Boost sales with personalized strategies. Learn how to tailor your sales pitch to each prospect's unique needs for higher engagement and conversions.Convertkit, an email marketing platform offers personalized pricing to their customers depending on the email subscribers they have. Users with 300 email subscribers have to pay $9 per month for the Creator plan whereas a user with 3000 email subscribers will have to pay $41 per month. You see? The pricing plans are hyper-personalized for the users. This makes space for each user to use the platform and Convertkit can onboard customers with different budgets.

According to Segment’s 2023 State of Personalization Report, 56% of consumers became repeat buyers after a personalized experience in 2023, which is a 7% increase compared to 2022. Incredible, right? 

But how can you personalize your sales approach to ensure your prospects turn into customers and brand advocates?

Let's dive into this topic in detail and find out everything you need to know about personalization in sales.

What is personalization in sales?

Personalization in sales is the process of understanding your prospects better using data and insights. It provides a more relevant experience to each buyer and leads to better conversions.

To understand your prospects better, identify their pain points, common challenges and personality.

This helps you craft more targeted messages and pitch better to prospects. 

To provide a personalized customer experience, offer:

• personalized recommendations
• custom pricing
• discounts

Rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach, personalized sales strategies aim to create a more customized and relevant experience for each potential buyer.

For example, crafting a targeted cold email using the prospect’s pain points, value proposition, etc. is a good personalization strategy. 

Why does personalization matter in sales?

• Improved customer loyalty: When you offer exclusive deals and discounts to customers, it encourages them to keep using your product. 
• Improved customer retention: When you provide a customized solution and 1:1 customer support to customers, they are likely to become your repeat customers. 
• Increased customer satisfaction: When the reps take time to understand the customer like discovering their key challenges, needs, and preferences — customers feel valued and understood. 

Pitfalls to watch out for when personalizing for sales

Personalization comes with its own sets of risks. Here are 4 major pitfalls you should be aware of before leveraging personalization strategies. 

Data challenges

Without the prospect’s data, you cannot personalize your sales approach. Before you pitch to the prospect, you need to collect important details such as:

• company size
• goals
• pain points
• interests
• behavior

Here's another challenge: is the data available accurate or not? For example, if you have added your prospect’s details like their company and designation into your CRM but the prospect moves jobs, this information is irrelevant to you. 

To make sure the data is accurate, verify the information before uploading it to your CRM. Collect, store and update the data continuously from multiple sources like blogs, websites, social media, emails, and phone calls.

Scalability challenges 

It's easier to send a hyper-personalized cold email to 10 prospects. But not to 100 of them. 

When you want to send personalized messages or emails in bulk, scaling up can be challenging unless you're using automation tools. 

For example, with email automation tools, you can:

• add personalization variables to each email relevant to your prospects
• send hyper-personalized emails to thousands of prospects large volumes

Using multiple tools for personalization 

You could be using Crystal to understand the prospect’s personality, Lemlist to generate icebreakers and send compelling email campaigns, and Leadfuze to get information about the prospect. 

When you’re using multiple tools, it can be difficult to find and organize the prospect’s information accurately. 

Instead, use tools that offer different personalization elements on a single, unified platform.

Over-personalization 

Maintain a balance when personalizing your sales approach. When you personalize your communication excessively, you may appear too salesy and unprofessional. 

So, make sure to follow the value-based personalization strategy. This means that you should personalize your approach based on the information that can actually provide value to your prospects.  

5 personalization strategies for sales teams

Wondering how to personalize your sales approach? Here are 5 sales personalization strategies to get started with:

Craft a personalized value proposition

Without a personalized value proposition, the prospect will never know how your product or service can solve their problems and deliver value. That's why it's important to make your value proposition hyper-relevant. It should not just be specific to an industry but each prospect you're pitching to. 

To craft a personalized value proposition, you must do the following:

Conduct prospect research

Get a basic understanding of their products (read reviews on review sites like G2 and Capterra). 

Identify their pain points, and be well-versed with their industry trends. Look for more details about the prospect from their LinkedIn profile:

• educational and professional background
• interests and achievements
• overall personality
  

Use language specific to the buyer's industry

Use words and phrases that resonate with the prospect’s industry. This showcases that you're speaking their language and understand their industry well.

