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What Is Status Quo Bias in Sales and Marketing?

The post What Is Status Quo Bias in Sales and Marketing? by Anton Rius appeared first on Corporate Visions.

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What Is Status Quo Bias?

Status Quo Bias is defined as a person’s innate preference for not doing something different from what they’re doing today.

Over the years, a number of psychological studies have shown that when faced with a decision, the majority of people tend to stick with their status quo. And most of the time, you aren’t even aware of how this bias affects your decisions.

Why does it happen? The simple answer is that people
naturally view change as costly, unsafe, and risky. If the perceived benefits
of a new or alternative solution don’t outweigh the perceived costs of changing
their status quo, people tend to take no action to change. They prefer instead
to continue on the path they’re already on—even if the alternative is
objectively better.

Decision-making science has shown that Status Quo Bias is closely related to another cognitive bias known as Loss Aversion—a concept that was popularized by Nobel Prize-winning researchers Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.

Loss Aversion research found that the potential for loss
stands out more in peoples’ minds than the potential for gain. And people are
twice as motivated to make a decision to avoid a loss than to achieve a gain.

At its core, Status Quo Bias is about safety. Whether you
realize it or not, you are inherently biased to take the path of least
resistance in your decision-making. It’s much easier—and much safer—to stay
with your current way of doing things than to take a risk on something new. And
the same is true for your customers.

How Does Status Quo Bias Apply to Sales and Marketing?

In a sales and marketing context, Status Quo Bias is a
powerful force that can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. If you
understand how your buyers are framing their decision to change, versus staying
with their status quo, you’re more likely to persuade them to change, choose
you, and stay with you when your competitors come knocking at their door.

But how you manage your buyer’s Status Quo Bias changes with
the situation at hand.

In customer acquisition scenario, you need to disrupt and
defeat your buyer’s status quo to convince prospects to change and choose you.
But in a renewal or expansion scenario, research shows that a disruptive
approach will backfire. You actually need to defend your position as your
customers’ status quo and reinforce the relationship.

With this in mind, it’s important to understand the deeper causes of Status Quo Bias. Then, you’ll know how it affects your buyer’s purchasing decisions across the entire Customer Deciding Journey.

The Four Causes of Status Quo Bias

In his study “The Psychology of Doing Nothing,” research psychologist Christopher Anderson details four causes of Status Quo Bias.

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1. Preference Stability

When people form an opinion or preference about a situation,
they don’t like to change their mind. In fact, people filter out and discount
information that runs counter to their opinion. If a customer’s preferences change
less often, or remain static, they’re more likely to choose the status quo and
stick with what they’re doing today. Conversely, if you destabilize their
preferences, you increase their openness to change.

2. Anticipated Regret/Blame

The possibility of regret brings up all sorts of negative emotions
such as fear, dread, and anxiety. While the consequences of actual regret will
play out in the future, the emotional experience of regret takes place in the
present. Choosing the status quo may decrease the feelings of anticipated regret
because there’s less risk involved, and therefore less of a chance that the
decision maker is blamed for the negative repercussions of that decision.

3. Cost of Action/Change

Changing the status quo often involves a cost of some
kind—the transactional costs associated with the change, or the transitional
resourcing costs of changing to something new. Change seems risky or costly,
while sticking with the status quo registers as either neutral or even
beneficial—even in the face of contrary evidence. Even when no explicit costs
are associated with switching, uncertainty can stall the decision from moving
forward.

4. Selection Difficulty

When prospects and customers are overwhelmed by too many
options, they suffer from “choice overload.” This amplifies their tendency to
view change as complex and costly. Decisions may also seem more difficult if
there isn’t enough value associated with one choice versus another.

When you’re the outsider challenging your prospect’s status
quo, your sales and marketing messages must show enough value to disrupt these
four causes. But when you’re the insider, defending your incumbent position to
existing customers, you need to defend them.

How to Overcome Status Quo Bias

Differentiation is one of the most daunting challenges
salespeople and marketers face. Unfortunately, many organizations rely on “best
practices” that actually have the opposite effect—you end up sounding exactly
like everyone else.

When you sound like everyone else, you play into your
buyer’s Selection Difficulty, which only reinforces their Status Quo Bias. Ironically,
this lack of differentiation is quite common. In fact, 60 percent of deals
in the pipeline are lost to “no decision” rather than to competitors.

