How to Get More Value Out of Your Sales Technologies! with Steve Silver [Episode 111]

In this episode, Steve Silver (Research Director and Sales Operations Strategist for Sirius Decisions.) discusses how to effectively use sales technology to enhance your business.

Sirius Decision conducts research based on studies for both clients and the broader market place. The Sales Operations Strategies Group’s focus is on processes, measurements, and technologies that sales organizations use to execute their sales, go to market, engage with customers, convert prospects into clients, and manage clients.

Why is Account Based Marketing important?

Account Based Marketing (ABM) is highly targeted marketing activity, instead of broad marketing, designed to generate leads or create demand. This is focused on a subset of accounts answering the question: What do we need to do from a marketing perspective within those specific accounts to land the business and to expand the business, while generating brand awareness and working hand-in-hand with sales in order to retain or acquire those customers?

Why is Account Based Sales important?

Account Based Sales (ABS) is a direct sales strategy where you designate a relatively small set of accounts for direct sales engagements. Global, National, Strategic accounts taking the most important large customers. They are strategically important to your organization, putting dedicated sales resources assigned to those customers. ABS and ABM are intimately linked and in an ideal situation, there is a close interlock between those functions.

What are the most effective tools for sales?

Sales Force Automation, MS CRM Dynamics, Oracle, and Sales Cloud, are a few tools companies use as their basic sales stack. Configure, Price, Quote, is a software application that helps the vendor take the data they are getting, by having sales reps prepare quotes, and configure deals presenting them to clients. This is accomplished by turning that data into insight, converting into intelligence that can be provided back to the sales reps as useful intelligence about an opportunity and giving the guidance to sales reps.

Why are analytics essential?

Companies are going beyond their core expertise to add analytics. Besides just performing a function, you can provide guidance and intelligence to the sales rep that helps them make more informed decisions about what they are going to do in a given day.

Businesses need to shift their mindset from buying software to buying outcomes. There is no shortage of tools that will promise certain things, but what is achievable with the resources. There is a change between the vendor and the buyer relationship. Vendors are beginning to put more emphasis, focus and organizational resources behind the end user adoption and engagement.

When maximizing the values from the tools you already have deployed, ask yourself these questions:

• Why did you buy the tool?
• Why isn’t it achieving the desired output?
• What can we do differently?
• What’s the value to the end user?

If you decide to purchase a new tool, ask yourself how does it fit with everything you have already implemented?

Learn More About Steve Silver:

What’s the most powerful sales tool in your arsenal?

Me

Name the one tool you use for managing your sales that you can’t live without?

Sales Force Automation Platform

Who’s your sales role model?

1st Sales Manager

What’s the one book that every sales person should read?

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

What’s your favorite music to listen to psych yourself up for an important sales call?

Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles

What’s the one question you get asked most frequently by sales people?

How should the Sales Rep spend their time and focus more on core selling activities?