Sales Intelligence Weekly

Episode 68: Using Customer Feedback to Develop your Messaging Strategy

Authenticity is key when selling. As a seller, it's your job to build trust and communicate effectively with your buyers.  But what does it mean for someone to be perceived as authentic? Authenticity can be affected by the way we speak, the way we dress, and our sales presentations.  In this episode, we explore the latest research on how buyers perceive sellers' authenticity in virtual contexts, specifically when it comes to language. Tune in to find out how your language impacts your buyer's perception.

Sales enablement is a crucial function for any B2B organization, but on today's show, we're going to talk about something a little uncomfortable: The elephant in the room.   The reality is, many people who work in sales enablement have never experienced front-line, quota-carrying selling!   If you want to eliminate disconnect and align your enablement strategy to make more impact for your reps, you must first understand their world. We've heard the frustrations from sales enablement teams: “My reps don't use the enablement I provide them!”. But we also hear the frustrations from sellers: “How can enablement tell me what to do when they've never even sold a deal?”. These are difficult waters to navigate.   So today, we're going to address this massive elephant that might be hanging out on your sales floor.   Episodes and more: https://www.primary-intel.com/podcast/

In B2B selling, your buyer's mind will wander during your presentation. Ideally, they will not wander so far that they forget they're attending your Zoom call.  While mind-wandering can have a positive impact on leisure or creative activities, it has negative consequences in communication because it is linked to less comprehension and more reliance on automatic behaviors. This means that changing your buyer's status quo is harder.  On today's show, we're going to explore the latest research on what to do (and what not to do) when the person's brain, you're trying to sell to, takes a break.  Episodes & More: www.primary-intel.com/podcast

The use of artificial intelligence in sales is revolutionizing the way businesses approach customer engagement, lead generation, and sales forecasting. This revolution brings with it a lot of questions, and even worry from reps and leaders on what this means for the future. In an ever-changing sales landscape, it's important to understand how AI can impact your sales motions. On today's show, we're going to explore how AI has transformed B2B selling so far. We'll dive into how your sellers can leverage AI to increase win rates. And, we'll look into the future to see how AI might continue to transform B2B selling.

In this global economy, conducting business across borders is inescapable, especially with the convenience of virtual platforms.  But do people from different cultures process information differently? When presenting to a culturally diverse audience, do you need to simplify complexity, or include additional details?  As sellers, we must understand how our buyers process our presentations and other assets we share with them during the buyer's journey.

In today's dynamic business landscape, the focus on sales enablement for B2B organizations has become increasingly vital. Whether you're already equipped with a dedicated enablement team or considering enablement initiatives within your company, understanding the evolving nature of enablement, strategic best practices, and securing executive buy-in are crucial. Here to unpack this with me today is special guest, Chris Kingman, the Global Head of Digital Sales Enablement at TransUnion. Together, we'll dive into the world of sales enablement, exploring its transformative journey, how to kickstart your own enablement function, and the pivotal role it plays in driving growth.

Before the pandemic, face-to-face sales meetings prevailed. But then everything changed. Suddenly, buyer and seller interactions only occurred in virtual settings. Sellers had to adjust their skills to ensure they were building trust, communicating effectively, and differentiating in this new digital environment. As the world slowly opens up, many sellers are eager to get back to face-to-face selling, but getting everyone in the same room can be difficult. And while many buyers now expect (and prefer) a digital buying experience, we have to seriously consider the modality of our sales presentations and sales interactions. What if we could peek under the human skull to understand how buyers want to be sold to today?

Go-to-market teams are made up of different functions, all working together – or at least they should be working together - to increase win rates and revenue. But, this is not always the case. In a time where you are fiercely competing for your buyer's time, attention, and budget, you cannot afford to be disconnected within your go-to-market team. Today, we're going to dissect the disconnect from the perspective of sales enablement to find out where these functions do and do not align, how you can identify misalignment, and how fix misalignment to create better experiences – both internally and for your buyers and customers.

