Sales Enablement – Everything You Need to Know
Sales Enablement in simple terms is any technology, process, or software that helps the sales team increase their efficiency. This may vary from giving your sales team the right information to move the sales acceleration forward, tools to handle their leads better, tools that help the sales team reach the prospects in a better way, or even the tools that help in sales training. If you have been following the stock and crypto markets lately, you know that something unprecedented has been working its charm. Nobody in their right mind would have predicted that a global shutdown in the 21st Century would ignite an investment frenzy that would put the Tulip mania of 1637 to shame. Total global equity traded in 2020 alone stood a whopping $137.64 Trillion, a steep 54.8% rise when compared to 2019 (according to Statista). So what made investors jump onto the money wagon? It takes a keen eye to understand all the factors that contributed to this bullish growth: The pandemic caused massive behavioral changes due to lockdown and free time. People were spending way less due to no social life and saving more. Relief packages from governments left them with some extra cash. The proliferation of digital apps and devices has made trading child’s play Growth in support ecosystems, such as digital banking and online media, has contributed to superior accessibility. In other words, it takes an entire ecosystem working in tandem for any major market movement to flourish and sustain, a prerequisite that Key Account Managers should aim for in the context of Sales Enablement. There is no denying that if you create the right ecosystem for your sales reps to succeed, they will naturally close more deals and drive higher revenues. But where do you begin? How do you find the right sales tools that foster sales enablement to the point that you can have a revenue squeeze of your own? Today’s blog aims to answer all this, and more. What is Sales Enablement? Sales Enablement is a framework that provides the sales team of the business with the necessary tools and resources that they require to close more deals and, in turn, drive more revenue. Let’s start with the basics and understand what it is about and the importance of Sales Enablement. The tools and assets that are leveraged can include knowledge, key information, content, and anything and everything that makes the sales process more optimized and geared for better conversions. It is a great practice for Sales Enablement to be owned by both Sales and Marketing teams as a function. While the marketing team often contributes with collaterals such as blogs and product guides, sales teams leverage them to the maximum by driving more contextual conversations with prospects. What is Sales Enablement Strategy? A Sales Enablement Strategy is aimed at helping sales reps to add more value at every customer touchpoint by defining a framework through which they can acquire all the necessary resources they need to effectively sell. In practice, it defines and lays down the entire path of reaching the target sales figures with the best change management and process adoption strategies. 5 Ways to Track and Measure your Sales Enablement Efforts If you look at the Sales top down, you will see that things are pretty measurable. As you travel down the funnel, things don’t seem so clear. We talk about increasing the sales pipeline, about white space opportunities, traffic, leads, warm, hot, cold but once we get to those numbers, no one can tell how to prioritize the projects on hand. This is the Sales Enablement Measurement conundrum. Organizations are uncertain about how to measure sales enablement efforts. How do we measure the alignment between marketing and sales? We have tried to resolve your conundrum here to some extent, using both, qualitative and quantitative methods of measurement. These are at best taken as indicators but will help your sales enablement efforts stay on track. 1. Track the lead-to-deal rate or lead-to-conversion rate The Sales Enablement team should be more focused on the bottom end of the sales funnel. This means tracking the lead to conversion rate. This is what will indicate the impact of your sales enablement strategies. Although not entirely, because the conversion rate depends on the number and quality of the leads. Besides this, this can be a good measurement index that also helps to identify trends over a period. Ask yourself the question “Will this project help me close more deals?” If the answer is “yes”, put it on priority. The others can be taken up later or delegated. 2. Measure win/loss rates against key competitors Sales is a race to the finishing line for every lead to be cracked. Your sales team needs your help and support all the time as they face the toughest of competitors. Monitoring your wins and failures and comparing them with your competitors’ wins and losses, will help you identify the gaps and fill that in. It will help you even further to know where you need to put your energy. Your CRM system will help you with this metric. 3. Amplify your content so that it influences a decision to buy Content is a universal weapon in the sales arsenal; right from the top end of the funnel to the bottom end. Supply your sales team with the right documents and decks but also, leverage the online medium to publish content through visual media. Then monitor it to see which one is more influential as the buyer is in the last stages of his buying decision. Scaling up online with content is good as you can measure the results of what works and what doesn’t. A good CMS and an analytics tool will help you in this task. This will be a perfect time to go for a sales enablement tool. Also, keep a track of and measure your content production – how many pieces of videos, infographics, newsletters, blogs, etc. produced in what month.
