Sales Teams

Sports and Selling . . . As others have said, “so alike and yet so very different”.

In Tennis, points are scored on every serve and the game mainly relies on the skill and technique of the players.

In Football, the strategy matters greatly, and points are scored during the game. In fact, you have someone guiding the strategy during the game – the quarterback. The quarterback is assisted by his coach when he wants to take a time out to get advice from someone who’s even more experienced. But the quarterback is calling the plays.

In Curling, execution skills are table stakes!  Strategy is the key to winning.   No points are scored until after the last shot is made.  To a certain extent, a “Curling match” is more like a “sales match” where the seller tries to overcome the buyer’s objections because in both cases it doesn’t matter until the order is signed or the last shot is played. All the efforts don’t matter – the “score is not calculated until the match is over!

There is another huge difference between selling and sports: On “game day” 99% of the sports teams show up . . .  in sales only 5% of the prospects answer your call. What are the ramifications of this in sales? It’s critical that you’re Relevant to the prospect. That means you’re competent, and you are talking about what the prospect is interested in.

We try to coach our new sales reps to say the right thing, at the right time, but preparing them for each call is different. Each prospect is different. You need to reflect the unique attributes of the prospect.  For example, is your prospect a market leader or with a market challenger? Are you talking to the CFO or a CEO? In both instances your approach needs to be different in order for them to stay on the phone with you and even give you a shot at closing the sale.   

Another big difference between sports and sales is you may only play one game a week . . . in sales, you may make several hundred calls a week. If only 5% of the people are going to answer their phone, how can you be adequately prepared? The first call needs to be tailored to the specifics of the prospect and to the experience level of the sales rep, so they come across as credible. If you’ve been in NFL for 20 years, you know what you might want to do in any given situation. But if you just graduated from college and you’re in your first year of the NFL, you may need some guidance on what a good plan for this game would be today. Looking at all the previous games that this competitor has played, how are you going to beat them today? So, you have a strategy and the strategy changes on the field, as it should, but you don’t have it written down. You’re going to try to go on memory. You have a plan, but in today’s sales calls, you don’t have that luxury.

We can use artificial intelligence so that the sales rep is given an opening statement that is appropriate to his experience and appropriate to the prospect. For example, it’s critical that a beginning sales rep not talk about things that go beyond their experience because they lose all credibility. An experienced sales rep can say, “In my 10 years in Sales, I’ve watched AI go from something that was interesting to something that’s really pivotal and key to being effective in every sales call.” However, a younger sales rep who just started working with their company would have to say, “My company has been in AI for 10 years and we have four patents pending.” A beginning sales rep can brag about their company – an experienced person can speak to their personal experience.  This is important because there’s usually a huge disparity gap in experience between the sellers and the buyers . . . because the buyers have money (control the purchase budget), which means they usually have more experience than the sellers, at least those in the Business Development role making the first calls.

What happens when you have 100 or 300 calls you must prepare for weekly? You’re going to forget what you prepared for, because the person you really want to talk to didn’t answer your calls. You find that you have forgotten all you prepared to discuss. So, to be effective, a seller needs a system to generate a call plan of what would be the right things to talk about to this prospect, not generically, but reflecting the experience level of the sales rep because you don’t bring things up that are beyond their experience to handle.

 That’s why it’s so critical to have a call plan, which is your steady talk track of what you plan to discuss. It’s helpful whether you’re experienced or inexperienced. It guides you on what will probably be the flow of the call, and helps you get back on track if the flow goes in an unexpected direction.

What we’ve done using artificial intelligence is comparable to what a good senior sales rep would do, based upon the flow of the call. It provides you with the ability to immediately pivot if your current solution or conversation is not a fit. The focus needs to immediately change, and that is where the artificial intelligence comes into play. Our Talk Tracks are based upon what has been discussed, the amount of time a subject was discussed, the number of times a subject was discussed, the experience of the sales rep, and the answers that you’re being given to the questions that you ask – everything from the day you first got the lead to what the story so far to this moment in time – is reflected in the talk track.

The ability to dynamically change during the call based upon what been learned is critical to a successful engagement. A successful sale is determined much like a curling match – are you going to get the score or not based on the strategy you used? In curling, it’s the final rock of the final play that determines who wins the game. And it works much the same way in sales.

