Being an avid Amazon Kindle user, I love the fact that once I’ve finished yet another book, Amazon recommends books to me that are similar.
Consider using Netflix where it knows what TV shows and movies you like. Use Spotify and it understands what your musical tastes are. Use Amazon again, and if you have a young child at home, it tells you that you probably need diapers and formula!
And yet in our B2B world, we don't do that yet – despite buyers saying,
“Show Me That You Know Me!”
We're starting to get there, and with all of this data at our disposal there should never be a question about what resonates with what buyer persona at what stage of the sales cycle.
A proper sales enablement platform should do all that work for us, including trying to figure out who's ready to engage, and at what stage in their buying journey they are. We can push that information into a system that helps the sellers tell the right story at the right time.
And what that is, is really simple. In my opinion it goes back to the fundamental basis of all the things we're trying to do in sales, and in prospecting in particular, which is “I understand you”.
Put differently:
I think I know what pain you have, and
Here are other people or businesses that are like you and
They did the same job as you, and
Here's proof that I can help.
Forrester, Gartner and other researchers all say that customers are typically up to 60% through their buying journey before they engage with a seller. Salesforce research shows that business buyer expectations are also becoming consumerised – they want the same experience as when they’re buying for themselves:
72% of business buyers expect vendors to personalise engagement to their needs
69% expect Amazon-like buying experiences
Nearly 60% of customers say tailored engagement based on past interactions is very important to win their business
So that's a lot different than it used to be back in the day when salespeople were teachers, keepers of information and educators.
How do your sales reps engage differently?
Personalised Experiences
In this continuously changing landscape of selling that we operate in, the modern buyer expects a personalised experience supported by relevant content across all the stages of their buying journey: i.e., the “show me that you know me”.
This buyer-seller engagement, a.k.a. Sales Engagement, is a two-way exchange of information that requires a seller to create meaningful interactions with an inbound or outbound lead, prospect, or existing customer, and take on online conversation to an offline discussion.
Needless to say that when I mention meaningful, it is meaningful and personalised for the buyer first and foremost, not for the seller.
The challenge that most of our Fresh Perspective Sales customers face, however, is aligning their people with the right technology and processes to efficiently deliver on that promise, so that their sellers can move faster and win bigger.
On top of that – let’s face it – most sales people are lazy…
Of course you get your top-10 percenters who are outstanding and will always go the extra mile to do the research and do the personalisation to deliver an amazing experience for prospects and customers alike. They have an innate commercial curiosity that most sales people do not possess.
You get the bottom 10 percent who are the non-performers, are looking for their next job and then you’ve got everybody in the middle. Roughly 60 to 80 percent of your sales people typically are in that middle, and that's the control group that can stand to benefit the most from a change in methodology or the addition of a tool that helps them save time, increase win rates, and reduce sales cycles.
So why aren't sales leaders helping sales reps to focus in on bringing content that serves me up as a buyer; personalise that message to me and help solve a very specific problem?
Why aren't sales leaders doing this and why aren't sales reps getting the point, or this concept of leveraging content, personalised content and insights specific to the buyer persona?
Put simply, the reason is that it takes too much individual effort to collate the relevant - and up-to-date - data from all the different data sources, directories, shared drives and so on. Marketing have their collateral, but it may not be easily accessible, searchable or even relevant to a prospect.
This is where Seismic comes in
Seismic delivers industry-leading tools to orchestrate engaging buying experiences, at scale.
It’s a sales enablement platform that provides the right content at the right time, with relevant content getting pushed to buyers across all the stages of their buying journey.
You can measure who is using what, how long for, and whether it is of value to them, whether that’s a prospect, a customer, or your own sales people. Marketing gets visibility into how their content is performing, how it’s being used and consumed, both by prospects, existing customers, as well as internal stakeholders.
Like Spotify, Netflix etc., you start off with a profile and Seismic and your profile become smarter every single day, as over time it sees the selections that you pick, so the algorithm gets smarter and starts to push interesting items based upon your preferences, and what your peer group likes.
Using modern technology like Seismic makes it effortless as you will have the content find the sales reps versus the other way around. Seismic makes it super simple for the sales reps and the content finds them at the right stage of the journey for the right buyer at the right stage of the sales cycle.
Everything magically opens up, and the interactions become much more personalised, combined with sales reps now getting more valuable time to actually spend selling.
This last fact is underscored by another Salesforce research, which shows that:
Today’s sales professionals spend just 34% of their time selling.
High-performing sales teams are 2.3 times more likely than underperforming teams to use “guided selling”, enabled by predictive analytics provided by platforms like Seismic.
Fresh Perspective Sales
Introducing yet another tool like Seismic is not going to automatically change your sales reps behaviour. As we know they're (typically) lazy – and we know systems are confusing, so by leaving it up to the reps you're not going to achieve the results you want.
So if your sales reps are having a hard time connecting with prospects, or you are not hitting your sales goals, that’s probably a good indicator that it’s time to try a new sales methodology or approach.
And to be even more specific, if you're not delivering a personalised interaction at every touch, you're going to lose.
It's just that simple. You know there's so much noise in the world today, especially for buyers, so if you don’t differentiate yourself thru personalised interactions, your competitors will trump you.
Fresh Perspective Sales have years of experience helping businesses ensure that enablers such as CRM systems and sales enablement platforms like Seismic are being implemented correctly. Fresh Perspective Sales also ensure that– at the end of the day – these systems deliver the required ROI to your business, all the while driving improved sales results.
It is for that reason that Seismic appointed Fresh Perspective Sales as their New Zealand Partner in 2020.
Rain Group research found that the top sales priorities of companies are:
Improving the ability to communicate value (70%),
Improving the productivity of the entire sales team (65%), and
Increase business with existing accounts (64%)
Contact us if you want to find out how we can help you achieve the above, increase your Sales Engagement and improve your results.
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