3 Expert Insights About Sales Performance (June 2024)

54% of sales reps are finding it more difficult to sell in 2024 than in previous years.

With 40% of sales pros struggling to surpass their goals, it’s safe to say that teams are on the lookout for opportunities and tactics to kickstart lagging performance.

Publicly available expert insights are a low-cost source of inspiration for improving sales and experimenting with new tactics.

Here are three insights you can put to use. 

Focus on getting the job done, not doing the job perfectly

According to Matt Gray, perfectionism carries a bigger long-term cost than mistakes.

With this in mind, you should focus on execution since perfection can trigger “overthinking, delays, and missed opportunities.”

Execution also allows you to iterate more, which gives you extra chances to learn, grow, and test your ideas to see what works. In contrast, perfectionism can blind you from seeing your own growth.

As Gray states, “Learn by doing, not just by thinking.”

How you can apply this

Using Gray’s insights, here are four tactics you can use for your own sales performance:

• Start now and iterate – Instead of rewriting and rewriting the same email, you should simply write it and send it (but make sure to proofread it). The more emails you send, the more chances you’ll have to fix it and ‘perfect’ your script.
• Set daily targets that you can achieve – Mastery is a marathon, and it will take several days before you can master the art of emailing and natural-sounding personalization. Mastery will require putting in the reps, whether it’s learning more effective ways of prompting if you’re using an AI email writer or crafting your own copy. Setting daily goals you can reach will help you score small wins and build momentum towards your final goal.
• Embrace feedback to trigger continuous improvement – As you send more emails, you’ll see more results. The data and feedback you collect will help you target each iteration and refine your overall approach.

Make sure you’re meeting basic cold outreach benchmarks

As Nils Schneider explains, there are several benchmarks your cold outreach needs to reach, from mailbox set-up to email performance.

They include:

• No more than 3 mailboxes per domain
• Building sender reputation by warming up new mailboxes for 2 weeks before cold emails
• Limit yourself to 30 cold emails per day per mailbox
• Change email copy and offer if your positive responses and closes are 0.5% and 0.0004% respectively

How you can apply this

Many of these insights are already actionable as they are, but we’d like to expand a bit on a few of them:

• Since email service providers have been making changes to their policy, we’d suggest limiting yourself to 100 emails per domain and 49 emails per mailbox. This means you can get by with 2 mailboxes per domain, but if you can afford to set up 3, it will give you some room for error.
• To build and maintain a good sender reputation, you should follow a ratio of 1:1 ‘warm-up’ emails to cold emails.
• Sending fully unique and personalized emails with good subject lines every time will build your sender reputation as recipients are more likely to read and engage.
• While a 0.5% positive response rate is a reasonable benchmark, good sales emails and a good lead list should allow you to score a positive response rate between 1% and 5%.

Try using the “Mullet” technique to get your audience to act

If you’re looking for ideas to ‘reinvigorate’ your sales copy, you can take “the Mullet” shared by Neal O’Grady for a spin.

The Mullet is a simple technique that can be broken into two parts:

1. Business in the front
2. Party in the back

The first part contains the important business message while the second part is a one-liner that makes the reader laugh or smile.

Examples of the Mullet include: 

• “Save money. Hoard friends.” (Citi)
• “You’ll love our deeper look at the news. Provided you’re not a criminal.” (The Vancouver Sun)
• “Please enjoy responsibly. The internet never forgets.” (Bud Light)

How you can apply this

The Mullet can make your sales emails more engaging, memorable, and (most importantly) likely to trigger a response.

Your sales emails would have to start with a clear and direct value prop before finishing with a “twist”.

An example would be:

Hi [name],

I’d like to introduce you to AiSDR, a sales tool that helps you write emails and get meetings booked on autopilot. Think of it as your new best friend at work – one that doesn’t borrow your stapler or steal your lunch from the fridge. 

This is just an example though. Successful use of the Mullet will require some experimentation and iteration to find what works for your audience (just like Matt Gray shared above). 

Improve your sales email performance with AiSDR

AiSDR creates and sends personalized emails that use the sales tactics and success scripts of 50+ sales leaders. As a result, every email is short, to the point, and reads like you wrote it, without unnatural-sounding personalization.