[guide] the changing role of sales: how to transform sales in the customer engagement economy
DESCRIPTION
For sales teams, productivity and efficiency have long been the trusted drivers of growth. However, there’s a new kid on the block—customer engagement. Powered by Mobile, Social and Cloud Applications (such as Salesforce.com), learn the three ways Sales leaders are delivering growth and profitability in the new Customer Engagement EconomyTRANSCRIPT
How to Transform Sales in the Customer Engagement Economy
THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES
THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 2
OF CEOs CITE CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT AS THEIR PRIMARY INITIATIVE, YET MOST BUSINESSES CAPTURE ONLY A FRACTION OF THEIR OPPORTUNITIES FOR CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT.
1
We have entered into a new era of business.
Information and technology have empowered
buyers to take the driver’s seat. Mobile and
social media are catalysts for creating a new
connected customer experience, giving them
more power than ever and making every
customer moment count.
For sales, growth and competitive
advantage are no longer tied to productivity
and efficiency alone. A new driver has risen
to the top: customer engagement. In the
coming years, customer engagement is set
to overtake productivity as the primary
driver of profitable growth.
In the Customer Engagement Economy,
profitable growth starts with aligning processes
and technology to both your customers’ and
employees’ needs. However while 90% of CEOs
cite customer engagement as their primary
initiative, most businesses only capture a fraction
of their opportunities to increase it.
In this guide, we will discuss emerging
market trends and three ways Sales leaders
can rapidly increase customer engagement
within their organizations:
1) Engage Your Employees,
Engage Your Customers
2) Inject Customer Obsession
into Your Sales Process
3) Make Sales Social
INTRODUCTION
LET’S GET STARTEDFor sales, growth and competitive advantage is no ORQJHU�WLHG�WR�SURGXFWLYLW\�DQG�HŧFLHQF\�DORQH��$�QHZ�GULYHU�KDV�ULVHQ�WR�WKH�WRS��FXVWRPHU�HQJDJHPHQW�
Often it’s easy to miss customer
engagement moments in an organization.
They happen without you. Bluewolf helps
you identify these moments, and then
optimize them.”
–Joanna Sohovich • President IAR • Stanley
Read the Case Study
ENGAGE YOUR EMPLOYEES,
ENGAGE YOUR CUSTOMERS
part 1
70% OF EMPLOYEES ARE DISENGAGED AT WORK2
FULLY ENGAGED CUSTOMERS DELIVER
A 23% PREMIUM IN SHARE OF WALLET,
PROFITABILITY, REVENUE, AND RELATIONSHIP
GROWTH3
ENGAGED EMPLOYEESCLOSE 33%
MORE DEALS 4
STATSquick
ON ENGAGEMENT
THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 5
Employee engagement may not be at the top of
many executives’ lists, but it should be. Engaged
employees are more productive, have better
relationships with customers and are more
innovative. Furthermore, they are willing to put
in the extra effort that keeps customers coming
back for more.
Additionally, customer engagement is formed
and nurtured by interactions with your sales
team. According to Gallup, 70% of workers
are disengaged at work.5 If your people are
not engaged, you are most likely missing out
on new revenue opportunities. Worse yet, you
are wasting your company dollars due to lost
productivity and poor performance.
Here are the three steps to increase employee
engagement within Sales organizations:
1) GET IN YOUR EMPLOYEES’ SHOESBefore you begin to address the different ways
to increase employee engagement within your
organization, you need to identify your sales
teams’ pain points firsthand. Don’t assume,
spend time alongside them. Take a “rep ride” to
understand intimately how they interact with
your customers. Go from account to account
with them and get the kind of understanding
that only comes to one who has lived it.
By going on a few “rep rides” you’ll learn the
ins and outs of how your salespeople really do
their jobs. You’ll discover bottlenecks. You’ll
uncover priceless insights into how to help
them sell more effectively. And you’ll open
valuable channels of communication between
you and your reps.
ENGAGE YOUR EMPLOYEES,
ENGAGE YOUR CUSTOMERS
1 How are your sales reps
engaging with customers?
