There’s something about barbecuing; it can be so gratifying to spend 19 hours cooking up the perfect brisket. I recently tried a cut of meat I had never cooked before, and as I was planning and looking up recipes, I came across some sage advice: every time you cook, only make one change at a time. If you change the whole recipe, you’ll never learn what works best and understand which variable makes the overall recipe better.
As sales professionals, honing our craft is similar. Learning what works and building our skills involves trying different things. With that said, the pandemic has changed a lot of what our daily lives look like, forcing us to evaluate and sometimes change our approach. So how do we adapt to this new normal as sales professionals?
A Recipe for Change
Customers and conversations are not what they were in 2019. Some businesses are thriving, while others struggle with the changes presented to them this year. In a recent conversation with one of my dealers, a sales rep said his biggest struggle was finding a business that still had sustainable revenue coming in the door. Businesses seem to be putting major purchases on hold while they wait for something to change. Yet, no one knows when this change will happen or what it will look like.
Health concerns are also more prevalent than ever. Businesses are facing strict guidelines in many parts of the country, and sales reps still relying on travel and in-person meetings are at the mercy of quarantines, company policies and local mandates. You can’t just walk through a front door or schedule a lunch-and-learn like you did not long ago.
As more people are working from home, service calls are down, and many MFPs are collecting dust in the corner. Customers are not wondering how their workflow will change when they add 10 more employees next quarter, but instead are concerned with business continuity and their ability to service customers in a completely new way. Many organizations have been forced to pivot their business models due to this new environment, and I would argue that we as sales reps need to pivot as well.
Pandemic Pivot: Start with a Smidge of Adjustment
It may feel as though we have the deck stacked against us, but not everything is outside our control. Today we’ll walk through some strategies I am seeing dealers across the country implement to keep their pipeline full and continue growing. But, as in my recipe analogy earlier, don’t implement everything you read here all at once. Pick one or two things to try this week that could give you a slight edge and make your sales recipe a little bit better tomorrow than it is today.
Dine in or Carry Out?
While talking with one dealer who has successfully navigated this season, I was told the best decision he made was transitioning from an external sales team to an inside one. By becoming an inside sales rep, you now have substantially more time in your day. You no longer need to drive 30 minutes or more to one appointment. You no longer need to spend weeks planning that lunch-and-learn. While you may have made 100 touches per week in the past, you can now make 300 by leveraging tools and technology. And instead of scheduling 10 discovery appointments, you can now shoot for 20.
Customers may have more objections than before, but we now have more time to better educate them and help them overcome those objections. As a result, we can close more business. Additionally, you may now have a sales manager or senior sales rep within earshot of your calls who can coach you and hold you accountable to deliver high-quality conversations. Those using these tools and resources are multiplying their activity levels substantially—and are winning because of it.
You may not be sold on becoming an inside rep, and that’s OK. There are many variables you cannot control, but what you can control is whether or not you show up.
Useful Tools are Your Key Ingredients
We’ve all been forced to get creative in the last several months, and this has led many sales reps to discover and get comfortable with virtual tools. These new tools have altered our workflows and changed how we interact with customers. If we are focused on keeping our pipeline full and getting in front of new customers, we need to leverage everything available. After all, if we were chefs in a kitchen, and there was a convection oven available, we wouldn’t use two rocks to create a spark and start a fire to bake our recipe, would we? Here are just a few tools to consider:
1. Start Cooking with Your CRM
Use the notes from previous reps, competitive data and lease data to warm the prospects you already have at your fingertips. Spend time updating your CRM for leads and logging activities. Utilize all of this data to implement a long-term follow-up process—no lead left behind! If you have a marketing team helping you stay in front of clients, they’ll be able to be most effective if you keep your CRM data clean and up to date. This will enable them to stay in front of the right customers and prospects at the right times. They, in turn, should be able to help you educate your pipeline and shorten your sales cycle.
2. Fold in Social Media
As a sales professional, your social media accounts tell every customer who you are; they convey that you have the expertise to help them. Look at your content through the eyes of a business executive, ask yourself what their first impression would be and then adjust accordingly. These platforms offer us an opportunity to not just look our best, but share our best and build rapport with our prospects. What relevant content can you share that builds trust while helping your customers and prospects? It could be a timely post about current business struggles, a customer success story or maybe you simply connect customers with other like-minded people for best-practice sharing.
We should also utilize social media to learn as much as possible about customers and prospects so we can offer relevant solutions and ideas. Some of the most-successful sales reps I know leverage social media regularly to build their brand, provide value and connect with new customers. Anyone can do this; it just takes a little time and focus.
3. Sprinkle in Video
I’ve found that a personalized video email to a prospect is substantially more likely to get a response than a standard text email or voicemail. We all have customers we’ve tried to contact 10 different ways with no acknowledgement. If you’ve been stuck at a gatekeeper and don’t know if your email is getting read, a video email is a great way to deliver your message. There are several platforms that offer a free version, so it’s worth trying. Many of these tools even provide live notifications when the video is watched. I’ve seen video emails I’ve sent to one prospect forwarded to nearly every person within an organization. That’s pretty impactful considering you can go months without a response otherwise.
4. Add Some Zest to Your Phone Calls
As you make hundreds of calls, make sure the message engages the customer. As stated earlier, the struggles our customers face now are very different than they were before, and our talk tracks should reflect that. Today’s customers are concerned about cash flow, security, business continuity, employee safety, law changes and more. Once we get in front of a customer, we need to make sure we have a strong value statement that speaks to their concerns.
5. Add a Dash of Virtual Meetings
These seem to be a necessary evil for many customers and sales reps. Zoom fatigue is a real thing, but it has more to do with bad meeting planning than it does the format itself. Take some time and learn how to maximize the effectiveness of your virtual sales meetings. Using video can help you personally connect when an in-person meeting isn’t an option. As sales professionals, we’re in charge of whether a meeting lives or dies. We may not get another chance to learn more about a prospect’s needs or pitch our solution, so make the most of this time. There are countless blogs and videos on hosting a quality virtual sales meeting, so invest time to learn how to make it a great one.
6. Cut in New Product Offerings
Dealers are branching out to deliver more solutions to their customers, whether it be managed IT, VoIP, office supplies, PPE gear, temperature scanners or even security systems. We’re using these new products to not only go deeper and wider in current accounts, but also to offer more solutions that can attract net-new customers. If you want your pipeline full, don’t write off a customer who isn’t a good prospect for an imaging device. Instead, dig in and learn how what they need may play a role in the ecosystem of your offerings and explore how you can offer a solution that fits today.
A Recipe for Success
The recipe in imaging sales has new variables—a new cooking environment, if you will. The heat has been turned up, but if sales reps can identify those small changes, even one at a time, you’ll learn what will yield the best results. Before you know it, you’ll find yourself pivoting your sales approach in a way that better meets your customers’ needs and forms your new recipe for success! You can do it—just take it one ingredient at a
time.
