Insights for Smarter Sales
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What makes customers stick around? Achieving high customer retention is essential for any thriving business, but knowing the ‘how’ is paramount. Learn practical, industry-backed strategies for maximizing customer retention, cultivating loyalty, and promoting business growth, without the jargon. From actionable tips to transforming customer data into lasting relationships, this article will serve as your concise guide.
Keep in mind that your most loyal customers form the bedrock of your business; they are not just its lifeblood. Rather than being a mere nice-to-have, maximizing customer retention is a strategic imperative, leading to cost savings, increased revenue, and an elevated brand reputation.
In a fiercely competitive landscape, grasping the importance of customer retention is key to not only survival but also thriving. One of the main goals for businesses should be to increase customer retention by effectively retaining customers, ensuring long-term success.
Pivoting the spotlight onto cost savings, imagine a world where the relentless pursuit of new customers takes a backseat. Here, nurturing existing customers leads to significant reductions in acquisition costs and a more robust bottom line. This isn’t a utopian fantasy, but a strategic shift that can improve your financial performance, balancing the scales between acquisition and retention with a keen eye on long-term sustainability.
Now, let’s turn the page to increased revenue, where loyal customers are the protagonists. These repeat patrons are not merely a stable source of income—they are the architects of a larger revenue narrative. With just a fraction of your customer base, they can contribute disproportionately to annual earnings through consistent purchases and seizing upselling opportunities.
The final chapter in this trilogy of importance is brand reputation. Satisfied customers don’t just return—they become ambassadors, spreading the gospel of their positive experiences. This organic advocacy fortifies your brand’s image, transforming customers into a voluntary marketing force.
Moving into the B2B domain, we will discuss two impactful methods to boost your sales with existing clients. Whether it’s uncovering hidden potential in sales data or ensuring customers are apprised of your latest offerings, these strategies are about maximizing value from existing relationships while bolstering your bottom line.
The first method invites us to scrutinize our sales data. By examining spend data across product categories, we can unearth sales gaps that might indicate missed opportunities. Are all categories getting their fair share of attention from customers? If not, it’s time to investigate why and how to bridge these gaps.
Reps can start by heading over to where their customers’ data is stored, whether that’s in your ERP, BI tool, or an Excel sheet, and find the spend data for each product category.
Once the rep has sales by product category sorted for each customer, they can start to identify if there are any gaps.
If one of a rep’s customers is a star spender in only 3 out of the 50 product categories your company stocks, something might be amiss.
It’s time for some detective work:
The next time the rep sees their customer, they can present their spend data and start asking questions. There could be a big opportunity waiting to be seized!
The second strategy, while simple, is frequently overlooked: keep your customers informed about new products. This isn’t a complex endeavor; it can be as straightforward as a mention in an email or a sample during a visit.
It’s about keeping your offerings top-of-mind, ensuring your customers can take full advantage of your evolving product line.
Too easy.
Before embarking on retention strategies, it’s crucial to evaluate your current efforts. Are you tracking the right metrics? Are you listening to your customers’ feedback? This assessment will not only provide a baseline but also illuminate areas ripe for improvement, setting the stage for a more targeted and effective retention approach.
Key metrics serve as the compass guiding your retention journey. From calculating the customer retention rate to assessing customer lifetime value, these figures are the benchmarks against which you can measure the success of your strategies. They help you understand the health of customer relationships and how they contribute to the company’s sustainable growth. Some key metrics to consider include:
By tracking and analyzing these metrics, you can make data-driven decisions to improve customer retention and drive business growth.
However, numbers only convey half the truth. Listening to your customers is just as important when it comes to identifying issues and determining causes of attrition. Through customer feedback, you gain access to invaluable insights that can steer your retention strategies in a direction that resonates with your clientele’s evolving needs.
With a clear evaluation in hand, it’s now appropriate to create an all-encompassing customer retention plan. This blueprint for loyalty should be tailored to your unique business landscape and customer base, setting clear objectives and ensuring resources are allocated wisely to nurture and grow customer relationships over time.
Establishing objectives is similar to marking destinations on a map. Defining clear, measurable goals gives your retention strategies a direction and purpose, ensuring they are aligned with broader business aspirations. Without these targets, you’re navigating without a compass, risking engagement with your most valuable customers.
Effective resource allocation is akin to maintaining balance. It’s about prioritizing initiatives that deliver the most impact on customer retention, while not neglecting customer acquisition efforts.
This strategic allocation is the cornerstone of a sustainable, profitable business model that values long-term customer relationships.
Now, let’s explore established customer retention strategy that can take your customer retention to the next level. From personalization to loyalty programs, these approaches have been tried and tested, demonstrating their prowess in keeping customers engaged and invested in your brand. Implementing a customer retention program is one such effective approach.
Personalization stands out as a beacon of individual attention amid a sea of generic interactions. By leveraging customer data to tailor experiences and communications, businesses can dramatically increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, making each customer feel uniquely valued.
Outstanding customer service forms the cornerstone of customer retention. It’s about exceeding customer expectations at every turn and resolving issues with efficiency and empathy.
By delivering consistently high-quality service, you not only retain customers but turn them into advocates for your brand.