What If You Never Had to Update Your CRM Again?

Would you walk home from the store carrying all your groceries when a digital Uber is offering you a free ride?

I founded the first CRM company (CRM Magazine honored me as the “Father of CRM”), so I can speak about ‘My Baby” with a sense of perspective. “Dad” says: it’s time for CRM to quit demanding so much time – reps need to get on to their next call! 

Many Sales Reps see CRM as something that is done “to” them, not “for” them. As a result, the information entered in the CRM is usually vague, incomplete, and not always current.

But now there is an easy way for the CRM to get automatically updated – even during a sales call – and always be 100% accurate

. . . a way to update all key metrics like Deal Status, Probability to Close, Next Steps, and even Send “look at this deal” notes to the Sales Managers automatically.

Our Talk Traks™ are AI generated for each sales call to guide the rep on what should be covered during the call. The Talk Traks include not only suggested Talking Points based on each prospect’s unique persona, but also single click annotations that capture all the data needed in the CRM – as they happen. This allows the rep to focus on the conversation with the prospect, not taking notes for data input. Most importantly, everything captured during the call is automatically updated in the CRM, saving valuable selling time for each rep.

How valuable would it be for your sellers to save 90% of the time they currently spend updating their CRM – while giving you more accurate data at your fingertips?

Leveraging Your Call Recording with Call Mapping

Recognizing the limitations of their CRM, many companies have adopted Call Recording to give them critical insights into what is happening in their sales calls.  But is that the complete answer?  Consider these proposed questions below. While listening to call recordings will give you SOME insight, does it solve all these problems? Is there a better solution?

Do your sales reps always come across as professional and confident, creating trust between the sales rep and the prospect?

Do your reps just “show up and throw up”, spewing product features until they bore the prospects to death?

Isn’t the actual time a subject is discussed the ultimate measure of the importance of that subject to the prospect?

These are common pain points that are felt across most, if not all industries that have adopted Call Recording. But there is a solution – SalesTalk.

Playbooks

SalesTalk quickly and easily loads all your current content into our system to create relevant Playbooks that your reps can use to guide them through their sales calls. No longer will they have to search through battle cards, documents, or binders to help them say the next best thing – they will have customizable content that can be followed word for word or simply referred to as a guide to move their prospect down the sales funnel.

Since the content is easily loadable and customizable, you will be able to capture and quickly share Best Practices to your team such as adding rebuttals to common objections. Your reps will easily see that new content has been added to their Playbooks, letting them know you’ve made an update.

Providing your Sales Reps with real-time best things to say in response to any objection means two things: First, your reps will be more Confident in their answer, which will build trust with the prospect. Second, the rep’s answer will be the accurate “best answer” for any given question or objection.

Story-So-Far

The Story-So-Far is a true Call Map that makes looking at your recorded calls so much easier – and so much more effective. It is a comprehensive look into everything that has been sent to, read by, said to, or said by the prospect.

Perhaps most importantly, it shows the amount of time (Duration) a given subject was discussed – which is the best indicator of what’s most important to the prospect.

As a Sales Manager, isn’t it invaluable to be able to see that your reps are following the recommended best practices? Would a Story So Far allow you to see the actual best practices that are resulting in sales? By comparing the sales efforts of your most successful reps to others, you will quickly see patterns that are not obvious to even to the sales Rep who is being so successful.

You see subconscious patterns of communications that work.  “They work” is measured by sales that close, which is why the Rep you’re listening to is more successful than their peers. Having this comprehensive Story So Far showing the best practices of the reps who are earning the most commissions will make it easier for peer reviews; the reps who are not as successful recognize that they too can become better by just replicating the behavior of the most successful reps. This Call Map makes it quite easy for you as the Sales Manager to extract the relevant parts of key conversations where the best reps are doing things in the best way, allowing you to share those best practices with the whole team.

Interaction Insights

Can Call recording generate a Report of the interactions like you see in this Interaction Summary? Notice that the report shows the number of times a point was discussed, the last time a subject was discussed, and the total time this subject was discussed. Perhaps most importantly, there’s no ambiguity about the subject that was discussed. The report is generated by the simple click of a keystroke by your Sales Rep, which indicates to the system that they are changing the subject with the customer.