Powering Sales Intelligence in KAM to Drive More Leads
“There was once a factory that was run by a large engine at its core. One fine day the engine broke, shutting down the entire operation. After several engineers failed to solve the problem, the factory owner approached a veteran engine expert as a last-ditch effort. The expert inspected the engine for a whole hour, pulled out a hammer from his toolkit, placed it above a specific spot, and tapped once with panache. The engine roared and started working again at once. The owner, ecstatic at the result, thanked him and inquired about the fees. The expert handed him an invoice for $10,000. Angry at the ‘atrocious’ amount, the owner exclaimed, “You hardly did anything! $10,000 for a single tap? I want to see an itemized bill.” Without saying anything, the expert simply made another invoice that read: Tapping with a hammer: $2 Knowing where to tap: $9,998” Every time I think or read about Automated Sales Intelligence, it reminds me of this story. As sales leaders, we come across such scenarios every day. Whether it is about finding qualified leads, pushing customers through their buyer journeys, or boosting the conversion with landing pages, every information about the customer helps to ‘place the hammer’ at the right spot for the ‘decisive tap’. Today’s blog delves into what automated sales intelligence is, how to gather sales intelligence effectively, and how integrating CRM with sales prospecting intelligence can transform your sales engine. What is Automated Sales Intelligence? Automated sales intelligence refers to the technology and processes that empower sales teams to gather, analyze, and leverage substantial amounts of data about prospects and existing customers. This intelligent approach allows sales professionals to derive actionable sales intelligence that enhances their decision-making capabilities. This helps sales leaders and teams to: Track key changes and information bytes of existing accounts Map key stakeholders in prospective organizations Understand the needs and wants of prospects Collate and index real-time company information And much more… Sales Intelligence = Intelligent Prospecting When done right, Sales Intelligence is all about selling hard and more in the least possible time. Naturally, the benefits extend to a crucial arm of the new-age sales process – Prospecting. By overhauling prospecting and equipping it with ‘Intelligence Data’, Sales Intelligence tells salespeople who they should be talking to, the precise conversations that they should be driving, ideal times at which they should be reaching out to prospects, and more. Ideal Sales Intelligence tools also go to the extent of eliminating manual processes of scraping for critical insights, verifying for their authenticity, and providing a 360-degree view of the prospect. Such benefits have been driving the adoption of Sales Excellence to the point of no return. As per a report from GrandViewResearch, this has witnessed the global market to be valued at $2.29 Billion in 2019 with the expected CAGR to be 10.5% from 2020 to 2027. For instance, consider a scenario where a salesperson is in charge of generating new leads. She is armed with a list of ‘potential’ prospects and the blueprint criteria of what the company’s ideal customer profile stands as. By feeding such data into a Sales Intelligence tool, she can be instantly notified when any new company falls under the purview of the ideal customer profile. And all this without the customary stalking behavior that we usually exhibit as salespeople! Importance of Data in Sales Intelligence As you may have caught up by now, data naturally plays a central role here. But long and complex sales cycles often need much more than numbers and addresses. And as reported by Salespanel, most sales intelligence platforms focus on providing intent data. This usually includes key behavioral information about the prospect’s digital activities. Sales are all about making the right decisions at the most ideal times, a natural habitat for data to thrive in. But while the quantity of data matters here, so does the accuracy. With hyper-contextual marketing and sales data, sales intelligence can drive successful relationship-building that focuses on the correct conversion or engagement parameters. And that’s not all. Sales Intelligence also seeps into the foundation by transforming how customer profiles are shaped. Hunches, feelings, and opinions are categorically eliminated and all intelligence is driven by a consistent profile that does not deviate from one leader or department to another. Such a stable approach keeps every stakeholder on the same page and channels sales and marketing efforts in the right direction. How Sales Intelligence Affects: Data Quality and Management Poor sales data is one of the foremost challenges that salespeople face. Sales Intelligence places immense focus on assessing data quality and improving it with a data quality strategy that brings positive ROI. Key metrics that are usually leveraged here include: Email Bounce Rates: The number of emails that go undelivered due to bounce backs directly correlates with the health of your sales data. The ratio of Data to Errors: Tracking redundant, missing, or incomplete data entities that are depleting data quality. Improved data health here translates to fewer errors with constant or growing data size. The number of Empty Values: Corresponds to missing information or data that has been entered incorrectly into a field. Keeping a track of empty fields and how this number changes over time is a characteristic of sales intelligence. Data Transformation Error Rates: Converting existing data into a different format can introduce another class of errors. As a sales intelligence metric, it becomes important to keep track of data transformation tasks that fail. Quantity of Dark Data: Dark data refers to complicated data quality issues that may not be resolved easily. They are best resolved with elimination and require close monitoring. Data Storage Costs: If the amount of data that you are leveraging in sales remains constant but the storage costs are rising, it can be a sign of poor quality issues. Data Time-to-Value: Another way to measure quality is the time it takes for salespeople to derive actionable value from a given data set.
Sales Transformation in Key Account Management
It was the year 2015 and Coca-Cola was sitting on a goldmine of an ever-growing customer database. The roadmap ahead was clear – to boost the consumption of their existing line of products through sales transformation. Because we are talking about one of the most recognizable brands in the world, this was no easy feat. With a thirst-quenching range of 500+ beverages, over 1.9 billion servings of Coca-Cola products are consumed every day! As expected of any global brand, they led a graceful response. They placed data at the heart of their sales transformation journey by listening to customer opinions over the phone, email, and social media. The next step was to curate targeted content for different audiences that aligned with their passions. The result? Consumers are 4 times more likely to click on their digital adverts (according to Bernard Marr & Co.). If there is one idiom that can accurately sum up the entire digital age, it is this – using data to learn about customer behaviors and point them towards relevant conversions. That’s what every innovation on the planet is about – to be a relevant building block towards making the ultimate sale. And as it turns out, data has always been the missing ingredient when it comes to Sales Transformation in the digital era. What is Sales Transformation? Sales transformation is the process of aligning every cog in the wheel of driving the growth of an organization. At its core, sales transformation is about implementing big ideas and the shift in sales focus that is required to deliver the target results. It is as much about the “change” in sales techniques and skills as it is about making that change stick. With that being said, the end goal of sales transformation is to make the change in behavior, skills, and results measurable. For instance, let’s say that a business is targeting to close more deals this quarter than the last. As the leader, your goal would be to revamp the current operations and processes of the sales team and provide them with the required tools and frameworks to meet the new sales targets. Importance of Strategic Sales in Key Account Management There is no denying the fact that growth in Key Account Management is closely tied to the ability to drive the execution of sales strategies. This is a deciding factor that can make or break the reputation of organizations, and even sales leaders. Richardson reports that the average tenure of a sales leader lies between just 18 to 24 months! This is an alarming statistic and only accentuates the importance of a coherent sales transformation strategy. In Key Account Management, the criticality is at another level altogether. Not only do sales leaders need to meet short-term business objectives, but they also need to ensure the long-term viability of the entire business development vertical. For instance, if an organization is launching a line of key services to capture a bigger piece of the market share from their competitors, the value of stakeholders can only be driven in the long term if the sales strategy is updated and redefined according to the new targets. Looking Past Traditional Account Management Strategies