An Integrated Sales Enablement

and

Marketing Automation Platform

How the Buyer’s Journey has Changed and Impacted Sales Enablement…

EMPOWERED BUYERS

SHORTER SALES CYCLE

THE INTERNET

THE NEW PHASE OF SALES ENABLEMENT

The traditional sales cycle

• Buyers actively contacted sellers

• Purchase decision was made based on information provided by salespersons

• Sales and marketing teams’ roles were clearly demarcated

The modern sales cycle• Empowered buyers with access to product/service reviews on the internet

• Buyers pretty much make up their mind even before contacting the seller

• Interacts with the seller via multiple touch points

• All through this new buying process, salespeople get very little time and hardly any chance to make an impact

57% of the buyer’s journey is completed before the

buyer talks to sales -Corporate Executive Board

81% of shoppers research online before making a

purchase

40% of smartphone owners compare prices in-

store on their mobile device

90% of buying decisions are influenced by reviews

available online

What does this mean for channel sales?

The need to change on-boarding, training and sales support tools and processes

On-boarding: Then Vs. Now

Traditional sales on-boarding

• Focuses on the salesperson , sales tactics and the company’s offering

• Provides the salesperson with documented best practices , sales scripts, sales process, demo recordings, checklists, etc. which may or may not have been updated

• Salesperson is given a lot of ‘ramp-up’ time

Next-generation sales on-boarding

• Focuses on prospects and customers , helping the salesperson understand the buyer persona

• Involves providing the salesperson with latest and ‘live’ versions of key assets such as playbooks, case-studies, process documents, checklists etc.

• The concept of ramp-up time is virtually non-existent due to the new, compressed sales cycle

Training: Then Vs. Now

Traditional sales training

• Looks at selling in isolation and theresponsibility of closing a lead ispurely on sales

• Salesperson is urged to SELL andgaining prospect’s trust is not on theagenda

• Aim is to ensure the sales target aremet, maintaining relationship withcustomer post-sales is not stressedupon

• Assumes that the buyer will gothrough all the stages of the typicalsales cycle and provides thesalesperson with standard salescollateral for those stages

Next-generation sales training

• Adopts a holistic , company-wideapproach to selling—sales is not justthe salesperson’s job

• Focuses on how the salesperson canbuild a relationship with the prospectby becoming a trusted advisor andsubject matter expert

• Aim is to ensure that the salespersonis able to match steps with themodern buyer

• Teaches the salesperson to anticipateprospect moves and adapt their salesstrategy and communicationaccordingly

Sales tools: Then Vs. Now

Traditional sales tools

• Traditional sales tools were very basicand not very sales-specific or user-friendly

• Salespersons were given access tospreadsheets, word processors andpresentation software programs touse as sales tools

• Salespersons would use a CRM toolto manage their leads—that’s theclosest they came to automation

• The traditional sales tools gavesalespersons little or no flexibility interms of sales collateral creation

• Made sales heavily reliant onmarketing

Next-generation sales tools

• Truly empower the salesperson bygiving them control over variouselements of the sales process such assales collateral creation, leadmanagement and segmentation,prospecting, etc.

• Since these tools are meant to beused by salespersons and have veryspecific purpose, they are more user-friendly, flexible and effective thantraditional make-shift salesapplications such as Excel or Word

• Integrate seamlessly with the CRMthat is in use

• Cater to modern customer touch-points such as social media and SMS

Sales enablement: Then Vs. Now

Traditional sales enablement

• Focused primarily on automatingsales collateral creation

• Entailed investing in a sales portalthat served as a storage vault for allsales collateral

• Salespersons are given access tostandard sales materials and as aresult they take the pains to‘personalize’ them to suit theirprospects

• Adopted a top-down approach tosales enablement providingsalespersons with collateral themanagement considered wasessential

Next-generation sales enablement

• Encompasses a lot more than justsales collateral creation to includecontent/assets, process, people &skills, technology and measurement

• The sales portal is on the cloudallowing any-time access to salesmaterials

• Has better version control tools sothat the sales team has access only tothe latest collateral

• Adopts a bottoms-up approach tosales enablement taking into accountpast buyer experiences and inputfrom frontline salespersons, industrytrends and competitors

Sales enablement: Then Vs. Now

Traditional sales enablement

• Follows an inside-out approach tosales collateral storage where-in theassets are stored based on datecreated or file-type

• Often times results in salespersonssending irrelevant materials toprospects

• Looks at each prospect interaction inisolation and this often results infragmented communication betweenthe sales team and prospects

Next-generation sales enablement

• Follows and outside-in approach tosales collateral storage which mapssales collateral to buyers’ journey andposition in the sales cycle

• Studies buyer persona and buyingstage and optimizes the salescollateral automatically, in real-time,ensuring only relevant content isshared with prospects throughouttheir buying journey

• Uses a 360° prospect view to adopt aholistic approach to prospectinteraction ensuring consistency andunification of content across allchannels

Impact of the internet on consumer education at pre-sale stage

• 59% of U.S. smartphone owners use their devices to research an item beforepurchasing it

• Mobile devices will account for 30 percent of global retail e-commercespending by 2018

• After they make purchases, 26 percent of smartphone shoppers comment ontheir purchases using social media.

