Two years ago, we published a blog post detailing seven essential tools we’re using to navigate the transition to remote work and virtual selling. Today, we’re still virtual selling, but our tools need an update.
Before the coronavirus outbreak, only 20% of Americans worked from home. As of February 2022, roughly six-in-ten U.S. workers with jobs that can work from home (59%) do so all or most of the time.
As a reminder, here are the tools we suggested two years ago:
- A web conferencing software to keep buyers engaged (e.g., WebEx, Zoom)
- A business instant messaging (IM) software to increase team productivity (e.g., Microsoft® Teams, Slack)
- A CRM software to track customer data and sales activity (e.g., Salesforce, SAP C4/HANA)
- Cloud storage software for easy collaboration (e.g., OneDrive, Google Drive)
- A project management software to keep your team on task (e.g., Trello, Asana)
- A Learning Management System (LMS) to onboard and train sellers (e.g., SAP Litmos)
- Interactive presentations and content for impactful digital selling experiences. (e.g. Engagement360)
These tools have become table stakes. Collaboration and efficiency are no longer the primary challenges. Today, B2B businesses need tools and insights to successfully engage distracted digital buyers, improve sales effectiveness, and, ultimately, scale the business.
As such, here are the seven new tools we’ve implemented, developed, or acquired to navigate the transition to remote work and virtual selling:
1. Video & Screen Recording Tools to Foster More Personal Connections
Per MarketingCharts, 43% of consumers prefer interactive video content over other types of video content because it gives them the ability to decide what information they want to view and when they want to view it.
Video and screen recording tools are a great way to foster more personal connections with buyers. Mediafly Copilot, for example, enables sellers to deliver personalized, conversational presentations without long explanations or calls.
Reps can quickly create and share on-demand, interactive walk-throughs of sales proposals, value analysis reports, and product demos tailored to each buyer.
At Mediafly, we also use Copilot to train remote sales teams on new content or pitch decks.
2. Conversation Intelligence for Greater Sales Coaching ROI
Conversation Intelligence (CI) is a powerful tool that can help organizations gain a deeper understanding of buyer-seller interactions. Because we feel this is such a critical tool to have in the age of virtual selling, Mediafly recently acquired ExecVision.
Using ExecVision’s technology (now Mediafly Conversation Intelligence), revenue teams can record, transcribe and analyze every customer call and meeting for insights into the complete customer journey.
Automatically capture sales conversations and put the data to use. How is your pipeline impacted if competitors are mentioned? Are certain features requested more than others? Conversation Intelligence offers an unfiltered lens into buyer-seller discussions, with rich insights you can use to enrich machine learning models, predictions, forecasts, and analytics.
3. Value Calculators to Quantify the Value of Using Your Product or Service
Our sellers also leverage value calculators to lead consultative sales conversations today’s buyers crave. Value selling tools enable our reps to quantify and communicate the economic benefits of our technology in the context of our buyers’ challenges. That is increasingly important in a digital selling environment where reps have to work smarter (not harder) to differentiate your product or service from the competition.
Different types of tools can be leveraged at various points in the customer journey to ensure your revenue team is tying every conversation back to the value you can provide and helping buyers justify purchase decisions.
Add self-service diagnostics assessments to your website to improve demand generation and lead quality. Give your sellers business value assessments and TCO calculators to help them quantify your business value to buyers or compare your cost to a competitor’s. Arm your customer success or other post-sale teams with realized value calculators to guarantee renewals.
Try out our free ROI calculator here to estimate the financial impact a sales enablement solution could have for your company.
4. An Account-Based Marketing Platform to Target Key Accounts
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a focused growth strategy where marketing and sales collaborate to create personalized buying experiences for a mutually-identified set of high-value accounts.
An ABM platform can help you identify accounts in-market, learn more about your buyer’s hidden behaviors, and drive action across every channel based on intent data and rich insights.
Waiting for inbound leads can be a waste of time. With an ABM platform like 6sense, you get the visibility you need to proactively target the right accounts at the right time.
5. Forecasting Tools for Predictable Revenue Growth
Your forecast isn’t just a number. It affects countless other decisions across your business. Yet, most revenue teams fail to forecast sales pipeline accurately quarter after quarter.
Mediafly acquired InsightSquared, a leader in revenue intelligence, to bring customers Intelligence360, a flexible, comprehensive solution to analyze all activity and engagement across the buyer’s journey to accurately predict the likelihood a deal will close and provide prescriptive next steps to execute. Track historical changes, easily interpret the data, and streamline the rollup process to save your revenue leaders countless hours each week, and set your team up for efficient, scalable growth.
Take this self-guided, interactive tour to see how to quick and easy it is to roll up an accurate sales forecast.
6. Interactive Content & Presentations that Engage Digital Buyers
B2B buyers’ content consumption habits changed during the pandemic. The move to virtual selling drove content consumption up, with the average number of views per piece of content shared increasing by 207%. More specifically, interactive content assets saw 28% more views than static content assets.
At Mediafly, we recognized how critical interactive content had become to engaging distracted digital buyers early and acquired Presentify, a visual communications provider, to help our customers create standout content experiences whether engaging buyers in-person or remote.
We’re helping our customers replace static PowerPoint slides and PDFs on screen with multimedia presentations, animated social media and explainer videos, and simulated app and software demos. And as a result, they’re improving the buyer-seller dynamic with more impactful, collaborative sales experiences.
Download our guide How to Create an Effective Virtual Sales Presentation for tips on creating your own interactive content.
7. Conversational chatbot to generate pipeline
McKinsey reported that B2B buyers complete 60-80% of their research independently. That means they visit your website to learn as much as they can about your company, products, and services before they agree to a meeting. At Mediafly, we use Qualified to connect with prospects in real-time while they’re engaged on our site.
Our sales development reps ask visitors qualifying questions and offer content recommendations and other information to get to know prospective buyers and capture more qualified leads. With Qualified, we can pre-populate questions and answers for site visitors to click through or automatically route visitors to a sales rep as soon as they arrive on our site. We can even book meetings via chat.
Humanity: The #1 Tool in Your Arsenal
While these technologies will help you sell virtually, please remember that nobody’s remote work setup is perfect. If your colleague isn’t tech-savvy and needs help setting something up via Zoom, help them. Forgive your boss for the dog barking incessantly in the background of your weekly team meeting. If your direct report’s toddler makes her way onto his lap during a video conference with a client, say “hi!”. We’re all in this together, and empathy is the #1 tool you can have in your arsenal.
Looking to uplevel buyer engagement and drive more revenue from virtual selling? Contact us to learn more about Mediafly’s Revenue360 suite with solutions for content management, sales enablement, interactive content, value selling, customer engagement, revenue intelligence, and more.
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