How To Sell In The Digital Era – The Digital Sales Institute

How to sell in the digital era has become somewhat more complicated. So, salespeople and businesses need a different approach if they are to flourish in the new world or way of sales. Selling is all around us and buyers are being bombarded with emails, phone calls, social media messages, connection requests etc. How does a salesperson or business differentiate themselves in a noisy market?

With more access to information, the B2B buying process has become longer (an average of 4 months to close a new customer) and involves more decision makers (an average of 6.8 buyers). To effectively navigate the new buyer’s journey, sellers need to leverage digital platforms to find, engage and connect with the modern buyer.

Are you doomed to fail?

While many companies are figuring out how to sell in the digital era, many salespeople and organizations are struggling where to go next. Outdated sales techniques, internal politics, unclear sales strategies, lack of relevant sales training or sales coaching and inert sales cultures are hampering their ability to transform their bureaucracies. The companies that are no longer smart enough, fast enough, or innovative enough to survive will be swallowed up.

We know that the goal of any business is to generate profits that will lead them to success. In the modern sales process the way to do this is understand what level of interest the respective customer has that would trigger them even considering a purchasing journey. This explains why we need to understand, how to sell. It seems easy to say that selling involves establishing a connection with a buyer or the ability to create an interaction. Unfortunately, recent research proves that the sale has more chances of progressing when the buyer conducts or initiates the conversation.

The consequence of the digital era is that everything is connected. Which means that everything and everyone is networked. Once everything is networked, a lot of things happen. Everything goes faster and network dynamics come into play. Which brings you into the realm of adaptive selling systems. Salespeople need to be plugged in, content needs to be uniform across channels, multi-channel selling has to take priority, remote selling techniques need to be enhanced while AI and sales tools need to work in harmony with the actual selling activity (and not against it).

What You Need To Do.

Network

If your markets and by default your customers are turning into networks, your company and sales organization needs to turn into a network. The hierarchical network of the company structure and internal positions are the least important network. In a world of six degrees of separation, nobody cares about your title; they care about what you do, what you can offer them, how you can help them.

Vaccine Plan.

You need to apply Vaccine to your business and sales strategy.

Velocity – Velocity is the speed of something in a given direction. This is about how efficiently a business can reach its target audience, gather in leads, qualify those loads, convert leads, and create new sales opportunities.

Agility – Agility is how quickly and easily a business can move. The business can account for market changes and respond accordingly. It makes buying easier. Internal processes are streamlined and customer focused.

Creativity – Creativity is the ability for the business to produce great ideas. How they are different, demonstrate that differentiation and devising new ways to solve your customers problems. To bring a fresh way of engaging your customers in a way that’s meaningful for them.

Connections – Connections is about building networks of relationships, that the business is associated with phrases that customers value. The sales team is organized and can deliver personalized communications to a large network.

Innovation – Innovation involves bringing a fresh perspective to the business and its work methodologies. Rewrite the sales playbook and carve out a competitive advantage by delivering sales moments that matter. Train all the salespeople on digital interactions and virtual deal making methods.

Network – Build a virtual network of fans, customers, influencers, prospects, audiences, and customers. The business can plug into these networks to deliver messages, news and tap into the pulse of the market. Move closer to the customer base and be “always on”.

Experimentation – Experimentation in the business should uncover new opportunities using research and insights. No single person owns business experimentation, the business must involve anyone who touches a customer to experiment with ways that matches the overall strategic goal for the business.

The Salesperson and How To Sell.

In the era of remote, virtual, and digital selling, salespeople should understand the traits of the modern buyer.

The Buyer is digitally connected. The office is where the buyer makes it, they have multiple digital devices from a computer or laptop, smartphone etc. While this means there are many digital routes to connect to the buyer, the old way of selling has lost its voice. Salespeople need to be expert digital sellers and social media savvy.

The 24/7 Mobile attached buyer. How can salespeople build enough credibility and trust to interact on the buyers mobile? People check their phones over 100 times a day.  Whether the customer is sitting in traffic, driving to work, or working from home, they will be constantly checking messages or emails on their mobile phones. How to sell I the digital era? well apart from email, social media messages, salespeople need to build closer relationships to their customers to be able to unlock mobile as a sales conversation channel.

Customers are socially engaged and savvy. From Twitter to Facebook, Instagram to LinkedIn, all your buyers and prospects are probably reachable on social media. However, social selling is a skill, an additive process to every sales strategy. Salespeople need to use content, provide neutral insights, build credibility, and establish a level of expertise if they are to reap the rewards of social media as an engagement channel.

The video age goes hand in hand with the digital age. Today, many C-level prefer watching videos and conducting sales meetings in video rather than in person or viewing static presentations. Salespeople need to get accustomed to using video in their sales tactics. While social media is great for promotional video the rise of personalized videos in email will have greater impact.

The Trends In How To Sell

The modern buyer is looking to connect with companies on a level that goes beyond a product or service. While they may be business driven, they are also more and more emotionally driven. They want to do business with companies that aim to improve not just their revenue streams but their business life.

Buyers are willing to network and engage with a responsible organizations. Communicating a genuine values and purpose will open up the opportunity for a business or salesperson to tell its story. The skill of storytelling about who you are, what you stand for, where you came from, what’s important to you, why it is important to the customer and the positive impact your business will make. How to sell in the digital era will have to include building a compelling narrative to share across the networks. One that features how a business operates, what it does differently, how it values and appreciates its customers and the approach it takes in being a responsible guardian to a customer’s trust.

As salespeople embrace the social channels and digital selling, a business will not only be able to humanize its brand but give customers and prospects a reason to listen and care about what the business is communicating. So, every business will need to provide multiple channels for questions, insights, buying or service inquiries. More than anything, one trend is that businesses must be accountable and open about how they operate.

How to sell in the digital era five principals:

Demonstrate you care about your place and your customers place in the market.

Meet your customers on their terms and only their terms.

Create differentiation and unique messaging that speaks to your audience.

Network, engage and educate with those seeking to do business with you.

Build long term relationships by creating loyal customers and not just clients.

Personalize the messages and solutions for each individual customer.

Wrap Up.

Every salesperson and business needs to have a hard look at themselves. How close are you to your customers? How strong are your shared values and culture? How customer focused are you really? How adaptable are you? Do you make good sustainable revenue or bad profit? Is your business ready for the digital era? Business and selling is not changing, it has changed, already happened. Now its up to every company to respond and start to move faster that what the market is telling it. Keep moving.

