A few months ago, I asked for questions on LinkedIn to fuel an article. I’m a little late for the Summer Slump question, but slumps can happen at different times in the year so hopefully this answer will help next time you feel yourself heading into a slump.
1) How are small businesses using AI in their sales efforts?
Here is a short list of things I have seen with my coaching clients:
Identifying search terms – Reps can use AI engines to identify common SEO search terms for services like signage, direct mail, and omnichannel campaigns. Common search terms can be used in email subject lines, copy, and LinkedIn posts to create longer-form content like blog posts.
Prospect emails and a cadence of messaging, including voice mail scripts, emails, and LinkedIn messages about a specific topic. Reps can ask the AI engine to create multiple emails for a specific topic like improving response rates, increasing point of sale purchasing in a retail store, or B2B omnichannel lead generation.
Personalizing content sharing emails – reps are using AI engines to take a standard piece of content like their company’s blog post and personalize an email message to specific customers sharing the content.
LinkedIn Posts and personalized messages – This is the best thing since sliced bread for reps who struggled with a blank screen. They use it to create topics and posts, from direct mail and hot Pantone colors to signage and wayfinding. Describing the persona, you know what to target, and asking for an educational post helps to keep it from being too pitchy.
Some reps need help to write a grammatically correct response to a customer email. Now they can prompt an AI engine to write a professional email. It’s especially helpful when a customer is angry, and the rep needs to respond in a way that will calm the situation. Reps add the customer’s email to the prompt, and the AI engine writes a response that they can tweak easily.
Proposal Cover Letters – Reps who have a problem writing coherent emails will struggle with things like proposal cover letters, RFP question responses, and any other need to write something grammatically correct and coherent. AI is a big help with all of these activities.
AI integrations with CRM systems can do more, like lead scoring and building prospect lists. With third-party tools, sales reps can also use AI to prepare, update, and manage prospect databases saving time and streamlining the execution of direct marketing campaigns.
In today’s digital age, the seamless integration of artificial intelligence (AI) has paved the way for innovative approaches to content creation. AI engines with advanced voice analysis capabilities can revolutionize a company’s online presence. By dissecting the distinct voice embedded within a company’s website, these cutting-edge systems can comprehend the tone, style, and messaging and replicate it effortlessly in the content they generate. This transformative process ensures a consistent and authentic brand voice across various communication channels, fostering a stronger connection with audiences and enhancing the overall user experience.
We are at the tip of the iceberg on how AI will change sales. The biggest advice I can give owners, sales managers, and reps is to work with it. The more things you try, the better you get at the prompts and the less time it takes to generate what you need.
2) How are reps adjusting to the fact that more B2B buyers prefer to buy with limited involvement with sales reps?
I could write a book on this one. B2B Buyers rely on reps they consider trusted advisors. They take their calls, share their problems, and ask for opinions and advice. B2B buyers don’t want to talk to reps who can’t add value. Selling is not about pitching products. It is about helping customers solve problems. To solve a problem, a rep must understand the customer’s industry, objectives, challenges, how they use their products, how they could use their products, and the results they can generate. Professional sellers prepare, invest in themselves, and always work on improving their skills. They ask great questions, which leads to great conversations and sales opportunities. Selling is evolving quickly, and the best reps are also evolving. AI Chatbots will take over for the reps who get specs, send pricing, and keep their fingers crossed.
That said, it is much more difficult to get the attention of key B2B stakeholders. It takes a dedicated effort through many different channels, including traditional means of phone and email, as well as physical and virtual networking and sharing thought leadership via blogs and LinkedIn posts.
3) Are sales teams using omnichannel marketing to support their sales efforts in attracting prospects and upselling existing clients?
Good lead generation requires frequency and consistency. Sales reps often need to improve at both. If reps are responsible for prospecting and account management, they almost always tilt toward account management. If reps are good, existing account revenue will grow. However, the dual role often leads to fewer new customer opportunities. If reps are bad, companies lose customers and can’t find new ones to add.
Lead generation is critical today. It makes great reps more productive and covers up the sins of bad reps. Lead generation has to be omnichannel because customers and prospects interact in multiple channels and because omnichannel delivers better results than single-channel messaging. It’s better when omnichannel marketing is personalized and automates the follow-up messages based on the actions the prospect or customer has already taken. Lead generation is ideal when it includes a sales interaction when the customer’s actions show that their interest is building.
4) How can sales reps avoid the customer summer slump and keep the sales cycle moving?
This is a multi-part answer:
First, fill the pipeline with more opportunities. If reps only have a few things to work on and the decision makers for those opportunities are out or preoccupied with other business issues, decisions slip. Reps who know the summer or holiday months will be slow should fill their pipelines with more opportunities earlier in the year. A healthy pipeline has upside so if a decision slips, there is another one to take its place and reps can hit their monthly sales goals even in slower months.
Second, reps shouldn’t slow down because their customers are out. Reps should see the summertime as a way to get ahead of competitive reps who take their foot off the gas. Too many reps feel the slowdown and slowdown themselves.