In our research, we've found that over 70% of sellers don't feel confident when selling against competitors. This is a scary number considering most B2B deals are competitive deals! Having a competitive sales enablement strategy is key to improving win rates and revenue. But where do you even start? How do you create a competitive sales enablement strategy that makes an impact? Episodes & More: www.primary-intel.com/podcast

In a world where you're always competing for your buyers' and customers' attention, you must create memorable messaging that quickly speaks to your audience in an impactful way. As sellers, we must make the most of the time we have with buyers, and understand what messaging, tactics, and value propositions are going to build trust during the buying process. Your pitch needs to be concise and consistent across the buyer's journey. So how do you develop the perfect pitch? And how do you help your sales reps use your perfect pitch to win more?

With the changing economic climate, go-to-market alignment is crucial.  Join us as we discuss how the go-to-market team at CentralSquare Technologies uses Win-Loss Analysis to align go-to-market teams and initiatives, create a successful feedback loop, inspire action and change for success, improve win rates, and provide insight to executives and investors.

It's an uphill battle out there for sales leaders and front-line sales reps. This is a common theme on our show! As the buyer's journey shifts to a digital experience, the time sellers have with buyers is shrinking. This means that sellers must understand how to make the most of the time they have with buyers and understand what they can personally do to impact win rates. It's pertinent that go-to-market teams quickly identify the blind spots that cause reps to lose winnable deals. And it's even more important to know how to fix those problems in real- time. In a time where every deal is sacred, you must be able to track the strengths, the weaknesses, and the “health” of each sales rep. But how do we do this?

Data is power! As long as it's quality data and if you know what to do with it. When creating an impactful go-to-market strategy, you've got to do your research. In a time where we are flooded with data and intelligence, it can be hard to parse through the noise, uncover truth, and understand what insight you should be applying to your sales and marketing strategies. So how do you go about conducting research in the right places, understanding which data is most powerful, and applying this new insight to your GTM strategy?

Go to market teams are comprised of people who have a kaleidoscope of skill sets, backgrounds, and experiences. This diversity of experience is part of what makes a business successful! It's not uncommon for a marketer or a sales rep to have professional experience unrelated to marketing or selling. The career path of someone on a go-to-market team may be filled with twists and turns – but along the way, they pick up something very important: transferable skills! As you lead your go-to-market teams, you must be able to identify these skills and help each team member develop them. In this episode, we will explore this concept of transferable skills. What are they? How do you recognize them? How do you develop them? And why do members of go-to-market teams need them?

There's been a shift for many B2B services companies in the past few years – even here at Primary Intelligence! More and more services companies have made the transition to selling software as a service. And it makes sense – software can be less expensive and easier to scale. But the transition from service-based to SaaS is not for the faint of heart.

Product marketing is a crucial function for go-to-market teams who want to win more. Product marketers are often tasked with positioning, product launches, win-loss analysis, and oftentimes, sales enablement! With so many things on your to do list, how do ensure your product marketing role doesn't become 100% tactical? How can you as a product marketer move past the tactical, and become more strategic? And how does strategic product marketing impact your go-to-market strategy and organization as a whole?

When launching a new product, it can be difficult to understand what should take priority. You must think about what will have the highest impact on driving value for current customers - while also considering how to attract new customers. Needless to say, there are a lot of moving pieces. One crucial element of any product launch framework is sales enablement. But where should sales enablement fit in this prioritization? What role does sales enablement play in the go-to-market process? And how can you align your efforts to create success every time?

It's no secret that product launches have a lot of moving parts. If you're thinking about launching a product or product feature, there's a lot of research, coordination, and planning that will need to go into it. Marketing, product, sales, and CX teams will all need to work together to ensure product launch success. But how do you measure the success of a product launch? And who's responsible for what?

If you're on a go-to-market team, you may already be using a specific framework to position your product. And if you aren't you should be! Storytelling frameworks are powerful for improving positioning and creating an effective go-to-market strategy. But once you have a framework in place, how do you then use it to create alignment throughout your organization – and, alignment with your buyers and customers?

We've said it before on the show... The way buyers interact with sellers has changed. The way buyers research and learn about solutions has changed. The way we build trust, the time sellers have with buyers, the way we educate our buyers... it's all changed. And I'm here to tell you that it will never stop changing and evolving. And as sellers and marketers, it can be hard to keep up. It can be difficult to understand what's working and what's truly going on within your buyer's journey. The traditional marketing funnel may no longer apply to your buyers, which poses the question - Is the traditional marketing funnel dead?

