Great customer insights are born out by watching customers use your offerings and during the product development and delivery process. Both give managers a solid, in-depth understanding of real-world user stories. Once product marketing gets involved, they collect those experiences and transform them into case studies – a time-tested classic output of B2B marketers. Even in a world of social media and brand publishing, the case study lives on, produced now in more formats (video, animation, paper and digital form) and across many more channels (twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube).
Storytelling is a vital element in building a business and a lasting brand.
Although it may seem counter-intuitive, role-playing for sales reps can cause a stress-filled moment of panic. Sellers spend the bulk of each day performing – social situations where improvisational skills may be the difference between missing a quota or triggering a commission accelerator.
Sales reps know that nothing engages a buyer quite like a good story. The “Storytelling Enterprise” has been grabbing attention as a fresh approach to harness a company’s hard-won insights in the form of stories delivered directly to the sales team. It is a powerful way to scale what sales reps have always known – great stories move prospects to action.
The driving-force behind your B2B sales funnel is the new, savvy and hyper-informed buyer. Yep. They come to the table already loaded with questions and demands that challenge even the most skilled sales reps. According to Forrester Research, buyers are estimated to go through 70 to 90 percent of the buyer journey before engaging a sales rep, placing an enormous hurdle for reps to overcome and catch up – or to reset.
No way, Jose!
One assumption we hear when we talk to companies about story programs and role-play automation is that only the new reps and junior reps need to role play.
To bring in new accounts at scale, conventional wisdom is to first invest in a CRM and sales process, then invest in lead generation and efficiency tools and then – maybe – invest in making the sales interactions valuable for the prospect.
Ever since I broke into sales, I’ve heard leadership talking about ‘cloning the best reps’. The best reps seem to deliver year after year, even as the company grows and the product mix changes.
Every Chief Sales Officer must seize growth opportunities. Yet these days, they face an uphill battle. Now more than ever, prospects view salesmen
and saleswomen as time-sucking annoyances. In fact, they say 90% of sales calls are a “waste of time*.
Our belief is that the biggest miss in sales leadership today is failing to invest resources in the single biggest needle-mover of sales success – the sales conversation.
B2B companies always ask themselves – “can marketing help us win more business?”
Hey, let’s get the sales team all on the same page!
One of our customers recently told me that SharperAx makes it very easy for his sales team to learn. He said “it’s all about active learning – check out the Learning Pyramid to see what I mean.”
This is the first of two posts centered on how Geoff Colvin’s book “Humans are Underrated” is a great blueprint for the future of the sales profession.
Key Skill Sets for the Future Are Not What You Think
This is the second of two posts centered on how Geoff Colvin’s book “Humans are Underrated” is a great blueprint for the future of the sales profession.