B2B STRATEGY

A Mayank Gupta Presentation

WELCOME TO SALESFORESIGHT

“Sales-n-LeadsForesight” is Your North Star for B2B Solution Selling! SalesForesight inspires salespeople, builds confidence and makes B2B solution selling beautifully simple even for the most complex B2B solution deals.

SALESFORESIGHT B2B SALES STRATEGY WIDGET – Content The Sales Strategy Widget 0. Introduction To Strategy Widget 0.0 to 0.15 1. B2B Sales Strategies to Higher Win Rate 1.0 to 1.6 2. The Sales Enablement Strategies 2.0 to 2.12 3. The Sales Team Strategy 3.0 to 3.8 4. The Lead Management Strategy 4.0 to 4.6 5. The Client Engagement Strategy 5.0 to 5.11 6. Sales Meeting Strategy for Qualifying The Offering 6.0 to 6.9 7. Power Messaging Using Buyer Personas 7.0 to 7.5 8. Sales Rep’s Own Sales Strategy 8.0 to 8.5 9. Sales Rep’s Own Brand Strategy 9.0 to 9.6 10. Differentiation Strategy in B2B Solution Selling 10.0 to 10.5 A 11. B2B Sales & Sales Process Metrics Areas 11.0 to 11.4 CHAPTERS (Colour Coded) PAGES 5

SALESFORESIGHT CHAPTER – 0: INTRODUCTION TO STRATEGY WIDGET 0.0 SalesForesight – What, Why, How & Who 0.1 A Guide To Lead Management 0.2 Why Companies Miss Their Sales Growth Targets? 0.3 8 Strategies for Lead management for 2023 to 2025 0.4 Adapting Strategy to Changed Buyer Behaviour 0.5 How to Formulate Strategies that Win in B2B 0.6 Why SalesForesight Strategy for B2B Sales? 0.7 Sales & Marketing Alignment 0.8 Advantages of Using Strategy Widget 0.9 Strategy Widget is For All Client Facing Departments 0.10 How to Use Strategy Widget? 0.11 Future of Solution Selling in 2025 0.12 What Will Change in B2B Sales Methodology? 0.13 Challenges Ahead in B2B Solution Selling 0.14 Generating Leads on Social Media 0.15 CONTENT – CHAPTER – 0 PAGE 6 The Sales Strategy Widget

SALESFORESIGHT 5 SalesForesight Widgets – WHAT, WHY, HOW & WHO The SalesForesight Process Widget consists of “WHAT” needs to be done by the salespeople and the sales organisations. The Strategy Widget shows “WHY” is it to be done. The Marketing Widget shows “HOW” is it should be done. The Customer Meeting Excellence Widget guides sales rep for a “WINNING ENGAGEMENT” with customers. The Sales Director’s Excellence Widget consists of best practices for enhancing sales “PRODUCTIVITY”. The SalesForesight Strategy Widget is like a user manual for sales people to grow sales revenue profitably for the sales organisation and for salespeople to grow own career. Along with the SF Process Widget, it serves as a complete B2B sales methodology for a successful salesperson and a sales organisation. “WHO” can use SalesForesight Strategy? It is useful for sales reps, sales managers, sales directors, CEOs, marketing managers and the sales 0.1 operations managers, actually all who interact with the clients. Strategy Widget - INTRO 7

SALESFORESIGHT Strategy Widget – A Complete Guide to Lead Management B2B Lead Management Strategy is an action plan built on “value creation for a specific prospect” and “proof of differentiation”, by defining the road to be taken from first contact to final close for each potential deal, overcoming recessionary pressures and always aligned with your buyer’s 0.2 behaviour. B2B solution salespeople have a tough life & is to become more demanding in upcoming difficult years when traditional methods of solution buying cycle becomes more online. Strategy Widget is a complete guide to B2B Lead Management Planning, making the Life of Sales Reps Fulfilling, Exciting and Less Demanding. Strategy Widget - INTRO 8

