A recent report by Gartner, a leading research firm, shows how sales enablement tools must help with “sense making” (1).
In simpler words for the rest of us – we should help our clients make informed decisions.
Doing so:
So sales enablement tools should be geared to help clients, not just target clients better.
In this blog, we’ll use 3 stories to do that.
Consider Alexi. She is preparing for a meeting with a prospective client.
Since the agenda of this first meeting is very broad, she fears that this meeting would result in no clear follow-ups. And then she would have to spend a lot of time trying to convince the client for another meeting.
Then she gets an idea. She had seen a coaching friend use a Wheel of Life with clients to get to know each other better.
How about she do the same? Since Alexi is in tech sales, she decides to work with her practice leader to create a needs assessment. That way, she’d be able to uncover key challenges faced by the client.
As the meeting progressed, Alexi presented their services and asked pointed questions about what the client was doing in the different areas.
At about the 20 minute mark, Alexi shared her screen and showed the client what she had captured in the needs assessment tool. Through graphical displays and scoring, the gaps in the clients portfolio became apparent.
The conversation shifted to become consultative. It went from Alexi presenting her services to what the client could do to address the gaps.
A good rapport was also established. They agreed to do a workshop to review the results in more detail.
Thus, Alexi built a solid trust equation and kept the sales cycle moving forward without delays.
Her needs assessment tool helped the client make sense of the noise. This sales enablement tool took Alexi from a mere transactional information exchange into a consultative conversation that positioned her and her company as a trusted advisor.
All of us, whether we coach, consult, or sell products and services, want to ultimately increase our clients’ lifetime value.
And the best way to do that is to help our clients better meet their goals so we can have a lasting and growing relationship.
Consider the story of Daniel, a full stack developer and a senior architect.
Daniel’s client is embarking on a new project. It’s an exciting time, full of promise and potential. But, as often happens, everyone has a different opinion on which type of database to choose. SQL? NoSQL?
Daniel has had some experience with this. He thought it’ll be great to step in and help the client team arrive at a consensus and make an informed decision—one that aligns with the project’s specific needs.
He could create a scoring spreadsheet to achieve this, but Daniel wanted to make this decision making tool available as an asset to other teams.
So Daniel created a customizable SQL or NoSQL online product selector. This product recommendation tool guided the team through the decision-making. It became a big hit because it got things started in the right direction.
Needless to say, Daniel’s tool became a company asset and part of the standard sales enablement tools. Other project teams used this and selectors in other areas to drive higher client satisfaction – and more growth. No duplicate copies were needed and all of them could keep their client data separate.
Coaches can do the same using personality assessments such as the DISC or Big 5, and even a custom Wheel of Life.
High client lifetime value results from building trust and helping them make better decisions.
In the dynamic world of business, two things are evergreen concerns:
Meet Sarah, a sales enablement & marketing lead. She was looking for more ways to generate leads and differentiate her company’s brand.
She was noticing that while her team had a lot of expertise, that expertise was not actually used too often.
For example, they had recently helped a client with software security. And they now had a lot of expertise in that area.
But this information was neither known to many, nor presented too often to clients.
In other words, the expertise needed to be unlocked.
Sarah idea was to translate stories like this in an interactive form and online.
“We could also provide the same tools to our sales and account teams to engage clients”, she pondered.
Enter the “Software Security Assessment”. Clients visiting their website could now embark on a journey of self-discovery with just a simple click.
And, their sales team could engage both prospective and existing clients in more detailed discussions.
In this consultative model, clients found themselves experiencing the expertise of the company.
It was a win-win situation for lead generation and brand value. as they wrote multiple targeted blogs on these topics.
Sarah and Anand improved lead generation and established an expert brand at the same time.
If any of the above stories appealed to you, we encourage you to go ahead and sign up for a 2 weeks trial on Evalinator. We are here to help you help your clients make better decisions.
Rather than just creating quizzes and assessments, the Evalinator platform is about supporting your ultimate goals around establishing an expert brand and revenue growth.
Explore the possibilities with Evalinator and unlock the potential of consultative client engagement.
Ref: Gartner Sense Making Approach
