How Sales Enablement Can Improve Virtual Selling

 

How Sales Enablement Can Improve Virtual Selling

Mark Magnacca

August 29, 2022

Virtual selling was once the response to a socially distanced world, but now it has transformed how B2B sellers will connect with customers moving forward. According to a Bain & Company survey, 92% of B2B buyers prefer virtual sales interactions, with 79% of sellers also realizing its effectiveness. These stats make it clear that virtual selling is here to stay.

Although the world is gradually opening up to pre-pandemic levels, virtual selling will continue to play a pivotal role in sales organizations, whether they have fully remote, in-person or hybrid work environments. But with its wide adoption comes a new skill set to learn.

The Challenges of Virtual Selling

There’s a misconception that virtual selling consists of taking what worked for in-person buyer interactions and applying it to digital spaces. That can be easier said than done. In a study conducted by RAIN Group, sellers revealed just how challenging virtual selling can be. Among the top challenges were gaining and keeping buyers’ attention virtually (91%) and developing virtual relationships with buyers (88%).

The truth is that virtual sales and the components that come with it, such as meetings, demos, launching new products, sharing content and onboarding and training sales reps, require an entirely new skill set. Sales teams must be equipped with tools to successfully close deals regardless of location. That’s where sales enablement comes in.

The Role Sales Enablement Plays in Virtual Selling

Sales enablement ensures sales teams have the skills, knowledge and content they need to win new customers, especially as they navigate the digital buyer experience. The capabilities of sales enablement platforms—sales training, product launches, messaging, digital sales rooms, virtual coaching, content creation and sharing, and collaboration—empower sales reps to take on buyer interactions in the virtual age.

Here are a few ways sales enablement can help equip sales teams for virtual selling success:

Encourage Self-Guided Onboarding and Training

As more companies embrace hybrid work environments, the way new hires onboard and train on virtual selling tactics must be reimagined. Onboarding and training now have to accommodate sellers and buyers that operate on different schedules and in various locations. Introducing self-guided onboarding and training allows dispersed reps to learn how to engage hybrid buyers at their own pace when it’s most convenient.

Implement a Learning Library for Knowledge Reinforcement

Dispersed teams should be able to easily find high-quality assets aligned to their needs, making a central repository to store all the sales content essential in the era of virtual selling.

A learning library that aligns with the sales process allows reps to find the right collateral at their moment of need. When reps realize how easy it is to find and share relevant content, they’ll be motivated to use the library.

For instance, reps will want guidance on overcoming roadblocks, such as a particularly challenging objection they didn’t know how to handle, during the sales cycle. Have top-performing reps record a video explaining problems they’ve encountered during the sales cycle and how they overcame them. You can preserve their knowledge in the learning library for peers to learn from.

Incorporating Asynchronous Video into Coaching

Because virtual selling allows sales reps to work independently, ensuring distributed teams stay connected becomes imperative, especially regarding coaching matters. Asynchronous video — videos that can be viewed when convenient instead of on a schedule—helps sales coaches by letting reps record pitches and send them to managers for review. Managers can then review the pitch and provide feedback in the form of their own video.

Sales managers can also record videos demonstrating effective sales conversations, handling objections and rapport-building techniques to show their teams “what good looks like.” This helps ensure sales teams stay on the same page and receive the same coaching regardless of location.

Strengthening Buyer Engagement

The move to virtual selling doesn’t just impact sellers but buyers too. Sellers are now tasked with finding new ways to build engagement with buyers so that they can still close deals regardless of location. Before a virtual sales call with a buyer, sales reps can use digital sales rooms to share content that will be covered during the meeting. Reps can send a personalized video explaining the sales content they’re sharing, giving buyers more context to what they’re receiving and adding a human element that familiarizes them with the sales team before the call.

Another way to strengthen buyer engagement is to make virtual meetings collaborative. Virtual selling allows reps to leverage different forms of multimedia to make the meeting interactive and engaging. To make the meeting relevant to buyers and add more value, incorporate multimedia like pre-recorded video based on the stage buyers are in.

Virtual selling has called on sales organizations to change their approach and adapt to digital sales interactions. Sales enablement can help organizations take on virtual selling by equipping teams with the tools for self-guided onboarding and training, creating a learning library, incorporating asynchronous video for coaching and improving buyer engagement. With sales enablement, sales teams can quickly build the skills they need to successfully close deals no matter where they are.

 

In my many years of seeing most all the different variations of local businesses who cut their media marketing investment in recessionary environments, those who keep prodding along mostly capture share from local competition who sit it out and do nothing .... other than watch their share decline to catastrophic levels. Trying to win back lost customers or clients is often a lost cause. Sam Walton had it right, " Funny thing happens when you stop inviting customers to come to your store, they stop coming.!" Philip Jay LeNoble, Ph.D.

