Proche Solutions

ALT Hello Everyone, Happy Bhogi, Lohri, Magh Bihu, Maghi, Makar Sankranti, Pongal, Sankranti, Suggi, Uttarayana,... Celebrate everyday as Proche harvests qualified leads for your business.

ALT Wish You & Your Business a Happy Diwali & Prosperous times

ALT Most salespersons struggle to sell outcomes because of their inability understand and relate to the business, they just push the sale by pitching product benefits and features. For better success at sales take time to understand their business, decision maker & your champions’ business and careers goals. Sell tangible and bottom-line results for the business, decision maker and the champion. Example: Proche helps ‘B2B Business’ grow their sales pipeline by 2x times, increase sales by 25% or more and save 25% or more on marketing spend. With Proche, ‘Head of Business and their team’ focus on sales closure, meet the sales revenue goals and maximise their variable pay. ‘Head of Inside Sales / Marketing’ harness Proche Solutions’ marketing and sales development expertise to deliver qualified sales leads, scale market outreach activities and gain market insights.

ALT Every salesperson now and then encounters a no-show - people cancel or simply decide not to show-up for the meeting. No shows are irritants, they demotivate and makes salesperson inefficient. Salespersons not only sell the product but they also need to sell the value of meeting. Set meeting expectations and ensure customer recognises the importance of the meeting to them individually and their business. Also ensure continuity by scheduling the meeting within a short-time period (i.e., in few-days not weeks) while your previous meeting & value assertions are still top of their mind. Use reminder system to ensure you remind them on their commitment to the meeting via SMS / email / messaging tool (a simple SMS in ‘the evening before’ or ‘early in the morning of’ the meeting day has always worked for us.) Lastly always have plan-B to make best of the free time due to a no-show – do something productive or strategic - build on your sales pipeline; reach out & network; read; write.

ALT While B2B product/service characters is not similar to consumer good/services, B2B sales organisation should strive to equal the consumer goods & services buying behaviour – by making candid information on the product is available; data on all compliance, standards and performance is made available as boilerplate; eliminate or keep the number of variables and dependencies to a small number in the commercials.

ALT B2B sales requires you to prepare for the meeting. Prepare a questionnaire ahead of time to better understand your prospective customers’ business goals and needs. I recently happened to be on the other end of the sales desk with an SDR, while I empathise with them and their objective to establish business opportunity by quizzing me, before investing any of their time. But as a business I was disappointed with them. The prospective customer has agreed to meet you because they believe you offer an expert solution to address their business need. Instead of just shooting questions like a quiz master; demonstrate your expertise and while discussing your solution capabilities, learn about their business goals and needs. You are bound to gain their confidence and position yourself to win their business.

ALT Most sales personal end up spending more than necessary time during sales calls. Fair amount of the time is spent on topics unrelated to the product you indent to sell. Respect your prospects time and also your own time. Keep your sales calls short, get to the point and accomplish the same work in less time. CxOs value time and are happy to work with sales personal who recognise their time and get to the point. With increasing remote working, decision makers are now even more mindful of meeting time and throughput. Build a game plan for each sales call and end each call with clear next actions. If you used to take 60 mins for a sales call, build plan to make it a 30 min sales call – it looks difficult but, is easily do able if you cut majority of insignificant talking.

ALT B2B sales are not transactional in nature (i.e., win the sale without much thought to the customer’s needs or the longer-term). B2B sales is relational, requiring you to invest time, being patient to build long term relationship, good understanding of customers’ business culture and their needs & wants. Investing effort in building relationship shows your permanence & gain trust for long term association with the business rather than for just the sale. Be sensitive to customers’ business culture, be neutral and keep away from controversial topics like politics & beliefs – food and sports (Cricket) always work. Building relationship allows you to be part of customers’ purchase process at an early stage, explain what difference you bring & why you command the price. B2B purchase process involves multiple stake holders, each of them working on multiple business priorities and timelines - being patient allows you to work to win their business at the pace that customer is comfortable with.

ALT Many B2B sales opportunities do not materialise simply because salesperson is unable to clearly articulate the value proposition early in the sales cycle. By the time you realise, and course correct it you may have not just lost the business but also time and effort invested. When engaging with prospective customer, make sure value proposition of your product is clearly stated up front & early on in the sales cycle - clarify what sets your product apart rest and what value it brings to the customers business. Engage with prospective customer to make sure they understand the problem, the solution you offer and the upside in solving the problem.

ALT Most common challenge for B2B salesperson is to overcome obstacles to purchase at customer end. The only means to overcome these obstacles is by being always aware of where the customer is in their journey to purchase your product. The information on the present status of their purchase journey will help you spot problems that customer can encounter and actively implement interventions to ensure swift and easy purchase. Map the customer purchase journey along with the customer and actively engage with customer to track their progress by gaining a simple yes/no assertion in writing from them to avoid any possible misinterpretation. Every positive assertion is a step towards deepening commitment to moving away from present status and making the purchase. Put together the process that identifies duration & what customer stakeholder (role/designation) is expected to do at each stage of purchase journey. Equip every salesperson in your team can validate the progress in customer purchase jou

ALT A business purchase is always a well informed decision. Maximise your returns on spend by investing in educating your target customers, continuous customer education effort is the fuel to your business growth. Educating customers’ demands you to investment time and money to educate your sales, marketing & service teams. Once your team has acquired the knowledge, ensure you give it away to your target customers for free. Give access to all your product knowledge, ways to solve business problems, customer success stories, features, capabilities & limitations of your product. Education empowers customer to use the product efficiently and effectively; reduce customer complaints and make them adept is resolving problems on their own; and set realistic expectations on the product – what is possible and what is not. The open sharing of knowledge and experience helps build & strengthen trust between customer and yourself, your business, and the product. This trust is the foundation of high NPS

ALT To lower barriers to a sale, identify and work closely with the customer on their key business priorities. Practice on discovering the key business priorities of the customer, if needed plan and schedule meetings with them with objective to identify the business goal on which you can collaborate with them for mutual benefit. Working closely with the customer also allows you to be familiar with their culture and practices and establish trust. Confidence gained by customer while working with you to achieve their business goals; lower or even eliminate any challenges that may arise in the sell and adoption of your product/service.

ALT With technology customer is always aware. In-person sales meeting (virtual or physical) allows for a more natural and organic conversations and salesperson needs to be always ready to adapt to unforeseen circumstances. If salesperson is not prepared the meeting can take a worse turn due an unexpected question or voice of an objection. Being adaptable is not natural, nurture yourself. Practice for adaptability - study, prepare and practice for meetings ahead of time, learn everything about the person(s), company and business. The more prepared you are the more likely you will be able to answer questions, anticipate and react to unexpected turns in meeting.