By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Marketing
Let's face it, I am no different then most sales and business development people, we all need to optimize our schedules to get everything done that needs to be done. But let's be honest, meetings tend to take up a large bulk of our work day. While meetings are crucial for professionals to collaborate with each other, just because you cut out a chunk of time for a certain meeting does not necessarily mean you have to ensure every minute is dedicated to that meeting. But we have other options, social collaboration tools both internal like Chatter and Yammer and external like Linkedin and Twitter. Yes, sales reps often feel in their element in person, but your schedule is already jam-packed with things to do. Use technology. Get on networking sites to connect with colleagues. Employ customer intelligence analytics that do a lot of client research for you.
Question if There is a Better Way
In a recent LinkedIn article, entrepreneur Shane Snow advised professionals to say goodbye to long meetings and invest in networking. While abandoning meetings altogether may not be viable for many sales reps, Snow recommended professionals take a page out of the entrepreneurial playbook and always question whether they need to be in a meeting or if there is a better solution out there. If you need to connect with a colleague about a project, Snow suggested going digital with either email or social media.
Only schedule time for a meeting when you need absolutely need to – entrepreneurs understand their time is valuable and refuse to sit in a 30-minute meeting with people who may not even have need to be there when a seven-minute one in front of the water cooler does just fine.
In her Entrepreneur blog, Carol Tice, CEO of TiceWrites Inc., reminded professionals unnecessary meetings can cost nearly $37 billion every year for the U.S. economy. We may be recovering from the recession, but we still can't afford to lose that much money on an annual basis for something irrelevant. So Tice recommended sales reps go online to connect with each other. Networking sites – and even networking meetings – can produce stronger results than more traditional methods of communication.
You may still need to go to a meeting every once and a while because it's still standard procedure for most companies, and it is easier to close a sale face to face rather than on the phone or through an email. However, using all the tools at your disposal can significantly reduce how much time you spend in meetings every day.
By Daniela Barbosa, Director of Business Development
Utilizing social enterprise collaboration allows sales professionals to not only connect with customers on a regular basis but to continually drive sales. Investing in social enterprise platforms is a great customer intelligence strategy, but there is often a disconnect between what a sales team or a company wants to happen by bringing in a social business and what actually occurs. From disengaging with clients to not doing the proper research from the get-go, you may start to see your precious ROI go down the drain. But you can prevent that from happening by identifying the sales opportunities that will come from employing social enterprise platforms for increasing revenue productivity to ensure you are making the most out of your investment.
1. Calculate Realistic Costs
According to data from Simpler Media Group, the social enterprise software market is set to reach $6.4 billion by 2016. Gathering exactly what your business or team wants to accomplish can significantly help B2B companies maximize their social enterprise investment and prevent finances from entering the digital ether.
In a piece for Entrepreneur, business writer John Patrick Pullen suggested companies develop an ROI formula before investing in social enterprise. Taking all of the data into account helps you create a social mission statement and set realistic goals. Assembling all of the information before entering a contract helps ensure you are not devoting more money into a social media campaign than you have to.
2. It's All About the Tech
In an article for Salesforce, Vala Afshar, CCO and CMO at Enterasys, advised companies to take a peek at the technology the social enterprise uses. Outdated software can hamper how the business connects with clients and collects customer insights. Afshar suggested sales professionals or team managers identify the specific set of parameters the enterprise employs. According to Afshar, streamlined technology that is built to easily adopt to changing preferences helps sales teams optimize their investment.
3. Go Where Your Clients Are
By ensuring the technology used is top notch, sales teams are better able to identify their customers' online activity. Afshar suggested taking clients' temperatures when examining social enterprise software. You might want to have a quick chat with your social enterprise contact to understand whether they are on top of the latest and greatest social platforms.
4. Plan Everything Out
In his Entrepreneur blog, Jason Falls, CEO of Social Media Explorer, advised companies to think beyond the benefits of entering the online world to drive their social enterprise ROI. Create a plan of action that the social business can stick to, but still provides room for change. Leaving things up in the air can significantly damper a social media campaign, so giving your enterprise contact as much information as possible about where your company is headed improves your chances of receiving a strong ROI.
Plus, no one wants to be left in the dark when they are trying to provide you with a service. If you want to be on Facebook verses Twitter, let them know. Plan everything out – you'll thank yourself later.
5. Follow Through
Don't just let things go after doing all this great work early on – you have to follow through on your plan, stay in communication with your contact and provide feedback on a regular basis. Frequent connection and follow ups can help you identify any changes right away instead of wasting time in the future. Guiding a social plan along the way is much easier than making a dramatic shift half-way through the relationship. So stay in contact, because not doing so is setting you up for disaster.
