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The New Sales Playbook: Thriving in the Post-Pandemic Hybrid Sales Environment

The global landscape of sales is different from what it used to be. In this new era, marked by the aftermath of a pandemic, the post-pandemic hybrid sales environment has emerged, intertwining the virtual with the physical. For sales professionals, the mandate has become clear: adapt to this changed scenario by refining strategies and sharpening specific skill sets to resonate with today’s demands. Unfortunately, as high as 60%, based on our assessment data, salespeople have yet to adapt their skills to a hybrid sales environment.

The Shift to a Hybrid Sales Model Post-Pandemic

Historically, sales thrived on handshakes, face-to-face meetings, and in-person presentations. The pandemic, however, redefined these norms. We witnessed the birth of the hybrid sales model—a synergetic blend of traditional face-to-face sales and remote, digital interactions.

A global crisis, in the form of COVID-19, made this shift unavoidable. Traditional sales interactions faced significant challenges with lockdowns, travel bans, and social distancing norms. However, even as we gradually return to some semblance of normalcy, the hybrid model’s advantages are hard to ignore. It offers unparalleled flexibility, extends reach beyond geographical confines, and can be more time and cost-efficient.

Yet, this evolution isn’t without challenges. The digital shift requires mastering new technologies, guaranteeing effective communication over virtual platforms, and ensuring that client relationships remain robust without the regularity of physical meetings.

Salespeople who still need to adapt and build virtual selling skills are struggling. As I shared in one post, salespeople who have not made virtual selling skills are basically selling naked, like in the story of the emperor’s new close.

The Top Sales Skills for Success in a Post-Pandemic World

Navigating the sales domain in a post-pandemic world demands more than just conventional tactics; it calls for a blend of old-school principles, novel strategies, and an adaptive growth mindset. Here are the most sought-after skills in this hybrid sales era:

Building Business Relationships

Even in a digitized environment, the human-to-human connection remains at the core of the business. The relationships forged with clients go beyond transactions:

Personal Touch in Digital Interactions

It’s not about replacing face-to-face meetings but about replicating their essence in a digital context. This could mean using video calls more often, remembering personal details about clients in your CRM, or even sending a quick note on special occasions.

Leveraging Technology

Tools like CRM software can remind salespeople about follow-ups, ensuring no leads fall through the cracks. In addition, analytic insights can indicate the best times to reach out or offer personalized suggestions to clients. As CRMs add AI functionality, the CRM will recommend actions for sales managers and salespeople.

Value Addition

In the post-pandemic era, relationship-building means being an active partner in a client’s success. This involves understanding their challenges and proactively suggesting solutions—even when there’s no immediate sale involved.

Identifying Goals and Challenges

As I shared in my book, Driving Explosive Growth, human-to-human interactions will become the determining factor for sales teams who reach and surpass their goals and those that miss their sales plan again. More salespeople missed the plan that was achieved in 2022, and we do not expect 2023 to be much different.

Salespeople trained in building business relationships know how to build rapport and know industry trends and everyday struggles their customers have. They have been trained to use discovery and qualifying questions to get below-the-surface discussions with buyers and truly understand the problems to be solved.

Virtual meetings, building rapport, and asking great discovery and qualifying questions are essential for salespeople today. Opportunities they once would see as they walked around prospects’ facilities now must be heard from insightful questions that demonstrate competence and build trust.

Discovery and Qualification

Recognizing potential clients and understanding their needs is an art in some companies and a science in market-leading sales teams. We spend much training and coaching helping salespeople develop strong discovery and qualifying questions today.

Digital Profiling

In a world with extensive digital footprints, salespeople can use social media, company websites, and online reviews to get a preliminary understanding of a lead. Some sales teams are using sales AI tools.

Active Questioning

Instead of generic questions, salespeople should aim for specific queries that uncover needs. For instance, instead of “Do you need a new software solution? one might ask, “How are you addressing your current data analytics challenges? “By the nature of your questions, you can demonstrate competence and build trust.

Continuous Learning

Staying updated with market trends and potential client challenges becomes crucial with rapidly changing industry landscapes. Often teams leverage the voice of customer research to understand customer satisfaction and gain insights into any unresolved problems customers have today. Voice of customer research helps identify current challenges your customers and markets are experiencing.

Empathy and Active Listening

In a world bombarded with information, genuine understanding becomes a premium commodity. Unfortunately, too many salespeople ask questions, listen to reply, and do not learn. Active listening is critical to becoming the trusted advisor clients want and need today, and it is a skill that can be learned.

Emotionally Intelligent Responses

Recognizing and acknowledging a client’s emotions or frustrations can create a rapport. For instance, understanding the added stress businesses may have faced during the pandemic and tailoring conversations accordingly.

Feedback Integration

Active listening isn’t just about the present conversation. It’s about integrating feedback from past interactions. If a client mentioned a challenge in a previous conversation, bringing it up in subsequent discussions showcases genuine interest.