Thirdly, figure out the types of businesses that are busy when your existing clients are slow. If you sell event signage, there will be many events in the summer. If your business slows during the holiday, target markets that are busy during the holiday season like retail, restaurants, and entertainment venues. Start talking to customers in the winter about what they’ll need in the summer and vice versa. If reps wait until their pipeline is light, they will likely be too late to influence decisions in their favor.
Lastly, customers buy because there is a reason to buy. Understand what your customers will need following a slow period and create a compelling reason for them to get started during your slow months.
The sales profession keeps evolving with the addition of new sales models, specialized sales positions, proactive CRM systems, powerful tools like AI, and changing B2B buying practices. Great reps keep learning and because they do, they overcome challenges and capitalize on the opportunities the market presents.
Use the contact form below to ask a question or to learn more about business development solutions from the Evolve Sales Group.
Liz was trying hard to make her sales numbers, but no matter what she tried, she wasn’t hitting her goals. She’s a “people person,” and her boss, the company owner, was sure she would succeed as a rep when he hired her more than a year ago.
She spent the first three months learning the ins and outs of the print and signage business. Her colleagues helped her understand what their equipment did and the information she would need to capture from the customer to help them produce a job correctly. She went with the owner to inspect sites and learned how to measure space and what she needed to be careful of when installing a graphics project or sign. She spent time with the mailing team and learned about direct mail and personalization. She familiarized herself with the most common papers and media and had a feel for the costs and how they could impact the quality of the product.
Her owner took her to meet a few customers in the early days, and it all seemed so easy. The sales just seemed to happen. She didn’t think she knew everything her owner did but felt she could talk to people about their projects and make a sale. She was confident she could reach her sales and income goals.
Unfortunately, things hadn’t turned out that way. She found it hard to get meetings, lost opportunities because of price, and couldn’t land any new customers. She was doing everything she read online; cold calling, follow-up emails, and sending samples…but nothing seemed to work.
Today, her boss told her he could not keep her if her sales didn’t pick up in the next 90 days. Liz was getting married in 6 months and was hoping to buy a house with her fiancé soon. She had hoped her commissions would help with all that, and now she was 90 days away from losing her job if something didn’t change. Her boss, who had been so helpful in the beginning, was knee-deep in the implementation of a new MIS system and didn’t have time to work with her.
She knew she needed to look for a new position.
That means ongoing sales training and coaching. Even owners with a sales background are often too busy running their companies to provide the necessary training and coaching to help their reps succeed. Even reps with sales experience from other industries need help adapting to the nuances of selling visual communications. If reps don’t develop the skills to be successful, they fail. When sales reps fail, owners waste money, and companies don’t grow.
Here are some statistics to keep in mind when planning to hire your next rep:
Only 19% of printing companies have a defined and documented sales process. Source: Marketing & Sales Best Practices Study – Karen Kimerer & Evolve Sales Group, Inc.
Businesses with a standardized sales process see up to a 28% increase in revenue compared to those without. Source: Harvard Business Review.
90% of the companies that use a formal, guided sales process were ranked as the highest-performing companies in their class. Source: Sales Management Association
68% of all salespeople do not follow a sales process at all. Source: Objective Management Group
62% of salespeople who are not on track to meet quota say they are not taught to communicate value. Source: Value Selling Associates
Continuous training results in 50% higher net sales per sales rep. Source: The Brevet Group
Successful sales coaching programs increase average deal size, sales activity, win rates, and new leads by 25%-40%. Source: Rain Group
66% of companies surveyed who have implemented structured sales coaching practices saw increased employee engagement and retention. Source: Value Selling Associates and Training Industry, Inc.
33% of printing companies do not offer any form of sales training. Another 29% offer sales skills training quarterly or only twice per year. Source: Marketing & Sales Best Practices Study – Karen Kimerer & Evolve Sales Group, Inc.
Struggling sales reps are five times more likely to report they weren’t fully onboarded & productive one year after starting their job. Source: Spekit
40% of sales professionals lack the training & coaching needed to conduct virtual sales successfully. Source: Salesforce
Top-performing reps only “Pitch” 7% of the time. Source: Sales Insights Labs
92% of B2B Buyers are willing to engage with a rep known as a thought leader. Source: Fit Small Business
Only 26% of sales onboarding is tweaked to account for a new hire’s pre-existing strengths & weaknesses. Source: Allegro
7% of sales reps will leave their job if the training or onboarding experience is poor. Source: Spekit
The average time for a sales rep to become productive across all industries is 3.2 months. Source: Hubspot
43.8% of printing firms surveyed reported that new reps were productive within 3 to 6 months. 33.5% of companies reported that reps were productive in six to twelve months or more. Source: Best Practices of High-Performance Print Sales Organizations, Keypoint Intelligence
93% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their careers. Source: Workforce Learning Report – LinkedIn.
66% of companies don’t believe their managers have the skills to manage and coach sellers. Source: Entrepreneur
If Liz’s story sounds familiar and you are tired of hiring and firing reps, isn’t it time to rewrite it? Outsourcing to experienced trainers and coaches who know the industry well can help your business outshine its competition. Find an expert to tailor a program to fit the needs of your business and reps and write a new ending.
