Category: Commentary

And that’s a wrap! We had a blast participating in SalesHacker’s 2018 Revenue Summit on March 1. It was Automation Hero’s first conference as a company and we were a proud Platinum sponsor. We’re thrilled that we had the chance to elevate and educate sales organizations about sales AI. We couldn’t have asked for a better way to introduce our sales AI platform into the industry!

We’d like to give a huge shout out to those that stopped by our Automation Hero booth. Those who chatted with us and got a demo of our sales AI assistant, Robin, we’re excited about its potential within their sales teams.

Sales leaders across the industry hosted various sessions at the conference, each were extremely insightful and offered new perspectives on sales processes. Here’s a few sessions that we thought rocked and some of their key takeaways:

How To Prospect Using The Basics

This motivational session was hosted by Ralph Barsi, the senior director of global sales development at ServiceNow. Barsi shared that even with all the new technology available, many salespeople are still struggling with prospecting and qualifying.

In order to win at prospecting, Barsi says there are three “basic” areas sales reps need to focus on:

1. Adjust your attitude:

How? Start with a winning mindset. Make clear mental goals and write them down.

2. Get known for adding value:

How? Build a brand and leverage the power of your networks. Personalize your customer’s experience.

3. Do the work:

How? Focus on priorities, projects, and people by thinking of the impact instead of productivity. Reps need to get specific about the prospects they go after. And the big one: don’t just think about it, take action.

Helpful tip: Pin the logos you want to go after to your bathroom mirror so those companies are on your mind at the beginning and end of each day.

9 Elements Of Highly Effective Sales Conversations

This Revenue Summit session was hosted by CEO and co-founder of Gong.io, Amit Bendov. His sales AI company looked at the call data of star sales reps and pulled out conversation insights that correlated with their success. Bendov shares the insights on what makes a highly effective conversation that leads to conversions.

1. Controlling the agenda

How? Have an agenda at the start of the call, agree upon it with your customer, follow it and watch the time. Star reps discussed the “end goal” as they set the agenda.

2. Control the rhythm

How? Star reps talk at a slightly faster pace and pull prospects into their sentiment.

3. Talk business

How? Star reps talk more about business topics (Ex: ROI, pain points, agenda, timelines, decision-making ecosystem, etc.)

4. Coffee shop conversations

How? Make the conversation a dialogue, not a monologue. Make more switches and speak in shorter sentences. Ask questions evenly throughout a call (not all at the beginning).

5. Hollywood style demos

How? Star reps provoke buyers to ask questions by only giving them a short teaser as a demo. Think of demos like a movie trailer — show a little so they want more.

6. Risk-reversal language

How? Star reps reduce the possible risks that a prospect may be facing when deciding on their product by using language that reverses those risks. Some examples include “free trial” or “cancel anytime.”

7. Therapist-grade listening skills

How? Allow customers to talk uninterrupted as much as possible. Silence will help encourage them to continue talking.

8. Differentiate early

How? Separate your product from the competition early on, rather than later in the sales process.

9. Sell in team

How? Involve other members of your team or organization in the call. The close rate of deals skyrockets when multiple people from within are on the call.

The 2020 Sales Leader

This was an energy-filled Rev Summit session hosted by Jacco VanderKooij, the founder of Winning By Design, and Rob Jeppsen, the CEO & founder of Xvoyant. They shared five key takeaways on what it takes to be a sales leader of the future by changing productivity standards and processes.

1. Know the new math

• Know that 7 > 10 (meaning that high-quality leads are better than more leads.)
• Know that 4 + 1 > 5 (4 days of work and 1 day of training is better than 5 days of work.)

2. Chase the 80/80 rule

Break the cycle of 20 percent of reps making 80 percent of deals. Chase the 80 percent making 80 percent.

3. Know the numbers, have a process

• To break the cycle mentioned above, sales leaders need to build a killer process.
• Know the goal and make a foolproof plan for reps to get to that goal.
• Use sales AI in those processes to help your team work smarter

4. Use data the right way

Look at productivity data rather than volume data.

5. Continuing education within your organization

The biggest motivator for sales reps is still money, but education also drives them and encourages them to grow.

LinkedIn Photo Booth:

We also sponsored the LinkedIn photo booth. If you had your pictures taken during the Rev Summit, you should have received an email from Orange Photography (make sure to check your spam or promotional folders). You all looked great and we can’t wait to see those headshots on your profile pages!

If you didn’t get the chance to stop by our booth but would like to see a demo of our sales AI automation platform click the button below.

By Jessica Munday

Poor sales productivity and performance were the biggest challenge business leaders faced in 2018. The Bridge Group reported that 41 percent of companies said this was either their first or second largest business problem.

This year, the Bridge Group also found that the top-fifth of performing sales reps more than double the production output of the bottom fifth. This means that the all-star sales reps are carrying the entire organization on their back. Another study found that 67% of sales reps miss their annual quota.

What’s hindering these sales reps from performing? Their work processes prevent them from getting their selling duties done.

Reviewing the sales productivity problem

Sales reps spend most of their time on non-selling tasks, 64 percent to be exact, according to Salesforce. In fact, administrative tasks took up the biggest portion of their week at 25 percent, while connecting with their clients in person took up only 24 percent.

On average these sales reps are performing 94.4 tasks each day, which prevent them from connecting with their customers and from acquiring new ones.

Other research by Hubspot broke down these tasks and estimated the percent of a sales rep’s day these activities took up:

• 21% is spent writing emails
• 17% entering data
• 17% prospecting and researching leads
• 12% going to internal meetings
• 12% scheduling calls

While the sales team’s purpose is to sell, each rep spends the equivalent of at least 50 full days away from core selling activities each year, which make these repetitive, administrative tasks directly interfere with a company’s revenue goals and sales productivity.