Digital Etiquette

On virtual platforms, active listening might involve non-verbal cues such as nodding or using reactions on platforms like Zoom.

Customer Personality Profile

Salespeople today must have solid situational awareness and be able to identify the personality style of their prospects. We teach sales teams how to adapt their presentations based on DISC,

Acting like the CEO of Their Region of Responsibility

The modern salesperson needs to be a strategist, viewing their portfolio with an owner’s lens. Time is one of their significant assets, and current salespeople must be able to allocate time based on opportunity. They must make decisions based on ROI and consider the cost of sales.

Data-driven Decision Making

This involves closely monitoring metrics like lead conversion rates, client feedback scores, and return on investment for particular strategies. They review what customers buy and recommend other products based on what similar customers purchase.

Risk Management

As a CEO would for a company, salespeople should be adept at anticipating challenges—be it potential objections from a client or external market shifts—and crafting contingency plans.

Stakeholder Management

Just as CEOs manage various departments, salespeople must liaise with delivery teams, product managers, or finance departments to ensure seamless client experiences.

Collaboration – Building and Delivering a Business Case

The essence of sales is solving a problem. Crafting a compelling narrative around this can sway decisions. As we assess sales effectiveness, we often find salespeople need to improve or have a low figure-it-out factor. We must upskill salespeople to build and deliver business cases, not just product features and benefits.

Cross-functional Partnerships

Collaborating with technical experts or product teams can lend more credibility to a pitch, especially in B2B sales scenarios.

Storytelling

Data is essential, but stories resonate. Whether it’s a success story of a past client or a hypothetical scenario illustrating the impact of your product/service, weaving a story can make your case more compelling.

Create Customer Champions

When salespeople are skilled in collaboration, the customer feels ownership in the plan and becomes an internal champion. Salespeople who pitch slap their customers lose that critical step of cooperation.

Negotiation and Closing

This phase is where the rubber meets the road. Mastery here dictates success. Unfortunately, our sales effectiveness assessment data shows less than 14% of salespeople have received negotiation training. As we learned in a buyer study, over 75% of professional purchasing agents have been trained in negotiation tactics, which often leads to a mismatch of negotiation skills. If salespeople do not receive negotiation training, they leave money on the table that could have flowed to your profits.

Understanding the Client’s Position

Often, negotiations stall because of unseen constraints on the client’s side. Unearthing these—be it budgetary restrictions, past experiences, or internal processes—can lead to more fruitful discussions.

Win-Win Solutions

Negotiation isn’t about victory but alignment. Instead of hard discounts, offering extended support or training could sweeten the deal for the client without compromising the price.

Professionally Handling Customer Objections and Not Trying to Overcome Them.

Top-producing salespeople know customers’ top objections and are prepared to handle them professionally. Our sales skills training teaches salespeople how to handle objections and not try to overcome them professionally.

Selling Based on Value Delivered, Not Price

In the information age, competing on price is a race to the bottom. The focus needs to shift. As we assess sales effectiveness in teams, we find many sales teams sell based on price and not the value their product or service delivers.

Highlighting Long-term Benefits

A slightly pricier solution might offer benefits that, in the long run, lead to cost savings or greater value for the client.

Building Trust

Often, resistance to higher prices stems from a lack of trust. Regular client testimonials, case studies, or pilot projects can bolster confidence.

Building a Business Case

Top-producing salespeople act as trusted business advisors and know how to build and present business cases to close the sale.

Acting as Consultants Rather Than Sales Reps

Today’s clients are looking for partners in growth, not just vendors. I want you to know that clients wishing to have trusted advisors share insights not found on your company website.

Offering Tailored Solutions

This might involve understanding a client’s industry in-depth, recognizing trends, and offering resonating solutions.

Educative Approach

Sometimes, it’s about educating clients about potential challenges they still need to recognize and showcasing how your product/service can address them.

In essence, the post-pandemic world has upped the ante for salespeople. It’s no longer just selling a product or service; it’s about offering holistic solutions, building genuine relationships, and navigating the nuances of the digital world with finesse.

Conclusion

The future of sales in a post-pandemic world isn’t just about selling—it’s about understanding, adapting, and providing genuine value. As the line between physical and virtual continues to blur, mastering these skills will not only be advantageous but also imperative. The message for sales professionals gearing up for this new era is clear: refine, relearn, and reignite your sales strategy—the future promises for those ready to embrace it.

Do your salespeople have the skills your customers and prospects expect today?

How effective is your sales team today?

How much more effective could your sales team be?

What impact would higher close rates at higher gross margins have on your bottom line?

Let’s go ahead and schedule a call if you’d like answers to questions like the above and to improve your sales effectiveness for today’s customers.

Do You Really Need to Hire More Salespeople?

Do you believe that hiring more salespeople will fix the gaps you have in your sales organization? In this video, Mark Allen Roberts helps you consider if you need more salespeople or just the right people in the right roles.

