Plenty of sales tech is out there, and no wonder your sales team can use every advantage. Nowadays, tech is trying to do more than just helping sales reps measure their performance on the hard metrics they’re used to, such as pipeline conversion ratio (or how many deals closed out from how many you’ve generated) or win percentage (sales success rate).
The future of sales technology is not only about sales volume but also about improving sales processes and developing relationships with customers who are ready to buy.
The Role of Signals in Social Media
The use of social media has exploded in recent years, with billions of people worldwide now using Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram each month. Moreover, the number of users on these platforms is expected to increase as they become more mainstream. As a result, companies need to adapt their sales strategies accordingly.
Social media can provide a wealth of information about the target audience and their buying preferences. Still, it’s essential not to overlook how this data can be used with other factors such as speech analytics. This approach allows you to create targeted campaigns that reflect your customers’ needs and interests rather than relying on generic information about your product or service that might not be relevant to everyone involved.
In the past, sales reps could input their conversations into a system and get real-time feedback on how they were doing. This allowed them to adjust their approach and improve their performance. But now, with the advent of social media and virtual assistants, we can move beyond these conversations and look at how people feel about us online.
This is where things get interesting: when we can track what people are saying about us online, we can finally truly understand what our customers want and need from us—and that’s something no other industry has been able to do!
Automation, CRMs, and Other Sales Tech
B2B sales have changed.
As B2B sales professionals, we know how hard it is to keep up with all the latest trends in marketing automation, CRM tools, and other sales technology solutions.
These solutions allow businesses to automate marketing processes, create personalized content for their customers, and measure performance in real time.
What does this mean for business owners? First, it means that the playing field is more level than before. You don’t need a vast budget or army of employees to keep up with your competitors. With these tools, you can manage your entire sales process from start to finish.
Working with Social Signals and Sales Tech
The sales funnel is a powerful tool for companies. It’s a way to organize your workflow that helps you understand where the most critical points of contact are with your customers and how you can move them through the process from interest to sale.
When it works as intended, it helps companies entice more people into their sales process by doing what they’re good at — offering value and providing quality products or services.
But if something goes wrong during this process, it can be disastrous for a company.
You can’t afford to have a “broken” sales funnel for long in the business. If you do, leads will hemorrhage quickly, and you’ll feel like you’re doing something wrong because people who showed interest in your product or service are now gone.
Getting the most out of your sales funnel requires a lot of planning and analysis. But if you don’t have a system in place, you can’t be sure if what you’re doing is working or not.
One way to ensure your sales funnel is working as it should is to look at the numbers. For example, if people sign up for your website but aren’t converting, something isn’t working. This could be because there are too many steps involved in the sales funnel or because there isn’t enough information about what happens next after signing up for a free trial or consultation.
The best way to ensure that your sales funnel is working properly is by using A/B testing software like Optimizely or Unbounce (or even Google Analytics). You can test different versions of landing pages, emails, videos, etc., to see what works best with the audience you are trying to reach.
The next frontier for sales leaders is shifting from sales intelligence to social intelligence.
Instead of focusing on hard data and metrics, we can use subtle social signals to build the intangible emotional bonds that guide most purchase decisions.
Conclusion
The way people buy has changed. As more purchasing decisions are made online, prospects are making the leap to purchase independently rather than through a sales rep.
But while the buying process has changed, the reasons behind it haven’t. Prospects still want to feel like they have a personal connection with the companies they buy from, and that’s where social intelligence comes in.
Social intelligence is the ability to see subtle (and often imperceptible) social signals that can guide an individual’s purchase decisions. It’s about understanding how people interact with each other on social media platforms and using that information to build intangible emotional bonds with prospects that will lead them down a path toward becoming customers.
Social intelligence is something that sales leaders need to understand if they want to build long-term relationships with their customers—and it’s something that can be incredibly effective when used correctly!