Loyalty programs serve as treasure troves for customer retention, providing rewards and incentives that stimulate continuous engagement and repeated purchases. These programs are a testament to the value you place on customer loyalty and provide a tangible way to express your appreciation.
In the ongoing rhythm of business, maintaining regular communication with customers forms the heartbeat of a healthy, lasting relationship. Whether it’s through newsletters, feedback surveys, or educational content, staying in touch keeps customers engaged and informed, reinforcing their connection to your brand.
In the modern digital era, technology serves as a potent ally in the pursuit of customer retention. From CRM systems to marketing automation, the right tools can:
CRM systems form the bedrock of a technology-aided retention strategy. By centralizing customer data, these systems empower businesses to deliver personalized marketing initiatives and foster improved customer interactions, all while offering a 360-degree view of customer relationships.
Marketing automation acts as a driving force for efficiency and effectiveness in customer communication. It enables businesses to nurture customer relationships at scale, delivering personalized messages and offers that resonate with individual preferences and behaviors.
Customer feedback tools function as your ground-level listening devices. They:
As we draw closer to the conclusion of our journey, let’s reflect on the overarching theme: customer retention is not just a metric to be measured but a philosophy to be embraced. By exceeding customer expectations and focusing on value creation, businesses can forge lasting relationships that transcend transactions and evolve into partnerships.
From the initial spark of a customer’s interest to the ongoing glow of their loyalty, the strategies we’ve explored are the kindling that keeps the flame of customer retention alive. As we conclude this exploration, let the insights and real-world examples serve as a beacon, guiding you to not only retain your customers but to delight and inspire them at every turn.
Customer retention relies on the 8 C's: community, care, convenience, customer connection, cultivation, customization, character, and choice. These factors are crucial for maintaining a strong customer base.
The 3 R's of customer retention are: retention, related sales, and referrals. These factors contribute to increased profitability and loyalty among customers.
Customer retention, the process of keeping existing customers coming back to your business, is crucial because it leads to cost savings, increased revenue, and builds a positive brand reputation, driving sustainable growth.
By using technology like CRM systems, marketing automation, and customer feedback tools, businesses can improve customer retention rates through personalized interactions, streamlined communication, and valuable insights for service improvement. Invest in these technologies to enhance the customer experience and reduce churn.
Some effective customer retention strategies include personalization, exceptional customer service, loyalty programs, and regular communication. These approaches can help increase customer satisfaction and encourage repeat business.
Extras: Keen to learn more ways to grow wallet share? Check out this article here to get sales coach Ian Cartwright’s method to growing sales among existing customers.
Is one of your goals this year to be more efficient at work? Embrace technology? Save on operating costs? If that sounds like you, these 9 sales tools are for you. The best bit? They’re all free. Let’s have a look!
*Pricing information as of 19th January 2023, prices may change at any moment.
What is it?
Fathom is a relatively new transcription service for Zoom which allows you to record, transcribe, and highlight vital moments during your call. Their transcription/voice recognition accuracy blows the competition away, and it’s straightforward to use.
Feeling like you in-meeting note taking is making you miss vital info? Boot up Fathom and get it to take the notes for you.
Pricing
I discovered Fathom recently and I couldn’t believe the quality I was getting with its transcriptions and that the tool was 100% free. Jump on it now while it still is!
What is it?
Loom is a video messaging/comms tool which allows you to record your screen, voice, and self to produce quick-sharing presentations and messages. It’s a great tool for quickly sharing your point across in a clear way. Thanks to Loom’s quick sharing, I use it often for content production and to communicate with team mates.
Need to walk a customer through a new product virtually? Record your desktop, camera, and mic together to give them a rich experience.
Pricing
Loom’s free Starter level limits you to 25 videos at up to 5-mins long. When you cap those limits, you’ll need to upgrade. Here’s their current pricing:
What is it?
Calendly is a popular meeting scheduling tool which automates the meeting setup process. If you despise emailing back and forth for days with a customer or prospect to settle on a meeting time, Calendly is for you. I’ve used it to book plenty of meetings and it always takes the stress off.
Pricing
You can use Calendly for free with the caveat that you can only make one meeting available for booking at a time. If you know you’ll be needing to schedule for multiple meetings (e.g. with different topics), you might need to buy a plan. Here’s their complete Individual level and Team pricing:
What is it?
Lavender is an AI email writing assistant to help you write better emails quicker. If you find writing to be a chore, want to avoid emails being sent to spam, or make your emails more personable, Lavender can do it.
Pricing
Lavender’s free plan will start with a full-feature trial of the paid tier before stepping back to more limited features. You’ll get an integration to Gmail/Outlook 365 and the capability to analyze 5 people and emails per month. Otherwise, the next tier up is USD $29 a month for an individual, and without extensive integrations. Here’s all the details:
What is it?
Templify is a nifty little Chrome extension which can help you respond to emails or messages quickly by storing self-made templates. I’ve used Templify for a while, and found it great: it’s great for speeding up the email process. And since templates are 100% made by you, there’s no concern of coming across as impersonal (unless your templates aren’t on the mark!)
Pricing
Templify is 100% free, nothing more than that.
What is it?
MailMeteor’s Spam Checker is a super-simple tool which can help identify spam words in your emails when you feed your copy into the tool on MailMeteor’s site. The checker will grade your email with a score, reading time, and identify spam words and why they’re spammy. It’s an easy tool to use if you’re finding no-one is getting back to you and suspect you’re being dumped in spam. I didn’t realize my emails were so spammy until I used this tool - cheers MailMeteor for letting us have something for free which works!