If you truly want to differentiate your value, you need to tell a powerful, disruptive story that inverts your prospect’s perceptions about staying the course versus changing. You need to show them how their current situation is actually unsafe and unsustainable, and that by not changing, they’re putting themselves at greater risk of not achieving their objectives.

This Why Change story starts by introducing Unconsidered
Needs—challenges, shortcomings, or missed opportunities your prospect doesn’t
yet know about, but are holding them back from their most important business
goals. Then, in the Why You conversation, you can connect the Unconsidered Needs
you’ve identified to your differentiated strengths, which are uniquely suited
to resolve those risks.

How to Reinforce Status Quo Bias

Your demand generation and customer acquisition messages
should drive big changes and mentality shifts in your prospects. But “big
changes” aren’t always the objective when you’re trying to persuade your existing
customers to expand or renew with you.

In fact, using the same provocative approach that works so well in a customer acquisition scenario actually backfires in a customer renewal one. A B2B sales study conducted with an academic research partner found that:

A messaging approach that reinforces an
existing customer’s natural Status Quo Bias increased intention to renew by 13
percent relative to the provocative messages in the test. The provocative messages increased the
likelihood of a customer switching by 10 percent relative to the status quo
reinforcement message.

Certain customer conversations require more finesse than
others. For example, your expansion conversations need to walk a thin line
between persuading your customer to buy more while convincing them to stay with
your solution in the process.

Our research also found that during upsell conversations,
reinforcing the emotional aspects of the customer partnership was most
effective in making change seem safe to your customers, as long as they’re
changing with you, not away from you.

Buyers are naturally more inclined to remain with their
status quo than change to a new solution. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t
make every effort to defend your incumbent advantage. Your customers are
constantly being pitched by outside vendors who are eager to win their
business. Don’t give them the opportunity.

Winning on Both Sides of the Status Quo

Nearly 60 percent of marketing and sales leaders believe the provocative messaging and content suited to new customer acquisition is still applicable in a renewal context. And they choose to use the same messaging approach, regardless of customer relationship.

These organizations are doing themselves a disservice. But
you don’t have to.

Think beyond the industry’s so-called “best practices” and consider
the deeper undercurrent of behavioral motivators that are driving your sales
and marketing conversations. When you understand key concepts like Status Quo
Bias, you can begin to create tailored messages and develop the situational
skills needed to match your buyer’s decision-making process on both the
acquisition and expansion sides of the customer lifecycle.

Get our new e-book, Winning the Four Value Conversations, to learn the research-backed messaging techniques and situational sales skills you need to master every stage of the Customer Deciding Journey.

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The Deciding Journey: Four Value Conversations You Need to Master

The post The Deciding Journey: Four Value Conversations You Need to Master by Tim Riesterer appeared first on Corporate Visions.

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When you think about the customer journey, you might recall the stages in a typical buying journey model, like Awareness, Consideration, and Decision. But in practice, the B2B customer buying journey doesn’t follow such a broad or predictable sales process.

When you label a prospect as being in the “Consideration” stage, for example, what does that really tell you? Nothing about their motivations. Nothing about their needs. And nothing about how you should approach that sales conversation or how you can provide them value.

So, what happens? If you’re like
most sales organizations, you approach the conversation as a “trusted advisor,”
asking your customers lots of questions, using those questions to diagnose the
customer’s needs, and then presenting a solution that fits the criteria.

This approach does you and your
customer a disservice—and it’s the opposite of what it takes to master sales
conversations today. To be of value to your buyers, it’s no longer sufficient
to say, “Tell me what you want; I’ll get it for you.” Buyers now want
salespeople who will tell them what they should want. They want you to
do the heavy lifting of sifting through all the information that’s out there,
and to deliver insight into what they’re missing that will improve their
performance.

To rise to the demands of what great selling requires now, and in the future, it’s not enough to simply follow your documented sales process, checking the boxes along the way. You need to understand and master a new, diverse set of conversation skills and sales techniques that go beyond the traditional customer journey.

You need to understand and respond to the decisions your buyers are weighing in key situational moments across their Customer Deciding Journey.

