As organizations solidify their plans for the new buying landscape, sales leaders are adapting to the new normal. Many of the changes that happened in the past year are likely here to stay, and that has huge implications for sales teams that have had to go back to the drawing board on their sales organization and sales motions.

Since the landscape has changed dramatically in the past year, here’s what changed about the traditional inside sales vs. outside sales conversation and how sales are building new, digitally enabled teams, no matter where they set up their workspace.

The Death of the Conference Room Meeting

Some constructs of field selling are canonical, like conference room meetings and stakeholder meetings. Field reps work to get stakeholders into one room, where the decision-making happens between the champion, boss, and the approver. Before COVID-19, the conference meeting was earned once or twice over a 6-9 months sales cycle, but post-COVID, it’s earned zero times because conference rooms aren’t an option.  

Field reps need the same level of visibility they’d have in a conference room without insisting that it looks just like it used to. And, truthfully, buyers never really liked the conference room meeting anyway. The challenge for field reps is to create and deploy a process that is buyer-friendly but still gets things done.

Creating a digital conference room goes beyond Zoom calls. Sales reps need to create systems that allow them to get the visibility they would have if they were in the room. They can identify who is not in the room but should be, and create action plans and next steps for stakeholders.

Digital field reps will develop an ability to manage mutual action plans or “close plans” in a digital way. All of the same steps that happened in the field through emailed spreadsheets and word documents need to take place digitally in real-time: information security review, legal review, design review, sign-off from finance on ROI, etc.

Embracing Change and Changing Biases

When it comes to adapting sales teams to the new normal, bias from experience will be sales leaders’ worst enemy. The book many seasoned reps swore by has now been thrown out. The true risk for sales leaders is believing they have it all figured out. For teams to succeed today, they’ll have to forget their biases and embrace change.

For field reps who have become digital field reps, adapting to digital tools and engaging with the customer using those tools will be critical. Buyers are digitally native and frequent, asynchronous communications are the norm. Sales leaders who can step up to that challenge and play in a digital environment will be more productive than ever before. Investment in tools that allow sales reps to see their territories at a high level as well as engage in authentic, personal, and natural conversations with buyers will be key to making this happen.

Inside sales leaders will need to stretch their teams as well. As many teams are asked to do more with less, inside sales reps will need to work larger deals and step into a multi-stakeholder process. As they expand into enterprise-level deals, they’ll learn to manage longer sales cycles and stretch into selling more products and more complex products and services from the inside.

Sales leaders for any team, no matter how it is configured, must loosen up on definitions of standard operating procedure.

Strategic vs. Transactional Selling

The definitions between inside and outside selling have converged. However, there is still a relevant distinction related to the characteristics of the sales cycle. Many sales leaders continue to think about sales teams as inside vs. outside when the conversation has shifted to strategic (enterprise) vs. transactional selling.

This shift in terminology matters because even though field reps have been working from home, they didn’t become inside sellers. They continue to use their unique and valuable skillsets to work digitally.

A successful outside sales rep today embraces technology and uses the right tools. They have seen and embraced the shift in buying behavior and are using it to their advantage. For teams that can leverage their experience and expand their range of tools, they will be prepared to meet the challenges ahead.

As sales leaders consider their modern sales teams, it’s important to let go of the idea that the selling landscape will return to normal. The challenges that many teams face will not be solved the same way as before. Sales reps should pick up new, digital tools and processes that enable them to engage with customers and their territories in new, creative ways. And, as the rules of engagement continue to change, the sales leaders who can adapt first will be the ones who win. 

Data Set

Playbooks is the leading enterprise sales engagement platform that guides sellers through their engagement with buyers, in part by brokering calls, sending emails, and otherwise automating a large number of sales activities. The platform anonymizes collective data on activities and outcomes and employs AI to produce insights into the behaviors of buyers, or Buyer Intelligence. 

For this study, we pulled a sample from our collective data of approximately 30 million outbound calls, collected over 2.5 years (2018-2020), and generated by over 10 thousand users in North America. The sample contains 30% success defined by a reps’ disposition indicating ‘correct contact’, and 70% contact failures. Calls occurred in all major time zones.

What Does the Data Say About When To Prospect?

The findings are striking in their simplicity and application for sales practice. Whereas the bulk of prospecting calls are made in the afternoon hours (3X higher), calling in the mornings through noontime prospect local time yields an abnormal contact rate of 15% higher in the AM vs. PM. For perspective, for every 100 calls made, at a baseline contact rate of 30%,  sales orgs would achieve a boost of about 5 conversations. And to achieve this benefit sales reps need to overload their morning hours with calling activity while pushing other items (demos, meetings, admin) to the afternoons.

Graph 1: Variation from average, or baseline, connection rates by day and time block

Graph 2: Prospecting attempts volume by hourly blocks; highest performing time blocks in yellow, but they’re near the lowest in attempts made

Additional Insights for Effective Outbound Prospecting

Sales leaders would do well to understand the following benefits from aligning the timing of their revenue team’s outbound prospecting practice.

