It’s no secret that virtual sales have boomed over the past two years. According to Gartner, CSOs expect that over 60% of the sales force will remain virtual permanently. Even for B2B sales, virtual selling is the standard: 80% of B2B buyers now prefer virtual methods of sales interaction. Virtual selling has become the new normal, making it imperative that sales leaders ramp up their sales teams to excel at selling through virtual channels.
For those accustomed to traditional in-person sales methods, switching to a primarily virtual approach can be tough. Although it may seem intimidating, virtual selling provides benefits you don’t see in traditional sales environments. To help you make virtual selling a more standardized and lucrative process, we’re sharing three of our best tips for virtual sales in 2022. Let’s begin!
1. Best Practices for Transitioning from Traditional Selling to Virtual Selling
Here are some tips to help you make the transition smooth as your team moves from traditional selling to virtual selling:
Engage in Virtual Sales Training
Even your most seasoned reps will need additional training to learn virtual best practices. Providing virtual sales training during the onboarding process and continuing your team’s training over time allows them to stay up-to-date on virtual selling strategies and best practices. By providing formal training, reps may feel more prepared for virtual customer interactions. It’s a good idea to introduce sales consultants into your virtual sales training process to empower your reps as they continue evolving into the digital age.
Leverage the Right Tools and Equipment
One of the best ways to ensure you stay ahead of the curve is by providing your reps with state-of-the-art sales enablement tech. As sales go digital, sales tech stacks need to become just as sophisticated as the rest of your equipment — or your business will get left behind. This includes everything from sales content management systems to strong communication channels for reps to use when not interacting face-to-face. Tech can even automate some of the most time-consuming administrative tasks, like CRM data input, to help your team get back to revenue-generating activities.
Focus on Buyer Engagement
In traditional sales environments, reps harness personal connections to engage the buyer face-to-face. Without the personal connections reps make during in-person sales meetings, buyer engagement has become more difficult to achieve. While selling virtually, reps should approach each meeting with creative ways to engage the buyer, such as live product demonstrations, interactive sales presentations, and more. This allows them to better engage the buyer at every step of the journey. When building an engaging sales strategy, consulting expertise can help your reps leverage various sales strategies to better engage buyers and boost win rates.
2. Track Sales Rep Performance to Measure the Effectiveness of Virtual Selling
One of the greatest benefits to virtual selling lies in the ability to track sales performances more accurately through seller data. This data enables you to make data-driven decisions that strengthen individual reps’ performance. With sales enablement technology, you can also easily track metrics to better inform and fine-tune your sales strategy. Below, learn just a couple of the metrics you can track to ensure effective virtual selling:
Virtual Selling Sales Efficiency
Sales efficiency refers to the amount of revenue generated for every $1 spent on sales and marketing over a given period of time. This can help you determine the number of sales activities per account, which provides insight into your team’s performances. You can calculate your sales efficiency by dividing your total revenue by the total amount spent on sales and marketing. For instance, if you generate $1.2 million in Q1, and you spent $450k on sales and marketing, you’d have an efficiency of 2.6. Ideally, this metric exceeds 1 — meaning that for each dollar spent, you’re getting at least that much in returns.
When sales efficiency drops below 1, you’re spending more money on the upkeep of sales and marketing than your sales team can generate. This indicates that your team struggles to sell efficiently with the current resources available, so it’s likely time to take a closer look at your virtual selling processes. With the help of sales consultants, you can create an expert sales strategy that trims your sales expenses while boosting your team’s efficiency and sales effectiveness.
Learn more about important sales metrics and how to calculate them by downloading Effective Sales Operations Management: Key Performance Indicators to Consistently Monitor and Track Sales Success.
Time Spent on Virtual Selling Administration
Administrative activities quickly eat into valuable time reps could spend selling. These activities include everything from inputting CRM data to locating the right sales enablement content to share with buyers. By tracking the time reps spend on tedious administrative tasks, you can discern precisely where the most time goes — and find a content management solution to give your team that time back. Hiring sales consultants can help you discern precisely where your sales team can cut down on time and streamline those processes to use your reps’ time more wisely.
For example, say that after implementing sales enablement technology to track sellers’ time spent on administrative tasks, you see that reps spend several hours a day locating relevant sales collateral. To mitigate this, you expand your sales enablement tech stack to include content management. This allows reps to quickly and easily locate the information they need within a single source of truth. All that time spent digging through email chains and confusing folders disappears overnight — and your reps can spend more time focusing on sales.
3. Personalize Sales Experiences
With virtual selling, personalizing your sales approach to the individual buyer has become easier than ever. Personalizing sales involves tailoring a sales pitch or offer so that it addresses a buyer’s pain points, needs, and specific buyer journey. Roughly 63% of buyers claim they would think more positively of a brand if it gave them content that was more valuable, interesting, or relevant. This shows that personalizing content to appeal to your prospects’ most pressing pain points can help your reps close deals more effectively.
Final Thoughts
With virtual selling only growing in popularity, adapting and changing to the new normal is key to staying ahead of your competitors. With SFE Partners’ expert consulting services, you can build and refine your sales team’s virtual selling capabilities and processes to boost win rates and drive revenue.
Start building, refining, and training your sales team on virtual best practices. Get in touch with us today.