Pricing
This spam checker is free for everyone!
What is it?
If you struggle to write good subject lines (like I do- occasionally) this tool could help you out. Head over to SendCheckIt’s subject line tester and paste in your draft subject. From here it’ll give a score and recommendations for: scanability, length, spam, sentiment, reading grade level, and tips for improvement. Nice!
Pricing
This subject line checker is free for everyone too!
What is it?
ContactOut is another browser-based tool which can be used to find email addresses and phone numbers from social profiles. Found a great prospect on LinkedIn but can’t find their contact? ContactOut will find it. Whenever I’ve needed to find someone’s business email, ContactOut has had my back.
Pricing
At 40 email searches and 3 phone number searches per month, ContactOut’s free plan was more than enough for me. However, if you’re in a role where finding new customers is a priority, the free plan may be too limiting. You might like to try…
What is it?
Here’s an out-of-the box sales tool. Crystal Knows is an AI tool which analyzes a prospect’s social accounts to create a personality profile: which you can use to shape your approach. Using Crystal Knows could be a good way to gauge a prospect to help you nail your first contact with them.
Pricing
Crystal Knows’ free plan will analyze 10 profiles, and do yours too. From there on, you’ll need to bump up to Premium to keep using the tool. As Crystal Knows says, the free plan is really best for testing out the tool.
You never know what sales tools are out there until you start digging - and there are hundreds. We’re all living in a pioneering age for accessible tech that makes our work lives easier, so let’s embrace it this year.
We’ll keep this list updated as we come across great new free sales tools you can use to become a more efficient salesperson in 2023. Stay tuned! In the meantime, we’d love to share some free sales advice with you - straight from a sales expert. Check out our webinar collection here.
Stuffy, chore, difficult, misguided - these might come to mind when you read the words ‘sales forecasting’ and ‘sales targets.’ Forecasts are made for finance, and your team barely hits their targets.
It doesn’t have to be that way. If you learn how, sales forecasting and targets can be weaponized to grow wallet share and boost rep sales performance.
Here’s how our CEO Jonathan Hubbard teaches sales leaders to use forecasting and targets to seriously boost sales results.
Forecasting and targets matter because they help sales reps find direction and visualise their end goal.
An outside sales rep’s job is to shift stock and grow revenue. Yes, they’re also building relationships and developing their skillset, but the key requirement is to deliver their revenue quota.
In 2023, having a forward looking mindset towards the sales goal is even more important as markets tighten.
Clear sales quotas and smart forecasting can be used to guide sales reps toward a forward-thinking mindset.
Here’s what smart forecasting looks like and how targets can be weaponised to produce results.
Smart forecasting is actually really easy. All reps need are pen, paper, and 15mins.
A sales target or quota is a meaningless expectation until the figure is broken down to the customer level.
The mindset is to look at each customer and consider how much they’re likely to spend towards the target based on their spending history.
If a rep has a 300k target for March, how could it be broken down over their 200 customers? Who is going to contribute the most to the target? Who has the potential to contribute more to the target? What smart and thoughtful actions could be taken to secure that revenue?
Now the rep has set meaningful sales expectations for each customer which they can measure against: they have an attack plan!
BONUS:
In the first week of April, the rep can look back on customers’ performance for the $300k March target. If one customer didn’t live up to expectations, could the rep have done something to change the situation? As their manager, you can take this opportunity to ask questions and help the rep figure out what they could do next time.
"What’s more effective is spending time doing important things before they become urgent - that’s what drives careers and sales growth.”
A sales trainer with 18+ years experience, Ambrose Blowfield is a believer in the powers of proper account management practices, meeting mastery, and sales behavior. Numerik CEO, Jonathan Hubbard, spoke with Ambrose to uncover his mindset for proactive account management best practices, and how sales managers can support their sellers to nail it.
We also looked at Numerik’s top new feature for account management: Customer Goalcards. Too often, rebate initiatives and promos go unseen and don’t influence customers’ buying behavior. Goalcards are the way around the problem.
Read on, or watch the recording below, to learn about Ambrose’s proactive account management best practices mindset and see how Goalcards are the best tool for the job.
According to Ambrose, there are 3 key differences between the ideas ‘key account management’ and ‘proactive account management best practices.’
Using a proactive mindset for account management is the only way, Ambrose explains, to grow sales territories or sets of clients. Analyzing sales data to find new opportunities within accounts, finding new ways to add value, and having a ranked call cycle, choosing the right customers to visit are all proactive actions which can drive account growth.
After the accounts have been ranked, and goals set, taking time each quarter, and month, to plan out what can be done in the time available to hit the goal. Rather than visiting a client to have a coffee, or visiting for the sake of it, pinning down actions which can add value.
Analyzing each account’s numbers. Based on their order history, are there hidden sales opportunities? A cross-selling gap here, an opportunity to add more value, to deepen the relationship, to get access to new branches and new product lines. Leveraging knowledge to take the right actions is essential for account management best practices.