1. Early week contact rates are superior on Monday and Tuesday AM times
2. Afternoon times are subpar on most days with Friday PM as the worst time
3. Lunch hour on most days performs more like AM than PM times 
4. Late day times are better than early to mid-afternoons

Overall, prospecting is more efficient when overloaded in the morning or late afternoon hours. These empirical findings comply with most sales leaders’ intuition, though with higher specificity. When combining these findings with sales automation technology like XANT Playbooks, the best time to call can be programmed to an individual prospect which may vary from the overall effect observed in the data.

Seasonal Trend

Beyond the best time to call, the data also shows seasonal variation by the week of the year which can be useful for sales planning. These findings may be categorized as follows:

• Year-end boost. Prospects are prone to engage with sellers in winter months, with spikes during the last week in December and the first week in February. 
• New Year’s zeal. Prospects generally answer at the highest annual rate during January and February.
• Summer doldrums. June and July see the lowest averages in buyer connection rates.

Graph 3: Variation in connection rates against the baseline, or average, by month

These findings mirror deal closure patterns that outperform end of year, but they also suggest that making contact at opportune times during the year may lead to unexpectedly short deal cycles.

Performance Variation

As a cautionary note for revenue organizations which rely on prospecting to meet a quota, the data show that contact rates are declining, though not unexpectedly. Whereas Reps once could make contact at even 40%, baseline contact rates are converging toward the lower thirties. However, for all the effort we observe that average talk time has doubled in the same period. One potential take away and upside for reps willing to persist is that prospects are still willing to talk, even if they are more elusive to initially contact.

CRM is fine. It does what it’s supposed to do. It doesn’t help me hit my number, but it’s not supposed to.”

Peter Black, CRO of XANT

While we rely on CRM software to build territories, track our funnel, and record deals, we do not rely on it to guide reps to the right prospects or the right activities. It wasn’t built for that.

If we have a revenue team that isn’t hitting numbers, it’s likely they are working on the wrong things. How do we get them working on the right things? Here’s what we know—without a helping hand, daily demands will steer reps to: 

• Be reactive, not proactive
  • They wait for marketing to deliver better leads 
  • They wait for the channel to deliver better opportunities 
• Work on closing deals, not on prospecting 
• Talk to who they already know vs. building new relationships 

The end result of the above is overworking bad opportunities and not working to find new, better opportunities. Our data shows reps spend 297% of time on opportunities that will never close. Why? Probably because it’s more comfortable over-working an opportunity that “might” close than prospecting to create new opportunities. Getting reps working on the right things is the key to hitting a number—CRM is not the answer. How do we get beyond CRM and help our teams hit their number? 

For data in CRM today, we have dozens of apps that make it easy to streamline access and analysis. However, our data is old, incomplete, and inaccurate. How do we get beyond CRM and help reps prioritize activity that works? Even when it requires them to be proactive, to prospect, and to reach beyond the customers/prospects they already know?

Here are 3 steps to the Nirvana of your reps getting beyond CRM to hit a number: 

1. Cadence. If you don’t have a Sales Engagement Platform (SEP) in place, run don’t walk. At this point, the ROI for SEPs is well documented. Forrester estimates a 3-year, 329% ROI on implementing a Sales Engagement Platform. Large companies like Verizon, American Express, and John Hancock use SEPs in scaled environments, and smaller companies like ClickDimensions, Sana Commerce, and QuickStart use SEPs to implement cadence–a structured way of prospecting. 

The primary benefits of cadence are  

a) Visibility —know who is working and what is working

b) Productivity —your reps get more done, and in a more structured way  

There are many SEPs on the market. All of them facilitate click-to-call, integrated with email, SMS, and social messaging. With cadences, you are able to program different plays, or cadence, that get your team working according to a plan. This helps a lot! It’s far better than what we used to have with just CRM. 

→ Here’s where to pay attention:  Cadence is not enough. 

Cadence can help reps do more, but by itself it does not help reps do more of the right things

2. Prioritization. It makes little sense to help teams work faster if they are not working on the right things. The efficiency of a cadence tool helps you cover more ground, but is it the right ground?

Who are they enrolling in their plays? Who decides that? What intelligence is being used to drive enrollment criteria? Human Intelligence? Artificial Intelligence? Buyer Intelligence?   

The responsible way to roll out cadence is with accompanying prioritization. Work faster, yes. But also, work on the right things. 

Prioritization relies on data—data about what works and what doesn’t. To solve this data problem, XANT collects, organizes, normalizes, and anonymizes data in real-time from thousands of sellers who are using the platform to engage buyers. What is working?  What is not working? For which types of buyers, in which types of companies and industries and geographies? All this data helps optimize for your reps: next best prospect and next best action. More of what works; less of what doesn’t.

