What is the intersection between optimal sales leadership… and the optimal use of today’s technology? Part II

At the conclusion of part one, we mentioned that once you have a deep understanding of your buyer’s journey, you can use technology to give your team a much better chance of meeting the buyer where they are. This is important, because where the buyer is at that moment is where all the best discussions happen.

So – what kind of information should your team members, as sellers, have readily available for buyers at any given stage of their journey? What types of facts and figures do buyers at that stage typically need to see? Which white papers? Which articles? What pressing problems are those buyers most likely to be grappling with? What options are they likely to have already explored? What white papers are they most likely to want to download from your website? What third-party stories are going to be most relevant to their world? You really can identify all of this information ahead of time – and use your CRM (or whatever internal system your team uses) to make sure the right buyer-focused information is easily accessible at the right time. Your technology needs to empower both your salespeople and your prospective buyers to take part in conversations that connect the dots and uncover the truth.

Remember: Buyers want different things at different stages of their journey.
It’s your responsibility as sales leader to map out all the touch points and deploy all the relevant messaging and resources for each touch points. Most sales team do not do this. They don’t to make it easy for buyers at a certain point in the journey to welcome the chance to have a conversation with someone on the sales team.

Is this mapping and deploying process easy? Maybe not at first. That’s because we’re accustomed to viewing the sales process from the perspective of the seller. But if we can flip that around and start thinking about the buying process from the perspective of the buyer, and leveraging our technology accordingly, we’re going to create a significant competitive advantage for our team and our organization.

Once you get into the habit of supporting your sales team by making good technology choices for each of these four critical pillars – sales process, sales methodology, leadership, and buyer journey – you’re going to find that you’ve created a well-oiled machine. Your team really can be the kind of machine that compresses sales cycles, creates more repeat business, and claims greater annual market share. Just understand that designing and running that machine means stepping up as the kind of leader who creates a steady stream of best practices for the team – and who is committed to becoming more of a scientist than an artist when it comes to aligning all of those best practices with the buyer journey.

For help in getting a clearer sense of your buyer’s journey, or in strengthening any of the other pillars we’ve been discussing, contact us.