In Recession, 'Invest or Cut Marketing Spend?' Is The Wrong Question

• by Jason Chebib , 2 hours ago

When COVID lockdowns loomed in 2020, there was much discussion about whether brand owners should continue to spend on marketing. The alternatives included trimming or pausing budgets – in reality, often dropping them to the bottom line. Views were often informed by learnings derived from the last global recession in 2008-9. To spend, or not to spend, was the question.

It could be argued this wasn’t the best question. Or at least that, by the time it was asked, it was moot.

On the one hand, if your business has reached the point where you’re seriously considering cutting your marketing budget, it’s probably already too late to make a real difference. Poised to cut, the business is likely decelerating and probably declining.

Exhorting the business not to cut that budget is too little, too late.

On the other hand, if you’re winning, the situation is already working for you. If your business is thriving during changing times, then it’s likely to be business as usual for marketing. These dynamics can be that much more visible in a recessionary context.

Realistically, most businesses aren’t operating in that kind of clarity. Most don’t find themselves at either extreme, but rather face category-wide uncertainty and an unclear competitive outlook. Neither a decision to disinvest, nor one to invest ahead, comes with much surety.

We all know brands with no budget can’t accelerate growth. In the face of any meaningful competition, without budget, a growing brand will slow -- and a declining one will slide faster.

But we are also naturally tempted by the prospect of turning a downturn to our advantage. There are losers and winners in every recession. How can you emerge a winner?

First, ask a better question. Namely: if we’re going to make a calculated investment, how do we make the smartest investment possible? That’s a question that’s much more relevant in the unpredictable real world, when “invest or cut?” no longer is.

A recession isn’t just an opportunity to invest. It’s an opportunity to invest smarter.

By foreshortening timescales and increasing pressure, recessionary conditions focus business minds on what a brand really needs -- short term and long term -- from its marketing, communications, innovation and portfolio management. Pricing, promotions, delivery mechanisms and channels are thrown into starker relief. If not now, when?

For most brands, tough times should rarely mean a choice between shutting off the faucet completely or opening it full flow. They should mean a couple half turns each quarter, justifying a little more expenditure based on a complex, changing set of market and competitive conditions.

 

COMMENTARY

The State Of Senior Spending Power

• by Corinne Casagrande , August, 2022

The following was previously published in an earlier edition of Marketing Insider.

Facing a bear market alongside rising inflation is enough to make any consumer skittish. But for one in every seven Americans, or seniors 65+ in the U.S., it can be downright scary.  Seeing their account statements drop is a stark reminder for seniors of reduced cash flow from interest and investments.

Many retirees with the highest discretionary spending follow the 4% rule, or the idea that a retiree can safely spend 4% of their retirement nest egg annually. Nest egg reductions translate to monthly budget reductions.

Nowadays, even the expected monthly income of retired seniors from Social Security distributions to the 68% of retired seniors who have a pension, is cause for concern. With a fixed cash distribution each month, it is painfully apparent to seniors that they are spending more and getting less for it due to inflationary effects.  The effects of inflation are most visible in the grocery aisle. Even though seniors spend less on gas than other cohorts, they spend more on food at home.

What is the only aspect of their household economy that seniors truly can control? Their spending.

Marketers in all sectors understand that seniors have spending power. And it’s not all health and personal care spending: 27% of seniors have been active recently with luxury retail, specialty sporting goods, upscale travel or entertainment services, per Acxiom retail activity data.  Seniors are also shopping online now more than ever, with 79% making a purchase on Amazon in the last 3 months (per Resonate).

Which marketers are most affected by a senior consumer pullback?

Nonprofit marketers know how important the senior cohort is to recurring donations, as contributions generally escalate with age. Seniors spend about 62% more than the 35– to 44-year-old age cohort on gifts and charity. Seniors shop early and often for friends and family, so senior spending shows up in holidays and Q4 promotions for retail products.

Seniors are also ready to start traveling this year, with the majority of trips involving traveling with or to family (per Mintel).  Senior discounts and savings for consumers willing to sacrifice a bit of time for money may help manage yield during off-peak times.

Marketers with big footprints in senior-heavy states like Maine, Florida, West Virginia and Vermont should also look to understand how confident their consumers are about their household economies.  Emphasis on features, benefits and rational purchase drivers may resonate now more than ever.

For seniors and retired consumers, so much of the current economic state is out of their control. It may seem there is only one way to react -- with discipline. For seniors, this means pulling back on spending to maintain the annual budget they’ve set for themselves despite getting less for their budget. For marketers, this means giving seniors more of a feeling of control over their financial health.

 

Gen Z To Marketers: Ditch the Persona

• by Ben Kunz , 3 hours ago

Marketers loves to create personas -- those data bios and photos that personify target consumers as if they were political candidates. We think personas humanize our research, pinpoint the bull’s-eye for media, and demonstrate we understand our consumers.

