In celebration of our recent acquisition of sales enablement provider iPresent Ltd., our fearless leader Carson Conant is taking over the blog for a three-week series on the importance of sales enablement, the misconceptions you shouldn’t buy into, and the reasons we at Mediafly believe in making sales enablement accessible for all sales teams, regardless of size, maturity or geography.
Did you know the deadliest predator in the animal kingdom is…the dragonfly? By a long shot. For those of you laughing or rolling your eyes right now, let me put that statement into perspective. Only one in four of a lion’s hunts are successful. A shark fares a bit better with a 50% success rate. But a dragonfly is successful in hunting, killing and eating its prey 95% of the time. How does such a small, seemingly delicate species perform so well in a world filled with bigger, more ferocious predators?
Simplicity, agility, and efficiency.
Now think of your sales force. Traditionally, we’ve taught our sellers that to be successful, they need to be sharks. But with the modern buyer growing increasingly informed, cautious, and experience-driven, it’s time we adjust our sales strategy. Today, modeling our selling behaviors off of the dragonfly is a better bet. Here’s why (and how sales enablement can help you make it happen).
Simplicity: Adopt a Sales Strategy That Cuts Through The Noise
Dragonflies have a knack for selective attention. They’re able to focus in on a single insect from a swarm and completely ignore the background buzz.
With the average RFP process including 6-8 vendors, today’s buyers are inundated with a lot of information in a relatively short amount of time. Understandably, it can be difficult for stakeholders to differentiate between providers and select the right option. This often leads them to make a decision based solely on price or to throw their hands up and do nothing. As a seller, how do you differentiate yourself and your solution to convince buyers to act in your favor?
Tune in to your buyer’s unique needs and address them in your sales interactions. They don’t care who you are, what you do, or that you can solve 100 challenges. They care if you can solve one or two very specific challenges. Listen to your buyer. Cut through the noise. Zero in on their priority business challenge and how your solution can address it. Data from Corporate Visions shows 74% of buyers purchase from the first sales rep to add value and insights.
How can sales enablement technology help?
Interactive guided selling tools like ROI calculators or TCO comparisons help you capture real-time input from buyers and use the output to guide compelling sales discussions. Presenting hard data that underscores why your product or service is the right choice in a consumable way builds credibility and loyalty.
Agility: Pivot Sales Conversations To Address Buyer Challenges In Real-Time
Researchers have identified a neural pathway in the dragonfly’s brain that allows it to track a moving target, calculate the interception trajectory, and subtly adjust its own path as needed.
A large majority of buyers (87%) feel sellers don’t understand their needs. Why? Static, linear PowerPoint presentations don’t allow sellers the flexibility they require to take the conversation where the buyer wants to go. When a buyer asks a question off-topic or veers in another direction, it’s not uncommon for a seller to panic and tell the buyer they’ll get back to them with an answer or more information later on. This creates a disconnect between buyer and seller and leaves the sales interaction feeling stale. Even if the seller can regain their footing, the buyer isn’t walking away from the conversation with the information they need to move forward with a purchase decision.
Equipping sellers with accessible, dynamic content and ensuring each salesperson can effectively deliver that content builds confidence in your solution and ensures the buyer leaves every conversation feeling as though their needs have been satisfied.
How can sales enablement technology help?
Using a sales enablement platform to store, update, and access all content in one place ensures your sellers always have what they need to build and deliver impactful sales presentations on any device, whether online or offline, and pivot sales conversations to address anything the buyer wants to discuss in real-time. Incorporating dynamic content into your solution empowers sellers to customize sales presentations in line with buyer challenges and expectations while staying on-brand and compliant. Sales readiness tools combine the power of sales enablement and LMS to modulize continuous sales training and help you ensure your sellers can effectively deliver the right message every single time.
Efficiency: Leverage The Right Capabilities to Increase Your Sales Win Rate
According to entomologists, dragonflies are “perfectly adapted for flying and hovering”. They can move at speeds up to 50km/h with three wing beats and dive, pivot, fly backward or upside down. Clip off one of their wings, and they can still capture their prey.
While all of your sellers may not have the innate abilities needed to be a top performer, ensuring they have the right sales tools and methodologies will drastically increase the likelihood that they’ll meet sales quotas. To start, modern sellers only spend 30% of their time doing what they were actually hired to do: sell. How can you automate some of your sellers’ day-to-day tasks to drive efficiency?
Once you’ve alleviated some of the burdens on their time, you can zero in on the capabilities that will also make them more effective. Adopting a storytelling approach to sales (and supporting it with relevant data and insights, compelling content, and interactive sales tools) allows sellers to effortlessly create meaningful sales engagements that inspire buyers to say “Yes!”.
How can sales enablement help?
Utilizing a sales application drastically reduces the amount of time sellers spend preparing for sales presentations, allowing them to spend more time where it counts – in front of customers. Integrate your CRM system with your sales enablement platform and leverage machine learning to automatically log important meeting details, content presented and prospect data in the appropriate customer record and make relevant content recommendations. Use data to tie your content back to revenue and optimize your sales strategy based on what works and what doesn’t.
The dragonfly is an impressive creature – small and mighty. It’s living proof that you can pack a lot of power in a small package. So what are you waiting for? Every organization today, regardless of size or maturity, should be leveraging sales enablement technology to improve sales outcomes. Be a dragonfly. Launch or level-up your sales strategy with sales enablement tools and technology today, and show the sharks and lions who’s boss.
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