Author: Jay Mitchell



Are You Going to Let AI Replace Our Future Selling Workforce?

July 25, 2024
Jay Mitchell

Most selling careers follow a similar trajectory. Even for me, years ago as I finished my education at Baylor University, I joined the workforce in an entry-level position — ready to learn all I could and prove my worth. I gained on-the-job training that helped me grow and excel, while providing my mentors and other top-performing professionals extra support by taking on lower-level tasks so they could focus on providing higher value to the organization. It is a no-brainer for training recent graduates, for supporting your seasoned professionals and for managing resources effectively for the long-term within an organization.

But today, artificial intelligence (AI) is threatening these entry-level tasks in part — and sometimes in entirety. From research and data entry to other basic needs of a selling organization, AI excels. In fact, in a recent report by Intelligent.com, 69% of hiring managers surveyed flat-out said AI can do the work of recent college graduates. And 78% of hiring managers also said they planned to lay off recent graduates and turn to AI instead.

These insights alarm me. They should alarm you too, whether you are a selling leader or sales professional or an up-and-coming salesperson. Because while replacing entry-level positions with AI might reduce an organization’s costs in the short-term, it will leave the entire industry low on a seasoned talent pool in the future.While I cannot argue against the value of AI when used strategically, I see a compromise for selling leaders to explore as an avenue of true progress — where people and technology are not competing but working together for the greater good of your buyers and your organization. I see a way to Seek to Serve™ people, not to blindly lean on technology.

PUT AI IN A PARTNERSHIP WITH YOUR RECENT GRADUATES

No matter how proficient AI is at performing entry-level tasks, this technology still requires a handler — and, I would argue, the human touch. When we put too much trust in automation or AI tools, we sacrifice critical thinking humans do best. We have seen firsthand how AI can be misused, such as in replacing the voice of the customer (VOC), and lead an organization astray. And questions remain to the accuracy and applications for this novel tool, and an overall lack of personalization that limits the authentic value selling organizations should be aiming for.

Instead of going all-in AI, organizations instead can look to partner recent graduates with AI tools, to still get the stepping stones they need to quickly advance in their career path while tapping into AI to the best of its usefulness. In that same Intelligence.com study, 95% of hiring managers said they were more likely to hire graduates with background or proficiency in using AI.

Even if a promising recent graduate has little to no AI experience, gauge their openness and curiosity. Younger generations bring a high level of technologic literacy. It is likely some will have experience with AI tools and how to use them to your organization’s benefit.

For selling leaders and organizations, new employee growth from mentorship and guidance should still play a key role in entry-level jobs. But explore new ways how you can get the most out of recent graduates, including by partnering them with AI. Give them opportunities to prove themselves to move up the stepping stones to higher-level positions.

As a recent graduate in the selling arena (or arguably any industry today), bring your A-game and prove that you are agile and quick to grow. Tenacity and flexibility have always been important in a career in sales, and it is becoming even more-so as technology rises and the competition gets tougher.

SEEK TO SERVE™ OUR NEXT GENERATION OF SELLING LEADERS

By supporting selling interns and recent graduates, you are doing more than fortifying our future workforce. When you become a mentor and guide to selling graduates, you can achieve a level of return money cannot compete with. You get to be courtside as you watch a young person’s life grow and evolve, and you can win with every professional win they achieve. You, a human, can support another human on this planet — and is that not what part of life is truly about?

Do not let AI become foe to the next generation of selling professionals. Instead, hold fast to the meaningful responsibility of serving the future of your organization by serving our recent graduates.

To apply the Seek to Serve, Not to Sell® philosophy throughout your entire organization, check out our eBook and stand out with your buyers.

 

PRACTICE A SUPERIOR KIND OF SELLING

 



The Seller Trust Fall

July 18, 2024
Jay Mitchell

The lie starts as a way to avoid causing disappointment, not as an act of malice.

“Why did you not attend school today?” the Blue Fairy asks a small wooden boy.

He makes up a silly story — harmless but clearly false. Then in a blur, the boy jerks his head backwards as his nose extends like a dowel, his eyes crossing in shock.

“A lie keeps growing and growing until it’s as plain as the nose on your face,” the Blue Fairy warns.

This statement rings as true for salespeople today as it has for children since Disney released the motion picture Pinocchio in 1940.

Much like with a cartoon puppet’s nose, each fib a salesperson utters widens the gap between buyer and seller. In fact, even if your salespeople lead with honesty, those few salespeople who do not have instilled doubt and suspicion in buyers all-around.

Sellers must establish and reinforce trust in every conversation of every sales cycle. This does not have to be a desperate approach to conversations, and nor should your salespeople force relationships with buyers — but rather you must lead a shift in your sales teams from self-focused selling to buyer-centric service.