2 Is their process efficient?
3 How can you help them be
more productive?
4 Are they leveraging technology
the right way?
Success T ipsWhile shadowing your reps, observe
and ask yourself these questions:
Sales leaders today are being asked to SULRULWL]H�RQH�DVVHWŎWKHLU�SHRSOH�
–Bill Nelson • EVP Worldwide Sales • Nuance
THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 6
2) MAKE CRM TECHNOLOGY EFFORTLESSThere is a definitive link between having the
right tools for business and employee
engagement. Why? Because employees are
also consumers and expect to have cutting-edge,
easy-to-use tools in the workplace, just as they
do in their personal lives.
Take, for example, the varying adoption
rates of enterprise Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) systems within
organizations. According to a recent Forrester
study, only 41% of organizations fully achieve
or exceed expected business results from
their CRM deployments. In many cases this is
attributed to the solution not being configured
in a way that keeps up with how salespeople
sell and changes in the business over time. The
result: low adoption, diminishing ROI and an
ineffective tool for both reps and managers.
Achieving technology ROI starts with the
deployment of solutions that your team will use.
IT doesn’t own business technology. Neither
does the executive team. Your workforce does.
Involve your users from the start and switch from
an “on-time, on-budget” metric from IT, to one
that values sales engagement and ROI.
This will not only lead to great system design,
technology adoption, and dashboards that
actually work, you’ll have kickstarted behaviors
that create lasting business results. You’ll also
have a workforce vested in helping you innovate
on the solution and your technology and
processes will be in lockstep with your business.
Mobility has the biggest impact on our
customer experience because it gives
sales reps the ability to spend more
quality time in front of the customer,
with quicker responsiveness.”
–Bill Nelson • EVP Worldwide Sales • Nuance
Read the Case Study
THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 7
3) GO MOBILEFrom our experience doing “rep rides” on
behalf of our clients, we’ve discovered that
another way to increase employee engagement
and streamline workflows is to provide mobile
apps that extend Salesforce™ functionality
into the field.
For field sales, the desktop is dead. How many
sales directors want their salespeople sitting
in an office on their computer? Zero. Sales
managers want their team to forecast and
update activities in their CRM system, but not
at the expense of face-time with customers.
Providing an easy-to-use mobile solution is
a smart way to keep sales teams in front of
customers, while still getting opportunities
updated in real-time and on the road.
By “getting in the shoes” of your salespeople,
aligning technology and processes around
making their jobs easier, and providing mobile
apps that extend sales technology into the field,
you free your employees to focus on doing what
they need to do best: selling to customers.
6
1 Lead with the right use case
2 ID common actions that would
benefit from mobile sales
3 Design with users in mind
4 Intuitive interface, ease of use,
few clicks, speed
5 Get feedback and iterate
Success T ips5 Tips for Successful
Enterprise Mobile Strategy
Learn more! Read “Building An
Enterprise Mobile Strategy: 5 Tips
For Success”
MOBILE ENABLED REPS ARE
Read the Blog
THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 8
BLUEWOLF CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT
Free with existing Salesforce license.
“SALESVISIT” iPHONE APPTo identify opportunities for enhanced
employee and customer engagement at one of
the world’s largest food distributors, members
of the Bluewolf team did “rep rides” with
the company’s top sales reps on their visits
to customers. By “getting into the shoes of
employees,” the Bluewolf team was able to
understand the unique interactions between the
company’s employees and their customers. As a
result, Bluewolf made recommendations on how
processes and technologies could be enhanced
and developed a simple mobile app that the
reps could operate with one hand, to limit
interruptions on sales calls.
CHALLENGES• Sales reps worked out of their cars to service
their accounts in any given region.
• Reps had to dial in to a slow VPN to access
Salesforce and had to work with a laptop and
phone as well as iPads.
• Accounts and activities were not getting
logged properly or on time, resulting in
missed sales opportunities.
SOLUTIONSalesVisit provides real-time, mobile access
to the items most commonly used by a sales
rep during a customer visit. From opportunity
management, to easy activity logging, SalesVisit
increases sales productivity with Salesforce.
