MarketStar Blog | Sales (4)

Sales enablement is the process of supporting your organization’s sales team with the information and tools they need to be successful. While this is a fairly broad statement, it involves careful planning and coordination to ensure your company has a proper sales enablement program in place.

Prosthetic patients at the Hospital das Clinicas in São Paulo, Brazil, are receiving a new form of treatment. Each patient is fitted with an armband connected to a gamification platform. The platform, designed by Accenture, uses SAP Leonardo capabilities and has several virtual reality dashboards that entertain and encourage patients as they work with their prosthetic limbs. In addition to the dashboards providing improved detecting, measuring and analyzing capability, it also makes monotonous exercises fun and infinitely more engaging. Initial findings suggest that patients who use the gamified armbands have a greater acceptance of their situation, emerge from their sessions with higher self-esteem, and make much more progress during the course of their treatment.

Establishing a proactive sales operations approach is necessary if you want to gain more business or cross-sell to existing clients. On the other hand, a reactive approach is haphazard and just doesn’t work out in the long run. Being proactive in your sales strategy entails planning, profiling targeted accounts, finalizing and executing account strategies, and creating a process to receive continuous feedback to improve performance. When done right, it leads to more sales revenue.

Key Takeaways

• Implementing RevOps to unify and streamline your GTM operations can have numerous benefits for your organization–from increasing revenue coordination to better business-wide accountability

• It’s a big change. As you get started with it, it is essential that your current processes don’t pose a hindrance to your big plans 

• As a crucial component of any organization, your tech stack deserves the same attention as your RevOps strategy. It’s how you will be able to scale your GTM initiatives 

• It can be confusing to build your ideal tech stack. But once done, it can go a long way in ensuring that your various customer-facing teams have access to the same data. This will help you optimize your workflows and infuse new efficiency in your campaigns 

Advancements in tech stack and increasingly sophisticated buyer behaviors have mandated an evolution in operating models if enterprises hope to stay ahead.

Organizations, especially those in the B2B space, are increasingly opting for newer approaches to enhance their customer acquisition and retention strategies.

The concept of centralizing teams from marketing, sales, and customer success–the core concept behind RevOps–has become popular to accelerate revenue growth and go-to-market operations.

Companies are reporting significant gains in terms of accelerated revenue growth, about 100% to 200% increases in digital marketing ROI and 30% reductions in GTM expenses, according to a BCG report.

The importance of delivering a successful RevOps initiative relies heavily on having a deep understanding of the right technology stack which will support a well-aligned RevOps strategy.

But the sheer number of software and apps available for RevOps can make it a daunting task. Additionally, you don’t want too many systems in your technology stack as this can lead to limitations in individual systems.

Having said that, a full tech stack that is aligned with your RevOps strategy can be the game-changer you are looking for to align your sales, marketing, and customer success teams while ensuring streamlined workflows, in order to capitalize on growth opportunities.

How Does RevOps Affect Your Technology Stack?

No two businesses are the same.

This also means that not every tech stack is affected the same way by RevOps. While some companies require a complete overhaul of their RevOps tech stack, others might see no change.

The tech stack previously selected by your sales, marketing, and service teams provided each individual function with its capabilities. So the tools used by your service team were vastly different from those used by marketing. This changes with RevOps.

With RevOps in the picture, the underlying goal is to structure technology in such a way that it supports the customer journey across all touchpoints while unlocking more of your organization’s revenue potential.

A technological audit as part of your RevOps framework can help you get started. It will help you analyze the various gaps in achieving the ideal tech stack.

How to Evaluate the Ideal Tech Stack for Your RevOps Strategy? 

A hard look at your existing systems as part of your revenue operations practice can help you assess the gaps in your current tech stack and how the addition of any new software fits with the overall goals of your GTM operations.

• Start with Business Process Evaluation: Begin with a thorough map-out of your customer’s journey. Then document all the processes that your customer-facing teams go through.

• Do a Little Research: The purpose of this market research is to gather all relevant data about the tools that should be part of your organization’s revenue tech stack.

• Cost-benefit Analysis: When you map out each of your GTM functions with the tools available in the market, you will gain a better understanding of the software that will make up your ideal tech stack. 

How to Build the Perfect Tech Stack for RevOps?

In “The State of Business Operations in 2021” report, conducted by Tonkean and Lucid of 500 companies and IT professionals, only 24% of respondents were satisfied with their current toolset handling all workflow needs.

An ideal tech stack for revenue operations will include tools that monitor top-line data that can be easily integrated with other apps. Remember that your tools should help you scale your RevOps strategy and achieve overall business operations.

