Selling Power Blog

Powerful Sales Interventions to Succeed in This Crisis

Today’s post is by Richard Barkey, founder and CEO of Selling Power Top 20 training company Imparta. Richard is an expert in sales, negotiation, leadership, and account management, and is a sought-after keynote speaker who has run Webinars for more than 15,000 sales leaders and professionals since the beginning of the pandemic. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

In the middle of a crisis, should you add training to an already-heavy sales workload?

I’m not impartial, because I run a training company. But I can tell you that, for my team, the answer is emphatically yes. New buying behaviors are creating intense new sales challenges around the whole buying cycle, and salespeople are busy precisely because they are fighting fires they are not fully equipped to put out.

Let’s take a couple examples. 

Dealing with Requests for Price Cuts and Extended Payment Terms

Even organizations that have done well through lockdown are limiting budgets and saying no more often, in advance of the likely recession. That has an effect on new deals, but it’s also driving procurement teams to issue repricing letters, and to demand extended payment terms from their existing suppliers. 

For a company with a 10 percent net profit margin, an across-the-board 5 percent price cut would slash profits by 50 percent. And, for many organizations, a 5- to 10-day increase in days’ receivable can cut cash headroom in half.  So, resisting these pressures is business critical.

The fundamentals of positional negotiation remain unchanged: Power comes from how good your BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) is, relative to the BATNA your customer enjoys. It’s critical to assess what alternatives they have – and, at a time when supply chains are changing fast, those alternatives may not be as good as they were. These requests are often sent out as blanket emails, and procurement only expects 60-70 percent compliance.

On its own, though, positional negotiation can destroy trust. Salespeople also need to create value for both sides through principled, insight-based trading. Give things one side cares about more than the other, and get things where the reverse is true. The pandemic has created new opportunities to do this, because those priorities are being driven by new needs, new decision priorities, and new risks. 

You can see more details on our Website.

Unlocking Stalled Deals 

Your customers are on a journey – from their initial reaction to the crisis, through a stage of brutal prioritization, to adapting to the current normal, to planning to take advantage of the changed environment, and finally toward recovery. If you’re selling to a customer who is still at the start of that journey, you may well struggle to get much traction. But, once an organization has started to adapt, you can unlock stalled deals. 

However, to do so, your teams need to understand the psychology of how decisions are being made right now. Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist, developed a theory that we have two systems of thinking: System 2 (the conscious, reasoning self) and System 1 (the faster, more intuitive thinking that actually governs much of what we do – but calls on System 2 when it needs help). 

At times of stress like a pandemic or global recession, decision makers (even very senior ones) use System 1 thinking even more than usual. If we try to influence them using only System 2 thinking (facts, figures, and logical arguments), we may fail to achieve our goals. We also need to understand and work with their intuitive decision making, with all its flaws.

One example of this is loss aversion. Buyers make decisions with an eye toward avoiding a loss two to four times more often than they do to achieve a gain. So, we need to frame deals in those terms, and to contrast the pain of not acting directly with a compelling vision of the future. 

Equally, research shows that buyers are averse to being given a single option. You can drive successful outcomes by offering at least two choices as a way forward, even if there was a single solution on the table before. 

You’ll find more insight here into how to unlock deals. 

Business-Critical Interventions

These are just two examples of the business-critical issues your sales teams face right now. Across a wide range of companies and sectors, we’ve identified a total of 12 common ones, from mastering virtual presence to virtual sales management. 

We’ve created business-critical interventions for all of them to help you address these very current challenges. How many of these do you recognize?

Leverage Your Core Sales Skills During This Pandemic

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

 

While many states and countries are gradually in the process of re-opening, there remain restrictions and a need to navigate a new sales normal. Additionally, an economic crisis is clearly part of the COVID-19 fallout. All of this has created a business environment where sales can be achieved, but through a different process than we are used to. However, it’s important to remember that, regardless of the state of the world, your industry, or business in general, there is a path forward to sales success.  

1. Adapt your skills to the current environment 
The sales process has likely changed. We are connecting with customers in different ways, there’s a greater emphasis on remote selling, and there is a vital need to think creatively in meeting the unique challenges of an economy overshadowed by a pandemic. But the good news is, you’ve developed core selling skills that can be applied to the new environment – just a bit differently.  

Things like knowing how to open and close, being a trusted advisor, identifying needs, tailoring a solution, offering insights and ideas to get customers to think differently – these are all core selling skills sales professionals have honed over the years and are still critical in today’s unique environment. They are applied a bit differently, as the communication medium has changed. Lean into Web-based tools with video, if possible, and get comfortable working phone and email. While face-to-face interactions will be limited, you still can connect deeply with your customers by leveraging the core selling skills you’ve learned to rely on.  

