Get your FREE 30-day trial.
Start by selecting a product:
Anyone in the sales profession can see that with the rapid rate of technology development, customer expectations are higher than ever. Sales teams are moving into unchartered territory, so it’s becoming crucial to learn from people who are plotting their own course through the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
I spoke to one such sales professional this year at Dreamforce 2018 - AJ Binnie, Sales and Marketing Automation Manager from New Zealand’s largest internet service provider, Spark New Zealand.
He told me a lot of great insights about what makes top sales teams tick. A common trend he has seen is their need to have a 360-degree customer view to not only drive increases in customer satisfaction, but also ramp their own productivity.
Spark New Zealand recently went through an ambitious digital transformation journey in order to adopt this trend learned from top sales teams. The aim was to get a 360-degree view of the customer to improve the day-to-day life of their sales reps and improve customer engagement and retention.
The recent State of Sales report found top sales organisations recognise that connected experiences entail far more than sales interactions, with 75% of business buyers saying that connected processes — across marketing, sales, and service interactions — are all very important to winning their business.
Here are three key ways that Spark NZ improved their view of the customer that businesses and sales professionals can use to improve interactions:
Churn, or in other words customers moving to another provider, is becoming a huge issue for all telecommunication businesses around the world. This year's State of Sales report showed sales reps spend a mere 34% of their time actually selling. This is one of the big problems facing our industry at the moment and one of the key roadblocks stopping us from having a full, comprehensive view of our customer.
To counter this issue, Spark New Zealand used Artificial Intelligence (AI) and analytics to create intelligent pre-churn conversations with the right customers. This injected life back into the customer programme and helped their sales team be more efficient and effective with their time.
“We were really focussed on how we could give sales people back five hours in their week and we’ve now managed to do just that with some projects,” said AJ.
According to AJ, this had more than just a positive effect on the sales team. Customers also appreciated the additional care. Spark’s team is seeing an uplift in customer retention as they now identify customers at risk and proactively contact them to ensure they are receiving best value for money on the right plans. AI provides the team with “next best action” to guide their conversation.
Sales reps shouldn’t just see customers as numbers on a page. They also need to understand the customer’s own personal journey as if they were taking it themselves. A key to getting this understanding is to embrace a CRM.
AJ discussed why it is imperative for companies to use CRM tools to greater understand the customer journey. More companies are following suit as it is now the second highest technology adopted by sales professionals globally. With a CRM you can have a customers’ activity like calls and site visits at your fingertips, so you can better understand what stage of consideration they are at and how you can best approach them.
AJ told me that a CRM cannot be a ‘set and forget’ activity. “We are constantly looking for processes on the fringes of CRM that we can bring into Salesforce. It always drives cost out of the business, improves visibility, provides better reporting and ultimately an improved customer experience.” AJ went on to talk about how “digitising Excel spreadsheets within Salesforce also delivers significant benefits.”
AJ’s team also surfaces important news and insights about customers with the CRM so they are even more informed.
While we often talk about meeting customer expectations with the customer facing parts of our business, we often forget that a big part of understanding the customer better comes from a strong tech foundation.
AJ believes IT departments need to move from managing plumbing and infrastructure to driving innovation within a business. The move into cloud structures can be difficult but it is rewarding, and AJ and the team at Spark New Zealand are certainly reaping the rewards.
“By upgrading our Salesforce platform to Lightning, we have accelerated time to benefit and we’re now delivering Salesforce projects 30% faster,” he said. By accelerating these processes, there is more time for face to face interactions with the customer, and personalised offers that will make them feel appreciated.
Businesses of all sizes are currently going through digital transformations so they can be successful in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where new and innovative business models will emerge. In my conversation with AJ, it is evident that Spark New Zealand is ahead of the curve when it comes to innovation of IT structures to meet customer expectations while increasing productivity for the journey ahead.
As technology advances, we can’t forget the traditional human sales skills of really knowing your customer. The best sales organisations in the digital age will combine new tech with old school values to achieve the best results. To find out more about the sales trends that are important to embrace and succeed in the Fourth Industrial Revolution download the State of Sales Report.
