The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Remote selling, virtual selling, more communication via emails, and phone calls — it’s all the new normal. And these new normal tactics require a significant shift in skills to create a more engaging buyer experience.

Conducting business over Zoom is tricky. Rather than shaking hands and reading body language, salespeople must learn how to limit distractions, make virtual sales demos more like traditional presentations, and learn to communicate as effectively online as they do when they’re physically with prospects and clients.

Being a sales professional in 2020 is very different than it was just last year. Buyers, who used to prefer meeting face-to-face prior to making a purchasing decision, have changed too.

Google search data shows that in 2019 searches for “sales enablement” increased by 61.1% year over year, up from 51.2% in 2018.

What’s the reason behind the steady increase in interest around sales enablement? When implemented correctly, sales enablement moves the sales process faster and more efficently. It's the long-term solution that addresses each of the key priorities for sales productivity — to shorten the sales cycle, decrease onboarding time, and streamline the opportunity management process. Simply put, sales enablement provides a big impact on the bottom line. 

Still, there are several questions sales managers and salespeople want answered before investing in sales enablement. Let us help answer some of those questions.

We all have a choice to make. That choice is what we’re going to do for the next 20 weeks of the year. We can continue to worry, fret, blame, and sit on the couch (if you're not doing any of those things - hurrah for you!). But we can also take the opportunity to be the Comeback Kid. 

Twenty weeks is a long time. That's 100 working days, with a few holidays thrown in. We encourage you to continue the activity that got you where you were before this pandemic struck. And, while we always encourage you to visualize the win, it's the plays in between that are really important. How can you win each day? What activities should you do to get you to the finish line? And, are you doing those activities to the best of your ability?

Sales structures look different for all organizations depending on the industry, size of the team, product, and the sales process. As your company and people evolve or as things change in your business sector, your sales structure should change as well in order to maintain a competitive advantage.

Companies that identify the need to change sales structure continue to grow, while those who ignore it find themselves struggling to meet sales goals and stay competitive. According to the recent Media Sales report, 60% of sales managers don’t feel they have the right number of salespeople on their team. This leads to a couple important questions:

• Is it the number of people on your team that needs adjustment?
• Or is it the sales structure and expectations aren’t in line with sellers’ true talents?

The market's uncertainty has left many companies with an uncomfortable and frustrating bloated feeling in their sales pipeline.

Even before the pandemic, you could have easily convinced me that compensation plans changed radically and that people in sales were getting paid based on pending business. Every time I asked a salesperson how they were doing, I received the same response: "I’ve got a lot pending!”

Pre-pandemic, I reviewed over 500 proposals from various B2B sales organizations over the course of six months. These were all legitimate proposals, actually presented to a prospect or client. Based on those proposals, and the bloated pipeline many of you are experiencing today,  here's some valuable insight on how to close more business.

How fast does your team move when a lead comes in? A lead response study of 2,241 US companies showed that the average first response time of B2B companies to their leads was 42 hours.

A quality lead degrades over time. Every aspect, from the channel you select to the amount of time you take to respond, impacts your prospect’s decision. Whether you conduct your sales outreach by phone, email, or social media, timing is crucial — and here’s the data to back it up.

From being quarantined in our homes to keeping six feet apart and avoiding handshakes, the way we interact with other humans has drastically changed. In the business environment, the normal behaviors and tactics that salespeople have relied on to drive their success are no longer available. We can no longer drop by to see a client, meet a prospect for lunch, or fly to another city for a face-to-face meeting. More and more selling is now being conducted over the phone and via email.

And this isn’t a short-term trend. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports that “a new normal has developed for businesses of all sizes across nearly all industries, with changes likely to endure even after COVID-19 is a thing of the past.” We may have lost a few tools from our sales toolbox, but we’re going to replace them with new ones that we can use to build relationships and advance the sale.

Sales enablement. Is it a buzzword or just a misunderstood word?

DEFINITION OF SALES ENABLEMENT: Sales Enablement encompasses the technology, strategy, processes, and content that empower sales teams to sell smarter and faster. It’s about providing salespeople with what they need in order to successfully and strategically engage the buyer throughout the buying process. Why wouldn't you want it?

When dealing with severe levels of change, it’s natural to reign in and hyper-focus on the activity we feel is most essential to surviving and thriving in that environment. In sales, that core activity would include things like the need to continue identifying quality prospects, connecting with decision makers, and discovering their needs and desired business results.

Activity is important, but a knee jerk reaction to keep approaching those activities the way you always have will not be effective when business cycles are at their most volatile.

Grow, the sixth and final step in the Sales Accelerator Process is often-overlooked and underutilized—despite having hidden revenue-generating opportunities. Closing deals is the ultimate goal in sales, but it’s not where the work ends with clients. Salespeople should start to care about the renewal the moment they make the sale.

It costs five times more to attract a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. One of the biggest untapped opportunities for increasing sales and growing annual revenue is renewal and growing existing accounts. To do that, you set up regular meetings with clients to review campaign results and make adjustments along the way. You keep your promises, sell success, and grow the account.