2. Pay even more attention to communication style preferences
Communication styles are one of the most critical gateways to understanding and connecting with buyers. In times of stress and strife, like COVID-19, they become even more important. Being able to talk to someone who is in sync with you in your preferred communication method is a huge relief, and it’s an opening that sales professionals can use to establish trust, build rapport, and engage in a productive sales dialogue. 

However, the environment has changed. Even with the relaxing of some restrictions, face-to-face is still less likely to take place. Consequently, sales professionals will need to use other strategies to discern communication styles – verbal clues like tone and words used, and writing elements such as content, length, and syntax. When possible, the use of video can be a tremendous asset. Being able to read the body language of your customer – and them being able to see the same – is a significant advantage. 

3. Short-term problems could take priority over long-term solutions
Because pandemics involve a great degree of future uncertainty – no one knows precisely how long it will last, for example – long-term strategizing will likely downshift to a lesser priority for buyers. After all, if you don’t know what the world will look like in the future, it can be difficult to make plans based on that.

Thus, sales reps may find they need to align with buyers’ most pressing short-term concerns over long-range issues. That doesn’t mean future scope is completely out of the equation, of course – one can make models and projections based on an array of possible futures – but addressing immediate problems could not only represent a win now but strengthen your position on future deals as well.    

4. Resist the trap of diving too deeply into non-business discussions
The pandemic response at the local, state, national, and international level has tragically become politicized. One of the things sales professionals need to be aware of is buyers who have strong opinions about the strategy employed to deal with COVID-19. Sales professionals need to be aware of the risks associated with diving too deeply into this dialogue.  

Despite the chaos affecting the entire world of business and sales, core selling skills are still critical to engaging and influencing buyers. Shifting strategy to work through different communication channels, emphasizing relationship building, strongly considering communication styles, and balancing both short-term and long-term goals are all ways to effectively keep the sales pipeline full.

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

Three Ways AI Guidance Can Help You Sell Better in a Black Swan Environment

Today’s post is by Amit Pande, CMO and head of Strategy at Aviso AI. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

The year 2020 has already been a year of tumultuous twists and turns unlike anything we’ve seen in recent decades. It has brought concepts like “Black Swans” – unpredictable or unforeseen events, typically with extreme consequences – into the mainstream. Experts even say what we’ve just seen in the first half of 2020 may be the new norm for the decade: unpredictability. 

Here’s the truth: Surviving novel problems requires novel solutions. From a revenue perspective, old approaches, technologies, and biases won’t just hurt us – they have the potential to sink entire companies. If we learn the right business lessons from COVID-19, we can be better prepared for future uncertainty. 

Using novel technologies such as AI will be absolutely key to remaining afloat through troubled waters. Here are three ways we believe AI can enable your selling success even through all-virtual WFH collaboration, deviant markets, and a general mood of chaos. 

1. Stay close to the ground with AI understanding of markets and buyer behavior.

Companies can benefit from applying the power of AI both to who they sell to and how they sell. Leaving this sensemaking task to human brains is fraught with specific risks – humans don’t look far back enough, broadly enough, or objectively enough. 

A starting point with AI can be looking at similar challenges experienced in the past, and how revenue forecasts dropped in those situations – for example, previous recessions. At Aviso our AI Research team has found that the extent of the impact your industry faces depends on a variety of factors: financial resilience, sales cycles, geographical exposure, churn versus new customer acquisition rates, account sizes. All these considerations should be modeled into your business to forecast future quarters. 

On the buyer engagement side, AI can also help you develop more empathy for the impact on prospects so you can adapt the way you sell. For example, applying AI to actual email and calendar engagement – and even chat conversations – will give your sales teams a better understanding of prospects’ pain points and how to create a virtuous cycle with them.  

2. Collaborate as one virtual team with revenue-focused AI “war rooms.” 

Working from home is the new normal. From team SKOs, on-site demos, and field sales, revenue teams are rapidly digitizing all their operations. How do you keep up velocity virtually? In times of rapid change, just “watercooler” collaboration (e.g., Slack or Zoom) is not enough. During remote work, teams suffer from deeper cognitive biases. Good news looks better than it should, and bad news often doesn’t enter the discussion. These biases can compound and spread across CRM, forecast calls, and deal reviews, and inhibit timely actions. 

We recommend using digital “revenue war rooms” where sales leaders and teams can plan and execute during these uncertain times. Ideally, these rooms combine the best of Zoom, Slack, and CRM-like tools while keeping end-to-end encryption and also augmenting sales collaboration with AI insights, live chat, video, file sharing, and “to-dos” prioritization. 

Such rooms serve as a virtual collaboration space to move deals – drawing in other go- to-market members such as customer success, marketing, or legal, for help when needed.