As a sales leader, being adept at new-age account management strategies would make you realize that traditional account management can cause more harm than good. To meet the growth targets in today’s digital landscape, account teams need to pinpoint, hand-hold, develop, execute, and deliver on every growth opportunity. This is especially the case if such opportunities are the side-effect of a well-defined Land and Expand ideology. With a traditional backdrop, account management channels tend to perform much below their full potential with cross-selling and upselling initiatives falling short of the intended growth targets. This is backed by key reports from Gartner. Source – Gartner.com Therefore, there is direct and clear potential for cross-selling and portfolio expansion. This is primarily due to the evolving nature of the job of account managers who are now expected, more than ever, to deliver services, resolve issues, and maximize ROI while also driving the exposure and conversions of new services or products. Driving sales growth now requires a rather fundamental shift in skill sets and on-the-job attitude. And this is exactly where the need to explore new models of account growth comes into the picture with ‘customer improvement’ at the helm. Source – Gartner.com Such a shift would involve leaving behind product success and service and instead implement tactics such as: Finding and simplifying the process of identifying opportunities for customer improvement within key accounts. Measuring the effectiveness of sales strategies and tracking the potential of key account growth. Delivering customer improvement via growth-oriented account teams. Clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of every team member. Key Elements of Sales Transformation To drive effective sales transformation, you need to relook at your key accounts as solutions, rather than mere transactions. To implement this, 6 key ingredients can function as perfect fodder: Employee engagement: Focusing on boosting employee engagement and retention to create a strong internal team and culture that is hell-bent on driving customer success. With a team of better-motivated employees, the path to sales excellence becomes easier and shorter to achieve. Cross-functional collaboration: Key account management teams that work closely together even when assigned to different roles or cases. With dedicated cross-functional Account Management KPIs that are tied to each other, personalized support can be driven for every use case of cross-selling/up-selling. Capability building: Regularly helping the sales teams to up-skill themselves to create employees that are highly engaged and in-tune with experiential and war-room sales strategies can be a trigger for sales acceleration. The end goal is to create a motivated sales team that can deliver impeccable and memorable customer experiences. Digital transformation: With the ever-changing digital landscape, customer expectations are constantly evolving with a never-ending work of bridging the gap between their wants and the ground reality of implementation. Effectively managing such expectations with a bull’s eye digital transformation
Customer Success and Key Account Management: 2 Intricate Cogs of the Same Wheel
When Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994, he did so with the mission of becoming “Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company. ”Fast-forward to 2020 and one can argue that customer success, and rather customer obsession is the sole pillar that Bezos’ entire $1.7 Trillion empire rests upon. But while the vision during the early days was in place, the definition was nowhere in sight. As Bill Price, former Global VP of Customer Service Amazon explains, Bezos interestingly (and maybe even purposely) resisted accurately define his vision for several years. Eventually, things took shape and Bezos took the first major decision that would drive his point home – allowing customers to review the products – a decision that attracted strong initial backlash owing to possible sales detraction. But Bezos was firm in this belief – “We don’t make money when we sell things. We make money when we help customers make purchase decisions. “Over the decades, this vision has transformed into a near maniacal culture of customer success, one in which Bezos leaves a chair empty at conference tables as a reflection that it has been occupied by the customer – “the most important person in the room”. Today’s blog is a journey into customer success, the benefits that it can reap for your organization, and what it looks like in practice! What is Customer Success All About? In essence, customer success is about making your organization’s culture, philosophy, department, or role all about the customer. And especially in a manner that your customers can easily find ‘success’ with your products and services. When customers interact with a brand, they expect a specific desired outcome via an experience that can be tagged as ‘meaningful’. Customer success is about meeting such expectations time and again. As Jeff Gardner puts it – “The fastest you can help customers understand and extract value from your product that is in line with their business goals, the stickier and more successful they’ll be.” Misconceptions About Customer Success Since customer success is a rather newer concept in the management world, a lot of misconceptions exist, especially when managers deploy customer success programs for the first time. Myth 1: Customer Success Always Translates to Hands-on Service Customer success might translate to being obsessed with customers. But this does not necessarily mean that CSMs are engaging with customers round-the-clock. Customers prefer minimal interactions and the fewest possible touchpoints for their queries to be addressed. Hence, customer success, in this case, would mean optimizing such touchpoints for smoother onboarding, documentation, automation, etc. Myth 2: Customer success is a single department drive This cannot be farther from the truth. While it is true that customer success cannot thrive without ownership, it has to be a pan-organization effort. Assigning customer success to specialists is just the tip of the iceberg and would amount to nothing if the rest of the organization does not follow suit and work collaboratively towards a single objective. Myth 3. Customer success translates to feedback collection and analysis Don’t get me wrong. Feedback is one of the most crucial building blocks of customer success. But assuming that customer success is only about customer satisfaction surveys and Net Promoter Scores is highly erroneous. Surveys might be good for specific queries, but they lack in-depth insights about products, customer behaviors, trends, correlations, and more. Why Does Every Business Need Customer Success? “Until you know what it takes to achieve success from your customers’ perspective you will just waste valuable time.” – Jason Whitehead, Tri Tons Your business’s success closely depends on the success of your customers. That is the crux of this blog. There is no point in selling a product or service if your customers are not “winning” (constantly) after making their purchase decisions. Jeff Bezos is a billionaire NOT because he has created an automated sales ecosystem. It’s because he has created thousands of millionaires around the world through Amazon in the form of star sellers. It is also because Amazon helps end customers to make the best purchase decisions for their available budgets. If that’s not convincing enough, here’s why customer success should be at the helm of your business strategy in 2021: Reduces Churn: When you listen to your customers and accordingly iterate your service or product, it’s only natural for their satisfaction graph to rise and for them to stick around longer. At a proactive level, this also translates to solving issues of customers even before they can spot them! Drives Revenue: It should not come as a surprise that the majority of your revenue comes from (or should) post-sales relationship building. That’s simply because it is much easier and economical to up-sell and cross-sell instead of acquiring new ones! Improves the Renewal Process: For businesses functioning on SaaS and subscription models, renewal conversations and decision-making on the part of their customers are fairly common. With customer success, users are more likely to keep renewing and stop questioning their decisions time and again. Customer Success in Key Account Management If customer success is all about aligning the definition of success of clients with your organization, then how does Key Account Management (KAM) come into the picture? In essence, KAM is a subset of Customer Success. Think about it. If 80% of your revenues come from 20% of your clientele, customer success would translate to successful KAM for these accounts simply because they matter the most. To achieve the best results, you must merge the two management styles to ensure the most optimal outcomes for your business. During implementation, this is not a complex feat to achieve since KAM and CS are two sides of the same coin. This also brings us to their key differences: Client Focus: In a typical Customer Success scenario, you would not want any client to be left behind. The idea is to help each one of them succeed to the point of no return. On the other hand, KAM expects you to cherry-pick the clients that add the most to your
Driving Sales Excellence in 2025: What, Why, and How?