Use the contact form below to get to inquire about Evolve Sales Group training and coaching solutions.
In December, I used a LinkedIn post to solicit questions from owners, sales managers, and sales reps. If you have sales or sales management questions you’d like to ask, send them my way via LinkedIn or via email: [email protected].
Here are the answers to the first two:
Q1: What are some areas of training and development for sales professionals in every stage of their careers?
According to data from the Brevet Group, ongoing training results in 50% higher net sales per sales rep. Printing companies tend to rely upon their vendor partners for much of their sales training resulting in more product training than skills training. However, product training doesn’t always move the performance needle. While it helps, it often leads sales reps to pitch new services in the wrong places and rely too heavily on product specs instead of using an insight-driven sales process to create demand. A combination of selling skills account development strategies, and product training delivers the best results.
All sales professionals, no matter the stage of their careers, benefit from refreshing their skills and learning new strategies to help penetrate accounts and develop new opportunities.
Selling has shifted, and the best sales reps are seen as trusted advisors by their customers, not just printing experts. Trusted advisor status grows from business acumen, marketing knowledge, and high-level selling skills. The more reps understand the markets they sell into, the more valuable they are to their clients. Training on business acumen, focus market trends, critical business challenges, marketing strategies and tactics, and position-oriented responsibilities will help reps have more relevant conversations with key stakeholders.
Virtual selling has become the norm even in the print industry, so assessing the virtual selling skills of reps, especially more tenured reps, will help you define specific training priorities. Reps may need training on using virtual tools like Zoom and Teams, using presentation applications like Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple’s Keynote, and delivering compelling presentations virtually.
For some reps, training in business writing may be necessary. Writing a professional email, prospecting letter, or LinkedIn post are critical skills today. Unfortunately, many reps in all age groups have issues with grammar and sentence structure, so providing access to a business writing course can have a big impact.
Here’s the process for defining your training priorities.
1. Define the skills needed to sell successfully for your company. (See my article on hiring sales reps for a list of skills and aptitudes needed today.)
2. Using the list created in #1, assess the skills of each rep using a scale from one to five, with five representing full proficiency in the skill.
3. Ask the reps to assess themselves using the same scale.
4. Perform a gap analysis and work with the rep to prioritize the skills that will have the biggest impact on performance.
5. Create a training plan for your team and for individual reps to work on their priorities. Your training plan should include:
the skill priorities
who will do the training or the online resource to be used
when the training will take place
how you will reinforce the training
how you will validate that your reps are incorporating their new skills into their daily selling practices.
Hopefully, you have a training budget that will allow for an outside resource if you need one. If you don’t have a budget, assume you can achieve a portion of the 50% net increase mentioned above from Brevet to build a business case to secure funding from your senior management or owner. Remember that your training will be much more impactful if paired with coaching as a reinforcement. Accountability, current rep sales levels, and rep bandwidth play a part in determining how much of an increase you will realize.
Q2: How should reps deal with the threats of a looming recession and customers who want to reduce their spending on print or marketing services?
If your reps aren’t already dealing with this, they probably will soon. Economic disruptions are scary for business leaders. Decision-makers are more cautious, tend to scrutinize their spending more thoroughly, and often delay decisions as they wait to see what the market does, what their peers are doing, and how their customers are reacting.
The good news is that to survive, businesses need to sell, nonprofits need to raise money, hospitals continue to treat patients, and consumers continue to spend money on things they need. Your customers will continue to buy what they need.
Sellers need to stop pitching and focus on solving critical business objectives. Reps must work harder to engage the stakeholders who own those critical objectives. Lower-level stakeholders or contacts typically don’t understand the business impact of what you sell and are more likely to focus on price. Senior-level stakeholders still have to drive their business forward no matter the market circumstances, so they care about results and ROI.
Reps should focus on getting to the right level and building a business case for their solution. It’s critical to understand the value of a lead, a customer, a student, or a donor. The risks of an accident (safety signage), lost customers, a lengthy process, or a communication error can be part of the business case. With this information, reps can help their customers understand the possible savings or the value your solution can create. The more detail the rep understands, the better their chance of crafting a cost-effective solution.
Reps also need to qualify each opportunity carefully and often. They have to ask tougher questions throughout the sales cycle to ensure enough value exists for the customer to make a change or spend their money. And reps must keep confirming where the problem they are fixing is on the customer’s priority list as the customer navigates the disrupted environment.
Reps simply can’t “out nice” their competition in a down economy. Reps must outsmart competitive reps, focusing their time on customers and opportunities that can close. Your reps have to use their time to focus on customers and opportunities where they can create tangible value for customers. And reps must use a sales process that helps customers understand why they should buy anything, buy it from them, and buy it now.
If you have questions to ask, send me a message on LinkedIn or via my email: [email protected] or use the contact form below to get in touch.