SALESFORESIGHT Why Sales Companies Miss their Sales Growth Targets? 0.3 In most companies, Sales reps are on their own and are selling in the dark. Departments work in siloes, with minimal collaboration with each other. The reason, cross-functional decision-making is not under one roof. Sales tools are not designed for every stage of buying cycle and not aligned to hybrid physical & digital behaviour of buyers. No clear direction to close deals, sales reps are just armed with product literature and pricing. Use of archaic CRM tool which has only historical and opinionated data input by Salespeople. No clear strategy for up-selling & cross-selling. Strategy Widget - INTRO 9

SALESFORESIGHT 8 Strategies For Lead Management For 2023 to 2025 0.4 The Strategy Widget helps to prepare your sales team for ever increasing online presence of buyers, and whatever the economy throws at you. Design a proactive B2B sales action plan for proactive engagement with buyers instead of reacting to buyers after their ‘Online Research’ during which their decision is already made. The best B2B sales strategies are often cocreated by sales, marketing, & operations teams. Strategy Widget - INTRO 10

SALESFORESIGHT Adapt B2B Sales Action Plan to the Changed Buyer Behaviour 0.5 The Future of B2B Solution Selling is in digital realm and may peak by 2025. You need to prepare your action plan for the hybrid engagement by sales team. Buying methodologies have changed and are changing fast. In 2021, Salespeople experimented with remote selling & buyers sought information online. In 2022, the remote sales reps got some basic digital tools. The buyers increased their online research and gave preference to digital interactions. The saving in costs in digital selling means it is here to stay. As per Gartner, by 2025, 80% of B2B sales engagements with buyers will likely occur in digital realm. People will still buy from other people. This is a challenge for sellers to be digitally humane & personalise remote customer engagement. Strategy Widget - INTRO 11

SALESFORESIGHT How to Form Strategies That Win in B2B? 0.6 A recent survey indicates, B2B buyers spend nearly four-fifth of entire buying cycle time in the digital world for seeking information on products and vendors. The salespeople physically come into the buying picture only for validation of the online information. That’s why it’s essential for a sales organisation to create and execute a targeted B2B sales tools for the hybrid engagement for buyer’s entire buying cycle and not just the face-to-face selling stage. This will help the salespeople to consistently and predictably win new and repeat business. Strategy Widget - INTRO 12

SALESFORESIGHT Why SalesForesight Strategy Widget for B2B Sales? The Strategy Widget helps a sales organisation to design a proactive B2B solution sales action plan for proactive engagement with buyers instead of reacting to buyers post their online information research during which their decision is already made. The best B2B sales strategies are often co-created by sales, marketing, & operations teams. The Strategy Widget helps to create an “Action Plan” – by sales directors at company level and by sales reps for their own field sales plan. The goal of a Strategy Widget is to empower sales reps and sales directors with a winning mind-set, resources, and action the steps they need to persuade buyers. SalesForesight helps the sales organisation to design a highly efficient and productive & proactive B2B sales strategy which is actionable, repeatable with a scalable process, track & analyse results, and standardize what’s working for the company as well as customize certain activities for each of your large, important and strategic customer accounts. 0.7 Strategy Widget - INTRO 13

SALESFORESIGHT Sales and Marketing Alignment When the powerful checklist of Process Widget combines with Strategy Widget, it helps to create a careful alignment of your sales, marketing and operations teams, resulting in much higher revenue growth and profitability. Organisations with well-aligned sales, marketing and operations teams enjoy: o 20% annual growth rate, o 38% higher sales wins, o 36% higher customer retention rate, o Aligning sales and marketing also increases annual company revenue, improves brand awareness, and increases average deal size. On the other hand, a sales strategy created without collaboration between these three teams is almost certain to fail. 0.8 Strategy Widget - INTRO 14

SALESFORESIGHT Advantages of using SalesForesight Strategy Widget SFSW has a modular structure. A salesperson can choose all or any area of strategy he/she is interested in. It provides step-wise direction for developing strategies for taking your business of generating sales revenue and your sales career to the next level. The strategy provides systematic inputs for – o Lead Generation Tactics for acquiring new customers and get repeat, upsell, cross-sell business from existing customers. ​ o Customer Engagement Planning which defines how to find right communication medium of interaction during the entire buying journey. o Winning over decision-makers through a series of steps for aligning The Needs with The Offering and the influencing tactics. 0.9 Strategy Widget - INTRO 15