• Bluewolf built a custom mobile field sales
application for the iPhone.
• The app has a geo-location feature for reps
to see all accounts in the area and log calls,
activities, and notes with location data.
• The voice activation feature allows reps to
type while driving and on the go.
RESULTSThe app allows reps to easily track and log
information, making the sales team more efficient.
• Greater visibility into sales and pipeline
• Easy activity capture
• GPS-enabled account finder
• Intuitive pipeline management
INJECT CUSTOMER OBSESSION INTO
YOUR SALES PROCESS
part 2
53% OF CUSTOMER LOYALTY IS ATTRIBUTED
TO THE SALES EXPERIENCE 9
70% OF THE BUYING PROCESS IN A
COMPLEX SALE IS ALREADY COMPLETE BEFORE PROSPECTS
ARE WILLING TO ENGAGE WITH A LIVE
SALESPERSON7
ON THE NEW SALES EXPERIENCE
55% OF BUYERS THINK SALESPEOPLE
ARE NOT ADEQUATELY
PREPARED FOR INITIAL MEETINGS8
STATSquick
THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 11
The explosion of the social web and mobile
devices has fundamentally changed the way
people interact with organizations and buy
products and services. Unlimited access to
information helps customers diagnose problems,
identify solutions, and allows them to make
buying decisions without ever speaking to a
salesperson. By the time they engage with your
sales team, if at all, the last thing customers want
is to be blindly pitched to and sold to.
Organizations are realizing that the sales
experience is more important than product
features and benefits combined. Progressive
sales organizations are obsessed about knowing
what their customers want before they know
they want it. This customer obsession is the
driver for customer engagement.
UNDERSTAND YOUR CUSTOMERS’ BUYING JOURNEYIn the past, Sales singlehandedly took prospects
from awareness to action, controlling the
sale every step of the way. Today, the buying
process has become increasingly nonlinear. Your
customers are entering and exiting the sales
funnel at different stages and Sales is no longer
the only one in control.
In the new Customer Engagement Economy,
every customer touchpoint and interaction is
an opportunity to increase revenue. Because
customers are more informed, your salespeople
need to be savvier and have the right knowledge,
tools, and resources to proactively engage and
capitalize on any customer interaction.
INJECT CUSTOMER OBSESSION INTO
YOUR SALES PROCESS
1 Nobody owns the customer,
but someone always owns
the moment.
2 Know what your customers
want before they do—and
act on it.
3 Customers are people, not
transactions.
3URŤOH�RI�D�Customer-Obsessed Enterprise
Organizations are realizing that the sales experience is more important than product IHDWXUHV�DQG�EHQHŤWV�FRPELQHG�
LEARN HOW TO GET CUSTOMER-OBSESSED
View the Infographic
THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 12
POSITION SALES AS THE TRUSTED ADVISOR In the new Customer Engagement Economy,
the disruption to the traditional buying
process has caused relationships to be more
important than ever. The overwhelming amount
of information at your buyers’ fingertips has
created the need for your salespeople to create
value, build trust, deepen relationships and
differentiate your brand and products through
the sales experience.
More akin to management consultants,
today’s most effective salespeople know what
their customers want before they do. They
understand their customers’ customers, speak in
terms of business impact, and help turn disparate
information customers have into competitive
differentiators. In the past, customers came
to sales to get key information. Today they
come for best practices, industry insights and
strategies to achieve greater business outcomes.
KNOW CUSTOMERS AS PEOPLE, NOT AS TRANSACTIONSProactively solicit opinions and information that
sketch the stories of customers as individuals,
rather than relying on anonymous data to inform
strategic decisions. Customers are truly engaged
when they feel known.
The guiding principle of customer obsession is to
know your own customers intimately, but also to
understand your customers’ customers. Cloud,
mobile, and social technologies give you access
to the right customer information at the
right time. These tools enable you to meet
customers where they’re at, learn what
they want, and proactively meet their
needs. Customer obsession drives customer
engagement. You become the default buying
choice for your customers. They’re loyal. They’re
advocates for your company. Other customers
choose you because of your reputation.
