There have been significant changes in the sales process only in the past years. As more and more business takes place in a digital environment, customers change the way they engage with the sales team. In the LinkedIn 2020 sales status report, 44% of respondents noted a longer sales cycle, with customer awareness and a more significant role in considering the customer journey. The virtual sales process has shifted to the way customers interact with sales teams.
As salespersons adapt to changes in the sales process, an online-first approach can help reveal new opportunities today and in the future. Mastering the sales process – whether online or in-person – begins with getting to know the customer and creating a personalized content experience that meets your unique needs. In this post, we can share three steps to improve the quality of your sales process and build trust among ongoing managers, potential customers, and customers.
- Champion training for new sales activities
There is always an opportunity to fix the sales team and prepare it for continued growth. Even the most experienced sales reps will have opportunities to develop new skills and strategies. The transition to virtual sales provides a natural opportunity to develop digital skills that can be used in a sales organization.
Once, area salespeople were about to fight for the sales organization. The transition to a virtual sales process has led to the adoption of a digital warrior mentality that calls for salespersons to change their approach. This change requires vendors to consider the rapidly changing needs of leads and potential customers. While area vendors first attended conferences and events to identify new conferences, digital channels have become the new sports arena for lead generation. To move from personal events to digital locations, vendors must meet new expectations. While traditional sales methods have emphasized transaction strategy, digital sales and community sales are asking vendors to prioritize building trust and engaging with prospects.
The in-house sales team is equally affected by the adoption of digital-first sales processes. The proximate nature of internal sales led to the first face-to-face meetings, which were replaced by video conferencing. New productivity tools need to be adopted to reflect individualized online experiences to enable collaboration between a remote, geographically dispersed sales team. Ensuring that remote sales reps are proficient in productivity applications such as Slack, Teams, or Zoom can help drive a high level of collaboration. Using productivity tools that include features such as virtual whiteboards, co-editing, and more, your sales team can work together to produce relevant content that tells your story in a way that resonates with your audience is.
2. Use the power of storytelling
Because contact occurs at almost every point through digital channels, there is more pressure on sales and marketing teams to stand out from the crowd. To rise above the dirt, businesses have mastered the art of storytelling. Sharing generic, product-driven content with potential customers is no longer enough. On average, the modern customer is involved in in-depth research solutions and is better acquainted with the business and its products at an early stage of the sales process. If many buyers conduct their own research, sellers interested in the buyer’s unique needs can create personalized content experiences that support the buyer’s journey. Therefore, rather than taking a vendor approach with prospects, the most effective vendors try to understand potential customers’ challenges and connect them to viable solutions.
Why is personalization so important? For starters, personalization will help expose your business to a crowded content ecosystem. In an environment where B2B customers receive approximately 128.8 billion emails a day, 57% of customers receive content they find worthless. Put, sharing the same general content with your audience is ineffective. It should not happen. Innovative technologies such as sales support solutions allow you to tell the right story to the right customer at the right time. The most compelling stories follow these three pillars:
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Communicating the story to the audience is also essential. When developing the story, it is essential to meet the audience’s needs during the sales process. To meet the buyer’s needs, the material must indicate three stages in the buyer’s journey:
- Awareness – The client is looking for solutions that address their challenges or pain issues.
- Consideration – The customer has identified viable solutions and is interested in additional information and verification points to demonstrate its effectiveness.
- Decision Making – After extensive research and interaction with the sales representative, the customer is ready to select and implement the solution.
3. More connectivity and GTM coordination facilities
To make your audience more and more engaged, sales and marketing must be on the same page. Building cohesion means creating common goals between two teams simultaneously and a continuous channel of communication to ensure the effectiveness of joint efforts. During the sales process, both content analysis and data tracking allow teams to assess what is useful and make intelligent decisions to improve and ensure progress.
Sales enabling tools can help both parties gain knowledge in the sales process and determine sales and marketing activities. Integrated with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools, marketers and vendors can clarify what content is best at different stages of the customer’s journey. This also allows for greater collaboration between vendors or tracking with prospects and opportunities. CRM integrations also increase sales speed by reducing the number of time vendors spend on content research through predictive content contained in performance data. Tools that enable sales can help break down barriers by connecting different teams to share knowledge, resources, and data to work smoothly.
4. Identify potential customers and customers who value their time
Time management is more important than ever. Although working from home ends up reducing, many workers now find it difficult to separate the work-life balance because work and life are in one place. Also, fast office chats have become a zoom meeting, making it difficult for people to focus time.
Allowing some downtime between appointments takes into consideration customers and potential customers. Like the gestures, “I want to give you 10 minutes before my next meeting, so I want to explain these items before I finish the call.” By prioritizing brief meetings and prioritizing their time, you set yourself up to stand out from the crowd. For example, you can change the length of meetings:
60 minutes → 50 minutes
30 minutes → 25 minutes
5. Videos and demos matter more
Presentation matters. You want to communicate with professionalism and ensure that your customers and potential customers see you as an ideal manager. You want people to leave the sales call by saying, “Wow, this team is great! This was my most effective time and focus in an online meeting I’ve ever experienced.”
Here are seven ways to accomplish this.
- Breathtaking Dress. Like staying indoors in our pajamas all day, one of the routines that helped get our team into the professional field was getting ready for work in the morning – even if only the waist-ups.
- Look for flattering light. Sitting in front of the window provides the best light. If you cannot do this, ask your company to provide lights, which you can place in front of you or on both sides of the screen.
- Take advantage of the right camera angle. The best solution is a camera that is slightly above the line of sight. This will make your head bow automatically. It is also more ergonomic.
- Take care of your eyes. Look at the camera more and more to simulate eye contact with your potential customer. Turn off the self-view in the zoom-in so that you don’t feel like you’re looking at yourself and keep the participant’s window close to your camera.
- Turn on the “Do not disturb” setting. Make sure that loose pop-ups and notifications do not interrupt the conversation. Your customer gets your full attention.
- If possible, stop sharing the screen. Suppose you have completed the presentation, and we have jumped on the agenda of questions and answers. Stop sharing your screen to see facial expressions and body language.
- Get creative with your presentations. For example, if Zoom is enabled with a background, you can increase your sales and presentations. Think of it as a weather indicator in front of a green screen – you can organize as visuals or record a demo to create various visual interests and presentation styles.
Preparation leads to notable meetings online
Without the benefits of face-to-face meetings, it is more important than ever how we will make the best use of the time that our prospects and customers give us. If you meet in person, you will definitely talk and cultivate more personal relationships. Although limited to a virtual meeting, you may want to think about what value it offers during the call and what you are trying to achieve. In this way, you can intentionally sprinkle these opportunities for deeper relationships.