Using knowledge of each account’s numbers and potential gaps to go into meetings primed with strong questions. E.g. “In this region, 25% of people's sales are usually in this product category- but this client’s only doing 10% of their sales in this area. What's the problem?”
Ambrose explains that despite ranking their accounts, account managers will often fail to spend time with accounts based on that ranking. In a global survey from two years ago, the Sales Mastery team found that although 88% of participants rank their accounts, only 44% follow a call or territory cycle based on their rankings. For sales managers, this is an alert to realize your team likely isn’t spending their time on the right people despite knowing which accounts should be prioritized.
An account manager’s time cannot be spread evenly over each customer. “That’s customer service,” Ambrose says, “that's reactive and that's not going to grow your career or territory.” An account manager may spend 2500 hours a year working- ensure they’re using their time with the right clients when needed.
Without having a handle on their clients’ sales data, account managers won’t know who to invest their time into, or how they should invest their time. Ambrose says it should be an account manager’s responsibility to know their data- they just need to stay disciplined with it. Knowing the numbers is key to account management best practices.
Account managers are ‘people’ people who can get distracted easily by fun small clients who make good coffees and have great banter: “I think there’s a naughtiness there… we’re all guilty of it.” Ambrose adds that they’re also heart-based people who will do what they’re told, and can often end up with their customers dictating how their time will be spent. Again, a matter of discipline.
Goalcards are a goal-tracking tool made to help account managers set shared sales goals with their customers. An account manager may have set an internal goal for an account, set up a product promo, or even a rebate/loyalty program to keep the account engaged. However, it can be hard to keep customers engaged with these goals in real-time. If the rebates/promos aren’t in their mind, it’s not working. That’s where Goalcards come in.
Goalcards help customers track their progress and purchases by taking live sales data and presenting it to them in a snappy and simple way.
Customers are given a login to Numerik to see the Goalcard their account manager has set for them. Whether the account manager has set up a product promo or rewards program, the customer can log in at any time to see their live progress towards their goal. They can see which product groups, products, they’ve been purchasing more/less of compared to previous years, and even how they’re tracking towards their goal compared to last year.
Goalcards are a great tool for proactive account management best practices because they keep rebates and spending data front and center with customers.
Having shared goals and spending data accessible from both sides of the customer relationship keeps the conversation focused and deliberate. With a Goalcard in place, it’s easy to lead a customer conversation with something like “just checking how we’re going on our annual goal. These are the products which are doing best for us at the moment, these are a little behind.”
The broad brush approach of setting a rebate and forgetting about it can’t keep up with a proactive account management best practices mindset. With a personalized Goalcard, your company can stand out against competitors: the visibility provided is unmatched.
At Numerik, we understand the importance of proactive account management best practices. That's why our platform is designed to help sales teams not just manage their accounts but excel at it. With features like Customer Goalcards, we provide the tools needed to set clear, actionable goals and keep both account managers and customers aligned on progress. Our data-driven insights ensure that account managers spend their time wisely, focusing on high-growth opportunities and making informed decisions based on real-time data. Numerik empowers your team to lead proactive conversations, stay disciplined with their numbers, and ultimately drive sales growth more effectively.
If you're looking to take your account management to the next level, Numerik offers the solutions you need to succeed. Schedule a demo of our platform today and see how we can support your journey to mastering account management best practices.
What does a winning sales culture look like for a construction company’s salesforce?
We spoke to multiple sales leaders in construction and consulted our customer team to pin down the 5 characteristics which the best sales cultures are built on.
Have a read through to see if your sales culture matches up. Worried it won’t? We’ve got advice on that too. Let’s get going.
Strong construction focused sales cultures are united around their core goal: achieving target. Not only is that revenue or GP target clearly communicated, it’s achievable. There are few things which ruin a rep’s motivation more than having to reach an unrealistic target they heard about once at the start of the period.
Managers in high performing cultures are pros at taking the finance team’s goals and deconstructing them across their sales reps according to their capabilities. If the whole team’s target for the period is $2.5mil, every rep knows exactly how much they’re responsible for contributing to the target.
Smart sales forecasting is the underrated tool top performing sales cultures use as their weapon. In a competitive and transitioning (through covid and economic stress) industry like construction, using smart forecasting is an easy way for sales reps to keep an eye on where things are headed, helping them stay calm and ready.
We’ve found it’s the teams who have mastered forecasting, and use it as a guide, who are always aware of how far they are from forecast sales. They aren’t strung out: they know when they’re beginning to fall behind early enough to pivot and get back on track. As a result, the sales culture is clear, focused, and collected.
The communication style in a winning sales culture is proactive and doesn’t miss a beat. Despite possible regional separations, everyone is kept on the same page, with information kept in a central source. If anyone needs help, their colleagues are there with advice.
The tell tale sign there’s something wrong? If you walk into the office, and you’re met with dead silence. Or you haven’t heard from your reps all week.
Your sales reps are likely self-sufficient - after all, they’re able to manage close to 200 customers every week. Doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate your help, guidance, and leadership.
The 8am daily huddle, the monthly forecasting meeting, weekly 1-on-1s: these are all critical touchstones for you and your sales reps. Stellar sales cultures are forged in those moments of human connection. Everyone shows up.
Teams with strong cultures know how to celebrate every win, big or small. Sounds simple, but not everyone does it.