Only companies that fully embrace customer
obsession from the top will succeed in the
Customer Engagement Economy.
We now have a system that encourages
proactiveness with our customers
because our Sales team has all the
information it needs at its fingertips to
address buyers needs.”
–Tony Ball • Senior Vice President • HID
Read the Case Study
THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 13
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) wanted to develop a
strategy that would enable its sales representatives
to better engage and nurture relationships with
physicians. Bluewolf custom-designed the Koach
iPad app that makes it easy for sales reps to access
Salesforce customer data and real-time product
information while in the field. This has elevated
GSK’s reputation and improved engagement with
its physician customers.
CHALLENGEAs medical professionals are typically busy, they
don’t have a lot of time to spend meeting with
reps. GSK wanted a mobile solution that would
provide their reps with the ability to access
information and resources while onsite with
customers, enabling them to focus on the sales
areas most likely to have the greatest impact.
Some factors which determine what material
the rep is going to “pitch” include the doctor’s
“personality type” and level of brand loyalty.
The ultimate goal for GSK was to deliver
more intelligent and effective selling,
matching each medical professional with
his/her ideal products as well as increasing
doctor-to-patient recommendations.
SOLUTIONBluewolf built an award-winning Visualforce
iPad application that incorporates a complex
matrix of situational criteria (e.g. brand loyalty,
personality type, practice specialty, etc.) and
matches the drug(s) the doctor is most likely to
accept, approve, and recommend. The app pulls
information from a set of custom objects, which
house various types of information (e.g. research,
sales tools, situation- or product-based lists of
questions to ask doctors based on personality
type, etc.) to help coach reps on effective,
customer-focused selling.
THE RESULTS• Increased doctor-to-patient recommendations
• Improved the reputation of GSK’s brand,
increasing its credibility and revenue
• Enabled sales reps to strategically target leads
with specific products
• Increased “brand loyalty” of GSK
customer base
BLUEWOLF CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT
“KOACH” iPAD APP
MAKE SALES SOCIAL
part 3
56% OF BUYERS FEEL STRONGER
CONNECTIONS TO BRANDS THAT ENGAGE
WITH THEM ON SOCIAL 10
70% OF B2B DECISION MAKERS USE SOCIAL MEDIA SOURCES OF
INFORMATION 11
85% OF IT DECISION MAKERS USE AT LEAST ONE SOCIAL NETWORK
FOR BUSINESS12
ON SOCIALSELLINGSTATS
quick
THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 16
Profitable sales teams are using the
power of social media to differentiate the
customer experience and stay one step ahead
of their competitors.
Social selling is critical for both for B2C and B2B
companies. Bluewolf recently surveyed a cross-
section of B2B and B2C executives to find out
top priorities for using social for business. These
executives cited employee productivity, getting
closer to customers and internal collaboration as
the key business drivers of social selling.
Are you using social media to influence
customers? In today’s business environment,
your salespeople need to leverage every possible
channel to get closer to customers. Enabling
your sales team to actively participate in social
selling provides a powerful and efficient new way
to engage with prospects at the right time in
their buying journey, spur internal collaboration,
shorten sales cycles, and increase revenues.
We partnered with Bluewolf to introduce CRM and social tools and processes
that help us understand our customers better and share internal knowledge
more effectively, in order to deliver the best solutions to our clients globally.”
–Debora Rustemeyer-Brown • Global Commercial Programs Manager • ERM
View the Success Story
MAKE SALES SOCIAL
Success T ips1 Don’t be too quick to “connect” with your prospects. Make sure you
have a purpose in connecting and the relationship built is strong enough to
withstand someone poaching that contact.
2 Listen and share. Keep up with your industry and your customers industry
and demonstrate thought leadership.
3 Manage your connections. You may think that having 500+ connections is
great, but like all things of value, you must take care of them regardless.
4 Don’t be abusive. Social networks are for connecting and collaborating,
not for stealing and pestering.