What Is The Future of Sales? An Interview with Mark Allen Roberts

In this interview, Pat Altvater, founder of the Elite Expert Network and Soar to Success magazine, interviews Mark Allen Roberts to discover his thoughts about the effect of the pandemic on sales and his prediction of what things will be like in the future for sales reps. Tune in for his insights

Do You Have A Sales Pipeline or Pipedream?

In the complex and often unpredictable sales landscape, differentiating between a realistic sales pipeline and an elusive pipedream is essential. Understanding these contrasting concepts and mastering their nuances can enable sales professionals to maximize productivity, streamline strategies, and enhance results. This comprehensive article dissects these concepts, explain their implications, and illuminate the road toward more productive and strategic sales ventures.

Understanding the Sales Pipeline and Pipedream

The Sales Pipeline: An Operational Lifeline

The sales pipeline is a vital strategic tool, functioning as a visual snapshot of where prospects are in the sales process. It serves as the backbone of sales operations, offering a comprehensive view of pending sales and facilitating reliable revenue forecasts based on the likelihood of deal closures. A robust, well-maintained pipeline is the cornerstone of predictable and stable revenue.

The Pipedream: A Mirage in the Sales Desert

In contrast, a pipedream in sales signifies a deal that, despite its enticing allure, is unlikely to come to fruition. It often stems from overly optimistic assumptions and can lead sales professionals into the trap of investing resources into opportunities that offer little to no return. Sales leaders mistakenly share the information in their sales pipeline with their CFO, and that data is used for the senior leaders and shareholders. If your team has a pipedream and not a sales pipeline, it is just a matter of time for you to feel significant friction as we close 2023.

Delineating the Difference

The distinction between a sales pipeline and a pipedream hinge on the principles of reality and feasibility. While a sales pipeline represents tangible progress of leads through the sales cycle, a pipedream rests on fragile hope for sales prospects that may never materialize. Unfortunately, more than 50% of salespeople are not trained in selling skills. As a result, they are often overly optimistic and need help distinguishing between genuine buyer interest and put-offs.

The Impact of Supply Chain Constraints on Sales

Supply chain constraints have provoked a unique response from buyers. Anticipating shortages and delays, many have begun to over-order, hoping to ensure their required quota is met. Though born out of necessity, such practices can lead to inflated sales pipeline figures.

This inflation of sales orders can distort the perception of a company’s sales potential, creating a mirage of a booming business that, upon closer examination, is based on uncertain and potentially unfulfillable orders.

The Shift to Smaller and Less Frequent Orders

As the dust settles, a new trend is taking shape – smaller and less frequent orders are becoming the norm. Though this shift could be construed as an economic warning sign, it’s not necessarily indicative of a recession on the horizon.

Instead, this trend reflects strategic inventory management practices spearheaded by CFOs. As businesses work through excess stock, order frequency has decreased, leading many optimistic sales pipelines to morph into doubtful pipedreams.

Sales Pipelines vs. Pipedreams: Unmasking the Current Realities

The Balloon of False Hope

In the present climate of excess inventory and dampened demand, many once-promising sales pipelines are inflating into balloons of false hope. The perceived sales potential from extra orders may be merely pipedreams as demand dwindles.

The Imperative of Pipeline Auditing

Considering these revelations, the importance of auditing sales pipelines has never been more pronounced. Companies must meticulously qualify each order to discern opportunities from pipedreams and update their forecasts.

I have all my clients auditing their pipelines now, and one client discovered approximately $2 million in products they planned to ship in 2023 would not send. The impact of such a large order and profits from that order trickling to our bottom line is enormous. This team felt they had plenty of orders and an operations plan to deliver the revenue and make their sales plan promised to their investors. Luckily, we have several months to implement a revenue acquisition plan with current, inactive, and targeted new customers. The sales motions this account must accomplish now are much different than their plans just 30 days ago.

Identifying a Pipedream: The BANT Method

The BANT method – a well-regarded acronym for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline – is an incredibly effective qualifying strategy employed by sales professionals worldwide. It’s longevity and widespread adoption is a testament to its effectiveness, aiding sellers in evaluating the potential of prospects quickly and comprehensively. Using this method, sales representatives can efficiently gauge a prospect’s financial capacity, role within their organization, business needs, and the expected timeframe for implementation.

The BANT methodology is easy to remember but requires a nuanced understanding to apply effectively. Here’s how you can leverage each criterion:

Budget

Understanding a prospect’s budget enables sales professionals to gauge if a candidate can afford the solution. The probability of converting that lead into a sale is low if the funding is insufficient. Probing questions like “Have you allocated a budget for this purchase?” can help ascertain this.

Authority

Does the prospect hold the decision-making power? If not, sales representatives must navigate their way to the key decision-makers. Without their buy-in, the deal is unlikely to materialize. You might ask, “Who else, apart from you, will be involved in making the final decision?”

Need

The most critical component of the BANT method is identifying the need. The offered product or service must fulfill an immediate requirement or solve a problem for the prospect. Sales reps should delve into the prospect’s business pain points and demonstrate how their offering addresses those issues.

