Practical Adjustments to Remote Selling in a COVID and Post-COVID World
https://vimeo.com/408628953Jacco Van Der Kooij of WinningByDesign and XANT CSO David Boyce talks about how you can make practical adjustments to your remote selling practices.
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In this article:
Grow Your Business with These Remote Selling Tips
This webinar runs through a five-step agenda discussing the poignant topic of remote selling and what you can do to accelerate productivity.
Jacco Van Der Kooij is the Founder and CEO at WinningByDesign.com, a consultancy business that helps design go-to-market models and trains sales, CMS, and marketing teams for success.
He founded WinningByDesign over 7 years ago, and they have offices in San Francisco, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, and Sydney. All are intending to help clients big and small, with a process-driven approach to sales.
The current pandemic crisis means we are faced with a lot of change that we have not experienced before. Separating the human suffering from a business perspective, you can turn this situation into an opportunity for you and your teams.
The Productivity Gap
In response to COVID-19 cases, productivity across the world in enterprise and SMB sales has dropped, particularly on:
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- Pipeline creation (lead generation)
- Pipeline conversion (sales)
- Retention/churn
- As a sales professional, things will change, and they may not be the same again.
- Recovery will take a while, but we can use this to our benefit to learn more.
- There will be setbacks, and lingering issues will remain.
- However, if we prepare today, then ramp faster, we can gain market share, improve win rates, and speed up the sales cycle.
What is Remote Selling?
There are typically three types of sales right now. Transactions which are done mostly in person but with some remote actions, deals which are done chiefly remotely but with some in-person activity (such as visiting the client onsite), and thirdly, inside sales organization primarily dependent on lead generation and predominantly online
Synchronous sales refer to sales that are done directly with real-time contact, such as face to face meetings. Asynchronous is the opposite and refers to such activities as emails or recorded demo videos.
Remote synchronous meetings have an advantage because there is no wasted time on travel. Using asynchronous techniques can also speed up the sales cycle by alerting clients to your product as soon as they have time to send the data, or even have it available online.
Combining the efforts of both techniques will result in the compression of the conventional sales cycle.
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Tools as a Force Multiplier
Navigate the Organization
To find people that matter quicker, Jacco Van Der Kooij suggests using Crystal Knows to identify the ‘Initiator’ within an organization.
In Playbooks (from XANT), hints are given as to who is who within an organization based on past deals, job roles, and previous influences. Combine these two tech platforms to get great results.
There is so much online data available which can help you to cut out wasted time getting to know people.
Leverage what your clients provide online – identify people in the organization faster, develop rapport immediately, lower cost, and be more scalable.
Stakeholder Meetings
Remote meetings with stakeholders can take weeks to arrange and delay the sales cycle. Working remotely can speed this up by getting people in a remote room quicker. Other benefits include:
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- Fewer actions to follow up
- Materials can be distributed easily
- No ‘road blockers’
- More balanced meeting online/ democratizes attendance
- Seeing all names and faces at once makes it easier to check for visual clues and to engage with everyone
Assign a person to engage with others in the group, e.g., in chat format. This will mean people have access to document links, more actions will be resolved immediately, and because the facilitator will read out questions, there is likely to be more engagement.
Proposal Review remote selling
Create engagement with your clients using a variety of techniques. Use color and design to highlight your proposal or engage people by adding comments into sections of the document.
When presenting, use side by side demonstrations to create an authentic and personal experience. This will add relevancy.
Making your proposal bespoke will speed up the back and forth process, add relevancy, and be better quality.
Ultimately, aim for your proposal to be a living document.
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The Impact remote selling
Look at the anatomy of your deals and factor in sales as a science.
Benchmark data should include contract value, win rate, sales cycle (days), calendar meetings, and meeting format.
Reducing the number of meetings will increase the win rate. Fewer meetings also minimize the possibility of things going wrong, or salespeople messing up.
Use these techniques to become better than everyone else, even if slightly better, small impacts will compound returns.
It’s feasible to outcompete your competitor and get really good at online selling to ensure you make big gains.
Make meetings more efficient, use tools to make the sales even better, shorten the sales cycle, all to improve the win ratio – that is the impact!
Conclusion- Focus on 3 Things
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- Create the playbook – dedicate the playbook to online/digital format
- Operate the tools – understand and integrate the tools to work online
- Train on expert skills – for online, modern setups
Your business needs to be 100% remotely architected, using playbook or sales processes, automated with tools, specialized with skills, and data-driven. A combination of tools and data is the key to success.
Support remote selling
Be part of a community to survive the coronavirus crisis; share best practices, and support each other.
XANT.ai is offering a playbook for free during the pandemic crisis to help people. At the same time, they figure out how to work better remotely. You can also head to our website to find out further information.
There are free resources on WinningByDesign.com, and you can check out and subscribe here to their YouTube channel.
What new sales methods have you adapted to? Share your ideas in the comments section below.
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