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Sell insights, not just products with customer intelligence

Mar 2014/in /by

Understanding your customer more deeply can lead to an increase in sales. In this data-driven world, the relationship between sales rep and prospect is different than it used to be. In the past, salespeople sold solutions to problems; they now sell insights, according to Mark Bergen of Vision Critical, an insight community technology provider.

With all of the information that is available to prospects today, they have little use for the same old solutions. They are also more likely to know right off the bat whether your services will work for them. Since they arrive into the sales funnel with more knowledge, the entire sales process is being turned on its head. When a sales rep can give them assistance on top of what they already know, this individual has an opportunity to become not just a sales person, but a colleague.

In this new landscape, the most powerful sales strategy is having insight into your customers market that no one else has. Once you have this information, you won’t just be selling clients a solution to a pain point, but valuable knowledge they can only get from you.

How to understand your customer’s end market There are several options, but one thing is clear: a simple Google search doesn’t cut it anymore. Knowing your customer’s market requires in-depth research, from scouring social media platforms to reading industry publications. It can be a time-consuming activity. That’s why the best option is to invest in a customer intelligence platform that will deliver personalized information about customers’ markets. The right solution will allow you to tune out the noise and focus just on relevant events and big data analytics.

Here are just two examples of what you can accomplish when you know your end-customer:

1. Sell your prospect an outcome Don’t work in the dark. Use key insights to determine what your client really needs, beyond how you believe your product can help them. According to Anthony Iannarino for Salesforce blog, you need to focus on the final outcome instead. By honing in on their market, you can develop a better understanding of what the customer is looking for. Successful salespeople pitch the future outcome that the client is looking for. However, depending on where the client is at in the buying process, they may not be aware of their desired outcome. As a valuable asset to your prospect, this is an idea you can help them develop. Iannarino also provides another valuable piece of advice: a sale will only happen if stakeholders are in agreement on the desired outcome. Using the market intelligence you’ve gleaned, you can help guide the decision-makers into a consensus on what direction operations could go.

2. See needs before your customers do According to Bergen, by monitoring your customer’s market very closely, you can often identify problems they don’t know they have. Bergen notes how his company, which provides software that facilitates communication between customers and businesses, found a solution for sports teams whose end-customer was sports fans. After doing some research, his firm determined that sports teams don’t offer the engagement tools that sports fans want. For instance, sports teams weren’t always reaching out on digital platforms. In addition, digital platforms enabling fans to branch out from just supporting local teams. This knowledge helped Bergen’s company pitch their product to sports teams.

When you are well-versed in all the elements that make your customer’s market tick, you have opportunities to provide valuable insight in addition to products and services. The role of the sales person is changing. Do you have the tools you need to be a 21st century sales rep?

Time is money

3 Ways to Improve Sales Productivity

Mar 2014/in /by

Even the best sales people need some tips now and then. When it comes down to it, the problem could simply be one of time management—your reps may be spending too much time chasing down leads that will never convert. The sales funnel shouldn’t be a black hole; make sure salespeople know when to persevere and when to surrender in order to improve sales productivity.

1. Do More with Less

According to Geoffrey James for Salesforce blog, you may need to refocus your time to increase sales. While it may seem counterintuitive, sometimes you need to reduce the number of opportunities you go after in order to increase sales. The problem with chasing too many leads is that you may not be giving each one the time they deserve. Instead, choose the most qualified leads and prepare sufficiently for each pitch.

2. Know Your Customer

This point goes along with the first one. Going after the right leads means doing significant prep work. Utilizing sales intelligence and good, old-fashioned customer research are the best resources. Make sure you are having a sales conversation based on the needs of your potential client, suggests Selling Power. To be able to pitch a meaningful solution, you have to understand what drives their market. In the same regard, if you’ve done the research and it doesn’t seem like your product is the right fit for them, odds are the company’s buyers will come to the same conclusion. It will be more beneficial to focus your efforts elsewhere.

3. Work on Your Pitch

Once you’ve improved your time management and started focusing in on the sales you can actually make, it’s time to work on the most basic part of your strategy: the pitch. If you’re not effectively closing sales, the culprit could be the pitch itself. The problem could be that your pitch is too much of a hard sell, and not enough like a conversation. According to sales training group Fearless Selling, a canned pitch can really turn off your prospects. Once again, you need to respect your potential clients as individuals with specific needs—remember to pitch your solution to their pain points, not your product. Your product won’t work the same way for everyone, and neither will your pitch. Try ditching your notes and having a real talk instead of giving a presentation.