Source: How To Sell In The Digital Era – The Digital Sales Institute

Sales Tips For 2021 and Beyond

Some sales tips for 2021 and beyond as we ponder some important questions.  It goes without saying that 2020 shook the sales world and a new reality was born.  No matter what happened in 2020, the continued rate of change is driving an increasingly competitive selling environment, lowering barriers to entry for companies and products. Add in the fact that expectations and preferences of customers continue to evolve.

These forces are changing how businesses and salespeople operate, from selling tactics and business models to product offerings. In 2021 and beyond, salespeople with the right mix of technical and soft skills will become more important for business success. As the sales skill needs of business evolve, so too does the sales force.

Our sales tips begin with sales expertise. The talent of the salesperson and the sales experience delivered will remain the top reason buyers choose a supplier. So, industry knowledge and a good cultural fit will take on a renewed significance. The sales task is now clear for any business, build your sales tactics around deep industry insight and expertise. Show that you can solve the challenge at hand. This is what customers are seeking and what converts them into clients.

 

Reconfigure Your Sales Process

The sales process has to account for both the remote salesperson but also the remote, hard to reach buyer. Every business, large or small is going to need to reconfigure their sales process to ensure it is optimized for remote selling. Start by reviewing your buyers’ journey and the various touch points. How will you connect with them, engage them, interact with them, converse with them, educate them, and bring value to them?

Salespeople that stand out have moved beyond identifying problems and proposing “solutions. Instead, they focus on understanding the business results their customers want to achieve, and then act as a partner to accelerate the results. Keep one important thing in mind. It’s all about the buyer, what they want and when they want it. The key is making sure your selling efforts are in sync with their buying signals and stages.

Master Multichannel Selling

We know that the modern B2B buyer is harder to reach like never before. The old methods of selling will have diminishing returns for a whole host of reasons. Because what the modern buyer expects from salespeople is largely linked to emotional intelligence, communication, and critical thinking. What buyers really want is a salesperson who can think outside the box and bring interesting and innovative suggestions to address their evolving challenges.

Salespeople have to master how to skillfully utilize multichannel selling, including influencing tactics, social selling, using video (live or pre-recorded).

Stop Selling and Start Sharing

Instead of selling customers on something, the focus will switch to serving them. Or another way to look at this is to aim on having any sales time together to be valuable for them, regardless of the outcome of the interaction.

Another of our sales tips for 2021 and beyond is a business needs to be able to position themselves to be relevant for their customers ongoing and evolving needs. This means that first the ability to understand what those needs are and how they are changing. Then the business must make it clear how their experience can address those challenges. Globalization and digital disruption have lowered the barriers to entry for business, meaning that today the real competition is often in the quality of the customer experience. Businesses are finding that customers are looking for service, not just low prices.

Valuable Communication

More than one in four buyers consider themselves “on the fence” about whether or not they would stay with their supplier two to three years down the road. The rise of relevance. Buyers seek out, are loyal to, and refer suppliers that they believe can drive their success. Increasingly, it takes specialized expertise to beat the competition.

So valuable communication revolves around the relevance of the information or messages being delivered to the customer. Remember value is not one single element. Valuable communication should encompass a range of benefits for the products for which the customer is willing to pay. The key is to communicate the highly differentiated features that the business offers the customers.

Salespeople Must Get Creative

Salespeople must be trained to be more creative and less automated in the sales process. Modern buyers are savvy and expect more than the value that comes with the product. They want more than the value a company adds in. They want unique, relevant, personalized value. The only place they can get that is from a salesperson, the seller, human-to-human. They expect salespeople to create value in every interaction with them. The continued focus on hard sales skills will not equip the sales teams for value creation.

Even the smallest bit of genuine sales character in the sales process will help a business stand out from the crowd, especially since so many companies just fail to recognise this need from buyers.

A 2021 Value Proposition

Sales tips for 2021 includes updating your value proposition. In a noisy, uncertain sales environment, If you are to get buyers to listen to your sales conversations, you need to ensure that you have 2021 value propositions for your product or service that has both sufficient points-of-parity (POP) and points-of-difference (POD).

What this means is that you want your product or service to be considered equal or similar (on par with, hence the word ‘parity’) with the major offerings in your market for the key attributes (POP), but your product and service also needs to have a number of unique or differentiated attributes (POD).

As buyers become harder to reach, your value proposition will be the acid test in sales conversations to make sure you have something to say, which answers the customers “Why Listen” and “Why Care” questions if they were to consider a buying journey. This is how you stand out from the crowd.

Rethink Your Sales Conversations

Selling revolves around 2 core activities. Conversations and Commitments. Your sales conversations must be planned to maximize the sales efforts and opportunities. We all need to ask how strong our conversation content are when it comes to attracting customers’ attention and push them towards making a purchasing decision. We need to convince them that we prioritise their satisfaction over our profit.

Your sales conversations must:

Get critical issues on the table so they can be worked on.
Engages buyers in a meaningful two-way discussion.
Actively listens to hear your client’s real needs.
Challenges your clients to think differently.
Collaborates internally and externally to build a solution that’s best for everyone.

Digital and Social Selling Must Evolve

The great thing about digital or social selling is that it is a learned skill. When the term ‘digital selling’ was first coined, it was meant to help salespeople understand the importance of using social media platforms within their sales processes. Unfortunately, most focused on the ‘selling’ rather than the ‘social’ aspect of the term, and this led to a shoehorning of old school hard-sell tactics on new digital platforms, as opposed to evolving to meet the modern buyer where they’re active. So, Stop Selling And Start Engaging.

Become relational rather than transactional. Modern B2B sellers don’t close deals over Twitter just like traditional reps don’t close deals on the golf course — they network. A successful digital selling strategy is a long-term play. Sales leaders must shift their mindsets from transactional to relational and implement sales training to achieve this. The best digital selling companies are constantly engaging and building relationships with others. After they have earned the right to do so, they can leverage messaging functionality to ask for introductions, meetings, or references.

Sales Tips for 2021 Conclusion

They say necessity is the mother of invention. There is no doubt that the events of 2020 will make it necessary for every business to reshape themselves to thrive in 2021 and beyond.

Leaders will have to optimize their sales strategy to increase customer confidence and lower the hard selling by salespeople including their claims. Selling will evolve where connecting customers to relevant information, simplifying any complexity in the sales process, and collaborating with customers on their learning’s will take priority.

The future of selling and sales techniques is about the customer, their wishes and needs.  In the fast paced digital and SaaS world, companies are implementing sales strategies based on transient competitive advantage. This strategy is based on the concept that to win in volatile and uncertain environments, sales teams need to learn how to exploit short–lived opportunities with speed and decisiveness. Sell well and prosper.

Source: Sales Tips For 2021 and Beyond – The Digital Sales Institute

Sales Challenges Facing Salespeople

The sales challenges to keep up with shifting buyer preferences which are now heavily influenced by digital data means that salespeople need to engage with customers on their preferred channels. And they need to come prepared to have meaningful conversations, share insights and put concern for the customer above their own self interests.