My Vision of CRM

CRM was originally started in order to share notes about what was happening in Sales Calls.  The deployment of minicomputers and then the adoption of personal computers gave the sales reps an inexpensive tool to keep their notes of what was happening on their deals.

This early vision of a “Customer” “Relationship” “Management” system was highjacked into a system that was done “for the sales managers and CEO’s” to help them keep their jobs by consistently delivering on their forecasted revenues. This focus on “making my forecast” meant deals exceeding what was needed to make this quarter’s forecast were often held over to the next quarter to assure that next number’s forecast was made.  It is no secret that Wall Street values dependability even more importantly than maximizing results over several quarters through unsteady sales growth quarter over quarter. 

A sales manager in a big company described to me what he referred to as the “Sunday Night Funnies”, where “the sales reps were frantically updating the CRM on Sunday night with what they remember from their calls and what they want management to know about their pipeline in preparation for their Monday Morning Deal Review.’

Here we are all these years later and reps still struggle with the same problems, but we have added even more difficulty to the situation because of the displacement of the office environment. This shift has turned traditional sales models on their heads, leading to the following changes:

The Internet displaced the sales rep as the broker of information on a company’s product.  Most studies say the buyer is 70% through their purchase process (now called the Buyer’s Journey) before they will even talk to a sales rep.

The prospects have probably looked at your competitors before they take your first call . . . there is no such thing as a “quiet deal” anymore. They expect you to be more knowledgeable than they are.

The new “educated prospect” has turned traditional discovery on its head!  “Can I have 15 minutes to understand your needs” is no longer a good opening statement.  Your opening statement needs to be highly personalized to address how your product will specifically benefit this prospect. Most reps will need AI to pull together “the right thing to say” in an opening statement.

Because less than 20% of the people called will answer the rep’s calls, the reps need AI to do the research to create personalized opening statements Reps don’t have the time to do the research required when only 20% of their calls will be answered. 

Reps will love having Agent Assisted dialing to increase the actual discussions they have per day.  And the blended cost of connected calls will be considerably less using the combination of outsourced Agent Assisted Dialing and the BDR Salary. 

Virtual Calls are substantially shorter than traditional face to face meetings used to be, so there is now little time for rapport building.  The prospect’s confidence and trust are now built on the rep’s effectiveness in showing a fit to the prospect’s needs.

So, what is the answer? I believe we will start to see an industry shift to the following solutions:

Access to a Google-like searchable knowledge repositories of product and competitive information will replace the flood of internal emails that are being sent to the sales team now to keep informed of new features and the key changes to existing products.  Until the data is searchable with a Google-like search, the info is of extremely limited value to the entire sales team – because email is not such a great “knowledge repository for reps to have info at their fingertips” to handle prospect questions and objections.

Real time alerts when prospects look at videos, proposals, etc. will allow reps to follow up on prospect activity quickly and easily when the prospect is thinking about your product.

Your cell phone will become the window to a complete Story-So-Far as your real time follow up when prospects show interest, rather than waiting until you are back at your desk.

Coaching will be more effective – and better received by the reps you are coaching – because you will be showing them the actual processes being followed by the reps who are the leading producers. Comparing what top reps d0 compared to another is the best way to demonstrate Best Practices that really work!  Reps like comparisons to their peers rather than hearing sales managers telling them “when I was a rep, I used to . . .”. 

A virtual Call Map (the Story-So-Far), which shows where important (by keyword) and meaningful (by duration of the discussion) topics were discussed will make listening to just the important parts of important calls easy, efficient, and productive.

Traditional Playbooks will be replaced by AI generated TalkTraks or PlannedDialogues.   Playbooks by definition have too much irrelevant information in them because they must include “what to say” to any question or objection, rather than AI TalkTraks that are generated specifically for each call to this prospect.  The discussion points – and their suggested sequence – is personalized even down to the different personality type of the prospect. 

These AI “PlannedDialogues” will evolve during the call based upon the subject discussed and the duration points are discussed.  AI initially establishes and then maintains the reps Relevance to the prospect based upon the discussion. 

AI generated follow up emails are going to dramatically improve the effectiveness of sales calls because the AI engine will draft an email that is: far better than a new BDR would know how to write, more detailed than an experienced rep would take the time to write, and in the best sequence to elicit the desired next action.