SALESFORESIGHT Strategy Widget is for All Client Facing Departments The strategy provides systematic inputs for – o How a salesperson can improve his own personal brand image. o Strategy Widget is a futuristic tool comprising of best B2B sales practices for every department and for every individual in the sales organisation. o Strategy Widget when combined with SFPW becomes a thorough B2B teaching manual for salespersons and a thorough sales methodology for the sales organization. o SalesForesight Process & Strategy Widgets help to align activities and actions plans of sales organisation with its salespersons and sales support persons. o SalesForesight Process Widget helps to identify strengths and weaknesses of salespersons as well as that of organisation as a whole. Combined with strategy widget, it enables customized training to each sales rep. It helps to provide relevant onboarding of salespeople and sales support people. 0.10 Strategy Widget - INTRO 16

SALESFORESIGHT How to Use SalesForesight Strategy Widget? Strategy Widget is developed on modular approach keeping in mind the varied needs of the salespersons and the sales organisation. You have flexibility to adopt entire stack of B2B sales process and strategy or you can pick and choose aspects that you feel are relevant and of interest to you. The Strategy Widget is also like a reference guide for any time use, when you are stuck and need some good advice or an innovative suggestion, even just before your upcoming sales meeting. Please keep it within reach always, even when you are on field on customer calls. Strategy Widget will help salespersons to grow in their sales career. The salesperson can learn how to influence their colleagues in their company as well as members of buying committee of the prospective client. Strategy Widget will help sales managers, sales directors to influence and devise winning sales policies and customer centric sales structure for their 0.11 company. Strategy Widget - INTRO 17

2021 was an year of experimentation. Salespeople adapted to remote selling and buyers adapted to seek information in virtual realm. In 2022, the seller organizations expanded their digital selling efforts and learnt to provide some basic digital tools to the remote sales reps. The buying organisations too increased their online research and gave preference to digital interactions. The saving in costs in digital selling means it is here to stay. As per Gartner, by 2025, 80% of B2B sales engagements with buyers will likely occur in digital realm. However, people will still buy from other people. This is a challenge for seller organisations to be humane and focus on personalisation in remote customer engagement. The B2B buyers too want peer-to-peer connection within the digital channels. In coming three years (2023-2025), there will be a marked change from face-toface meetings towards digital ones. In other words, the seller companies must immediately relook at their old pre-pandemic models for customer engagement. SALESFORESIGHT The Future of B2B Solution Selling in 2025 0.12 Strategy Widget - INTRO 18

What will Change in B2B Selling Methodology? In B2B, the best way to convert a prospect is by giving him a reason to buy from you by simultaneously showcasing the differentiation and increasing the value of your products and services. In the digital world, it means rolling out different types of content as part of digital marketing , which is aligned to your market segment and provides digital sales tools for your sales reps to engage with clients. The digital content should make motivate the prospect to consider your brand & buy from you. SalesForesight Strategy Widget helps you to find what works best for your solution sellers while engaging with their prospects who engage with you 80% of buying time in the digital channel and 20% physically with salespeople. What will not change is your basic offering of products and services and the pain which it solves for your customers. However, the old ways of managing sales is definitely changing. Your old sales report dashboards are obsolete. You must have a “Sales Process & Strategy” that is client behaviour centric. SALESFORESIGHT 0.13 Strategy Widget - INTRO 19

The B2B Solution Selling Challenges Ahead The challenges for B2B Sales Strategists are: With the increased use of social media by buyers, B2B sellers’ first challenge is to maximise reach to the targeted audience in their market segment. Creating online content which “Compels Your Prospects To Engage With Your Brand in the digital realm. Enticing your prospects through online marketing and online sales tools to become a “Qualified Lead”. How to build trust among your customers at each stage of buying cycle. The challenges for B2B Sales Reps are: There has been an increase in sales funnel failures and low win rate. Lesser number of new leads generated. You can overcome the above challenges by creating a hybrid marketing model of digital cum physical sales strategy. SALESFORESIGHT 0.14 Strategy Widget - INTRO 20