Source: Sales Challenges Facing Salespeople – The Digital Sales Institute

The Sales Challenges in Prospecting.

Sales prospecting in the modern sales environment is not an easy task. It involves quite a bit of effort kick start a sales conversation with a prospect and to get them listen to what the salesperson has to offer. The hard reality is sales prospecting must be a planned, organized activity as random prospecting is mainly a waste of time.

Sales challenges

75% of purchases now start with an online search by the buyer.

Prospects can compare your product or service to everything like it and buy from the competition without you even knowing they exist.

Nearly two thirds of B2B buyers state that prior to completing any purchase they researched at least two but as many as seven B2B sites plus between 50 and 90% of the buyer’s journey is complete before they interact with a salesperson.

Salespeople need to master how to combine social selling, digital channels, and traditional sales prospecting methods to lessen the reliance on inbound leads. We know that buyers value content that helps to educate and fill in some of the blanks for them. As more and more selling will be conducted via the digital channels, salespeople need to up-skill on the use of sales tools and content (articles, whitepapers, research etc) to engage a prospect. The goal is that they gradually build a network of contacts via their social interactions. Buyers are drawn to thought leaders and surveys show they prefer interaction with salespeople whom they consider to be a trusted adviser.

The Status Quo Challenges

The reason for sales challenges in moving a buyer out of their status quo position is that for them to implement a new solution always presents more short-term challenges than the vision of a future state. If we agree that some form of change causes buying, then buying requires the customer to undertake a “change management project”. However, the customer’s preference for the status quo is more complex than avoiding short-term hurdles. Researchers at Cornell University and the University of Chicago have learned that a phenomenon called “sudden-death aversion” explains why the status quo is so immovable.
This pattern of sudden-death thoughts has the effect of customers to sense that they are “tempting fate” and taking a risk that does not need to be taken. Unfortunately, this thinking leaves customers anchored to the status quo. It also leaves sales professionals with a roadblock to overcome.
Salespeople need to get to grips that without no identified customer pain, then no opportunity. In the sales process, they must have a clear understanding of the specific pains their product and services are supposed to eliminate for that unique customer. Sharing credible and evidence-based proof is needed to remove previous emotions (experiences) and get the buyer out of the status quo to demonstrate how to solve the core PAIN of any customer.

Sales Challenges in The Buyers Journey

The modern buyer’s journey is far from linear. Salespeople must accept that winning a sale is no longer characterized by some logical progression on a CRM system.  They must acknowledge that success comes from a dynamic approach to selling. Many salespeople already see the effects of a changing buyer’s journey. The question is, can they be proactive in the drive to change with buyer habits. It is not enough to observe that buying has become more complicated, salespeople must make the moves necessary to lead the customer and help them navigate the journey.

Salespeople must face these sales challenges by their ability to build credibility and trust. Sales skills and sales training which are focused on educating and informing the key decision makers in their target accounts by offering genuine thought leadership and insights that serve to shape the customers perspectives and influence their thinking. To position themselves as a valuable resource, to help the customer navigate the buying journey and to persuade them to engage with them sooner rather than later.

Having “Why” Conversations Challenges

Customers are often in less of a hurry to buy than you are to sell due to aversion to change (internal roadblocks etc.). There is compelling research showing that if potential customers do not become connected to a product or service, they will not care enough to buy it. Every buyer will assign value to a sales proposition and then mark it as good or irrelevant. It is how we all distinguishes between what matters and what is irrelevant. When it comes to customer conversations, the status quo bias plus the competitors in the market will be one of the salespersons biggest sales challenges. To defeat it, every salesperson is going to need “Why Conversations” that confronts the forces that make people resistant to change. Why would a customer listen or care to what a salesperson has to say?

It begins with a salesperson being able to raise curiosity in email or sales call. Planning for what story or topic will resonate with the buyer in a sales conversation plus how they will you set the scene (reason for the approach). Salespeople will need to master how to explain on how they solve problems, the impact on the customer of doing nothing plus the effectiveness of their solutions. They also need to come prepared to quickly address any perceptions.

Sales Challenges of Roadblocks and Objections

At any given time, buyers are looking at multiple things that they could invest in. Salespeople must overcome the many implications that a potential customer must consider before purchasing any offering. Implications include concerns about impact, change, risk, reputation etc. The many tangible and intangible factors that are associated with the actual adoption of a new offering.

We know that buying has many moving parts, including individual needs, rules for assembly, collaboration and communication, politics, corporate regulations, and internal or external historic relationships.

Salespeople must learn to facilitate buying, they must enter earlier as a servant leader to a customer and be willing at first to be a change agent. They must think of this as a way of helping the customer create and own a compelling need to change. To have the sales skills to help the customer create a vision of a new future and how they might get there. Every salesperson who wants to succeed in this challenging sales environment must master how to share stories, provide evidence that reinforces them as the “safe option” for a customer to unlock their roadblock.

Summary

There are many, many more sales challenges in the modern sales process, a process that is now determined by the buyer or customer. Whether through sales enablement, sales transformation or sales training, salespeople need to adjust rapidly to win over more customers for their business. Time waits for no salesperson.

Sales Discovery Questions – The Digital Sales Institute

Sales Discovery Questions

Source: Sales Discovery Questions – The Digital Sales Institute

Sales discovery questions are used to move a sales conversation with our customer or prospect into the “why care” stage. To make the customer care about what we are saying, we need to uncover information, a pain point, or a problem we can solve. Without discovery questions, we cannot move to the why care (our unique and personalized value proposition for this customer), and if we cannot get the customer to care then there is little opportunity to continue a sales conversation.

Real and impactful discovery questions should give us a deep understanding of our customer, their challenges, and problems. No problem means there is no sales opportunity. Discovery calls set the path of how we approach the deal and we rely on the answers obtained as we walk alongside the buyer on their journey.

It is important to understand that the purpose of discovery questions is to determine whether you and your buyer have reason to invest further time in each other. To ascertain any appetite for change plus what are their priorities, and goals so you can effectively engage with them.

As the discovery stage evolves, we will use insights and questions to help the buyer form a picture as to why they should change and the impact of inaction on any identified problem. The discovery stage allows for each side to learn and then determine whether any opportunity exists to explore further.

This sharing of relevant insights should lead to a deeper conversation around the buyer’s issues. Our role is to be a conduit of information to demonstrate our focus on the customer, then to see if our questions have unlocked the status quo and has the buyer become concerned about any highlighted pain points.