We all know that change is painful, so I do not expect to see this happen overnight. However, as companies continue to move forward, they will need to find the right solution for their pain points, which I have more than likely outlined here. A solution that can bring an end to unnecessary problems by making their CRM work FOR them not AGAINST them.

What are the Qualities of a Good Sales Team Leader?

The best sales teams will always be led by quality sales leaders. All good sales reps know that their success would be held back by a lack of leadership and, by the same token, enhanced by great leadership. As a sales leader, it’s important to take on certain qualities to truly lead your team towards success. The sales leaders who simply sit back and watch the revenue come in are probably going to be waiting longer than they’d like to fully realize the fruit of their labor, or lack thereof. Staying involved in the sales machine and playing an active role in the process is going to go a long way in increasing the production of your team.

Roles of a sales team leader

A great leader should take on certain responsibilities and fill certain roles that help support the individuals that make up the rest of the team. It’s important for your sales reps to know that you are there as a leader to fall back and lean on when needed. It’s also vital for a team to have a leader where less experience reps can learn and grow from. 

Here are some roles that every sales leader should be taking on in order to ensure a successful approach.

  • Coach:

As the leader of your team, you need to be there to help your individual sales reps improve. This can come in the form of strategies or techniques they use on a sales call or maybe just adapting their voice to fit the product they are selling. Regardless, any sales leader needs to be ready to jump in and coach up their reps. The ability and willingness to coach your reps in real-time is a huge factor in your success at the helm.

  • Motivator (Creating Goals):

Every great leader has one thing in common. They are able to motivate their team to victory. This is no different in sales. Creating relevant goals that will motivate not only each individual rep, but also the whole sales team, is going to put your team in a position to want to succeed. If your sales reps aren’t pushed to be great, chances are they won’t produce the results you’re looking for.

  • Evaluator:

Overseeing your sales team means seeing each rep’s strengths and weaknesses. As an evaluator you need to be able to recognize this and act accordingly. Whether you need to coach that rep up in a particular area, or determine where a rep will fit best within a team, you will have to be able to properly evaluate the situation. 

  • Arbitrator:

There are times that members of your team won’t always see eye to eye. Maybe one rep “stole” a sale from another. You need to be ready to step in and become the arbitrator in these situations. Remaining calm and neutral, always hearing both sides out, will help you succeed in this role.

sales teams

Qualities of a great sales team leader

Just like the top-tier sales reps have certain traits to look out for, sales leaders need to possess certain qualities in order to be truly successful in the sales world. A lot of times, these qualities come second nature to sales leaders. Other times, the traits are learned with experience. Regardless, it’s important to remember these qualities when going through your own development process as a sales leader.

  • Ability to identify and hire the right people:

The importance of identifying the right people for your sales team cannot be understated. Knowing which personalities will work for your specific process and being able to weed out those who don’t fit the mold you’ve carved out for your team is a skill that will improve with experience.

  • Communication Skills:

Every great leader, really in any realm, needs to have effective communication skills in order to bring a team together. You need to be able to provide feedback the right way so that it is absorbed by that particular rep. Also, you don’t want to leave your sales reps in the dark in any facet of the sales process. Always keeping your team in the loop is going to make you a better leader in the long run.

  • Sales Intuition:

Having that institutional knowledge will always put you ahead of the game. This quality will only develop over time, of course. The ball is in your court however, with how you take your experiences in the sales world and target trends that can help your team improve..

  • Adaptability:

Speaking of trends, the sales landscape is full of change. Trends come and go, and as a sales leader you need to be able to adapt your strategies to support these changes. If you are one of those people who remain stuck in their ways, without the willingness to change it up, you may see a plateau effect with your results.

SalesTalk can help you become a great sales team leader

Taking the next steps in your progression of a sales team leader can be difficult. Having the right information is one aspect of this, but having the right tools in order to implement your leadership is what will separate you from the pack. At SalesTalk Technologies, we provide our clients with a toolset to allow them to elevate their sales process to the next level. Our sales enablement modules give you the ability to really empower your team to generate more leads and convert those leads into customers with higher consistency. If you’re ready to take the next steps as a sales leader, contact our team to request a free trial of our software.