More and more purchasing decisions are happening inside the dark funnel—parts of the buyer’s journey that are invisible to sales and marketing teams. According to Gartner, marketers lack visibility into at least 50% of the buying journey, making growth opportunities harder to influence. And, when B2B buyers are considering a purchase, they spend less than a fifth (17%) of their time meeting with potential suppliers. 

The rise of the dark funnel means more sales processes are happening outside of a sales team’s control and that’s something many of us will balk at. Take software sales for example, more buyers than ever are conducting their research online before they even visit a provider’s website. Online reputation across review sites, social media platforms, discussion forums and events has become crucial in purchasing decisions. 

In this article, I explain more about the dark funnel and provide ideas on how you and your sales team can leverage this trend rather than succumb to its challenges.  

First, let’s talk more about the dark funnel

The dark funnel is a hidden space where prospects explore options, seek advice, and gather info through online research, reviews, social media, and more. Despite being hard to track and influence, the dark funnel is crucial in the rise of self-service culture and buyers wanting control. 

For sales teams, the challenge lies in identifying and understanding these invisible touchpoints, as well as finding ways to influence them positively. 

Now, we can dive deeper into how the sales landscape is changing

Self-service is transforming the way sales teams approach customer engagement. B2B buyers are taking matters into their own hands – research and shortlists are often compiled with little or no vendor interaction. 

Thanks to online retail, the B2C buying journey has evolved to the point where individuals shop around for the best prices,  meaning marketing and advertising channels need to work even harder for attention.  

For both groups, the dark funnel is appealing as buyers can avoid a hard sell and craft a buying journey on their terms. 

Traditional attribution metrics like email open rates and social media clicks are not as useful or significant as they once were. Customers are looking for products and services in places that sales teams often cannot influence – within the dark funnel. 

Using the dark funnel to support the sales cycle

For all its mystery, the dark funnel is not the enemy. Far from it. The propensity for buyers to self-serve means sales cycles can be shorter. This makes the dark funnel a positive support for the sales cycle. 

But that doesn’t mean that sales teams should sit back and let the dark funnel do the work. The onus is on businesses to get their content in front of their audience via the right channel. Podcasts, webinars and LinkedIn forums are all valuable tools of influence for today’s buyers and where content needs to be pushed. 

Companies must work hard to remain visible so sales teams can act when customers emerge from the dark funnel. 

The moment a customer emerges, sales reps can help buyers complete their purchase and feel confident in their decision. Sales teams stand out when they can provide additional insights and value that buyers can’t find on social media or in discussion forums.  

Tips for building influence inside the dark funnel

Sales teams may no longer make the first move but they need to make a good first impression. Since first impressions are made well before any interaction, sales leaders need to be prepared to build influence inside the dark funnel.  

The following strategies can support sales leaders in their efforts: 

• Invest in content marketing and thought leadership to attract potential customers during their pre-purchase research phase. Content such as blogs, whitepapers, videos, and webinars can help build credibility and trust. 
• Optimise SEO and online visibility and create content that answers common queries customers have during the research phase
• Use social media and influencer marketing to engage with prospects on platforms where they are active. Sales leaders who don’t post regularly on LinkedIn are missing out on great opportunities. 
• Consider retargeting and remarketing tactics to reach out to prospects who have already visited your website or engaged with your content. 
• Deploy personalisation and account-based marketing to address the specific needs and pain points of individual prospects. 

With the right strategies, you can make a positive impact on potential customers during this hidden phase of the buyer’s journey. Leveraging the dark funnel correctly will help your organisation stand out and establish a strong foundation for future sales interactions. 

The post Shining a Light on the Dark Funnel: How It Can Empower Your Sales Strategy appeared first on Head Of Sales.

When it comes to the world of sales, GenAI is making a pronounced impact. Research by SugarCRM reveals 80% of sales and marketing leaders will use AI, including GenAI, to maximise the value of their CRM in the next five years. Complementing this, McKinsey research shows companies that do invest in AI are seeing a revenue uplift of 3 to 15% and a sales ROI uplift of 10 to 20% so far. 

The bottom line is, GenAI is here to stay and sales teams are poised to benefit from increased adoption. Used effectively, GenAI enables sales teams to do more of what they are meant to do – sell. 

Using GenAI can reduce administrative load, increase personalised selling, create optimised pricing, address customer concerns and lengthen lifecycles. 

Those that don’t work to integrate AI into their business operations will see themselves at a competitive disadvantage with reduced efficiencies and missed opportunities.  

So, how can you start integrating GenAI into your sales function?

Steps can be as simple as using GenAI to help write emails, input data and create proposals. More sophisticated use involves using GenAI alongside other systems like CRMs to pull and analyse data for tailored recommendations. 

Here are 5 ways you can use GenAI to improve selling. 

5 ways you can use GenAI to improve selling 

1. Take over administrative tasks

Your best sales reps usually have specific skills they hone in on whether it be amazing presentations, perfectly written emails, or an excellent phone manner. 

GenAI can help your entire sales team lift their game by helping create emails, proposals and pitch decks to the same high standard, every time. 

When it comes to phone calls, GenAI can help write scripts and create guidelines to discuss specific customer objections. 

Not sure where to start? Start small, use a tool like ChatGPT to finesse an email, or write the perfect opening for a proposal. 

More than this, GenAI integrated into your CRM can automate busywork like inputting customer data, creating manual tasks for other reps and organising meetings. 

Reducing administrative tasks will give your sellers more time to actively sell, a dream scenario for every sales leader. 

2. Deliver more personalised experiences  

GenAI can help deliver the personalisation needed to elevate customer service, and nurture leads to build the depth of relationship required to close deals. 

Reps can use data to create personalised and original content that resonates with each lead or segment. For example, you may have a segment of customers who prefer to short emails with specific information about one product use case.

A targeted approach boosts engagement and conversion rates. Conversation transcripts can also be analysed to identify opportunities the sales team may not have thought of or had time to consider.

3. Addressing customer queries

GenAI can help address customer queries in a number of ways. First, GenAI powered chatbots can interact with prospects right at the early stage of their journey. 

Reps can use GenAI-powered search functions from their CRM to offer fast responses to customer concerns from finding the perfect case study to send to answering a technical question. 