It’s easy to fall into only celebrating when a key account orders $10k+ of product, or $20k of slob stock finally gets shifted. The flip side is if it’s only wins of that caliber being celebrated, the team will start to think it’s only the massive, or even fluke-y wins that actually count. No.
Every time progress happens - that’s awesome. Particularly as the industry continues to move slowly thanks to supply chain disruptions, unpredictable distributors, and less demand from end consumers. Top sales cultures celebrate every win because each time positive progress is celebrated, it reinforces the action. And if you’ve ever heard of Jim Collins’ flywheel principle, you’ll know it’s small efforts which drive momentum. The best teams know this, so they celebrate every win, and strive to achieve more, no matter how small.
As a manager, you’re not always going to get the support needed to improve intangibles like sales culture.
The best way to find battle-tested ways to re-engineer your team’s culture? Network with other managers.
Get active on Linkedin, at trade shows, or even chat to other managers in different branches of your company and try asking:
The biggest trends we found among top cultures were a relentless focus on where the team is headed, purposeful communication, and the initiative to celebrate progress.
If you’re feeling like your team isn’t making the grade, you’ve got nothing to lose by having a good chat with other professionals and hearing what works for them. And if your sales culture hit every characteristic on the head, kudos to you, keep leading the charge!
After 6 years of selling and time at large US firms, Apprento co-founder Alex McNaughten noticed there were serious sales talent issues in NZ.
He saw 5 problems:
Alex joined Jonathan and Connie on December 8th to discuss his solution to these 5 issues.
In this summary blog, we’ll give a quick recap for Sales Hitch Episode 3: attract, develop & retain top sales talent. Check out the contents below to find what you need!
Find what you’re after:
Check the replay below to get the full story.
To find the right salespeople, organizations need extremely specific hiring processes. Here’s Alex’s approach to building a better process:
“If I’m a sales leader, I would ask myself: am I equipping my new hires for success?”
Components of a better onboarding process:
“Your number one role as a sales leader is to coach your team to improve, to bring their skill set up.”
3 things you can do right now to start developing your salespeople:
From here, you can get creative. Curate content for reps to take away, consume, and report back on at the month’s end. Do some research and seek out some books or podcasts the team could benefit from.
You’ve just got to start. I think like a lot of these things, um, but it always starts with a little bit of introspection that “hey, I'm probably not doing everything I could be right now.” Start there, and then.
What does it take to retain the fantastic people you’ve got? Pay your people properly and invest in their development.
“It's far cheaper to pay your reps properly for good performance, than to lose them, because the cost of losing a sales rep on average is about $95,000 USD. That's how much it costs you in terms of having to replace them and in terms of lost pipeline, lost revenue.”
Take care of your front line people and they’ll take care of you. Sales leaders, if you want to keep the sales team happy, the easiest way is by helping them earn money. As you begin to review budgets for the year, consider what you could be investing in your reps: the people who drive the revenue that creates the budget in the first place.
“When I was a rep, the leadersI loved were the ones who invested in me, gave me skills, so I could earn a fat commission check at the end of the month because they were teaching me stuff that would help me earn. Why would I leave?”
Apprento’s hiring and onboarding eBook: Download here
Todd Caponi (selling in tougher times and recessions): LinkedIn profile
Jason Bay (outbound selling + podcast): LinkedIn profile
Alex’s podcast: Rev Up Sales podcast
Check Alex out on LinkedIn and send him a message: linkedin.com/alexmcnaughten
Send Jonathan a message: jonathan.hubbard@numerik.ly
Looking to develop a better sales talent hiring process in 2023? Give yourself a head start when hiring your next salesperson this year with these 3 pieces of sales hiring advice.
Based on the advice shared by Alex McNaughten for Sales Hitch Ep 3: Attract, develop & retain top sales talent.
Why are you hiring a salesperson, and what do you exactly need them to do? And what kind of person do you need? Too many sales leaders overlook these simple questions when they start their hiring processes and go straight to interviews - with the wrong candidates. Filter out unsuitable candidates by painstakingly defining the job specs. Drill down into specific detail: the weekly and even daily tasks the salesperson will need to do. Ask yourself:
Review your hiring process, ensuring it’s been designed to filter out the wrong candidates. Great sales hiring processes contain 2 interviews, an exercise, and a reference check - it’s that simple. Depending on a role’s complexity, your hiring process may have up to 8 steps. However, provided you’ve got the basics, and every single candidate is run through the same procedure, you’ll be well set.
“As a rule of thumb, have a screening, an initial interview, a second interview with other members in the team, and then a role play presentation.” - Alex McNaughten, SH ep.3
Bring in assessment tools, scenarios, and measurements to help you make the final call. Everyday we use our opinions to make decisions, however, for sales hiring, the final choice is best made with quantitative evidence. Otherwise, you might be persuaded by the wrong candidate.
“If you don’t know what you're looking for, you can get sold.” - Alex McNaughten, SH ep.3
Take advantage of psychometrics or other assessment tools and scenarios to uncover a candidate’s process. What could a simple assessment scenario look like? Require each candidate to sell a product back to you. Hearing their pitch isn’t solely about seeing how good they are - it’s a great opportunity to objectively evaluate their process. Are they leading with features and pitch-slapping you? Or are they asking powerful questions?