3. Vigilantly apply AI to predict forecasts and recalibrate pipeline numbers.

A key challenge faced by companies in crises is that CRM data loses its trustworthiness. This is due to many deals drying up as poor economic conditions lower buyer intent. CRM becomes a lagging indicator of business. More so, if you are using a spreadsheet, it is nearly impossible to forecast during COVID-19 due to the large amount of rapidly shifting variables constantly influencing potential revenue outcomes. 

Re-assessing both forecasting strategy and pipeline quality is critical to revenue success. Using a machine learning approach to forecasting sales – preferably with a tool that applies advanced data science to learn your organization’s selling patterns – will help your team get smarter over time. AI pipeline analytics can help with objective, unbiased inspection. 

Comparing start-of-the-quarter pipeline and new pipeline added to ending pipeline predictions can reveal when and where you need to strengthen revenue strategy. Playing the long-term optimization game is key to sustained revenue; see if you’re on track to creating sufficient pipeline one, two, and three quarters out. To round the process out, find out if your pipeline is the optimal mix of opportunities that will gear your team for success.

Confidently close your next quarter with an AI Guidance Compass 

Aviso is here to help companies recover from the impact of COVID-19. Get Aviso AI complimentary for 90 days to understand your business better, collaborate more effectively across your revenue team, drive more revenue, and reduce the burden of CRM. 

The Power of Optimism and Realism in Sales

Today’s post is by Jeff Seeley, CEO of sales and leadership training company Carew International. He is a frequent keynote speaker, columnist, and blogger. Find him online or connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

Conventional wisdom tells us that, with a positive attitude, we can accomplish anything we set our minds to. But what if we’ve been misled? 

What if ignoring the bad and focusing only on the good is actually preventing us from reaching our full potential? 

Sales Leadership Lessons from the “Stockdale Paradox” 

This concept was presented as a primary lesson in the famous business book Good to Great by Jim Collins, in which he discusses the Stockdale Paradox, a concept named after James Stockdale, a Navy admiral and POW during the Vietnam War. 

As a POW at Hoa Lo (the notorious “Hanoi Hilton” of Vietnam POW camps), Stockdale lived to recount his story of the many difficulties he endured. He recalled how he and his comrades were constantly in survival mode – every person mentally and physically battling to stay alive. 

Surprisingly, the first to die, he said, were the optimists. Talk about a challenge to conventional wisdom! According to Stockdale, it’s because the optimists always had their minds set on arbitrary deadlines, such as “We’ll be out of here by Christmas…” and then, “We’ll be out of here by Easter,” rather than mentally planning for surviving the reality at hand. When release deadlines came and went, they lost all hope and died of broken hearts.  

What did Stockdale do differently to make it home seven years later? He was both hopeful and realistic. He told himself he would be in prison for at least five years and set his expectations accordingly. He balanced the hope he had, of returning home, with the cold, hard reality that he was unlikely to get home anytime soon – hence, the Stockdale Paradox. In other words, he hoped for the best while taking a long-term approach to plan and prepare for the tough years ahead.

Facing Uncertainty in Tough Times

The Stockdale Paradox is applicable to careers in the sales field. A profession in sales can be brutal, and the current uncertainty only makes it more difficult. Universally, as the economy starts to reopen, we are unsure as to what lies ahead. Customers are concerned about their companies and, even more importantly, about themselves and their day-to-day lives. 

We are all experiencing the personal deflation that accompanies rejection from a customer – and have felt the pain and helplessness that comes after working tirelessly to pursue a deal only to learn we’ve lost to unexpected events. In such a situation, the optimists will respond by saying, “That’s okay. I’ll get the next deal I’m after.” 

As we learned from the Stockdale Paradox, although a hopeful mindset is necessary in tough situations, simply hoping for the best won’t win the next deal. Something is missing – the optimists lack a sense of reality and perhaps a plausible plan for overcoming challenges. 

Sales professionals should always be able to articulate how they intend to win the deal and help their customers. Optimism without a realistic assessment and specific plan to address challenges will not close the deal. Just as it was for Stockdale in the POW camp, long-term planning for reality is the difference between optimists and realists in sales situations. It was clear Stockdale had an objective to go home, and he had a survival strategy to actually make it happen. Likewise, in these chaotic times, we have to balance our short-term optimism with a long-term strategy to address the challenges that lie ahead. 

Balance Optimism with Realism to Thrive Long Term 

When it comes to leading a team of sales professionals, optimism without realism can be detrimental to the business. Blind optimism will result in misled and inflated sales projections; and, without long-term, realistic planning to support our sales professionals’ goals, they will continually underperform.