Once a customer converts, GenAI-powered helpdesks can help customers troubleshoot issues, sometimes proactively, to help reduce churn. 

4. Optimise competitive pricing

Price optimisation can be difficult for sales teams to get right. Many reps operate solely on instinct without the time or resources to back decisions with data. 

GenAI can help ensure prices are designed to drive sales and revenue. It can perform data analysis to identify customer patterns that affect the price point for a product or service. 

Fast competitor research that assesses market share, pricing strategy, and product positioning can also be conducted.

GenAI can pull data from around your business to create predictive analytics that forecast the effect of different pricing strategies on sales and revenues. Analysis of data from various sources can be used to adjust prices in real time based on market conditions and customer behaviors. 

5. Lengthening customer lifecycles

Across the funnel, GenAI is poised to help sales teams optimise their processes to drive productivity. It can identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks and suggest ways to address them. 

Beyond the initial sale, GenAI can help with ongoing relationships with customers. Customer data can be assessed to determine when and how to communicate with existing customers and which customers to approach regarding upsell opportunities. This is important since it tends to be easier to sell to existing customers than to bring in new ones. 

When it comes to closing, GenAI can identify the best negotiation strategies and approaches to improve the likelihood of a conversion. 

AI-driven sales strategies  

Technology-backed sales processes can help sellers be more proactive and less reactive. Using AI correctly can help sales teams reduce administrative load and use data to send more effective recommendations about products and services leading to higher ROI. 

If you’re interested in learning more about sales transformation download our whitepaper, CRO Update: AI and Digital Sales Transformation. 

The post What Does ChatGPT Mean For The World Of Sales? appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Two years ago, the management team at REA Group, Australia’s number one property platform, decided it was time to take a journey of powerful and purposeful digital transformation. The business was fast expanding into new markets, organically and by acquisition. Its legacy systems were not designed to cope with the increasing expectations of a market demanding seamless, real-time individualisation and meaningful, relevant connection.

To grow at pace but still be nimble enough to defend its position at the top, REA Group required the forward vision, insight and trend-spotting capabilities offered by data analytics.

REA Group brought on board a Salesforce suite to make its data-driven vision a reality. Vitally, this united data front allowed for the formation of a single point of truth for every customer, one that was available across the organisation, rather than being held in siloed departments and acquired businesses.

The REA Group journey to its digitally dominant position today as an organisation that changes the way the world experiences property – a company that refers to itself as “a leading global digital business specialising in property” – is a perfect case study for numerous data points that came out of the fourth edition of the State of Sales report.

Sales ops fuels organisational growth

For example, 89% of sales professionals said sales ops plays a critical role in growing the business. Clearly, sales ops played a lead role in REA Group’s development of a single point of truth for each customer.

“There’s a lot of work that the sales ops team has done in collaboration to create that single point of truth,” says Rodney House, REA Group’s Sales Adoption Lead: Customer Excellence. “That data is used to drive the business of the account managers within our business.”

“The biggest thing our Chief Sales Officer wants is for our sales team to see our customers more often but, when they do, for them to have a better-quality conversation. So actually, it’s about quality and quantity at once – he wants more shots on goal and more of those shots to go in.”

That’s not possible without a single point of data truth, Rodney says.

The sales professionals who go out and speak to the market, he explains, are the engine of the organisation. The Salesforce system, and the data and insights it provides, makes that engine run far more efficiently and much faster.

“We can see now in real time whether we are having more conversations quarter-on-quarter, as well as whether those conversations are driving value,” Rodney says. “Those are statistics that would never have been known around the organisation before.”

Sales ops is cross-functional and strategic

Similarly, 85% of sales people say sales ops is becoming increasingly strategic. In fact, within REA Group there is now a Chief Sales Officer, a role that simply didn’t exist two years ago.

“Two years ago, we were structured by market – residential, commercial, etc.,” says Smrithi Kamtikar, Senior Manager Product at REA Group. “Then we took the opportunity to move to a more functional structure, and that was when our Sales teams came together into one function.”

“Since then, from a platform perspective, we’ve been on a journey of dramatic simplification, with the end goal of putting in place the right experiences for our customers and ensuring our platform supports teams like Sales and Customer support who in turn support our customers..”

Another fact to come out of the State of Sales report was that high-performing sales teams were 2.3 times more likely than underperforming teams to increase the cross-functional nature of their work. In fact, 48% of sales ops teams surveyed have increased their involvement in cross-functional workstream management.

Within REA Group, most of our discussions tend to be cross-functional ones, Smrithi says. At quarterly planning sessions, she says, a multi-disciplinary team that includes sales discusses shared goals and common challenges, combining their wisdom, experience and knowledge to develop actions and solutions.

Those discussions, and so many more within the business, are made far easier where we have relevant and insightful data into our market and customer needs.

Data reveals the future

“From a macro point of view, we’re constantly reinvesting in our data to support good business decisions,” Smrithi says.

“We’re also doing it to make sure we can take the next big step forward, which is about becoming more predictive and proactive across all our customer channels – regardless of whether they are digital or face to face channels.”

“We don’t want to look backwards, we want to look forwards and have the ability to predict what our customers might want, and to identify gaps in the market, and to know which product or which approach best solves specific customer pain points.”

From a micro point of view, Rodney discusses the way a performance discussion might go between an account manager and their sales manager, with the insight provided by data.

“We’ve definitely moved to more data-led coaching,” he says. “We describe it as ‘less feels and more facts’. So rather than sitting down and saying, ‘I think I’m doing well’, they can now say, ‘I have made this amount of calls and off the back of that I can see that I have issues with this particular product, because I close the other product more often’.”

“Central to everything we’re doing right now is the driving of a coaching culture. Some people considered coaching as being a bit of a soft art. But actually, when you marry those two things together – the empathy of coaching and the hard facts of data – that’s when the real magic happens.”

Find out the latest sales trends and insights guiding sales professionals to recover and grow in the fourth edition of the State of Sales report.

More articles from Salesforce

How Fisher & Paykel Redefined Its Approach To Sales

Six Traits Of Great Sales Reps

It’s time for sales leaders to rethink how they lead

50 Pro Sales Tips eBook

The post How REA Group Built Its New Sales Strategy Around Data appeared first on Head Of Sales.

