MarketStar Blog | Best Practices (5)

Change is inevitable; in fact, it is essential for businesses to grow. However, not everyone is willing to embrace change, and even if they are willing to accept change, they may not see things your way. That’s why stakeholder relations have to be a key component of any business or change management strategy. It’s important to have everyone involved on board with the new strategy, policies, and procedures so the entire team is working toward a common goal. When making plans for 2019, you want to be sure that everyone involved shares the same vision and objectives.

Selling any technical product is a team effort. Sales representatives need support from customer service, accounting, operations, and, perhaps most important of all, sales engineers. When you close a complex engagement involving multiple components, integrations, and customizations, you need the support of the sales engineering team to help with presales and to handle fulfillment. However, even the most seasoned sales professionals still get confused about the role of sales engineers and how best to include them in the sales process. That’s why it’s essential that sales managers understand how to manage both sales reps and sales engineers.

The primary goal of every sales executive is to maximize sales productivity. It takes time to research new prospects, make cold calls, and do sales prospecting. In today’s business climate, more leads are coming in through the internet, which means sales representatives also need to react to sales queries—whether they’re qualified or not.

Today’s customers live online. If you want to fill your lead funnel, you must use digital media sales.

My leadership philosophy is a combination of my own experience and that of watching and being mentored by key contributors at MarketStar. What have I learned? A sales leader is an individual who isn’t afraid to roll up their sleeves to accomplish goals and lead their team to success. But we all know leadership takes more than barking orders!  I try to lead my teams with empathy, performance, and transparency as my guideposts. I don’t want to scare new hires away after their first week on the job!

As the sales industry continues its rapid evolution, sales reps will need a higher level of technical competency to sell complex products, services, and solutions. Technology has created a demand for sales teams to stay up to speed on the wants and needs of their customers and the pulse of their respective industries at large. Not only is technology changing how teams operate and interact with their customers, but products are becoming increasingly complex. This requires a rethinking of sales knowledge and skill sets.

There is a general misconception that companies create their own brands. This simply is not true. A brand is created by the way others perceive your company, its products, and the services it offers. A brand becomes the way they feel and think about you. Even though companies don’t create their brand, they influence it by their actions.

To illustrate, let’s examine two examples, Volkswagen and Kia. Volkswagen launched the brand strategy “working with you” in 2013. Their goal was to establish the idea that they were meeting their customer’s needs. When news hit in 2015 that they had installed a cheat emissions devise in their U.S. vehicles, the once premium car manufacturer quickly lost credibility and confidence in consumers and their customers. Their customers no longer felt like Volkswagen was “working with them.” They perceive the brand as cheaters and dishonest. Not only have they experienced significant job cuts over the last few years, but they have lost revenue as a company. In 2016 sales in the United States dropped 8% in one year.

Inside sales has grown immensely over the past decade; research shows that 800,000 jobs were projected in inside sales from 2009 to 2012. It hasn’t showed any signs of slowing down. According to 2016 data, inside sales personnel held a 54.4 percent majority over a 45.5 percent field sales minority. By 2020, it’s projected that there will be more than 6 million inside and field salespeople in the US, with a vast majority dealing in inside sales. 

You and your team of salespeople likely excel at closing sales. You likely have a firm grasp of managing your top enterprise accounts. However, managing a funnel of leads and prospecting and qualifying them for growth are also likely consistent challenges.

You aren’t alone. As data shows, 25 percent of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales, but 79 percent of marketing leads never convert. What’s more, 73 percent of leads are not sales-ready, and 50 percent are qualified but not yet ready to buy.