By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Marketing
Tapping into opportunities to improve sales productivity by gleaning insights derived from market intelligence help sales reps find ways to motivate clients and become top performers. But the sales superstars do more than optimize their customer markets – they are challengers. They get that understanding their client's industry – where its going, what's trending in it, how the product is the solution for the customer's specific issues – provides them with a means of not only engaging the client to make the sale, but how they supply a service.
According to research from the Corporate Executive Board, a sales rep's success comes from distinguishing the client's demands through customer intelligence. These professionals are the high performers, their team's go-to person, client challengers, and it is essential for senior sales leaders to give their reps the best shot at shaping their client's needs and providing a solution.
Not All Reps are Created Equal
CEB research found 85 percent of sales professionals do not have the required skills to become top reps. According to the study, salespeople who are able to find and employ customer insights have an increased chance of promoting their product to clients and clinching the sale. Approximately one in six sales reps are natural "challengers" and are able to see strong numbers as a result.
In an interview with Jill Konrath, a sales strategist, research authors Brent Adamson and Matthew Dixon defined challenger reps as those professionals who are able to take control of a customer meeting, can identify and target their client's specific needs and can provide innovative solutions for their customer's challenges.
Challenger reps may be hard to hire for since some may not have prior sales experience – in fact, CEB found 15.6 million individuals with the traits outside of the industry – and numerous factors must be taken into account during the hiring process. Therefore, you need to develop one.
According to Salesforce's Brent Adamson, there are five types of sales reps. Challengers are one of the profiles, but a sales team can also have a hard worker, a relationship builder, a lone wolf and a problem solver. Creating an entire team of challengers may be a bit too much, but Adamson suggested more teams need to cultivate challenger qualities, such as teaching the customer, since that is where the industry is heading.
Fostering certain challenger aspects in reps can help you make sure your team has the abilities needed to make the sale well into the future. Cultivate customer insights, promote their debate skills and remind them to deliver the complete sales experience to clients, because doing so can produce stronger customer relationships.
By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Marketing
It may be difficult for you to identify when to pitch to certain clients and when not to. Investing in B2B market research is key to understanding your customers, but all too often many of us enter a customer meeting without actually preparing beforehand. This can result in more than just a lost sale – it can lead to reduced confidence and the ongoing question of what went wrong. Not preparing for the sales call is basically waving a sales opportunity goodbye just because you were too eager to get rolling. But, don't feel too bad – even the most veteran sales professionals do it. Here's a quick checklist you can use before you leave your desk to meet with a client.
1. Get Intimate with Client Knowledge
Not knowing what's going on in your customer's industry is a major mistake many sales professionals make. Understanding just what your client does is not enough, you must be familiar with where the market is heading and how what your selling fits into future plans. So many salespeople let market insights pass them by and then wonder why they are not top performers.
Industries change on a daily basis. Yes, you read that right – a daily basis. Just because training software was high last week or even yesterday does not mean your technology client is interested in it right this moment. Maybe they want to know everything about cloud commuting because – guess what – it's trending today. Being on point with your knowledge is essential to pre-meeting prepping.
The first thing you should always do is to utilize your customer intelligence software. Even just a glance is often enough for some sales people. Doing so may help you adjust your pitch strategy enough to convince the client to purchase the product.
In an op-ed piece for Inc magazine, Mark Suster recommended sales people look beyond "sell and tell" approach and instead really get to know the client. And that relies on not only knowing the customer but the ins and outs of the product.
2. Understand the Product – Intimately
Suster suggested you get into a discussion with the client. An ongoing conversation helps customers invest in not only what you are selling but you and your brand as well. However, so many sales professionals only know a few key points about the product due to time constraints and cannot get beyond the "sell and tell" technique because their knowledge is lacking.
So stop thinking you will be able to remember all of the product's features and review what you're selling beforehand. Otherwise your client won't trust you and walk out the door. A quick glimpse may be enough for more experienced sales professionals but carefully rereading any and all product information can help you to answer every single customer question and avoid missing the sale.
3. Pump Up the Motivation
Confidence is essential to convincing the client to buy your product. If you have to go the Dwight Schrute route and rock out to heavy metal before stepping out of your car, do it. Just remember to park far enough away from the building so the customer doesn't see – unless they are headbangers themselves.
While it may seem unwarranted, motivating yourself before entering the meeting is a great strategy to adopt. Often, it takes the first few minutes of an interaction to get focused, so doing it all beforehand increases your chances. Staying professional is key to making the sale, but having a little fun before you enter that meeting can help you get energized.
