Signing up for a career in sales

When you get into sales, you are essentially agreeing to a career where you lose far more often than you win.

In fact, starting out early in your career you will be lucky if you win more than ten percent of the time. Become an Enterprise level closer, and you should be winning thirty percent of the time.

Either way, you are losing more than you win. So the question becomes, “How do I stack the cards in my favor?”

Should I use tools like Conversational Intelligence Software, or maybe Real-Time Call Coaching to help me move the needle?

Revenue Intelligence seems to be a popular buzzword lately… maybe that type of tool is what I need?

Scroll through your LinkedIn feed and you will see various data points being published from these companies, claiming that this behavior or that talk track are the keys to success in closing deals. The problem is, even with all the data in the world hitting you upside the head when it’s closing time, the majority of sales reps revert right back to their modus operandi.

Why?

Because they are human, and human beings have emotions and stress. When a deal starts to slip, when that meeting doesn’t happen or when the discount is asked for, that is when things go sideways. Unfortunately, all the dashboards in the world can’t help in that moment that matters the most.

Here at Abstrakt, we understand that dashboards don’t close deals, reps do. That is why we want to help reps, by stacking the cards in their favor. We want to make sure that the house doesn’t always win. Imagine a world where your CRM showed an eighty-percent win rate, what about a ninety-percent win rate? What would that do for your business?

Dashboards don’t close deals, reps do

It is so easy to fall into the trap of doing what it takes to scrape and crawl your way to every deal, especially when accelerators and kickers are on the line at the end of the year.

Unfortunately, the data in your CRM or Revenue Intelligence system doesn’t tell you exactly how to coach your reps to not default back to their core genetic behavior when a sweet bonus check is on the line.

• For example, your sales representative is $18,000 away from their annual number, and the deal they have outstanding is currently committed for $23,000.
• Seems perfect.
• That is, until the Chief Marketing Officer joins the final closing call and says he only has the budget for $15,000.
• It is simply out of budget, and too expensive. It is not too difficult to imagine the immediate stress hormones that kick in, totally throwing the sales representative into a tale spin.
• Now, if as a sales leader you are relying on reactive conversational intelligence software you will find out after this call is over how this situation is handled.
• It is a toss-up, kind of like doubling down every chance of hitting quota on red and hoping for the best.

Any guesses on how this played out?

Cliff notes version… the rep closed the deal for $15,000, missed their annual bonus by $3,000 all because she had forgotten about the talk track that should’ve been used to push the prospect into a multi-year deal that carried with it a twenty-five percent quota retirement incentive.

This is what happens when emotions are triggered, and reps are left to be reactive.

How could this have been different?

Well, let us begin by calling out what would have not made a difference. Revenue Intelligence, Conversational Intelligence, Call-coaching software… none of those could’ve saved this deal. Unfortunately, any of those tools would’ve provided your organization with the same outcome. Sad, but true.

Now, imagine a world where the moment this Chief Marketing Office brings up the budget, said sales rep is immediately provided a recommended response card with three bullet points.

The second of which, was an immediate reminder of multi-year deals, and how they could be used to pick up quota retirement. We talk about pattern interrupt when discussing prospects, but what if technology like real-time call coaching could be used to interrupt the patterns of sales representatives as well?

What if that little trigger could be used to snap a sales representative out of what was soon to be a tension-filled exchange over a couple of thousand dollars of quota retirement? That is how this could be different. That is how this should be different.

Candidly, one of our core guiding principles here at Abstrakt is we want to completely remove the possibility for the initial example from ever being a thing again. It is better for the seller, it is better for the prospect, and it most certainly is better for everyone’s stress levels.

Stack the cards in your favor by leveraging technology. Don’t get stuck in the past by continuing to lean on revenue intelligence technology just because “that’s how it has always been done.”

It is time to evolve the profession of selling by adapting with the advancement of technology.