When hiring a salesperson, keep things simple. Better hiring is about being specific about what you need, systematic in selecting the right person, and reviewing candidates objectively.
Found Alex’s advice useful? Then you might like to check out our full webinar collection containing sales expert advice on topics from sales KPIs to combatting sales disengagement. Click here to get their straight-forward advice.
The ability to connect your sales team, share wins and advice, and keep customer notes all within Numerik, was unveiled earlier this year with Posts. In the following days, we saw fantastic engagement and had new feature requests all over our inbox! And so, for Making Your Number 3, Jonathan, Connie, and Customer Success Manager Sam joined forces to showcase Posts 2.0: our biggest Posts upgrade to date. Additionally, Connie and Sam took time to share top-user advice for getting 100% from Posts, which included discussion on use rates, supporting the team, and bonus protips.
In this summary blog, we’ll recap Making Your Number 3, including; a look at where Posts started, Posts 2.0’s six new features, our top-user Posts advice, and a glimpse at upcoming future features.
Watch our replay below to hear Jonathan, Sam, and Connie share what’s included in Posts 2.0 and what our top-users recommend you do to get 100% from Posts.
“What they [Posts] set out to do was to make recording customer interactions very natural and easy to do.”
Recapping what sparked Posts version 1, Jonathan explained that the social media style feature grew from the need to give users a way to capture information in a quick and easy way.
“We noticed reps would quite happily post in a WhatsApp or Teams chat way more than they would put something into a CRM.”
With these principles in mind, we formally released Posts in May. We knew we’d hit something good, with positive feedback, high usage, and new suggestions coming in hot. Based on that user feedback, and seeing how Posts were being used in reality, it was inevitable that Posts would get upgrades; the feature quickly became a priority for our team.
Let’s get right into Posts 2.0- the upgrades, tweaks, and new additions:
Richer content gallery
Search in Posts
Get attention with mentions
Stats in Posts
Upgraded Task display
Customer quick search
Are you a sales rep or manager who currently uses Posts? Scroll down to read the top-user advice Sam and Connie shared, thanks to the contributions from sales managers Brett, Robbie, and Charlie.
At the sales rep level, Sam and our top-users recommended checking and adding Posts at least 5 times per day, if not upwards of 10 times per day.
“Some of the most successful sales reps we see use Posts the most, because they’re building a story around their customers the entire way.”
Whether you’re capturing videos, photos, audio, or just written notes/Opportunities/Tasks, you’re logging detail against the customer which Sam explains can be extremely helpful when you’re talking with a customer later on.
It’s recommended that reps make Posts before and after conversations with customers or whenever there’s a spare moment. If you’re sitting down for a coffee, it’s an ideal time to scroll through the feed.
From the sales manager perspective, at a minimum you should be checking Posts once per day to stay on track with reps as they add Posts during their day. For the middle ground, you could check twice daily, or at the maximum, use Posts as often as a rep or have Posts live 24/7!
“The more you know about your sales rep’s customers…that transparency can be incredibly important when you have a 1-on-1 because you can refer back to a Posts they made earlier in the week.”
For anyone in the team, remember Posts are a great tool for sharing and celebrating wins. Simply reacting to Posts or leaving creative comments can help create a positive environment within the sales team. If you’re having a tough month - knowing others care about what you’re doing and are celebrating your little victories can give great validation to what you’re doing.
Taking it to the next level, you can look at getting creative with your responses and comments. Personalized video, Sam explained, is a top way to communicate a response - “you can actually say ‘great job!’ especially if your team is out on the road, they might not get that face-to-face interaction.” Pictures or sales data from Numerik itself are great additional options, particularly if they show an opportunity. These creative responses are an engaging way to stimulate the senses, build a positive atmosphere quicker, and cultivate transparency between reps and their manager.
Whether you’re a rep, or a manager, it’s important you take time when creating a new Post. Visualize your Post as a presentation to the team: it’s important you explain your ideas clearly and convey the right message. Setting aside time to make that effort for the customer or in response to a coworker can go a long way!
As a manager, take time to check a rep’s Posts before weekly 1-on-1s to catch up on their activity. By filtering Posts by rep, you can note down interesting information worth bringing up in your meeting. “...this is what I recommend in all of the training sessions that I do: filter by the sales rep, pull up all the posts that they've made, and you can go one by one through the whole week or the whole month.”
For everyone in the sales team, remembering not to spam reactions, aka “like for the sake of liking” is something which shouldn’t be overlooked: be conscious of what you’re doing. Additionally, Sam recommended remembering to use tags on your Posts, and don’t just make notes: add in Tasks/Opportunities: “It’s a way more powerful tool than just note-taking. Tasks- these could be your to-do list, or a reminder each month to call a customer. If you know you’re going to get a sale at the month’s end, throw it in as an opportunity so you know what’s coming in your pipeline.”
Particularly for sales reps, don’t only save Posts to My Posts. Sharing your activity to Team Posts can inspire your coworkers and help them learn. Sharing a win and explaining how you won can help others upskill!
To close out the event, Jonathan and Connie previewed upcoming feature releases: Follow-ups on Posts, and Contacts. Read on to get more details, and details on two other upcoming feature releases.
Follow-ups on Posts
Contacts
Prioritize Posts
Quick Filters
If you’d like more from the Numerik team, feel free to get in touch with one of us!