As somebody that has, over the last 3 years, seen in excess of 4000 applicants for the circa 350 jobs I’ve been assigned to recruit for though, I have to tell you, most salespeople seem to subscribe to taking the path of least resistance – the easy, or lazy, way out. And it speaks volumes as to their likely work ethic. They’re not very competitive in their efforts.

In exactly the same way as the business you currently, or, used to work for needs to cut through the noise and stand out in a market where buyers are increasingly more informed, as a candidate you need to do the same thing. Especially as a sales candidate! If you can’t or won’t go to the effort of distinguishing yourself to a future employer… well it kinda suggests that you can’t/won’t in the job either.

80% of roles get filled by organisations without needing to use a recruiter or advertise

When you’re in job-search mode, you need to think and act like a marketer – in order to get in front of your ‘prospect’ – and then act like a sales professional. (And here’s a hint… 80% of roles get filled by organisations without needing to use a recruiter or advertise their role. It’s called the ‘hidden job market’ and it’s one of those ‘somebody who knows somebody, who knows somebody’ kind of things. Which means having a good looking resume will only work for 20% of the opportunities out there).

So, what does marketing yourself look like?

Well, there’s this platform. Maybe you’ve heard of it? Called LinkedIn?

Let me digress. I’m sure you’ll be quite familiar with the Coca-Cola sign which sits in place of pride at the top of William Street, in Sydney. Right at the gateway to the equally as renowned Kings Cross? That sign has been there since the 1970s. It has seen various iterations from its original clapperboard version, to neon lighting, to LCD and now LED. Coca-Cola Amatil reportedly pay a six-figure sum to the City of Sydney to be able to display the sign.

So what?

The fact is, your LinkedIn profile has the capacity, if managed properly to act just like that famous Coca-Cola sign. This iconic billboard has tens of thousands of vehicles – and occupants, more importantly – driving past it every day. And hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. They are treated to a dose of ‘top of mind’ advertising as they drive or walk by. Your LinkedIn profile has the same, if not greater, potential. What do people – possible hiring decision-makers – see when they come across your ‘Coca-Cola’ sign? Something minimalist or fading like the 1970’s version of the sign? Or something compelling, that stands out and causes them to put the brakes on and investigate further?

Here are five practical tips you can do to both stand out and grab attention – and better market the value proposition you represent to potential employers.

1. Practical Tip #1– use a descriptive headline that positions what you are professionally, rather than your current job title. Eg.
   
   “I drive revenue growth in Cloud-Enabled Technology Solutions. Challenger sales black belt.”
   
   or
   
   “Prospector | Lead Generator | Opportunity Creator | Revenue Maximiser | In B2B Services”
   
   
2. Practical Tip #2 – the next place a hiring manager is most likely to look is at your ‘Experience’ section. What I see here, time and time again is the job title (which is OK) followed by either a beautiful promotion piece on the company you work/worked for, or, a list of your routine duties. Don’t do that…
   
   Instead, write about your accomplishments! Tell us what you’ve achieved! Things like % revenue growth; %market share gained; % of annual target achieved; sales awards; Consider describing your core attributes…
   
   ► High-energy and fearless — I do whatever it takes to deliver value to clients and partners
   ► Self-starter — I have a bias towards action, appreciate cut-through, and prefer a fast-paced, constantly changing work environment
   ► Natural leader — I pride myself on the ability to lead and motivate teams
   ► Self-motivated — I work with minimal supervision while achieving daily, weekly, and monthly goals
   ► Problem solver — I independently translate high-level goals into actionable plans
   ► 10+ years — business development experience (B2B), plus some enterprise sales experience
   
   
3. Practical Tip #3 – get to work on getting endorsed.
   
   If you have 500+ connections on LinkedIn and for your top 3 Skills you’ve only been endorsed by 15, or 27, or 44 people… that doesn’t really say what you want it to say about your skills, right? However, if I see “99+” against the top 3 then you continue to be of interest and worth potentially exploring/meeting.
   
   
4. Practical Tip #4 – if you can add to all of that a consistent level of posting of thought-provoking content; content which is insightful and valuable which clearly positions you as somebody who knows what they’re talking about in their field, that’s gold. Now I’m really interested to meet you. And if you don’t have time to do all that posting yourself, then at least be commenting on others’ content with consistency. As a hiring manager I can see that stuff on your profile. It sets you apart, believe me.
   
   
5. Practical Tip #5 – whether you’ve already applied via the usual channels (responding to an ad), or, whether you’re wanting to get yourself noticed by an employer that hasn’t advertised a role but you’d love to work there… connect with them on LinkedIn – but don’t just hit the ‘Connect’ button and pray. Hit ‘Connect’, add a note… and a link to a video you’ve shot, introducing yourself! (It doesn’t have to be up on YouTube – you can use a link from your personal Google Drive). In particular, add some insights on their business in your video. What are some trends you are seeing in their market right now that you can help them capitalise on?
   
   We use this to connect with potential candidates for jobs we are looking to fill and acceptance rates are as high as 66%, with individuals routinely commenting on how much they enjoyed the 3-minute video intro.

So, these are the fundamental things that you can manage and refine which will see you more effectively marketing yourself as somebody who is worthwhile considering. Remember, marketing don’t make the sale. But they do create the interest and that’s what you need to do first and foremost if you want to land that next ideal sales role.

If you need any advice as a candidate or as a hiring manager, please connect with me via LinkedIn.

The post 5 Ways Sales Candidates Can Stand Out From The Crowd appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Because it’s a donkey.

Sure, it kinda looks like a race horse. It eats what race horses eat. It dumps like a race horse dumps. And it may even be truly committed to being the best race horse it can possibly be. “No, honestly! Just give me a chance to show you what I’m capable of!” But it’s not going to happen. Because to do so will require it to behave in a manner which is at odds with who and what it really, naturally, is.

And in so many cases I have seen way too many businesses hire what they have convinced themselves is a race horse… only to find months later they hired a donkey.

Let’s take a look at sales managers…

In my Sales Managers Australia business we help mid-size, privately-owned businesses to recruit their first sales managers. And as with each of my recruitment brands we utilise a number of highly effective assessments to discern whether the people who apply for the role are made of ‘the right stuff’. We do that using behavioural science. And here’s what we’ve learned about those folks who have been seen, and go on to be seen, as highly effective sales leaders.