Our story begins in 2003, a time of great distress in British Cycling. The national cycling team of Great Britain was the epitome of mediocrity at the time, having won just one medal in a century of existence. Fast-forward to 2008 and the squad took home 7 out of the 10 available medals in the Beijing Olympics – a remarkable feat that they would repeat in the 2012 London Olympics. In fact, by 2015, the squad had even won three Tour de France – the holy grail of competitive cycling. Make no mistake. This is much more than your average rags to riches story. But a natural question begs – how did the worst cycling team in the world suddenly turn into world champions? Our answer lies in the strategy of “the aggregation of marginal gains”. It was Introduced by Dave Brailsford in 2003 when he was appointed the new performance director of British Cycling. The idea was simple yet hauntingly effective – to think small and not big. This involved breaking the entire process of competing into its constituent elements and then improving each of them by 1%. In practice, this meant painting the floor of the team truck white to spot impurities that undermine bike maintenance, hiring a surgeon to educate team members on ideal hand-washing techniques to avoid illnesses, making athletes sleep in the same postures every night, and other such countless initiatives. Why does this work? How can such small improvements accumulate into such head-turning results? And most importantly, what can we learn here that can be implemented in sales and account management? Sales Excellence: Getting Ready for 2024 The What and Why of Sales Excellence As reported by Salesforce, organizations spend anywhere between 5 – 15% of their entire revenue on sales. Revenue. Not profits. This is as significant as an investment can get in a single organizational department. Naturally, it makes sense to have a well-defined framework that milks the maximum possible ROI from the equation. And this is where Sales Excellence comes in. In Key Account Management, Sales Excellence is an amalgamation and progression of all possible sales functions. Drawing parallels from the management philosophy of Dave Brailsford, this would mean constant improvement in all key initiatives that go into sales – sales training, sales culture, sales tools, sales technology, and more. From a 360-degree point of view, Sales Excellence model translates to stepping into the world of British Cycling. It cares about everything – the number of deals that are closed, deals closure times, deals won rate, the support level extended to salespeople, and much more. What Ideal Sales Excellence Looks Like For Sales Excellence and Sales acceleration to function at its ideal capacity, leaders and the organization at large need to live and breathe the practice. For a concept that involves attention to detail at unprecedented capacity, anything less than 100% buy-in would be a shame. What does such dedication look like in practice? At the foundational level, Sales Excellence strategy begins with staunch onboarding, training, and up-skilling support for salespeople in a manner that grows into the shoes of a pan-organization culture. Sales Excellence means that salespeople are not only attuned to the best practices of sales but also work closely with other departments (such as marketing) to better understand the personalized needs of every buyer. Key ingredients to formulate an ideal Sales Excellence framework includes: Sales Strategy: Scoping, understanding, and implementing ideal sales targets and budgets by taking into account both current and potential customer segments. Market Penetration and Development: Defining the best mix of digital channels that promotes market penetration at maximum capacity. Sales Processes: Defining the end-to-end sales structure and making crucial decisions related to key account management, customer classification, customer acquisition, and more. Pricing Strategy: Increasing profitability with the right pricing strategy in place. This includes closing the right number of deals, defining key accounts, order management, and more. Impact of Sales Excellence on Deal Closures In a traditional capacity, sales are driven by taking into account how effective the entire organization or sales department is in executing their roles and responsibilities. But such monitoring is often undertaken at a bird’s eye level with KPIs catering to teams or entire sales functions. Sales Excellence goes way beyond this and brings a fundamental shift in this practice. Sales Excellence questions not just the leaders or the sales functions but every individual salesperson. This means monitoring metrics such as the deal closure time, deal win rate, the training and proficiency levels of salespeople with the tools, organizational support, and the like. What does this mean? When the spotlight is on every individual salesperson, improved deal closure is nothing more than a natural byproduct of the practice. Revisiting the story of the British Cycling team, focusing on every detail in the small picture ultimately has a significant cumulative impact on the big picture. How to Measure Sales Excellence Now that you know what Sales Excellence is all about, the next step is figuring how to measure it. The age of Sales Enablement and Sales Transformation has paved the way for many key metrics and frameworks that need to be put to ideal use to measure success in Sales Excellence. Here is a round-up of the key metrics that you should be focusing on: Time to Full-Ramp: How much time does a salesperson spend to put up his/her shop? The quicker they are set up and running (in both individual and organizational capacity), the better the results. Collateral Engagement: So you have provided every salesperson with the ideal content and sales collateral. But are they putting them to good use to move prospects through their buying journey? Communication Analytics: Are salespeople eager to up-skill and keep up to date with organizational and product updates? Monitoring communications (at a high level) can be indicative of their eagerness to be prepared. Sales Performance: This is a direct measure of the effectiveness of all sales efforts and includes monitoring KPIs such as
Everything You Should Know About Account Management KPIs
Jose Mourinho is quite a peculiar figure in the world of football. Our story unfolds in the Champions League semi-final match between Inter Milan and Barcelona in 2010, arguably the biggest competition in football. Inter Milan, managed by Jose at the time, was set to host Barcelona, a team that was (and is) known for its quick and accurate ball-passing prowess. To make things worse for their opponents, Barcelona also has the most lethal football player today – Lionel Messi. With a much weaker squad on paper, Jose had to pull off an audacious stunt to win. And, rather unexpectedly, he did. One of his primary tactics was to not cut or water the grass at the Inter Milan ground for weeks (a screwed tactic that he used again while at Real Madrid). This took the Barcelona players by surprise and affected one key metric that dictates their signature playing style – pass success rate. The result? Barcelona lost the match 3-1, and Inter Milan went on to win the competition. An obsessive focus on just one key performance metric was enough to stifle the best team in the world at the time. That is the power of KPIs. If understood well, they can be shrewdly used in any field, including key account management, to turn the tide from a bird’s eye perspective. This blog takes a look