A strong post-sale engagement process is essential for companies looking to grow existing account revenue. In today’s world, the process extends beyond ensuring your customer is happy with the delivered project. It offers businesses a way to demonstrate their differentiation, reinforce their value, expand relationships, and grow profitable revenue.
Your Sales Model Dictates Responsibility
The positions within your company that are responsible for executing the post-sale process will depend on your sales model. But the consistent execution of an effective post-sale process can be critical for growing your business today and into the future.
In 2019 Deloitte Digital published a report called Experience Selling: The Future of B2B Sales, Five Steps to Transform and Deliver the Right B2B Experience describing the importance of aligning the B2B sales process with the customer’s buying journey. As defined by Deloitte, the B2B Buyer’s journey (see below) illustrates the need for B2B sellers to move beyond the transactional sale and into a role as a trusted advisor who helps solve business problems and works with customers to create continuous improvement. Many years ago, Wally Stettinius, the then-CEO of Cadmus Corporation, put it another way: “All sales reps can get you what you ask for, but only the best can sell you what you need.” Companies with direct sales reps who cannot shift to helping customers get what they need and not just what they ask for will be forced to compete primarily on their ability to make it easier for customers to buy from them transactionally.Strategies for facilitating transactions include branded web portals, eCommerce solutions, or in-house teams who can provide customers with fast pricing and streamlined ordering. You won’t need a direct sales team if this is your strategy.
When sales reps use a strong sales process, they develop a deeper understanding of the customer’s problems, the impact of those problems, and the value of fixing them for the customer. With this understanding, reps can make more valuable solution recommendations and justify them with a projected ROI. With knowledge of the customer’s current and desired state, reps can execute a post-sale engagement process focused on continuously improving both results and the processes used to generate those results. They fulfill their promise of a partnership by making the customer successful.
Evolve Sales Group Selling Process
Today, too many reps believe their value is in facilitating a project for their customer. They aren’t focused on the results the customer needs to achieve their goals. Their post-sales engagement process, if there is one, is focused on whether the customer is happy with the product or service they received. This focus doesn’t do much to differentiate them from any competitor capable of producing a similar product or delivering the same service. Reps who believe their customers perceive value in only their product knowledge and responsiveness leave themselves vulnerable to competitive reps who do those things and focus on improving customer results. Great reps position themselves as trusted advisors, a critical differentiator with B2B buyers. The Global Sales Report published by LinkedIn in 2020 found that 88% of B2B buyers only buy from sales reps they consider trusted advisors.
The Objectives of a Solid Post-Sale Engagement Process
The post-sale engagement process accomplishes the following:
Confirms the customer’s satisfaction with the product/service sold or identifies issues so they can be researched and resolved quickly.
Discusses opportunities to streamline the process for both the customer and the seller. This is critical today because of the labor shortage and a world where fewer people are expected to do more work.
Confirms the results of the project and makes recommendations to improve future outcomes.
Confirms that the buyer and her organization have realized value from the seller’s expertise and focus on improving results, and they want to continue the relationship.
Introduces insight to help the customer tackle another pressing challenge.
Determines the next steps for the customer and rep to address the next challenge, starting a new buying and selling cycle.
Confirms the customer’s satisfaction with the product/service sold or identifies issues so they can be researched and resolved quickly. Discusses opportunities to streamline the process for both the customer and the seller. This is critical today because of the labor shortage and a world where fewer people are expected to do more work. Confirms the results of the project and makes recommendations to improve future outcomes. Confirms that the buyer and her organization have realized value from the seller’s expertise and focus on improving results, and they want to continue the relationship. Introduces insight to help the customer tackle another pressing challenge. Determines the next steps for the customer and rep to address the next challenge, starting a new buying and selling cycle.
A Post-Sales Engagement Process Maintains Momentum
In today’s world, reps may have to work just as hard to get the attention of an existing customer as they do a prospect. B2B decision-makers don’t have the time for reps to “check-in” or “meet to get an update on how things are going.” A robust post-sale engagement process maintains the momentum from one project to the next. Avoiding a hard stop at the end of a project means the rep won’t have to chase the customer for the next conversation. Instead, the next sales cycle is initiated by introducing new insight during the post-sale process of the previous sale. More opportunities are uncovered early, allowing the rep to set a buying vision for their customers. A Forrester Research study of executive buyers found that 74% of their purchase decisions went to the seller who initially helped establish the customer’s buying vision.
A study by Lee Research in 2016 found that only 8% of B2B buyers claimed they were strongly satisfied with their customer experience. However, B2B companies believed 80% of their customers were very satisfied. This gap occurs when both sides need clarification about what they want from the relationship. This vast difference is likely tied to a difference in perception. Research from the Rockefeller Group found that 68% of customers leave their vendors because they don’t think they care about them. The customer defines care as “help me solve my business problems and stay with me and make me successful.” Too often, the seller’s description of care is defined as responding “quickly (getting) the customer what they asked for.” Research from Gartner suggests that getting customers what they want isn’t all that easy either. 77% of B2B buyers found their latest purchase “difficult” or “very complex.” It turns out B2B customers aren’t happy with the number of emails it takes to conduct business and get answers they would have preferred to look up online. Using a post-sale engagement process demonstrates both a commitment to improving the process of working together and the fact that the seller cares about the customer’s need for tangible results and is working hard to help them accomplish their goals.