We use the Profiles Sales Assessment from Wiley, which measures the combination of a person’s cognitive ability, behavioural attributes and occupational interests. The tool enjoys one of the highest predictive reliability ratings in the world. The system takes the data from the assessments of these high-performers and identifies the common traits which are contributing to their success. It creates a benchmark to compare against.

Over the last 15 years I have assessed thousands of people in various ‘head of sales’ roles (defined in this instance as: any person with responsibility for delivering sales results through and with others). More recently we approached a good number of our mid-tier clients and, providing them with some definitions, asked them to indicate whether they felt their ‘head of sales’ was an effective sales leader. For those who were, we then invited that sales leader to sit the assessment again to verify the benchmark.

The results are interesting to contemplate.

And suggest ways for you to discern the race horse from the donkey…

As far as cognitive ability is concerned what we saw in the high-performers was a very high capacity for taking in, analysing, interpreting and correlating information and learning new things. Their ‘Learning Index’ is at a level only found in 5% – 40% of the population (so, the right hand side of the bell-curve).

 In Behavioural Traits:

• Quite surprisingly at first consideration, the most effective sales leaders are less ‘driven’ than their mid-performing peers. Up to 30% less psychological energy is placed in the pursuit of goals/outcomes. Their energy is more moderated, with a focus on process rather than inspiration or motivation. They are motivated but this is NOT the prime hardwired behaviour that leads to their success.
• High performing sales leaders are naturally comfortable asserting themselves. With levels of assertiveness found in the top 10-40 percentile band. Only 5%-10% of the population are more naturally assertive. This was not the case with mid-performing managers whose natural Assertiveness scored in the middle of the bell-curve;
• The exemplars have less need to socialise. They can and will, as required but they do not need to do so. Mid-level performers display a higher level of Sociability (pushing well into the top quartile of the population) and a need to be part of a social cohesion. The exemplars are not the charismatic style of leader. The exemplars are, comparatively, somewhat more considered – erring more towards being naturally ‘ambiverted’. They socialise as needed, returning to the task at hand quite readily;
• The leader group present as rule-breakers (5-10% band) or rule-benders (20-40% band) (so definitely on the left side of the bell-curve) in the Manageability scale. They are more inclined to depart from ‘standard operating procedure’ than mid-performers who show a preference to be adherents. They are natural risk-takers. The mid-performers do desire some level of autonomy but they from 40% to 80% more risk averse than their high-performing contemporaries. This seems to be viewed by direct-reports as ‘career protection’ on behalf of the middle performing group;
• On the ‘Attitude’ scale which measures optimism and pessimism, whilst neither group is at the extreme, mid-performers do demonstrate a greater degree of cynicism and fault-finding than the leader group. The leaders evidence somewhat more resilience and a healthy (so, not ‘blind’) optimism and are more inclined to be opportunistic. They are 30-40% more naturally optimistic and self-confident than the middle-performers;
• The leaders are significantly more naturally decisive – almost 50% more so. Mid-performing sales managers are not ‘paralysed’ but they are notably less inclined to make decisions or take action. Again there is a correlation here to risk-aversion. This is a significant area for concern in our opinion as the need to act, once appropriate due diligence has been performed, seems to be imperative today;
• The high-performing sales leaders rate slightly lower on the ‘Accommodating’ scale, with a stronger natural inclination toward standing firm, holding people accountable and not tolerating excuses. They are 10-30% less willing to flex from their agenda or expectations than the general population. Mid-performers were more naturally tolerant and inclined to give people ‘one more chance’;
• High performing sales leaders are naturally Independent. Their scores place them in the 40%-5% band (right side of the bell curve). Taking the lead comes naturally to them;
• Of particular surprise was the degree of polarity when it comes to Objective Judgement. The middle-performing group has a greater inclination (and preference) for subjective decision-making, with greater reliance on gut feel. The leader group is quite clearly more inclined towards data-driven and objective decision-making.

We didn’t expect there to be any particular common differences as far as Occupational Interests was concerned, as this area is often affected by the nature of the industry the individual is working in – which for most people is aligned with what they enjoy doing or being associated with. However, there was one discernible difference – the leader group tended to have People Service as their first or second preference. Leaders like people. Even in mechanical or technical type organisations. The middle-performing sales managers tended to place People Service third or lower, in level of interest.

“Leaders like people.”

So, how should your next sales leader be naturally hardwired in order to improve the odds of them being the ‘race horse’ you want and need?

• Above average intellect
• Motivated but not so focused on the goal they can’t see anything else
• Assertive but not dominant. Iron fist, velvet glove
• Ambiverted. Happy to socialise but not in need of doing so
• Risk-tolerant, questioners of the status-quo, creative ‘on their feet’
• Healthily optimistic and naturally resilient
• Decisive once they have sufficient facts. Action-oriented
• Firm but fair. Open to input but will not need consensus. Equally comfortable holding people accountable
• A natural leader. Someone who takes the initiative and gives energy to action
• View the world primarily through facts, evidence and data
• They love being in the sales environment
• They truly love building capability in others

I hope you’ve found this interesting. If anybody has any questions I’d be delighted… and of course if you’re interested in having an ‘inventory’ done on your sales management folks please connect with me via LinkedIn. (PS. If you’re not in sales but what you’ve read resonates, please consider sharing this article with your organisation’s Sales Director.)

The post How Are High-Impact Sales Leaders Hardwired? appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Working through this pandemic has brought many different challenges for all types of businesses, and COVID-19 presented us with a big decision: do we let things play out and see what happens? Or do we double down and invest in technology?

As a global business who sells products in more than 50 countries, we operate in a B2B, B2C and B2B2C world, so we needed to ensure our sales channels were still able to work as best as they could.

We asked the question internally: “In 12 or 18 months, are we going to regret investing in technology now?”. No one could say “no”.

There were some things that we already knew we needed to do. Straight away, we brought forward the technological investment that was already on our roadmap. Since then it feels like we’ve done at least two years of work in the past six months, but it’s been worth it.

Under our new CEO and the executive team, we’ve been focusing very heavily on internal communication and transparency to make sure our shared purpose, vision and strategy have cascaded through the company and permeate everything we do at every level.

This culture enabled us to quickly take action and helped power the changes we made to the way we connected with all of our partners and customers.