As sales leaders, does this mean we should stop inspiring our sales teams to be optimistic? No. Using the Stockdale Paradox, we should use a healthy dose of realism to augment the optimism we cultivate on our sales teams – whether this realism takes the form of account strategy review, long-term planning sessions, or selling skill development for your team. Assessing your strategy is necessary for sales leaders to uncover vulnerabilities in strategy or skill gaps that repeatedly hinder your sales team. 

By balancing both optimism and realism, you are preparing your sales team to reach its full potential. 

To learn more about Carew International and sales skill development, visit us at https://carew.com/sales-training-programs/.

How Effective Sales Enablement Starts with Prioritizing the Right KPIs

Today’s post is by Ed Calnan, Co-founder and CRO of Seismic.

 

 

Teams looking to remain effective and successful while working remotely need to be sure they share the same goals. Without the ability to stay in touch on the ground – and hold in-person check-ins and meetings – having a team that rolls up to the same goals is critical to keeping your go-to-market engine running smoothly with a distributed workforce. And enablement is one of the best ways to ensure your sellers are focused on the right things.

But what are you tracking to make sure your teams stay effective? As a sales leader, you need to be sure your team has the right priorities to succeed. For Seismic, it’s about tracking key results that all filter into our central focus.

Enablement key performance indicators (KPIs) should all support one central goal – generating more revenue to drive sales success. So how do we set the right goals to keep our team focused on the right things that all feed into this ability to generate revenue? 

The Three KPIs That Will Drive Sales Success Right Now

Seismic’s key results filter into three buckets – all of which are priorities in focusing your team on driving more revenue.

Shorter sales cycles

Finding ways to shorten the sales cycle is one of the easiest ways to drive more revenue. Quicker sales cycles represent a smooth sales process and a compelling message to buyers. And some of the best KPIs to track around shorter sales cycle are those that give your sellers more time to actually sell.

When sellers spend less time on things such as searching for content and ramping to productivity, they can devote more time to getting in touch with prospects, building valuable relationships, and taking other actions that will actually drive decisions from buyers.      

KPIs around 1) time spent searching for content, 2) time spent training, and 3) conversion rates will give you visibility into how much time your sellers are spending effectively communicating with buyers, compared to taking on more menial, time-wasting tasks. 

Higher win rates

Go-to-market teams wasting energy on activities that don’t effectively connect with buyers are ultimately less efficient. A successful enablement program will shine a light on the activities that are truly essential, while automating other activities or eliminating inefficient processes altogether. 

And, ultimately, this prevents budget from being wasted on ineffective activities.

The best go-to-market teams will deliver a strong message to the right prospects in a personalized way. Forrester’s 2019 State of Sales Enablement Report found that buyers expect more relevant, personalized information than they did five years ago.      

So be sure your enablement program has KPIs on 1) time spent creating content, 2) content usage, and even 3) lead quality to make sure your go-to-market teams can efficiently guide prospects through the buyers’ journey.

Increased customer value

Finally, finding ways to bring more value to your current customer base is a major consideration for anybody who wants to see effectiveness in their enablement program. Especially at a time like this, creating more value for your own customers is imperative for companies looking to keep revenue coming in from organizations that get value from your product.

Some great indicators can give insight to sales leaders into the value your customers get from your product. With this in mind, you need KPIs around 1) churn rate (to monitor those customers who no longer see enough value to justify their spend) and 2) cross-sell and upsell rates, which will showcase customers getting enough out of your product to increase their investment and double down.

KPIs Keep Sales Enablement Efforts on Track

Keeping these key rules in mind is what will truly ensure your enablement program is on the right track. At a time when organizations are tightening their belts, making sure your go-to-market teams are efficient and effective will be a major difference for teams trying to do more with less. With visibility into important, easy-to-understand KPIs, you can understand how your team and your enablement program are performing in a simple fashion.

Want more sales enablement insight? Access Seismic’s guide, “12 Sales Enablement KPIs for Enterprise Sales Leaders.”

What You Need to Know to Win at Virtual Selling

Today’s post is by Tom Stanfill, CEO of ASLAN Training & Development.

 

The COVID-19 pandemic is a defining moment for your salespeople to hit their number while working from home. At ASLAN, we’ve spent over 20 years training reps to sell remotely. Salespeople who take the right steps can absolutely learn to influence, engage customers, and close sales virtually. 

We’re happy to share proven strategies that work. Start with the four tips below. You can also download our latest report, "How to Help Your Team Master Virtual Selling," for even more winning advice for sales leaders.  

Tip #1: Increase Customer Receptivity by Building Trust

Receptivity to sellers is a mixed bag right now. Customers are working from home and answering the phone, but they’re overwhelmed by other priorities and taking care of their families and teams. 