When you really think about how you’re working and try to perfect each element, the results can be surprising.

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Industry Thought Leaders Share Sales Insight

Feb 2014/in /by

As a thought leader selling solutions to enterprise sales leaders, Penny Herscher often gets asked about the trends that she sees in some of the world’s largest enterprise sales teams. Recently, a request came through with just one question: What is the most important shift in sales strategy, technology or process that you’ve implemented or observed in the past year?

Penny shared what she hears the most from our own customers, many of whom are themselves senior sales leaders at Fortune 500 companies. The insight that came to the forefront was that, in order to be successful and grow your business, you need to build trusted relationships with customers that bring real value. The buyer wants to know that you, as a seller, truly understand their pain points and their business needs. They don’t care about all the bells and whistles of the product—they care about what value it will bring to their business. This all but requires that you, and your product, provide year-round value to them—and the only way you can do that is to become intimately knowledgeable about their business.  Of course, to do that successfully and stay productive, sales teams need the right tools that provide real-time insights to solve the business problems customers have.

Penny Herscher was featured this week in ringDNA’s 20 Top Sales Leaders Reveal Their Biggest Productivity Secrets. There are many other great sales thought leaders and practitioners who are quoted as well. Read on and learn from the best!

The e-book is available for download here: http://firstrain.it/1erdrl9

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Engage Your Customers With A Story

Feb 2014/in , /by

Humans respond to narratives, and we are more likely to retain information when it comes packaged in a story; so, storytelling is one of the greatest tools in the sales and marketing toolbox to engage your customers.

In a video from Marketo called “Lead Generation Tips from 6 Really Really Smart Human Beings,” Lee Odden, founder of TopRank Online Marketing said, “Facts tell. Stories sell.” This is the kind of catchphrase you should write down on a post-it-note  and stick on your computer monitor—it’s that important. You can use statistics about your product as a selling point, but your prospect’s eyes may glaze over. However, tie these numbers up in a compelling tale about how your product completely turned a business around in its time of need, and you are much more likely to grab their full attention. Numbers make people nod, but stories make them care—and people are more likely to invest in something they care about.

Do Background Research

In the same video from Marketo, Nick Westergaard, chief brand strategist and founder of Driven Digital, said, “Questions are currency.” In other words, what marketers really need to do is identify what their potential client’s questions are and provide an answer before the prospect even thinks to ask. But how do you do that? You do a whole lot of customer research: determine what’s going on in their markets and use big data analytics to get a sense of their industry climate. When you know your audience, you’ll understand what kinds of stories make them tick.

Where Do You Tell Your Stories?

If you haven’t noticed, narratives are pervasive in our culture. That’s because they work well, no matter what medium you use to tell them, be it podcast, text or video. Using them in sales pitches can be extremely effective too. When it comes to digital marketing, video is a pretty safe bet. Internet video is a huge part of marketing and unlikely to go away anytime soon. When it comes to sending a succinct, effective message, video is a medium unlike any other. Make a video to use on a landing page or share on social media.

How Do You Tell Your Stories?

Once you choose a vehicle for your brand story, it’s all about creating a narrative that will sell. The important thing is that it contains all the right elements to engage with the audience. According to Forbes, it’s important to create characters that your clients will root for. After all, a story without a protagonist isn’t much of a story at all. Make sure it’s someone with issues that will resonate with your audience. Remember in grade school when you learned that a story has a beginning, middle and an end? That’s still true. Don’t forget to craft a story arc. In the beginning, present a stable situation, which then gets upset by the introduction of a problem that your product will solve for them.

Be Honest

When we talk about stories in marketing, we’re not talking about fiction. Your stories should be rooted in real encounters. This may sound less interesting than writing the great American novel, but using real events actually makes the whole process easier. You probably have an entire file full of client success stories. Think about one of these sales from the company’s perspective. Rather than just being a percentage point in a sales record, this situation is a story waiting to be told.

Whether you are making a pitch, creating a video or e-book, basing your marketing and sales efforts in stories is the way to go.

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How To Navigate the Twitter Ocean

Feb 2014/in , , /by

Navigating social media without analytics is like crossing the ocean without stars.

No self-respecting ancient mariner, or night-migrating bird for that matter, would try to cross from Knossos to Delos without use of the stars. The ocean is too large, and full, and dark.