Buying is an emotional business. Every customer or buyer has a mission to improve their lives and a motivation for personal success. Getting to the root of these may be the most important aspect in any sale. In fact, we can only space to ask a few questions in our discovery process, make them around this.

During the discovery process, we also need to know who the person is, or the buying group are, who will undertake a change management process (a buying decision is a change management issue!!) to make these purchasing decisions. And we ideally would want to know the level of urgency with which they want to solve this problem.

Discovery questions should

Get to know our customer’s “NEEDS”

Understand our customers “PROBLEMS”

Understand how we can solve their PROBLEMS”

Understand how we can “BENEFIT their NEEDS”

 

The ICE Sales Discovery Technique

I = Identify

C = Clarify

E = Extend

Example:

Identify: How do you currently nurture and attract passive talent?

Clarify: Is the ability to extend your employer brand to attract candidates for future roles important?

Extend: Have you considered how activating your employer brand across selective channels could boost your application rate and speed up your hiring?

“The answers you get depend on the questions you ask”

 

Types of Discovery Questions

Factual questions. Fact based discovery questions; an example would be “how many calls do your agents make per day?

Situational questions. These can seem irrelevant (and uses up your question time) if not thought out correctly. An example of a situation question is “how many people work here?

Problem questions. These are more powerful than situational questions, they are related to the problems our product or solution solves. “what has prevented your achieving that objective?”

Implication questions. These questions establish and build the pain experienced by the buyer. They are the hardest to ask and should be carefully planned “What would you do if your agents couldn’t make any calls for 3 days?”

Need-Pay off questions. These questions are to get the buyer to confirm the benefits your product or solution could offer. “How much business would you lose if your agents were unable to make calls for 3 days?”

We need to think of ourselves as investigators and connectors of information. Asking questions, turning implied needs to explicit needs, explicit needs are wants and desires the buyer has to take action to resolve the pain. These needs must outweigh the costs, to shift from problems to solutions.

Sample Sales Discovery Questions

What role does ……?

How do you proactively plan to ………………?

How much business would your company…….?

What are the biggest factors that impact [related to your solution]?  How do you currently address this?

Can I ask- in an ideal world what would you expect [ your solution] to deliver for you?

Looking at your current [process], if you were to rank changing [current solution] on your list of priorities would be low, medium, or high?

What role do you think [our solution] can play in overcoming some of the [relevant] challenges your companies face?

Can I ask you, what part of your [process] is not working as well as you wish?

Tell me about what causes you the biggest headache when [relate to our solution]? Tell me how have you tried to solve (the challenges) so far?

Tell me, how difficult is it to [ insert challenge or pain] for your company?

How do you feel that …….?

Discovery Questions in the Sales Process

The modern buyer is shifting rapidly away from being product and solution-focused to seeking value-laden experiences from start to finish. From identifying a problem, learning about solution options, to choosing a solution and supplier, making the decision, and then realizing the value of the purchase. They want sales conversations and sales discovery questions that are personalized to their needs. To have companies treat them as a partner rather than a buyer. To have salespeople with the sales skills to help them clarify unconsidered problems and then demonstrating their expertise in understanding their business.

The Sales Funnel – The Digital Sales Institute

The use of a sales funnel allows sales management and trainers to identify what sales activities are posing a challenge in the sales process.

Source: Sales Funnel – The Digital Sales Institute

A sales funnel is the process a salesperson works to in order to convert prospects into qualified leads or sales. A typical sales funnel will have stages that each sales lead goes through. These funnel stages are based on the steps in the company’s sales process that the salesperson leads the customer through.

Why use a Sales Funnel?

By implementing and aligning sales activities to a sales funnel, sales management and trainers can identify which stages are posing challenges in the sales process. To also understand where individual salespeople are struggling to progress leads, for use in sales forecasting and measure conversions rates more accurately. The sales funnel should be used as a training and sales tool to give the sales team insights into their prospects or customer’s buying journey, challenges, and decisions.

Research into the sales process shows that upwards of 80% of prospect’s make it to the end of the sales funnel without making a decision, other research shows that over 70% of leads entered into the funnel are never converted into paying customers and (CSO Insights) tell us that in most sales organizations only 50% of their sales professionals achieve sales quota.

The reasons to use a sales funnel now become compelling as without it a business will struggle to track and convert the leads into sales efficiently or to grow sales revenue over time.

What is a sales funnel?

A sales funnel is a visual mapping of the buyer’s journey split into stages and steps, from the existing customers or prospect’s first contact with the business until they complete a purchase or exit the funnel. The sales funnel is then mapped to the sales process so the correct sales activity happens at each stage.

To help visualize it, a typical sales funnel is the widest at the top and then narrowest at the bottom. The leads are qualified using set criteria during each stage of the funnel in order for them to be moved into the next stage and also eliminates those that are do not pass the criteria to continue investing time in. The sales funnel is directly connected to the buyer’s journey phases, which for ease of understanding can be sorted into three parts: the top, middle, and bottom.

This sales funnel structure can map to the status of each prospect, for example

Top of the funnel. Suspect (not contacted), contact made, demo completed, interest shown, broad level criteria matched etc.

Middle of the funnel. Buying committee identified, budgets in situ, buying motivation triggered, willing to undertake change management, obstacles removed, solution presented, meetings, negotiating in play etc.

Bottom of the funnel. Decision time, Delivery, implementation, timescales, customization and payment all agreed. Deal Won.

The best and most experienced salespeople know the sales funnel inside out. There are two main motivation factors for this:

1. They can use criteria to measure the customer’s interest levels and then deliver the right sales messages at the right time, and
2. They can maximize their time in the sales process and forecast their own sales needed to achieve their revenue goals.

Simply put, a well-defined sales funnel improves the customer’s interactions with the salesperson as well as company’s ability to measure sales metrics.

Stages in a sales funnel

There is no one size fits all when it comes to mapping out a sales process and customer touch points from the sales team in progressing a sale. However, a good starting point is to use the three distinct stages in the structure mentioned above.

1. Top of the sales funnel: The awareness and discovery journey

Whether inbound or outbound engagement with a customer, early in their journey they need to leave their status quo (current position) to explore alternatives to a problem, to research, be educated and learn more about solving it. It is important to acknowledge that in this early part of the journey, they are still identifying their challenge, whether to move (and undertake a change management process). As they have many questions, they are seeking advice and information not a sales pitch. They may know the symptoms of the problem but need help in lining up potential options to consider (not buy). The buyer may not even reveal the symptoms to the salesperson, but the questions asked need to be understood so they feel comfortable going a little further.

The buyer is trying to crystallize the problem, the impact on the business and to justify taking action. They are looking for a trusted source of information and education, someone who could all things being equal, make buying easier. At the top of the sales funnel, the prospect wants to feel they have been educated, have found useful advice and be confident enough to open up to questions the salesperson will ask as a level of trust has been established.