at how you can do the same for your key accounts and scale them by encouraging the right management behaviors. Account Management KPIs What are Account Management KPIs? Account management KPIs, or key performance indicators, are metrics monitored by account management teams for both internal assessment and external performance evaluations. They serve as benchmarks to gauge effectiveness within specific areas of the company, similar to how marketing KPIs analyze the efficacy of various marketing campaign components. Setting Powerful Key Account Management Objectives Starting any business is easier than scaling it. That’s the first axiom in the corporate world. However, with key account management, challenges can be particularly complex. With a lot of strategic moving parts, such as Land and Expand, it is important to clearly define and lay the foundations of powerful account management objectives to steer the ship in the right direction and deliver the desired results. More often than not, establishing the right mindset is a precursor, and the biggest challenge, to selecting ideal account management KPIs. And this also brings us to a major pitfall in this domain – focusing on too much too soon. This reminds me of an Aphorism by Nassim Taleb from The Bed of Procrustes- “They think that intelligence is about noticing things that are relevant; in a complex world, intelligence consists of ignoring things that are irrelevant.” The best account management growth strategies are the ones that are the most simple. Most accounts should consist of only a few impactful components that set you apart from your competitors. And by natural extension, this means focusing on only a handful of impactful KPIs rather than the opposite. KAM Glossary: Crucial Account Management Terms Explained The Importance of Generic KPIs Our notion of simplistic account management philosophy also extends to selecting generic KPIs to determine the performance of departments. Surprisingly, most leaders often focus on specific KPIs while making decisions, failing to realize that the specificity of the KPI itself takes them away from the big picture! For instance, imagine a Key account manager focusing on the expansion rate of a couple of accounts to assess his performance, failing to make note of the high churn rate of his entire portfolio. Any decision made in such a scenario would be biased and would overlook the true picture. Aligning Key Performance Indicators for KAM Okay, so you have your account management objectives in place and are ready to dig into some quality generic KPIs to build a solid foundation for account expansion. But another challenge crops up – an account management KPI that is fit for one department may not be so for another. It might also be the case that the incentives of your account managers depend on multiple KPIs. How do you then align various KPIs together to reach the desired results? By constantly iterating your account plans, as explained by Calin Muresan, Business Manager at Netguru. More than a blueprint for your teams, account plans should be looked at as frameworks to deliver results for your clients. By constantly finding KPIs that are dependent on each other and iterating account plans accordingly, leaders can keep the roles and responsibilities of account managers and ensure that KPIs are aligned in terms of: Strategic Direction Business Processes Business Units For example, consider that an account plan has the objective “Increase customer satisfaction”. To measure this, the management might have the option of two KPIs – %age Customers satisfied or Customer satisfaction index. Now if ‘Expenses incurred in account operations’ is another KPI to be minimized, selecting the correct option of the two would consider the budget allotted for KPI activation. As a general rule, it should also be noted here that the efforts or expenses that go into measuring the KPI for key account management should not be greater than the benefits that are realized as a result. 11 Crucial Account Management KPIs that dictate Success With the foundational jargon and mindset in place, let’s now take a look at the top Account Management KPIs (generic or otherwise) that account managers must focus on for long-term success. 1. Unlocking Key Account Success: Understanding Customer Lifetime Value and Its Strategic Impact Customer Lifetime Value is a metric that can single-handedly dictate the success of any key account, which denotes the total revenue that a business can generate from a single account in the entire course of the arrangement. It is calculated by: Customer Lifetime Value = (Customer Value) x (Average Customer Lifespan) Why is it important? Because it instantly tells you about your most revenue-generating buyer personas. Other key applications of CLV by extension include:
Sales Acceleration – The Complete Guide
Sales acceleration could be compared to a Formula 1 pit stop. Formula 1 pit stops are the most nerve-wracking events of a Grand Prix race. The cars decelerate to make it slowly into the pit from a top speed of 240 mph. The pit crew pounce into the car – fuel-ups, changes tires and completes the check-up in a matter of seconds. The world record for the fastest pit stop in 1.82 seconds. Let that sink in. The perfect pit stop happens because of the synchronized activities of a hundred team members working on the minutest of details. The Mercedes team has over 980 team members, with each of them working round the clock to get every possible detail of the car right. Sales acceleration does the same to a lead as the lead begins its journey towards becoming a customer. An inbound lead fills a demo form on the website. The user analytics software tracks source (Organic search, referral, or social media) and the complete journey of the lead on the website – pages visited, time spent on-page, and what prompted them to fill the form. Based on the email id of the lead, the lead enrichment tool updates the company information of the lead including details such as Job Title. The lead insights tool quickly gathers all market-related information about the company such as new CEO, new product launch, fund-raising, and the new roles the company is hiring for. The sales rep is now armed with enough data points to have an intelligent conversation with the lead. Sales acceleration isn’t done yet. There is more including automated calling, fallback emails, automatically scheduling meetings, and more. Let us accelerate and go deeper. What is Sales Acceleration? Traditional sales methods of prospecting are over, almost. Cold calls are out. Inbound sales is in. Lists are out. Intent driven inbound leads are in. Transactional sales is out. Contextual consultative sales is in. Sales acceleration is the perfect answer to respond to the challenging demands of new age buyers. Sales Acceleration may seem like a self-explanatory concept, but it is far from it. At the surface level, it is about improving the speed and efficiency of the sales process. The idea is to identify key areas of improvement in the sales process and scale them in a way that adds tremendous value. This may include: Reducing process inefficiencies and refining the results Leveraging key trending technologies that accelerate sales Systematic and scalabe training to the sales team Aligning marketing and sales with SLAs that are in line with changing market conditions Continuous analytics to drive a metrics driven culture Analysts and industry thought-leaders have heaped praise on sales acceleration. Analyst firms such as Gartner and Aberdeen continue to