Yet Gen Z, the 68 million 10- to 24-year-olds who comprise every marketer’s dreamscape for lifetime customers, defy our characterizations.

Gen Z-ers influences $150 billion/year, roughly one-fifth of all consumer spending. They set cultural trends in fashion, music, entertainment, and technology. They are the vanguard of popular commerce.

Nearly half of Gen Z-ers are non-Caucasian; one in four is Hispanic, one in six is Black, and one in five has an immigrant parent. A recent Gallup survey found that 21% of Gen Z-ers identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender -- nearly four times the rate of older U.S. adults. As the first generation to grow up with the Internet, they have incredibly diverse habits in technology, social platforms, and media usage.

Try to capture such diversity in a few personas at your peril. 

This points to the broader challenge of any marketing persona that may misrepresent an audience.

Here’s a quiz: How you would illustrate the “persona” for football fans, dish soap buyers, or stock investors? Did you conceive Middle Class Charlie, Busy Mom Mary, and White-Collar Weston? Well, women now account for 46% of Super Bowl viewers; 45% of grocery store trips are made by men; and women and minorities now account for one in three high-net-worth investors. Those silly personas were off by a demographic mile.

It’s time to toss personas and instead design campaigns with matrices of demographics and corresponding modalities.

Plot the 25 or so major types of your future customers on a grid that defines the modes in which they enter heightened interest for your product. Then match each mode with data signals that can be picked up from search, mobile apps, travel patterns or contextual alignment. Plan media for these touchpoints, and you can match communications to the ways real people engage with your brand.

It’s fun to pack marketing plans with photos of consumer personas, but we end up selling fictions to ourselves. Gen Z is showing us we need to systematically recognize and satisfy the behavioral diversity of all our present and future consumers.

 

Good reason for local affiliates to capitalize on ad reduction on Amazon and swing to local-direct. Philip Jay LeNoble, PhD 

COMMENTARY

Brands Selling on Amazon May Reduce Ad Spend Based on Added Fees

• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, Yesterday

Brands and companies selling goods on Amazon this holiday season may need to cut back on advertising buys to cover other costs the marketplace is passing on during the holiday season.

Ama­zon told third-party sell­ers us­ing its ship­ping ser­vices it would in­tro­duce a “hol­i­day peak ful­fill­ment fee” from October 15 to January 14.

The fee is ex­pected to in­crease costs for sell­ers in the U.S. and Canada by an av­er­age of 35 cents per item sold, ac­cord­ing to several media outlets.

The fees are in response to rising op­er­at­ing costs dur­ing the hol­i­day season. Reports suggest Amazon had pre­vi­ously ab­sorbed the costs, but sea­sonal ex­penses are reach­ing new heights.

The fee increase is the second this year. The company added a “fuel and inflation surcharge” to seller fees in April that averaged 5% of fulfillment costs at the time.

Ecommerce in the United States grew 7.3% in Q2 and 9%, according to Baird Equity Research, citing data from the Department of Commerce. This compares to Baird's Q2 ecommerce forecast of more than 6% year over year and more than 7.6% quarter-over-quarter.

Local ad spend on Amazon remains small, compared with Google and Facebook. Last week, Borrell Associates released data showing the percentage of local businesses that buy ads on Amazon is a mere 3%, compared with Google at 36%, and Facebook at 58%.

The average annual ad spend on Amazon is $9.6 billion, compared with Facebook at $13.3 billion and Google at $38.7 billion, according to Borrell.

Higher costs are likely the reason Amazon continues to add fees and diversify revenue streams.

On Sunday, reports surfaced that Amazon is among the bidders for the healthcare company Signify Health, a home-health-services provider.

 

Crossing The TV 'Rubicon': Cable TV July Viewing Sinks 19% -- Down 32% Over 2 Years

• by Wayne Friedman , 6 hours ago

While streaming and cord-cutting continue to sink all legacy TV, cable TV networks in particular have been taking the brunt of that activity -- down 19% in total day 18-49 July viewership versus a year ago, according to media research company MoffettNathanson Research.

Over a two-year period, the picture is worse. MoffettNathanson, analyzing Nielsen results, says cable TV networks have declined 32%.

Broadcast has not been spared either -- it was down 39% this past July, due to comparisons to July 2021, which included one week of the Tokyo Summer Olympics and late post-season NBA and NHL games.

Looking over a two-year period, broadcast is down 18% in July.

“More troubling to us is the fact that broadcast's loss of key events wasn't cable network’s gain, as viewers did not return to cable,” writes Michael Nathanson, senior research analyst of MoffettNathanson Research.

