Month: November 2012
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Inside Sales vs Front-line Sales: Whats your Success Strategy?
Often I hear people inferring making a strategic investment in your front-line sales managers always yield in higher productivity. Strange, I still find Companies cannibalizing each other’s Inside sales Reps with top-tier candidates. Undoubtedly, the Inside Sales market is still “On Fire”.
Then the obvious question is what triggered this change. Well, a lot of factors put together. This shift from field sales to inside sales – Even in sectors that have traditionally relied heavily or exclusively on direct or front-line sales teams – has accelerated in the last few years.
Unlike front-line sales, Inside sales is cheaper to execute. Although many companies have assumed that having field sales, leads to higher conversions. The fact that the face-time it allows in front of prospects, and based on their size or the complexity of their problems, drives greater success, differentiation and deal conversion. May be it WAS true but Jurassic .
As far as I can understand, there are a few basic but critical factors that are leading to the success of Inside Sales. I have tried to shortlist them in a few pointers, please add more if you can, may have missed out few. Here they go:
1. Changes in Buyer’s behavior : The preferences or Choices that a Buyer typically shows today are different from the Last decade. Today they are busier like never before. Thus having a Face-to-face meeting is not preferred. Indeed it calls for higher commitment. So having a quick call or a Video-Conference is more flexible, yet it gives the same result or outcome.
2. Not so Tiring: I have a colleague who points out his days when he started in sales. Yes, it used to be tiring field sales job. With no end to travel and far from families for days use to crush the Work-Life Balance. Inside sales in its toddler days was typically looked down as the breeding ground for the future sales reps [Field sales of course].
But today the concept has changed, today my same colleague sits in a comfortable air-con office, interacts with his prospects in the same manner [Thanks to improved internet and VOIP connections], reaches his sales targets and still takes home a handsome pay cheque. Oh yes, he is a part of Inside Sales too.
3. Improved Technology and lower cost to Action: Traditional phone carriers may still be pricey, but the cost of doing business all day via phone and Web (VOIP phones, Skype, WebEx and other Web-based means of prospecting and meeting) has decreased dramatically, which if nothing else has organizations re-evaluating their sales deployments. Again the accessibility to all these modern technology has also become much easier. These multimedia tools enables any sales team to do presentations and combine other sales factors to effectively engage a prospect during the sales pitch. Thats the power of “Going Live” or “Join The Meeting”.
I think I don’t have much to say beyond this about why Inside Sales is the Success Mantra for Sales Teams today. Its all a part of the same system of changing market trends [or should I say “Sales Trend”] and Excellent managers don’t fight the system, they make the system work – period.
Social Connect – Do it Right.
The trending factor in any organisations marketing program is social connect or social engagement. But organisations often fail to analyse the message it is trying to deliver. If your goal is to create a Winning Social Strategy, one should focus on tracking the growth and measure the success of the effort.
Correctly said that- In marketing, $50 is always a waste, but the BIG question is WHICH $50.
Every Marketing Channel has its own Pros & Cons. Infact there is limited resources where we only have so much time, money, or energy to invest into something at one time. So the basic question to ask before we venture into social is – whats right for the organisation.
Social experts narrow down the equation by saying if you’re primary goal is to increase sales, then you should obviously invest in marketing tactics that give you the best returns.
Correctly said that- In marketing, $50 is always a waste, but the BIG question is WHICH $50.
Every Marketing Channel has its own Pros & Cons. Infact there is limited resources where we only have so much time, money, or energy to invest into something at one time. So the basic question to ask before we venture into social is – whats right for the organisation.
Social experts narrow down the equation by saying if you’re primary goal is to increase sales, then you should obviously invest in marketing tactics that give you the best returns.
- Paid search for new visitors
- Email marketing for repeat visitors.
But even there we have tremendous under-utilization of resources. An important marketing tool is undoubtedly the most under-utilized factor with marketers. I fail to understand why. May be its not trendy as the social media but it’s still way more efficient because you can automate almost everything.