Digital sales rooms. This is something we've heard talked about by analyst groups like Gartner, by marketing leaders, and by sales leaders all over. This new way to bring information to buyers is gaining a lot of traction in the B2B space. With the goal of simplifying the way buyers and sellers collaborate, digital sales rooms are something you may want to consider if you're trying to create a better, unique and even bespoke buying experience. The Sales Intelligence Weekly podcast covers topics focused on helping sales and marketing leaders improve sales experience, increase win rates, and elevate sales enablement Episodes & More: www.primary-intel.com/podcast/

Product Marketing has become an essential function for B2B businesses who want to win more. If you want to create better go-to-market strategies and increase your sales win rate, having a product marketer on your team is key. But the definitions around product marketing can still be somewhat fluid depending on your organization. In 2020, the Product Marketing Alliance collected over 160 definitions for what a product marketer does. This role is evolving. It's changing. So today, we're going to dive into this. We're going to explore the state of product marketing – past, present, and future.

Product marketing has become a crucial function for B2B revenue teams. Product marketers play a key role in understanding buyer needs and providing insights that help each sales rep improve their win rate and create better experiences for buyers. Product marketers are constantly researching, defining, and communicating the position of the product. But some organizations struggle to align product marketing and sales initiatives. The struggle to create a strong feedback loop is real! The struggle to inspire action or change is real! So, if you're a product marketer, how do you take your learnings, your insights, your research, and use these things to create alignment with your sales and the rest of your organization?  https://www.primary-intel.com/podcast

You don't just win deals without first capturing the attention of your audience. A solid and effective outreach strategy when selling is key to helping you improve win rates. But it's no easy feat… So how do you create an outreach strategy that is going to help you grow your revenue and have a positive impact on your win rates?

There's no better way to build trust than through the voice of your customers – we should know. We help our clients tap into the voice of their buyers and customers every day. But, as we say on this show, data without action is just data. One way to action on the data from the voice of your customer is through story telling. So how do you take the insights and experiences of your customers and turn them into stories that impact your go-to-market strategy?

The buyer's journey is changing, which means marketing and sales funnels are changing too. With buyer behavior shifting to self-education and solo research, go-to-market teams are having to rethink the buyer's journey. The buyer's journey is not linear, and it can be difficult to understand all the touchpoints that influenced your buyers' decisions. You may feel in the dark about what's truly happening in your buyer's journey. In fact, there's a term for these “dark” touchpoints: The Dark Funnel. And today, we're going to explore how you can conquer dark funnel marketing and use it to improve win rates and revenue.

Launching a product is no easy feat. And aligning your marketing and sales initiatives when taking a new product to market can be even more challenging. When you launch a new product, you must consider the specifics of your market and build trust in the right places. In this episode, we'll explore the framework for how to launch a product successfully with host, Ryan Cuellar, and  Warren Schirtzinger, Managing Partner at High Tech Strategies.

In any business, it can be tough to create awareness and accelerate market acceptance when launching a new product (or promoting an existing one). You have to build trust in the right places, with the right message, and with the right people. It's an uphill battle. But never fear, in this show we give you the strategies and tactics to improve your go-to-market. Explore the framework for how to accelerate market acceptance and shorten the sales cycle with host, Ryan Cuellar, and Warren Schirtzinger, Managing Partner at High Tech Strategies.

Sales and product must work together to ensure your customer's needs are met. But in most B2B organizations, a strong, consistent feedback loop between sales and product is non-existent. Your sales reps are on the front line, and they have unique insight into how your product is perceived by your buyers, what features and benefits are most important to a buyer when making a purchase decision, and how your product is expected to solve for evolving client needs. Product leaders must also communicate with sales on things like product roadmap and product updates so that sales can speak confidently about your solution, better differentiate against competitors, and demonstrate product value. So how can you create a successful feedback loop that empowers both sales and product? How can you align sales and product in a way that helps you better serve your buyers?

The insights you receive from your Win-Loss Analysis can be carried throughout the entire customer lifecycle. In this episode, we talk through the customer journey together to uncover how you can apply your Win-Loss Analysis throughout your customer journey and the impact your insights have in each phase. Learn how to optimize your customer journey through Win-Loss Analysis.