If you call customers out of desperation to achieve quota, your tone, word choice, and actions will reflect your self-focused mindset. To put your focus on the customer, ask yourself these questions: 

• Why is it in the customer’s best interest to meet with me? 
• How can I help them in this crisis? 
• What problems can I solve? 

The answers will give you a calm and confident demeanor, which will replace the, “Sorry to call you, but I’m supposed to be selling remotely and I need to fill my funnel” vibe.

When you call, ask (in an open-ended way) what challenges the customer is trying to solve. Your goal is to serve (we call this “dropping the rope”), not force your way into a meeting or get an order. This eliminates an adversarial relationship and allows both you and the customer to relax and collaborate to solve real problems (virtually) or agree to meet after the pandemic crisis is over. 

Either way, you will distinguish yourself from the pack and move from “rep to avoid” to friend, partner, and trusted ally (aka, someone they will always want to meet with). All these actions will increase the customer’s receptivity – even over the phone!  After all, they may not remember what you said during these uncertain times, but they will remember how you made them feel.

Tip #2: Land Meetings by Following a Process 

If you can’t “stop by” to visit customers, how will you land meetings while virtual selling? Likely you’ve already heard customers say things like: “Thanks for calling. Family’s fine and we’re good right now. Look forward to catching up when this thing blows over.” 

In the absence of the intimacy that naturally occurs face-to face, you need to follow a process to land meetings. Take the following steps. 

1. Lead with the customer’s whiteboard. Picture the person you are about to call sitting in his or her office or cubicle. Now picture a whiteboard displaying initiatives and key action items. Whatever it says, lead with that when you call. Response rates will soar.
   
   
2. Ask permission to meet. A request puts control in the hands of the customer, giving them the freedom to choose. This may yield a higher commitment: Research has shown that, when people make small, initial commitments (like agreeing to hold a meeting), they’re more likely to follow through.
   
   
3. Write fantastic prospecting emails. Pay attention to subject lines, narrative flow (how one idea rolls into the next), how you articulate value, and the supporting information you attach or link to. And you can learn more about how to include these five components of an effective email. 

Tip #3: Build Rapport Virtually 

With virtual selling, customers can’t see you in person, and you lose rapport and intimacy. This means customers are less likely to believe you can solve their problems – after all, you’re just another faceless voice or image on a screen. 

In these situations, salespeople must be strategic to uncover the information they need to diagnose problems and offer valuable solutions. You can do so in three key ways. 

1. Ask questions by leading with knowledge. Demonstrate knowledge or expertise, then pose a related question. (Example: “Ninety percent of social media strategies fail because they invest in content and channels that don’t reach the intended audience. How would you assess your current social media strategy?”) Asking a question by leading with expertise causes decision makers to sit up and take notice.
   
   
2. Validate the customer’s point of view (even when it’s something you don’t want to hear). Let’s say your customer says something not so pleasant, like: “Now’s not the time to explore this. We are currently working on XYZ, and that’s our greatest priority right now.” Or: “We’ve been working with (your competitor), and they seem to be doing a great job.”
   
   How do you respond? “Tell me more.” That way, information flows freely, and you uncover the truth.
   
   If your response is, “Yeah, but…” then the message to the customer is clear: There is a consequence to sharing negative information. So, they learn to just keep things on the surface. (Kind of like having a bad meal at a restaurant and knowing you’ll never return – when the server asks how everything was you’ll likely just say, “Everything was great. Thanks.”) 
   
   
3. Dig to uncover the customer’s truth. Recently, a very competent seller was presenting a solution to our marketing team. During the presentation, the seller stopped to ask, “Tom, you sound a bit skeptical; what do you think about ____?” I told her my concerns – information I wouldn’t have shared if she hadn’t asked. She knew if I didn’t have a clear understanding of what our concerns were, she couldn’t address them. Her response was perfect, and we moved forward. Brilliant!
   
   Bottom line, customers often bury the truth and it’s your job to uncover it. Here are a few areas where “digging” is required:
   

• Concerns. Most customers have learned that sharing concerns leads to conflict. Therefore, gently probe to determine their fears about moving forward (e.g., value of what you offer, ability to deliver, experience). 
• Relationship with the competition. Most don’t enjoy sharing bad news, and positive information about your competition is certainly not good news.  
• Decision maker. People don’t jump at the chance to tell you they have limited power. 

Tip #4: Present Using “Word Pictures” 

With virtual selling, you need “word pictures” to help customers “see” your offering and increase the likelihood of moving the conversation forward. 

Word pictures can help you sell a high-end, expensive product by conveying feel, the cost of shortcuts, or why the expensive materials really matter. Word pictures can also help you sell an offer that’s simple to understand or easy to misjudge (like insurance or medical supplies). 

Here’s how to develop word pictures for your offering. 