A TRUST GAP

In 2021, LinkedIn surveyed 800 B2B buyers and sellers and uncovered the state of trust. 58% of buyers ranked “trustworthy” as one of the most important traits a salesperson could possess. Second was “transparency,” at 37%. 89% of buyers described the sellers they ultimately choose to do business with as “trusted advisors.”

Sellers believe they are trustworthy too. In that same survey, 65% said they always put their buyer first. And in a TrustRadius survey, 85% of B2B sellers say they are open and honest about their solution during the sales process.

Yet, no matter how honest some sellers are — those who are not have corrupted the pool for everyone and, thus, buyers put up their guards. B2B sellers say “We are putting you first,” but only 23% of buyers believe it. B2B sellers swear “We are telling our solution as it is,” yet only 36% of buyers believe it.

Buyer-seller relationships start and grow from trust, and trust comes down a relationship grounded in honesty. Yet even if your salespeople are honest, as we have established, your buyers might be apprehensive to trust them, be that from a past experience where they have been burned or from a stereotype they hold about salespeople. How can your salespeople get your buyer to believe them then?

THE GAME-CHANGING APPROACH OF TRUSTED ADVISORS

Gaining buyer trust takes extra value selling considerations and a, what we call at Mereo, Seek to Serve, Not to Sell® approach.

Leave behind the marketing speak. Authenticity, clarity and value resonate with buyers much more than clever, over-branded turns of phrase. Enable your salespeople with the right tools and skills to have meaningful value-oriented conversations with buyers. A good place to start is by crafting a powerful value proposition worksheet.

Put your solution in your buyer’s hands. Buyers do not want to just hear about all the value your solution will bring — they want to experience it directly to see how it will fit their specific needs. Explore how demonstrations and trial runs can fit into your sales process as a way to prove you understand their situation (their challenges and pain) and have a solution (a “pain killer”) as a remedy.

Connect your buyers with your current customers. Buyers want authentic insights. But no matter how hard your salespeople try to share these, sellers will always maintain a bit of skepticism. It is your solution, your organization after all. So do not just have your sellers talk to the prospective buyer. Build a network of current customers who are succeeding with your solution and advocating for embracing the need for change as well as the need for changing with your solution — and then connect them to your buyer for honest, insightful conversations.

Tell the whole story of your solution, not just the good stuff. Sellers tend to spout only the good of a solution. Here are all the benefits and outcomes you can expect. Here are all the super awesome mega amazing things we can sell you! Yet pothing is nerfict. (See what I did there?) And your buyer knows that. Do not have your sellers disparage your solution. Rather, provide an honest assessment of your solution’s limitations and constraints. Likely, if you do connect the buyer with any of your current customers, they will hear it anyway. And it will be all the more powerful if it came first from your sellers.

A WIN-WIN OUTCOME

Truth be told, buyers have a right to be skeptical: News stories abound of fraudulent businesses and solutions from “luxury” music festivals to “revolutionized” blood testing technology. On the outside these looked legitimate and real, until they are revealed as not.

When you salespeople engage buyers with authenticity and with the commitment of a trusted advisor to truly solve the buyer’s problem with the best solution, not just your solution, they can overcome this skepticism and start building the greatest business currency — trust. This trust will translate not only into deals for your organization but true value for the buyers you serve.

LEARN TO SERVE YOUR BUYERS

Lead your salespeople to Seek to Serve™ for sustainable revenue performance. Visit us on Mereo to get the complete organization guide to this approach.

Get the Guide



Conversation Intelligence: The Sales Performance Game Tape

June 27, 2024
Jay Mitchell

When a coach wants to see what worked and what did not in a past play, they turn to the game tape. The video captured reveals individual performances — and it also gives an oversight into the team’s performance together.

In B2B selling, key performance metrics such as engagement gaps, message relevancy, salesperson mis-steps and more can be exposed in buyer conversations. And conversation intelligence (CI) software has become the game tape to record and review your team’s winning (and losing) moments. This tool is even included as a built-in part of the best sales enablement platforms today.

While many selling organizations invest in CI technology, most still fail to fully adopt this tool or meaningfully apply its insights. The potential benefits of integrating CI insights into your sales enablement program are too good to ignore. Learn how to make the most of your CI investment.

HAVE AN EAGLE EYE (AND EAR) TO SALES PRODUCTIVITY

Today, in our uncertain and sluggish marketplace, leaders are embracing a transition from growth at all costs to efficient growth. And a key part of productivity is making the most of the resources you currently have.

You can look at this as an opportunity to better use your technology stack. If you are investing in conversation intelligence, why not use it for all it is worth (which is quite a bit)? You can also look at this from a workforce vantage point. How can you make the most of your salespeople and each of their buyer engagements?