We call it buyer intelligence. Who are the buyers? What do we know about them? How can we use that intelligence to prioritize?

Buyer Intelligence data streams in from all geographies, industries and sales motions as reps work in Playbooks. Not only can Playbooks see what actions reps are taking, it can also see what is working vs. not, and ultimately what creates revenue transactions. We compare this buyer-intelligence approach to ‘Waze for sales.’ Thousands of sellers virtually sitting on your reps’ shoulders, whispering what is working and guiding your reps to work on things that will pay off. 

3. Change Management. With a Sales Engagement Platform and effective prioritization in place, you can see everything: 

• Which teams and reps are working on recommended things? 
• Which teams and reps are following the recommended plays? 
• What are the results? 

With instrumentation and visibility, you are well armed to run full-scale adoption and change management programs, leaning into what is working and pulling back from what is not working. 

Without visibility, change management is a crapshoot at best. You launch training and hope it sticks. You run an incentive program and hope it works. But with the two capabilities listed above you can actually see which actions are leading to which outcomes, and you can fire up the best of sales enablement and sales ops to fine-tune your machine for performance. 

*** 

This may seem like Nirvana indeed, but at XANT we work with customers every day whose objective is to accelerate their revenue. Our customers aren’t as interested in implementing software as they are in seeing real results. We provide #1 and #2 listed above: The world’s leading Sales Engagement Platform for enterprises, leveraging a global buyer intelligence database to power prioritization that works. The visibility we create in the process is a perfect environment for your sales ops and sales enablement teams to do what they do best—and if you need help or guidance along the way, we are there for you. 

We want nothing more than for you to hit your number. If leveraging Playbooks helps you get there, we know we’ll have a partner for life. 

As always, thoughts, comments, challenges and questions welcome. 

Rock on!

Dave Boyce, CSO, XANT

Peter Black, CRO, XANT

In my 30 years of leading sales teams, I’ve seen it all. Once I had a rep literally “phone in” his forecast for 2 months from a campsite at the base of his favorite climbing sites in Southern Utah. He did just enough email from his Blackberry and just enough on the phone to keep his manager from knowing where he was. After he hit his number (and he did hit his number), he let us know he had “gotten away” with that. But I always wondered how much he could have done if he had been fully engaged for those two months—not only closing business but also building pipeline for future quarters. For over a decade, my summer all came down to the ability of my federal/military sales team being able to hit their numbers because fortunately, most federal budgets and business are awarded in the month of September.

2020 is very different.

Time traveler: “What year is it?”

Citizen: “2020”

Time traveler: “Oh boy.”

Because so many are forced to work from home, sellers are even more “out of sight, out of mind” than in a typical summer. But on the other hand… they have nowhere to go but home. Stores are closed. Restaurants are closed. Hotels restricted. Travel risky. And even if salespeople could travel right now, the question is would they? Unfortunately, with people losing their jobs in record numbers, it seems 2020 is the exact wrong year to gamble with job performance.

All indications from our data show that selling (albeit modified) is still happening, even from home. XANT’s statistics show overall sales activities are up 43% and telephone talk time up 37% since March 1. For that to be true, sellers need to be selling and buyers engaging. Let’s assume that in 2020, both sellers and buyers want to stay in the game and keep doing their jobs as well as they can (instead of “taking the summer off.”) With that assumption in mind, here are 5 tips to help your sales team succeed:

1. Adjust expectations. Most CEOs have taken Q2 new bookings expectations down by +/- 50% and Q3 by +/- 25% (this will vary by industry). Make sure your team knows you are not tone-deaf to the situation in the world and adjust their targets accordingly.
2. Adjust your message and your targeting. Right now is not a good time to be running an aggressive promotion to the travel and tourism industry—they have other things to worry about more than buying your product. Make sure you understand how your product can help your customers in the context of the current economic conditions, then adjust your message and target accounts accordingly.
3. Measure and discuss activity metrics. This is not the year to check-in only weekly for the forecast call. Track phone calls, emails, and meaningful conversations for each rep, each day. Review these stats live with your reps and have a conversation with them.  This helps sellers stay in the game and stay accountable to a program—something they need to do this year more than most. XANT’s statistics also show that manager monitoring of calls is at an all-time high; we are all learning how to adjust in this new reality. XANT’s Playbooks is a perfect tool for auto-logging and tracking activities.
4. Record and listen to sales calls, and use them for coaching. Since you can’t stop by desks or join in person for meetings, make sure you have a call recording set up so you can “drop-in” on calls and use them as the basis for coaching your reps. Chorus.ai is a great platform to help with this.
5. Hold daily “best practice” standups. The world is changing by the minute right now. Your competition is adjusting. Your customers are adjusting. What worked a week ago may be different today. Have your team dial into an informal standup each day to share what they are experiencing and learn from what others are experiencing.