1. Figure out and rank the most difficult but important concepts required to sell your solution. 
2. Develop three to five word pictures for your most critical but complex concepts. You need a variety so you can match your customer’s personality types and preferences: some people like sports analogies; others don’t.   
3. Test it. Some of the seemingly best word pictures fall flat when delivered live. Test with an audience of colleagues and refine them accordingly.

Want more expert selling insights to help your salespeople close deals while working from home? We recently partnered with Selling Power to produce a timely Webinar about virtual selling skills every sales team needs to know. Download the report today: “How to Help Your Team Master Virtual Selling.”

Why You Need a Human Connection to Make Sales Soar

Today's post is by George Brontén, a lifelong technology entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of Membrain.com, a sales enablement CRM. His new book is Stop Killing Deals: How to Avoid Deadly Assumptions and Achieve Sales Excellence. 

 

Would it surprise you if I said sales technology does not hold all (or even most) of the answers to common sales challenges?   

This may seem counterintuitive – salespeople use a lot of very helpful technology tools, especially now that 90 percent of sales teams are closing deals remotely. 

But, despite an explosion of technology and tools in the past 10 years, the sales profession has not seen a lot of progress in sales effectiveness in that same time frame. In fact, I founded Membrain.com in 2012 because I saw that current technologies were, in many cases, making problems worse rather than solving them. 

That’s because most sales technologies are built on the same three bad assumptions that cause the problems they’re trying to solve.

Three Assumptions about Sales Technology That Kill Deals 

Take, for instance, the CRM. Most CRMs are simply databases with tools wrapped around them. When the CRM was invented, it was intended as a replacement for the Rolodex. As such, it was effective in making it easier for salespeople to keep track of information.

But it didn’t make salespeople better salespeople, because it still operated on the three bad assumptions that kill deals: 

1. Salespeople are born, not made.
2. Salespeople are naturally self-disciplined.
3. Sellers and buyers are driven largely by logic.      

All these assumptions reflect a misunderstanding of human nature, and all three lead to poor sales results.

In my new book, I explore each of these assumptions and show where they are hidden inside most sales organizations. I also reveal how sales leaders can: 

• Defeat the deal-killing monsters lurking in your buyer’s subconscious
• Heal your organization and help your team win with sales enablement
• Align your strategy, process, and methodology to achieve scalable, world-class sales performance
• Build your sales coaching around your sales process to generate exponential results within complex B2B sales environments
• Understand the essential humanity of your sales workforce, thereby enabling you to recruit better, train, and support the people on your team in order to win more deals
• Turn your sales technology into your servant, not your master

Embrace the Humanity of Selling to Improve Sales Performance 

I lay out a framework for achieving world-class sales performance based on this better, correct understanding of the sales team. The framework starts with a human-centered strategy, and drills down through all the layers of the organization to align every aspect of it with a proper understanding of the humanity of both buyers and sellers.

The book is a fast read and supplemented with extensive additional material, including white papers, tools, and calculators, available for download via an online resource center. My hope is that the book will provide a new way to structure complex B2B sales organizations to yield substantial performance gains while honoring the basic humanity that connects us all. 

In a world saturated by more and more technology and inundated by artificial intelligence, I believe returning to our humanity is the only real way forward.

Contact George at george@membrain.com and purchase his new book, Stop Killing Deals: How to Avoid Deadly Assumptions and Achieve Sales Excellence.

How to Increase Sellers' Productivity with AI

Today’s post is by Sergey Medved, head of product at ClearSlide.

 

 

A good mix of creativity, personality, and persistence is the hallmark of a successful seller. When the mixture can be seasoned with a healthy pinch of technology, sellers can find more time in their days and close more deals. That’s a boon for most sellers because, right now, they’re only able to use 34 percent of their time for actual selling. The rest of the time, they are consumed with other work – from manual data input to administrative tasks.

This time crunch combines with salespeople’s busy schedules to make hitting their numbers a challenge. One of the ways artificial intelligence (AI) solutions are reshaping the sales industry is with tools that can boost sellers’ productivity and give them more time with prospects.

Productivity Drain

The majority of sellers’ time is spent in sales technology that doesn’t always directly support their sales efforts. Sometimes, reps spend hours just tracking down the right content to send prospects. Then they have to figure out what content is current, approved, and appropriate for a prospect’s specific stage in the sales funnel. That’s a lot to ask of people who already struggle to find time in the day to accomplish all their tasks.

Rather than asking sellers to sort through and familiarize themselves with a massive library of content, use AI-enabled tech in the following three ways to boost your sales team’s productivity and give them more time to focus on selling.

1. Automate low-value tasks.

Start with the low-hanging fruit: Automate easy, low-stakes tasks. For example, leverage automated email campaigns to help your sales reps check in with and send relevant content to prospects. That will save sellers from having to draft a long personal email each time they contact a prospect.