CI can help you improve the efficiency and efficacy of your salespeople. As buyers continue to distance away from salespeople more and more, every direct interaction between buyers and sellers becomes all the more important.

CI tools use artificial intelligence (AI) to turn recordings into insights. Both qualitative insights — like recorded calls, meetings and emails to study — and quantitative data — like analytics, trends and dashboards — give your leadership eyes and ears into not only the competencies of your sales team, but, more importantly, actual buyer engagements (what is working and what is not working).

The real game-changer is how leadership uses this data and insights, though. Heads of sales can apply this tool in a number of ways to boost techniques and behaviors. And our friends at Mediafly have some tips.

LOOK TO BUYER CONVERSATIONS FOR DEEPER INSIGHTS

Mediafly is a leading provider of one of the most comprehensive sales enablement and revenue intelligence platforms, offering conversation intelligence and more. Their experts share more below about how your sales leaders can use CI to assess sales engagements with buyers:

Most sales performance gaps can be surfaced in buyer conversations. And with CI, sales leaders can actually extract these issues and address them — if they are using the tool to its full potential.

There are a number of vital sales performance metrics every organization should track against. With CI capturing data and delivering insights in real time, sales leaders can coach their team to adjust and improve.

Activity — how much is the rep actually doing?

  • Number of leads created
  • Number of calls made
  • Number of emails sent
  • Number of follow ups
  • Number of social media connections
  • Number of logged visits
  • Number of conversations
  • Number of discovery call summaries
  • Number of meetings scheduled
  • Discovery call to meeting rate
  • Number of demos or sales pitches
  • Number of proposals sent
  • Close ratio
  • Number of referral requests
  • Number of attempted upsells

Productivity — how are these activities moving the needle forward? 

  • Sales cycle length
  • Open vs. closed opportunities
  • Pipeline value
  • Average deal size
  • Win rate

Success — how are these activities translating into revenue?

  • Successful Quota attainment
  • Pipeline lifetime value (LTV)
  • Annual / monthly recurring revenue (ARR / MRR)
  • Average revenue per user / account

Find out how to use CI insights to create sales coaching impact from Mediafly here.

ENGAGE YOUR CI INSIGHTS FOR SUSTAINABLE REVENUE PERFORMANCE

Conversation intelligence software can collect mass amounts of valuable data and insights as part of your overall sales enablement management — but your leadership must implement and apply this technology to realize true go-to-market and revenue outcomes.

The dashboard and trends offer sales, marketing and operational leadership a view into the conversations buyers and sellers are having, but if the selling organization does not take those insights and make adjustments, then the case can be made that the entire effort was all for naught.

For example, if the data indicated sellers are talking too much in buyer meetings, is that because they are pitching, are not asking enough / effective questions of the buyer, are answering the questions before the buyer responds — or something else altogether?

The variation in answer to each of those questions can dictate an entirely different path forward where different parts of the organization are activated. Sometimes that may be a sales skills uplift, in another case it may be a new / repackaged sales tool. While in a different scenario the answer may be to shift to a new buying audience.

An inaccurate interpretation of the “map” CI data draws can send an entire team down the incorrect remediation path. But intelligent interpretation of the insights can lead to game-changing results that feed into sustainable revenue performance.

LEARN MORE ABOUT CI FROM AN EXPERT

CI can help you gather insights more easily and drive you to success. If you are interested in learning more about CI and what it can offer, please contact us.

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Your Summer Business Book Reading List

June 13, 2024
Jay Mitchell

As the lull of summer begins to (or already has) set in, do not let this idle time go to waste. Reading is a great way to expand your knowledge or hone in on an existing skill. I want to share three titles that have helped me stay ahead in the market and better understand what Mereo clients deal with in their respective fields. Without further ado, here are three books to add to your “to-be-read” list.

1. Selling the Cloud: A Playbook for Success in Cloud Software and Enterprise Sales by Paul Melchiorre and Mark Petruzzi

Paul Melchiorre and Mark Petruzzi share their 25 years of enterprise cloud software sales strategies in this title. The book provides practical lessons and key characteristics needed to succeed in future sales climates and includes insights from titans of software sales from significant companies. Selling the Cloud is a valuable resource for anyone involved in B2B sales.

This book is a practical guide to selling enterprise software in a marketplace now defined as “Software as a Service (SaaS).” While this book targets “software,” it is relevant for all subscription businesses. Having supported Paul Melchiorre on some of the transformations he has led as Chief Revenue Officer, I can speak firsthand that the lessons and leading practices are relevant and deliver the desired outcomes – recurring revenues, revenue growth, sales cycle velocity, win rates. In part, Paul and the team lay out the pillars of scalable, sustainable revenue performance in software sales, namely: passion, velocity, grit, empathy, authenticity, creativity, resilience, trust, strategic thinking and technology leverage.