CRM tasks serve as an example of what can cost a company thousands of dollars. CRM users spend 5.5 hours each week on activities and contacts that cost companies $13,200 every year per user. Processes like these that are repetitive and inefficient (what’s called “organizational drag” in the academic world) cost the U.S. economy $3 trillion each year.

What we’ve learned

Companies became aware that this is a major business problem, and many are working on or already have implemented artificial intelligence (AI) as a solution.

Over the course of this year, we saw businesses learn about AI’s potential and thus, interest in implementing this technology grew. One survey done at the beginning of the year showed that 88 percent of companies have plans to implement AI. And Forrester reported that 46 percent of companies were first looking at marketing and sales when it comes to adopting AI systems.

In 2018, we saw much more education around AI and its potential for the workforce. Business leaders had a better understanding of their business efficiency problems and are now seeing AI as a solution.

But while excitement is building around AI, only about 20 percent of businesses have incorporated it in some way. Those eager companies that hit the pavement and implemented AI right away ran into some roadblocks.

The downside was that more than half of these early digital transformation efforts were stalled. Forrester attributes much of this to a lack of organizational readiness. Lots of the issues these early adopters faced were challenges like technical debt, data governance and fears that new technology would interrupt quarterly sales performance.

Now companies have a better understanding of both AI and the challenges they must overcome to implement it successfully. Because of this, Forrester predicts that companies will be much more pragmatic in addressing these barriers and sales efficiency problems within their organization.

Setting the stage for 2019

One of the biggest problems artificial intelligence faces is skepticism, in many forms. Some business leaders said that AI would be the end of the sales rep, fearing that it would wipe out the human salesforce altogether. Others were skeptical about its capabilities, saying that there was no way a machine can accomplish the same tasks that human workers can do.

With more education over the course of 2018, both about sales inefficiency and the potential for AI in the sales process, skepticism has waned. Businesses now have a better idea of what AI is and just how powerful it can be to increase sales productivity and efficiency.

More and more practical use cases for sales AI have made their way into media headlines and early adopters are paving the way for others to follow, showing that this technology will bring high ROI and revenue.

As skepticism disappears and businesses focus on pragmatic approaches to implementing AI, we will see more sales AI success stories coming out in 2019. The results for those who jump aboard the AI train will see increases to sales team productivity, boosts in revenue, cleaner sales data and happier customers.

There is one downside to the sales AI success that’s expected in 2019. It will be the year that sets the market standard for years to come. Those who implement AI now are going to be ahead of the innovative curve and therefore outcompete in their market.

Those who lack the resources, education and organizational readiness to implement AI in 2019 will struggle to catch up down the road or become obsolete altogether.

By Jessica Munday

This post originally appeared on LinkedIn by modern sales rep, Brandon Baisch, Customer Success Account Manager at Gradle, who’s been using Automation Hero’s sales AI assistant to perform data entry tasks.

I hate updating Salesforce. It’s not just Salesforce – pick your favorite CRM system. Every time I have to update Salesforce I’m pretty sure another fairy just lost their wings. I know that I’m preaching to the choir but CRM data entry is by far the biggest time suck of my day. I should be focusing on what I’m good at – pursuing high-quality opportunities, closing deals and making my current customers happy. Instead, I’ve become a highly-paid data entry clerk.

Modern sales reps need to be data-driven

But here’s the rub. As a salesperson, I really need information to be centralized and housed in a CRM system. Not just for my manager’s sake, but for my own. Data is becoming the cornerstone of how we become better at sales. The more information we have, the more accurately we can determine who the right prospects are and the right methodology to convert them into paying customers.

The net-net is that data is crucial to our jobs and instead of complaining about it, it’s about time we take ownership of it. We are entering a new era in which we should be gathering and leveraging every last piece of information that can help us close a deal. As Bob Dylan said, “These times they are a-changin’.”

AI is now for sales reps too

So we don’t want to deal with CRM data entry but we want the benefits of the data. Such a conundrum. It’s time that salespeople step into the twenty-first century and take a look around at all of the options available to streamline the sales process – on their own terms. In particular, artificial intelligence (AI).

For example, I use Robin, an artificial intelligence assistant developed by Automation Hero, that sends me a daily email with all of the Salesforce tasks it can complete for me. With one click, Robin just logged emails and calendar events to their respective Salesforce accounts, created new contacts for existing accounts, and updated contact information. And, because we use account-based marketing, what’s incredibly helpful is that Robin offers up missing account information like the number of employees a company has, the company description, the annual revenue, and other useful tidbits. This would have taken me at least an hour each day to source myself. Now it’s delivered right to my inbox for my approval and then synced to Salesforce every day. One hour condensed into one minute!

Sales AI lets salespeople take control of their data without putting in the grunt work. It’s no longer just for sales ops, sales managers, C-level executives, or marketing. And it doesn’t have to be unapproachable with the words “deep learning” and “algorithms” floating menacingly nearby. I’m sure there’s a lot going on behind Robin’s curtains but all I have to deal with is a friendly sales AI assistant that offers to do my boring data entry tasks for me.

Because I’m getting my data entry in with sales AI, sales ops isn’t trying to convince me to use one of their bloated tools that just adds to my tech stack; I don’t need manager buy-in because it’s not expensive, and there’s no download for IT to be suspicious of. It’s a tool for the sales rep – for me.

Welcome to the modern-day sales rep – one who embraces data (though not necessarily data entry).

Plus, I don’t have to hide anymore from my manager about Salesforce updates.

If you enjoyed the post, please click the thumbs up icon and let me know!

By Guest Author