker. Although true in principle, we would argue that you can change seller behavior based on the measures their organization values most. 

When we asked SMB and ENT sellers globally about the metrics that are most important to their success, the top one for SMB sellers was meeting revenue targets followed closely by conversion rates. On the other hand, enterprise sellers value customer satisfaction the most (42%) with customer lifetime value and customer acquisition costs coming in a close second (both at 36%). 

Given the smaller average deal size, shorter sales cycles, and the ever increasing pressure to accelerate growth, the more transactional, revenue-based performance metrics that SMB sellers value most make sense — particularly in light of the fact that 21% of them missed their quota.

Ready to help your team become more efficient and effective? Sales Navigator is here to help.

Did you know that SMB users of Sales Navigator, or those sellers who work for companies with 1,000 employees or less, see 32% more deals, 42% larger deals, and 47% more revenue? And, our ENT sellers realize similar benefits with those sellers at companies with more than 1,000 employees realizing 29% more deals, 45% larger deals, and 43% more revenue.

Mic drop.

If you’ve always been curious about what LinkedIn Sales Navigator can do for you, then you’re in luck. Check us out free for 30 days and let us know what you think.

And, if you’re a customer of HubSpot’s Smart CRM who is interested in learning more about the Sales Navigator integration, then sign up for a free demo and we’ll reach out to you shortly.