RESPONDING TO
THE NEW SALES
REALITY:
HOW INSIGHT
SELLING CAN
INCREASE SALES
EFFECTIVENESS
The Traditional Sales Process
There have been sales processes in place for as long as anyone has been in business. While
many managers feel that their sales process is unique to the scope and intricacies of their specific
business, they usually follow a quite traditional consultative or needs-based approach: Discovery
to uncover needs and preferences, alignment of benefit and value, handling of objections and
misinformation and closing to commitment or sale.
We train our sales reps to skillfully execute these steps and support them with product/
service sell sheets to present differentiated value. As prospects and customers are engaged, sales
reps record their activities, outcomes and the qualitative information they have uncovered through
discovery. CRM reports and dashboards provide key performance indicators designed to manage
activity, sales effectiveness and the opportunity pipeline. Sales managers are generally happy with
this framework. However, what quickly becomes evident is that the data only represents activity and
outcome, but does not capture ‘what actually happened’. This handicaps the ability for a structured
process to achieve improvements in sales effectiveness.
Scenario A
Say you manage sales for a digital marketing agency. You have several sales people who
are assigned leads that come from various channels — advertising, events, various offers on your
website, referrals from current clients, etc. Your reps are able to connect with some of them by phone.
In some cases they are able to book meetings and a proportion of those become opportunities. As
opportunities are developed the reps record their activity as well as any relevant notes. They also
estimate the value of the sale and the probability of closing. Captured in their notes are what the reps
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have understood to be the needs and preferences of the prospect as well as competitive information,
budget, decision factors and timing. Overall your pipeline is estimated to close at 60%. You rely
on these forecasts for planning and investment decisions. You find that you are not making your
targets and that your real close rate is closer to 40%. You push your team to make more calls and
book more meetings. Your performance ratios do not change even though there is a short-term lift
in activity. You call in sales experts who coach your team, go on sales calls and interview prospects.
They provide a 2-day training course and 3 months of follow-up. Sales increase marginally. You have
repeated this pattern every 18 months. Everyone is frustrated.
What is really happening? What is really missing?
When sales people aren’t hitting their targets, managers tend to focus purely on activity - generate
more calls, more meetings, more quotes so that sales will be positively impacted. The old paradigm
is that enough activity will yield enough results. When this does not succeed, managers turn their
attention to sales effectiveness rather than activity. The traditional approach focuses on coaching,
sales visits and skills based training to support improvement. This is a very indirect process that
does not yield quick or meaningful results. The real issue with improving sales effectiveness is that
there is no management data to support the process. We need to define a specific set of data that
defines success for each of our key performance ratios. We will then be able to pinpoint roadblocks
and leverage opportunities. We will then also have a meaningful new set of information for accurate
forecasting.
“The old paradigm has sales
reps capturing insights in
notes and then subjectively
assigning probability to
opportunities. The new
paradigm has reps capturing
all insights as data that is then
used for sales effectiveness
management and accurate
forecasting.”
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What Is Insight Selling?
The Insight Sales Process™ is the methodology to capture insights from the sales process as data
and use them to deliver a consistent experience of value to prospects and customers to maximize
sales effectiveness for the organization.
Almost every sales manager would like to increase sales effectiveness and productivity. The
usual processes of pipeline management, activity review and coaching do not deliver the desired
results in a reliable fashion. Insight selling is a data-driven approach. It provides a more substantial
understanding of where roadblocks exist and how to quickly remove them. Sales success will always
rely on our ability to build relationships. Relationships are developed by uncovering insights, so that
experiences of value can be aligned to used to influence behavior and successful outcomes.
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We train our sales people to engage in active discovery. They uncover needs, interests,
decision timing and process, competitive influence, budget and other key information that is needed
for value alignment and effective solutions delivery. We understand that this information is critical
for success but we do not track it or manage it. In fact we encourage sales people to record this
as notes in their CRM system, which cannot be summarized or aggregated. We then have the rep
subjectively assign the probability of close to each opportunity based on the information collected
(but not analyzed).
The Insight Sales Process™ fixes that. It enables the sales rep to capture key insights gathered in
their calls and meetings. These insights are the new engine for improvements in sales effectiveness.
“The Insight Sales Process™
enables the sales rep to capture
key insights gathered in their
calls and meetings. These
insights are the new engine
for improvements in sales
effectiveness.”