But sales people are trying to follow their B2B customers on Twitter without the stars. They load up users and keywords into excellent B2C support apps like Hootsuite or Radian6, but still miss their destination because they can’t navigate the business developments by following people. To understand how your customer’s business, and so your target, is changing, you need to be navigating through all of Twitter and extracting out the B2B business trends buffeting your prospect.

That takes analytics. Analytics that process every tweet and figure out its meaning, in real time. Analytics that figure out whether it is relevant to you. Does it match your personal interests, does it have meaning to your business and your strategy, whether or not the keywords you put in are matched?

That’s what we’re doing at FirstRain; it’s all very personal. We analyze Twitter the way a Minoan navigator would study the stars 10,000 years ago. We’re finding you the path through Twitter’s ocean to get to your ultimate destination: revenue growth.

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1 Surprising Way to Increase Sales

Feb 2014/in , /by

When it comes to landing a sale, there’s just one concept that sales reps need to know. Make it easy for your prospects to say yes. Henry David Thoreau got it right when he famously wrote these three words: “simplify, simplify, simplify.” Although that’s technically only one word, and if Thoreau was really following his own advice, he wouldn’t have repeated it three times.

According to Executive Board, making the decision process easier for customers makes them far more likely to buy. Brands that simplified the undertaking were 86 percent more likely to close a deal, and more than 100 percent more likely to be recommended. All because these brands removed any elements that distracted clients from their main goal: determining if the product would solve their problem.

How is This Achieved?

  • Giving potential clients information they feel they can trust
  • Presenting this data effectively in a way that’s easy to digest
  • Being open about competitors

Essentially, being a resource for this information reduces the amount of thinking your potential customer is forced to do. It makes it easy for them to say yes. And, of course, you’re doing this through completely honest means, and not trying to dupe them into buying your product when it is not, in fact, the best choice for them.

Use these tips to make the sales process more straightforward and increase sales:

Research

If you’re truly making the sales funnel easier to navigate, you are going to have to do a lot of research on behalf of your potential customers. Research customer markets using sales intelligence software and get a better idea of what’s going on in their industries. Use this information to empathize with your customers. Why are they seeking your services? What problem are you going to help them solve?

Reduce Jargon

As Michael Boyette puts it on Salesforce Blog, simplifying things for your prospects does not mean being condescending. Buyers are usually very smart people, and highly intelligent individuals tend to get bogged down in details, which can be overwhelming. One way to reduce the noise for potential customers to get rid of jargony language. Don’t speak with it and don’t include it on any materials. This may be a good exercise for salespeople, as well. How many words does your sales pitch take? Are all of these words truly necessary to get your point across? Do any of them have more than four syllables? Try to use layman’s terms that are comprehensible across different fields.

Streamline Your Online Materials

Prevent sensory overload by having an easily navigable website with an obvious call to action. According to Ellie Mirman on Hubspot, this could mean actually getting rid of a few calls to action. They don’t need to jump out on every page. With your website, you should provide a clear pathway to the information users need. Once again, a little customer research goes a long way here. Use customer intelligence analytics to understand your customer. Rather than telling your potential buyers what you want them to know, try reversing the equation. If you were a decision-maker seeking your services, what information would you be looking for. Reorganize the website based on this perspective and you will have made the research process easier for prospective customers as well.

Be an Open Book

Pricing information shouldn’t be a secret. This is a key piece of information for people looking to buy a product. As has already been noted, you’re dealing with smart people here. If they can’t find the answer to this question, they will probably assume the number isn’t obvious because it’s unattractive.

Unclutter the sales journey, and you may be pleasantly surprised by the results

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Keep training consistent to create sales superheroes

Jan 2014/in /by

Training your salespeople is vital to the continuing success of any business. Even if they can’t turn back time by flying around the world in reverse, sales superheros can turn a bad pitch into a closed deal. In a rapidly changing world, it’s a mistake to assume that your best sales reps don’t need any more training. Whether your salespeople are veterans or just entering the world of sales, it’s necessary to provide them with the training they need to best represent your company. Training sales reps is important for:

  • Improving knowledge of your company: You want your reps to be evangelists for your business, but they’ll be duds without background information that gives them a good story to tell.


  • Clarifying responsibilities: Increase the efficiency of your team by ensuring they understand how their day-to-day activities affect the company as a whole.


  • Increasing product knowledge: Give reps a reason to get excited about the products they’re selling. Not to mention there’s nothing more off-putting to potential buyers than a sales rep who doesn’t know everything about the products they’re touting.


  • Knowing your customers: Part of sales training should be devoted not just to your own products, but your customer base. Use big data analytics to plug yourself into your customer’s world.