Get your copy here.

2. The Boutique by Greg Alexander

Greg Alexander is the founder of Collective 54, a mastermind community for boutique professional service firms. He helps founders increase profits, simplify scaling, and achieve successful exits. Before this, Greg co-founded SBI, where he served as CEO for 11 years before successfully selling his interest in 2017.

This is a must-read book if you have founded or are leading a professional services firm. Greg Alexander starts with the fundamentals and helps put layer upon layer of practical lessons for how to start, scale and sell a professional services firm. No matter where your firm is in the lifecycle, this book is for you. Greg provides examples and “snackable” chapters with critical principles and strategies, plus a checklist of questions to wrap up each chapter, helping the reader benchmark progress and lay out the next steps to attack.

Check out this title here.

3. The Joy Model: A Step-by-Step Guide to Peace, Purpose, and Balance by Jeff Spadafora

Jeff Spadafora is a life coach who teaches readers how to find joy through faith. Many American Christians feel frustrated as they struggle to find joy in their faith. As a result, some seek meaning, purpose, and joy in other aspects of their lives, such as work, relationships, or possessions. In Jeff’s The Joy Model, you will learn that joy comes from balancing the practical and spiritual sides of our Christian lives.

With roots in Bob Buford’s Halftime, in his own book, Jeff Spadafora offers a plan for a more vibrant and real life – one filled with joy. At the heart of it, Jeff reveals a blueprint for readers to grow from “knowing about God” to actually “experiencing Him” by balancing the “Doing” and the “Being” of life.

Get the book here.

Serve Yourself by First Serving Your Buyers

As a bonus for this list, try reading our Seek to Serve™ eBook. Seeking to serve means putting your buyer’s needs at the heart of what you do and offering solutions that will truly ease their pains. In the eBook, learn more about the philosophy and how it can create a win-win situation for you and your buyers.

Get Your Copy Here



How a Leading SaaS Company Won Big by Focusing on Growing Existing Accounts

May 30, 2024
Jay Mitchell

In 2020, Resurgens Technology Partners, a prominent private equity firm, triggered the final piece of merging together three leading business continuity and resilience companies. With each of their company’s strengths combined, they could offer a powerful all-in-one platform for their customers that had never before been seen in this historically fractured industry. They charged ahead with high hopes.

Despite the promise of uniting under a new single brand, Castellan, and armed with a flagship solution that would change the game for their customers, their salespeople floundered to land deals. The global COVID pandemic played a role, but a disconnect in the go-to-market strategy uncovered by the CEO and CMO offered a compelling path forward.

There is nothing quite like an acquisition to open up a gaping opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell to current accounts. In fact, increasing the lifetime value of current buyers becomes even more critical when we find ourselves in a tight and uncertain market, such as where we are now. Your organization already has vested trust and value-exchange with current customers. How will you capitalize on sustainably growing that for win-win outcomes?

For Castellan, each of the original three companies had solid reputations with existing accounts. In order to sell these contented customers on the new and better solution, we refocused their team’s efforts on alignment and targeted value selling.

BRING YOUR ENTIRE ORGANIZATION IN ON THE EFFORT

A cross-functional team — your revenue operations, marketing, sales, customer experience professionals and even solution management teams — has a stake in the organization’s strategy and their ability to see it through. As such, everyone must be aligned not only around the same objectives but also singing the same value messaging song.

For Castellan, this meant an overhaul of disparate selling tools and processes to introduce and align global selling professionals around current buyer opportunities. We started with the ideal client profile. We helped guide salespeople to target and cross-sell to the newly acquired market segments that they were previously not successful or comfortable with engaging. And we equipped them with value selling tools that packaged the cross-sale offerings in effective plays. And we activated them through more than 15 revenue enablement sessions.

PRIORITIZE CUSTOMER LIFETIME SUCCESS FOR SUSTAINBLE REWARDS

Soon after Castellan salespeople entered the market with not just a new solution — but the focus, tools and skills to back it up — they began to win. They in fact became a leader in the resilience management arena. And just over a year later, the company was acquired by Riskonnect at a premium price.

Even if your organization’s goal is not acquisition, the Castellan story holds a lesson for all B2B organizations on the value of current customers. In a culture where we are always looking for more or the next big thing, it is worthwhile to rather consider how you can deepen what is and what more you can serve your current buyers with.

Read the entire Castellan client value story here, and reach out to our revenue experts to discuss your growth strategy.

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*Note, a version of this article first appeared in Top Sales Magazine.



Achieve Organizational Alignment: The Client Success Team

May 16, 2024
Jay Mitchell

Aligning your sales and marketing teams is just the beginning. Organizational alignment is a goal that is often sought after but less often achieved. However, in pursuing this goal, we often overlook a crucial member of the revenue organization: the client success team. This team, responsible for many buyer interactions, plays a pivotal role in aligning not just the organization but being a primary pillar of orchestrating the entire client lifecycle.