From a sales management perspective, they want impartial content or research that will help guide them through the challenges that matters to them, including blog posts, articles and videos.

In this stage of the funnel, suspects turn into contact made prospects. Once engaged they become leads. This is where the salesperson understands the sales process and matches the correct activity to qualify the lead according to the company’s criteria, which is what brings us to the next stage of the funnel.

2. Middle of the sales funnel: The buyer is on a journey for solutions

In the middle of the sales funnel, the buyer has now left their status quo position and is considering undertaking the change management process that is necessary when opting to purchase a new solution. They look for vendors who are useful to them, ones that can make buying (if they decide) easier. They seek out content and information specific to their challenges. The salesperson now should now have formed a relationship, they know certain details about the buyer, connected on social media and started to build trust. For the buyer’s part, they have now defined their problem and they are look to narrow down the available solutions they believe can help resolve their pain points.

Salespeople now need to be prepared to listen to and answer questions matched back to the buyer’s position, vanilla type generic answers will not cut it. The buyer is no longer asking ‘why’ questions, (why change, why move, etc) but “how” and “what” type questions.

A sample of their how type questions could be;

“How could these options resolve my problem?”

“How would this vendor be able to support me?”

“How have you (the vendor) previously solved my problem with another client”

“What makes these vendors qualified to handle my business?”

“What level of trust could I have in these suppliers?”

“What have I seen or read that gives me comfort to move forward?”

The middle of the sales funnel is usually the make or break moment. The buyer is investing time and resources into delving deeper into the specifics of the problem. They may have formed a buying committee to gather data and to know the possible solutions.

It is important to note that at this point they are still in research mode, looking for insights and help, even if they are engaging with a salesperson. They are not ready for the big sales pitch but instead are looking for the types of solutions the buying committee would buy into.

An example would be, will they buy a new SaaS CRM software solution or upgrade their existing in-house solution. Another example: the B2B buyer is unsure whether they need employee engagement software or hire in an employee engagement consultant.

The type of content that salespeople should serve up to the prospect at this stage of the sales plan  includes third part reviews, independent research, peer reviews, guides, checklists, ROI (pros versus cons options) and other insightful neutral pieces.

It is important that the salesperson working the lead has the sales skills to ensure they qualify them in or out at this stage. The sales process steps should ensure opportunities to talk and engage with the buyer are mapped out, what questions or criteria needs to be completed in order for them to continue sales conversations, and to get commitments that the solutions on offer are a fit to their problem.

3. Bottom of the sales funnel: Make buying easy to get a decision

Now we come to the final stage in the sales funnel. The buyer and the buying committee now feel confident they have enough information about their problem, the preferred solution for them, and are ready to select the provider to purchase this solution from, provided they make buying easy.

This is the reason why their questions and validation points in this stage become vendor-driven. The information they seek (plus gather via social media or online searches) and the questions that need answering might be like these:

“Which supplier will provide the best pre-sale support”?

“Which supplier offers the best implementation path”?

“Which provider will provide the best support”?

“Which vendor has solved our problem before”?

“Which one offers the best terms and contract”?

“Which one has convinced us they will go the extra mile for us”?

Sales funnel example

The company that makes buying easier by having answered these types of questions will get the decision as they have built the trust that they can match the buyer’s exact needs, addressed their specific problems, deliver within budget, and provide the other relevant resources to make the buyers life easier.

The content to support bottom of the funnel sales activity should include, specific customized proposals, testimonials, case studies, comparison data, cost of acquisition guides, change management support, industry awards or recognition, proof of concepts, and competitive feature analysis. This type of content shared in the final sales presentations will reinforce their confidence that your company will make buying easier and the right choice to partner with.

Now the prospect or buyer will have the final proposal presented to them, have a round of negotiation conversations (again to reinforce they have the right partner), after which the deal should be concluded favorable.

Operating a sales funnel in conjunction with a well thought out sales process is vital for any sales organization but especially for SaaS type sales where consultative and navigator type selling is required to engage more buyers and prospects.

Inside Sales Jobs Role

Inside Sales Jobs Role

Source: Inside Sales Jobs Role

What does the future hold for the inside sales jobs role for a salesperson and will its job description come to mean anything more than facilitating a customer’s purchase.

The future of sales is not an Outside V Inside salesperson argument but a Salesperson V Technology one, because even today technology is now facilitating greater numbers of sales conversations (up to sale completion).

What will the inside sales jobs role look like in three-to-five years?

The inside sales role will evolve in line with technology. These roles will evolve to become way more value add using sales tools, AI and technology. However, most inside sales jobs will decline or even be eliminated altogether as technology replaces many customer interactions.

Many experts believe that within five years, the inside sales jobs role will be completely determined by artificial intelligence. The use of data for trends, insights and sales activity with CRM will be outputted by AI, as it has the ability to process far greater amounts of data much faster and more efficiently than human interrogation.

The impact to inside sales jobs will mean only the effective “consultant” type roles will survive and thrive. All other inside sales jobs will most likely be replaced by technology. The “sales consultants” will be deemed the high-value sales talent to be deployed to earlier stages of the sales to maximize results. This will lead to the remaining sales jobs demanding deeper sales skills, so relevant sales training and sales courses around conversations, commitments and navigating a more complex buyers’ journey effectively will be critical.

The inside sales jobs role in the future will most likely require more and more specialization.  Expecting an inside salesperson to excel at research, prospecting, outreach, discovery, evaluation, presentations, negotiations and then closing is a falsehood. The entire sales process and the buyer’s journey will be mapped into a number of key stages. Then, depending on what is being sold, will see individual salespeople focusing on each stage. Sales prospecting roles and marketing will produce a mix of inbound and outbound sales leads, Sales researchers will use AI to map out account plans, conduct research and other pre-sale activities. Sales consultants will undertake the actual conversations, discovery work, connecting internally, presentations and closing the deals. Customer managers (who may not be part of the sales team) will implement what’s been sold and provide customer service.

Inside sales jobs role will quickly evolve from being an individual producer with their own goals, leads and CRM contacts to being part of the specialized team, who will share data, trends and insights via the use of sales automation tools to stay connected to prospects and customers. We will see a bigger focus on Account Based Management from the sales leadership team. In fact, the sales functions and reward models will look much more like a unified team of sales, marketing, and customer service pointing in the same direction, using the same sales tools plus following a common sales playbook.