To be sure, the world will come out of this current crisis. The sales teams who stay in the game over the summer of 2020 and make the necessary adjustments to stay relevant in their customers’ minds will put distance between themselves and their competitors as we come back to normal.

Stay strong, enjoy the summer, and keep selling!

Throughout my childhood, my father was in prison for drug charges. I remember visiting him in Chino. Dad classified Chino as a “country club,” that visit drove home a stark realization for me—my dad’s choices were severely limited in prison. That unforgettable experience taught me that the most powerful thing in the world is the power of choice. Today, 34 years after that visit, the power of choice continues to influence my actions, and it is something I have continued to teach my children. Every decision you make either expands or narrows your choices.

Today, as we recognize the end of slavery in the United States and celebrate Juneteenth, my heart hurts for the enslaved men, women, and children whose power of choice was removed by the actions of others. Kidnapped. Bought. Sold. Raped. Beaten. Abused. Starved. Killed. I further reflect on how actions of others in a post-slavery time in the United States (redlining, for example) continue to dramatically narrow options and choices for my black sisters and brothers. This makes my heart hurt for them.

Fear.

Fear is one of the most powerful human emotions. It can provoke paralysis, irrationality, mob mentality, hatred, and violence. In history, fear has fueled uprisings, overthrows, wars, and genocides. It has been the campaign platform of many an autocrat. Fear robs us of our potential because instead of focusing on possibility, it prompts us to focus on impossibility.

Racial prejudice has caused more than its share of fear in the United States. Black people, because of ingrained racial prejudice, must fear violence at the hands of white people and the police. Underrepresented minorities must fear rejection by a society that doesn’t reflect them. LGBTQ citizens must fear discrimination, disadvantage, and hatred based solely on their gender identification or sexual orientation. In recent weeks, thousands of stories have been told–personal stories–where fear, hatred, and discrimination have caused death, destruction, and impossible obstacles for people of color. These stories have shocked, offended, and brought us to tears. In many cases, we did not know the pain and fear our friends have suffered due to discrimination. As we continue to learn more, it prompts us to act.

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

-Maya Angelou

I’ve been thinking about the correct response to our current reality. For those of us who can still breathe, what is our responsibility? What can we do to correct the flaws in our society that would limit the potential of some of our beautiful fellow humans?

Humility.

First and foremost, we need humility. We must acknowledge we do not know and cannot know what people who don’t look like us have experienced or felt. From a place of humility, we can learn. I do not know what I need to know about my black brothers and sisters, and the more I speak to friends and hear their stories, the more I realize I do not understand. Often fear is bred of ignorance, and we can overcome ignorance by learning. We can learn about the experiences of our sisters and brothers whose lives may not be the same as ours, and in so doing we can eradicate ignorance, unseat ignorance-based fear, and build bridges that strengthen our society and unlock potential for all citizens.

A Day of Learning and Reflection.

To create space for learning and reflection, XANT offices are closed today in recognition of Juneteenth. In addition to celebrating the emancipation of black slaves in the United States, we will take this opportunity to learn more about our brothers and sisters and their experiences in today’s society. I encourage all of us to connect with someone from whose experience we can learn. I encourage all of us to spend time listening to each other’s stories, becoming familiar with each other’s experiences and working to eliminate the ignorance that fuels misunderstanding, fear, suspicion, and even hate.

Reconciliation.

It is impossible, in my opinion, to make up for hate crimes that have plagued our society in the past. But we must tear down barriers of prejudice and racism today. Please join us in being part of the solution. Please join us in working to understand and love and embrace our fellow humans and cheer for their success. Please join us in helping create equal opportunity for all people to bring their talents and skills to bear without fear of prejudice, rejection, or even violence. Take time today as a day of learning, reflection, and reconciliation. For the XANT family, these are high priorities. We want to be inclusive and supportive of people of all races, genders, nationalities, abilities, and belief systems. We want all people to live up to their potential. We see a world where we make it easier for each other, not harder, to contribute talents. We see a future where love and understanding trump fear and hatred. We stand with our colleagues of color, with our colleagues of all nationalities, with our LGBTQ colleagues, with our colleagues of various abilities, and with all colleagues whose talents and contributions can and will make the world a better place.

It is no longer enough to simply not be racist. We have an obligation to act. The XANT family will continue to use this platform to share the changes we are making and the actions we are taking to do our part to eradicate racism.

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old but building the new.”

Lori Harmon at XANT NEXT2020

Sales will never be the same. This may sound extreme on the surface – but in reality, sales will never return to the way it was before the COVID-19 pandemic, and this is a good thing. Many of the needed sales process changes were forced upon us as we adjusted to selling from home. And now we will keep the best of those changes going forward. Those who cling to the old ways will be left behind.

A quick characterization of these changes is “digital transformation”. In place of in-person meetings–video meetings. In place of fully synchronous communication–asynchronous communication. In place of “management by walking around”–digital tools, instrumentation, and metrics.

