August 2021

30
Aug
Sales
3 ways to end your sales day on a high note

Ending your sales day earlier and still being more productive feels so good. To end the day on a higher note we would have to start the day on a higher note.

To do that you must first know your objective and be ready to achieve it to end your day with a great sales presentation. 

Here are some questions you need to ask yourself: How much time is left for the close? Send a survey to your whole team asking the following questions: – What is your closing time? – What time are you most likely to procrastinate in the closing? – What sales cycle time is your ideal? – How can you measure your average closing time?

These questions will help you plan the process and the desired result. Once you have these answers, draft the closing message, and implement the process. If you follow strict guidelines, then you are in control.

Here are three ways to end your sales day on a high note:

1. Reflect on your meetings on how you did and what could have been better

Once the meeting is done reflect on the positives and negatives of that particular meeting. Summarize what you’ve learned and what happened during the meeting. Clarify your priorities.

Decide on the next steps, if there are any, who’s responsible for them, and by when, and follow through on whatever you promised you to do, including an email summary from your CRM so the conversation and all decisions are well documented.

Make the meeting discussions stay timely and on track, and get to know the positives and negatives of each sales representative present during the meet

Ask everyone to share what they’ve learned and what could have been better. These experiences can be shared, encouraging the sales team to write down their observations. 

With all these details being shared, it would be better for the company and sales executive to act upon it.

2. Analyse your customer’s intent and feedback for all calls you had

It’s quite important to analyze your customers’ intent and feedback, not only for yourself but also for the company’s growth. However, a recent study by Hubspot found that 42% of companies don’t survey their customers or collect feedback.

Why is customer feedback so important?

Customer feedback is quite necessary for future product development, improving the customer experience and also customer satisfaction levels. The proper analysis provides a company with a better view of what it has to change and improve on to help increase customer loyalty and reduce customer support cases.

Customer feedback is quite important & beneficial for most of the people in the company like product managers, analysts, marketers, customer service teams & pretty much anybody in your organization. 

Once we are familiar with the customer feedback the company and the team need to analyze it and work towards it

3. Track your monthly sales targets

Your sales targets set your direction & roadmap towards your goals. Having a quick look at where you are on those milestones at the end of the day will ensure you are taking the right steps for tomorrow.

Firstly, it is important to have your sales targets and their accurate as-on-date actual figures readily available to you. Most of the CRMs have sales funnel which helps you track this in real-time, but to ensure this happens, make sure you and your team are capturing the data on CRMs after every sales meeting. If you are not using a CRM, having a clean excel sheet with your targets & actuals will also make your tracking very easy.

Secondly, you need to look at the data & analyze it from the perspective of what’s going right and where are areas to improve upon. Breaking your targets into logical buckets by either customer type, regions, etc will help you further know which buckets are doing well and where you need to focus more.

Lastly, make sure you are sharing some of the important notes from your analysis with your teams as well, this will create an efficient look of collaboration where thoughts & ideas on solving some of the issues or improving conversions will generate very organically.

Conclusion

Every day is different. That’s why every sales professional needs to have different closing techniques at their disposal. Your style of closing will determine your success as a sales professional. Good luck with your today’s sales meetings, do end your day on a high!

by Saanya George


20
Aug
Sales  ·  Virtual sales
3 Engaging Ways to Start Your Virtual Selling Conversation

In recent months most industries around the globe have experienced a rapid shift toward virtual selling conversion. This major change has happened due to the global pandemic.

Salespeople who were selling in person just a few months ago are now steeped in a different world, the virtual world. Salespeople find virtual selling less interactive and complain that it’s harder to build relationships when you are not meeting face-to-face. This shows in the Korn Ferry Buyer Preferences Study 2021 as well where only 33% of buyers agree that sales professionals are effective at selling in a virtual environment.

The reason for this dissatisfaction in buyers is definitely understood by sales professionals. They have been proudly doing their sales meetings physically. And converting deals after deals are left to the limitations of the virtual world to make the same thing happen. However this can & will change very rapidly, sales professionals are experts at learning new ways. It is just a matter of time before they will know the tricks of the trade for the virtual world as well.

Starting the Virtual Selling Conversation

A structured approach to this learning curve is to break down the sales conversation. And look at mastering each individual part. The starting of the virtual conversation plays the most important part here. This is where the foundation of your relationship with the buyer gets laid. Let’s look at these 3 ways to make sure this foundation is the strongest it can be.

1. Be more empathetic, especially during these trying times

The same Korn Ferry report also finds out that only 27% of buyers fully agree that salespeople are effective at communicating empathy during virtual presentations and only 36% fully agree that salespeople have been initiating engagement in an empathetic manner with them during Covid.

This needs to be addressed first as this can make the relationship foundation fall apart even before it is built. Most people are stressed and drained out with personal, professional & financial challenges. And there is a lot running on everyone’s mind on the uncertainty around these. Hence, one has to be very cognizant of the fact that people even if they may not say have a shorter attention span today.

We as sales professionals need to appreciate and be empathetic towards this. Make sure that our starting of the conversation with the buyer ensures that this is the best convenient time to talk to them. Asking questions about their own & their family’s health, talking about pandemic effects on their industry. And even letting them know some of the challenges you faced during the pandemic will help you connect with them more deeply. More importantly, be conscious of anything that you feel is more important for the buyer at this time. If so make sure you ask them if they want you to reschedule the meeting or have a shorter one.

