The art of selling thrives only if it is underpinned by empathy and deep insights into customers’ needs; a clear understanding and appreciation of how, when, and where the customer would like to engage; and the ability to build a trusted relationship where the intent to help the customer solve their problem shines through, instead of the sole desire to make the sale.
But is this framework enough?
Going Above and Beyond
Any sales leader would agree that best practice sales behavior is more than empowering the team with data-backed insight into which customer to engage with. Or prescriptive intelligence on which product/proposition to pitch to increase the chances of conversion.
This is amazing as it tells the sales team “What exactly to do’.
But, sales teams need to go beyond this! They need to inculcate a sense of discipline to follow defined playbooks, which have been refined over time, empowering them with the ability to discern customer behaviour and refine their approach to align it with the then prevailing customer sentiments. This combination is the real deal. The ‘What’ combined with the ‘How’.
Better Outcomes Through The Playbook Approach
Enterprises are realizing that to control outcomes, it is important to monitor and drive input activities and behaviours. This can be achieved through a multi-pronged strategy:
- Defining activity playbooks that serve as a bible for sales representatives and outline the set of input activities they need to carry out on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis
- Visibility into the activities they are doing to identify bespoke skill gaps at the individual salesperson level
- Bite-sized training programs to up-skill teams in specific areas and a sustained learning process to help them improve.
If this cycle is repeated multiple times across years, this can help change behaviors. With additional incentives based on various outcomes (in addition to sales closures, managers could include input activities – meetings, FNAs completed, referrals, etc.- as well as sales engagement quality – customer feedback, freelook cancellations etc.) , managers will be able to expedite this change even faster.
Enriching Customer Experience (CX)
Let’s take an example of the insurance industry. One of the biggest influences on sales conversions, especially when it comes to financial products such as insurance policies, is the customer experience through the buying journey. Despite realizing the importance of CX, most insurance firms are not able to crack it since a cookie-cutter approach seldom works. We are living in an era of hyper-personalisation and customers have become most demanding, seeking instant gratification. This is fuelled by their experience with other tech majors like Amazon, Netflix, Uber, Airbnb, etc.
Enterprises should factor in the following aspects while transforming their customer experience:
- A seamless, omnichannel communication experience through their user journey.
- Value-added information on product options, availability, and best fit based on the customer’s needs coupled with user feedback and product ratings can help the customer make a good decision. Most times, agents and sales teams are trying to push products that give them better commissions, but this strategy will backfire. Firms must work towards equating the commissions irrespective of the product to make seller income more agnostic. If commissions are regulated in certain jurisdictions, companies must use incentives to drive the same end objective.
Enterprises must embark on end-to-end digitization and with technology at the core, it is possible to achieve this transformation of sales.
(The author Mr.Rajesh Sabhlok, Managing Director – Asia Pacific, Vymo and the views expressed in this article are his own)