raise projections for the sales acceleration market. User review websites like Capterra, G2Crowd, and Software Advice now even have a separate category featuring sales acceleration software. Sales leaders, managers, and even users are talking about the need for sales acceleration, and with good reason. Why Sales Acceleration matters? There is no denying that the sales industry has undergone fundamental evolution. Your average sales rep today is no longer overbearing to the point of repulsion. Instead, they are highly trained, professional, and empathetic personalities who constantly check on their customers and guide them towards gentle, value-oriented sale closures. How is this achieved? By using the right amount of research, analytics, and a number of software tools including account planning software. What was once a soft-skill, now also includes a technically sound and process-driven culture. With the right team culture, sales acceleration fits right into this equation. It makes use of processes and data to achieve sales success, rather than relying on ad-hoc decisions and hunches. That isn’t to say that soft-skill of sales doesn’t matter in the equation. The sales equation also has another factor at play – the buyer. The new B2B Buyer needs no sale Gartner in one of their recent sales insights summarized the B2B buying situation well. Sales teams have very little opportunity to influence customer buying decisions. All the information related to the purchase is available online via digital channels. Gartner research says, “When B2B buyers are considering a purchase‚ they spend only 17% of that time meeting with potential suppliers. When buyers are comparing multiple suppliers‚ the amount of time spent with anyone sales rep maybe only 5% or 6%.” A study by CIO Insights in the recent past made similar claims. It claimed that 70% of buyers have already done their requirement analysis before speaking to a sales representative. Close to 50% have already decided the solution before engaging with sales. No wonder sales is becoming a channel rather than ‘The Channel.’ This growing B2B buyer behavior aligns really well with a sales acceleration approach to sales. Something, which was demonstrated with success by Mark Roberge at HubSpot. The Sales Acceleration Formula – Mark Roberge Mark Roberge is the best selling author of the book ‘The Sales Acceleration Formula.’ In the book, Mark (Chief Revenue Officer of HubSpot) describes how he devised a sales acceleration formula for scalable and predictable revenue growth at HubSpot. Using this, he was able to scale revenue to $100 million in 7 years. According to him, the Sales Acceleration formula or process has 5 key pillars. Sales Hiring Formula Defining the ideal characteristics of a salesperson for your organization and devising a framework to test these skills. Finding top-performing salespeople by incentivizing internal recruiters on success rates. Determining the first ideal hire in the sales team, someone that perfectly aligns with the characteristics, long-term vision, culture, and maturity. Sales Training Formula Creating a systemic sales training program that is focused on the buyer journey, sales process, and sales qualification matrix. Taking into account individual traits and skills of salespeople in a way that is predictable and scalable. Constantly iterating the sales training program and ensuring that it aligns with the needs of the team instead of merely the organization. Sales Management Formula Sales Training: Focusing on a
How to Optimize Your Business? – Thanks to Sales Enablement Tools
Nowadays, businesses need the right tools and data to remain competitive in their respective market. This makes now the best time that you check out sales enablement software. These are solutions that provide your team with the proper tools, knowledge, processes, and functions to maximize every sales opportunity. Sales enablement is more than just about lead generation. It covers an umbrella of functions such as recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training, coaching, providing resources, and evaluating the effectiveness of certain programs within the organization. Likewise, sales teams are not the only ones who benefit from such sales enablement tools. It can also help marketing teams, human resource teams, and more. It syncs every department within your organization and ensures that their goals are aligned towards one goal, which is an increase in productivity and efficiency of sales. With that said, here’s how you can optimize your business with the right sales enablement tools in the market. 1. Synchronize source of content and data As mentioned earlier, sales teams aren’t the only ones who get to use sales enablement tools. It can affect your whole department as well. It does so by providing a centralized source of content and data for all departments. This source of content and information is critical for engaging with potential customers and closing deals with them. Having a single source of truth for all your content can help you create a more streamlined and organized sales enablement strategy. This helps sales reps and other teams reduce wasted time and efforts on searching for and using relevant content to use for their campaigns and operations. This centralized repository of data can also help you improve your sales account planning, especially if you integrate it with your customer relationship management (CRM) software. DemandFarm is a powerful account planning platform for integrated planning where you can connect your data with external sources for a holistic approach. 2. Personalize buyer’s journey With your customer data organized and aligned properly across departments, this makes it easier for you to personalize your potential buyers’ journey and experience with your company. After all, not all customers need and want the same thing. You would often need to use different tactics to close a deal for each prospective customer. Through sales enablement tools, you can create a relevant and personalized sales account plan for each respective prospect. This serves as a guide that contains all the critical information you will need to interact and close a deal with them. As more customers begin to look for genuine and dynamic interactions, relying on a scripted sequence for each sales pitch won’t be enough. You need to be in tune with your targets’ behaviors, needs, and wants instead of forcing them to fit into your own sales process. And since sales enablement aligns your sales team across all departments, they can get the needed data to learn more about their leads. 3. Streamline communication between marketing and sales team Marketing and sales team may have different functions and tasks within an organization, but they are inevitably tied with one another. A study by LinkedIn shows that 58% of aligned sales and marketing teams have higher lead conversion rates compared to those companies with teams that have poor communication. Sales enablement software can help you with that. It does so by streamlining content for both sides. What one produces, the other can use for its operations. These may be in the form of content, data, and reports. Likewise, it provides transparency on both sides to keep goals aligned throughout. Nowadays, this alignment between the two teams is becoming increasingly important for your business’ growth. With digital marketing blurring the line separating the two departments, these two teams must collaborate to ensure meaningful engagement with potential buyers. 