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Mega Trends

Staying Ahead of Sales Mega-Trends: Consumer Expectations

Jul 2014/in /by

This is part 3 of a 4-part series addressing how Personal Business Analytics help our customers respond to the emerging mega-trends set forth by McKinsey on the Salesforce blog.

B2C-inspired customer expectations

With the proliferation of mobile in consumers’ everyday lives, as well as increased expectation of BYOD workplaces, both B2B employees and customers are coming to expect the same level of personalization that they get as consumers. In order to meet these B2C-inspired consumer expectations, “sales leaders need to develop frictionless and personalized models to connect with the customer across any channel.”

The need to understand how to really connect with your customers has led to the rise of CRM and enterprise collaboration platforms, but employees tend to resist change in their existing workflows—which can result not only in stagnating customer relationships but also in slowing sales cycles. The answer is to place intelligent guidance right where sales already lives, while providing value-based information stickiness in the tools you need them to use. This can be done with very specific, granular insights based on their role, product lines they sell, regions they cover, industry focus and market and competitor relationships.

Connecting with your customer anywhere, anytime is a priority—and as our FirstRain usage stats show across some of the biggest global sales organizations, mobile is the fastest growing platform to connect sellers with buyers’ needs. But for many organizations, gathering the customer intelligence needed to turn the sales team into customer experts is time-consuming. They are simply unable to create very personal experiences with basic sales intelligence tools they may have previously invested in, many of which don’t even have native mobile apps. Consumers today have access to almost everything they need on their mobile devices, from banking to finding their next date, so consumer expectations now mean having the same experience when it comes to customer intelligence. They want their phone to help them build better relationships with their customers so they can win more deals; so, when selecting a tool to match the needs of these sellers, consider:

  • Are your current sales intelligence tools available as highly personal solutions in both native mobile apps, as well as integrated into enterprise workflows like CRM, enterprise portal and collaboration platforms?
  • Can your sales teams quickly create a very personal and intelligent view into their full customer revenue cycle, from initial sale to renewal?
  • Are you meeting consumer expectations by giving them specific, granular insights based on their role, product line, region, industry, market and competitor relationships?

Drop us a note if you’d like to learn more about enabling your sales teams with frictionless and personalized views that help them connect with your customers.

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Using Personal Business Analytics to Build Consensus

Jun 2014/in /by

Having to build consensus among your buyers is one of the most challenging parts of the sales process. It is likely that many of the stakeholders (and maybe even all of them) are driving their own personal agenda—and many times, they won’t match up, neither amongst themselves nor with you.

The Corporate Executive Board mentioned in a recent webinar that having to build consensus can be frustrating for the salesperson, because it creates price-driven conversations, lengthens sales cycles, increases the need for specialist resources—all of which can result in more stalled deals.

Though the great benefit to companies of having diverse teams has been proven time and again, the diversity of opinions and points-of-view can frustrate the salesperson by increasing tension and slowing the buying cycle even more. So what can the salesperson do to avoid falling into that trap? Make sure you truly understand your customer’s business before you even start talking.

Help all stakeholders understand the problems they face. Getting every decision-maker on the same page is the very task that seems insurmountable in the first place. But if you demonstrate a deep understanding of the customer’s business and present their business challenges to them, you can focus the conversation around those particular points—and eliminate side agendas that can distract from what you’re trying to do. Using personal business analytics, you can see critical events and trends within their market, helping you make sure that your message really resonates with them when you walk into the meeting.

Demonstrate that your solution truly meets their need. Once you’ve centered your discussion around a specific handful of business problems, it’s time to work your magic. If you avoid selling your product itself and, rather, position it as a solution to their particular problems, your executive buyers are more likely to see the value that you create. Since you’ve already gotten them on the same page as to what their business issues are, you are more likely to be seen as a trusted partner—and explaining how you can help them tackle those challenges will help you get ahead.

Though it may seem like an intimidating task, there are things that you as a salesperson can do to shepherd your buyers in the right direction. By truly understanding their business, you can clearly define what their needs are and how you can help them.

Shorten the Sales Cycle

3 Ways to Shorten the Sales Cycle and Increase Sales Productivity

May 2014/in /by

Time is money, and salespeople often find themselves with too little of both. They are constantly trying to figure out how to become more efficient and shorten their sales cycle, in order to win more deals and meet (or exceed) their quota faster. It is a huge task, but there are a few ways you can, at least, make the most of your time.

1. Target the right people

Though salespeople wish that everyone would buy from them, that’s unfortunately not the case. So don’t waste time targeting the wrong people. Understand who and what teams in the organization would most benefit from your solution, given their particular business needs and challenges. And keep a pulse on critical changes affecting them: did they miss their revenue goals? Are they getting eaten alive by their competition? Find the person or people who oversee these goals, and increase your own sales productivity by not wasting time with someone who really won’t be interested in what you provide.

2. Aim high

According to Mark Suster for Inc., instead of pitching your product to a lower-level employee, you can increase your sales productivity by cutting out the time you’d have to spend giving demos and repeating yourself to many different levels of the organization by going as high up as possible. People higher up in the organization have buying authority, or direct access to the person who does. If you’re pitching to a senior executive, they may even send you down to the person who actually does the purchasing—and you’ll have executive endorsement.

Having a champion is invaluable, but if you’re pitching to an executive, you must make sure that you’ve done your research so you don’t waste their time. Executives are busy people, and if you don’t wow them on your first shot, the odds are that you won’t get another. Prepare by using a personal business analytics solution that will help you align your value proposition to exactly how it will solve their specific business challenges.