Recently, I have noticed many organizations shifting from “sales” to “revenue” (e.g., chief revenue officer versus chief sales officer, revenue operations versus sales operations, revenue enablement versus sales operations). And supporting the full client lifecycle is even more critical as this shift occurs. Organizational alignment, with the client success team at its core, allows your organization to work more efficiently together and serve your buyers better.

How Organizational Alignment (and RevOps) Affects the Organization

Organizational alignment is highly sought after, but why? What are the benefits of and the risks of not achieving it? What do revenue operations (RevOps) have to do with it? There are many reasons why you should strive for aligned teams and many things that are at stake if you do not. Here are a few:

  • Misaligned organizations suffer. When your organization is misaligned — or you have not aligned your teams with the client success team — your organization will suffer on multiple fronts. Misaligned organizations struggle to grow and increase profits. As teams do not talk or collaborate, different departments are following different guides — at the buyers’ expense. A study from Forrester showed that organizations that included RevOps grew their revenue around three times faster than organizations that did not include RevOps. Furthermore, their study also found that public organizations with RevOps had 71% higher stock performance.
  • Aligned organizations see improvements. To name a few, aligned organizations see improved team communication and efficiency, increased revenue performance and improved client experience. The conversations are richer as there are more touchpoints across the client lifecycle, and those touchpoints are more coordinated as well.
  • Value is elevated for the client. When client-facing teams are all working in unison, the client receives more value at a quicker pace. the client receives is larger and more rapidly gained. For example, marketing and sales teams share valuable insights with clients, leading to compelling value propositions that the client success team and your solution desire to offer.
    The seamless flow of information with the client and across the entire organization manifests in more value for the client.

Highly aligned and successful organizations typically have two things in common: the presence of RevOps and the inclusion of client success teams. This is why it is important for you to include and align client success teams with your other teams. Achieving organizational alignment will help your organization flourish and help your buyers in an otherwise tumultuous journey.

Supporting the Full Client Lifecycle

If your goal is to Seek to Serve™, the client should be at the center of everything an organization does. Many organizations that have aligned their sales process with the buying journey have not actually done so. Instead, they have implemented a sales process that their sales teams want rather than one that is in sync with the buying journey and the buyer. If you aim to ease buyer pains, the client success team is vital to your organization’s success.

So, how can you align your sales, marketing and client success teams to serve your buyers best?

  • Communication amongst teams. Organizational alignment is all about communication. Ideally, all of your teams will work together and help each other. With the addition of the client success team, they must communicate with your sales and marketing team. In fact, the more the teams operate as one “voice to the customer” and “voice of the customer,” the more the business can scale.
  • Meeting with the client. One of the main functions of a client success team is to speak directly to clients. While many sales professionals believe a deal is done once they reach an agreement with the buyer, it is important for you to reach out to the buyer and ensure that they are receiving the value from your solution that you promised. Knowing who is involved in these meetings and cross-selling to buyers is essential. Examples of this could include quarterly business reviews (QBRs) and status calls.
  • Listening to your buyers. When your client success teams speak with your buyers, it is important to gain insights from their meetings. These insights should be included in your solution strategy, marketing efforts and road maps. Client-facing teams (marketing, sales, client success) who are not offering transparent feedback into the solution teams hamper the entire organization, as the pros and cons of the solution are not multiplied or addressed, respectively.

Organizational Alignment in Action

At Mereo, we are honored to assist many different organizations with their journeys to serve their buyers. If you are interested in learning more about what we do especially if you are interested in learning how we assisted a client who needed help with organizational alignment — please look at Nextworld’s client testimonial.

How Organizational Alignment Can Help



Make the Journey from Descriptive to Prescriptive Data Decision-Making — and Turbocharge Your RevOps Performance

April 25, 2024
Jay Mitchell

Would you believe your organization was capable of predicting its own future — guiding your teams to make not just better but the best decisions?

Big data has long since entered B2B selling operations in full force. For good reason too: The right data promises insights that can help your leadership make better decisions and reach (or surpass) your goals. Yet in a 2023 Tamr, Inc., study, more than 250 out of 500 data leaders reported that they struggle to realize true business value from their datasets.

Most organizations’ data analytics remain in the early phases, at the descriptive and diagnostic levels that tell a “what” and “why” story. Simply put, it is like looking through the rearview mirror at what is behind you to determine where you are going. Rather you should be looking primarily out the windshield at the road ahead.

In this article, I want to help you identify your revenue operations’ current data-driven decision-making capabilities and help you enter the more-powerful predictive and prescriptive stages. If you stick with me on this journey, you will get behind the revenue operations (RevOps) wheel with a clear path ahead to success.

