Closing a (big) deal is not something you can do in 24 hours. It takes time, dedication, and—in the current market—influence from existing trusted relationships.
With
92% of consumers willing to trust companies when referrals come from people they know, tapping relationships has become a must if you want to close your deal. Buyers acquired through referrals have a
37% higher retention rate and are four times more likely to make a purchase.
Buyers no longer trust interruptions from ads, cold outreach, or well-placed ads. There’s too much information and they’re tuning out. Instead, they are looking to those in their network and industry that have been where they want to go.
And if you’re not your customers’ source of trust…well, you better partner with one.
Involving partners in your deals won’t only help you to have a
41% higher win rate, 43% higher deal size, and close 35% faster, but it’ll also bring more value to your customers by filling the gaps in your product and service. Plus, they will provide you with intel about your customers, influence them, and give you intros.
Great sales leaders earn trust by partnering and showing customers they know them and care about their success. And the best way to have all the answers to test is through
nearbound.
We recently sat down with top sales leaders to dive into
The State of Sales. During the interviews, we noticed a theme: they had all used nearbound to close some of the largest deals in their careers.
Read on to hear how the following leaders won big with nearbound:
Darin Alpert, VP of Strategy and Sales
Leslie Douglas, Head of Sales Programing and Thought Leadership at Sell Better
Judd Borakove, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Red Monkey Consulting
Scott Leese, CEO and Founder of Scott Leese Consulting
Saad Khan, Director of Sales and Business Development at Aligned
Nick Bennett, Chief Customer Officer and Co-Founder of TACK and ClubPF
Tom Slocum, Founder and CEO of The SD Lab
Darin Alpert: Marketing to the future
The biggest deal I closed wasn’t thanks to cold outreach, but what now we can call nearbound.
It was when I was at G2, we were trying to contact a large social media management software company.
In G2 we have what we call “buyer intent data”, with this we’re able to identify if one of your customers is shopping for your competition and predict why.
Besides using that data, I leveraged my relationships to crack into that account. I knew a friend in charge of product marketing back then, and he shared that they had a new CMO.
This is what happened during our conversation:
During that purchasing journey, everything happened for a reason.
I wasn’t going to send him an email without doing some research first. I needed to know what were his interests and needs. It turned out that he was a fan of the Back to the Future movies.
Adding that touch to the email made it personal–within one hour I had a confirmed dinner.
To keep building a personalized experience, I couldn’t arrive empty-handed for our dinner. I got the book from the movie and printed out some buyer intent data from their current customers and similar accounts.
While having dinner, I pulled the book and my intent data and said “This is what marketing to the future looks like”. After that, I started pitching what “buyer intent data” means, and how that could be a game changer for his marketing strategy–helping them with renewals, entering new markets, and building ABM campaigns.
It was all about bringing value to the table–literally. I wanted to build a connection with him by building a personalized experience. And it worked!
I built a great relationship with him. Two weeks later we closed the deal. Later on, we upsold them.
Leslie Douglas: Helping first pays back
I’ve been in sales for about 16 years and throughout my career, as far as I remember, all of my biggest deals have been sourced through referrals, or previous clients moving to a new role or a partner.
Those sources bring you into a conversation. And then it’s transformed into a relationship, which means that the very first thing that you do is not sell but bring value.
Don’t be afraid of bringing the first big deal to the table. If you’re working with your network or partners, reciprocity is a value that should run through their and your bloodstream.
Start by giving your efforts to partners you prioritize, connect them with other partners or people just by the “joy” of helping, and eventually, they will reciprocate.
This is how I got the deal:
This deal might have taken me 6 months, but to be honest, it was quicker than what this type of deal usually takes. Earlier in the year,
Jason Lemkin, mentioned that a $500K-$1M+ deal often bleeds into the next year.
I took my time to build that relationship and, to be honest, I didn’t have any expectation or anticipation of ever working with them.
Thanks to nearbound I took only 6 months to close a million-dollar deal.
Judd Borakove: Leveraging internal advocates
When closing a deal, you shouldn’t be dialing for dollars; instead, you should be creating relationships with the people at the company you’re trying to get in touch with.
That’s my ’forever’ golden rule, the secret behind my million-plus range deal closures. The initial touchpoint shouldn’t send shivers down your spine; it should be a warm introduction, coursed through external or internal advocates – trusted relationships.
Internal advocates are your allies in building bridges, navigating the intricate corridors of your deal from the inside, and delivering genuine value to your cherished customer. Here’s how we win big together:
I really don’t believe in selling something that doesn’t bring value to the customer. But here’s where nearbound steps in; it helps you bridge the gap in your services and products, connecting people with people.
That’s part of this big shift.
The shift represents a move away from traditional sales tactics that may have been more transactional and short-sighted. Instead, it promotes a customer-centric, value-driven, and relationship-oriented approach that aligns with long-term business success and sustainable growth.
And the best way to do that is through nearbound.