5 Deliver an excellent customer experience via social throughout the cycle.
THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 17
THE RELATIONSHIP BUILDER VS. THE CHALLENGER SOCIAL SELLING
By Andy ThoeEnterprise Sales • Bluewolfbluewolf.com/people/andrew-thoe@AndyThoe
Statistics show that the most valuable trait
that sales reps have is the ability to listen to a
customer’s problem and challenge them on how
to most effectively solve it. Statistics also tell us
that the least successful sales rep is the one that
solely focuses on building relationships.
The truth is that in today’s “always on and
always connected” Customer Engagement
Economy, sales reps need to be both. Here are
the steps to most effectively marry the two
behaviors at the start of a cycle:
1) UNDERSTAND YOUR AUDIENCETake the time to check out your prospect on
various social networks. Look for things like the
groups they follow, tweets they posted and prior
jobs they have held—this will tell you what they
really know.
2) HAVE A MEANINGFUL FACE-TO-FACE THEN MAKE THEM PART OF YOUR SOCIAL NETWORKA core tenet of the challenger sell is building
trust by relating and helping a customer
identify gaps in their perceived solution. Telling
someone what they need to do over the phone
is not going to cut it. After you have a great
challenging conversation, make them part of
your professional social network.
3) BRAINSTORM WHAT CHALLENGES YOU HAVE HELPED SIMILAR CUSTOMERS OVERCOMEThere is a lot to be learned by understanding the
point of view of the individual you are meeting
with. For example, they probably care about
integration and reports if they have spent their
whole career in data warehouse jobs.
4) FIND THE CONNECTIONNow it gets tough. Once you are underway with
your cycle, try to find soft connections between
your prospect and your other relationships. For
example, if the prospect is a salesperson, maybe
their top customer is an existing customer of
yours. Once you find this link, you can skip a few
steps in the sales process.
THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 18
In the new Customer Engagement Economy,
leaders must be focused on driving customer
obsession across their organizations to sustain
profitable growth. Your customers aren’t
transactions, they’re people with stories. Your
willingness to invest in your employees’ ability to
understand and respond to those stories affects
your customers’ decisions to buy.
Empower and engage your employees to seize
every customer moment. Understand your
customers’ pain points and equip your sales
team with the right technology and processes
to stay one step ahead of them. Whether it’s
through selling strategy, mobile technology, or
building out functionality beyond core CRM, the
results will quickly show up in your company’s
bottom line.
CONCLUSION
SALES TEAM ENGAGEMENT +CUSTOMER OBSESSION =CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
Business Process
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BLUEWOLF SALES TRANSFORMATION
SERVICES
Bluewolf is a global business consulting firm.
Companies across the world choose Bluewolf
to help them engage their customers and
drive more sales. As the first global business
consulting firm born in the cloud, Bluewolf’s
strategic consulting, implementation, training,
and cloud management services realize business
outcomes in weeks, not years.
Our proven Agile Business Transformation
methodology helps clients rapidly innovate their
business processes and technologies to get
closer to their customers. And our people are
recognized for having the competencies and
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customer-obsessed enterprises that sustain
profitable growth in competitive markets.
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SOURCES1) IBM, CAPITALIZING ON COMPLEXITY: INSIGHTS FROM GLOBAL CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER STUDY, 20102) GALLUP, “CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT—WHAT’S YOUR ENGAGEMENT RATIO?”, 20093) GALLUP, “CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT—WHAT’S YOUR ENGAGEMENT RATIO?”, 20094) BLUEWOLF, “INFOGRAPHIC—CUSTOMER SERVICE: THE NEXT BATTLEGROUND”, 20125) GALLUP, “CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT—WHAT’S YOUR ENGAGEMENT RATIO?”, 20096) COMSCORE MOBILE METRIX, MARCH 20127) SIRIUS DECISIONS WEBCAST, “THE MARKETING ORGANIZATION IN 2017”8) IDC “WHAT’S KILLING THE TRADITIONAL SALES FUNNEL?”, 20119) CEB SURVEY, 201210) CONE INC.11) FORRESTER, “LISTENING AND ENGAGING IN THE DIGITAL MARKETING AGE”, 201212) LINKEDIN, FORRESTER AND RESEARCH NOW, “IT PURCHASING GOES SOCIAL”, 2012