4. Be Cool
Every sales person gets rejected at some point – so be prepared for it. No matter how much research you do or pumped up you get, sometimes the client doesn't buy the product. Many times, persistence pays off, but a rejection offers many benefits, like figuring out what part of your pitch doesn't work. So be prepared for it before it happens.
By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Marketing
Believe it or not, having a positive attitude does not rely on being perky all the time – but on customer knowledge. It may sound easier said than done, but mobilizing customers to buy your product comes from understanding the client's needs, and – oh, yes – sales intelligence. Investing in customer analytics does not have to be a pain when you find the right professional application, such as FirstRain. When you have information right at your fingertips, you can go into a sales call or client meeting with a positive energy that just emits confidence – and mobilize your client to close the sale in the process.
Knowledge Linked to Confidence
Bloomberg Businessweek advised salespeople collect as much data as possible about a client before an interaction. According to an Op-Ed piece by Grant Cardone for Entrepreneur, customer insights are not only important to closing the sale but also for your confidence to do so. If you think you don't have the tools to sell the product, you probably won't. Entrepreneur suggested you take a look at the customer's purchasing history and develop a plan of action in case your team wasn't able to make the deal on the product before.
In a recent article, Cardone, a salesperson and writer at Entrepreneur, recommended sales representatives glean sales intelligence from client analytics in order to visualize the sale. Doing so not only helps you play out possible scenarios and prepare for what might happen during the interaction but to line up a set of questions that shows the customer that you know exactly why they need the product.
"For example, 'When you do this with me, you will get this result,'" Cardone wrote. "If a customer is undecided about a sale, I tell them: 'It's only a matter of time before you do this with me.' I recently did this with a customer and after the third time he said: 'Dude, you are pretty confident, I like how you keep assuming the sale.'"
The Power of Client Insight
Inc.com suggested sales representatives and teams remember that attitude is everything. But while you can pretty much fake your way through a smile and excited hand gestures, true positivity comes from confidence – which we already know gets its start in understanding customer intelligence.
One of the strategies Inc.com writer Geoffrey James advised salespeople to adopt for staying positive and confident in any situation is to constantly frame each challenge in your mind into a challenge rather than a barrier.
For example, Corporate Executive Board described some customer contacts as skeptics, or clients who always ask questions, almost like a drill sergeant. Sales people who have not invested in market insights may falter when they come under endless questioning, but those reps who identify it as an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge are able to close the sale.
Many sales professionals try to stay positive and confident when entering client contact interactions, but that attitude can turn negative when they don't have the proper insights. Mobilizing customers to invest in your product lies in confidence – and it all comes down to sales intelligence.
By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Marketing
From the information technology industry to marketing, it seems like most professionals in almost every field are talking about the cloud these days. And it's no wonder – investing in cloud software for your enterprise lets you gain market intelligence, analyze industry trends and even examine customer analytics. The cloud will become one of the top innovations for salespeople fairly soon.
In fact, the trend is becoming so wide spread that Salesforce recently acquired business intelligence startup EdgeSpring to enhance the site's marketing cloud. If that's not enough, the investment came a week after the site purchased email marketing firm ExactTarget for $2.5 billion. The integration of business intelligence with analytics is set to help boost customer relationship management (CRM) ROI.
Cloud sales have gone through the roof, with Ellen O'Brien, executive editor at TechCrunch, suggesting recent slowdowns in cloud computing storage are due to the rapid increase in users. O'Brien reported cloud storage vendors have been around for years, but the recent uptick in the demand for customer insight solutions and tools as well as user demand, sales have significantly increased. More sales people are now investing in the tools they need to ensure the sale and to increase their CRM ROI.
Customer Conversion Flies Into the Cloud
Louis Columbus, cloud computing expert and Forbes contributor, recently wrote that now is the era of digital customer insights for the marketing industry. With the purchase of EdgeSpring and ExactTarget by Salesforce, the marketing world is on the cusp of integrating cloud computing into their customer insight platforms. But the advertising industry is just the latest in a long line to have adopted cloud analytics. Sales was one of the first.
Cloud-based services came into the sales mainstream with platform applications, such as FirstRain into Salesforce, by bringing sales people up to date on the latest customer insights and intelligence. Business analytics that use the cloud format allows you to get a glimpse into what's going on in the industry, what's trending up or down and what areas to focus on. It cuts your customer research time in half while boosting your client conversion rates skyward.
Many of us try to take time everyday to do some Internet research about our clients, but it often gets a back seat to other more pressing issues. And most of the time, treading through the clutter of information can be a hassle. Having access to one place that gives you the most important insights of the day keeps you connected with customers and be prepared for every client interaction.