Generate Leads on Social Media In coming 2-3 years if you need to master the art of digital content to attract new opportunities. If you are not on social media, then you are nowhere. That is the norm for B2B Solution Sales Business now. And why not, buyers have start their buying journey with vendor and solution research on internet. When they look up a product on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, or Community blogs, your brand must be present there. The sales and marketing team must actively engage your prospects on social media platforms. You need to join various online communities of your prospects and target market. The sales reps should connect with their buyers personally, comment on their posts, initiate conversations, share informative content and be a part of common communities. Once you get a positive response, nurture and lead them to your brand’s website. Lastly, set and track social media KPIs of your sales reps and marketing team. SALESFORESIGHT 0.15 Strategy Widget - INTRO 21

Sales Enablement Through Content Relevance 1.1 Know Your B2B Prospect Well 1.2 Do Research about Your Buyers & Their Company 1.3 Align Sales And Marketing Teams 1.4 Create Your Ideal Buyer Personas 1.5 Nurture Leads on Digital Platforms 1.6 1.0SALESFORESIGHT CHAPTER – 1: Strategies to Improve Win Rate CONTENT – CHAPTER – 1 PAGE 22 The Sales Strategy Widget

Sales Enablement Through Content Relevance Sales Enablement is all about aligning the goals of your sales team, marketing team and operations teams with the needs of your customers. For any sales organisation, the first customers are its Salespeople. Hence, the Sales Enablement Strategies need to focus on rolling out productive and efficient sales team enablement programs. The key results of an effective Sales Enablement Strategy being more leads generated, increased conversion rates, and effective delivery and implementation of the solution ensuring customer satisfaction. Sales Enablement has proved to increase conversion rates by 15%, increase repeat orders by about 20%, and increase in order size by about 30%. 1.1SALESFORESIGHT Strategies To Improve Win Rate 23

Know Your Prospect Well B2B Solution Selling has a complex sales cycle and requires resources, time and energy of each department of the seller organisation in order to align with the buyer’s buying cycle. Solution Selling Process, traditionally is one of the most difficult process to inculcate in the organisation. The success requires efforts not only from salespeople, but the whole organisation. One way to succeed is by understanding your prospect well enough to know what they are looking for and how the buy and execute their post purchase activities. Knowing your prospect well is essential for you to succeed at winning and retaining more customers, thereby growing revenues & profits. A well-executed KYC strategy serves as the foundation of a successful marketing program and creation of a relevant sales tools. It is important to know your prospects well before you even start to create content that will interest them. 1.2SALESFORESIGHT Strategies To Improve Win Rate 24

It is the most crucial part of sales and marketing tactics before the marketing team launches any promotion campaign. The sales team needs to assist marketing team in giving inputs about their customers and markets they address. The marketing team needs to an independent research about the buyers’ media habits, demographics, role in buying committee, their brand preferences and perceptions, their motivations, and their past work profile. Marketing team then creates buyer personas, on the basis of which they develop campaign material. 1.3 Do Research about Your Buyer & Their Company SALESFORESIGHT Strategies To Improve Win Rate 25

Align Sales And Marketing Teams In today’s digital world, alignment between sales and marketing is one of the most essential of all B2B sales strategies. In B2B sales, the role of the two teams is to supplement each other. The marketing team creates lead generation programs and develops content ideas for sales tools while the sales team works on revenue generation tactics. The best way to align these two teams is align their objectives and KPIs. The goal of a sales team is to close a deal. The purpose of a marketing team is to acquire new leads and in today’s digital world, to create digital sales tools to empower sales teams. As buyers dwell more in digital channels, the goals of sales and marketing are inter-twined with each other. The ultimate measurable outcome for both the sales team and the marketing team is revenue generation through customer acquisition and retention. 1.4SALESFORESIGHT Strategies To Improve Win Rate 26