1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software

Since aligning and unifying your organization’s various functions under one umbrella is what RevOps is all about, it makes sense to start with CRM to get all your customer data into one place.

A CRM software will centralize customer data, putting it in one easy-to-access place.

This means that even if your data is coming from various sources such as Google Analytics, Social Media portals, and other apps, the chosen CRM for your tech stack will sort, clean, analyze, and store data in actionable formats.

For your marketing, sales, and service teams, this data serves as the single source of truth for their various campaigns.

2.Revenue Intelligence Software

Driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), Revenue Intelligence Software streamlines data gathering, synchronization, and management across your customer-facing functions. 

Such software is incredibly helpful as it eliminates siloed data entry that can potentially hamper the success of your GTM operations. Since it automatically captures data at every touchpoint, your teams have more accurate and reliable insights to fall on. 

This also means that your sales reps have better leads to deal with since your teams are better equipped to assess the direction of customer conversation as it unfolds. Consequently, you also allocate resources to the right team, expediting the lead qualification process, and optimizing conversions.

3. Project Management Tools

Collaboration is key to success for RevOps and project management tools can help you achieve it. Teams have a centralized place to effectively work on cross-cutting revenue-related activities.

Such tools are useful in the end-to-end management of projects, including task ownership, and deadline adherence. 

Bridging the Gap Between Strategy & Tech

A HubSpot report highlights that a whopping 61% of B2B businesses leveraging technology and automation in their sales processes will exceed revenue operations.

Selecting the ideal tech stack is your first step to scaling your RevOps strategy and streamlining sales.

As daunting a task it may seem, you can ease the process by understanding what your RevOps team needs in order to function properly. Build on this understanding to lay down the foundation of your RevOps technology stack.

Looking for the right RevOps strategy to compliment your GTM initiatives? Head over to our blog and read more about the top 5 areas of consideration for RevOps success!

The underlying purpose of sales enablement is, essentially, to improve sales outcomes. While this is an admittedly reductive and oversimplified statement, it holds true and serves the purpose in this context because as soon as you consider this, the need to measure and track various metrics around sales enablement becomes immediately apparent. After all, how would you know if you’ve improved something without measuring it?

Key Takeaways

• Design thinking in sales prioritizes the needs and perspectives of customers, enabling businesses to differentiate themselves from the competition and improve customer engagement.

• The pandemic has disrupted sales across industries, leading businesses to shift to online sales and explore new sales growth strategies such as gamification, social media marketing, and subscription models. 

• Incorporating design thinking principles can help businesses redesign customer experience and empathize with customers.

Introduction

‘A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.’

Tagged by many as the most difficult achievement in business operations, customer satisfaction measures the utility derived from the consumption of goods and services. However, experts believe offering quality products or excellent customer service is not enough.

In addition, the pandemic has had a significant effect on the sales process across industries. Businesses have observed radical shifts to online sales, disruptions in supply chains and changes in consumer behavior owing to social distancing measures and financial instability.

At this critical juncture, businesses are more inclined to incorporate design thinking principles such as redesigning customer experience, fostering collaboration and empathizing with customers. This article highlights the multi-faceted nature of design thinking in sales and how it prioritizes the needs and perspectives of customers post-pandemic.

Understanding Design Thinking in Sales Processes

Since 1970s, design thinking has been a customer-centric approach to maximize customer satisfaction through understanding the needs and desires of customers, generating ideas, prototyping, and testing. 

In sales, design thinking involves

• using empathy to understand the customer’s perspective

• developing creative solutions to their problems

• continuously refining the sales strategy 

5 Core Design Thinking Stages

Design thinking focuses on understanding the needs and perspectives of the end-users to develop innovative solutions that meet their needs. The process of design thinking is divided into five core stages. 

• Empathize: The first stage of the design thinking process is to empathize with the end-users. This involves understanding their needs, desires, and pain points. The goal is to develop a deep understanding of the end-users' perspectives to create solutions that meet their needs. This stage involves conducting interviews, surveys, and observations to gather end-user data. 

• Define: The second stage of the design thinking process is to define the problem. This involves synthesizing the data gathered in the empathize stage to identify the core problem that needs to be solved. The goal is to define the problem in an actionable and relevant way to the end-users. 

• Ideate: The third stage of the design thinking process is to ideate solutions. This involves generating a wide range of ideas without judgment. The goal is to encourage creativity and innovation in the development of potential solutions. This stage involves brainstorming sessions, mind maps, and other ideation techniques to generate diverse ideas. 

