meetings held – and provides actual customer response to sales activities. How long did the buyer spend with the proposal? Which parts? Did they share it? Combining engagement analytics with CRM creates a powerful data-driv- en pipeline management machine.
MAXIMIZE MEANINGFUL CUSTOMER INTERACTIONS According to Aberdeen Group, 42 percent of sales leaders cannot identi- fy which sales activities drive success. Your top reps may not be the ones making the most calls or scheduling the most meetings. Top reps reach out at the right time, with the right content, to close the deal – making every interaction with customers and prospects more meaningful. Instead of setting arbitrary goals (such as number of meetings held each quarter), leverage engagement data to benchmark your team on the actual outcome of selling activities and interactions. When reps are mea- sured by engagement quality instead of engagement frequency, they will have better sales conversations, and your team will close more deals.
DELIVER REAL-TIME COACHING Many managers lack the insight they need into the selling activities and results of reps. As a result, traditional coaching is too little, too late – super- ficial, hazy feedback about deals that have already been won or lost. Customer engagement allows sales managers to deliver on-the-spot metrics-based coaching. Engagement analytics provide “insider knowledge” on which buyers are responding to which messages and help you coach reps to avoid dead-end deals and fo- cus on more promising opportunities. Complement data with “game tape” – meeting recordings that capture what was said in meetings, the content used, and the customer response. Increase the timeliness and relevance of coach- ing – and then, scale best practices by sharing recordings and engagement data of top reps team-wide. Most teams are addressing pro-
ductivity issues by using sales tools that address only small pieces of the sales cycle. Leveraging a complete sales engagement platform can transform how you manage oppor- tunities, teams, and individual reps by powering your sales process with engagement data. ClearSlide – the sales engagement platform leader
SELLING TIP
Overcoming the “Established Relationship” Objection
It’s not easy selling against an established personal relationship. But, while getting a foothold over a competitor’s services or product is certainly a challenge, it’s not insurmountable.
Salespeople who do their homework, position themselves correctly, and practice patience can ultimately create opportunities for themselves. Here are some tips and sample one-liners to help open a conversation. Do your research. Find other areas where you can offer a service the other vendor can’t. Script: Just out of curiosity, let’s compare the pros and cons of the choices you have.
Ask the right questions. Ask the buyer open-ended questions that might give you some insight about the relationship. You have to be careful not to be too pushy or obnoxious. You’re simply trying to determine the buyer’s needs. Script: Is there anything about me or my company that is holding you back from doing business with us?
Be a backup. If your competitor has the account locked up, try to be- come the second or third vendor of choice and start working hard to build a relationship – especially if you find that the buyer is the type of person who prizes relationships. Script: I’m not asking for all of your business – just 1 percent of it. I’m confident my company and I can earn the other 99 percent. Develop contacts. Be on the lookout for champions at the target ac- count. (But don’t step on any existing contacts you might have made while you’re working your way up the ladder. You never know when you might drop a rung or two.) Script: Would it be helpful if I also talked with your sales operations manager/CEO/CFO? Pace yourself. If you’ve tried everything and are still stuck, you can try ask- ing for a fair shot outright. If that seems too aggressive, pull back a bit and reassess. Instead of checking in weekly, check in monthly. Script: We will be announcing some exciting new developments in three weeks that I think can help your business. Would that be a good time to get in touch with you? A final point: Don’t give up. Keep working at the relationship – you never know what might happen. Companies might merge or a salesperson could leave. Sometimes, when there’s a long-term buying relationship, sellers can begin to take buyers for granted. All those situations could represent a valuable opportunity to a salesperson who is on the ball. If you invest in learning about the objectives and goals of the buyer and design a pro- gram around those, the buyer will see you as having a greater understand- ing of his or her needs.
– SELLING POWER EDITORS SELLING POWER DECEMBER 2016 | 21 © 2016 SELLING POWER. CALL 1-800-752-7355 FOR REPRINT PERMISSION.
– has focused its ION release on features designed to supercharge sales results. Watch this short video about how Autodesk has ionized its sales teams through ClearSlide’s sales engagement platform.
For more information, go to
Clearslide.com.
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