SET THE FOUNDATION WITH DESCRIPTIVE DATA ANALYSIS

Descriptive business analytics look at past data to answer “What happened?” This data is easy to identify, collect and present. With descriptive analysis, you can start to see trends and patterns in your business and with your buyers. But descriptive analysis on its own cannot tell you much beyond what already happened. And for future decision-making, historical perspective is helpful but can also be a large drawback.

  • Year-over- year (YoY) sales numbers
  • Annual revenue report
  • Revenue reporting dashboards

Consider routing a road trip. At the descriptive phase, you would drive your route first, more or less blindly making decisions as you come upon signs, traffic and forks in the road. Then either during your journey or after you reach your destination, you would mark your trip on a physical map and note observations about what you experienced. Clearly this sort of approach is easy to track but it is not the most efficient or productive.

In order to uncover insights from your past data to drive stronger decision-making, your teams need to take that data a step further — into diagnostic analysis.

ASK MORE FROM YOUR PAST DATA WITH DIAGNOSTIC ANALYSIS

Diagnostic analytics take descriptive data and asks of it “Why did this happen?” Your teams can identify outlying data, isolate patterns and uncover relationships between different outcomes to drive more-confident decisions ahead with less trial and error.

  • Why did subscription customers churn / renew?
  • What explains this good / poor performance of a new product?
  • Why did YoY sales numbers drop / rise?
  • Why do some deals close fast and others linger?

In the same road trip analogy, with diagnostic insights, you would take that map where you routed your journey and compare your past data with other observations you have gathered on different trips of that same route or alongside the area’s traffic trends, construction plans, etc. These insights would help explain why the route may have taken a certain time or why you encountered a smooth ride or roadblock after roadblock. With these additional insights, you can start to make a better estimation of how long the route may take in future trips and what you might encounter along the way.

The problem is, with diagnostic analysis your teams are still stuck in the past as a means to inform your future decisions. But seeing into the future is becoming all the more possible with stronger datasets and more-powerful data science tools — and with these you can start to practice predictive data analysis.

BETTER ENVISION YOUR REVENUE SUCCESS WITH PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS

Predictive analysis starts to engage more-advanced data science to help your RevOps leadership make better-educated guesses to answer “What could or will happen?” Today’s digital tools from machine learning and algorithms to artificial intelligence (AI) and statistical modeling can do the heavy lifting for you. But in order to predict likely future outcomes of business decisions, you need to feed these tools quality datasets. The more-complete the datasets, the stronger predictions you can expect. But predictive analytics still cannot foresee unpredictable human factors or disruptions.

  • Likelihood of customer retention and future sales forecasts
  • Recommendations of product upsells / cross-sells to market segments
  • Highest performing marketing content to consider recycling and re-promoting

Let’s return to our road trip analogy. This predictive stage would allow you to analyze your planned route before you put wheels to road and, based on historical traffic data and other internal and external inputs, get insights into your different goals and concerns, like how long the trip will take and how much stress you may encounter.

Not many RevOp teams operate at the predictive stage because not many organizations have this level of data infrastructure. But setting your organization up for predictive insights is more within reach than you might think. And once you start embracing a stronger data infrastructure, your teams can tap into the pinnacle of data insights — prescriptive analysis.

UNCOVER YOUR BEST OPTION FORWARD WITH PRESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS

Prescriptive business analytics can give your leadership an answer to “What should we do?” With a powerful data infrastructure comprising internal and external data and run through machine learning, algorithms and AI, your teams can see all the possible future outcomes of decisions against your key performance indicators (KPIs) — while also helping you understand why these different outcomes may happen.

  • Identifying most-relevant value messages for engaging a specific market
  • Scoring sales leads to prioritize based on purchase intent
  • Sales touchpoint suggestions to best drive a specific target segment through the buying journey to a successful deal

In our road trip analogy, prescriptive analytics is live and on full display in Google Maps. You type your destination into your device, and Google Maps uses a number of data insights, both historical and in real-time, to recommend the best route ahead. Might you decide to take a longer scenic route if travel duration is not one of your KPIs? Sure. But at this stage, you are well-informed to make the best decision for your path ahead with little effort on your end.

This level of confidence and input in B2B decision-making remains rare. But leading B2B organizations are starting to see the value in being able to partner with digital tools to improve their operations, mitigate risks and make the most of their resources.

LEVERAGE YOUR DATA FOR PREDICTABLE REVENUE SUCCESS

If your leadership is ready to take your data strategy to the next level, let’s talk. Reach out to our RevOps expert principals to learn how we can move your organization toward predictive and descriptive analytical decision-making.