For more detail on upcoming features, and securing a live demo, contact Jonathan here: jonathan.hubbard@numerik.ly
For product training sessions, email Sam: sam.eichhorn@numerik.ly
Or for product support, get in touch with the support team: support@numerik.ly.
Not a user, but interested to give Posts a go for yourself? Click here to get a 1-on-1 demo.
Finding time to review your reps’ sales performance, goals, or skill progression can be tricky with our busy workflows. Consequently, it's no wonder why annual sales performance reviews are so significant: these one-to-one sessions are the biggest opportunity to really connect with your people and influence future sales success. If you're feeling rusty going into sales performance reviews this year, don't stress! In this blog, we’re looking at 6 Dos and Don’ts when running sales performance reviews with your sales reps.
> What to Do when conducting sales performance reviews
> What to Avoid when conducting sales performance reviews
Make sure your review is authentic, clear, and detailed. It’s no use sugar coating weaknesses - be honest about where reps need to improve and give examples. While it’s tempting to give brief ratings, explaining the what/when/where behind a behavior can help reps identify what they need to change.
If a rep is clearly performing poorly, now is the best time to discover why! Identify a rep’s top sticking point and ask when they felt things started going wrong and how the issue arose. With the full picture, you’ll be able to make objectives to rectify the situation.
Don’t create a vague action plan that puts your review and rep self reviews to waste: influence sales success by making corrective action easy with SMART objectives. Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-bound objectives can help you create an action plan with the best chances for success while leaving no room for confusion.
Reps should have space to share their own thoughts first with a self review. Sales performance reviews should be two-way conversations. Make sure you listen to what your reps share and use the information to create SMART objectives.
To give a well informed review, you’ll need a good understanding of how your reps have been going: the good and bad. Each week leading up to the review, take note when reps win or have trouble. You can use these notes later to write comments.
Don’t focus hard on reviewing traits - these are personal aspects which are difficult to measure and change. If there’s a problem with a trait, it’s likely to have been caused by a problem related to behavior or results. Focus on review behaviors and results to understand how a rep has performed and what needs changing to increase performance.
When holding sales performance reviews for you team, use the time to get to know your people better. It’s a time to offer support, share knowledge, and help those who need it most. Let’s recap our 6 points:
Do:
Don’t:
Want more sales content? Check out our webinars here, and keep an eye out for our December event.
Win/loss analysis can be a great way to get sales performance feedback whether you’re a sales rep or manager. We know win/loss analysis can be alittle theoretical and a heavy process. No-one wants that, which is why we’ve created one method for conducting win/loss analysis. Scroll down to get the easiest way for sales reps to run win/loss analysis minus the hassle and hangups.
We’ll start by nailing down the right customers to interview for win/loss analysis. Then get specific: which deals should you get feedback on?
Next, let the customer know (before the sales cycle completes) that you’d like feedback. Regardless if the deal is won or lost, you’d like to hear what they think: is that okay with them?
Get the customer comfortable. It’s natural for them to be awkward when trying to give feedback on your performance to your face. Empathize with them and be honest:
“This is super valuable and interesting for me. Please don’t try to protect my feelings, I know it’s hard to give feedback, just give me as much as you’re comfortable with.”
Draw out more detail from the customer by asking specific questions. Take the two below for example:
During your chat, you can dig deeper by:
It’s likely most feedback given will be straightforward. If not, now’s the time to pull the underlying message from the points you’ve been given.
Next, create an action list with the feedback and order each point by priority/urgency. These’ll be your actionable takeaways you’ll use to refine your practice. Make sure you upload your action list into your sales tool for your own records.
End on a high! Once you’ve got your prioritized action list, reach out and thank your customer for helping you take another step on your journey towards a better sales practice.
Our win/loss method needn’t take sales reps more than 10 minutes. Plus it’s a simple way to find validation: to learn exactly how you’re making a difference, and how you can become even better! Remember:
1: Identify the right customer to ask and get their permission
2: Remove barriers to feedback
3: Use questions to draw out more feedback
4: Interpret feedback and build an action list
5: Follow-up with gratitude!
A sales culture is like a sales team’s personality; shaped by reps’ daily actions and attitudes. Changing something so intangible like sales culture may seem impossible, however, anything can be changed with direction and persistence. In this blog, we’ll look at what sales cultures actually are, and a great place to start making changes: how your team communicates remotely.
A sales culture is created by the attitudes, behaviors, and routines a sales team executes each day. As Mike Stokes puts it,
“...culture's always an interesting thing…I feel that you can, it's very hard to put your finger on it sometimes, but you can feel it when you walk into an office. Do people come up to you immediately and offer to help, is there laughter going on? Is there noise or is it the opposite?”
Since sales culture is intangible and can’t be measured, it’s easier to see it as a personality, and like any personality, it can have positive and negative traits.
Signs you’ve got a positive sales culture:
Negative sales culture signs:
If you can pin down negative traits in your team’s sales culture, the next step is to start changing behaviors. Attitudes are notoriously difficult to change: behaviors less so.
Reps aren’t engaged with their work? Sit down and have a stay interview.
Sales data isn’t being used properly? Show the team which figures they should be using to guide their actions and where to find them.
