Last year, the whole society had to make so many changes due to the unpredicted circumstances. Hence, in this Expert Insight Interview, Marie Hale discusses changes in the sales leadership caused by the pandemic. Marie Hale is co-Founder and visionary at @revenue company, revolutionizing sales and marketing for small businesses.
The interview discusses:
- How changes enforce innovation
- Effective communication with customers and within the team
- Sales process towards customers and within the team
Time for Innovation
Adapting to changes has left many people emotionally and mentally exhausted. People receive information and act on it differently now because they do not have the same resources and conditions they had before. However, now more than ever, we have to leave the past and think about maximizing our efforts in current conditions. Since we had to make a radical shift in how we do business, this is a great time for innovation and new habits to be born. As sales leaders, we have to empower our team to accept and embrace the fundamental changes that we experience.
Communication
Ensuring proactive communication within the team is essential so that the team can function well under any circumstances. In communication, only seven percent are words. The rest of the 38 and 55 percents are tonality and body language, respectively. Thus, we have to adjust all three – vocabulary, tonality, and body language in virtual communication. Using Zoom all day every day makes people exhausted and unable to concentrate sometimes. If that situation happens, call it out, be vulnerable, say that you are struggling at the moment because probably the person on the other side feels exactly the same. That way, you can create a better relationship with a client, find out more information about his or her personal and professional life, find more compelling reasons, build a stronger business case, and finally close the sale.
Sales Process
The sales process is a dynamic process that should always match the buyer’s buying process. And buyer’s buying process has changed since many buyers feel afraid to commit to a purchasing decision in a time of uncertainty. Thus, doing many micro agreements is crucial to make buyers feel comfortable with going to the next phase. We have to make sure that we get emotional and mental permission from a customer to move to the next stage because otherwise, it will look like we are forcing the deal to close.
Furthermore, there has to be constant internal checking. We have to revaluate our pipeline to make sure that our forecasting is right. Equally important, we have to check with the team members if they are doing good and have all the resources beyond basic sheets and presentations to work effectively.
Our Host
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
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