Of course, there’s still a time and place for personal communication – especially as prospects make it further down the funnel. But, at the top “awareness and education” stage, a prospect is just as happy to get a free white paper via an e-blast. Automated email technology is also helpful for one-off sends like birthday emails and check-ins. Sales reps can still personalize their message (or have it automatically personalized for them via language processing software). But, with the email timing and content already automated, your sales team will get back hours of time – time they can use to actually meet with prospects.

2. Use AI to tailor content.

While AI starts with automation, it doesn’t stop there. It’s constantly learning from the data it analyzes. That’s how Google – which you probably use every day – knows you, knows your preferences, and ranks Websites based on how well those Websites have helped others accomplish their goals. Sellers can leverage a similar approach to further personalize their interactions with prospects.

Sellers spend too much time searching for content and often end up with outdated decks. To get back some of that time and ensure content accuracy, AI can recommend the most appropriate content for a sales rep to use based on what’s known about the opportunity. For example, a sales enablement platform can help you find relevant content or even recommend specific content based on what has worked for a similar buyer, industry, or stage before.

3. Leverage power calendaring.

Even if admin tasks do take up an inordinate amount of sellers’ time, AI can help by turning time management into time intelligence. For example, platforms such as Woven – an AI-powered calendar app created by the former CIO of Facebook – scan users’ emails for signs of meeting requests. It then generates suggested meeting times and sends options to the attendees to book. On a more basic level, options like Calendly give your sales team the ability to ask prospects to book a time that works for them, via a simple link. That means no more weeks of back-and-forth emails requesting bulleted lists of days, times, and narrow windows of availability.

By using AI, sellers can get out of their email and calendars and into more – and more effective – meetings. 

Want to learn about how AI is shaping the future of the sales industry? Download the ClearSlide white paper, “AI-Powered Selling.” 

Get a Big Sales Coaching Boost for Your Salespeople Right Now

Today's post is by Ed Ross, CEO and founder of The CORE Results, Inc.

 

 

We’re hearing a lot about which businesses are “essential” and “non-essential” in this pandemic. No matter what condition the market is in, I think we can all agree that sales teams are in the “essential” category. Salespeople will drive your ongoing operations and may even help you tailor your offerings to appeal to markets with growth opportunity. 

Sales Coaching Is Critical to Success

That said, this is a new world for salespeople, and they’ll need proper coaching to find their footing and yield the best performance. (Salesforce research indicates that 67 percent of companies that have had a formal sales coaching program in place for three years or more experienced high revenue growth.) 

For the time being, this coaching will have to happen remotely. At The CORE Results, our AI-enabled approach to sales coaching was developed to maximize a sales manager’s ability to leverage data to improve the level of individual, targeted training – absent the need for physical interaction.  

How AI Enables Great Remote Sales Coaching 

Innovations in machine learning and AI are leading the way to fully automated, personalized sales coaching programs built on precise insights and remote interactions. 

Real-time coaching fosters greater coaching competence and proficiency among managers (so you support your team at all levels – both managers and sellers). Our system helps you in the following ways. 

• Takes the guesswork out of sales coaching. For decades, sales managers have led teams by relying on instinct while cherry picking data buried in multiple systems. This is time consuming and, honestly, an elaborate form of A/B testing.
  
  Our technology identifies coachable moments for the sales manager and the individual contributors throughout a coaching interaction by establishing clear and concise actions to advance an opportunity in the sales process. Focusing on the core behaviors aligned to each stage and/or milestone enables sales organizations to increase sales-funnel velocity. 
  
  
• Helps you coach efficiently and with greater precision to save time. One of our global healthcare clients has used our system to provide just the right amount of coaching for each salesperson on his team.
  
  As he put it: “There’s never enough time in the day to spend time with every rep, on every deal. CORE’s dashboard allows me to quickly see my team’s progress, then drill down to gain insight into each rep’s individual skills and competencies. With this level of visibility, I know exactly where I need to focus on developing an employee – whether a top performer or rising star. We’ve never had insights like these all in a mobile platform. It has allowed me to be more effective as a coach, in less time.”
  
  
• Fine tunes your sales coaching insights and increases deal velocity. Our proprietary technologies analyze emotion, context, and sentiment in real time for nuanced coaching insights. Because interactions on our platform are powered by AI, our system delivers more precise and useful suggested action steps the more you use it.
  
  We’re on track to create a fully automated cycle in which sales managers receive the key insights, feedback, and analysis they need to be exceptional sales coaches, while also sharpening their skills. When insights are converted into predictive analytics about selling and coaching behaviors, they have a great impact on deal lifespan and revenue. 
  