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Capturing Insight Data
The essential ingredient in a successful sale is the gathering of key customer insights. This
is the fuel that allows sales teams to align benefit and value and to differentiate their solution. The
Insight Sales Process™ has the sales representatives capturing this data in a usable form. It ensures
that they know exactly where they are in the sales process and how well they are doing. It also
gives them specific and standard scores to help them understand, manage and improve their sales
outcomes.
So, how can you go about doing this for your sales team?
Develop Your Insight Sales Panel™
The key to increasing sales effectiveness starts with the development your Insight Sales Panel™ for
your salespeople. The Insight Sales Panel™ specifically defines the data to uncover in their ongoing
customer or prospect contact and discovery. Each question should be detailed so that it can be
captured in data form and not recorded as text.
Create Your Insight Sales Index™
The next step is to develop the most common answers to each question in your Insight Sales Panel™.
Give each answer a score. The higher the score, the more likely the customer is to purchase your
product. If there are multiple answers for a question, pick the maximum score for that question and
then add all of these ‘maximums’ together. This represents a 100% Insight Sales Index™. You can
now use each customer’s responses to calculate their Insight Sales Index™. This is a more consistent
and reliable predictor of opportunity conversion than the sales rep’s educated guess. Review of the
customer Insight Panel™ will show what key information is missing and permits the formulation of
best responses and selection of key next strategies.
Manage Sales Effectiveness with your Insight Data
Use the Insight Sales Index™ to understand how to help your sales people increase their performance.
You will see in real time, where there are gaps and how to specifically help them in gathering key
information, provide value, respond to issues and differentiate you from the competition.
It is important that you have a process to improve your sales performance and more specifically
the sales effectiveness of your sales people. The development of an Insight Sales Panel™ and the
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Insight Sales Index™ for your company will provide the data necessary to manage your salespeople
with a new understanding on where their discovery and value creation needs support.
Use this new knowledge to more accurately forecast your pipeline. Use this new process as a
differentiator as you hire new salespeople and start them off more quickly and more successfully.
Use the Insight Sales Process™ to realize the potential of your business.
Scenario B
Let’s revisit our scenario at the digital marketing agency. Leads are distributed and you now see that
you have a 55% call completion, a 68% meeting rate, a 52% opportunity rate, a 60% proposal rate
and a 65% close rate. This equates to an opportunity close rate of 39% and a lead conversion rate of
7.6%. You need better results.
You can see which reps are good at each of the key sales activities and, with their input, you
develop the best responses to all the key insights in your Insight Sales Panel™. You provide these
to all the reps. You now work with your reps weekly to see where they are missing key information
and help them develop techniques to complete the discovery. You see which reps have a low Insight
Completeness Score™ and discuss compliance with them.
Within 30 days you see performance shifting in all of your KPIs. The impact is dramatic. The team is
focused and they know how to execute. Within 3 months you have increased your overall performance
by over 150%. You have a systematic process of hiring, training and managing more reps to this same
level of success.
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Conclusion
As you can see, once you have developed your Insight Sales Process™ a few things will happen:
•
Your sales performance will increase
•
You have a new set of data to manage sales effectiveness and productivity
•
You have developed best responses for all sales scenarios
•
You are able to forecast your pipeline with accuracy
•
Your reps start to self-manage themselves
•
You can quickly pinpoint areas for focus with your Insight Sales Index™, and your Sales Completeness Score™
•
You are able to better align value, and differentiate your products and services
•
Sales reps, managers and management are happier and more confident
•
Great sales reps want to work for your company
From our experience, in the space of 1 to 3 months, sales reps are having what they describe
as the most meaningful conversations they’ve ever had. Sales teams will be delivering powerful and
meaningful experiences that quickly increase revenue. The sales reps truly feel like consultants.
They have confidence in the proposals they’re presenting. Management has a new set of insight data
to manage improvements in sales effectiveness. Most companies see immediate sales increases in
the range of 20% to 35% when using the Raybec Insight Sales Process™.
Ready to improve your sales effectiveness?
START NOW:
1) See how you stack up with the Sales Effectiveness Scorecard
2) Get a 30 day free trial of our sales effectiveness tool and begin
capturing insight data today
Please call us with any questions or to brainstorm at
866.420.9755
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