Selling the Cloud Mark Petruzzi, Cathy Minter, Paul Melchiorre

Today the hosts talk with Andy Paul about the evolution of the B2B landscape, how teams should be approaching and implementing AI in their sales strategies, and the types of leadership needed for scaling sales teams in today's world.

Today we talk about reaching alignment in marketing, rev ops, and sales in B2B companies with Kunal Mehta from Bain Consulting.

Today we talk about reaching alignment in marketing, rev ops, and sales in B2B companies with Kunal Mehta from Bain Consulting.

B2B Sales professionals are continuously faced with new challenges and obstacles they need to overcome on the path to success. In the past two years alone, sellers were forced to move to a 100% virtual roll due to a global pandemic. Most recently, the economy has quickly transformed from growth at all costs to efficient, profitable growth as the new imperative.

Dipanjan Das, Service Line Leader for Sales & Commercial Service Line, Cloud, Hi-Tech and Media, at Genpact joined the Selling the Cloud Podcast to discuss the need for "disruption ready selling". 

The first disruption we discussed was that most B2B Buyers (70 - 75%) prefer to conduct the majority of the buying process online, beginning with research. One of the factors driving this new reality is the presence of millennials as buyers. As a result, traditional sales processes must transform to meet the buyers where they are.

Dipanjan sees three major factors driving the need for B2B Sales transformation:The majority of selling will be a data insights-led process.Customer experience will be critical and must be digital first throughout the customer journey.Sales culture must change to focus on leading as a trusted advisor.Point number three was referred to as a "Sherpa led" where a modern B2B Seller serves as a guide to help the buyer maneuver through a very noisy buying journey.

Over 30% of a B2B seller's time is spent on non revenue-generating activities, such as data entry, data analysis, and internal administrative tasks. Dipanjan said one of a company's primary goals is to find ways to bring JOY back to selling. 

Another key goal is to understand and focus on the "Value" that is being delivered to the buyer - both during the buying process and following the buying process as measured by the value that the client receives from the product...and even that the client's client is receiving.

"Disruption Ready Selling" is not a static concept; it is a continuously changing and evolving engagement process, especially for companies using a recurring revenue, subscription-based model. Traditionally, most companies viewed selling as a point in time, transactional process versus an on-going relationship where the customer could cancel the revenue relationship multiple times throughout the process. 

Dipanjan provides many thought-provoking insights on how to drive an "outcome-centric, data-driven sales process" that prepares a sales organization for the inevitable disruptions that B2B Sales professionals will face as the buyer's journey evolves and becomes even more digital.

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The professional of Sales continues to evolve, and is much more nuanced and complex these days - especially in the world of B2B Sales in the Cloud.

Andy Paul is one of the foremost experts in B2B Sales.  His 1,000 + episodes of the "Sales Enablement Podcast" and his latest best selling book entitled "Sell without Selling Out" provides unique insights, experiences and recommendations Andy has from over 30 years in the profession.

What is the motivation for writing a Sales book?  Andy's perspective is that selling is not evolving quick enough - and that we are basically just automating many of the same old processes used for decades!  Why is that the case - that was the fundamental question Andy sought to  understand and answer.

Why does B2B Sales need to evolve?  One is that the market continues to evolve and have been accentuated over time.  First, the internet has enabled more self-service by the buyers. Secondly, information about a company and their products is much more readily available by the buyers.  Third, if Sales does not evolve as a professional, buyers will find away to buy even complex, considered products without engaging with a sales person.

One of the metrics shared was that 54% of buyers regret their purchase decision when they did not engage with a sales person before making the purchase.  Andy highlighted that as a society we have become less social as measured by actual human to human interactions and this is leading to a higher level of buyer satisfaction.  In fact, for decades buyers did not really want to speak to sales professionals unless the sales professional can actually help them and their company.

The primary goal of a B2B Sales professional?  It's not to persuade, but it is to listen to what the buyer's need is and help them achieve that.  Buyers need sellers to be curious and go beyond gathering information (discovery), but is to truly understand the priorities, who else it is important to and what is the value of using your product or service?  The goal is not to get an "ORDER", it is to understand what the buyer's needs really are.

Andy has a unique ability to blend great stories from his own experiences, the insights he has gained form interviewing over 1,000 guests on his podcast and from the broad research he conducts daily in the pursuit of his natural "continuous learning" personality.

For anyone interested in learning more about the art of "Selling without Selling Out" this podcast and Andy's book are great investments.











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Cold calling is both the bane of existence for many sales professionals, while also being the key to success for sustained revenue generation growth!

Chris Beall is the CEO of ConnectAndSell, an assisted dialing, technology enabled managed services company conducting over 60 million outbound calls for their clients every year.

The human voice is the most powerful thing in business.  The phrase the Chris started the conversation with.  In a day where social media engagement is promoted as a top strategy to engage in buyer discussions, Chris is running a company that helps sales organizations unlock the potential of the telephone call and human to human conversations.

Voice mail became the first "obstacle" to successful outbound cold calling.  As a result of this challenge and the evolving use of email, the phone became a secondary prospecting tool to email.  Moreover, humans have a fear of the "invisible stranger" and an unexpected phone call can often trigger that fear that someone, who was uninvited is interrupting their day.

ConnectAndSell has empirical evidence from over 60,000,000 fully navigated calls resulting in 3,000,000 targeted conversations. Think about that, insights and experience from over 60 millions calls being applied to your outbound cold calling efforts?

Chris Voss, a leading FBI hostage negotiator shared that a seller only have 7 seconds to gain the initial trust of a cold calling recipient.  The secret to gaining this trust - ensure you show the person you see the world through their eyes (tactical empathy) and then show you are competence to solve the problem they have right now!  That first problem to disarm their fear that you are wasting their time, and they are not sure how much time it will take to get you off the phone - thus the hang-up syndrome.

One technique is to use two voice inflections, the first being a hard flat, self-indictment voice to a playful, come with me voice during those first 7 seconds.  Do not apologize or ask for permission in those first seven seconds,  simply state the fact of your call.

As an example of this technique, a team of 9 sales resources conducted a 2 hour flight-school and the results per rep hour standard of .5 meetings increased to 1.78 meetings per rep hour.  This represented a 3x increase in meetings schedule per rep hour.

If you or your company uses outbound prospecting as a tactic to drive meetings and opportunity, this conversation with Chris Beall is a highly insightful chalked full of strategic insights and tactical advice to dramatically increase the efficacy of your outbound sales programs and sales professionals.













 

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