Create Your Ideal Buyer Personas It is important to have a good understanding of your market and the ideal buyer profile , before you start your selling activities. It is essential for marketing team to create the buyer persona for every buying committee member type. The content so created will help to get the attention of your prospect, build trust and get a buy-in for your ideas. An ideal buyer persona is a list of attributes of the person (buyer) who is most likely to identify that his needs can be fulfilled by your offerings. The buyer persona will help you to understand the motivations and perceptions about your brand and your offerings. This will allow you to create content that appeals specifically to them and attracts more customers. When today’s buyer is spending 80% of his buying time online, to send the right content to the right buyer type, your marketing strategy must avoid being seen as a spammer. 1.5SALESFORESIGHT Strategies To Improve Win Rate 27

Nurture Leads on Digital Platforms Whether you team up with a social media marketing companies or carry out your campaigns in-house; every B2B solution sales company should have a dedicated digital channel strategy. The first digital platform to be considered is your website. You need to have visibility and analysis of the different types of people and organisations visiting your company’s website. Social Media is the second important platform for you to engage your prospects. Social Media has the potential to exponentially increase your reach. You need maintain log of your online community. So as to allow to you send personalised content and form a deeper bond with your prospects. 1.6 Part 1 SALESFORESIGHT Strategies To Improve Win Rate 28

Nurture Leads on Digital Platforms A hyper-personalised content is the POD (Point of Differentiation) which can turn the deal in your favour. Nurture leads on Digital Platforms supported by near immediate response mechanism, is a proven B2B sales conversion strategy. The role of B2B marketers is all the more important and will continue to become bigger in next 2-3 years to come. As B2B buyers move towards doing online research for their needs resolution, they (buyers) would decide to include your brand in the ‘hot list’ before they engage with sales reps. You have the time now to build your online brand presence and start targeting your prospects before its too late. 1.6 Part 2 SALESFORESIGHT Strategies To Improve Win Rate 29

2.0SALESFORESIGHT Why B2B Sales Process is Essential? 2.1 Organisation Wide Vision for Sales Enablement 2.2 Data & Metrics for Sales Enablement 2.3 Sales Enablement Process 2.4 Have a Manager to Monitor ‘Sales Enablement’ 2.5 Personalised Sales Content Delivery 2.6 Hire Sales Reps to Match the Buyer Personas 2.7 Online Platforms for Content Delivery 2.8 Direct Messaging Platforms 2.9 Avoiding Spam Through Hyper-Personalisation 2.10 Attractiveness of Various Content Types 2.11 Upskilling Your Sales Team 2.12 Conclusion 2.13 CHAPTER – 2: Sales Enablement Strategy CONTENT – CHAPTER – 2 PAGE 30 The Sales Strategy Widget

Why B2B Sales Process is Essential? Why B2B Sales Process is Essential Before You Develop Sales Enablement Strategies? B2B Sales Process aligns entire sales organisation to the buyer’s buying cycle and helps to improve customer satisfaction and builds long-term association. By aiding salespeople with the right content and the right sales tools to engage their clients successfully, and then combing with the right B2B Sales Process, the sales organisation grow their revenues profitably. The digital platforms have increased competitiveness and visibility but decreased the mind-share and loyalty of your customers. The prompt response with right content requires B2B sellers to have a well-oiled sales machine. B2B Sales Process helps solution selling companies to achieve this by providing sales team with the resources and direction they need to be successful. 2.1 Part 1 Sales Enablement Strategy SALESFORESIGHT 31

Why B2B Sales Process is Essential? A good B2B Solution Sales Process inculcated for the entire organisation helps to breakdown internal silos and get fully aligned with buyer’s buying cycle. A good B2B Sales Process for today’s virtual world of selling, helps the sales reps to synchronise their efforts with the needs and behaviour of their buyers. It allows faster and accurate information sharing with the buyers and ensures mutual expectations are met. Hence, the B2B solution sellers must focus on reaching out to buyers with a more targeted and personalized selling approach for both digital as well as physical sales channels. 2.1 Part 2 SALESFORESIGHT 32 Sales Enablement Strategy