The digital transformation that many in sales half-heartedly embraced is now mandatory.

CRM–not optional. Remote presentations–not optional. Screen sharing, email, documentation, call recordings, sales engagement cadences–all not optional.  Technologies many “senior” salespeople viewed as tools for their younger counterparts are now required to succeed: LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ZoomInfo, XANT Playbooks, Chorus, Vidyard, Sendoso, Outreach… these are no longer novelties, but necessities for doing business in a digitally revolutionized world.

And these changes are not temporary.  Bob Summers, Managing Partner of Vertical Relevance, points out that although some may be ready to get back to face-to-face meetings, customers may not be. He estimates financial services business development professionals will not be able to get face to face with their customers well into 2021, indicating that building new remote selling habits and adopting new technologies and processes will be required. “Companies must adapt to a digital-first mindset from both a product development and an organizational perspective. Helping companies get there is a core part of what Vertical Relevance helps large-scale sales organizations achieve.”

Inside Sales Teams are Already Digital

We’ve known digital transformation was coming for a long time; many have already transformed their sales development and inside sales teams. These teams are younger, digitally native, and open to change. If you examine a typical inside team, you will see clear aspects of the future. A good sales development rep pivots effortlessly between email, LinkedIn, XANT, Vidyard… She leverages technology for remote and asynchronous interactions at unprecedented speed. She’s often more comfortable in WhatsApp than she is on the phone – which works because so are her target customers.

B2B Customers are Already Digital

As of 2020, 50% of the global workforce is now of the millennial age or younger. This includes of course B2B buyers. These B2B buyers can complete 62% of their buying process without ever talking to a salesperson (Forrester Research). They have access to unprecedented amounts of information about products, vendors, competitors, and peers. More and more, they are not interested  in in-person lunches and in-person meetings. They know what they know, they know what they need to find out, and they would like a salesperson to help them learn in an efficient manner. For today’s buyers, a link to an online resource is perfectly adequate–when they need a voiceover they ask for it. A quick text exchange to answer a question is respectful and efficient. Of course, the buyer will need to rally their own buying committee and orchestrate larger conversations to make big purchases, but these are meetings that can be done just as easily over a video conference.

For Enterprise Sales, Digital Transformation is Here

Very few of us have gone so far as to suppose our seasoned enterprise reps want or need new digital tools to get their jobs done. Often our reps have been on their own–lone wolves more or less–executing a personal playbook they have perfected over years or decades of experience. They have their own personal formula for success. Management might wonder, but rarely question, how they organize their time or plan their work. The field rep shows up on forecast calls, QBRs, and enters minimal details about deals into CRM so they can get paid. Very little else about their job is standardized or automated. They may use a personal cell phone to follow up on customers and prospects. They may travel to pay a visit to a prospect for a formal or informal meeting. They may ask for help from one of the company’s expert resources in a meeting they organized. Highly visible in-person meetings punctuate this cadence, where the rep’s manager, selling team, and often C-level executives show up on-site to meet with the deal’s exec sponsor and key influencers. These meetings are important on both sides of the deal as they focus on energy and commitment and force preparation and progress toward alignment.

All these efforts culminate in a  “gut feel”  forecast that gets reported on the weekly calls.

All this has changed with the disruption that is COVID-19–all field reps are now inside reps. As Justin Edwards points out, now “100% of meetings are online instead of face-to-face.” All communication is digital.

Reps and managers have two choices:

1. Wait for things to get back to Those making this choice might be working on projects around the house, catching up on Netflix, and waiting to “be able to do their job.”
2. Work in the new normal. These people are creating workarounds. They are busier than ever. They are learning new tools and processes. They are leveraging digital and asynchronous communication. They are re-thinking how they interact with their own team and with their customers.

The professionals in camp #2 will have an advantage on the other side of this pandemic. They will have advanced their own “digital transformation” and become that much more in tune with how buyers want to buy. Those in camp #1 will be left behind.

According to Sales Futurist, Justin Michael, “The role definitions are blending, even going away. Field reps now inside can gain a unique competitive advantage by learning to adapt and power-use their existing and future tech stacks. Once technology avoidant, the modernized field becomes one with the stack almost like a Jarvis Iron Man Suit.”

And Sally Duby, Bridge Group Chief Sales Officer, “Companies that had a great tech stack and were using modern tools and technology before the pandemic are ahead of the curve and should come out of this stronger than the ones scrambling now to get it together. The companies that were already measuring, tracking, and reporting their metrics are also ahead of the curve.”

The Future of Sales

The future version of sales, “the new normal,” will have five characteristics that distinguish it from its predecessor versions:

• Digital
• Fast
• Self-guided Buying
• Content-rich
• Instrumented

1. Digital

Winning by Design, a thought-leading consultancy based out of Silicon Valley, recently studied sales performance data from over 500 SaaS companies and focused specifically on successful SMB reps transitioning to Enterprise.