If you don’t have a strategy for building those essential relationships, you’re steering straight into the storm.
Scott Leese: A Go-To-Network strategy
I’ve seen the effect of a go-to-network strategy multiple times in my entire career, but there are two deals that stand out from the rest.
The first one was in 2019, and the deal was from a government institution. Thanks to the network effect that my “Industry Relations“ team at that time was able to create, we managed to close a $2.6M deal.
The Industry Relations team consisted of 5 to 10 people, and their role involved talking and doing business with people who already had the trust of our customers. So, technically, they were in charge of networking with those who could help us influence our deals.
They needed to go to conferences, and connect with people, so those people could refer our business. This strategy was really helpful, it opened multiple opportunities.
They helped us get intros, influence, and intel to finally close our $2.6M deal in 18 months.
The second one is more recent; it was one year ago. One of my tech partners approached me looking for intros to some of my consulting clients. And since they already trusted me, they said yes and took the call with my tech partner.
The deal between them was about $360K, and just for that intro, I got a piece of that cake, resulting in a $36K commission just for helping my partner.
Saad Khan: Nurturing relationships
My most important deal was back in the time when I was a BDR at Clio. Everything started when I cold-called a lawyer, who, during the call, told me she was really interested in our content and in how SaaS companies worked and wanted to bring this model to law firms.
Fun fact: she was retiring, so she wasn’t interested in Clio. But she wanted to build a law firm incubator. I tried to follow up on that call, but my emails weren’t opened. So, instead of reaching out to her to set up the next steps or selling Clio, I started to just send her pieces of content she might find interesting with a “Best of luck, hope it’s a valuable tool for your Q1” message.
And magically, those emails started to open.
Trying to nurture that relationship, I connected with one of her
partners, which gave me
intel about her retiring time, and what she actually needed.
With that in mind, I invited her to one of our events in a very particular way. I changed the text (using the inspect tool) from her website, added a CTA, and asked, ‘What if all these lawyers in your incubator had a license for Clio, so they keep coming back to you for more?’
Later on, she called me asking for an explanation of my email. Instead of trying to sell, I tried to help her build her incubator model and explained everything through Clio’s lens.
So, we moved along and that deal closed.
Went from having one deal, one lawyer buying two licenses, to all year long to her coming to me and asking for four or five additional licenses. So what could have been a 5K MRR ended up becoming over 12K.
Closing that deal involved me calling her, understanding her priorities, connecting with her partners, and just really understanding them. Doing a little bit of navigation, understanding their business, understanding what she actually wanted, and then finding a way to reframe and actually sell it to her.
Nick Bennett: Building revenue through Tik tok
Tom Slocum: Building relationships before selling
In 2017, I was trying to get in contact with one of the largest healthcare groups in the area—this was a three-hospital account that represented a $750K deal.
We tried everything: phone calls, zoom meetings, and doing different deals, but we weren’t able to make any progress. So, we decided to do things differently.
The first thing we did was that we decided to meet the hospital owner face-to-face but with a unique twist.
We brought partners (brand advocates–clients) from other local hospitals who had already reaped the benefits of our services. This meeting allowed the hospital owner to see real people achieving tangible results, which added a personal touch to the business proposal.
The next move was to host a dinner event, attended by our current and potential clients. The atmosphere was based on a genuine conversation, where hospital professionals shared their experiences with the service.
It wasn’t a sales pitch but a gathering where the hospital owner could listen to peers discussing the transformation the service had brought to their operations.
This personal validation and partner influence were powerful. It bridged the gap between a skeptical owner and the idea of investing in the services. The owner saw that others in the industry were achieving success and benefiting from our solution.
To further sweeten the deal, we offered incentives to their existing clients and partners. These gestures not only expressed gratitude for their participation but also helped bolster the deal.
This wasn’t a high-pressure sales pitch; it was a patient and understanding approach.
Closing a deal of this magnitude took time, almost 10 months. However, by bringing real-life experiences, validation, and partner influence into the equation, we were able to successfully close the deal, bringing a substantial $750,000 contract to the table.
The personal touch, validation from partners, and building trust through real-world experiences were all key elements in closing the deal.
Let’s build a better together story
These stories aren’t only examples of
how GTM leaders are winning with nearbound, but the living proof
that it actually works.
In a nearbound GTM strategy, trust is the currency that unlocks doors and accelerates deals.
Building relationships, establishing rapport, and leveraging the power of partner influence are the cornerstones of success. These stories exemplify why these principles matter and how they can be harnessed to create lasting, mutually beneficial partnerships.
Nearbound empowers sales professionals to evolve from transactional sellers to trusted advisors and partners, ensuring success even when you feel your deal is at a dead end.
These narratives paint a vivid picture of how the nearbound principles can transform the landscape of B2B sales.
In fact, you can learn more about how Scott is doing this TODAY at the Nearbound Summit on November 9th.
Sign up here.