Selling the Value of Your Process
Things are changing rapidly in the business world. Decision makers are dispersed and difficult to reach. Most organizations have open positions they can’t fill, further taxing their staff. All businesses are looking for ways to get more done with fewer people. Solutions that automate processes from manufacturing to sales are being considered by companies big and small. Your customers seek ways to eliminate manual tasks in their internal processes and with their vendor partners. Helping customers figure out what they need quickly and giving them a path to continuous improvement of both results and the processes they use to get there will resonate with decision-makers today. It will differentiate you from competitors who may still think their job is to “get what the customer asks for, fast.”. None of that matters if it doesn’t work. Your customer will not buy again if what they purchased before didn’t accomplish its objective.
Absolute satisfaction with vendors comes from the results the products/services generate for them and the ease of working together. Reps who share the post-sale process early in the sales cycle can confirm their differentiation and gain the customer’s commitment to participate fully in the post-sale engagement process. Sharing your process differentiates you from competitors who don’t have one and improves the chances of winning future business. Executing the post-sale process with every sale builds loyal customers who want to buy again.
Who is Responsible for Post-Sale Engagement?
Depending on your sales model and the services your sell, the person responsible for executing your process may vary. Typically, sales reps own the process for the customers assigned to them. For your best customers who buy high-value solutions like marketing strategy, direct mail programs, omnichannel campaigns, large environmental graphics projects, and branded portal solutions, the post-sale engagement process should include pre-arranged virtual or in-person meetings with all key stakeholders. Customer service reps may handle the post-sale process via phone for smaller accounts with less complex needs. For very large accounts buying both complex solutions and smaller projects, owners may join with sales to handle the post-sale engagement meetings with senior stakeholders, while customer service or account managers execute the process for smaller or less complex purchases.
The Future
According to Harvard Business Review, 73% of the stakeholders involved in B2B research and decision-making are millennials aged 25-39, with one-third being the sole decision maker. As baby boomers retire, this percentage will grow rapidly. Millennials are tech-savvy and have high expectations regarding technology, customer service, and the overall buying experience. They expect convenience, customization, and personalized experiences that provide them with value. Millennials have grown up in a digital world, and they seek out Amazon-like experiences in their B2B purchases. They aren’t tied to their email like their Boomer counterparts and prefer texting. They see processes that require multiple emails to research, buy and track a print project through a sales rep as tedious. In fact, according to Forrester, 44% of Millennial decision-makers want a “seller-free” experience mainly because they don’t see where the sales rep is adding any value.
As the share of Millennial decision-makers grows, companies will face many more customers who want a “seller-free” experience because they seek to streamline buying. B2B eCommerce has already eclipsed B2C digital commerce, according to Gartner. And they forecast that by 2025, 80 percent of B2B sales transactions between buyers and suppliers will occur via digital channels. These statistics mean buyers seek better ways to get what they need. They want simple transactions to be easy and direct. And when they do interact with a salesperson, they want a trusted advisor. They want someone who will help them solve problems and improve results over the long haul, not just make a sale.
Post-sale engagement is essential for businesses looking to build lasting customer relationships. The need for a dedicated post-sale engagement process will increase as more tech-savvy Millennials with high expectations for convenience, customer service, and overall buying experience enter the decision-making ranks. Businesses that invest in their overall sales process, especially their post-sale engagement process, will be rewarded with customer loyalty, increased sales, and higher margins. Aren’t those things you’d like to see now?
For help defining your post-sale engagement process or your overall sales process, reach out to [email protected] or use the contact form below.
1) How will ai tools like ChatGPT and Jasper.ai impact selling?
This is a great question. Let’s start with what these tools are, and I will let the tool give you the answer. I used Jasper.ai to generate the following content by telling it that I wanted a description of AI tools, their uses, and their benefits in a professional voice. Here’s what Jasper handed me in less than 7 seconds.
AI Tools are software programs that use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automate various digital tasks. They can understand, learn, and make decisions from information using data-driven algorithms. Automating mundane or complex processes can help organizations improve workplace efficiency, productivity, and accuracy. AI Tools can be used in various industries, from finance and healthcare to retail, manufacturing, and transportation. Benefits of using AI Tools include cost savings, reduced human effort, improved accuracy, faster decision-making abilities, and increased customer satisfaction.
Additionally, they can enable businesses to stay competitive by providing more insights into customer behavior and trends. With the help of AI Tools, companies can make more informed decisions and increase their competitive advantage.
AI Tools are increasingly becoming the future of business. These tools can help you create content for your website, social media, lead magnates, and prospecting emails. There are templates for everything from an Amazon product post to a blog post to a company BIO. They can help you develop strong email subject lines, business or product names, Facebook Ad headlines, Google My Business Ads, etc. One of my customers used ChatGPT to write a piece of code to help him integrate a client application into one of his. He’s an intelligent owner but doesn’t write code, so he would have had to use an inside or outside resource to help, which would have taken much longer than seconds to resolve.