These reps did between 25-50% of their meetings remotely, even at $500,000 and above contract values. They leveraged the tools they learned in SMB for prospecting (LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, XANT, etc), as well as Zoom / GoToMeeting / Google Hangouts for remote meetings. They developed specific techniques for replicating an in-person meeting online, including:

• Preparation beforehand (average of 2-8 hours preparing for each meeting)
• Clear agenda
• Engagement of everyone during the call (they assigned someone on their side to actively work the chat window during the meeting)
• Timely notes and follow-ups afterward

In addition to hosting digital, synchronous meetings, these reps were more likely to use asynchronous communication techniques, such as email and pre-recorded video. For instance, best practice when emailing a proposal was to send it with a video-recorded walk-through overlaid (recorded on a platform like Vidyard), which then not only ensures everyone the proposal is forwarded to sees and hears the rationale behind the proposal, but it also allows the seller to track opens, clicks and forwards to see how engaged the buyer is.

Source: Winning By Design, The impact of remote selling on Enterprise Sales

“Today’s buyers want to buy impact right now, not 12-18 months from now,” notes Jacco van der Kooij, co-CEO of Winning by Design. “Therefore, the speed of the sale is not determined by the speed at which a seller sells, but rather by the speed at which a buyer buys. Digital Selling is an answer to Digital Buying and it happens at a faster speed.”

2. Fast

One of the main characteristics of a modern seller is speed. Part of this is because the modern seller is always on. Time to respond to an email? Minutes or hours (never days). From the buyer’s millennial mindset, a perfect answer a few days from now is not nearly as valuable as a pretty good answer a few minutes from now.

Among other things, the pandemic has increased the importance of sales speed. In Aligning Strategy and Sales (Harvard Business Review Press), Frank Cespedes points out that in most companies the selling cycle is the biggest driver of cash out and cash in. Accounts payable accrue during selling, and accounts receivable are mainly determined by what’s sold at what price and how fast. Consider the impact on your business, now and after the crisis, of shortening selling cycles and accelerating time- to-cash by a week or more.

Iterations, responsiveness, and multi-modality characterize the modern buyer and now the modern seller. It’s easy to find examples of conversations that start on LinkedIn messenger, the transition to email, and then transition to text. Some interactions are text, some are video, some are phone. But the common denominator is that the seller is willing and able to set a pace that keeps the buyer moving forward in the process and leaning in. Winning By Design defines 3 “speeds:”

• Speed 1: In-person (take time to schedule, travel takes time,)
• Speed 2: Remote synchronous (saves the travel time)
• Speed 3: Remote asynchronous (saves scheduling time and increases ‘touches’)

3. Self-guided Buying

One of the major shifts of the past decade is the balance of power between buyer and seller. B2B buyers say they can complete 62% of their selection criteria, including developing a shortlist of potential vendors, without ever speaking with a sales rep. In that environment, what value does the sales rep add?

Yes… that is the question. “What value does the sales rep add? We have to have a clear answer to that question every time we engage,” said Katie Azuma, global VP of Business Development for Infor. Since buyers are largely self-sufficient on the basics, reps need to bring value beyond the basics–consultative skills the buyer can only get from an experienced and studied ‘expert.’

4. Content Rich

Sometimes not all the necessary knowledge and skills are in the rep’s head. In that case, she can always broker expertise, but she needs to know how and where to find it so she can curate the right information and get it to her customer in a timely way that supports their self-guided buying journey.

According to a group of senior executives assembled at XANT NEXT2020, the problem is not a lack of information–the problem now is too much information. “I know the data is out there,” said Jacquie White, SVP Customer Success at DXC, “I just need someone to tell me what to pay attention to. When I engage with a rep, I need them to add value and save me time.”

Modern reps are buying concierges. Precisely because buyers now have access to so much information about product and price, research indicates they place a higher value on the salesperson who can usefully curate that information to their business context. (Frank Cespedes and Jared Hamilton, “Selling to Consumers Who Do Their Homework Online,” HBR.org March 16, 2016; Frank V. Cespedes and Tiffani Bova, “What Salespeople Need to Know About the New B2B Landscape,” HBR.org August 5, 2015)

5. Instrumented

Remember how we said above that field reps have traditionally been lone wolves, checking in only periodically to report on results? That is rapidly changing. As modern reps engage in modern sales processes (right now 100% online), data is available as never before about what reps are doing when and with whom. It’s as if we’ve outfitted each rep with a fitness tracker. The good sales organizations treat this the same way you would treat data for an elite athlete. What are they doing that’s working? What are they doing that’s not working? Elite athletes and coaches alike depend on data to get better every day and every week. With today’s digital selling process, we can do the same thing.

Welcome to the New World of Selling

Let’s face it, we are never going back.