Why B2B Sales Process is Essential? The B2B Sales Enablement Strategies must focus to train your sales reps to engage their prospects across the entire buyer journey with your organisation. Sales organizations that use the principles of B2B Sales Process combined with B2B Sales Strategy in sales enablement witness over 40% win rate. This DIY strategy book will guide you to develop sales enablement tactics with quantifiable results . So, keep reading the book to study, analyse and create Top-Grade B2B Sales Enablement Strategies which will be relevant for your profitable revenue growth. 2.1 Part 3 SALESFORESIGHT 33 Sales Enablement Strategy

To build internal systems which enables sales team, you need to first have a clear objective. Second, what is the most desired result of the enablement strategy? Third, the sales support departments and the sales team itself needs to have a common mission. Without any mission, you cannot achieve desired results. For maximizing its growth, it has be a compelling mission. Fourth, compensation is key to drive behavior in a strategic direction. To ensure that your B2B Sales Enablement tactics have maximum impact, the sales team as well as marketing and other support teams must have variable compensation and their KPI tied to achieving sales enablement objective. If the variable compensation and KPI are misaligned currently, you may need to re-work them before going ahead with rest of sales enablement strategy. 2.2 Organisation Wide Vision for Sales Enablement SALESFORESIGHT 34 Sales Enablement Strategy

Your online community and its online behavioural data are a source for you to initiate and continuously update your customer out-reach content development. Combined with your buyer personas and knowing their priorities for a particular deal, you have all the necessary information to hyper personalise marketing strategy and sales tools content. It will be fruitful to adopt a modular components of content tools which are independently delivered to the audience. The modular tracking of response and behaviour statistics and measurements will help to understand which sales and marketing tools are more frequently being viewed by your prospects. The sales tools can also be co-related for its effectiveness by correlating to results like increased sales, more leads or faster time to close). It will also determine what has worked and what has not in your marketing tactics of your sales enablement strategy. 2.3 Data & Metrics for Sales Enablement SALESFORESIGHT 35 Sales Enablement Strategy

Are you still using traditional CRM as your sales process and sales automation tool? If B2B Solution buyers are spending more than 80% of their buying cycle on online platforms and arriving at a certain perception about your brand before they decide to meet your sales reps, then your old generation of CRM needs to evolve too. (As it is, the traditional CRMs have only historical data which is worthless when it comes to sales enablement). The SalesForesight Process can be your ideal partner which is based on customisable series of predictable sales events that are aligned to buyer’s buying process. Your B2B sales enablement strategy needs to include an updated B2B sales process which guides the entire organisation on what to do and expect next. Sticking to older processes will adversely affect your competitiveness. 2.4 Sales Enablement Process Part 1 Sales Enablement Strategy SALESFORESIGHT 36

Sales Enablement Process – Other Benefits B2B Sales Process helps you to visualise the lead status and your where you stand in the lead. It helps you to see what objectives and activities you need to conduct in order to progress in the deal. The marketing team can create highly tailored content, and proposal s which will allow your sales team to reach-out to the prospects meaningfully. The B2B Sales Process helps to promptly reply to your customer inquiries and requests. The process helps you to maintain a high level of professionalism in all engagement from all the departments of your organisation. In summary, The B2B Sales Process Widget automates repeatable tasks, thereby improving efficiency, saving time and money, and delivering a better overall customer experience. 2.4 Sales Enablement Process Part 2 Sales Enablement Strategy SALESFORESIGHT 37

Once you have developed your sales enablement objective and strategy, you would need a person to keep a bird eye view on the implementation of the sales enablement tactics. Hiring a qualified person with knowledge of sales operations is a must for you to succeed in your sales enablement strategy implementation. The main task of sales enablement executive or manager is ensure smooth collaboration between the marketing and sales teams and between sales team and customer service teams. Your sales enablement strategy’s success will rely heavily on the flawless synchronization and breaking down of all the departments silos. 2.5 Have a Manager to Monitor ‘Sales Enablement’ Sales Enablement Strategy SALESFORESIGHT 38