Reimagining the sales process

As you’d expect during this global pandemic, we’ve had to rethink our approach to sales. And as a global business, that looked different in each region.

Parts of North America have essentially been in lockdown since March; in New Zealand we had very swift lockdowns, but were back in action relatively quickly. So we’ve had to tailor our approach based on what’s happening in the region.

Across the world, though, retailers’ ability to sell to the customer was taken away overnight. This meant we had to change how we supported them – and change that quickly.

The most significant change, of course, was for those who usually operate from a storefront. If you don’t have a store, how do you keep on selling?

The immediate things we focused on were perhaps the obvious. Were our products on their website? Did they have the right content to support those products? And this, all of a sudden, leads into how can we keep training your staff?

It was important they understood the principles of B2C commerce, so when they’re engaging a customer whose only access to the store is now via a website, they can have the right conversations.

The key thing to note, however, is that we didn’t turn to a direct sales approach – we weren’t cold calling or putting the hard sell on. We said to everyone selling: “we want you to keep engaging with customers in exactly the same way. The only thing that’s changed is the medium – you’re online, not face-to-face”.

The fundamentals are very similar.

Out with the hard sell, in with the gentle touch

From the outset of the pandemic, we decided to change the way we marketed and to take the focus away from the product.

We didn’t think it was right to deliberately promote our brand, so we decided to engage with customers on a much more human level. There was so much information about coronavirus and the economy, and it was all doom and gloom. We just wanted to add something positive – a distraction to lighten the mood and help people.

We started to communicate with customers about things that could improve their lives a little – especially given they were going to be spending more time at home.

We ran a series of ‘life hacks’ on timely topics, like ’how can I make my food last longer in my refrigerator?’ or ‘how do I use my dishwasher better?’, and ‘how do I make a cake for someone who’s allergic to flour?’. We just wanted to stay connected with our customers and continue to find new ways to add something of value.

Fast-tracking tech implementation

To keep the business and our channels to market working as well as they could given the new circumstances, we quickly moved all of our websites – across all of our brands and countries – onto Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

The first step was to home in on the user experience. The second step was to support our trade customers by continuing to build out our trade portal, which is built on Community Cloud, and getting that into the hands of more customers.

The third step, which was critical, was putting in place the internal tools of enablement – making sure employees had the right tools at their fingertips.

We did a lot of work in Service Cloud; we enabled Facebook Messenger as a channel and WhatsApp as a service channel, put the Channel Menu on our website and made sure we had the right touchpoints for everyone to do their jobs as well as they could.

The importance of empowerment and ownership

Of course, we couldn’t do any of this globally without our teams being able to act quickly. This comes down to empowerment and ownership and having the right groups of people focusing on outcomes for customers – again, something that stems from our culture.

Our Australian sales team was focusing on what they needed to do for their B2B and B2C customers; our UK team was focusing on what they needed to do on a direct-to-consumer basis.

Importantly, the teams had to have some autonomy to make decisions and move quickly, which our culture and leadership supported.

The changes we’ve had to make to the way we operate haven’t just been done to deal with the pandemic. They’ve been done for the long term, too.

The vast majority of our activity was on the roadmap for the future. Twelve months ago, I could never have imagined we’d have gotten there so quickly.

Find out how other sales leaders are driving business resilience and growth by downloading the fourth edition of the State of Sales report.

Hear more about how Fisher & Paykel redefined its global sales approach in our on-demand webinar Unpacking the State of Sales: What are the next steps for sales leaders? Hear from the best in the business, including sales expert Tony Hughes and Salesforce ANZ Chief Commercial Officer Ian McAdam.

Read more from Salesforce:

Six Traits Of Great Sales Reps

It’s time for sales leaders to rethink how they lead

Introducing the 50 Pro Sales Tips for 2020 eBook

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Every week, a new episode is released as we hear from global sales and social experts who share their very best social strategies and plays. We scour the globe looking for those who do a great job with their social plays and bring them and their ideas directly to you.

In every episode, there is at least one thing you can take immediate action on that will make a difference to your LinkedIn and digital selling approach.

Here are this month’s top selections for you.

3 Rules For Going Viral On LinkedIn.

Daniel Hochuli is LinkedIn’s head of content, APAC and China. He works with LinkedIn’s most strategic clients, big name brands such as IBM, Lamborghini, PwC, Johnson & Johnson, Audi, Philips, Pfizer and many more.

Who doesn’t want their content to go viral?

In this episode, Daniel shares with us the 3 keys to increasing the virility of your content to ensure as many people see your content as possible.

Great insights from someone who helps the best brands get their message out on social.

Sales Leaders why your LinkedIn profile says you’re FAT, DUMB and LAZY. – James Michael.

If you’re a sales leader, business owner or entrepreneur you probably don’t realise how much damage your LinkedIn profile is actually doing to your business.

You might think,

“I’m not using LinkedIn to reach out to start conversations or to support my business growth. Why does it matter”

 James Michael, from Justified Talent, tells us you’re probably driving the best sales recruits away from you and your business and you don’t even know it.

If you intend hiring anyone this year you should check out this podcast so you know what NOT to DO.

How to secure meetings, right now, from the UKs Top 10 SDR – Nia Woodhouse.

Nia is an SDR with coaching platform Refract. Nia spends her days trying to get people to take meetings with her Account Executive team.
 
Nia Woodhouse has just been awarded by Sales Confidence, as one of the TOP 10 SDR’s, in the entire UK.  

In this show, Nia shares her exact outreach strategy, how she uses LinkedIn to open doors to client conversations and a little about her cadence. All the tactics that made her a top 10 performer. 

One of the cool things we learnt is NIA is using voice notes on LinkedIn early in her outreach to create 90% conversation rate. 

If you’re an SDR, a BDM or you just need to find a way to talk to more customers NIA shares what’s working right now. You could do a lot worse than simply follow her lead here.

Automation in sales, at scale with Justin Michael.

Justin is on a mission to help sellers make a bigger commercial impact through the use of automation and technology. 

Justin has worked at a rate of 1000 – 1 doing the work of 1000 sellers in the time and space of one. A Million emails sent, 6years of pipeline built in just 6months. He has worked at Salesforce, LinkedIn and even trained Mike Weinberg’s’ sales development team.  