Win-Loss Analysis has a major impact on your front-line sales reps, but sharing win-loss insights with sales can be difficult. In this episode, we explore which insights are most relevant, how to create stories around the data, and best practices for sharing insights that matter with sales.

Your buyer feedback from Win-Loss Analysis can uncover sales coaching opportunities for each individual sales rep on your team. By leveraging buyer feedback in sales coaching, you can personalize your sales coaching efforts, eliminate bias, and help your reps what they can change TODAY to win more. In this episode, we'll discuss how you can use buyer feedback and Win-Loss Analysis to power your sales coaching efforts.

What causes biases in a win-loss program? In this episode, we'll explore the reasons biases appear within win-loss analysis, what common biases to look for, and how to eliminate those biases in your win-loss program. We'll also dive into how you can use marketing intelligence and sales intelligence to discover why your reps are really winning and losing.

Having a clear go-to-market strategy is crucial for B2B sellers. It creates alignment. It helps to optimize your buyers experience. But in today's environment, you must find ways to make your go-to-market initiatives stand out because buyers are flooded, bombarded even, with mass amounts of information. It's estimated that people are exposed to between six thousand to ten thousand ads every single day. So, in this sea of information and constant tug of war for attention, how can you capture your buyers' attention and how can you continually nurture your buyers with go-to-market initiatives that stand out?

As B2B sales and marketers, we understand that a multi-channel approach is crucial to nurturing and capturing your prospects. But today, we're going to explore one, time-tested channel, that is key to winning more opportunities – Email. There's a method to creating impactful email strategies in sales and marketing. You can't just send random emails and expect your prospects to move through the funnel. So today, we're going to explore how you can leverage email to win more opportunities.

The way buyers interact with sellers is changing! We've mentioned this before on the show. Gartner estimates that only 5% of the buyer's journey is spent with the sales rep – leaving about 95% of that buyer's journey for nurturing and buyer exploration. Buyers WANT more and more to self-educate when evaluating a new solution. In fact, a survey from DemandGen Report reported that 77% of B2B buyers did not talk with a sales rep until after they had performed independent research. So how do we adjust our go-to-market initiatives to match this changing buyer behavior? How do we provide the right information to the right buyers at the right time? And how do we educate and empower our buyers throughout the entire customer journey?

Enterprise selling. It's a different beast. Enterprise sales reps face many challenges as they try to hit revenue goals. There are struggles around engaging with senior executives, crafting the right story, positioning your deal size, and building a relationship of trust so that you can expand your deals throughout the customer lifecycle. So how can enterprise sales reps combat these challenges? What strategies can be used to help enterprise sales reps close massive deals and grow those accounts?

When you think of sales enablement, you may think of assets, pitch decks, battlecards, and other tangible pieces that sales reps can use to win more. But sales enablement goes beyond! Sales enablement includes the interpersonal interactions and relationships between reps, leadership, and other departments in your organization. Your company culture and the culture you build within your sales team should enable or empower your reps to win more. What we will explore today is how does organizational culture impact sales enablement and vice versa?

B2B businesses often struggle to find the best ways to go-to-market. With evolving buyer preferences, new or emerging competitors, and changing economic climates, your go-to-market strategy must be more effective than ever! So how do you go about nailing your go-to-market strategy and gain a deep understanding of what your buyers truly care about? Well, your buyers will tell you how to go to market… you just have to know how to ask and how to listen! And Win-Loss Analysis can help you do just that!  Episodes & More: www.primary-intel.com/podcast/

We know strategic alignment throughout your organization is crucial to increasing win rates. In a previous episode we explored specifically how to create alignment and end the battle between sales and marketing – but when it comes to strategic revenue operations, alignment goes beyond that. In today's episode, we're going to explore strategic alignment in B2B organizations from the top down. Let's talk about why the misalignment occurs, how you can identify it quickly, and how you can create strategic alignment within your organization between all customer-centric departments? Episodes & More: www.primary-intel.com/podcast/

It's no mystery – sales is a tough profession to be in. As we've talked about before on the show, the time sellers have with buyers is shrinking as the buyer's journey shifts to a digital experience. Gartner predicts that sales reps only have 5-6% of the B2B buyer's journey, and in this time they must understand how they can make the greatest impact on an opportunity outcome.   This is part of why we do what we do at Primary Intelligence – to uncover the unbiased reasons for wins and losses for each rep. To enable them with buyer feedback that helps them sell better.  But win-loss is one piece of the puzzle. So how can we enable our reps to build trust, differentiate, and – ultimately – increase wins?