Timeline

A prospect may have the budget, authority, and need for your product. Still, if they’re not planning to implement a solution shortly, it could signify a low-priority project that gets delayed or shelved. Establishing the prospect’s expected timeline can help manage expectations and sales forecasts.

Using BANT to Spot Pipedreams

Using the BANT method, recognizing a pipedream from a viable lead is significantly easier. If a prospect cannot satisfactorily respond to the BANT questions, the chances are that the information is a pipedream. The candidate might have expressed interest, but the lead will likely prove fruitless without the budget, decision-making authority, a clear need, or a feasible timeline. Redirecting resources away from these unlikely prospects to more viable leads can optimize productivity and increase sales.

The Bigger Picture: BANT and Sales Strategy

Understanding the implications of the BANT method is critical. It’s not just about distinguishing a promising lead from a pipedream; it’s about formulating effective sales strategies. By focusing on tips that meet the BANT criteria, sales representatives can concentrate their efforts on the most lucrative prospects, leading to improved conversion rates and increased sales..

Remember, the BANT method is about more than disqualifying leads hastily. It’s a strategic tool to understand where a prospect is in their buying journey and how your offering aligns with their needs. It facilitates a deeper understanding of your prospects, leading to more meaningful conversations, better customer relationships, and improved sales outcomes.

Conclusion

In the challenging sales arena, distinguishing between a healthy sales pipeline and an elusive pipedream is crucial. This discernment enables sales professionals to identify and qualify viable opportunities and avoid the pitfalls of unfruitful pursuits. Implementing systematic pipeline audits using the BANT method can ensure sales efforts are well-targeted and effective, steering your sales team clear from pipedreams and toward the promise of tangible, achievable sales.

Do you have a sales pipeline or a sales pipedream?

Do your salespeople understand the difference between buying signals and put-offs?

Do your sales leaders understand how to coach salespeople and help them move sales through their pipeline?

We suggest every sales team conduct a pipeline audit immediately. In this uncertain and volatile economic time, sales teams must know the sales they can count on in their pipelines and the new sales they will need by year-end to achieve the goal. We must avoid discovering mis November; we have a pipedream and not a pipeline. Teams must adapt now. Adapting often includes sales training in skills like discovery, qualifying opportunities and handling objections.

Let’s schedule a call if you would value help to audit your sales pipeline or to improve your sales teams’ effectiveness.

If you just discovered a shortfall in your sales plan and need to adjust your plan, we can help.

Driving Explosive Growth: Harnessing Customer Insights for Explosive Profits

Developing a strategy without customer insights is malpractice. In today’s competitive business landscape, having a deep understanding of your customers is the foundation for sustained growth and success. With a clear comprehension of customer behaviors, needs, criteria, and expectations, businesses can better tailor their offerings and strategies, satisfy customers, and drive profits. Think about how much your business has changed since the pandemic. We must clearly understand how our customer’s businesses have changed too and help them solve the challenges and problems they face today. This article delves into the nuances of conducting effective customer research, the limitations of relying solely on surveys, the potential of Voice of Customer (VoC) interviews, and the art of transforming these insights into actionable, growth-driving strategies.

The Limitations of “Surveys Slapping” Your Customers

One frequent approach in customer research is the widespread use of surveys, or, as critics argue, “survey slapping.” The term refers to the propensity of businesses to flood their customers with an avalanche of surveys to gather as much data as possible. This method, however, has severe limitations. Surveys tend to confirm and validate existing assumptions and hypotheses by their design rather than unveil new, transformative insights. They’re akin to a rear-view mirror, reflecting what you already know, instead of a telescope, that allows you to explore the unknown and anticipate the future. Another challenge is the response rate ( often meager) and how much thought went into quickly completing a survey compared to having a phone interview.

The Essentials of a Good Survey

To be fair, surveys are not entirely devoid of value. If designed appropriately, they can offer valuable quantitative data. The key is to start with a clear objective and a defined target audience. Questions should resonate with this audience and be simple, clear, and straightforward. A survey that feels like a taxing exam or a winding maze can lead to early dropouts or distorted responses. Just to remind you, the goal is to make the process smooth and unintrusive for the respondent.

The Power of Voice of Customer Interviews

As I share in my popular eBook on leveraging the voice of customer interviews, Voice of Customer (VoC) interviews are a treasure trove of insights waiting to be discovered. They delve deeper into customer perspectives, unlike surveys which often scratch only the surface. Let’s explore the immense potential and the best practices of VoC interviews.

What Is Voice of Customer Interviews?

VoC interviews refer to the process of engaging customers in one-on-one conversations to gain an understanding of their experiences, needs, preferences, and pain points. These interactions could occur in person, over the phone, or through video conferencing. They allow businesses to move beyond the typical yes-or-no responses of a survey and explore the ‘why’ behind customer behavior. This article will share the insights you will gain and how to leverage these insights to drive explosive growth.