  
• Accelerates sales managers’ progression from individual contributor to game-changing sales coach. Recently promoted a rep to manager? This transition often leaves the new manager feeling overwhelmed and under-prepared. Our Six Elements of Coaching™ methodology enhances your newly-promoted manager’s ability to measure key competencies of individual sales representatives, as well as analyze the performance of the entire team. This data can then be combined to understand and improve the proficiency of a sales manager’s coaching ability.

During this time, it is more important than ever that we all leverage technology to stay productive and keep sales moving forward. Adopt remote sales coaching strategies today that will yield your team greater success tomorrow and beyond. 

For more insights about sales coaching, download the Six Elements of Coaching Guide.

How to Equip Your Team for Virtual Selling

Today's blog post is by Ben Taylor. He is the content marketing manager at Richardson. He has an MBA in finance from LaSalle University and over a decade of business and writing experience. He has covered content for brands such as Nasdaq, Barclaycard, and Business Insider.

 

Virtual selling requires more than a camera.

Sales teams are discovering that virtual selling is different from executing normal sales conversations in front of a screen. They are learning that being effective over video requires more than simply transferring in-person selling skills to a video interface. 

Understanding these new skills is critical because virtual selling isn’t temporary; it will become an accepted method of business as selling organizations become accustomed to the time and money saved with an approach that doesn’t require travel or logistical burdens. 

Let’s look at the top selling skills salespeople need to move sales forward and close deals while working remotely. 

Skill #1: Pace yourself so you have energy to engage customers.  

Selling virtually can be unexpectedly draining. 

During in-person sales presentations, individual sales professionals have an opportunity to catch their breath as they hand off the floor to a teammate. In a virtual setting, this recovery time is not possible. Every sales professional is always on camera. Therefore, they must be engaged – and engaging – from beginning to end. 

Maintaining continuous engagement is difficult because a virtual connection often lacks the energy sharing that occurs when everyone is in the same room. The spontaneity of lively discussion can feel dampened as individuals wait for their opportunity to talk or when customers choose to mute themselves. 

The solution to these challenges is to enter every virtual sales presentation and discussion with the expectation that it will require enormous energy and stamina. Knowing this aspect of virtual selling in advance prevents the unexpected exhaustion (which some are referring to as “Zoom gloom”) that can set in during the second half of the call. 

Tip #2: Embrace difficult questions to advance the sale. 

Your customers face new and unexpected challenges right now. In nearly all cases, the customer’s challenges have intensified and become more near-term. 

Many customers are seeking ways to maintain revenue and preserve capital amid growing threats from diminishing GDP. This reality of our current economy has changed the dynamic of the sales conversation. The customer’s challenges will shape your key selling challenges. 

Helping customers clarify the specific nature of these challenges is critical to properly positioning the right solution. The problem: Seeking clarity on these issues means asking the kinds of questions that may yield unpleasant truths. Sales professionals who fear this discomfort choose to avoid sensitive topics.

A better approach: Face this stress directly. Sensitive questions are necessary. In fact, avoiding such questions “can be economically costly,” according to social science research from The University of Pennsylvania. The researchers worked with nearly 1,000 participants in their study. After reviewing the findings, they determined that “question askers believe that asking sensitive questions will cause greater discomfort than they actually do, and they expect that asking sensitive questions will harm the respondent’s impression of them more than they actually do.” So, go ahead and ask sensitive questions. 

Doing so often fosters a sense of candor that advances the relationship and encourages openness among the stakeholders.    

Tip #3: Safeguard against external distractions.

Distractions have an outsized influence on virtual selling. Stakeholders are either at their screen or in a conference room with their phone or individual laptop nearby. As a result, they are still exposed to the alerts, updates, emails, and notifications that have become the “white noise” of our daily lives.

In an in-person setting, these distractions are limited because social norms keep people focused on the speaker. However, in a virtual setting, stakeholders can listen to and respond to these distractions inconspicuously. Therefore, sales professionals need to take a proactive stance against distractions that are unseen but not uncommon.

Sales professionals can overcome this characteristic of virtual selling by asking individual stakeholders for their feedback. This person-to-person approach keeps stakeholders alert because they know they may receive a question about their opinion at any time. This interactive approach encourages participants to keep their video and microphone on.

The key is to avoid a one-way conversation in which the sales professional merely presents information. A conversational approach is more effective because it keeps distractions to a minimum, and it enables the sales professional to understand the details behind the customer’s challenges and goals.

Succeeding in selling virtually requires understanding the new rules of engagement. As this approach to business normalizes, sales professionals need to develop heightened energy, incisive questions, and a proactive approach to distractions to succeed.

For more insight about transitioning your sales team to sell virtually, check out Richardson’s Virtual Selling Training Program.