• 70% of mobile searches lead to online action within an hour

Companies now have zero control over the sales cycle. It is the buyercalling the shots now

Buyers know what they are looking for, conduct web searches, study the various options available, compare them and then decide where to invest

Thanks to this power-shift, sales and marketing teams have little opportunity to add value to the prospect at this stage or to influence their purchase decision in this new sales cycle

Need for a smarter sales team that is more connected with the buyer

• With buyers becoming smarter, thanks to the wide availability of informationat their disposal and the newly compressed sales cycle, the need for a smartersales team is being increasingly felt

More and more companies are realizing thatdespite their high investment in their sales teamsand sale channels, the returns are not reallymeasuring up…

Internet has changed the selling landscape

• Need of the hour…A sales team that is connected to the prospects atevery stage of the purchase cycle, through every medium

Did you know…?

81% prospects are willing topay more for a superiorprospect experience—Oracle

70% of buyingexperiences are basedon how the customerfeels they are beingtreated--Source:McKinsey

78% of consumers havebailed on a transactionor not made anintended purchasebecause of a poorservice experience.--Source: AmericanExpress Survey

3 in 5 Americans (59%)would try a new brand orcompany for a betterservice experience--American Express Survey

86% ofconsumers quitdoing businesswith acompanybecause of abad customerexperience--Source:CustomerExperienceImpact Reportby HarrisInteractive

Customer experience is the key

• In the new sales cycle, it is not justabout price, quality or product/service--now it is all the about the prospectexperience

• Making the prospects happy andbuilding a personal relationship withthem

• Customer delight is the key to closingsales in this new sales cycle

Prospects demand an unified experience across all touch-points

• Today’s buyer interacts with sellerthrough multiple touch-points

• Chances are, the seller is caughtunaware of this interaction Eg.Website visit, social mentions,etc.

• Even if the seller tracks theinteraction across multiplechannels, many a times theinformation is stored in silos,where-in prospect data from onesource doesn’t talk to another

• Having a single, consolidated,360-degree prospect view is keyto ensuring a smooth, consistentand positive buyer experience

360° prospect view is a must to ensure a consolidated, positive

prospect experience

Asset Download

Past purchases emails Website

Landing page

Mobile Social media

PPCs Form fills Call center

Store walk-ins Tradeshows/Events

The power of personalization

• The modern buyer doesn’ttolerate irrelevant/unsolicitedmarketing and sales campaigns

• Sellers need to reach out toprospects with relevant messagingand product/services

• There is a need to optimize salesand marketing content to suit theprospects

• Personalization of salescommunications based onprospect data allows the seller tobuild a strong personalrelationship with prospects that isbased on mutual trust

• A survey by Wharton Business School and its research associates revealed that personalization can

shorten the sales cycle and increases customer retention and

revenue by over 40%• Retail giant Macy’s managed to

reduce its unsubscribe rates by 20% with a simple shift from

generic to more targeted email marketing

• Over 90% of email subscribers unsubscribe in a few a months

Takeaways…

• The traditional sales cycle has undergone a paradigm shift that ischaracterized by the new, empowered buyer

• Mobile internet enabled devices are playing a key role in today’s salescycle

• The new sales cycle is shorter and the seller has lesser opportunities toinfluence the buyer

• All of these call for drastic change in sales on-boarding, training andenablement processes and tools

• Buyers should focus on creating a personalized, positive buyer experienceacross all channels

• At the end of the day, a sales team that is truly connected with the buyerin real-time, across all touch-points will emerge as the winner

This webinar was brought to you by…

Mindmatrix

About us

• Founded in 1998, Mindmatrix is theleading provider of Sales Enablement andAutomation tools

• Sales Enablement is using technology toempower the sales team and reduce theirresearch efforts allowing them to spendmore time “selling”

• Sales Enablement is providing the salesteam with the content to make themindependent of the marketing team; yetat the same time promote a seamlessmarketing-sales alignment that improvessales effectiveness

What do we do• Mindmatrix enables sales and marketing teams to be more effective

through a combination of asset management, automation, salesenablement and channel enablement functionality

• Mindmatrix empowers sales and marketing teams to engage withcustomers and prospects through both direct and indirect channelsand seamlessly across a combination of online, social, mobile andoffline media

Our Clients

How Mindmatrix can assist you

• Increase Revenue by running corporate adcampaigns with local lead capture

• Increase sales productivity by providing salesand product coaching

• Leverage social selling to connect to buyersearlier in buying process

• Onboarding new sales people

• Internal and External New Product Introductions

• Make more of your leads by optimizing followthrough from events

• Leverage mobile to be more effectiveannouncing new products

• Improve communication with channels by usingmobile for weekly updates

• Increase close rates by automating routine salesand marketing processes

• Improve your giveaways and contests by usingmobile

• Increase revenues by using mobile retail salesalerts

• Increase Warranty Renewals with PersonalizedMessaging

• Reduce printing costs with personalized productcatalogs

• Use customer data to target new products andcross sell

• Local Marketing With National Brand Control

• Save money by decreasing the workload onmarketing

• Increase revenues by improving sales processes

• Save money by making local marketing easier

• Get more out of your marketing time byoptimizing Marketing’s Time

• Assist channel partners with centralized localmarketing

• Close more business with 5 Minute responsetime to incoming leads

• Increase the amount of time sales spends selling

• Make it easier to run event campaigns

• Automate your nurturing of leads

• Automate the capture of customer referrals andtestimonials

• Create sales enablement in a box

• Automate the capture of feedback

• Deliver the right leads to sales at the right time

Thank you

Mindmatrix2403 Sidney Street, Suite 150, Pittsburgh, PA 15203

Phone: 412.381.0230, Fax: 412.774.1992