  • Enhancing skills: This the No. 1 reason for training. It’s vital to be 100 percent confident in your products and your market, but if you lack the skills to wow your prospect, none of that information is worthwhile.

Here are some ideas for training your sales people:

Hire a trainer

Most businesses can benefit from hiring a trainer. However, be careful that you hire the right person, according to Geoffrey James for Salesforce. Different professionals have different areas of expertise. If they don’t have what you need, the investment won’t be worthwhile.

Train consistently

Make development of sales staff a part of every sales meeting. Try to set a goal for how much time you’ll spend on it. According to Caron Beesley on the government’s Small Business Administration website, one training session is rarely sufficient. Make sure your reps are up-to-date on the state of the market and even new research that would be beneficial in sales tactics.

Remember competitors


An often overlooked way to increase the success of your sales team is to make sure they know your competitors as well as they know your company. As Beesley says, it’s a good idea to encourage role playing exercises that involve competitive selling techniques.

Make training part of your routine

Have sales reps incorporate training into their day by encouraging them to share information via social media or over group lunches.

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How to be an understanding sales rep

Jan 2014/in /by

Too often, salespeople get a bad rap. When the average person thinks of a sales rep, they imagine pushy, inconsiderate and generally insincere individuals who will do or say anything to close a deal. Popular culture only perpetuates these negative images. In movies like Wall Street and Glengarry Glen Ross, salesmen are depicted as ruthless, sociopathic and criminal.

However, it doesn’t have to be this way. Truly successful salespeople know that honesty and empathy are key to making great sales.

Understanding your customers

To be a great salesperson, you have to know where your customers are coming from. Use CRM intelligence to get a better handle on your potential buyer’s world; however, don’t use customer analytics to hurl data points at your prospects. Yes, it may communicate to them that you’ve done your homework, but it probably won’t help you make a sale. Use this information to truly understand what it is your customer needs. Then you can think about your role in helping them achieve it.

Empathize

Understanding your customer’s background is a little different than actually being in the room with him or her. Being keyed into your client’s emotional state can help you better guide the conversation. Emotional intelligence can be hard to learn, but there are some ways to practice. According to Natalie Grace for the Houston Chronicle, practicing self-awareness can help you to better understand the thoughts and feelings of others. When you can identify your own emotional triggers, you will become better at noticing them in others.

Be a good listener

Part of being an understanding salesperson is knowing when to stop talking. As S. Anthony Iannarino puts it on the Sales Blog, a huge part of emotional intelligence is the ability to listen. Salespeople often put a lot of effort into changing people’s minds. However, without really understanding why someone believes what they do, these efforts are going to be in vain.

Ask good questions

If a prospect has already decided they don’t want what you’re selling, they may not say what they’re thinking. A good salesperson knows how to ask the questions that will make prospects open up.

Know when to stop

Not every pitch will end in a sale. Some clients truly don’t need or want what you’re offering, at least right now. An empathetic salesperson will know the difference between hesitation and determination. For prospects that truly have no intention of buying, persistence can be a waste of time. Being too pushy will certainly not make you look good. End on a pleasant note–it’s possible you may hear from them again in the future.

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4 questions that provoke the ire of prospects

Dec 2013/in /by

By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Market Development

The cardinal rule of sales should be: Don’t irritate your prospects! It doesn’t matter whether a potential buyer could use your services or not. If they cultivate a strong dislike for you during the pitch, they’re unlikely to go with the company you represent. Sometimes when you’re under pressure to close, you might phrase questions inappropriately, leading to the disdain of the people you’re trying to impress. Avoid ruining the outcome of the sale before you’ve even begun. To start out, here are a few questions you should avoid asking:

  1. “Are you the decision-maker?”
    You want to make sure you’re not wasting your time with someone who doesn’t impact the purchasing decision. But the truth is, even if the final decision isn’t theirs, they can be a good bridge to someone who will make the final choice. Use this question and your prospect will see right through you. As Geoffrey James puts it in the Salesforce blog, when you ask this question you’re implying your contact is “some flunky gatekeeper who needs to be schmoozed.”Instead, you may want to dispense with the term “decision maker” altogether. James suggests asking instead, “who are the stakeholders?” Without bluntly questioning where the prospect falls in the chain of command, you can get an idea of who else you should talk to before closing the deal. Another idea, according to the Sales Excellence blog, is to ask “Once you make your decision, what are the next steps?” This will also give you a better understanding of the buying process.
  2. “Would you agree that…?”
    This is a leading question that could immediately cause your prospect to bristle. The idea is to make them say yes to something small so they will be more likely to say yes to buying. Unfortunately, your contact has probably heard this ancient selling technique hundreds of times, so it will only put them on the defensive. Instead, try a more open question like “what are your priorities around…?” Ask questions that lead to a legitimate discussion. Let go of the seller-buyer dichotomy and you’re more likely to influence your potential client.
  3. “If we could save you money, would you be interested?”
    Once again, you’re using a manipulative tactic and dangling the carrot in front of the horse. You’re obviously hoping to hook the prospect into a longer conversation, but this question is actually extremely vague, and needs to be more targeted to the prospective company in order to be useful. According to Colleen Stanley for Customer Think blog, it may be better to say, “let’s you and I crunch some numbers together to see if the cost savings add up to enough dollars to even consider making a move.” This way, you’re communicating to the prospect that you understand they have individual needs and offering a one-size-fits-all solution may not benefit them.
  4. Any question you should already know the answer to
    While making this kind of blunder may not send up a red flag as quickly as the first three, lack of research won’t get you ahead. To establish yourself as not just a salesperson, but a valuable informational resource, you’ll want to know as much as possible about your potential buyer’s market. Customer analytics can provide an in depth background on where your buyer is coming from. It can help you anticipate their needs, which will help you ask the right questions. Knowing your customers before engaging in the sales pitch is the smartest thing a salesperson can do.

Do your research, avoid provoking clients, and encourage conversation rather than being pushy, and you’re likely to win the confidence of your prospective buyers.

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Use Twitter for sales intelligence

Dec 2013/in , /by

Getting exhausted by tired old methods for finding sales leads and connecting with customers? Twitter is a fresh alternative to waiting for email registrations, and it’s a great way to provide better service to your current clients. The best sales resource is knowing your customers. In this regard, social media can be a great complement to customer intelligence analytics. Twitter’s features make it a good choice for sales reps who want to get plugged into their consumer market.

Find prospects
The best way to maximize the service is to get a platform like TweetDeck to help you organize the people you follow.

First, you’ll need to identify leads. It may take a while to build a following, but it will be worth it in the long run. Start by using the search function to look for words buyers of your product might use, says Anna Bratton for Salesforce. Follow the people who fit your customer profile.

Another good idea is to check out your competitor’s Twitter feed. If you’re lucky, they may have already done the legwork for you. If they’re not on Twitter yet, well, that’s good for you too.

Once you’ve generated a list of people to follow, organize them into lists. For instance, your competitors can have their own category. These indexes can also be used to organize potential clients by where they are in the sales cycle, suggests Bryan Kramer on the Salesforce blog. Twitter is a great tool for keeping prospects on your radar.

Look for signals
Use the search function on Twitter to identify businesses that are looking to buy a service you offer. Twitter benefits both buyers and sellers by providing a large community to answer questions. Look for users who are asking for recommendations. They will be particularly pleased to get a quick answer from you. Search for terms like “anyone recommend” or “any advice on,” says Bratton.

Keep on eye on various signals. Once again, list functions work perfectly for this. On TweetDeck you can create a list that compiles any tweet containing words you’ve identified. Look for tweets that mention name of your company, or a keyword that best represents what you do. Having a list devoted to competitors is never a bad idea. If a user mentions a competitor, specifically a negative experience with one, you have an opening to jump in and suggest your services instead.

Optimize the experience
No one likes a self-serving Twitter feed. The point of social media is to generate conversation and engagement, not to promote your own company ad nauseam.

This platform is ideal for companies seeking a thought leadership role. This means that most of what you tweet shouldn’t be directly about you at all. On Marketo’s blog, Heidi Bullock provides a useful guideline, called the 4-1-1 rule. For every tweet your company makes to promote itself, you should retweet someone else (but don’t cheat by retweeting another user’s complimentary words about your services). In addition, you should share four pieces of content from other sources. Provide insightful articles with digestible headlines that are under 140 characters. Actually, the less characters you use, the easier it will be for other to retweet you with your words intact.

Promoted posts are another strategy to consider, although this service may not even be necessary. You can use promoted tweets to target specific users. Since this is a slightly more invasive strategy than targeting users who seem specifically interested in buying, it may be wise to test the waters before rolling these out on a wide scale. Wait until there’s a big industry event underway and provide timely and engaging content like a white paper or e-book for those who may be associated with the occasion.

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