Reps aren’t communicating, wins aren’t being shared, and feedback not being given? Use technology to your advantage and start building habits.
When you’ve got reps out on the road, you won't have much facetime with them during the week. Use that time to improve how the team communicates remotely. To make those changes, you’ll need to know which behaviors to expect when a team is communicating well, and have a sales-specific comms tool set up to facilitate that behavior.
Behaviors associated with sales teams who communicate well remotely:
Examples:
Using a sales-specific comms tool:
While Slack, Teams, and WhatsApp are great comms tools in their own right, they all share a drawback - they aren’t sales specific. Using a sales performance app, users can access sales data insights and communicate with their team in one place: giving reps and managers a space to interact without stepping away from the data.
However, you can’t start improving remote communication behavior unless you’re using your new sales-specific comms tool properly.
Tips for using a sales-specific comms tool effectively:
Cultivating a good sales culture is about changing your sales team’s behavior one step at a time. By starting small and adjusting how the team communicates remotely, you’ll be able to build the processes needed to make larger behavior changes in future.
Want to learn more about a sales-specific comms tool which can reshape the way your sales team engages with their work? Click here to check out our Posts 2.0 liveshow and hear from top Numerik users on how Posts can be used to boost morale in a sales team.
Ah yes, modern communication tools - what sales rep doesn’t use them? From the monolithic Zoom to the rival Teams and the long-forgotten Skype, they’re the ‘best’ way to collaborate in our current times. Well, not quite! Although online meetings are becoming status quo, they’ll never top the rich experience of a face to face interaction. And so, in this blog, we’ll be looking at 9 face to face tips to help your sales team brush up on the most effective way to sell and build customer relationships: the face-to-face sales meeting.
Contents:
> Tips to prepare for a face to face meeting
> Tips for reps during their face to face sales meeting
Face to face sales meeting success lies far more in preparation than we’d like to believe. Once meeting intentions have been decided and confirmed by the customer, reps can start gathering materials needed to guide the conversation. These could be anything from samples, demo material, catalogs, or customer success stories: whatever’s needed to bring the discussion to life.
Ensuring reps refresh their knowledge on where a customer is at before a face to face meeting is an obvious must-do. Provided the rep has a easy-access customer notes record to rely on, they can go through and recap a customer’s goals, any items needed for followup, or past purchase activity. Plus, putting in effort to remember small yet significant details can help reps build stronger customer relationships: it shows the customer their sales rep cares!
Encourage reps to consider the customer perspective before face to face sales meetings. It’s tempting for a rep to focus on what they can get from an interaction, but having empathy towards a customer’s needs and situation could reveal hidden sales opportunities. E.g. if a building supplies customer has just signed their biggest contract yet, what stress might be on their mind? What could the rep do or provide to ease those stresses?
Being a consultant is about having a customer-centric mindset: listen to the customer, pull out their pain points, and make recommendations to reduce those pain points. Consultant sellers hold deep curiosity for what’s happening in a customer’s day-to-day, using the details drawn from listening to make recommendations based on their knowledge and authority position. E.g. a retail customer is feeling extremely nervous going into the holiday season: what are they most/least concerned about? What recommendations could be made based on the customer’s answer?
There’s no use reps bringing trunkloads of the latest products to a face to face meeting if they aren’t relevant to a customer’s pain points. Any products a rep brings to a meeting should support the consultant approach, helping to reinforce, if needed, any recommendations made.
The best sales reps are small talk masters who can fire up positive conversations with even the most tight-lipped customers. However, while group chats are wonderful for building strong customer relationships, they don’t exactly get the job done. Make sure reps remember to keep it concise when they’re meeting their customers: customers have their own jobs to do!
After a successful face to face sales meeting, reps can easily forget key points or small yet significant details. When a rep gets back in their car, memory charged and ready to go, encourage them to take a moment to mind dump key tasks, opportunities, and notes down into their preferred tool. With new notes captured and on record, reps will be well prepared for the next customer interaction.
Within their customer notes reps should ensure they’ve recorded any promises made which they need to follow through on. Think promises like: “I’ll do you a 15% discount,” or “I’ll send through samples next Monday.” For great sales reps, their word is their bond: something highly valuable if for increasing likelihood of a successful referral. Do your sales reps keep their word?
Once the meeting is over and notes have been taken, the communication doesn’t stop: send updates! Make sure reps are keeping the customer updated on the action as it unfolds: as products are ordered and shipped, when invoices will come through, a time to meet again, or even ideas for solving other pain points.
Whether you’ve got rookie reps or just starting to get back into face to face interaction, this simple list can act as a starting point for refreshing reps on F2F meeting flow. Here’s the full 9 point list:
1: Gather the goods (material for the meeting.)
2: Refresh customer knowledge (don’t go in without knowing the customer’s situation.)
3: Step into the customer’s shoes (empathy.)
4: Be a consultant, nott a seller (be a customer-centric problem solver.)
5: Bring relevant demo products (products which relate to the customer’s situation.)
6: Be personable yet efficient (keep it fun but concise.)
7: Update customer notes (capture key details while they’re fresh.)
8: Always follow through on promises (word is your bond.)
9: Keep in contact (keep the customer involved and updated.)
Keen to get more sales advice and a look at how Numerik can help you finetune your sales team’s performance? Click here to visit our webinars!