• Prototype: The fourth stage of the design thinking process is to create prototypes of the potential solutions. This involves creating low-fidelity prototypes that can be quickly and easily tested with end-users. The goal is to gather feedback on the potential solutions to identify areas of improvement. This stage involves creating physical or digital prototypes that can be tested and refined. 

• Test: The final stage of the design thinking process is to test the prototypes with end-users. This involves gathering feedback on the effectiveness of the potential solutions. The goal is to identify any areas of improvement and refine the solutions based on the feedback received. This stage involves conducting user testing and incorporating feedback into the design process. 

LinkedIn reports that design thinking methodology is not restricted to large businesses alone. Small businesses reportedly saw a 17.5% rise in average sales when they invested in design.  

Empathy, agility and a customer-centric approach are the basic postulates of design thinking for sales teams across industries. 

Here is why you should be design-conscious: 

• Customer-centric approach: Design thinking in sales centers around the customer, enabling sales teams to empathize with their needs and motivations, and tailor solutions that best meet their requirements. 

• Improved collaboration: Design thinking fosters cross-functional collaboration and communication among team members, promoting the sharing of diverse perspectives and ideas, and breaking down silos.

• Better outcomes: Design thinking in sales leads to better outcomes such as increased customer satisfaction, higher conversion rates, and improved sales growth. Design thinking skills are expected to drive adaptive selling behavior in salespeople, as the approach involves customizing offerings to match customer needs. Additionally, the human-oriented nature of design thinking skills is likely to foster collaboration behavior, strengthening the relationship between salespeople and customers.

How Can Design Thinking in Sales Cushion the Effects of the Pandemic?

Design thinking can be a powerful tool for sales teams to respond to the challenges posed by the pandemic. By using a customer-centric approach, sales teams can better understand the changing needs of their customers and develop new sales strategies tailored to those needs.

Here are three ways sales teams can apply design thinking to cushion the effects of the pandemic.

• Developing New Sales Channels

The pandemic has changed the way people shop and interact with businesses. Sales teams have had to adapt to this change by developing new sales channels catering to customers’ needs. By using design thinking, sales teams can identify theircustomers’ pain points and develop new sales channels that meet those needs. For example, many businesses have shifted to e-commerce to cater to customers who prefer to shop online. By leveraging design thinking principles, sales teams can develop new sales channels that are efficient, customer-friendly, and meet the needs of customers in the pandemic.

• Reimagining the Sales Process

The pandemic has disrupted the traditional sales process, making face-to-face meetings less common. To adapt to this change, sales teams have had to reimagine the sales process. By using design thinking, sales teams can develop new sales processes that are more digital, flexible, and customer centric. This can involve using video conferencing tools, developing personalized sales pitches, and using customer feedback to refine the sales process. By putting the customer at the center of the sales process, sales teams can improve their chances of closing deals in the pandemic.

• Building Resilience

The pandemic has created uncertainty and disrupted the normal course of business for many organizations. Sales teams have had to build resilience to adapt to these changing conditions. By using design thinking, sales teams can develop a mindset of innovation and problem-solving. This involves being open to new ideas, experimenting with different sales strategies, and learning from failures. By adopting a mindset of resilience and continuous improvement, sales teams can cushion the effects of the pandemic and emerge stronger in the long run. 

What Does It Mean for the Customers?

In a post-pandemic world, organizations must comprehend their customers’ shifting needs, particularly considering the remote working paradigm. With complex B2B sales strategies now transpiring in home offices, sales representatives face new challenges that can sidetrack and distract them from understanding their customers’ requirements. This can result in the following:

• Improved Customer Experience: Design thinking in sales can result in a more personalized and engaging customer experience. Sales teams can use customer feedback and insights to develop new products and services that better meet their needs. Based on consumer behavior, customers are generally willing to pay a price premium of up to 13% (and potentially as high as 18%) for luxury products and services when they receive exceptional customer experiences. 

• Greater Relevance: Design thinking can help sales teams stay relevant in a rapidly changing market. By continuously adapting and innovating, sales teams can better respond to the evolving needs of customers and offer products and services that are more meaningful and valuable.

• Enhanced Customer Loyalty: By focusing on the needs and preferences of their customers, sales teams can build stronger relationships and foster greater loyalty. Over 85% of customers expect proactive communication and outreach from businesses. Customers are more likely to return to businesses that understand their needs and are willing to go the extra mile to meet them.

Generating New Ideas for Products and Services Using Design Thinking

75% of organizations apply design thinking methodology in their processes to generate new and innovative ideas for their products and services that are aligned with their customer needs and preferences.   