Who trains one of the world’s best sales trainer’s sales teams’? Justin.

Let that sink in. 

You might not like what he has to say – but you can’t ignore it.
You’re probably going to need to listen to this episode twice.  
Lucky it’s short. 

List of guests

Guests have included many of the tops trainers and specialists you would know as well as some great practitioners sharing what they do and how they do it.

• Jason Bay
• Justin Michael
• Daniel Disney
• Phil Gerbyshank
• Brynne Tilman
• Bill McCormick
• Steven Norman
• Chris Reed
• Jay Jensen
• Cynthia Barnes & more

Subscribe to the pod on your favourite podcasting channel such as Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, Stitcher or pick up the pod directly at www.markmc.co/boss-podcast

The post The Best of Social Selling – BOSS Podcast Volume 2 (Sponsored) appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Building a great sales team and culture is not an easy task. For starters, everyone is selling themselves when they go into a job interview and salespeople are no exception. And with terms like “tenacious”, “a way with people”, “a drive to exceed goals” as standard buzzwords in sales recruitment ads, you’re likely to be interviewing similar candidates. So how do you identify the good from the great?

Everyone is time-poor, but sales managers and leaders cannot afford to skimp on hiring great talent when it comes to sales. That’s why we put together 50 Pro Sales Tips for 2020, an ebook full of valuable advice from sales culture to self-improvement and working with others, to lead generation and negotiation skills. Because it’s time to look past the buzzwords and down into what skills are really behind the best sales reps. And the very best way to understand that is from the experience and expertise of other sales professionals.

Use these insights as you develop your job description, hire and coach the reps on your team.

Know your customer inside out

All good sales reps know their product, but the best ones know their customer even better. They put themselves in the shoes of their target market to build trust and ongoing loyalty.

According to Aaron Tobone, Chief Information Officer at Provider Assist, a good sales rep understands the importance of timing and context to build a customer relationship.

“Be proactive in understanding what is happening in your customer’s business so you can have contextual conversations and provide valuable advice. This is how you build continued trust,” says Aaron.

Building on the facts

Just like you can’t build a home with weak foundations, you shouldn’t build a relationship with flimsy data.

A lot of sales reps will talk about opportunities and forecasting deals without a lot of hard facts to support them. The best salespeople, however, start with the facts and develop a strategy from there.

“When selling, customers want to see results you have achieved for relevant businesses. Always start with the facts, make sure you backup your stories with hard data,” says Nick Hultink, Sales Director, Commercial at Salesforce.

These reps usually input lots of data into a CRM like Sales Cloud, they don’t just look narrowly within the data, either, but try to find patterns across multiple accounts.

Not confined to silos

With 78% of customers expecting consistent interactions across departments, a good sales rep will break down silos between teams. They will also take the time to initiate a constructive discussion about lead scoring and qualification to improve the entire sales process. After all these, teams are working towards the same goal.

“If your marketing and sales teams are not aligned it can impact your ability to find prospects and convert them into customers. If you have a marketing team that is feeding leads from campaigns to your sales team, you have ‘warm’ leads ready to be nurtured,” says Josh Harding, Head of Client Sales, Criterion Conferences.

This kind of cross-functional thinking applies to other areas of the business too. Sales reps that see the benefits of communicating with marketing, service and even finance teams, to find mutually beneficial outcomes are the sales reps you want to invest in.

Technologically literate

Salespeople like to move at pace, so most don’t want to be bogged down by unoptimised spreadsheets and administration. When interviewing your next sales rep, get a sense of the tools and technologies they use to get a deeper understanding of their customer.

A sales rep that embraces and understands the benefits of artificial intelligence technologies is an empowered sales rep. AI can streamline work and help reps make smarter decisions, particularly around customer behaviour predictions.

Can work on the fly

Recent events have shown the positives of staff being able to work from anywhere. And while sales reps may be virtual sellers for now, when they return to face-to-face selling you want a sales rep who can optimise their time when they’re out and about.

There are an abundance of apps available for sales teams to turn their phones into an indispensable sales tool. Good use of business apps can help reps act with urgency to whatever their customers and employers need.

Look for someone who loves learning

“A rut is a coffin with both ends kicked out”, says Marcus Cauchi Fism, Channel/Enterprise Sales Expert at Sandler Training UK.

Great salespeople will take the lead on their professional development by looking for insights from anyone. Be that from their managers, peers, and even their customers.

“What worked 10 years ago might not be what works today. Read, watch, listen every day. Study sales like any other profession to stay current,” says Marcus.

On top of learning, a good sales rep will constantly evaluate themselves to ensure they’re improving and moving forward. There should be a sense of fulfilment from learning something new just as there is from crushing a sales quota.

While not every sales rep you hire will have all the skills listed, recognising their ability to build these skills is what will set a good sales rep and an eventual great sales rep apart in an interview. And they’re the sales rep you should aim to hire for your team.

Find more ways to build the best sales team with our 50 Pro Sales Tips for 2020 ebook.

Read more from Salesforce:

It’s time for sales leaders to rethink how they lead

Introducing the 50 Pro Sales Tips for 2020 eBook

The post Six Traits Of Great Sales Reps appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Every new reality in a business creates unseen challenges for staff. What’s important for the business is that leaders recognise these challenges and adapt and remodel their management practices to ensure they help provide solutions.

For sales teams, this has never been more important than it is right now.

The fourth edition of the State of Sales report, which evolved from a survey of almost 6,000 sales professionals worldwide in May and June 2020, revealed that just 26% of sales leaders feel completely capable of adapting team culture, and 28% say the same about staff skills.

These stats on their own reveal an enormous chasm between the expectations of senior management and the reality closer to the ground.

As individuals in sales teams have been physically separated by work-from-home orders, and as customers in that environment have begun to expect greater empathy, trust and personalisation, team culture and skills have been far more difficult to manage and mould.

Our research tells us it’s time for a new approach by leaders, one that better suits the new reality of a post-COVID market.

Leadership is no longer about authority

What is that new reality? It’s one in which the typically co-existing and complementary concepts of leadership and authority have been decoupled. It’s one in which the structure the office once gave to relationships and channels of communication have been shattered. And it’s one in which trust and capability walk hand in hand – the leader’s job is to ensure their people have the necessary capabilities to do the required work, and then to trust them to get it done.

