Sales Leaders Virtual Event Round Up with Paul Thomson
Everyone is adapting to this virtual world and we’re following suit! After sadly postponing our IT Sales Leaders events in London and Scotland, our Managing Director, Paul, is running virtual events. These events will cover any challenges you can think of surrounding remote working and sales teams starting with mental health in sales teams, challenges in engaging new customers, and how teams have changed their approaches.
We’ve seen great success with our previous events and they’re a sure way of getting ahead of the game in developing your sales teams. Read about our last event in Manchester here.
What have you done differently with regards to improving mental health of your sales team during lockdown or what does your business already do in this area?
- “Wellness Meetings” on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Monday being a catch up, Wednesday being a “lunch and learn” with a different speaker each week, and some Friday fun for the last meeting of the week. Friday meeting has taken different forms – quizzes, interview someone in their house, tour of their workspace, and people in the team performing a ‘show’ for 5 minutes!
- Encouraging the team to take breaks and annual leave to relax and recharge.
- The diary fills up with back to back conference calls so taking time to relax from that is important.
- Mental first-aiders that focus on the wellbeing of the team.
- Regular 1-2-1s with individuals to get anything off their chest and being open with them first to make them feel comfortable.
- Avoiding putting pressure on people with regular questions such as “what’s your forecast?” – now’s not the time.
- Introducing 3 morning pledges to the team that outline how they want to spend their day. The intent isn’t to vilify anyone or to rigidly review the pledges, it’s to help the team think about the objectives that they want to achieve throughout the day.
Salespeople can’t get out of the house which can be a problem with engagement – how are you finding it that you can’t meet customers face to face?
- Generally, salespeople are finding it easier to connect directly with clients and customers from catching them at home. The more you speak to someone the more you find out about them and their lives and the relationship naturally builds.
- Not meeting face to face was more of an issue in the first couple of weeks when all of this was new but sales teams have adapted to setting an agenda for a call or meeting, ensuring they have the right priority and focus for the call.
- Preparation and planning are key – articulating to a client or customer how they’ve built a plan and a framework which has seen more collaborative responses. As a result of this, relationships have been stronger than ever demonstrating that if you get your approach right you see the results.
How are your customers/buyers reacting and changing as a result of Covid-19 and how have you changed your approach/sales process?
- Some potential customers are concerned about the timing of starting with a new software, product, etc. but teams have developed a series of responses to promote the timing and articulate the “why” case to buy now.
- Some sectors are seeing more business than ever. For example, one event attendee’s SaaS organisation has skyrocketed due to them focusing on eCommerce and building digital apps. While their pipeline initially dried up, they adapted their methodology to cater to the current market and now busier than they’ve ever been.
- Customers have attending webinars despite already purchasing the product – they’re just interested in the organisation and appreciated the webinars.
- Content is key – this isn’t the time to sell, it’s a time to provide help forums to support each other through this.
We look forward to the next event and more fantastic and helpful ideas from some of the top sales leaders!