The most significant impact on sales productivity from these tools will be generating prospecting emails and LinkedIn posts. Most of the reps I coach struggle with writing. Some have trouble thinking about what they want to say; some can’t write coherent sentences using correct grammar; some type in all caps – it’s a myriad of problems. AI tools will make it easier for reps to write, and that will help them prospect using email and LinkedIn.
For example, I just asked Jasper.ai to write me a cold prospecting email for direct mail. Here are my inputs:
Tell Us About the Product: Direct Mail to generate leads for small businesses.
Your Company Name/Product Name: Kate’s Printing Company
Context to Include in Email: Small businesses need ways to generate leads cost-effectively
Voice: Witty
Here is what I got back in less than 5 seconds:
Could this copy be better? Sure. But if the choice is this or nothing, this wins all day. You won’t find new customers if they don’t know you are out there.
These tools will not replace robust marketing strategies, campaign tactics, and creativity, but they can help fill in some gaps that tend to bog companies down and keep them from getting things done and growing their companies.
From the sales side, AI tools can eliminate one big excuse I hear 100 times daily from reps: “I didn’t have time to prospect or proactively reach out to my existing customers this week.”
They had the time to hit the send button. They didn’t have time to think about what they wanted to say – or so they believe – tools like this can help reps develop something to say in 7 seconds or less.
2) What’s the best compensation plan to use with a new rep?
This is a great question, but it has no simple answer. Compensation plans are as varied as the companies who use them and the reps they are supposed to motivate.
In the print industry, most companies opt for a plan that is easy to calculate because of internal systems used to track sales and the time limitations of owners. Easy doesn’t mean better, and the printing industry has suffered the implications of its choice to make it easy for years.
Alignment between the company’s growth strategy and the sales organization is critical for the success of any plan. Successful plans help reps maximize their incomes by selling the things that help the company achieve its goals.
The most common plan used is a commission rate applied to sales generated by the rep. These are often adapted to reduce commission percentages for outside purchases or discounted deals. Plans like these can be 100% commission, where the rep is only paid for what they sell, or 100% commission with a draw used to help the rep maintain their cash flow as sales ebb and flow. The draw is subtracted from any commissions earned.
The last most common plan is a salary plus a commission on sales. The salary plus commission plans often include a threshold that the rep must meet in sales before earning additional commission, which is a way of offsetting the salary paid to the rep. Some companies pay commission from dollar one sold to help motivate the rep, but the percentage is lower until the rep reaches a sales threshold that offsets their salary.
None of these plans take into consideration the goals of the company. They are just simple to implement. Because of that, the industry deals with reps who won’t prospect, accounts that lose value, and declining sales productivity.
When you design your plan, start by thinking about what you need. Do you need more clients? Do you need to grow the revenue from your existing clients? Do you need to sell higher-value services? Do you need a combination of these?
Consider your sales talent too. The best compensation plan in the world does not motivate an unmotivated rep. It will not make a rep who is missing a critical skill magically have that skill. This is most evident when companies put a new business focus on reps who are skilled account managers rather than prospectors. Even with all kinds of compensation upside for new business, an account manager is an account manager who will not prioritize landing new accounts.
The reverse can happen with a good prospector. They will go after the new business but may need more skills to onboard that client successfully and get them into a position for consistent growth. They can be less detailed oriented, and even though they are successfully landing new accounts, there is lots of chaos around those accounts which monopolizes resources, hurts profitability, and often means the new accounts don’t grow as they should.
Taking these two situations into consideration, you may need two plans. For account managers, compensation plans should be focused on account growth. Companies typically establish the baseline revenue from the year before and then pay the rep for growth either throughout the year or in a bonus at the end of the year. If paying throughout the year, I recommend paying quarterly because it makes the reconciliation process more manageable. Reconciliation is needed because reps may have grown in one quarter and have declining revenue in other quarters. An annual bonus plan based on growth is the easiest to administer for owners but may not work for reps who need to maintain consistent cash flows. If you are offering a bonus plan for this first time, an annual bonus gives the rep an upside, reduces administrative costs, and minimizes the risk of overpaying. To keep focus throughout the year, good reporting that shows the rep where they stand, where they are projected to finish, and how much money they will earn is necessary.
For Reps expected to land new accounts, I prefer a plan that pays them for new accounts for 12 months only. This way, they cannot rest on their laurels and must continue to look for new business. This is a critical skill that only some reps have; the last thing you want to do is dull the skill by removing the need to use it. Unintended consequences are common in plans like these, so clearly define what constitutes an ideal customer so you aren’t churning accounts. I like to set a threshold in sales that the account must reach to be considered a new account. Suppose your Ideal Customer does at least $10K with you annually. In that case, the rep earns a lower commission on the account until it reaches $10K and then retroactively gets the higher new account commission once the threshold is achieved. It’s a little more administration but prevents reps from being paid a higher rate on new accounts that won’t grow.