Most companies spend their social media budget without a targeted goal. Do we expect Fans, Followers, Likes and Pins to fall from the sky?
Driving a consistent social campaign, matching medium with the message and integrating your social platform with other channels should be the key focus to drive the challenge. Do a reality check and before venturing into social, ask: When? How? and most importantly Why?
In Dec 2009, Dell made headlines with $6.5 million in Sales riding on Twitter. Reality check: Dell recorded $61 billion in revenue the same year. So we are actually talking 0.01% of actual revenue here.
So it is important to understand the medium which will empower you to deliver your message in an interactive manner and develop the audience or prospects for you. This can also be done by funneling people from your existing resources like existing website traffic or email database or it could simply mean your foot-traffic and other offline sources.
Recently in an interview speaking about the trend in Digital marketing, Shantanu Narayen, CEO, Adobe, said:
” Globally, digital is about 20% of overall marketing spends. TV still dominates. But digital provides the opportunity to get far more measurement in terms of return on investment. Which is why search spend, social spend is increasing dramatically.
But getting people to look at ads on mobile devices, especially on social media sites on smartphones, is still a challenge.
I certainly believe social is going to be far more important in the future than it is today. Like any other piece of technology, marketers have to learn how to use it. You will find innovation in the mobile space. There are retailers who are saying, if I have a mobile device and I’m in a physical store, I should be able to press an in-store application button on the phone and as I’m walking down the aisles, I will find coupons that are appropriate to me. Does the medium offer opportunities for tailoring the right ads, absolutely. Is it as advanced as we would like it to be, probably not. “
Thus before venturing into any form of Social connect one need to keep in mind if that is the correct medium that will also put a tick mark on the important check boxes of
- Connecting to share the correct message.
- Reaching the targeted segments
- Ongoing conversation to Share more and more
Remember, the success of your marketing campaign does not depend on the number of Fans, Tweets or Pins. It is judged on the ROI of your campaign.
Sell Benefits, Not Technology
Technology-enabled solutions are intangible sales. We should keep it mind that people don’t buy the machine; they buy what it enables. We often pitch the features of the solution and do not detail the utility of it to our prospects. Here are a few important pointers that we can focus on while driving these sales. But we should keep it mind that each one of these pointers are unique and they formulate a complete process. Thus keeping the pattern intact is inevitable.
Discovery: Discovery is the stage of the sales cycle where you can build trust and rapport through consultative selling. The more you educate the customer during this phase the more they will value your opinion. As you solve their problems, your credibility will increase. Apply your value building strategies to build the customer’s commitment to your solution. When you educate the customer on how their business strategy translates into technology needs and issues, you are helping them solve their problems, so they come to trust you and value your opinion.
Prospecting:If you don’t understand how your market is evolving and who wants to buy your product when and for what reason, then you are going to be in trouble. Market leaders know how to evolve along with the market to maintain dominance. Know who to call on when accelerates your success.
Building Value: Selling value creates momentum because it links your solution to what is happening in the market. Understand and make it believable that market doesn’t wait for the customer to make up his mind. Value is the only thing that builds belief. Features and benefits build points in your favor. Solving problems builds confidence that your solution works. But value builds the customer’s belief that they will be successful. Learn how to use the customer’s belief in the value of your solution as a powerful source of energy to drive the sale.
Qualify: Good qualified leads/prospects can make an extraordinary difference in overall sales productivity and a company’s profitability. Often they can cut out days of unproductive sales calls by asking the prospect’s executive team about their business strategy. Learn how to combine value building and solutions selling techniques to dramatically improve your ability to accurate and quickly qualify an account.
Close [and close faster]: When you are launching a new solution, building credibility in the early stages of market adoption is critical to your long-term success. Identify early and quick wins, so you can build the track record you need to ride. When you qualify [and qualify well enough], you confirm up-front the prospect’s buying cycle. This is to set mutual expectations about working together to make the best decision. Then use these expectations to keep the sale moving forward.
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