By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Marketing
As sales reps, we always look for new ways to close the sale because, let's face it, we've all been there – we did some research, maximized our pitch strategy, understood the ins and outs of why our product is the best out there, but we didn't get the sale. Why? Because many of us forget, perhaps, the one key thing – to get to know our customer. Whoops! And it's just not gleaning some information from the web before heading out on a sales call, it's diving 100 percent into market intelligence. And getting to know your customer relies on having the right tools – like that CRM investment you also keep forgetting to do – so you can be completely prepared to make the perfect pitch for that client before you even shake hands.
Get a Little Dirty
Your customer relationship management (CRM) relies on one thing – understanding what makes your customer's mind tick and what they really want out of the product you're selling. Don't believe it? Take a recent article by Inc magazine writer Jeff Haden where he talked about the time his wife wanted a new car.
A young salesman came up, gave them his rehearsed pitch, but Haden's wife wasn't buying it. Haden said the salesman started going through the whole sales-process checklist, but Haden's wife cut him off and started asking questions. Eventually the salesman figured out what Haden's wife needed in a vehicle and closed the sale.
Understanding your client can make you more confident in your own abilities. According to Entrepreneur, investing in customer insights can empower salespeople to play up their strengths.
But if you're like most sales professionals, you don't have all the time in the world. You're constantly running out on sales calls and talking with customers about the product. Because of the perpetual time constraints, researching what's going on in your customers' fields tends to get pushed to the back of the to-do pile. But what makes the top sales performers surge ahead of the pack every month is because they invest in customer insights. Yet cutting some time out to delve into client research is hard to come by.
You can cheat a little – you can boost your CRM strategies by investing in market intelligence software. When you have all the latest information at your fingertips – and you don't have to scour the Internet to find it – you have the tools you need to ensure your continued business with the client and close the sale.
By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Marketing
For sales teams, everything relies on staying ahead of competitors: If you're not first, you're last! Yet sales reps often waste a lot of valuable time figuring out what their client needs. The thing is, they needn't do so. Thanks to customer analytics and sales intelligence, which work hand-in-hand to drive salespeople and teams to reach goals and achieve an ROI on investments, the sales community is seeing big boosts in sales – and it's all thanks to big data analytics.
Big data allows sales teams to stay small while ensuring customer insights don't take a back seat. Forgetting big data analytics can significantly drag down productivity and cause severe consequences – like lost clients. That sentiment was recently reinforced when Tom Davenport from the International Institute for Analytics and Jill Dyché of SAS released the report "Big Data in Big Companies." The report focused on the increasing need for firms to bet on big data.
What's the Use of Big Data?
The data use of 20 corporations in pilot projects was profiled in the research. According to the report, employing customer analytics requires sales teams to develop new skills and for sales management to boost their investment in technology. And with budget cuts, it's not easy.
Jill Dyché, vice president of best practices at SAS, said implementing big data into the company was a struggle for many corporations, yet the obvious benefits of such deployments have become too much for business leaders to ignore.
"Big data was a wake-up call for these executives," Dyché said. "But the promise of fresh innovation is the real allure of big data for executives. They're turning their attention – and their budgets – to emerging technologies and skills."
While investing in sales intelligence may seem daunting, it's really not. According InformationWeek, real-time analytics not only offer insights for salespeople to identify what is happening in the industry at that precise moment but helps them to adjust their sales goals for the future. But big data doesn't just enhance your customer relationship management strategy (CRM), InformationWeek suggests it may produce stronger client loyalty. If the customer knows their sales team understands them and are able to deliver exactly what they need when they need it, sales representatives are able to ensure their customer's long-term business.
Knowing what's going through client minds right now may not be enough – sales reps need to peer into their crystal ball and see into the future. But sales reps have no need for Tarot cards of palm-reading, when all they really need is big data analytics is a salesperson's crystal ball. Gleaning insights about the customer before sitting down with them lets salespeople make the most of the interaction. One of the best ways corporations can improve client relationships is to mix sales intelligence into their bag of tricks.
New Opportunities for Success
The newest advancement from FirstRain allows salespeople to employ analytics in an easy-to-use way each day. The latest innovation includes an additional set of capabilities so sales teams can take advantage of useful customer analytics right away.
Salespeople can now detect their customer's future needs. This allows staff members who are in the middle of the pack to become top performers.
FirstRain's new enterprise platform lets sales representatives enter a client meeting knowing exactly what the customer needs.
Greg Mihran, senior director of Global Sales Enablement, said integrating customer insights into the company's sales strategy helped to increase the productivity of sales teams. By utilizing an on-demand client intelligence solution, Global Sales Enablement was able to boost sales success and rise industry knowledge for sales professionals.