The successful sales leader in today’s environment will democratise leadership. In other words, they will accept that every member of their team is now, by necessity, a leader. As such, they must be provided with the right tools, offered powerful motivation, then encouraged to add value to the business in an environment of collective power and responsibility.

What does this mean on a practical level? In terms of providing their people with the right tools, it means sales leaders must accelerate digital transformation and ensure their people are confident with using the new systems.

The State of Sales report told us 77% of sales leaders say their digital transformation has accelerated since 2019. This is an excellent sign, as it means members of sales teams will be better equipped to build relationships with customers independently and effortlessly.

In fact, digital technology’s automation of previously manual processes – logging sales data, generating quotes and proposals, prioritising leads, reporting progress, etc. – will free sales team members to focus more on increasingly important issues, such as building trust with customers.

The report also points to the necessity for greater training of sales staff. Tellingly, our research said high performing sales leaders are 4.8 times more confident in their training abilities than their underperforming peers.

With 70% of businesses currently retraining their field reps to sell from home using new tech and different communications methods, it means those that don’t continually train teams to adapt in new conditions will be left behind.

Sales leaders must take a reality check

Is it any wonder that sales leaders are having a difficult time managing culture, when sales reps themselves are struggling with having to adapt to new ways of selling? In fact, 79% of sales reps tell us they’ve had to adapt to new ways of selling very quickly.

In that case, the leader’s task changes from one of setting performance goals to enabling success through empowerment and training. That empowerment comes through a mix of technology, new responsibilities, changing sales metrics and shifting focus – to the building of trust with customers, for example.

Importantly, the expectations of leaders must change. Our research revealed just 54% of outside reps feel expectations from sales leadership match the current selling reality. And only 46% feel their relationships with customers are stronger than they were in 2019.

Becoming familiar with the reality of the market and aligning expectations with that reality are vital ingredients for sales leadership success. That familiarity, the State of Sales report tells us, comes from a mix of national, local and industry news sources and internal insights such as customer communication and customer purchase activity.

Sales leaders must get comfortable at the big table

The big-picture shift is in the fact that the strategic importance of sales operations is increasing.

To experience success, sales leaders must not only focus more clearly on the changing market and on their own, individual staff members. They must also focus upwards, on the organisation’s strategies, to ensure their own goals and processes are aligned.

This is clearly happening right now, since 75% of sales operations professionals tell us they have new responsibilities and 85% sales professionals agree sales operations is increasingly strategic.

Further, 89% of sales professionals tell us sales operations plays a critical role in growing the business.

To navigate uncharted territory, organisations have to become tighter units, all sharing a clear understanding of a common goal. Sales teams, with silo walls removed, have become a vital part of that goal becoming a reality.

Find out the latest sales trends and insights guiding sales professionals to recover and grow in the fourth edition of the State of Sales report.

Want to hear what other sales leaders think about the future of selling? Register for our upcoming webinar Unpacking the State of Sales: What are the next steps for sales leaders? on 29 October, 2020 and hear from the best in the business, including sales expert Tony Hughes, Trailblazer Fisher & Paykel and Salesforce ANZ Chief Commercial Officer Ian McAdam.

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I can’t quite remember how early in the piece I uttered those words. But I did. To my then business partner, Glenn Dobson, as we joined forces and began to build what would become known as The KONA Group. The irony of that statement was that our business… was a sales and sales management, training consultancy! My title was Director of Quality and I developed what would become some very well regarded training programmes – which delivered outcomes the likes of which our corporate clients had never seen before, consistently, over a 15-year period.

Our particular distinction was that of building scenarios which allowed our participants to practice the techniques and methodologies we were teaching them, on ‘real’ clients. Well, when I say ‘real’ – in the design phase of the programme for any client we would spend days out on the road, with multiple members of their sales force, often all around the country, observing both their techniques but also gaining insights into the reality of their clients’ environments. As we did this, not only were we assessing the current levels of competence and seeing the current sales methodology, we were seeing their clients’ worlds too. We would get to understand what the various sets of circumstances were for our clients’ clients – their operating environments, business objectives, their blockages, their concerns, their business drivers, their decision-making processes etc. and with this intelligence, we would then write “adaptive-fiction” scenarios based on these client realities, ‘changing names to protect the innocent’.

In our ‘live-action’ workshops our students would then meet a new bunch of ‘prospects’, who seemed somewhat familiar to them and they’d practice using the new methodologies we were teaching them, to develop a stronger understanding of the real drivers that would lead to a successful sale. They got to practice, rehearse and refine their newfound skills and techniques in an environment which was safe (no deals were harmed in the making of this skill set) yet were incredibly realistic. The learning was often described as ‘profound’ and certainly ‘the most realistic’ scenario-based training they’d ever experienced. People left our workshops, most definitely, armed with real skills which would help them increase their sales capabilities and enhance their sales careers.

Yet, I had developed a phobia of sorts about actually selling our solutions…

As it turns out, I wasn’t alone. It seems that a great swathe of small business owners also dislike the idea of being in sales. “I didn’t get into business to sell.” I hear. Or, “I’m the CEO, I’m not in sales.” Or worse than these, I see small business owners who subscribe to the old “Build it and they shall come!” Well, I’ve got news for you… yes you did, yes you are and no they won’t. I call these perspectives the S-Myth.  The myth that suggests that as a business owner, (aka Founder, aka Managing Director, aka CEO, aka Director of Quality) sales is somebody else’s concern.

Sales, is absolutely your concern. It always will be your concern. Even when you become a global juggernaut – sales will always be a pressing concern. Let me assure you that Alan Joyce (Qantas CEO), Gerry Harvey (Harvey Norman, Executive Chairman) and Janine Allis (Boost Juice founder and Executive Director) have always got their finger on the pulse of sales in their hugely successful and long-enduring businesses. They may not be out on the hustings but they absolutely understand that ongoing sales are never guaranteed and that, in my words, if you’re not selling shit, you’re gonna be in the shit.

So why is it that so many of us small business-owners are resistant to selling?