4. Leverage data and analytics Nowadays, data and analytics have become an integral part of running a business. It helps generate relevant content for their brands, make smart decisions, develop better strategies, and create meaningful relationships with their customers. According to a report by the Havas Group, 81% of brands often go extinct because they no longer create relevant content for their customers. Meanwhile, only 19% collect and utilize data for marketing and sales purposes. This goes to show how much data can affect your business’ growth. One of the benefits of sales enablement is its ability to track and measure the performance of your sales process. You can gain insights from your interactions with your prospects and those who are engaging with your marketing content. This includes top-performing content, trends and prospect behaviors, and areas of improvement. You can use these insights to develop content and process to close deals faster and more frequently. 5. Improve customer engagement The different types of sales enablement tools are geared towards one thing, and that is to drive up your sales productivity and revenues. It would also help in sales acceleration and sales transformation. With the right data and relevant content, you can improve interactions with target consumers and create meaningful relationships with them in the long run. Engagement is essential when it comes to closing deals. The constant streams of communication ensure that your leads are nurtured, and your potential buyers remain interested in your company. Without that point of contact, all your marketing and sales teams’ hard work can fall apart along the way. Sales enablement gives you the necessary tools and data to keep engagement with your prospects and consumers relevant and effective. This includes videos, CRM, whitepapers, datasheets, and more. 6. Integrate with your other solutions The beauty of technology is that you now have other tools, devices, and solutions within reach to help you manage and operate other aspects of your business. Sales enablement applications are just one of the software you can integrate within your system. Having one software may sometimes not be enough. After all, no solution is one-size-fits-all. Sales enablement software has its limitations. Nonetheless, you can incorporate sales management software into your strategy to further enhance your
Cross-Selling vs Upselling – The Main Differences
Recall the last time that you were at McDonald’s (even though it feels like a decade at this point). What did you order? Maybe you only wanted some fries and coke, but the cashier convinced you to convert them into a happy meal. Or perhaps you noticed a new addition to the burger suite (at a point when you were hungry enough to devour a buffalo) and decided to try it out instead. If we start inspecting such encounters closely, an interesting pattern emerges. For instance, walking into a shoe store and subtly pitched to add a pair of socks or shorts to the cart. What is this? And more importantly, why does it work so well for almost all organizations, regardless of industry? Guide: Cross-selling and Up-selling Explained What is Cross-Selling? At its worst, Cross-selling is an advanced sales tactic. But at its best, it is a customer success story that corporate leaders yearn for. As we have seen in the examples above, Cross-selling is the process of satisfying the customers’ additional needs that the primary product cannot fulfil. In other words, it means encouraging customers to buy complementary products with their purchases, increasing the overall cart value. This places the strategy miles away from cold reach-outs and sales prospecting simply because it taps existing customers instead of new ones. What is Upselling? Up-selling is the first conceptual sibling of Cross-selling, where the end goal is to increase the cart value not by introducing new items but by increasing the size or quantity of the initial purchase decision. For marketers (or salespeople), this may translate into selling a higher-end subscription to the customer with more advanced features or integrations. In most cases, upselling works much better than Cross-selling since it is easier to improve the commitment of a purchase decision that the customer has already made! What is the difference between Cross-selling and Upselling? More often than not, Cross-selling and Up-selling are used interchangeably, marking a conceptual error. The best way forward is to consider Cross-selling a complementary product and Up-selling an upgrade. For instance, upgrading an economy aeroplane ticket to business class would be an Upsell. But shopping from the in-flight product catalogue, such as headphones, would be a Cross-sell (since you have already bought the plane ticket). Upselling is almost always associated with a higher-margin product. Cross-selling deals with similarly priced complementary products with no significant enhancement in the margin. Thus, margin expansion is a function of upselling. Cross-selling helps boost order value and volume. The following examples will make the difference vivid. Case Study: TaskUs registered a 30% increase in up-selling & 20% increase in cross-selling Why are Upselling and cross-selling Important? When Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot, went onstage to deliver a keynote at Inbound 18, no one expected what was coming next. He officially shattered the traditional concept of Sales Funnels – a cornerstone of marketing strategies since 1898. His argument? Funnels are inherently outcome-centric. They do not care about the customers once the sales process is over. The solution? Delighting customers with the new Flywheel model instead. As HubSpot explains, companies can drive more referrals and repeat sales by using the momentum of happy customers. This is a strong indication of the direction in which the digital world is headed. With increasing transparency and customer awareness, businesses today have no choice but to invest their energy into delighting existing customers. Why? This is because, in present hyper-competitive landscapes, acquiring a new customer is 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing customer, as reported by Harvard Business Review. In other words, upselling and Cross-selling are much better business strategies than Sales and Customer Acquisition. Here’s why you should be paying close attention: Revenue Growth Both Upselling and Cross-selling have a direct positive impact on your average order value. This is a rather obvious outcome when customers are motivated to opt for higher-priced alternatives or add-ons. To put the numerous benefits in perspective, here’s what Neil Patel explains happened in 2006 when Amazon added Up-selling capabilities with the phrase – “customers who bought this item also bought”. They clocked a 35% boost in sales! Source Strong Customer Relationships The fact that customers are willing to buy is itself a testimony to existing solid relationships. Successful cross-selling and up-selling can strengthen this relationship to the point of co-dependence, provided that you can deliver on your promise. But this also comes with a word of caution – never try to pitch additional products/services that buyers do not need. And even when you do get the pitch right, always be willing to take no for an answer. Increased CLV For certain businesses, such as in the SaaS space, upselling and Cross-selling can amount to as much as 70-95% of the revenue. This means that in a modest scenario, initial sales can rake in only 5% of