Include case studies

Share case studies and testimonials from the same industry and similar clients you've worked with in the past.

Pro tip: If you want to save your time doing the manual research and developing value propositions for different personas, use Happysales AI. It will generate different value propositions for multiple personas based on their personality.

Conduct research for cold outreach and discovery calls

Sales professionals who use 2 to 3 personalization parameters in their emails see a 12.4% open rate. 

Case in point: SocialSense, a LinkedIn personal branding platform reached out to a freelance writer with the subject line: “You are in the top 1% on LinkedIn!”

The recipient is likely to open the email because they highlighted two personalization elements in their subject line:

• top 1%
• LinkedIn

The subject line tells the recipient that the brand knows they are actively creating content on LinkedIn. The recipient is likely to open and respond to their email as they have personalized it well. 

When sending cold outreach emails to prospects, conduct comprehensive primary research to get to know the prospect and their product better. Doing so signals to them that you’ve done your homework and know a thing or two about them. 

But what should you look for when conducting research in the first place?

• Prospect’s LinkedIn company page. Check their company description, team size, the content they have posted, and website
• Prospect's LinkedIn profile. Check their academic and professional background, LinkedIn About section, achievements, and content they've posted recently

Also, find out their pain points and personality traits to understand their challenges and communicate in a similar tone that resonates with the prospects. 

Based on these analyses, you can craft personalized icebreakers, subject lines, and emails that get you a higher response rate. 

Pro tip: With Happysales AI, you can get real-time summaries of prospects’ personality types, work experience, and challenges from LinkedIn profiles. Plus, you can analyze the prospect’s pain points and different conversation starters based on different prospect personalities.

Understand the buyer’s DISC personality 

What if sales reps could analyze their prospect's personality and adjust their communication and pitching approach accordingly? This is possible with the DISC personality framework. 

DISC framework analyzes different personality behaviors i.e., dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness. 

By understanding these behavioral styles, reps can understand the prospects better and adjust their communication style, negotiation, and relationship building strategies. This helps them fill in any potential communication gaps with prospects. 

For example, a prospect with a D-type personality will respond positively to a direct pitch that is supported by results or case studies. 

To identify the DISC profile, you can use tools like Happysales AI. It trains the reps for sales calls based on an AI-generated persona from the prospect’s DISC prospect personality assessment and LinkedIn profile. The reps can then communicate with the prospect, pitch, and negotiate with them according to their personality. 

Real-time feedback 

When sales reps get real-time feedback during a sales call, they can know what's working and what's not. It helps them tweak their communication approach for each buyer and improve their sales pitch. 

For example, tools like Happysales AI can analyze sales conversations and provide real-time feedback to the rep based on:

• Tone
• Speed
• Wording
• Active listening skills.

Reps can execute AI-based roleplays with the prospect’s avatar and practice their pitch before the call. Here, the AI analyzes the prospect's information and generates an AI prospect avatar so the rep can practice the pitch. The Happysales AI Coach then analyzes the call and offers suggestions to reps to improve their sales pitch.

With AI sales coaching software, reps can practice pitching to prospects without being on actual sales calls. 

AI is revolutionizing sales personalization

Say no to generic, boring sales approaches. 

With Gen AI in sales tools like Happysales, you can:

• identify your prospect’s personality using the DISC profile framework,

• discover their pain points and develop different value propositions for multiple personas
• get real-time feedback to improve your sales pitch with AI sales coaching

Curious to see how Happysales can take personalization to a whole new level for you? Check it out here. 

FAQs

How do you personalize the sales process?

You can personalize the sales process by conducting research on the prospect’s details such as their pain points and goals, understanding their DISC personality type, getting real-time feedback on sales calls, and providing AI sales training. 

How can personalization help you increase your sales?

Personalization helps in nurturing customer relationships by understanding the prospect better and providing them with valuable insights and personalized recommendations. 

What impact does personalization have on revenue?

Personalization can reduce customer acquisition costs by 50% and increase revenue by 5 to 15% — leading to customer loyalty and an increase in the company's gross sales.