Businesses can generate new ideas for products and services that meet customer needs in design thinking sales through the following ways: 

Empathy Mapping

Empathy mapping is a powerful tool that can help sales teams develop new ideas for products and services that meet customer needs in design thinking sales. The Nielsen Norman Group suggest that by understanding the needs and preferences of customers through empathy mapping, sales teams can generate new ideas for products and services that are more relevant, valuable, and engaging. 

Empathy mapping can help sales teams identify the pain points of customers or the challenges and frustrations they face when using a product or service. Using this information, sales teams can develop new products and services that address these issues and offer solutions that better meet the needs of customers.

Brainstorming Sessions 

Brainstorming sessions are another effective means to generate new ideas for products and services that meet customer needs in design thinking sales. These sessions encourage creativity and free thinking, allowing sales teams to explore new and innovative ideas for products and services. 

Businesses can generate new ideas through group brainstorming sessions by encouraging creativity, diverse perspectives, and open communication. This can be done in cross-functional teams with individuals from different departments. 

Brainstorming sessions involve a collaborative approach, where sales team members can share their perspectives and ideas. This can lead to a diversity of thought and result in a more comprehensive and effective solution for customers. 

Prototyping and User Testing

Prototyping and testing solutions can aid in developing customer-centric designs in a sales process that caters to customers’ evolving needs in a dynamic market landscape. Such solutions allow companies to measure design success in real-time by garnering customer feedback within and outside the organization. 

Prototyping should be conducted in stages, commencing with low-fidelity prototypes used to gather feedback from users and stakeholders. As solutions are refined, higher-functioning and better-designed prototypes can be created for further testing in a realistic production environment.  

Prototyping ideas in this manner enables the design team to create and redefine marketing and sales operations that address customers’ evolving needs in a dynamic market landscape. In the long run, it facilitates the development of user-centric designs that drive business growth and success. Vox Media has outlined its design prototyping method that discusses remote user research methodologies. 

Testing is an integral component that runs parallel to prototyping. Prototyping and testing operate in a continuous cycle where a prototype is created, tested, refined, and tested again until the project is ready to deploy.  

Testing a smart application for an established company may require a more comprehensive testing process that involves the participation of current customers and includes user interviews and other rigorous evaluation methods. 

Instances To Show How Design Thinking in Sales Help Businesses

Empathizing with children’s pain points in terms of undergoing MRI treatments, GE Healthcare introduced the ‘Adventure Series’ as part of their patent design thinking project aimed at redesigning MRI with a creative solution. They successfully replaced the dark MRI rooms with flickering fluorescent lights with imagery of pirate ships and the ocean. It helped boost patient satisfaction by 90% and improved scan quality.  

In 2016, Netflix continued improving its user experience by incorporating short trailers into its interface, responding to customers’ needs and using design thinking principles to drive innovation. 

Airbnb invested in high-quality cameras and took photos of every room, highlighting special features like hot tubs and pools and showcasing the surrounding neighbourhoods. As a result, Airbnb’s revenue doubled in just one week, demonstrating the power of design thinking to drive business success. 

Bottom Line

In conclusion, the post-pandemic era has highlighted the importance of design thinking in sales. Adopting a human-centered approach to innovation and problem-solving can lead to relevant and innovative products and services that meet customers’ evolving needs. 

Sales professionals should embrace a design-thinking mindset to drive business success in the current and future markets. Thus, it is imperative to prioritize people and empathy in sales operations and design solutions that truly speak to customers’ needs.

Key Takeaways

• There’s no exception that sales organizations have their work cut out for themselves

• Factors such as a competitive market and consistent growth agenda can take a heavy toll on the sales force, especially the sales operations team 

• As responsibilities grow, so does the possibility of getting it wrong 

• The good news is that such pitfalls can also be avoided if proper processes are set in place and the larger team understands the critical role sales ops play in revenue generation 

As sales transform in an increasingly dynamic market landscape, the importance of the sales operation discipline has taken off in almost every sector. 

Sales and operations planning is expanding rapidly to touch more processes, while shaping new workflows, driving better policies, and delivering holistic insight across the entire sales cycle. 

The report titled “The LinkedIn State of Sales Operations Report 2021” highlights the many ways in which the role of sales operations is growing.

According to the report, the role around the world increased by 38% between 2018 and 2020. Additionally, 49% of sales ops professionals feel that they are valued as much as any other sales professional in their respective company.

These numbers are a clear indicator of the discipline’s evolution. Its growth stems from two areas.

First is the vast amount of data readily available coupled with the number of data providers in the space. Second is the acute need of the sales operation team to synthesize this data to enable salespeople.