the revenue! This brings us to another critical revelation – the effect on Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). With most of the revenue being a direct result of the day-to-day experience of customers with the business’s products/services, Up-selling and Cross-selling also have a direct bearing on the overall CLV. How to Cross-sell and Up-sell in Key Accounts? Cross-selling v upselling is an art form where customer success teams need to target the sweet spot between under-delivering and under-pitching, and Account Planning plays a significant role in making this possible. Here are some of the best practices that will help you paint the canvas with more conversions: Understand Customer Needs and Goals Even though it may look tempting, don’t just bombard your customers with product suggestions. The right Upsell/Cross-sell opportunities are hard to come by, leaving no room for squandering. The best way forward is to prospect customers first and answer questions like: What were they looking for in the first place? What are their short-term and long-term goals? Is there any budget or operational constraints? And more… Once you know everything about them, proceed to take the right call – Upsell or Cross-sell? Find White Space Opportunities
Land and Expand – The Ultimate Strategy For Business Growth
Imagine that you’ve just graduated from college and landed a job with the organization of your dreams. The salary is generous (to put it mildly) and there are immense opportunities for professional growth. All in all, it’s a perfect fit. On the third day of the job, you enter the CEO’s cabin and demand that she assigns you to the flagship project, doubles your salary, and promotes you on the spot. That escalated quickly, didn’t it? It is not supposed to (umm, never even think about trying this). In reality, you may have to showcase exemplary skills for years before being anywhere close to such atrocious demands or expectations. This is even applicable in your personal life and the analogy from Forbes hits home in that regard. This is nothing but a modest case of land and expand business strategy. Definition: What Is Land and Expand Strategy? Land and Expand is a business strategy that is based on three simple rules: Rule#1: Efficient selling involves a natural progression. Rule#2: Selling too much too soon can undermine deals. Rule#3: Current customers are the best source of income. In other words, land and expand strategy dictates a strategic framework under which the salesperson first focuses on landing a small deal with an organization (‘Land’). The goal is to first get the foot in the door. Now that he/she becomes a part of the organization, it gets considerably easier to explore opportunities for upselling and cross-selling over time (‘Expand’). For instance, let’s say that you work in a tech company that sells hotel management software. Your latest convert is a multinational hotel chain with tremendous potential for account growth. Under the framework of ‘Land and Expand’, you would go above and beyond and do everything in your power to overdeliver. This might mean providing hands-on training to their employees or constantly anticipating and addressing possible concerns even before they arise. Think about your favorite restaurant that sends you a free pudding with every order. Or your local store that provides free delivery even for low-key shopping sprees. The idea is to delight customers and exceeds expectations, forging long-term relationships. As HubSpot lays it down for newcomers, ‘Exemplary Service’ is key. Now, let’s say that the client loves the experience and a couple of hotels can significantly improve their day-to-day productivity, saving thousands of dollars every month. Imminent trust looms around the corner, ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. This is where you sweep in and start taking advantage of possible upselling opportunities, potentially introducing your software to hundreds of other hotels in their portfolio. What it Isn’t? Notice that we have cautiously used the term ‘business strategy’ in the above definition. Contrary to popular beliefs (and the lingo of marketing gurus), Land and Expand is not a sales strategy. It is a business strategy that masquerades as a sales model. It may seem that the sales team is doing all the heavy lifting. After all, they are the ones who plant the seeds and nurture them to fruition. But many variables are working in the backend to support their case. This can range anywhere from ideal marketing and pricing strategies to unmatched deliveries and focused vision. As evident, this is very different from the case of one user organically leading to 10 other users. Importance of Land and Expand Strategy Once you decide to implement this framework, you’ll find that it takes the center stage in everything that you do. At its peak, it may even be driving more than half of your entire revenue. If properly executed (a big IF), Land and Expand strategies can help you: Significantly increase your cross-sell and upsell rates while also protecting you from discounted deals. Reduce the overhead cost of acquiring additional revenues with fertile customer expansion strategy and retention patterns. Taper the risks associated with selling by increasing the number of customer touchpoints and conversion timeframe. Accurately pitch the value proposition of your offering to your clients with an extended sales timeframe. Land And Expand Process The first step is to keep track of new user signups so that a sales representative or a customer success representative may identify ideal customer early on, even before your product is widely used. A typical ‘Land and Expand’ strategy will include several activities, each will ensure the relationship with the customer is strengthened across all potential stakeholders. Cold calls, emails, in-person meetings for lunch or at events, webinars, linking one of your executives with the customer’s decision-makers, or even a quarterly business review are some of the possibilities. You’ll need to keep an eye on user acceptance of your product as you improve your relationship inside the customer’s organisational hierarchy. It is critical that you maintain your focus on product adoption at all times. Make sure you understand the broader potential use cases for your product as well as the commercial impact it will have. As the product gains traction, it’s time to take advantage of the relationship you’ve developed with the customer’s decision-makers. Your product’s advocates and power users will help persuade high-level decision-makers of the importance of implementing your solution throughout the organisation. Land and Expand Action Plan: How To Implement It? For the strategy to work, you need to have a repeatable strategy action plan that moves the customer from one milestone to another, irrespective of the pace. Such a framework should include steps such as: Acquiring small pieces of business within potential accounts. Servicing every ensuing task at extraordinary levels. Developing trusted relations with multiple potential stakeholders. Penetrating the business by encashing this trust at strategic touchpoints. In the context of conversion and engagement funnels, Hunter And Bard neatly presents the framework as follows. At the ground level, this framework calls (rather, screams) for a support system in the form of sound practices. No Land and Expand strategy is complete without these: Right Off the Bat: Exceptional service should be the talk of the town from day one. Trust is an important