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The Research is Here: Relationships Help (and Hurt) in Sales

March 28, 2024
Jay Mitchell

Building relationships in sales offers a myriad of benefits. Not only do your teams become skilled at diagnosing and solving buyer pains, but it will also fix some issues your organization may be facing.

In fact, industry data is showing that in many issues leaders faced last year, the lack of (or too many) value-based relationships between buyers and sellers contributed to the problem. Leaders who did not focus on relationships often saw more opportunity losses. On the flip side, organizations with too many relationships also saw losses. Today, I would like to share how you can build meaningful relationships and how they will affect both you and your buyers.

 

Building and Fostering Relationships

In a recent study, about 75% of B2B buyers deemed their last purchase difficult or complex (Gartner). Some of these challenges come from buyers’ internal processes and the increasing number of decision makers engaged in the buying journey. Others result from uncertainty about the number of solution options—what makes them different and valuable. Help your buyers by enabling your teams to become trusted advisors and help your buyers break the status quo.

Become a trusted advisor. Your buyers crave and appreciate the trust built between themselves and your salespeople. To start building a relationship with them, here are a few tips:

  • Speak plainly. The marketing speak is effective, but buyers care more about having a real conversation that they know will help them find a valuable solution. This also gives you the chance to communicate this value (both educating them on their pain and informing them about a potential approach and related outcome) to them.
  • Show buyers how your solution works. This can easily be done through demonstrations. Besides, if your buyer is investing in your solution, it would help them know how it works and how it fits their needs.
  • Connect your prospects to current clients. It would be best to have a network of current clients available to speak with your prospects. This allows your prospects to hear honest feedback from an actual buyer who became a client.
  • Be honest. Your solution probably will not solve every problem a buyer faces or will ever face — it is important to make that clear to them. You should also communicate any limitations your solution has. This type of honesty will be a huge contributor to a long-term relationship with this buyer.

Break the status quo. Sometimes buyers do not even realize they have a problem your solution can solve, and this is often where selling organizations lose out most. Buyers typically have the same mindset when encountering an issue: This is just how it is. This is dangerous for the buyer and your deal. When buyers let the status quo win, you will often see that they do not come to a decision, leaving your deal frozen. In short, the buyer continues to struggle and you lose yet another deal. It is up to you to change this mindset. Let me share how:

  • Ask questions and listen well. Not just any questions, meaningful questions that will help you — and sometimes even the buyer — uncover pains that may not have been obvious. Asking discover-based questions allows your salespeople to diagnose potential pain points and helps build or strengthen the relationship with the buyer(s). Just remember, these questions should go beyond ones that can be answered with a quick internet search and your salespeople should genuinely have the drive to serve your buyers.
  • Sell after you earn their trust. Several of the ways we have discussed to build trust will also help you break the status quo. These include connecting prospects to current clients and being honest about your solution’s limitations.
  • Provide proof. Have handy success stories and relevant use cases. In fact, Forrester found that 71% of buyers consider client value stories and relevant use cases the most credible sources in their buying journey.

When you form a relationship with a buyer — when you Seek to Serve™ — you become a trusted advisor they can turn to for any pains now and into the future.

The Seek to Serve™ Philosophy

Seek to Serve, Not to Sell® provides a guiding philosophy that creates a win-win situation for your buyers and your organization. Learn the ins and outs of this philosophy and how to put it into practice with the Complete Sales Organizational Guide to Seek to Serve, Not to Sell eBook.

 

Learn to Seek to Serve, Not to Sell®



Sellers Have a New Challenge: To Ease an Increasingly Difficult Buying Journey

March 21, 2024
Jay Mitchell

A multi-national software provider’s sales cycles was running 12-18 months on average. To say deal velocity was slow would be an understatement. When they engaged Mereo to address this, we conducted a win-loss analysis and discovered that the majority of the sales cycles were really about three to four months. What filled the other part of the year?

Well, it was a combination of two things. The first was an extensive exploration phase by the client — they were “kicking the tires” to determine if their problem was significant enough to even address. While members of the buying committee were engaging “solution providers,” they were not even looking for solutions yet. They were researching the challenges and seeking insights and thought leadership that would help them conceptualize the problem. Second, the buying organizations were mostly retailers or brand companies selling directly to consumers. As a result, peak season played a major role in timing, in essence shutting down three to six months of buying window each year over the fall and holiday season.

This one example goes to show: Overall B2B buying has gotten more complicated. Around three-quarters of B2B buyers consider their last purchase difficult or complex (Gartner). Buyer’s internal processes account for part of this complexity: Most committees now involve 6 to 10 decision-makers and tend to engage more than 10 channels along their buying journey. Talk about too many cooks in the kitchen reading too many recipe variations at once.

Yet, sellers add friction to the modern buying journey, too — and this is where your selling team has influence and where I want to focus your efforts ahead.

