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5 Sales Personalization Tactics to Get More Deals (2024)

Discover why personalization in sales matters, and learn actionable tactics you can use to start closing more leads, ring the bell, and crush your quotas.

Jeremy Chatelaine

Jeremy Chatelaine

7 minute read

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Trusted by top companies:

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How to personalize your sales process?

  1. Personalized cold email templates
  2. Use Sales Navigator to connect with a personal note on LinkedIn
  3. Create personalized sales pitch decks at scale
  4. Track proposal activity to improve your follow-up timing and context
  5. Meticulously use your CRM to log information on leads for later us
Read about it in detail below
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Most reps are missing-out on personalization-led growth - are you?

The fastest-growing companies drive 40% more revenue by using personalization strategies. You don’t have to personalize but personalizing the sales experience for your leads is critical to outstanding performance. Your choice.

Companies that personalize grow faster - McKinsey

“The research suggests that even small shifts in improving customer intimacy create competitive advantage”

Data source: The value of getting personalization right—or wrong—is multiplying

In this guide, I’ll show you 5 actionable tactics to excel in the personalization of your sales process. By the end, you’ll be ready to improve your sales experience, convert more leads into customers, and collect your (easiest ever) commission.

Let’s dive in.

3 key benefits to personalization in your sales process

1. Build Better Relationships with Leads

The first reason to implement personalization in your sales process is that it will help you build stronger relationships with your prospects and leads.

As soon as your prospect sees your first outreach email, they’ll know you’ve invested in the interaction.

The data supports this benefit, too. 81% of buyers want brands who get to know them and understand their perspective.

2. Increase conversion rates and grow company revenue

Companies that implement sales personalization see an average of 10-15% revenue lift and see 40% more revenue from their personalized actions compared to generic messaging.

Your entire lead generation process will see the benefits:

  • Your ads will get more clicks
  • Your cold email outreach will get more replies
  • Your leads will trust you more in meetings
  • Your proposals will get signed faster

The end result will be more deals closed and more revenue growth for your company.

3. Differentiate yourself from the competition

Your leads receive multiple cold emails every day. You need to prove that yours is the one worth responding to.

Busy CEOs and decision-makers won’t reply to generic email templates. You need to instantly show that you’ve done deep research into them and that your product/service can solve a problem for them.

Take this email template from AppSumo as an example:

personalized sales email template example

This email begins addressing the recipient by their first name. It then references the company, and even the category of product they’re in, which shows that it’s not a generic template.

Because there’s a clear benefit in the form of promotion, the recipient will be happy to reply.

If you’re competing in the inbox against people who aren’t taking these basic steps to personalize their outreach, you will be the one getting the lion’s share of replies.

5 Actionable ways to use personalization in sales

1. Stand out with unique cold email templates

Cold email is still one of the best sales channels out there. You get direct access to a decision maker’s inbox and can start a one-to-one conversation.

However, you won’t get results if you write a stock template that’s the same for every recipient. The best way to personalize your cold emails at scale is by using cold email sequence software, like QuickMail.

Software like this enables you to add unique attributes to your email templates, such as:

  • Your prospect’s first name
  • Their company name
  • A custom opening line for each person

These personalized elements – combined with a value proposition that solves a real problem for your prospect – will give you a strong chance of a reply.

The first step to adding these is formatting your prospect list in Excel or Google Sheets.

Create a column for every detail about your prospect, such as their name, company, job title, and any other custom information you may want to include in your emails.

Example sheet with personalised prospect information

Example sheet with personalised prospect information:

Once your prospect list is ready, import it into your cold email software. Then, include these attributes in your template.

Example sheet with personalised prospect information:

You can insert any attribute you want in order to personalize your email. When your template sends, the attributes will automatically populate with the data from your prospect list.

When your prospects open your emails, they’ll immediately see that you’re only reaching out to them and that the email template couldn’t be sent to anyone else.

Example sheet with personalised prospect information:

Note: This tactic does take effort. There are no shortcuts and you need to spend time researching everyone you contact. But, it’s worth it.

You’ll have an excellent shot at starting a conversation with everyone that you contact.

2. Use Sales Navigator to connect with a personal note on LinkedIn

71% of B2B professionals use LinkedIn to inform their decisions.

If you can leverage the channel, it’s an excellent way to generate more leads and sales.

There are several benefits of using LinkedIn when it comes to personalization.

First, Sales Navigator adds 30+ new search filters to your account, which means you can easily identify prospects that are a perfect match for your ideal customer persona (ICP).

personaliza

Source: Linkedin Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide For Sales


This ensures that you always target the most relevant people for your product or service and sets your entire sales process up for success.