Situational Awareness to become a key cog in every sales strategy and inside sales jobs role. Its importance is as a result of companies striving to learn how to shorten their sales cycles or better understand why buyers exit the sales process without deciding (as much as 90% of the time). Specialization will lead to better uncovering of information around buyer readiness, engagement rules, internal conflicts and buyer change management preparation so deals can progress at improved velocity. Situational awareness to become even more central to the sales process as buying committees grow, deals get more complex (may be nothing to do with price but more internal issues). The challenge for salespeople is to acquire situational awareness via ongoing sales training so it occurs throughout the entire sales process.

Inside Sales Jobs Role on the Decline

As mentioned earlier, certain inside sales jobs are already in decline and this will accelerate quickly over the next few years. The inside sales jobs role that will disappear include,

The Order takers – These types of roles whose primary function is to serve a customer and help transact a sale will decline the fastest, by as much as 40%.

The Explainers – These inside sales jobs role whose function is pointing out options, explaining product differences or doing online demonstrations are the next on the list to decline rapidly as technology and AI solutions kick in.

The Sales Navigators – These sales roles will decline slower, as they will be part of the buyer stages to guide buyers through the purchasing process.  These roles will mainly be deployed in the mid stages of the sales process where personalization and complexity of choice needs addressing.

Inside Sales Jobs Role that will Thrive

The Sales Consultants. These roles will thrive as buyers seek to be enlightened, educated, challenged and empowered. The sales consultants will enter the sales process in the early stages where AI and technology has indicated the need for a higher skilled human sales resource. They will be skilled at sales prospecting, social selling, starting conversations, developing relationships, proposing a more strategic approach and gaining commitments not just from the buyer but the whole buying committee.  Sales consultants will master that messaging and content gets driven by the account (and the opportunities) rather than the individual needs.

The Future of the Inside Sales Jobs Role

Sales, selling and how buyers buy is in uncharted territory. Technology disruption, digital sales transformation, lower the cost of sales and adjusting the sales and marketing efforts to the buyer’s journey is posing challenges.

First, inside sales jobs will be impacted by the automating of order fulfillment, self-service, on-demand virtual product tours and administrative type sales tasks.  The use of chat-bots and digital assistants to transact high-volume, simplified transactions will see sales management recruit salespeople to focus on higher-value or more strategic type sales. Through this approach, some inside sales jobs will thrive and grow, while others will gradually be removed from the sales process. Now is the time to act, up-skill and learn the sales techniques needed for the Sales 3.0 or even the Sales 4.0 digital era.

Sales Strategy Plan

A sales strategy plan is your strategic approach to winning new customers plus developing and retaining existing customers. It also outlines in detail your sales goals and objectives for the period it covers including all the major marketing or sales tactics to be used. To create real, lasting growth for your business, you need to create your own grand sales strategy plan and then make it happen.

The plan will outline in detail the who, where, why, when and how that will guide all your sales efforts for the period ahead. While your sales strategy plan should identify what your business will do differently to achieve the sales goals, it should also consider your capabilities. Capabilities such as the skills required, knowledge and the processes to carry out the plan. A plan without building these capabilities will struggle to achieve the desired results.

Your sales strategy plan may be sound, but ask yourself, do you have the capability to make it work? Do your salespeople need to learn new approaches to prospecting, selling or relationship building. Does marketing have the budgets, skills and processes to deliver their side of the plan? Before you start writing your sales strategy plan, think about your company’s current position and existing situation. Then ask what capabilities will be critical to achieving the results you are planning for.  Next you need to identify how you will acquire, create and strengthen the relevant capabilities even if you have to begin implementing some aspects of the sales plan in advance.

Sales Strategy Plan Overview

Begin with sales planning, this documents the sales, plans and measurements that will allow your business to achieve the targets. The measurements will help you make decisions and adjust along the way. With the right sales plan in place, you have taken the 1^st step in improving your chances of success.

Budgeting. Ensure that you have allocated enough resources (salespeople, marketing and money) to hit the business goals for time ahead. Marketing budgets always depend on how much you have available to spend or how quickly you plan to get results.

The Market. Understand the trends, players, industry, forecasts, challenges and opportunities for the coming period.

Target Selection. The plan as to who you will go after, sell more to the same, sell something new to the same, sell what we have to new customers or even selling something new to a new set of customers. Target selection should be set with consideration of your capabilities.

Profiles and Buying Committees. Understand who you sell to and how they make purchasing decisions. Review your best customers and identify the things that make them want to business with you. Ensure your ideal customer profiles in your target selections are accurate. For new sets of prospects, update them to reflect the kinds of buyers who you can acquire to reach your sales goals.

Sales Strategy Plan for Customer Engagement

Customer engagement is where you define how the sales team selects and engages with prospects and alongside the plans for existing customers. Depending on target selection you again need to consider your capabilities especially if are placing a higher emphasis on acquiring new customers or selling new products. The sales process you have included must match the how buyers move from initial interest (inbound, outbound, meetings, events, cold calling, social selling, roadshows etc) into a buying decision.

Sales Pipeline. What is the current pipeline and forecast plus projections on how fast you will need to fill the pipeline with real qualified sales opportunities to hit sales targets.

Sales Resources. Determine the right mix, sales skills, location, type and numbers of salespeople you will need plus draw up the organizational chart. Is your go to market plan to have direct, inside, channel sales etc?

Document Your Buyer’s Journey. Armed with your updated customer profiles, personas and market knowledge, document the journey each buyer will take toward becoming a paying customer. Plot out the sales process, customer touch points, marketing content, social media interaction, social selling etc your target selection profiles will have.

 Territory or Segment Plan. Take into consideration sales cycles, customer engagement requirements and salesperson productivity to make the numbers work.

Individual Target Setting. Bring the customer engagement plan together by linking the budgets, objectives, targets and resources to individual salesperson targets.

Sales Strategy Plan Support Capabilities

This is about matching your sales support capabilities in your sales strategy plan so you can help improve the effectiveness of the sales team and make doing business with your company easier. It focuses on how you want salespeople to spend their time including reducing non-selling activity and streamlining other processes in the sales cycle. With sales operations or sales transformation, you want to improve the work of the team through process, technology, KPI’s, metrics and best practices. What sales training, tools and internal systems will make it easier for customers to interact with your business.

Sales support as part of the sales strategy plan should try to include how to continually improve the efficiency of the sales team. How you plan to increase revenue per salesperson while speeding up ramp time for new hires. The goal is to be a company that it is easy to interact with, easy to buy from and for salespeople – easy to sell for.

Documenting your complete sales strategy plan is a real and tangible part of your growth plans which removes the elements of hope or luck.

Sales Skills Definition

Creating a sales skills definition is unique to every business as they need to reflect the overall sales strategy alongside the expected sales activities of the salespeople.  Sales skills differ depending on inside V outside customer facing sales plus which part of the sales process a salesperson is involved with. Technology, social media, the internet and the digitally connected buyer has in effect driven the change in how we apply sales skills definition to a sales role.

