Harness the collective power of your teams to unleash high performance selling

Without wanting to sound too much like a trailer for the latest action movie – salespeople really are working in a world of relentless change and complexity. This we know is largely due to the transformational changes we’re seeing driven by Industry 4.0. New products and technologies continue to enter the marketplace at an unprecedented rate. Business models are being disrupted and traditional ways of buying and selling have changed forever. Customer expectations have never been higher. They are more informed and more technology savvy than ever before. The purchase experience has become a key differentiator when choosing a supplier. 86% of customers say they are willing to pay as much as 18% more for a good experience. They want help making informed decisions and expect insights tailored to their specific needs, at every stage of the buying journey. We know that suppliers who meet these expectations are 30% more likely to win the deal.

This represents both and incredible opportunity and challenge for most salespeople. While customers are actively looking for new solutions to stay ahead of their competitors, they also have much higher expectations of sales to add value. Sales have struggled with this challenge for some time. They know that their ability to adapt and respond to customer needs is critical to future success, but they are often restricted by outdated team structures and rigid sales processes.

Leadership mindset is changing

To tackle these challenges, sales leaders are developing a new “adaptive” mindset – sometimes referred to as Adaptive Leadership or Leadership 4.0. They realize that the main challenge today is not product, but rather being “adaptive”. To succeed, teams need to be agile and highly responsive. They need to be incredibly nimble and inventive to help customers navigate the myriad of unique challenges they face at each phase of the buying process. Teams need to learn quickly and figure out how to integrate new knowledge to make each customer interaction a high value experience. All this while trying to influence customer thinking and steer them towards a desired outcome. It’s a tall order, but, as mentioned previously, customer expectations are higher than ever. If you’re not thinking this way, your competitors are.

Adaptive Sales Collaboration is the future

If teams are working in Industry 4.0 and Leadership 4.0 is gaining momentum, maybe it’s high time for Sales 4.0? Over the last 20 years sales tools & technologies have come a long way. From cloud-based Sales CRM systems to the latest generation of Sales Automation tools, they’ve done a good job at delivering better sales outcomes by driving standardization and productivity. However, what if every sale is different, each with its own set of unique dynamics and layers of complexity? In these scenarios, standardization and automation are simply not the answer. What’s needed is the human capacity to adapt and respond!

People have all the superpowers needed to thrive in a Sales 4.0 world. They have an innate desire to work together, learn together and to succeed together: exactly what’s required to navigate through the change and complexity salespeople are experiencing every day. We believe, that unlocking these human capabilities is the key to future sales success. This is Sales 4.0 or as we like to call it – Adaptive Sales Collaboration

 Adaptive Sales Collaboration

5. Follow a framework for continuous customer value creation.

We recognise that transformation is not easy. It’s difficult to pull all the interdependent strands together, to deliver strategic change. This becomes even more challenging when daily objectives still need to be met. With this in mind, we’ve created the following framework to help you get started. It includes 5 pillars that we believe are critical to building a truly customer focused revenue organisation that can deliver continuous value at scale. We’d recommend you focus on defining culture and customer value first, if you get this right, you’ll then have a strong north star from which you can design the appropriate team practices, workflows and technology requirements.

Culture

• We align teams behind a common purpose & mission. There is meaning and value.
• Teamwork and collaboration are at the centre of how we work.
• We believe that collective performance is key to value creation and success.
• We promote autonomy and self-governance.
• We strive for mastery, by providing continuous learning and development.

Customer

• We are focused on making our customers successful.
• We partner with our customers and always have their best interests in mind.
• We help customers make-sense of change and complexity.
• We provide continuous high-value insights to help customers adapt & succeed.
• We listen, take feedback and capture learnings to improve how we deliver value.

Team

• We work as one united team with the customer at the centre of our focus.
• There is clarify of team roles and responsibilities across the customer buying journey.
• We understand what high performance is and have a defined learning path to mastery.
• We come together to strategize, plan, problem-solve, design & innovate.
• There is transparency to individual work. All team members are recognised and rewarded for their contributions.

Performance

• The team is aligned to a common set of goals, objectives and KPIs.
• The team works together collectively to achieve those goals and objectives.
• Customer experience and the quality of team engagement are key measures of success.
• Customer advocacy and buyer consensus building are key measures of effectiveness.
• We share the recognition and reward (compensation plans/ bonuses).

Systems & tools

• Systems and tools help align our shared vision, meaning, purpose and direction.
• They are principle-led adaptive systems & tools that flex with our needs.
• They enable us to be agile and responsive.
• They provide insights into customer experience, advocacy and buyer consensus.
• They guide with high-performance workflows, to optimise team effectiveness.

With change and disruption comes opportunity. Unlock the incredible potential within your organisation to deliver continuous customer value at scale. If you’d like to know more about how to implement our framework for success, without needing to resort to a complex and expensive transformation project, please reach-out! We’d be delighted to see how we can help.