Project Kick-off

The question design stage in our process is so critical. We design open-ended questions that enable the interviewees to share their thoughts and expand deeper on key topics. We also want the results to be statically significant. Some of the questions we will ask your team include: How many active customers do you have? How many unique product or service divisions do you have? How many inactive clients do you have? How many contacts do you have with each customer? Once we have your data, we will share the number of interviews we need to complete to make our results statically significant.

Benefits of Interviewing Customers

VoC interviews provide several advantages that other research methods may lack:

Depth of Information

Interviewing customers provides a depth of information that is hard to match. These conversations can reveal why customers make certain choices, underlying motivations, and emotional responses – aspects often missed by other research methods.

Flexibility

An interview is an interactive conversation, allowing the interviewer to ask follow-up questions based on the customer’s responses. This level of flexibility enables businesses to probe deeper into issues or ask for clarifications, leading to more valuable insights.

Discover Unexpected Insights

Surveys and other research tools often require knowing what you’re looking for. VoC interviews, on the other hand, are open-ended and can uncover unexpected insights that can prove pivotal for your business. In one case, we interviewed the customers of one of our metal manufacture and assembly companies. In the interview, one of their top three customers shared they were not happy the salesperson did not quote a recent RFQ. We asked more questions about the work, and the job was well within our client’s capabilities. We wondered if it would be ok if the CEO called her back, and she agreed. That short call turned into a $600,000 order. The salesperson was correct. They had never done a job like this, but the salesperson needed help understanding that the customers’ needs were well within the manufacturer’s capabilities.

Discover Key Customers Preparing to Defect

When we design our questions to gather the insights your leadership team needs, we also weave in customer satisfaction and net promotor score questions. We often are provided a list of customers by sales declining so we can deliver insights by key tiers of customers, A, B, and C accounts. We were helping a vast machine shop in one project and discovered that one of their top 3 customers was preparing to defect. In the interview, the decision maker shared their concerns and that they have already started moving a sizeable chunk of business to another machine shop. Our team is trained to communicate quickly with clients when we hear something like this. To the credit of the CEO and VP of sales, they contacted the account, flew to their location within 48 hours, and worked out the client’s issues. Not only did they save the business, they were introduced to another company’s division, and the machine shop’s volume with this client grew by over 40%. The time to save unhappy customers is before they defect.

Discover The Language of the Customer

Each call is recorded and transcribed unless the customer is in a region where this is not permissible. We capture the words and phrases customers use and how they describe problems. Often the language the client uses and searches for differs from the language manufacturers and service providers operate. One client had an innovative technology that mitigated odors in the air in industrial applications like wastewater treatment plants, breweries, and several odors-producing farming applications. As we interviewed clients in industrial processing and wastewater, the customers kept using “nuisance odor.” This was not a term on our websites, ad words, or campaigns. We added nuisance odors to our website, wrote blogs about mitigating nuisance odors, and web traffic increased significantly in 60 days. That minor change helped a large wastewater odor mitigation project in the Netherlands find our company, which became the largest installation to date.

Discover New Problems That Turn into Successful New Products

Markets and customers change all the time. When we conduct voice-of-customer interviews, we are listening for unresolved problems. When one of our trained interviewers discovers an unresolved issue, we capture as much detail as possible about the problem and the requirements of a product to solve this problem. We share the information with product management and marketing when we discover unmet needs and requirements. These insights often turn into successful new products and services.

Discover New Markets for Existing Products

Our team contacts and interviews your clients. We often find new clients in new markets using a current product in new ways. We focus on speaking with end-users and clearly understand their use case. We often discover new markets that value our existing products and services.

Discover Needed Process Improvements and Training Needs

Our questions on customer satisfaction often result in lengthy discussions we did not anticipate when a customer is unhappy. Rarely is the product or price concern, but the main issues are how the customer was served and the skill level of the person doing them. Voice of customer research provides excellent insights into dated and broken processes and much-needed product and skills training.

Discover Why You Did Not Win a Large Order

As a separate service, we provide loss mitigation and win-loss analysis. However, why customers buy and why they don’t often bubbles to the surface when we speak with them. The CRM entry read: “Customer went with cheaper alternative product from our competitor.” However, when we interviewed the decisionmaker, we learned price was third on why they did not buy from my client. The main reason they did not believe was they felt my client’s salesperson did not clearly understand the problem and therefore did not trust the solution they recommended. Second, the salesperson took over ten days to send the quote when the competitor provided a quote the next day.