Sales Skills Definition

This will be personal to each business. However, an overarching sales skills definition is the specific set of sales skills (prospecting, cold calling, nurturing, engaging, presenting, negotiating, closing etc) and knowledge (product, markets, trends, business etc) a salesperson possess to enact the exchange of value between a buyer and the vendor.

Sales Skills Reflect the Business Environment

Sales skills will always reflect the prevailing environment and the buyer’s acceptance of how they interact with the purchasing process. Let me explain further, once upon a time door to door sales was a dominant channel in both B2B and B2C. So, the prevailing environment was to enact sales via “the travelling salesman”. If you were to ask John Henry Patterson (probably the father of sales) back in early parts of the 20^th century for a sales skills definition he may have stated skills that reflected a door to salesperson.  Firm handshake, storyteller, manipulator, friendly, can convince, pushy, ability to take rejection and a persuader could be some of the skills he would mention.
My point here is that sales skills reflect the company’s sales strategy and business model. So, when it comes to creating a sales skills definition consideration must be given to how the business operates, potential customers preference for buying, ethos, channels and product complexity. The hiring profile and training of sales people should reflect the skills definition as laid out in a sales playbook or strategy.

Let’s compare the sales skills of a door to door salesperson with a modern sales professional when it comes to sales prospecting. For the door to door salesperson it would start with the knock on the door (not too aggressive), their opening lines, the handshake, the smile, their body language, how they were dressed, the opening pitch etc. For the modern sales professional doing sales prospecting what are the skills you would expect?

Future Sales Skills Definition

Some of the traditional skills still hold true, however skills such as ability to research, use of data, multi-channel activity, nurturing relationships and value exchange have replaced many of the interruption sales skills employed by the door to door salesman. This is being driven by social media, data, connectivity, educated buyers and technology that requires a transformation to how many companies sell. These changes will require sales skills that go way beyond the traditional selling tactics.

Skills that make buying easier. Research shows that the educated, savvy and connected buyers want the whole buying process to be easier more rewarding, informative and fulfilling.  Business needs to consider what sales skills salespeople are being trained on that reflects this new reality.

 Buyers want to engage for longer term value that goes beyond the product. They want to do business with sellers who really understand the “what, why, and when” of their needs. Selling will become more collaborative and intelligent.

To bring this extra value to buyers, companies need to invest in sales training for salespeople so they can educate and nurture customers on needs they do not know they have. Yes, social media, social selling, inbound marketing and digital connectivity is making it easier to engage with customers more cost effectively. But do sales skills and sales techniques reflect the current environment is a good starting question.

Sales Skills Definition for Sales 3.0

Salespeople need to have empathy and ability to really understand a customer’s needs.

 The skill to engage comfortable with a customer at their level and on their terms.

 Ability to add value to the customer at every stage of the process, leaving aside self-interest.

 Skilled at active listening along with asking discovery questions to uncover business challenges.

 The salesperson can create a vision for the value that their product will bring to the customer.

 Can build rapport, tell stories and sell their personality, because even in this digital world, people still buy people.

 Business acumen, the salesperson has a genuine interest in how business works.

 They are trained to know that sales negotiation is a process not an event, so they constantly use the 3Ps of selling – Prepare, Probe, and Propose.

 Is credible and understands how to build credibility and add value to a customer’s life.

Has the sales skill to pinpoint, quantify and communicate clearly the value their proposed solution will bring to the customers business.

 As stated in the outset of this article, a sales skills definition for the sales roles and salespeople will be personal and unique to every business. Just as sales has evolved from door to door in the analogue era to the digital salesperson of today, so too will the sales skills as our environments change with the times.

Sales Prospecting Definition

Nailing a sales prospecting definition can be difficult depending on your sales process, product and market. So, what is sales prospecting and what sales activity does it entail in winning new customers or business?

To start, lets agree that the stated aims of any business to is acquire, develop and maintain customers at a profit. Sales prospecting is focused on the acquire new customers activity in a business.

A sales prospecting definition is

“The sales activity involved in researching, engaging and nurturing new prospects so they eventually become paying customers for the business.”

Sales prospecting is NOT about trying to find buyers in the market now to purchase your particular product or service.  It’s not that easy!!

The end goal is to eventually move prospects through the sales funnel until they convert into revenue-generating customers. It is associated with a goal of increasing the customer base of the company and generating new revenue streams.  This definition can be customized to a particular business to account for their ideal customer profile, market, products and business model.

Without new customers, a business will have limited potential to grow, while some sales growth will come from existing customers, it is not sustainable due to customer loss, churn and circumstances. This is why sales prospecting is one of the most important sales activities any salesperson can undertake. Prospecting is the first step in the sales process and the key which unlocks future relationships with paying customers. Unfortunately, too many companies still do not have their own sales prospecting definition which can lead to an unstructured approach to acquiring new customers.

Sales prospecting is now a multi-channel activity covering social selling, emails, cold calling and events. Tactics include sharing content, white papers, articles and case studies along with offering demos, free trials or invites to events. It should also be noted that effective prospecting is a process not an event, it begins with researching a potential prospect, their industry, their business, establishing criteria as to why they are a suitable prospect and then putting in place a plan to gradually nurture a relationship with them prior to any sales pitch.

Some people ask “what the difference between a sales lead and a prospect?”

Well, leads are potential customers where you have either profiled them or who have expressed interest in your company or services through behaviors like visiting your website, subscribing to a blog, or downloading an eBook. So, leads are where you have some contact details, a match against a buying profile or an expression of interest via inbound marketing (regardless of how loose) so that you can prospect to them.

Then, leads become prospects if they engage with a salesperson and the interactions mean they could become a potential customer set against some qualifying criteria (size, existing situation, budget etc), meaning that they align with the profile of your target buyer.   A prospect may also be classified as a potential customer who has limited or no interaction with your company, but they would not be considered a lead.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/232646152?color=ffffff&title=0&byline=0

Sales Prospecting Tips from The Digital Sales Institute on Vimeo.

Successful Sales Prospecting

Successful sales prospecting starts with understanding the type of buyer who would most likely be interested in what you have to offer. In order to find this out, it can be helpful to answer questions such as

What type of buyers or customers use your products or services?

If you are an existing business, who are your most loyal customers?

What similarities do they share (revenue, industry, size, business models, age etc)?

Another point to remember when creating a sales prospecting definition is that there are usually three types of prospects.