The pandemic has driven buyers to research solution for their needs online through digital platforms. The sellers too have learnt to provide information through their websites and social media platforms. The sales reps are fast learning to respond immediately via emails and video chats. The objective till this stage is that B2B buyers must include their brand and solution in their tender documents. Once the buyer has completed the online research and shortlisted the desired vendors, buyers expect validation of their research from the vendors via face-to-face exchanges. This is the time when sales reps need to give a better experience than competition in order to improve their win chances. 2.6 Personalized Sales Content Delivery Part 1 Sales Enablement Strategy SALESFORESIGHT 39

A successful sales organisation should reduce the time to respond to the buyer’s needs. A study indicates that if the sales reps respond in the first hour to the queries of the buyer, the chances of sales win increase by 50%. The challenge of responding through online platforms is that the content and its delivery has to have a clear advantage over your competition. The personalisation of the content, relevance of the content, speed to reach, sending the content in buyer’s preferred media choice and the speed to respond to all queries will give an upper edge to win more opportunities. Content creation by marketing team must be of high quality, relevant to the buyer’s current needs, is hyper personalized and targeted to the buyer’s pain points. Content generalisation for all your customers will not yield the desired conversion rate. 2.6 Part 2 Sales Enablement Strategy SALESFORESIGHT Personalized Sales Content Delivery 40

Communication personalization ensures that your content is targeted towards a particular buyer persona and makes them feel valued. If your messaging talks about their specific issues, needs or experiences, they feel like it was specially designed for them. The research conducted on the ideal buyers’ persona will come handy here when you can use the data collected in crafting personalized messages for the audience you are targeting. General flattery of your product and prospect will not help you; instead, make you another spam in the box. Try mentioning their name, give a catchy (yet informative) subject line, bring up mutual connections, shared interests, etc. 2.6 Part 3 Sales Enablement Strategy SALESFORESIGHT Personalized Sales Content Delivery 41

Gen-Z has been joining the workforce in last few years. This has caused buyer behaviour to change and evolve continuously. . They are younger, technically equipped and very tech savvy. In today’s world of digital Omni-presence, the sales directors need to look beyond sales experience and selling competencies. The old school sales leaders must consider tech competence too while hiring fresh sales reps. An ideal sales team should have diversity which include experienced selling techniques along with the qualities of today’s tech generation. This will help you to align perfectly with the buyer’s online behaviour . Your team of sales reps of today should be a reflection of the buyer personas. You need to pair your sales rep with all the buyer personas you have for maximum coverage of your market. 2.7 Hire Sales Reps to Match the Buyer Personas Sales Enablement Strategy SALESFORESIGHT 42

A recent survey shows 33% buyers prefer sales rep free experience and it increases to 44% for millennials. As virtual realm takes hold of most future communication means, the thin line between ‘marketing strategies’ an d ‘sales strategies’ will become blurry. The most common means used by salespeople will be Emails and Video Calls supported social media reach. This will become all the more relevant in B2B solution selling scenario and Key Accounts based marketing and sales tactics. The key to sales enablement is to create content for every online platform for each stage of buying cycle and for each buyer type in the buying committee. The role of marketing is actually going to become more difficult going ahead as they have to create high-quality sales tools that are highly personalised and are able to take the sales opportunity forward. 2.8 Online Platforms for Content Delivery Sales Enablement Strategy SALESFORESIGHT 43

Direct Messaging Platforms – Email, WhatsApp, Signal EMAILS: The sales reps have are most comfortable using Emails. Traditionally, the is used when the opportunity is qualified and there is some semblance of relationship existing between the buyer and the sales rep. Earlier, the Sales reps spent hours on the road for a physical meeting with the buyers. Today, they spend hours perfecting their email copy. If marketing team can create content and make them easily available to the sales reps , it will immensely motivate your salespeople. Moreover, if the salespeople have a tool where they are able to customise the content, it will further give boost to their productivity, apart from saving whole lot of time on writing and revising emails. Similar exercise needs to be done for other direct messaging platforms. It is a must to give the sales reps a software tool to personalize their emails 2.9 and make amendments to the content template for each stage of sales cycle. Direct Messaging Platforms Sales Enablement Strategy SALESFORESIGHT 44