In another project, we called the largest customer for our client. They sent many tasks to our client to quote, but their close rate was under 20%. Our client’s CEO wanted to know how to increase their close rate to 50% or more. What we discovered were two insights. First, the client said no cleaning certification documents were provided in the quotes. Second, my client’s competitors were quoting in 48 hours, and my client’s average quote turnaround was 15 days. The shame was my client was cleaning the parts before shipment but was unaware of a needed document in the quote. When my client provided the documents and quotes in 24 hours, their close rate jumped to over 60%

Discover Your Share of Wallet at Large Key Accounts

One question CEOs and business owners often want to ask is our share of the buyer’s wallet. In other words, do we have over 70% of the volume in a particular category or 10%? When we ask salespeople, we often hear we spend most of the dollars on a specific product category. However, when we interview your large clients, the number typically is between 20% and 35%. Just imagine how your sales and marketing strategy might change if you thought you had a 60% share of wallets but discovered after the voice of customer research you had 23%.

Best Practices for Conducting Voice of Customer Interviews

While the benefits of VoC interviews are evident, their effectiveness depends on your approach. Here are some best practices to consider:

Prepare but be Open

Before the interview, prepare a guide or a list of topics to cover. However, remain flexible during the interview to explore exciting points brought up by the customer.

Use Open-Ended Questions

Open-ended questions allow customers to express their thoughts freely rather than restricting them to predefined options.

Create a Comfortable Environment

Encourage honest feedback by assuring customers that their responses will be used to improve their experience and that there are no right or wrong answers.

Listen Actively

Pay close attention to the customer’s words, as well as their tone and non-verbal cues. Try to understand their emotions and the reasons behind their feedback.

Do Not Have Sales Conduct Voc Interviews

Salespeople should be selling. Your salesperson is the worst person to conduct Voc interviews. First, they have a relationship with the customer, and the customer may be less than 100% truthful for fear of damaging the relationship. Second is bias; the salesperson has preconceived notions about the customer and their business and will detract from gaining insights. Third, if there are issues with the salesperson’s skills or service level impacting customer satisfaction, will the salesperson report them to you? And last, salespeople sell. If a salesperson conducts Voc work and hears a problem, they jump into sales mode. Once this occurs, the customer being interviewed feels this is some trick and stops sharing the insights you are hungry for.

Gather All Data and Determine Five to Ten Key Actionable Insights.

Although the interviews often have unique conversations, we must answer the key questions our clients want and need to build their strategy. After completing the interviews, we compile all the data and look for five to ten actionable insights. We develop an executive brief and share what we learned and the actionable insights discovered. We collaborate with our clients, provide recommendations based on the data, and help them develop an action plan. Our plan reviews the understanding, what we plan to do, who will do it, and when.

Act on the Insights Discovered

You just invested with our team to interview and understand your current customers’ level of satisfaction and your net promotor score, and we gathered answers to the questions you wanted to improve your strategic plans. Now we must act on those insights. Often, we prepare a customer-facing document for our clients, thanking them, sharing what we learned, and sharing our plans to work on the information we shared. This process will deliver the ROI that many of our clients experience of 10X to 50X their investment. We provide consulting and coaching to help the action plans have key thrusts with smart goals and often train and coach the team members executing them.

Understanding and Improving Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction measures how well a product or service experience meets or exceeds customer expectations. One of the most widely used metrics for gauging this is the Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS measures the willingness of customers to recommend a company’s products or services to others.

A critical determinant of NPS is the overall customer experience, so businesses must enhance the quality of their offerings, the efficiency of their customer service, and the entirety of the customer journey. One of the leading influencers of your NPS score is your company culture, as I shared in my book: Driving Explosive Growth.

Strategies to boost customer satisfaction and NPS can include:

  • Soliciting and acting upon customer feedback.
  • Training customer service personnel to be empathetic and responsive.
  • Continuously evaluating and refining products and services.
  • Training sales to take a consultative solution based sales approach.

If we find a meager score, we assess the all-team members who are customer-facing and then deliver training to improve their skills. This ensures the customers receive the best overall service experience possible.

Adapting to Customer Evolution and Future Challenges

Businesses are not static entities—they evolve, pivot, and adapt. The same is true for their customers. Businesses must understand their “share of wallet”—the proportion of a customer’s total spending captured by a particular business, as discussed above. Once we have this data, we develop key account growth plans to capture a more significant share of purchase dollars.

In this era of rapid change and uncertainty, businesses must also be adept at identifying and addressing new customer challenges. This requires staying updated on market trends, technological advancements, and consumer behavior and preferences shifts. Several of our clients ask we conduct Voc interviews many times yearly to compare the results and identify trends.

Transforming Insights into Growth Strategies

Developing your strategy to grow your business without customer insights is malpractice. You need current customer feedback to take an inward-facing approach to strategy development. Our strategic plan will only suit your teams’ existing customer and market knowledge. Teams often share their “gut and intuition,” not customer-specific data. Customer insights can be a potent fuel for growth, provided they are translated into actionable strategies. Businesses should analyze their customer research findings to identify growth opportunities. This might involve launching new products or services, revamping customer service strategies, training customer-facing teams, or changing marketing tactics.

Successfully implemented, these strategies can result in substantial growth in revenue and profits. However, this necessitates a willingness to truly listen to your customers, adapt to their changing needs, and occasionally take calculated risks.