20 years of experience, in both selling the various services that my 7 different businesses have offered, in concert with observing, coaching and mentoring in-excess of 10,000 sales professionals, sales managers and business owners suggests that while the reasons have subtle variation, there are some central themes:

• FEAR – the prime suspect. Primarily fear of rejection;
• Misconception – an unhealthy view of what the art and science of sales actually is;
• Limited knowledge of the methodologies of selling;
• All resulting in a deficit in ‘the 3Cs’ – competence, confidence and commitment.

Let’s take a look at each of those in a bit more detail.

Chances are you’ve heard the use of fear as an acronym – F.E.A.R. It stands for False Expectations Appearing Real. In other words, the suggestion is that fear is a product of a vivid imagination, which presents the possibility of negative outcomes/consequences, in such a powerful and compelling way, they end up paralysing the person experiencing those thoughts.

I often see fear coupled with a mantra of “the best way to not fail… is to not try!”

It’s a fair enough apprehension. Most rational people know that when it comes to selling, you are more likely to hear people say no to you than say yes. Anybody who has been anywhere near any kind of sales training in the last 50 years will have heard, at some stage and probably more than once that “it’s a numbers game!”. We get told that “another ‘no’ is one step closer to a ‘yes’!” So when it comes to selling we have read, heard, seen and/or been told that we’re going to be rejected. A lot. And of course, if you’re not a black belt in this mystery called selling, you’re going to be rejected a hell of a lot! Who on Earth wants to step up to that on a daily basis? Right?

This little monster absolutely sat in the dark corners of my mind for, I’d say, the first 15 years of business ownership for me. I’d start to think about the idea of picking up a phone or going on a sales call, or following up to see if they were ready to buy yet and instead of envisaging a positive outcome I’d feel that fear that comes when you look down into a drain grate built into the kerb and there’s one of those evil clown dolls grinning back at you.

OK, I’m probably exaggerating here but you get the gist right? The fear of being rejected and the subsequent feelings I might experience, of being incompetent, inarticulate, lacking in gravitas enough to be compelling to my prospect, intellectually inferior, an impostor – all of that was often enough to cause me to find ‘better things to do’. Things, which, I would kid myself, would lead to an easier way of selling. Perhaps I could devise a way of selling that didn’t involve actually selling! The perfect thing to waste time on.

Which helps us also understand that a misconception of what sales actually is can be a major obstacle to engaging in it. It had never really, consciously occurred to me until quite recently, that my subconscious perspective of ‘selling’ was that it was something you did to people, as opposed to for them. Selling seemed to be some sort of slight of hand where you used clever techniques and words, which eventually brought people to a place where they found themselves buying.  I knew, because I had been taught a number of moves, like a series of judo-throws of sorts, called ‘objection handlers’. Apparently people would try to resist the techniques and words and not buy from me. And so I had these moves in my arsenal to counter their resistance. So I learned quite early in the piece that people didn’t like being sold to. Therefore selling was something which was undesirable. I learned to ‘trial close’, to ‘always be closing’, to use the ‘hamburger close’, the ‘alternative close’, the ‘assumptive close’. These felt like techniques where, as a salesperson, I might be tackling an opponent down to the mat and putting them in a lock which ultimately resulted in them ‘tapping out’ – “Alright! Alright! I’ll buy!!” That just didn’t sit well with me. It felt like selling was really the art of manipulating somebody to do something I wanted them to do. That was a really good reason for me to not be in sales.

But I was fortunate, in comparison to so many start up founders and small business owners. I’d actually received an education in this called selling, as an employee of a global sales training business. And then, as I’ve shared I went on to create and deliver all sorts of sales training to thousands of people hired to sell for their companies. So at least I’d had exposure to this ‘dark art’ when it came to going it alone. Scores of business owners get their first exposure… when they start their business. Which means they really have very little understanding of professional selling. And in particular, professional selling in this ‘new’ era of internet, Google, Google My Business, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn – to name a few.

Right now, I’m in the throes of writing a book. I’ve named it “The S-Myth” in a nod to Michael Gerber’s best seller from over 30 years ago, The E-Myth, aka the entrepreneurial myth which is the mistaken belief that most businesses are started by people with tangible business skills, when in fact most are started by “technicians” who know nothing about running a business. Hence most fail. 30 years on and access to information, know-how and ‘hacks’ are readily available in the arena of entrepreneurialism. There’s no shortage of ‘how to sell’ tutorials on YouTube either – yet I see very few business owners who make that sort of educative investment in themselves. Certainly, few could classify themselves as masters of the profession of selling. So, the ‘technician’ still prevails. The person who is, invariably, incredibly emotionally attached to their product or service. They can see all of its beauty and possibility. They know and hold dear to their hearts why their offering is superior to the competitions’. They know exactly why customers/clients should be buying what they have to sell… but as it transpires they know very little, if anything about how to actually sell. (And by ‘sell’, I’m not just referring to the face-to-face interaction that occurs at the moment of purchase decision – I’m referring to the entire process of product/service positioning, creating market awareness – including your website, SEO, SEM, Google and Facebook ads – lead generation, qualifying ideal prospects, qualifying opportunities, defining solutions, understanding and then navigating the clients’ buying decision-making process, presenting solutions, securing the purchase – and after fulfilment, garnering the much vaunted ‘customer review’, in order to sharpen the cycle for the next prospective buyer).

Ultimately, all of the rationale I’ve shared so far can be distilled into a model that I have been teaching to managers and business-owners for nearly 15 years, known as TC3.  TC3 posits that a person’s performance in their role is a direct outcome of their level of competence in performing their routine tasks, their confidence in performing their routine tasks and their commitment to performing their routine tasks. Task competence, confidence and commitment – TC3. Wherever there is a deficit or shortfall in any of a person’s competence, confidence and/or commitment there will always be a corresponding shortfall in performance or results. There are actually six stages of evolution that we all go through in order to become highly competent, confident and committed at a particular field of endeavour – including selling.

So, on reflection, as I consider all of the thoughts, feelings and emotions I experienced when it came to the idea of being a sales person – especially a successful sales person, it’s not hard to rationalise why running for the hills seemed like a smarter move for the better part of 15 years.

Can you relate to any of this? Have I described anything here that you’ve experienced in the journey of getting your small business off the ground, or perhaps, to move from start-up to scale-up?

If you’re a business owner and the sales-voodoo thing is something you grapple with, connect with me on LinkedIn or visit my website where I share more insights.

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