Episode 26: Reverse Lost Opportunities with the Voice of Your Customer by Primary Intelligence

It's easy for sales reps to get discouraged or to lose motivation. When things get tough, prospects go silent, or deals are lost, your sales reps may feel discouraged, unmotivated, and negative  - and that negativity is contagious! We see this in our win-loss research. The experience with your sales rep can make or break an opportunity outcome. And when a rep becomes unmotivated, the buyer's experience with that sales rep is sure to suffer. And this is detrimental to win rates. So how to we prevent this? How do we as sales leaders keep our reps motivated and engaged?

Cold calling – most reps dread it. And it makes sense! It's uncomfortable talking to someone you don't have a prior relationship with – especially when you're ultimately trying to sell them something. And according to GONG, there's a 1.48% chance of a positive outcome from a cold call. It feels like the odds are stacked against sales reps when it comes to cold calling. But never fear. Cold calling doesn't have to fill you with dread. Join us as we explore how each rep can improve those cold call outcomes with Jason Bay, Chief Prospecting Officer at Blissful Prospecting!

There has never been a better time to be a seller! There is more technology, information, and means of connecting with our prospects and customers than at any other point in history. At the same time, the complexity of selling is through the roof and the variety of pressures on salespeople, sales leaders and sales teams can be soul-crushing.   What can sales leaders do to inoculate themselves and their teams against these pressures and complexities? What is one thing they can do to give themselves a competitive advantage in this complex and pressurized sales environment? Well, it turns out that the highest performing sales teams are also the ones that purposefully build and maintain winning cultures.  Now, there's almost nothing worse for a sales team than unchecked, rampant negativity. Negativity can be infectious, it causes innumerable problems for sales teams and it's super easy for it to take root in your culture.   As sales leaders, we can directly impact and ultimately reverse the effects of negativity on our sales floors. We have the power to create and foster a winning sales culture within our team.

A buyer's experience with a sales rep can make or break a deal. In a recent study, we found that 36% of losing vendors could've won the deal by making a change during the evaluation process. Most often, buyers attributed the loss to something in the sales experience – even above price or product feature! But when you ask a sales rep, they'll likely attribute most losses to something beyond their control – like price, missing product feature, or timing. The experience your sales rep creates with the buyer is crucial! So how can you empower your reps to create the right experiences for your buyers? How can you help them build trust, differentiate from competitors, and really demonstrate value throughout the sales process?

In today's episode, we're exploring a topic that seems to be on the minds of every B2B revenue leader right now – growth. Everybody wants it. Everybody needs it. But how do we create and implement successful growth strategies? Discussing how sales intelligence plays into growth strategies is Frank Maylett, Chief Revenue Officer at Instructure.

B2B sales teams have experienced a shift in the past few years. We've all felt it. The pandemic has caused many sales teams to transition into a remote or hybrid work environment. As sales leaders, it can be tough to hire, onboard, and coach when you don't have that daily in-person time with your new reps on the sales floor. So how can you identify top talent and skills quickly when building your team? And how can you empower your new reps to start winning as soon as possible?

Personal connection – We all want it. We all need it. But as the buyer's journey shifts to a digital experience, it can be tough to build personal connections with prospects during the sales cycle. Yes, sales reps MUST lean into data and analytics to understand how to win more – but layering in a personable approach to sales in crucial to building customer relationships. So how do we do this? How do we build those strong connections with prospects?

Sales confidence. Some reps have it. Some reps don't. Some reps fake it. BUT all reps NEED it. As sales leaders, we must empower our reps to help them build confidence when selling. When a sales rep shows up ill-prepared for a meeting with a prospect, it shows. Reps must be able to confidently tell the right story, speak confidently to competitive claims, and build trust in order to win more. So how can we prepare our reps to show up to every meeting with confidence?