Conclusion

In conclusion, effective customer research is far from a mere administrative chore. It is a fundamental pillar that underpins a successful growth strategy. By understanding customers better and allowing these insights to shape their strategies, businesses can enhance customer satisfaction, navigate market changes, and achieve remarkable profit growth.

Start harnessing the power of customer insights today, and let your business ride the wave of growth tomorrow.

Let’s go ahead and schedule a to discuss gathering customer insights from your current customers and how to reengage with inactive customers to drive explosive growth in revenue, profits, and shareholder value.

AI Revolution: Where does AI leave the role of the salesperson

I recently delivered a presentation at a Private Equity firm’s conference for its portfolio companies, and one topic everyone wanted to discuss was Sales and AI. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a game-changer across various industries, modifying established processes, fostering efficiency, and spearheading innovation. AI’s imprint is progressively prominent within the sales landscape, redefining conventional sales models and methods. Is AI used in common sales activities the silver bullet some teams think, or is it another tool to improve sales effectiveness?

Understanding AI and Gen AI

Before diving deeper into AI’s role in sales, it is essential to differentiate between AI and General AI (Gen AI). The AI that permeates our lives and businesses today is specialized or narrow. It is designed to perform specific tasks, such as providing customer support via chatbots or predicting sales trends using complex algorithms. I recently spoke with someone who described AI as a junior assistant or college intern that can perform many tasks and gather and review large amounts of information for you to turn into actionable insights.

On the other hand, Gen AI, also known as Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), is a theoretical concept that currently needs to be fully realized. It refers to highly autonomous systems capable of outperforming humans in most economically valuable work, not limited to specific tasks but adaptable across a broad range of activities. While our current focus is narrow AI, the potential emergence of Gen AI carries profound implications for the future of sales and numerous other sectors, much like a trained virtual assistant identifying your ideal prospects, contacting them, and booking meetings for you. It can also answer common questions you train it to answer. For sales managers, it will review your data and make suggested next steps with your salespeople and customers.

Sales and AI: A Symbiotic Evolution

On average, salespeople spend less than 20% of their sellable time selling today. AI will take sales activities and tasks to improve sales effectiveness, opening up more selling time for salespeople. Sales teams are increasingly adopting AI to streamline their operations and drive growth. For instance, an AI tool could automate repetitive tasks like sending follow-up emails to potential clients. This automation allows sales representatives to focus their efforts on strategic tasks that add more value.

In addition, AI algorithms can sift through vast amounts of past sales data to identify patterns and predict future trends. With such predictive capabilities, sales teams can proactively strategize, prepare, and position themselves advantageously.

As I shared at the recent conference, we do not want salespeople being librarians looking through mountains of data we want them to sell. Ai tools can review your ERP transaction data and deliver actionable insights and specific task recommendations for each salesperson, customer, and prospective customer.

Outcomes and Benefits of AI in Sales

AI’s increasing role in sales opens up new horizons for business operations and customer engagement. It’s an exciting time for sales teams, as AI brings multiple benefits ranging from increased efficiency and precision to the ability to predict customer behaviors.

  1. Efficiency Enhancement

One of the most significant benefits of AI in sales is its remarkable efficiency enhancement. AI-powered tools can perform manual and repetitive tasks, like sending follow-up emails, data entry, and lead generation, much faster and more accurately than human counterparts.

The often-quoted statistic is that the average salesperson only spends 20% of their time selling, and these mundane tasks consume the rest of their time. AI takes over these activities, freeing salespeople to focus on what they do best, engaging in customer conversations and closing deals.

  1. Smarter Customer Targeting

Moreover, AI in sales leads to smarter customer targeting. AI’s advanced predictive analytics capabilities can examine past sales patterns, customers’ online behavior, and other factors to pinpoint potential leads. Armed with these insights, sales teams can then focus their efforts on high-probability prospects, reducing wasted time on unlikely leads and improving overall conversion rates.

Some tools offer a predictive receptivity score based on each prospect’s profile, online activity, and comments made on social platforms. This tool lists hundreds of ideal prospects and ranks them based on a receptivity score to your message helping sales teams spend more time with prospects who likely want and need to engage.

  1. Personalized Customer Experience

Beyond mere efficiency, AI can help create a more personalized customer experience. By processing massive amounts of data, AI can generate comprehensive insights into customer behaviors, preferences, and needs, allowing sales representatives to tailor their approach to each customer. A sales pitch that resonates with the customer’s unique needs and interests will likely be more engaging and successful.

Some AI sales tools also predict the contact’s personality based on the person’s online profile, how they interact online, and the word choice and tone they consistently use. Is your prospect a high D, driven wanting bullet points, or a High I wanting a much longer conversation? Or is your ideal prospect a High S or C, and you will need to lead with data? AI can deliver insights resulting in more time selling and improved sales effectiveness.

  1. Cost Reductions

Furthermore, implementing AI in sales can lead to significant cost reductions. Automation means less time spent on each task, lowering labor costs. Enhanced decision-making, facilitated by AI’s ability to process and analyze vast amounts of data, can also decrease costs associated with human error.

