Sales Engagement

Sales engagement is the key to success for any business because it's not just about the sale. It's about building a relationship with your customers that will keep them coming back and bring in new business.

Engaged sales teams are built around trust, respect, and communication. They know their customers' needs and wants better than anyone else because they listen to them all along. They trust each other because they know everyone on the team is working toward the same goal: helping customers succeed.

Engaged sales teams sell more because they are:

More confident
Motivated
Connected to the customers

They know more about their customer's needs, which makes it easier for them to recommend the right product or service and build long-lasting relationships with customers.

What is sales engagement?

Sales engagement is about how salespeople feel about their job. It’s not just about the number of calls they made or the revenue they closed, but rather the way they feel about their job as a whole.

Sales engagement isn’t just a buzzword. It’s something that can have a significant impact on your business. If your sales team feels disengaged, it can lead to lower productivity and higher turnover rates.

A disengaged sales team is more likely to leave for another company where they feel valued and appreciated. On top of that, disengaged employees are less likely to bring their best work to the table every day.

There are several ways that sales engagement can work for your business:

Drives engagement at the workplace
Builds loyalty among customers
Encourages customers to refer others to your business
Generate more leads and sales through referrals
Make it easier for customers to buy from you
Encourage repeat purchases

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Why is sales engagement important?

Sales engagement is a two-way street. It's not just about engaging with customers; it's also about engaging with your team members. You want to ensure everyone on the team understands your customer base and the best way to serve them. This kind of effort results in better sales performance overall, which means you can expect more sales from each salesperson.

The benefits of an engaged sales team are numerous:

They are more likely to be productive.
Engaged employees are more likely to engage with their customers in a positive way, which creates a great customer experience.
They will be invested in your company's success, which translates into greater loyalty towards your brand or product.
Improves workplace culture because there is increased morale and trust between employees and managers.

What are the key drivers of sales engagement?

A salesperson's engagement can be measured by how they feel about their job, their managers, the company, its products or services, and their customers.

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The key drivers of sales engagement are:

Compensation: Salespeople want to feel like they're being fairly compensated for their efforts, and if that's not happening, then it's likely that they'll look for another job opportunity.

Recognition: Salespeople want to be recognized for their accomplishments and contributions to the company, which is why many sales organizations have formal recognition programs.

Career advancement opportunities: For many, the goal of being a salesperson is not just about making money but also about having an opportunity to advance their careers by becoming a manager or director of a team someday.

Management support: If salespeople think their managers care about them, they will be more engaged and motivated to do a good job.

Collaboration: Salespeople want to feel connected to the rest of the organization and need to feel that they are part of a team effort.

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What is the difference between sales engagement and sales enablement?

Sales engagement: Sales engagement occurs when a company's sales team members are fully engaged in their work. It is often described as a state of mind with three essential elements: Being passionate about what salespeople do, Having a sense of purpose that drives their behavior, and making an impact on others.

Sales enablement: Sales enablement provides your sales team access to relevant content, tools, and reports to sell more efficiently and effectively.

The main difference between sales engagement and sales enablement is that sales engagement ensures that every sales rep is motivated enough to sell more, feel good about their jobs, and build better relationships with potential buyers. Sales enablement is focused on ensuring salespeople are equipped with the right tools to close more deals.

How does sales engagement work?

Sales engagement is a two-way street. It's about what happens inside the company and what happens outside of it. You'll get nowhere fast if you just take one side of the equation.

Inside the organization: The first step is to define your purpose as a business. What do you want to achieve? What are your strategic goals? Once you have this information, you can start looking at how it affects your people. You need to know what makes them tick so that you can give them what they need at work and home.

Outside of the organization: Engaging with customers requires a deep understanding of who they are as individuals (their personality types) and what they want from a brand or product experience. This means knowing which customers are most likely to buy from us — those who are most engaged with our brand.

How to accelerate sales with a successful sales engagement strategy?

An effective sales engagement strategy is about aligning your team with the right things that matter to them. It's about helping them deliver on their goals and objectives, so they can be successful in their role.

It's not just about selling more stuff; it's about helping your team achieve their full potential and grow their careers. But how can you do this?

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Here are tips for accelerating sales with a successful sales engagement strategy:

Create an environment where people want to come to work every day and have better clarity of their work.
Build a workplace culture where your team feels comfortable experimenting with new approaches because it's only when we try new things we make real progress.
Encourage a culture of continuous improvement by offering feedback on what works best for your team – both individually and as a whole.
Identify the gaps between where your team is today and where they need to be to achieve those results. Work out how to close those gaps by helping them develop new skill sets and capabilities.
Develop an understanding of what drives your team's performance and how it affects the company as a whole so that you can support them in achieving their goals.
Have attractive incentive compensation plans that empower them and strives them to do better.

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How to keep a sales team engaged?

An engaged sales team at work and with their peers will be more productive and efficient.

Here are some tips to keep your sales team engaged:

Provide adequate training and development opportunities.
Create a culture where people feel supported and valued.
Have attractive incentive compensation plans.
Listen to what your people have to say.
Give them space so they can work independently.
Involve employees in decision-making processes that affect them directly.
Encourage competition by setting up contests amongst your team members where the winner is rewarded for achieving specific goals or meeting certain benchmarks.

How to measure sales engagement?

The best way to measure sales engagement is to use a combination of metrics. These include:

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Percentage of time spent in an active sales process: This metric helps you understand how much time your salespeople spend engaging with prospects. It can also give you insights into how well your sales team is managing their time and what types of leads they may be pursuing.

Employee engagement surveys: Ask questions about their feelings towards certain aspects of their job, such as their manager or colleagues, or if they feel their hard work is valued by management.

Average deal size: This metric gives you an idea of how much revenue each sales team member is bringing in. It helps you determine which members are driving revenue growth and which ones aren't pulling their weight.

Number of opportunities closed: This metric shows how many deals were successfully closed by each team member during a given time (month, quarter, or year). You can use this metric to identify top performers who close more deals than average and under performers who close fewer deals than average.

Sales cycle time: This is the duration between when a lead enters your pipeline and when it closes as a sale. A shorter cycle time indicates that your team is moving faster, which is good for business as it reduces the amount of time that leads go unsold.

Sales qualified lead ratio (SQLR): This refers to how many sales qualified leads (SQLs) you generate compared to the total leads generated by your marketing efforts.

Employee pulse surveys:

These are short surveys that can be sent frequently to check what your employees think about an issue quickly. The survey comprises fewer questions (not more than 10) to get the information quickly. These can be administered at regular intervals (monthly/weekly/quarterly).

One-on-one meetings:

Having periodic, hour-long meetings for an informal chat with every team member is an excellent way to get a true sense of what’s happening with them. Since it is a safe and private conversation, it helps you get better details about an issue.

eNPS:

eNPS (employee Net Promoter score) is one of the simplest yet effective ways to assess your employee's opinion of your company. It includes one intriguing question that gauges loyalty. An example of eNPS questions include: How likely are you to recommend our company to others? Employees respond to the eNPS survey on a scale of 1-10, where 10 denotes they are ‘highly likely’ to recommend the company and 1 signifies they are ‘highly unlikely’ to recommend it.

Based on the responses, employees can be placed in three different categories:

Promoters
Employees who have responded positively or agreed.
Detractors
Employees who have reacted negatively or disagreed.
Passives
Employees who have stayed neutral with their responses.

What is a sales engagement platform?

A sales engagement platform is a solution or tool that provides an integrated way to automate and manage the entire sales process. It has everything in place to drive sales behavior, encourage teams to close more deals and drive business growth.