All this points to continued trouble for big cable TV network groups -- such as NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery, down 29% and 24% respectively for the month. This followed similar declines in June of this year -- a 29% sinking for NBCU, and 32% for Warner Bros. Discovery.

This follows the recent news from Nielsen's The Gauge report for July -- which shows streaming platforms now leading for the first time -- cable TV in terms of share of total day persons two plus viewing with a 34.8% share to cable’s 34.4%. Broadcast was at 21.6%.

Looking at this dramatic result, Nathanson notes: “The Rubicon has been crossed.”

He adds: “These significant linear cable network ratings challenges should put further pressure on the ad dollars each media company relies on. Add in a potentially deteriorating macro environment and it becomes hard to find cause for optimism for many legacy cable network owners.”

Sales Outcomes and Product Marketing Are Interconnected

Why the success of sales relies on a return to core product marketing practices

Sridhar Ramanathan

August 22, 2022

In a rapidly changing business and economic environment, companies face even more urgent pressure to boost sales, strengthen customer engagement, and diversify opportunities. This “all-hands-on-deck” moment requires close collaboration between sales and marketing teams to ensure that limited resources are leveraged properly to drive sales outcomes.

Simply put, without alignment between sales and marketing, businesses cannot be successful as priority misalignment, poor lead quality, and infighting reduce organizational effectiveness.

Economic Downturns Exacerbate Inefficiencies and Misalignments

Economic disruption exposes inefficiencies and missed opportunities. As the sardonic expression goes, “when the tide goes down, you find out who is swimming without clothes on.”

In other words, inefficiencies and misalignments that were covered when business was booming are exposed when things slow down. This includes:

Misalignment between marketing goals and sales realities. There must be parity between the solution and vision being marketed by the marketing team and the ones that sales feels they can realistically sell. This requires effective communication and agreement between the executive team and the product, marketing, and sales teams to ensure the business is successful.

Misalignment between messaging and target audience. Product marketing teams must collaborate with the sales team and even customers to get feedback to ensure they are crafting the best possible message. For instance, if marketing messaging targets company CEOs but the sales team is most successful selling to mid-level decision-makers, the organization will have difficulties driving new business. Companies need to clarify their market segment and target audience so marketing and sales teams can work together to support critical outcomes.

Misalignment between lead generation and sales initiatives. Poor lead quality can negatively impact pipeline and revenue potential. If marketing and sales are not aligned, marketing leaders are more likely to miss the mark in securing the right leads, ultimately diminishing sales potential.

As businesses grapple with shifting operational realities, it’s especially important to align marketing and sales initiatives, proliferating growth through unified investment and resource deployment.

Product Marketing Drives Sales Results

​​Product marketing is essential to the success of a business. Unfortunately, product marketing teams are chronically understaffed, something that is even more apparent as companies contend with persistent hiring challenges in a tight labor market.

According to a recent survey of senior decision-makers, 67 percent of product marketing teams say they need to add personnel or reduce projects to sufficiently support sales enablement goals.

Most importantly, this reduces their capacity to develop a solid Go-to-Market (GTM) plan, which should include:

• Determining market segments
• Crafting an ideal customer profile (ICP)
• Identifying buyer personas and pain points
• Assessing value propositions and messaging
• Analyzing competitive differentiation
• Producing a marketing execution plan

If product marketing isn’t fully staffed, an organization will find it immensely or even prohibitively difficult to achieve its business objectives.

In response, nearly 90% of surveyed product marketing leaders say they plan to leverage external expertise and strategic partnerships to support product marketing initiatives. This is especially important when companies have a fast-approaching product launch or campaign, requiring sales teams and channel partners to be fully trained and ready to drive sales.

Launching a new product to the market has critical components, including a product launch plan and strategy to ensure its overall success. These efforts produce messaging/positioning for the product, understanding of the target buyers, SWOT analysis, competitive intelligence, and program management of the launch. Without product marketing, it will be difficult to have an effective product launch. It is a similar issue with campaigns, where product marketing helps the marketing team target the right buyers with relevant messaging and content which help generate quality leads.

Ultimately, when product marketing teams have the right personnel and financial resources, they are best positioned to support sales enablement and content marketing. Sales enablement ensures that sales teams understand the product, target audience, personas, value proposition, objection handling, competitors, and more.

With a looming economic downturn, it’s even more important than ever to have sales and marketing in sync for optimal outcomes.

Working Together to Promote Sustainability

Product marketing is one of the main functions within marketing that helps salespeople succeed. As companies battle shifting economic realities and novel operational challenges, aligning sales and marketing teams can be a competitive differentiator, separating agile companies ready to meet the moment from those left vulnerable by misalignment and poor prioritization.

Simply put, sales and marketing are two sides of the same coin. Discerning leaders will ensure that both are well-resourced and closely connected to help their business thrive in any environment.