To sum up, the integration of AI in sales processes delivers a host of tangible benefits. It makes operations more efficient, improves the targeting of leads, enables a more personalized customer experience, and ultimately reduces costs. Adopting AI in sales is more than just a trend—it’s an impactful shift towards smarter, more efficient sales processes.

What are some of the current AI Sales Platforms?

Clari: Provides AI-driven insights for sales forecasting, pipeline management, and deal execution. It helps answer the question: Are you leaving revenue on the table?

Chorus: Offers conversation analytics to help sales teams understand customer interactions and improve call quality. It helps salespeople make every conversation count.

Insidesales.com Utilizes AI for predictive analytics to prioritize leads.

People.ai : uses AI to capture and analyze sales activities.

Spiro: AI-powered CRM that helps salespeople activity tracking lead management and opportunity prioritization. They focus on manufacturers.

Gong.io: turn customer conversations into strategic insights. Helps sales teams improve customer communication and deal strategies.

Seismic: AI-empowered content management and sales enablement solutions delivering relevant content to prospects.

 X.ai: Focused on understanding the universe. Watch for more updates.

Outreach.ia: Sales Engagement and revenue intelligence.

Salesforce Einstein: Gen AI for CRM, insights, recommendations, and automation for sales processes and motions.

The above are just a few new AI tools, and many more are being launched daily to improve sales effectiveness and ultimately increase revenue at higher margins.

I remember when CRMs were introduced into the market, and they were to be the sales silver bullet. However, many teams do not have CRMs today, and for those that do, very few use them to their full potential. So why will AI and sales be any different?

Potential Risks and Considerations with AI

Despite the extensive benefits, AI integration in sales is not risk-free. Overreliance on technology can expose sales teams to vulnerabilities during tech failures or cyber-attacks. Additionally, data privacy is a critical concern. As AI systems manage massive amounts of data, there’s a heightened risk of data breaches or misuse of customer information.

To mitigate these risks, sales teams should implement robust data security measures. A balanced approach to AI adoption, where human involvement remains central to the process, can help prevent overdependence on technology.

I suggest a human still review the information and content accuracy to avoid AI Hallucination. AI Hallucination is when the AI tool provides false information or information that does not apply.

We can also foresee intellectual property concerns and possible litigation. There are AI tools today to check your content to ensure it has not been plagiarised and this tool can even change your content to different adult reading levels.

Best Practices in Integrating AI into Sales

Some practices can significantly improve the chances of success when adopting AI in sales. Importantly, regularly updating and training AI systems with new data helps to enhance their accuracy and effectiveness. These systems improve with each new piece of information, learning from data and progressively refining their operations.

Sales teams must also strive to balance AI and human interactions. As I shared in my new book: Driving Explosive Growth: A No Smoke and Mirrors Approach to Profitably Growing Your Business https://a.co/d/0BNNFGZ, human-to-human sales skills will become a key differentiator in the future. While AI can handle automation and provide valuable insights, the human touch remains critical for building relationships and managing complex or sensitive client interactions.

However, sales teams should only rely on AI for some decision-making. Despite AI’s predictive capabilities, it cannot fully account for all variables or replace human intuition. Ethical considerations and adherence to data privacy laws are also non-negotiables, as any breaches can lead to legal issues and irreparable damage to a company’s reputation.

Future Role of Salespersons in an AI-Dominant Environment

Just as 79% of top-producing salespeople use social selling today, and I anticipate the data will show in the future, over 80% of top-producing salespeople will leverage AI sales tools in some capacity. With AI becoming deeply entrenched in sales, the salesperson’s role is evolving. Instead of just disseminating information, salespersons are morphing into trusted advisors, providing counsel to their clients based on comprehensive insights drawn from AI-powered tools.

In the future, successful salespersons will need to augment their skills. They must be capable of interpreting and applying AI-generated insights, necessitating a higher degree of data literacy. Soft skills such as empathy, effective communication, building business relationships, and active listening will become even more crucial, as these are areas where AI cannot replace human interaction.

In conclusion, while AI is set to become an indispensable part of sales, it does not eliminate the need for skilled salespersons. Instead, it provides powerful tools that, when used effectively, can significantly enhance sales performance. To thrive in this evolving landscape, sales teams must strategically embrace AI, comprehend its implications, and adapt their skills and approaches accordingly.

Top-performing salespeople will have strong sales skills in creative problem solving, situational awareness, asking great questions, active listing, empathy, business acumen, and the ability to design and deliver a business case.

Do Your Salespeople Have the Right Skills, Beliefs, and Motivations Today to Thrive in an AI-Dominant Environment?

If you would like to understand the level of your sales team’s skills today and the skills they will need to improve as AI generates more conversations that could lead to revenue, let’s schedule a call. AI may make more conversations, but the salespeople must have the selling skills to create conversations that lead to revenue.

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