What B2B seller, after spending 90-180 days fine-tuning their sell-from- home motion, now wants to get on planes again and spend 14 days waiting for the travel day then 48 hours to travel to and from a corporate headquarters for a single meeting?

What B2B buyer wants to agree to in-person meetings when we just proved to ourselves that we can get it all done over video conference?

“Sellers are realizing how much more productive it can be to sell virtually because they are traveling less and can make more sales calls. Companies are realizing how productive and cost-effective it is to have sellers traveling less and working remotely. Most importantly, buyers are seeing the advantage of video meetings instead of in-office visits from vendors. And in today’s circumstances, buyers are more likely to be available to meet. Even when we return to our offices, virtual sales will still be easier and more cost-effective for buyers, who won’t have vendors coming by their offices, getting badged in, and taking additional time to network after the sales call.”

Lori Harmon, SVP Virtual Sales, NetApp

Within the new reality of sales, we can be:

• More digital
• Faster
• More self-guided
• More content-rich
• More instrumented

We can do this and we will do this. Or at least the winning teams will do this. Now is the time to get all systems and processes built and tested so that we come out of COVID-19 lockdown ready to put distance between us and our competitors who do not use this time to re-tool.

Sales is never going back, and that is a good thing. Let’s be on the right side of change–the promoters and catalysts, not the resisters. The future belongs to the bold. Comments and suggestions welcome as always.

Rock on!

-Dave Boyce & Chris Harrington

Resources:

XANT Playbooks Winning by Design

• Research
• Webinar on Remote Selling

Justin Michael Webinar on Building Pipeline

Justin Edwards, 3 Things COVID-19 Forced That Are Here to Stay XANT Labs, The Definitive Guide to Sales Cadence

Frank V. Cespedes and Jared Hamilton, “Selling to Consumers Who Do Their Homework Online,” HBR.org March 16, 2016

Frank V. Cespedes and Tiffani Bova, “What Salespeople Need to Know About the New B2B Landscape,” HBR.org August 5, 2015

Lori Harmon, “Our Finest Hour: How to Create a Virtual Sales Revenue Engine in a COVID-19 World and Beyond,” NetApp Blog, May 4, 2020

When a macro event like COVID-19, or a significant economic downturn occurs, we have to adjust to a new reality.

Part of that reality in sales is compensation – it’s the clearest signal we can possibly give to  our teams to indicate what the company believes is important and what we want them to do. If the macro environment changes so that the comp plan no longer reflects our priorities, or becomes unattainable due to circumstances beyond our control, we need to adjust it.

That’s where many of us are right now.

There are many unknowns about how this will play out – so try to adjust the plan in fairly small increments – months or a quarter …. If you try to re-cast the whole year, there’s a strong likelihood you are going to have to do it again as more information becomes known.

Here’s a framework I’ve used before to try and organise compensation under pressure:

1. Start with your data – honestly – and I mean honestly – assess where you are right now.
2. Then assess the impact of the crisis on your particular business, by region, by industry, by segment.
3. List what you can do to mitigate the impact – what do you stop doing? What do you double down on? What do you start doing?
4. Identify the business gaps after the impact of your mitigation tactics.
5. Focus comp adjustments on closing those gaps.

For example, it may lead you to a framework that looks like this:

1. Data shows that I need 3x pipe on new business (NB), and 1.5x pipe on add-on business. NB closes in 180 days; add-on closes in 90. I am entering the crisis with total pipeline coverage of about 75% of what I would need in normal circumstances. My gap is 25% in normal times.
2. Assessment in my business is that the crisis will delay new business by approximately 90 days, but will have a lesser effect on my add-on business in the business segments which can or will survive. The majority of my business is in USA and Europe; our strongest segments have been in transportation and leisure, but we have seeded business in new segments like hi-tech and security which we were intending on expanding into.
3. Mitigation could look like this:
   1. Stop short term demand generation for net new business in transportation and leisure
   2. Double down on short term demand generation for hi-tech and security – it may end up taking a longer deal cycle to close, but will be important in 6-9 months time
   3. Double down on contacting and listening to all your customers – you want to keep the ones you already have in troubled industries, and look for expansion in those industries less affected.
   4. Build specific package offerings to bridge customers through this period – this may include 12 for the price of 10 month contracts; or contract suspensions; or payment terms you’d normally prefer not to take – whatever these are, don’t fall for the ‘we’ll do this ad hoc as needed’ – put some framework in place so, that in trying to be flexible, you don’t actually put extra sand in the gears.
4. The business impact even after mitigation may be harsh: pipeline coverage will likely fall to 50% of what is needed to hit near term numbers due to a combination of longer deal cycles and fewer deals in pipe likely to close.
5. You make a comp adjustment to drive the behaviour you need, which could include:
   1. Next quarter targets reduced by 50%
   2. Spiffs on target industry deals
   3. Spiff on pipeline creation (I normally hate paying on pipe, but there are ways you can accommodate this … say by increasing commission on deals created in this quarter which close in the year…)
   4. MBO’s around retention/renewal – in a crisis, your existing customers are inevitably the ones who keep you in business

The most important thing is to recognise that a comp adjustment is needed – burying your head in the sand while your troops wonder how you got so out of touch is not the way to go. Value speed over internal shenanigans which involve folks who are not at the pointy end of revenue trying to boil the ocean, and create fully scoped risk free plans – they don’t exist in a crisis! Only bite-sized increments of forward momentum, which you can build on, to retain the spirit and camaraderie which is so critical in any successful sales team.