If you have a combo rep who is supposed to manage accounts and find new ones, you can adjust the commission on a declining scale. The rep may earn a 10% commission on sales from a new account for the first 12 months, and then the rate drops to 5%, for instance. As the rep’s customer list grows, you can easily find yourself in a position where the income from the base business is satisfactory, and the rep begins to lose focus on finding new accounts. Strong management practices can help with this, but once the need to find new business is gone, skills decline, and it is almost impossible to get them back.
If you have a combo rep, the plan should include a commission for bringing in new business that includes the higher commission for the first 12 months and “grow over,” which is the amount each account grows year over year. A rep can earn higher commissions for the new accounts in the first 12 months and continue to earn higher rates for account growth. The commission on the base business is reduced. This is more difficult to administer, but the commission plan is aligned with the company’s goals of growing account revenue and finding new customers.
One final plan that is getting some traction is activity-based. These are best used with inside sales and prospecting reps, typically called Sales Development Reps. For inside sales reps handling people at the counter, working with existing customers, and fielding inbound leads, adding a commission component based on outbound activity and lead follow-up can help keep the focus on proactive activities and mitigate the risk that they wait for the phone to ring.
Sales Development Reps are workhorses. They are typically responsible for anywhere from 60 touches per day to upwards of 150. An activity-based plan keeps SDRs focused on the sales activities that lead to sales. Points are earned for outbound contacts via phone, email, and LinkedIn, the number of qualified leads generated and handed off to sales, and leads closed by direct reps. The commission is based on the points the rep earns either monthly or quarterly. This requires a CRM solution like Hubspot or Salesforce, where these activities can be accurately tracked.
These are a few options, and more creative plans are being developed daily. If you want to discuss your current plan, contact [email protected] for a brainstorming session.
Question 1: I get many messages from sales reps on LinkedIn. I usually delete them. Is using LinkedIn necessary for salespeople today?
Using LinkedIn correctly is necessary. Using it incorrectly, like those reps reaching out to you, is not.
According to LinkedIn Research, 82% of B2B buyers review a rep’s LinkedIn profile before replying to outreach efforts. If your reps are calling on senior B2B buyers, those buyers are looking at their profiles. They will not waste their time if they don’t see a reason to engage.
An IDC Study, Social Buying Meets Social Selling: How Trusted Networks Improve the Purchase, notes that 75% of B2B buyers and 84% of C-level executives use social media when making purchase decisions. We Are Social’s Digital 2020 October Global Statshot report found that 30.7% of B2B decision-makers saw social media as “very influential” when researching products and services.
Engage Potential Buyers Early in Their Buying Journey
Key B2B stakeholders seek ideas that can help improve their organizations. They need perspective to help them identify those ideas. When professional sellers post on relevant topics and make their audience think about new ways to tackle tough objectives, they plant seeds that grow into leads and qualified opportunities.
When B2B stakeholders determine what they want to buy, advertising helps them locate potential suppliers, and price plays an important role in decision-making. If that’s your model, I recommend considering an inside sales rep or team to handle inbound leads and investing in more marketing and advertising to drive inquiries.
If you have a direct rep or team and expect them to find new business and grow existing accounts, they will need to engage stakeholders before they know what they want, help them define their problems, and advise them on ways your products and services can help them improve their organization. Besides phone and email, LinkedIn offers reps another channel for outreach, but its most crucial role is positioning your company and reps as trusted advisors.
Demonstrate Expertise and Insight
Rep profiles must demonstrate expertise and insight to draw the attention of B2B Buyers early in their buying journey. Too many reps in the printing industry don’t give decision-makers and influencers a reason to want to talk to them. I’ve seen profiles with no information beyond the rep who has worked at the company for 20 years. No insight or passion for solving business problems is evident. Half of the profiles I see don’t even explain what the company does beyond print. Titles and contact information are incorrect; I’ve even seen a few where the company name wasn’t correct. Would you want to entrust your business problem to someone with so little attention to detail that they can’t get their company name right?
Reps should post content that demonstrates they have insight that can help organizations accomplish their strategic objectives, whether that is creating awareness (signs, vehicle wraps), generating leads (direct mail and omnichannel campaigns), keeping employees engaged, motivated, and safe (environmental graphics, safety signage), helping them sell (brochures, promotional products, POS, event graphics, pocket folders) and delivering a great customer experience (signage, graphics, marketing collateral, direct mail, wayfinding signage and more). Everything posted on LinkedIn is searchable, meaning more prospects can find your company.
Demonstrating insight is more than sharing an article or posting a picture of a recent job. It helps people understand why others thought investing in that application was essential and its impact on that organization. I like to ask myself – will this post make someone think? Will it help someone fix a chronic problem or see an opportunity or risk they didn’t know existed?
Improve Sales Productivity
I was working with a rep yesterday, and he mentioned he had been trying to break into an account for six years. While I applaud his persistence, sales costs increase with each contact, and his owner still hasn’t realized any revenue.