This also means that the responsibilities of sales operations professionals have increased. From determining which accounts to focus on to building relationships with existing customers and forecasting business performance, sales operations need to be at the forefront.

Regardless of the scope of responsibilities, some common pitfalls can hinder sales effectiveness. Think of your sales ops team as the behind-the-scenes revenue generator.

While value demonstrations, negotiations, and deal closing might lie at the front, it’s the actions taken by your operations and planning department that make it possible.

5 Common Mistakes to Avoid in Sales Operations

1.Lack of Data Ownership

In all probability, the data exists that will help the sales team with their pitch success.

The problem is that it is not properly managed and processed, putting a question on its accuracy. Data is also the foundation of sales operations which means that data ownership must become a core value across BUs.

Instilling a practice of data ownership in day-to-day activities is a must.

2. Higher Load of Administrative Tasks

While processes, roles, territories, and quotas are all meaningful work that sales operations are tasked with, they eventually get burdened with crediting decisions, exceptions management, comp administrations, and commission complaints to make any bandwidth for the tasks that matter.

If the sales operations and planning team are buried in an avalanche of sales administration tasks, it would be difficult for them to focus on the larger goal: driving greater sales productivity.

3. Absence in Strategy Discussion

Many times, the sales and operations planning team is just not part of key meetings and discussions on growth strategy and sales coverage. 

This exclusion often leads to misalignment between the growth objectives of the organization and the focus areas of sales operations. 

In the absence of clear definitions of the company’s future outlook, the sales ops team will wrongly prioritize tasks or investments of time and resources. 

Sales roles require perfect clarity of the product or service and the customers being targeted. The same applies to sales operations. 

For your sales ops, the customers are internal and products are the internal sales enablers.

4. Lack of Documentation

If you document it, you learn from your mistakes.

It’s essential to capture all the institutional knowledge and assumptions that go into planning. Companies can put a mechanism in place to capture such information from all the participants.

When this gets embedded into the plan, you can understand the context of the decisions and changes, even months later.

5. Addition of Shadow Resources

Helping your sales operations and planning team become the center of excellence for one or more functions requires commitment from the entire organization. When this single team is given this amount of attention, added responsibilities and bandwidth issues can hinder team performance, putting the team’s efficacy in question.

Rather than investing in duplicative shadow resources, business leaders must work actively with the team to understand pain points and bring relevant measures to resolve them.

How Can Sales Operations Be Improved?

A common theme emerges when we look at revamping the sales and operations planning team: to keep on top of things. To transform the team, business leaders should look at the following recommendations.

• A culture of internal audits for continuous improvement can help to eliminate bureaucratic bottlenecks. Admin issues should be assigned to the sales department. Field salespeople should have access to regular sales training programs. Tools and software should get regular updates to keep up with the times.

• It is also critical for the sales operation team to have a crystal clear idea of the mission and objectives of the company. The executive team must consistently communicate them so that all oars keep rowing in the same direction. 

• Quick fixes will not work for your sales ops team. Sales are meant to be fast. This means that you will have problems faster than the time you have to fix them. Instead of looking at temporary band-aids, try to fix the real problem. 

•  While there is no shortage of KPIs and metrics, it’s important to choose the one that fits your team. Even when you have the numbers, break them down and examine them carefully. Deep dive into the performance of your sales operations team and identify the areas where they have shined and areas where they may have to improve. 

Empowering Sales Ops to Go Above and Beyond

89% of sales professionals feel that sales ops are critical to business growth, according to “The State of Sales Report” by Salesforce.

Navigating the landscape of sales operations and planning can be tricky, with the mistakes leading to activities being derailed.

But with proper processes in place, there’s no telling how much your team can accomplish.

In today’s hyper-competitive marketplace, you can’t continue to grow your business if you decide to go it alone. Your sales force is a force to reckon with. But channel partners can amplify your business potential when they work in tandem with your sales team members.

You have just landed a new customer for your product - congratulations! The first step toward product adoption is now behind you, but there’s a lot more to come. How you onboard your new user, especially during the early stages of the adoption process, will have a huge impact on how long they are going to stay with you, how enthusiastic they are about new features in the future and how often they refer your tool to other people.

Responding to a popular survey, liking an inspiring post or availing an irresistible offer– these are just a few of the ways customers express their thoughts after their interaction with a product. Forums, social media, groups, blog comments and events are the most common channels where customers usually voice their opinions and air their grievances. But the biggest challenge for a business is to decipher meaningful insights from these common actions. Known as the Voice of Customer (VoC) in customer service parlance, these expressions can mean a lot to a business that is looking to offer products that are acceptable and commercially viable.