Author
Lindsey Armstrong
Board of Directors | XANT

How do we lead from home in an environment where most of us are used to leading by interacting face to face with our teams on a daily basis? 

Our teams rely on us to guide them in a fluid and febrile environment. Our role is to lead them through it and out the other side, empathise but not sympathise, and above all do our very best to ensure they all have jobs to come back to by keeping our own company’s economy as healthy as we can. 

I’ve led teams and companies through several economic downturns and many seismic events, and here are three things I’ve relied on to get my team on solid ground. 

1.Emphasise what has NOT changed 

Our instinct is almost always to lead with what is different.  

Resist.  

Let’s first reassure and build confidence by grounding our people in what is the same, familiar. 

Setting up familiar routines (albeit in new ways) will help enormously. If you usually do a daily stand up, keep it going on a Zoom meeting.  

If your habit is to have an open door policy for an hour every morning, replicate it in a Google hangout.  

Re-create the familiar rhythms and routines of your team as much as possible. 

Above all, emphasize that the team mission, values, and culture endure, whether you are all in one room together or in your individual homes. 

2.Articulate what HAS changed and how you plan on dealing with it 

‘Everything is different…’ 

‘We are in uncharted waters…’ 

‘No one knows how this will play out….’ 

Resist. 

All the above may be true statements, but they are not helpful to your teams. 

Those are conversations to have with your peers, not your teams. 

Your people are afraid. 

They fear… 

…they or their family may contract this virus, 

…they may lose their job if conditions get much worse, 

…they won’t be able to pay their bills or provide for their families. 

 All that on top of their usual job and personal stress. 

Firstly, keep and increase your usual 1:1 and skip-level motions – now is the time to listen and really hear the text and subtext of what is going on. 

Empathise. 

Identify specific actions to help alleviate fear, and act consistently on it where you can.   

Don’t micro-manage because you can’t see them – you couldn’t see them in the office anyway, so why behave differently! 

Do not patronise them … ‘things will be fine…’ does not alleviate fear. 

Be specific…. ‘this is what we are going to do, today, to move the ball down the field to solve customer XXX problem….’ This instils confidence. 

Be flexible – work around their home schooling constraints; adjust to accommodate their needs vs having them adjust to yours. 

Always return focus to what they CAN control (a lot) vs what they can’t. Feeling more in control of your own destiny is hugely empowering. 

3.Fight like hell for your customers 

Our lifeblood in SaaS has always been customer retention – and never more so than right now. 

Some of our customers are really hurting right now. It has never been more important to listen to the news our employees bring us from the front line, and act on their advice. 

As the economy becomes more difficult, companies seek to centralise, to retrench power back to HQ. It makes sense – that’s the least expensive way of doing business. CFO’s look for cost controls from that vantage point. COO’s seek greater control of discounting, or deal structures. 

Resist. 

Fight like hell to empower your front line as never before to act quickly to help customers. I’m not saying do dumb stuff which jeopardises your own company …. But trust in your frontline staff to make the decisions they need to make without the extra bureaucracy (AKA extra BS that always gets inserted into processes when centralised motions and general economic panic kick in). Believe me, THE FRONT LINE KNOWS WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT! 

Customers have long memories. 

Treat customers well now, and they will stay with you even when they have the choice to go to another vendor. 

Chisel them now and you will never regain their trust or business. 

Here are some ways we are communicating this at XANT as we learn how to LFH: 

What’s the same: 

All of us! We are the same team, just in different zip codes. 

Our goals are the same – we are going to enable our customers and prospects to better manage and stay close to their customers and prospects, and we are going to help bring structure and visibility into that process whether they are in an office or at home. 

We still have to do our jobs – now is a time to stay close to our customers and do what we can to contribute to their success. 

We are still going to act with urgency and passion. 

What’s different: 

No more walking over to someone to get something done or solved…. So we are going to have to be more structured in our asks, and more forgiving of our colleagues. 

Customers are distracted – it’s not us, it’s what they are going through. So we are going to take the initiative, lead our customers, and be super flexible in how we do this. We are going to reduce “meetings for meetings’ sake.” We are going to cut to the chase. We are going lead when our customers don’t have the bandwidth to debate. 

Most importantly: 

Nothing is more important than getting every single one of our customers through the next few months. 

Lindsey Armstrong

Board of Directors & Operating Partner, XANT

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