3. Create value

A salesperson’s job is to sometimes lead the customer to the correct conclusion. In order to do that, you need to truly understand their business. If you point out challenges and opportunities that they may not have even realized and then suggest a solution to address them, they will see you as a trusted advisor. Because there is so much information out there about your customer and their markets, only with access to personal business analytics can you truly understand how your solutions can benefit them, based on their particular customers, competitors and market.

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Shorten the Sales Cycle and Improve Sales Productivity

Apr 2014/in /by

Shortening the sales cycle can lead to an improvement in sales productivity. The shorter your sales cycle is, the more prospects you will be able to reach. On the other hand, shortening the sales cycle can be a monumental task, which may have to begin with reassessing your entire sales strategy.

1. Define Your Sales Strategies

In an article for Salesforce blog, Jason Jordan describes the importance of creating common definitions for sales terms. Until your team members are all operating under the same expectations, it will be difficult to make these procedures more efficient. Do all your people have the same definitions for company-wide sales processes? You may be surprised. Jordan describes an experience at one firm where two sales managers had vastly different pipelines because they had different opinions of what types of leads should be entered into them. These kinds of discrepancies can lead to confusion among sales teams. Neither method was wrong, but the inconsistency was causing problems. Make sure all your sales reps define and qualify leads the same way.

 

2. Eliminate the Junk

Most sales reps talk about qualifying leads, according to Tibor Shanto in a Salesforce blog. However, when you’re trying to whittle down your sales cycle, what you really need to work on is disqualifying leads. It’s often more efficient to focus on eliminating the prospects that aren’t going to convert so you can focus on the ones that will. This may require more work as well. While you’re defining a consistent sales strategy, also think about a procedure for getting rid of weak leads. As Shanto puts it, if you mistakenly eliminate a good lead, you will always be able to give them a second try. Your time, however, is a precious resource that you can’t get back.

3. Define Objectives

Shanto also notes that businesses are quick to pounce on solutions that help them avoid negative consequences or situations. While many sales reps pitch “solutions” this very term implies a problem that buyers probably don’t want to think about. The best way to demonstrate your product or service’s ability to solve this problem is to provide a measurable objective that you can help them meet. Rather than telling your prospect you can solve X issue for them, avoid mentioning the problem entirely. Instead, tell them you will deliver X objective. Put it in positive terms. In order to do so, however, you’ll have to do a fair amount of customer research. Determine the prospect’s needs and what their market looks like. Making it easy for prospects to say “yes” shortens the sales cycle.

4. Aim High

Aiming your pitch at decision-makers can cut some time off of the sales cycle if done correctly. Most sales reps tend to play it safe by calling someone at a lower level and getting the message passed up to higher management slowly. However, since these individuals don’t actually have the buying power, negotiating with them is often a waste of time. In Inc., Mark Suster suggests that reps aim even higher than the decision-maker. Instead of reaching a project manager, aim for the CEO or CTO. They will likely inform you that they aren’t involved in the decision, and will pass the query down to the person who is. However, the high level executive will probably have the power to prioritize the project. On the other hand, these individuals will also be able to shoot down the project immediately, allowing you to disqualify them as a lead. On top of these benefits, starting high can help you start to develop a relationship with the company. Before making the call, learn as much as you can using customer intelligence so you know how to make your pitch in a way that will make them respond.

lifecycle

Understanding the life cycle of a sales lead

Dec 2013/in /by

A big pet peeve of salespeople is that they are given terrible leads by their marketing team. However, it may not be that the leads aren’t great, it may be how the salesperson is choosing to follow up on them. Think of it this way: Leads have a life cycle, like plants do. Just because a lead has peeked its head out of the ground doesn’t mean you can harvest it. Give your leads some TLC to see a maximum return on investment.

The buying cycle is changing
Buyers have already done their research before approaching a business. They could find a company through social media, search engines or other online channels. With the advent of content marketing, potential buyers could learn a lot about your company without ever having talked to you. You no longer need to seek out prospects. They’ll come to you. For this reason, prospective buyers are often at an early stage of the buying process during their first conversation with a sales rep.

A study from Marketing Sherpa Business-To-Business Demand Generation Summit found two different conclusions. Sales people need to:
1. Respond more quickly
2. Be more persistent.

Pounce quickly
Your leads are using the Internet to their advantage, and you should too. If you have data on when they were browsing, use it to make a call. The Marketing Sherpa study demonstrated that effective response times could be far shorter than most sales reps think. The likelihood of reaching a new sales lead drops 10 times if you wait longer than an hour after they first show interest. After an hour, the odds decrease another 6 times.

Be persistent
According to Michael Boyette for Marketo, about 45 percent of B2B leads end up buying. Out of 100 leads handed down by the marketing department, roughly 45 of them will be sales opportunities and about 15 of those will actually close.

The mistake is in thinking that the remaining 30 leads are dead. According to Boyette, they might just not be ripe enough. Depending on where they are in the buying cycle, they might just not be ready to commit. It doesn’t meant you should stop trying. Keep in touch with green leads. If you were gardening, you wouldn’t water plants once and then stop. If the apples were too green when you went out to pick them, it doesn’t mean they’re worthless – they just need some more time.

Nurture your leads
If potential customers aren’t quite ready to buy, they may not be ready to talk to a sales rep just yet. Keep building brand awareness for your products by sending them messages and content. Doing this can actually speed up the buyer’s timeline, making them likely to purchase more quickly. According to MarketingSherpa data cited by Marketo, lead nurturing can lead to a 45 percent increase in return on investment. Knowing your customers can help you determine when and how to approach leads when they are reaching fruition. Use customer research to determine what their buying cycle might look like before trying to close the deal.

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