Direct salespeople are costly. Prospecting is a critical part of the job but is inherently unproductive. Getting a prospect to talk to you takes between 5 and 21 touches. That’s a lot of emails, phone calls, and stop-ins. Reps aren’t particularly good at follow-up, with long gaps between touches. Maintaining mindshare as the customer’s needs evolve is critical. LinkedIn is a great way to remind prospects of the power of print to solve business challenges. 1000s can see one great post if the rep has built their network. Two or three weekly posts are more efficient than using 1000s of direct touches by phone or email to maintain awareness of what your company does and how it can help.
Question 2: What activity expectations should I set with my new rep?
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I like to build a little incentive plan based on activities to give the rep a way to earn commission before they are fully ramped up. I also like to include sales activities in the early weeks of onboarding. Most companies have the rep spend most of her early days learning about print, what your equipment does, and how your company functions. After a couple of weeks of spending time with customer service reps, working on the production floor, and going on sales calls with the owner or another rep, the company pronounces them trained, and they are left to figure the rest out.
During the Onboarding Process
I like to include sales activities along with production and process training. The first week is a good week for researching target markets. The second week is a great time to build prospect lists of target accounts and research their assigned accounts. By the third week, they should be working on questions to ask customers when they engage, and by the fourth week, they should create phone and email talking points. The owner or sales manager should work with the rep to validate their understanding and to role-play the rep’s messaging.
If the rep will have existing accounts, another great activity during the initial weeks of onboarding is creating a white space analysis of accounts, which captures what they currently and could be buying.
The next consideration when coming up with activity targets is the role characteristics. If the rep writes up their orders, performs customer service duties, and makes deliveries, they will have less time for prospecting. They will need to incorporate prospecting activities into these tasks to be productive. Reps need to learn how to extract critical information that can help them sell additional products and services while they are in conversations where they and the customer are focused on a current project.
Lastly, before finalizing your new rep’s activity targets, take the time to understand the results of your current lead generation tactics. Know how many web leads, referrals, and marketing campaign responses will be given to the new rep.
Activity Categories
The activity categories change depending on the characteristics of the role. Here are my favorites:
· Prospect initiations – a first touch to new prospects: These can come from networking, referrals, inbound leads, or self-generated prospecting activities. This number is usually between 3 and 15, depending on the rep’s other responsibilities. I tell reps the faucet can be turned down based on workload but never turned off.
· Proactive Outreach to Clients – a first-time touch to an existing client designed to initiate a new sales cycle. These can be to existing contacts, referred new contacts, or self-generated to expand sales to the account.
· Conversations – the number of times the rep talked to or received an answer to an email. If the customer is talking, the door has been cracked open, even if the prospect is not ready now. This will be low in the first weeks as the rep works out the kinks in their messaging. It should start with a goal of 5 and can increase as the rep improves their messaging and confidence to as high as 12 – 15, especially if the rep is using networking events as a tactic.
· LinkedIn Connections – if the rep is talking to customers and prospects, they should be adding LinkedIn connections. This number is closely tied to the conversations and will decrease over time as the rep connects to his customers and target prospects.
· Weekly LinkedIn Posts – LinkedIn is a great way to maintain mindshare with prospects needing more time to be ready when first contacted. This should be a minimum of two and can be as high as 4 or 5. Once the rep is confident using LinkedIn, I like measuring LinkedIn engagements because it tells you the rep is making relevant posts. Still, as the rep builds their network, engagements will be low in the beginning.
· First-Time Meetings with prospects or clients – A meeting is a pre-scheduled virtual or in-person meeting with a calendar invite to sell something. If the rep is focused on new business, this number can initially be as low as two and should grow to 5 to 7.
· New Qualified Opportunities Identified – the customer need must be defined. The customer must want to pursue a resolution and have acknowledged that the rep and the company have the expertise to help them. I don’t count every request for a quote. Still, I count new opportunities identified with prospects and significant opportunities for direct mail or omnichannel programs, portal solutions, or large one-time projects like graphics or sign projects. The number and value of opportunities vary widely depending on your business and whether the rep handles existing accounts. Count the number first and then set a goal for the revenue after you have a history.
· Prospecting Cadence Completions – after eight weeks, start tracking prospecting cadence completions. Because it takes an average of 8 touches to engage a prospect, reps must use multiple channels and contact prospects over a compressed period to drive engagement. I use an eight-week cadence which works for most reps whether or not they have a CRM system to help them keep track. The number will align with the number of first-time touches and tell you if the rep is conducting the cadence as planned. It may not be one-to-one alignment because some prospects will engage and not be ready, others will be disqualified, and some will turn into opportunities before reaching the 8thtouch. The combination of those three should total the number of prospect initiations.
· Sales – once the rep is through your onboarding process, which varies by the role characteristics but can be anywhere from 12 weeks to a year, depending on what they are selling and to whom. Reps should have sales goals that are tracked. Sales goals include overall sales, account growth, or new business sales. If you give reps a goal early in the process, it should be low and ramp up through the first year.