As per a recent survey 66% of buyers expect sellers to understand their needs and behaviour. However, only 34% of sellers know about individual buyers in the B2B solution buying committee. B2B Solutions buyers want the online content to educate them with industry trends, product information, different possible solutions to their needs and the vendor to deliver best possible relevant and customised recommendation. Nowadays USP is dead. It is the era of POD (Point of Difference). One big POD is customer experience. Hyper-personalisation of your content and delivery via buyer’s preferred media will be your POD to gain competitiveness. So how to go about it? Brands can personalize have personalised web pages on their website for every buyer persona. Emails need to be indvidualised too. 2.10 Avoiding Spam Through Hyper-Personalisation Sales Enablement Strategy SALESFORESIGHT 45

A recent survey of B2B solution buyers suggests that : 55% buyers want a message that is pertinent to their current needs. 32% buyers want content with recommendations to solve their problems. Media Habits as per thee recent survey depicted: 69% buyers prefer to watch a short video. 18% buyers would prefer to read an article on website /social media. 4% buyers prefer an infographic. 3% buyers would download an e-book. 3% would rather attend a webinar. 2% would prefer a sales call or demo. 84% buyers get convinced about a brand by watching a brand’s video. Gartner survey confirms that B2B buyers watch online videos to make important purchase decisions. The B2B sellers must use video content across all digital channels across the sales cycle. Videos links can be inserted in all sales tools like websites, social media, and emails . 2.11 Attractiveness of Various Content Types Sales Enablement Strategy SALESFORESIGHT 46

Upskilling Your Sales Team Your sales team is constantly trying to convince a prospect of the solution you are offering, and unless they have 360-degree knowledge about the product, they are not selling it. It is the sales team that is going to convert prospect to customer eventually. Train your sales team in online engagement and online selling techniques. Teach them to build relationships with prospects, customize their pitches and handle situations in virtual realm. 2.12 Sales Enablement Strategy SALESFORESIGHT 47

In summary, the top-grade B2B sales enablement strategies consist of creating content aligned to your target buyers. The content then needs to be tailored to the digital and / or physical delivery channel. The content should be created for each stage of buying cycle. The sales tools so created should be easily accessible to your sales team. The sales reps should be provided with software tools so that they can personalise and make amends and customise as per the deal requirements. The success in B2B Solution Selling is directly related to the success of sales reps. Alignment of sales team with digital marketing team will empower and motivate the sales reps. It will also improve their productivity. You need to ensure that you have a robust mechanism to measure the success of various sales tools independent of each other. 2.13 Conclusion Part 1 Sales Enablement Strategy SALESFORESIGHT 48

Misaligned sales and marketing team results in big loss of revenue and resources, and this is even more true when buyers are spending more and more in virtual realm. The content created by marketing team ensures quality leads and appropriate use of that content by sales team ensures conversion of leads to clients. If marketing brings in bad leads, sales cannot function, and if sales don’t reach out properly, marketing becomes pointless. Both teams have to work in sync to create an ideal buyer persona s . The marketing team builds brand image and creates pull for new leads and sales team outlines values and differentiation and informs prospects about the product/service. Sales team can follow up with the outreach on different sales engagement platforms. 2.13 Part 2 Conclusion Sales Enablement Strategy SALESFORESIGHT 49

Once the prospects interacts with the brand on various digital platforms, the marketing team can qualify the data that sales reps can use in their interactions. Digital Content is the new ‘king’, and it will continue to do so. However, as your competitors vie for digital mind space of the buyers, the fittest in the race to give relevant and differentiated customer experience will survive. A boring speech will not work, you need to improve and revolutionize your digital content. No clichés, no generic words. Only actual value and POD. Chalk out a new content marketing plan revolving around more customercentric topics and with a variety of multimedia. 2.13 Part 3 Conclusion Sales Enablement Strategy SALESFORESIGHT 50