As well as this, you can use LinkedIn InMail to send hyper-personalized messages to your cold prospects. Automation tools like LinkedHelper lets you work past the 30 search filter limitation and also helps with inmail personalization, while Linked Helper alternatives can offer different features or pricing options that might better suit your needs.

The main benefit of LinkedIn over other outreach channels is that the platform includes social proof in the form of your profile picture, profile summary, professional experience, and mutual connections.

When your sales prospect sees you reaching out, they’ll be happy to reply if your message is relevant to them.

3. Create personalized sales pitch decks at scale

Being the star sales rep that you are you can convince a decision-maker that your product/service has significant value for them within a 15-30 minute call.

But once the call ends your champion will need to communicate the value you sold them on to decision-makers and influencers within their organization. But they’ll be on their own, and they’ll never do it as well as you.

You need to create an effective sales deck to equip them with. One that could communicate your value when you’re not in the room.

Storydoc makes this possible. With it, you can create highly-personalized decks in minutes with dynamic variables - the same way email personalization works (you can find great sales deck templates here).

But the real magic happens when you integrate Storydoc with your CRM - then you can pull all the personal information into your decks with a click directly from your CRM.

Anything from a company logo, name, job title, personal message, or personal video, just name it.

Learn how it works
person

You can even personalize your product demo!

Like in this example by WiseStamp Email Signature Manager, where they showed prospects a demo of the finished product.

Read their case study
person

Personalized presentations make prospects and decision-makers trust you more which makes them more willing to listen.

Data shows that if you can get your leads to read the first 3 slides, 80% of those people will read the sales deck to the end.

When your prospect sees your presentation, the personalization ensures the message and value propositions strongly resonate with them.

Storydoc’s research shows that personalizing your sales pitches and presentations can improve your win rate by 70%. Knowing this, can you afford not to personalize your decks?

4. Track proposal activity to personalize your follow-ups

Most teams use PowerPoint, Google Slides, or PDFs for creating and sending their sales proposals.

The problem with these file formats is that once you send them, you don’t have any information on how your prospects are engaging with them, if at all.

Rather than being left in the dark, you should use proposal tracking and sales presentation tracking. These bring you analytics that shines a light on how your collateral is being used.

  • What proposal analytics tell you:
  • When prospects open your proposal
  • What pages or slides do prospects spend time on
  • How long they spent on each slide
  • What links they clicked on
  • and if they shared your proposal internally

Once you know this information, you can improve the timing of your sales follow-ups and proactively help answer their questions.

For example, you can follow up right after they shared the deck with someone in New York (where you know their HQ is located). And address the issues relevant to the slides they spent the most time on.

The bottom line is that data enables you to be more attentive and gather more context before your next interaction. The extra level of personalization ensures you stand out from the competition and win more deals.

Create your proposal

5. Enrich information on leads in your CRM for better personalization

A CRM gives you a central location to store information on your leads, track where they are in your sales pipeline, and even manage your email interactions.

enriched CRM information for better personalization

You can use CRM platforms like Pipedrive, HubSpot, and Salesmate, or even build your own lightweight CRM in Google Sheets.

At every stage of your sales process, you can log information on your leads in the CRM record for them.

For example, after your first meeting, you can mention key points or questions they asked you.

In the next meeting, you’ll know to address these points directly to proactively diffuse potential sales objections.

An extra benefit to using a CRM is that everyone on your team will have access to it. Even if one sales rep is off work, anyone else can review the CRM record for a lead and jump into a conversation with all of the context they need.

Once your CRM is implemented, you’ll always have a central place to store every key detail on your leads and be able to improve how you interact in every sales email or meeting.

The key is to always treat every one of your leads as an individual rather than just another lead in your CRM. If you can elevate the sales experience for every single lead, they won’t have a reason to choose any other vendor but you.

Start creating personalized sales collateral - grab a template

Companies that personalize grow 40% faster and sales reps that personalize their sales decks close 70% more deals. Can you afford not to personalize?

While you’re thinking about it other sales reps are personalizing their sales process and ringing the proverbial (or actual) bell.

You can shorten the time to results and make your first interactive personalized sales deck with one of Storydoc’s sales deck templates.

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Jeremy Chatelaine

Jeremy is the founder of QuickMail.io, a SaaS company that enables personal one-to-one conversations at scale through automation – for outbound outreach, inbound leads, trial/onboarding, customer communication, and more. Before founding QuickMail, he worked for more than 15 years as a developer in the video game industry and in finance.

Table of contents
Are you missing out on personalization-led growth? Key benefits to sales personalization Actionable ways to use personalization in sales Create personalized sales pitch decks at scale Track proposal activity to personalize your follow-ups Enrich CRM information for better personalization
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