As sales leaders and sales reps, how much do we rely on data and science to predict our success?

Starting in the hiring process, how can we de-risk our chance of a bad hire?

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Have you considered providing an aptitude test? determine their chance of success, attract skills best suited for the role as well as are aligned to the existing organizational culture.

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What about data to suggest what happened on deals that were closed lost vs deals that didn’t advance past the first call?

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Or looking at data within your sales process to determine where things started picking up or where things started to decline? How can we remove emotion and bias and see what is actually happening? In short, data.

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I had the pleasure of hosting a Sales Hacker Masterclass yesterday.

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The panelists, tenured sales experts, shared a list of 10 activities the top reps were doing consistently that were placing them on the leaderboard.

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I am sharing this list for both leaders to share with their team and individual contributors to put in to practice if you are not already doing so

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Here we go…

1) Have a next meeting booked, Recommendation is to never get off a call without the next meeting booked, even if it is a placeholder, it can be modified, ensuring something is already in the calendar.

2) At the end of the demo, invite your customer to share their thoughts based on what they saw. “ I would love to get your thoughts” what did they think, remove assumptions, you have access to them.

3) Current vs future state. Are you able to paint a picture of their before state, show them what things are like now, ask questions to dig deeper so when you show them the future state, there is resonance and a desire to move there?

4) Customize demo, this is the purpose of an effective discovery. Discover what is important to your prospects, what problems are they trying to solve, what features do they need, that their current solution does not offer. This is what you show them in the demo.

5) Avoid being robotic on the call, even though it may be your sixth discovery /demo of the week, show up with energy and intentionality and let your personality shine, they are buying your enthusiasm.

6) Leverage customer stories, they say stories sell facts. Again, paint a picture so your prospect can see themselves in the story. Data suggests for a 45-minute call, we should be sharing 3 customer stories.

7) Back to Basics, New and tenured reps can benefit here, did we have an agenda? invite our prospect to add to it, confirm the time, purpose of the call, get buy in with our prospect? Introduce multi-stakeholders on the call if required. This sets the tone for the call and gives your prospect the feeling of you are in good hands vs this is a waste of my time.

8) Lead with value. Avoid beating around the bush, people want to know what you have, what is the new object, solution etc, lead with it, don’t keep them waiting, emotion decreases over time. You may lose people in your meeting, or they may have to leave and will never get a chance to see what it was.

9) Do not wing in it. We are dealing with people and their time; time is the currency we trade. Be prepared, consider their thoughts, needs, objections, wants prior to the meeting. Show up with intention and to serve, otherwise we continue to bring the profession down.

10) Have an opinion. If they could do it themselves, they would. They have agreed to a call / meeting because they need help, a different way to look at their situation. Be the subject matter expert and share your point of view, based on past clients like them, years of experience, trends, data etc. we must cross the lines they will not cross themselves.

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After reading the list, as yourself:

• Am I at least hitting half of these?
• Where can you be more intentional, more structured?
• How as a leader can you coach your team to ensure they are putting these into practice?
• Do you use a conversational intelligence platform?
• Are you able to look at call recordings and coach to the list?

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Recommendation is to start, whether that means creating a framework for your team to follow on a discovery, demo? Involve them, iterate based on experience and coach to it.

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If you are looking to get started but aren’t sure of the first step or hone your existing coaching skills please reach out, I would be happy to provide some recommendations and help you get the wheels in motion.

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How are you leveraging data and science in your business?