Selling Power Blog

Three Essential Attributes of a Modern Sales Effectiveness Solution

Today's post is by Ken Valla, President and Co-Founder of The Valla Group, a modern sales training organization. Follow The Valla Group’s LinkedIn page for sales effectiveness insights.

 

You’ve seen the research: Companies engage with B2B salespeople later and later, and involve more stakeholders than ever. Add in the challenges of remote sellers and tightening budgets, and it’s easy to see why enterprise selling is tougher these days. To succeed, companies need customized sales effectiveness approaches that directly improve sales performance.

Yet most traditional sales effectiveness solutions and sales methodologies are one-size-fits-all affairs that ignore the fact that every company has different values, needs, and problems. This often results in an expensive consulting project that never gets integrated into the client’s sales strategy.

To get the best results from your enterprise selling efforts, look for a modern sales effectiveness solution with the following three attributes.

Treat clients like partners

There’s no cookie-cutter fix for each company’s sales effectiveness challenges. Most sales methodologies and sales training companies lack the customization necessary to identify and correct what’s driving a company’s poor sales performance.  

For example, one team may have pipeline management issues, while another struggles to drive early demand. Traditional sales methodologies don’t dive into organizations’ unique challenges and deliver bespoke solutions.

In contrast, modern sales effectiveness solutions go deep into a client’s unique needs, focusing on understanding how sellers think, work, and sell, and then delivering customized sales training approaches that pinpoint improvement opportunities with the most potential for impact. The end result is a partnership that’s built to work best for each client—and vastly improve sales performance.

Create demand via early-stage selling

B2B buyers engage with vendors later in sales cycles, but what do salespeople do in the meantime? It’s tough to find a B2B salesperson who’s made quota on leads alone, yet many salespeople still over-rely on their BDRs. As a result, pipelines shrink and salespeople grasp at unwinnable deals to keep their activity metrics high. These efforts typically increase sales activity at the expense of sales performance.

In contrast, a modern sales effectiveness provider will empower salespeople to drive top-of-funnel demand themselves, working with leaders to:

•       Identify why and how salespeople can establish credibility with buyers early
•       Create custom messaging for key stakeholders
•       Box out the competition early
•       Increase pipeline and deal velocity

Shape better conversations during mid-stage opportunities

Banking on the efforts of one or two internal champions isn’t enough for B2B salespeople to succeed. Almost every enterprise sale is a complex process that involves many stakeholders, all of whom need focused attention in order to maximize value, increase deal velocity, and eliminate surprises. When salespeople cut corners and go for the close without involving all the key stakeholders, they end up with undersized or stalled deals.

Modern sales effectiveness solutions look at how to shape successful outcomes through conversational sales interactions with all the key stakeholders in an account. Each of these conversations must be personal, situational, and collaborative—focused on the unique needs of each stakeholder. In contrast to scattershot sales efforts, conversational sales approaches ensure that deals aren’t upended by surprise roadblocks, and that value for each stakeholder is maximized—resulting in more and bigger deals. 

Implementing a modern sales effectiveness solution over traditional sales methodologies ensures that your sales training will meet the unique needs of your sales organization, align more closely with your sales strategy, and lead to improved short- and long-term sales performance. 

To learn more about the value of a modern approach over typical sales methodologies, click here.

Sales Coaching in the New, Virtual World

Today's post is by Justin Zappulla, managing partner at Janek Performance Group.

 

As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, many sales teams quickly adapted new skills to sell in the virtual environment. At the same time, however, many were ill prepared for the challenges of coaching remotely, such as the time required to coach a dispersed team. In an office, coaching opportunities present themselves organically. Managers sit at a rep’s computer or teams gather in conference rooms and even cater lunch. However, it’s different in a virtual world. Coaching practices geared toward in-person interaction did not readily translate, and for virtual coaching to be effective, managers had to find ways to sufficiently engage their reps. Here are a few ways sales managers can meet the challenges of remote coaching.

Actively engage reps

To coach successfully in a virtual environment, managers must change the dynamic. An overly prescriptive coaching engagement, where the manager speaks most of the time, will be even less effective virtually. Managers should encourage reps to speak up, invest in the coaching, and buy in to the desired outcomes. A basic tenet of sales has always been to believe in your product. Virtual coaching practices that encourage participation increase commitment, making reps stronger representatives for their customers and clients. This also aids retention as reps develop a stake in the organization’s long-term goals.     

Create an open environment

Key to creating engagement in virtual coaching is adapting how managers and reps communicate. In virtual, it’s essential to utilize open-ended questions. Similar to how successful sales reps use open-ended questions to uncover a client’s needs, managers must communicate honestly, build trust, and foster a willingness to engage in the coaching initiatives that increase performance and drive sales. Combined with open-ended questions, closed questions can provide confirmation and indicate buy-in. By themselves, however, they can make reps defensive. Remember, many reps already feel anxious from the isolation of working remotely, so employing a combination of open-ended and closed questions makes for a comfortable and enjoyable coaching experience.

