New sales techniques to adapt the sales team to the new reality

We have a sales process, some steps, and we measure conversion rates Between phases: Lead 2 Opportunity, … Opportunity 2 Close and in between all the relevant milestones: call, meeting, demo, trial, proof of concept, proposal… Along this journey, potential customers get closer and closer to being customers, and along the way, those who won’t be “falling” down.

Today, we will hardly get more Meetings, more Demonstrations, more Trials, etc. The solution of increasing sales by increasing volume is not possible. These days we have to concentrate on pulling what we have and focus on developing new, more effective sales techniques.

It’s time to activate our curiosity in every customer situation, be genuine, and be present. Move from survival mode to reinvention mode. It’s easy to get the better of fear, but just like in skiing or surfing, backing off really is the right thing you shouldn’t do.

The team must learn to navigate scarcity, as today you can’t pull two classic behaviors when the number drops: “being on the street” and “chasing customers.”

Here are 3 steps to increase sales effectiveness and teach your team to navigate scarcity with an explorer’s mindset in order to capitalize on new online sales techniques. If your company’s sales team needs to adapt to this new sales environment, you can
Apply for our online training program for sales teams
.

Step 1. Put your team in “conversation” mode.

It is very powerful to give context to sellers with a collaboration platform beyond Whatsapp and email. I’m talking about using MS Teams, Slack, or GSuite Chat. A place where the experience of working remotely is easy while sharing and learning as a team (collaborative selling).

In this
post by Alex Cabrera you can see some effective sales techniques in times of Covid
, and I encourage you to open a channel where you collectively answer this question: “What are we going to do to adapt to this situation?” Call it covid, corona-challenge, reinvention-mode… As you wish! But channel the creativity of the commercials and mitigate the negativity with positive news.

On the weekly team call, take time to pick up and highlight the positives and recognize those who are contributing on the collaborative platform to the dialogue. This situation will bring us new opportunities as well:

Step 2. Adapt your pitch with new insights.

All industries are adapting to two circumstances, current and possibly persistent in the near future:

Decrease in presence, crowds and transfers, and

Rise of digital, online shopping and the strategies associated with it.

What impact does it have on the industries or verticals you’re targeting? Customers will want to have a conversation about these changes. They’ll want to know how it applies to their company and how your solution fits into this.

In the “Challenger sale” methodology, they explain three skills that the salesperson must develop: Teach for differentiation, adapt to be relevant and take control.

It’s time to take the time to “empathize” and “define” where the problems are now and provide the insights we’re discovering over the past few weeks. Bringing unique perspectives that are the result of learning between the team and conversations with customers.

Insights that provide us with other angles to reach, triggers of needs, decision accelerators or that show us changes in customer buying behaviors. Between sales and other teams such as pre-sales or marketing, we develop responses or “plays” adapted to the new situation by vertical.

Ask the manufacturer or partners for help What’s working? The answer is collective. For more details on the topic of insights you can read the book “Insight selling”, although I recommend that you start with this
Harvard Business Review article on insight selling
.

It’s time to activate collective intelligence.

Between 2013 and 2014 I experienced this effect first-hand. Rhonda Stites, who at the time was leading business development in the global retail vertical, set up an internal community on Google+.

The first thing he did was locate the Google Cloud vendors that we were selling in the vertical. He invited us, explained his vision and asked us for two simple things:

1) that we share the “winning” presentation of our projects; the one you used with the client’s board of directors that included the “business case”, and

2) A brief, well-summarized summary of why you thought you had won the project. She even called you to push you to extract the learnings.The result was an international group of enthusiastic salespeople, sharing tricks, levers, triggers, competitor data, etc. Within a few weeks we had relevant information and fresh references to share with customers in the form of “Insights” to accelerate and win projects. 2014 was a memorable year, we gained great referrals, and took the sales practice to the next level.

Step 3. Focus on these 4 types of customers.

Surely in your CRM you have opportunities that respond to something similar to the famous BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline). The first thing is to understand what has changed in the opportunities from this simple perspective: Is it postponed? Are budgets frozen? Does the project trigger (compelling event) persist? Does the person I’m talking to operate from paralyzing fear or activating frustration? Once you’ve done this exercise, focus on:

1. Sales Opportunities in your CRM who have passed a Proof of Concept – Whether it’s a demo, a pilot, a trial, if the result was favorable, you have a “technical victory”. You’ve realized the use and value of your solution. This may be a viable opportunity and you may be able to focus on the “negotiation” and “closing” as much as possible.
2. Existing Customers – Prevent them from canceling, try to upsell or cross-sell based on new insights, and ask for referrals that can lead you to new leads. There are horizontal needs, such as cybersecurity, when enabling remote workstations.
3. Leads that are the result of your Inbound initiatives before March 1 – In that case, the potential customer showed interest and may have a need to solve. You must try your luck and be prepared for the new objections and to offer the new insights.
4. New customers – In this situation there are industries or verticals that have accelerated tremendously. For example, the “retail” vertical has to respond to the radical change from “point of sale” to “online sales“. So, as a result of listening to the market as a team, you must be clear about what they are and develop “plays” by vertical.

Create an ambidextrous company.

Finally, with all this you will have seen that attitude counts a lot. Then, you’ll need to update not only the way you measure sales, but also the capabilities of your salespeople. Complement good execution capabilities with exploration capabilities of new COVID-19 territory.

I encourage you to read this
post about ambidextrous companies
so that you learn to observe and promote in your team the behaviors that are characteristic of ambidextrous professionals.

“The ambidextrous person uses his left and right hand with equal skill. In the world of management, the ambidextrous professional is the one who has the ability to exploit current capabilities while continuing to explore new opportunities for future development.”