Another small thing, that should be better called out is how much they are comfortable talking over a video call considering the situation at their home or even in case of their internet connectivity issues. Do ask them about their comfort with the video call or otherwise switch to another convenient mode.

2. Know your buyer much more than you ever did even before you start the conversation

Another important element in building the relationship foundation, especially in virtual conversation is to be more aware of your counterpart, their profiles, their interests, their belief systems, and their thought process.

Spending time finding out some of these aspects about your buyer will not only give you a great start to the conversation by making it completely personalized and breaking the ice with them faster but also make sure that you use these very effectively while presenting your product pitch.

Spending time knowing more about their company in a B2B sales conversation, the latest company results and news will help you understand their current challenges and future plans, so that you can structure your objective and focus of the product pitch around these aspects.

With ready access to information and social media, finding some of these is also just a click away. So, this is a must step which is added to your checklist while preparing for the conversation.

3. Ask more questions & listen more at the start of the conversation

The third important aspect in starting a virtual selling conversation is to make sure that you facilitate the buyer in a discussion and listen attentively to every nuance when they speak. This further helps you be more empathetic & understand the buyer’s current challenges and help you align your product pitch accordingly.

Preparing a list of questions that can help you get some critical input from the buyers. It will be of great help to achieve this. If you already have their profiles & interests noted, use those to carve out sharp questions to make this more effective. You can further use some recent trends data related to their business. You can also have some other educative material to facilitate a more focused conversation.

Listen extremely carefully when they are responding. And pay attention to the words your buyer uses, and the way they say them. And the way the conversation flows & understand the need and expectations of the prospect for you to mold your further conversations accordingly.

Final Thoughts

Selling virtually isn’t going away. Even when the world gets back to normal, most companies will start to realize that traveling to ascertain prospects is inefficient. And far less productive than performing a virtual sales process. The more success you get selling this manner, the more it’s gonna benefit the company shortly. Starting the conversation well makes sure that you are 90% already there. S,o ensure that the relationship foundation is well laid. Good luck and all the best with all your future virtual selling conversation.

by Saanya George


13
Aug
Sales
3 reasons your client might be turning their video off

In recent months most industries have experienced a rapid shift towards virtual selling. This major change has happened due to the global pandemic. While watching selling is creating new opportunities for the sales team, it also creates unexpected hurdles for sellers unprepared to effectively connect with clients in a virtual setting. Let’s discuss 3 reasons your client might be turning their video off.

According to the LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2021, almost two-thirds (65%) of sellers say they “always” put the buyer first. However, only 23% of buyers agree that sellers “always” put the buyer first. Sellers know they should be putting the buyer first, but the LinkedIn survey data indicate that their sales organizations are a barrier to implementing buyer-first behaviors.

Here are 3 reasons your buyers see this gap and might be getting disengaged in the virtual sales conversation.

1. Unable to build a rapport

If you want to be a successful salesperson you need to get comfortable with the client and be able to build a personal connection. However, when it comes to virtual selling, many salespeople fail or find it difficult to build a rapport with their clients.

This makes them lose deals which directly or indirectly affects their own growth and revenue of the company. It is observed that people want to buy from those, whom they know, like and trust hence building rapport is essential for sales success.

So how do you build rapport with potential clients?

Listen Salespeople are great talkers, the moment you make them realize that you listening it makes them feel important Being Authentic People do business with people they like, no matter how well AI mimics human speech, there is nothing like the real things

Creating Shared Experiences The secret to building rapport is creating shared experiences, whether it is defining the prospect’s problem or identifying a solution, working together brings people closer.

2. Background noises and alerts

Virtual selling is practically due to every sales executive and most of the meetings are ruined by distracting background noise. Quite important to manage those noises or suppress them as much as possible.

This will lead to more attention on the agenda and objective all the time before and during the meeting.

So how could we avoid the noises and alerts? Make sure you use a pair of personal headphones with a built-in microphone or you can even try using noise-canceling mics. Secondly, the audio during online calls works best when one person speaks at a time. If it is not your turn to speak/talk, mute your audio, this will help cut down the background noise and improve the quality of the call. Third, make sure you turn off the dings, buzzes, and reminder alerts on all the devices before the meeting starts, these create the biggest dissonance in the conversation.

3. Lack of preparation and research

When you sit down to interact with a buyer/ client, you have to know you have their attention. So, you need to prepare for that moment. Provide them with the correct context for the conversation. Highlight the most valuable piece of information you can convey in the first meeting.

Prepare questions to ask that can bring you closer to them. What are they looking to accomplish? Where are they in the buying process? What are their pain points? How do you solve their problems? So how could we avoid this? Send the first email after you have prepared the right questions to ask and set expectations for the call, this will ensure your conversation is engaging & productive.

Conclusion

Virtual selling is normalizing fast as new business conditions demand continuity despite restrictions to in-person communication. Sales professionals who are prepared for this new model of selling will succeed and perhaps even win increasingly valuable market share.

But virtual selling takes a lot more than marketing, sales, and word of mouth. You need to make sure that the buyer experience in virtual selling conversation is as “wow” as the marketing, sales, and review of the business.

by Saanya George