Focus on quality communication

In virtual coaching, written and verbal communication require greater attention. As sales managers rely more on email, they must avoid miscommunication that stems from carelessness. While reps can readily note a manager’s joke in person, it’s easy to misconstrue a comment in an email. Without the benefit of body language, isolated reps might find themselves stressing over a misinterpreted comment that the manager meant humorously. Also, managers should read emails aloud to ensure their tone isn’t short, curt, or out of alignment with their intended meaning.    

On video, managers should reassure remote reps they are valued and appreciated. On the phone, without facial expressions, meaning can blur, especially when criticizing or critiquing a rep’s performance. As in face-to-face coaching, virtual coaching should always seek to build a rep up. In virtual, this requires a little extra awareness to preserve feelings and ensure a productive coaching experience.

Embrace technology

Today, technology is essential to coaching. Sales managers must be able to communicate and collaborate with remote reps through video and other conferencing applications. They must share data from their CRM, review recorded calls, and listen to live calls in real time. In addition, as technology is only as useful as its functionality, both managers and reps must troubleshoot the issues common to virtual interaction and prepare a network within their organization to ensure remote reps have access and support if something fails. Also, both managers and reps should be proficient with the tools of virtual collaboration, such as screen sharing and whiteboarding, to get the most from virtual coaching.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, it’s easy to see how sales coaching took a backseat as organizations struggled to maintain sales in the remote environment. Gradually, as organizations adapted and the need for coaching grew, it became clear the old way was no longer effective. Instead, as their teams adjusted to sell virtually, sales managers modified their coaching practices to suit the changing needs of their remote sales force. Going forward, as the virtual model continues to grow, successful managers will consistently update their coaching to ensure the productivity and success of their sales teams.   

For more helpful advice on how to advance your selling and sales management skills, visit Janek's resource library. 

Preparing to prospect in 2021: What we already know

Today's blog post is by Lead Forensics editorial team.

What happens when everything sales leaders know about the industry dramatically changes in a matter of months? There’s been uncertainty around every corner in 2020, and the organizations that are still standing strong and successful today must prepare to adapt their approach on a strategic level in 2021. While we can’t predict the future, we can use what we’ve learned to inform our strategies and maximize prospecting potential in the year ahead.

Develop a real-time response culture for following up with prospects

According to Harvard Business Review, firms that contact potential customers within an hour of receiving an inquiry are almost seven times more likely to qualify the lead than those who try an hour later—and more than 60 times more likely than those that wait 24 hours or longer. B2B buyers are consumers in their personal lives, and consumers demand immediacy. We’re used to instant responses from chatbots—we expect rapid replies, next-day delivery, and real-time updates. Your follow-up approach to prospects needs to cater to this, and a company-wide culture of immediacy is the only way. Lead Forensics for example, provides real-time alerts of website visitors and helps your reps act quickly on sales-ready leads.

Sales reps must embrace agility

Digital transformation isn’t a new concept—before the pandemic, buyers were already becoming accustomed to digital experiences, online purchases, and even using big-name vendors like Amazon to make their B2B purchases. According to Forrester, B2B e-commerce sales are expected to account for as much as 17% of all B2B sales by 2023. This makes sales prospecting a little more difficult. Your business must be agile in its approach. Ensure your sales team is prepared to sell to remote buyers; identify new, unique selling points to meet the needs of a changing market; enable on-site purchasing where possible; and embrace digital and social platforms to reach a younger, digital-first audience of B2B buyers. 

Data-fueled decisions for sales leaders     

According to the Salesforce “State of Sales” report, two-thirds of sales teams prioritize leads based on data analysis rather than gut feeling. This is critical—to convert the most customers and deliver an extraordinary experience, data must play a significant part in your strategic decisions. Your prospects can access all the information they need in seconds, so they’ll spot a generic email a mile away. In 2021, customization and relevance are key—whether it’s gaining a deeper understanding of your ideal buyers, personalizing your follow-ups with enriched data, or using behavioral analytics to identify the most engaged leads. Read our new eBook to optimize your 2021 sales strategy.

Website intelligence and automation: The secret to a full sales pipeline

EY recently reported that 41% of companies are investing in automation acceleration to prepare for the post-crisis business world. Automating or improving your prospecting process with powerful SaaS is a sure-fire way to build your pipeline—and investing in your business website might be the best way to do that. Reverse IP tracking software reveals the identity of your website visitors and tracks their on-site behavior, providing you with a bounty of new leads for the top of your pipeline along with large quantities of data, all in real-time. Lead Forensics, for example, eliminates the need for on-site conversion; sends instant website visitor alerts; and provides accurate business names, decision-maker contact details, and key firmographic data so that sales reps can reach out in seconds – try it free for 14-days.