1. The Cold prospect or lead. These are prospects whom you have identified as worth trying to engage or you are in the process of trying to get them to interact with you. PS. Just because they connected with you on LinkedIn doesn’t make them a warm prospect.
2. The warm prospect. These are the prospects where some level of positive interaction has happened but they remain in their status quo position in relation to your product or service (see no need to change right now). Such prospects will make up a large chunk of your prospect database as at any given time, less than 10% of your market are actively looking to change product or supplier. These prospects have to be nurtured with content, articles, and information that brings value to their roles. They are not looking to be sold to, so focus on the relationship.
3. The Qualified hot prospect. This prospect has started a buyer’s journey and is in consideration mode. Their actions (free trial, meeting etc) demonstrates the potential to purchase your product or service. They also pass your qualifying criteria around budget, needs, authority and timescale.

Sales prospecting does require sales training but regardless of whatever sales prospecting definition you settle on, the really positive effect is that effective prospecting not only increases the productivity of the sales teams but also their selling skills.

Sales Training Exercises

Here are a few sales training exercises to liven up your sales training. The goal of sales training is to give salespeople a set of skills and tools that radically improves their sales performance. The use of sales training courses is an essential part of the whole sales industry, but we need to continually ask what value it adds to sales growth. In fact, up to 85% of sales training fails to deliver a positive ROI. The reason for this is that sales training sessions can vary from being brilliant to being absolutely boring. So hopefully the below sales training exercises can help positively impact on a salespersons experience when it comes to sales training.

Sales Training Exercises: 1. Expectations.

What will sales training have done for you?

Get the sales course participants to imagine it is 1 year from now, they have been using what they learned during the sales training course continuously as part of their sales activity.  Get them to write down, in as much detail as possible, exactly what sales training will have done to make them more successful, their customers more engaged and helped them win more deals.

Sales Training Exercises: 2. Creating Value

This sales training exercise is based on the adage “If a customer can’t see the difference between 2 products, they will decide based on price”.

The object of this exercise is to assist salespeople to create and demonstrate value to a customer who is either comparing your offering to a lower priced competitor or has become too price focused.

Select two participants, 1 is the customer, the other is the sales person.  Give the salesperson 2 household batteries. One is priced at $1, the other battery is priced at $10, ask him/her to prepare a list of differences in 3 minutes. The customer asks the salesperson for a cheap battery for their kids toy.  The salesperson presents the 2 batteries and points out the price for each and asks which one would the customer like.  (The customer can either pick the cheaper one or ask what’s the difference)

So now the salesperson should explain a list of differences that can create real value difference and reasons to purchase the $10 battery.

Examples:

Guaranteed to last 100 times longer than the cheaper one.

5 times more powerful so can power larger toys.

Child safe, will not leak.

1-year warranty v 3 months warranty

The $10 battery has a limited special offer of buying another within a year for $5.

The point is that, depending on the customers own situation, people will opt for the $10 battery, proving that it is value, not price that drives decision-making. Done well, building customer value positions salespeople with a great chance to win more sales, and grow longer term customer relationships.

Sales Training Notes: Creating value not only transforms sales effectiveness, it also provides a cushion against price pressure.

Did the salesperson get to know the customer and develop a good understanding of what they value?

Explain clearly why the $10 battery will help the customer and communicate why it is the better option?

Sales Training Exercises: 3. Hit the Target

This exercise is based on consistency with sales techniques and in the sales process.

Roll up 50 or 60 pieces of paper into balls. Ask 3 course participants to volunteer to throw the paper balls into a waste paper basket. Give each person 10 balls.

Inform them the goal is to throw as many paper balls into the basket in thirty seconds. They can only retrieve any balls that have landed in the basket during the time to increase their score.

Now begin the countdown and count louder as they get to the last 10 seconds. Watch how their pace of throwing picks up (and they try to be more accurate).

Selling is about consistency and habits. Why did they throw more or try to be more accurate as the deadline approached? Was their plan to focus on speed or accuracy (or both or none!!)

As you had 50 or 60 balls, did any of the volunteers ask for more balls (you never mentioned they couldn’t ask for more balls). Ask them why didn’t they ask for more balls? You could link this back to parts in the sales process such as “initiative” “thinking outside the box for solutions” “asking for more resources” “determination to hit their targets” etc.   Also, the more balls they threw, the higher the score which is all about sales consistency.

The nice thing about this exercise is you can expand more examples that link back to your own sales challenges.

Sales Training Notes: By having a consistent approach coupled with focus, speed and accuracy of actions will give any salesperson the blueprint to sales success.

Sales Training Exercises: 4. Hold or Fold

This sales training exercise to focused on a salespersons ability to clarify where the prospect is in the sales process and in doing so cleans up the sales pipeline.

Using 5 or 6 sheets of paper, write down real reasons a prospect stalls a deal – budget slashed or gone, boss or member of the buying committee not convinced, preference for another vendor, not convinced solution meets their needs, not a priority, perceived risk with product or company etc.

Ask for 2 or 3 sets of volunteers, one will play the stalling prospect, the other the salesperson. Give each prospect player 1 real reason sheet why they are stalling.

Scenario: The prospect has agreed after weeks of chasing by the salesperson to a catch-up meeting. The salesperson must ask a series of questions to see if they can get the prospect to reveal their true reason for stalling.  At the end of the exercise, the salesperson must state why they think the prospect is stalling and whether to hold onto the prospect or move on. The prospect then reveals his/her sheet to see if there is a match.

Sales Training Notes: Have each salesperson ask the prospect questions to understand whether to hold or fold. Questions such as, “I noticed you haven’t taken advantage of your demo account, usually when this happens it’s because it is not a business priority right now, is this the case here?” can help your prospects confront whether they do or do not want to move forward.

Once the salesperson has asked their series of questions and does/does not understand why the prospect is stalling, and have either moved the deal forward or folded and walked away, have an open discussion on what went well, what made the prospects feel uncomfortable, and suggestions on what to do next time around.

Sales Training Exercises: 5. Walk the Buyers Journey

The goal of this exercise is for salespeople to understand their own market and how they could influence the buying process using social selling as more buyers use social media to conduct research.

For this exercise, the seller (all the sales course participants) becomes the buyer of your own product/service. Using their industry knowledge and a typical customer profile, how far can they go in the sales process doing web searches/LinkedIn/social media in selecting your own product/service without having to interact with a sales person? (In some markets, you can get pricing, free trial, video demos etc without having to talk to a salesperson)

Awareness (window of unhappiness) – “I may have a problem”

Example buyer question: What features should I expect in a CRM system?

Consideration (window of alternatives) – “I can see a definite solution”

Example buyer question: What CRM systems would the group recommend?

That is a quick list of 5 sales training exercises any salesperson or sales trainer can conduct to liven your sales training courses.