NAVIGATE YOUR SALES FORCE AWAY FROM ADDING TO BUYER FRICTION

If your sales force is stuck on selling to buyers, they are adding friction to a buyer journey that is already challenging enough.

Sellers complicate buyer’s lives when …

Buyers do not need salespeople. Buyers need problem-solvers, industry mentors — trusted advisors. They require sellers who Seek to Serve, Not to Sell® as they navigate their problem and explore the solutions available to them.

AND RE-ROUTE YOUR SALES FORCE TO SEEK TO SERVE™

A sales force that serves as a buyer’s trusted advisor builds trust, fosters value — and wins deals sustainably. The goal remains the same (to sell your solution) but with an essential twist (to focus first and foremost on the buyer).

A trusted advisor who Seeks to Serve™ …

  • Asks questions and listens.
  • Helps buyers best understand their challenges and break free from the harmful status quo.
  • Acts as an expert on their buyer’s industry, business and role — bringing forth key insights and challenges for a buyer’s risks and opportunities.
  • Provides consistent value across buying channels.

Take that multi-national software provider I mentioned at the start: The lesson we learned from our analysis was that the buying journey was long and complex. But the sales cycle was actually fairly rapid once they engaged in buying. The sales organization discovered they needed to ramp-up their thought leadership efforts to gain mindshare and help educate the buyers during the exploration phase. The key was to minimize expense (hard dollars of marketing campaigns as well as staff cycles) while offering meaningful insights that the buyers ideally correlated with them as the trusted advisor.

Enable your selling teams to simplify the buying process and stand out from the norm. Download The Complete Sales Organization Guide to Seek to Serve, Not to Sell. Reach out to our experts for help enabling your sales force with the value selling knowledge, tools and skills to put it all into practice.

SEEK TO SERVE



2 Reasons Why Sales Organizations’ Win Rates Are Dismal

March 14, 2024
Jay Mitchell

Most of us like to talk about winning, especially in sales. But there exist lessons in losing too. In a recent SaaS Metrics Benchmark Report, companies shared a median win rate of 25-30%. Most salespeople are losing about 75% of qualified sales opportunities. That is huge.

Low win rates mean missed quotas, inaccurate forecasts and hard-to-achieve revenue plans. They increase client acquisition costs (CAC) for your organization and frustrate sellers, leaders and prospective buyers stuck in their status quo.

If your salespeople are on a losing streak, it is time to reassess your selling engines:

  • Are you sending salespeople after truly qualified leads, or could your qualification process be improved?
  • Once your salespeople engage qualified leads, are they enabled with the right knowledge, tools and skills to serve buyers as trusted advisors?

Likely, both these aspects of your sales process could benefit from some attention. Let’s give it to them.

ARE YOUR PROSPECTIVE BUYERS TRULY QUALIFIED?

Sending salespeople after poorly qualified leads sets them up to lose — and misrepresents true win rates. In qualifying leads, many sellers still focus on buyer budgets first and foremost, but that approach is outdated for today’s marketplace and buying trends.

At Mereo, we focus on four lead qualification criteria to help your sales force identify buyers to meaningfully engage:

  1. Alignment: Does the prospect match your target buyer and organization power profiles?
  2. Appropriateness: Does the prospect have a need that your solution will solve?
  3. Authority: Does the prospect have decision-making influence and the power to allocate budget for your solution?
  4. Action: Will the prospect have a sense of urgency to solve their pains — and to solve them now?

To harness the AAAA qualification framework, download the proven formula today and reach out to our experts.

BETTER QUALIFY LEADS

IS YOUR SALES FORCE PREPARED TO SERVE BUYERS ALONG THEIR JOURNEY?

If your lead qualification funnel delivers highly qualified leads to salespeople — and win rates still suffer — examine how you can better enable your sales force.

Our Mereo experts focus on three legs to the revenue enablement stool:

  1. Buyer Insights: Do your salespeople understand your target buyer and how to approach them along the buyer journey to unearth pains and build trust?
  2. Sales Assets: Do your salespeople have the value messaging and tools to help them meaningfully engage prospects in compelling conversations all along the buying journey?
  3. Sales Skills: Do your salespeople have the right competencies and behaviors to serve as trusted advisors and see deals through to close?

Do not stop at simple revenue enablement either. Help your sales professionals become trusted advisors that Seek to Serve, Not to Sell®. If you manage this, you foster a sales force that is building meaningful relationships and is sharing true value with buyers. After trust is achieved and value is proved, these connections will look to your organization for help when they need it. This is how you achieve sustainable revenue performance.

Reach out to our experts for support with your enablement program, and download a copy of The Complete Sales Organization Guide to Seek to Serve, Not to Sell.

BUILD A CULTURE OF SEEK TO SERVE