The Deciding Journey: A Customer Journey Map Backed by Science



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In the Customer Deciding Journey, your buyers are asking a series of key questions they need to answer to meet specific business goals. The unique pressures of each of these buying moments call for specific stories and situational skills—tailored to meet the demands of the decision at hand.

Create Value™ – Answer Why Change and
Why You by telling a compelling enough story to defeat the status quo
and differentiate your solution from the competition to create more qualified
pipeline. Elevate Value™ – Answer Why Invest and
Why Now by putting together a meaningful business case that helps
executive decision-makers justify releasing budget based on your proposal.Capture Value™ – Answer Why Pay
and Why Sign to expand the size of your deals, avoid unnecessary
discounting, protect your pricing, and maximize your profits.Expand Value™ – Answer Why Stay, Why
Pay More, Why Evolve, and Why Forgive to defend your incumbent
advantage with existing customers and keep and grow their business.



Create Value™

Sales is more about change management than it is about selling. That’s because 60 percent of qualified opportunities end in “no decision.” As the outsider, you’re fighting inertia—or Status Quo Bias. To vanquish this force, you need to disrupt its causes, drive the need for change, and create a buying vision that favors you over your competition. That requires articulating compelling answers for two pivotal questions your prospects are asking: Why Change (why should I do something different?) and Why You (why should I do it with you?).

Elevate Value™

What about when you need to justify the value of your solution or service to busy executive decision makers? Why should they learn more about your solution (Why Pay), and why should they buy into your story and business case—and purchase now (Why Now)? In these conversations, your goal is to demonstrate the urgency for change by highlighting the risks affecting their business, introducing Unconsidered Needs, and providing a solution that will have a positive and tangible impact on their business.

Capture Value™

As deals advance, it becomes
harder to handle pricing pressures and avoid unnecessary discounting.
Salespeople need the training to deal with that pressure and close deals
profitably. In complex selling scenarios, they also need to learn techniques
for guiding conversations through multi-party decision processes and avoiding
any “last mile” challenges to reaching agreement. At this stage, you must avoid
“value leaks” by using Pivotal Agreements—value-based exchanges that you can
use to advance your deals while protecting your value.

Expand Value™

The skills highlighted above
address the sales inflection points when you need to defeat the status quo and
acquire new customers. But what about when you are the status
quo? That involves a drastically different buyer psychology and a dedicated
message development and skills training approach—research proves it. When you
need to retain customers (Why Stay), get them to pay more for your
solution (Why Pay More), expand with them (Why Evolve), or recover
from a service failure (Why Forgive), you need a tailored strategy that
meets to the demands of these moments.

A Better Approach to Selling Across the Customer Journey

One-size-fits-all approaches to your messaging and skills training won’t hold up across the range of decisions you need to influence in each of these critical deciding moments. Today, great selling requires breaking free from the antiquated idea of a customer journey, and getting your customer acquisition and expansion strategies on the right side of the research.

Get our new sales e-book, Winning the Four Value Conversations, to learn the research-backed messaging techniques and situational sales skills you need to master every stage of the Customer Deciding Journey.

Thank you for reading this post from Corporate Visions - Differentiate Your Marketing Messages and Sales Conversations.

Sales Value Proposition: How to Build and Deliver a Powerful SVP

The post Sales Value Proposition: How to Build and Deliver a Powerful SVP by Tim Riesterer appeared first on Corporate Visions.

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Your sales value proposition, or SVP, is a powerful messaging tool for communicating the unique value of the solution you’re selling. Unfortunately, most value propositions in sales fall short of delivering on that promise.

According to research by SiriusDecisions, only 10 percent of executives think sales calls provide enough value to warrant the time they spent on them.

A similar study by Forrester Research determined that only 15 percent of sales calls add enough value. That means 85-90 percent of sales calls are perceived as communicating no value—a staggering failure rate by any measure.

In short, most SVPs are poorly conceived and ineffectively delivered. So, what are some common mistakes to avoid? And how can you build a truly unique and highly effective value proposition of your own?

Common Value Proposition Mistakes

If your company is like most, you’ve carefully crafted your
value proposition and you’ve trained your salespeople on how to use it.  But considering the earlier statistics, the
majority of SVPs fail to actually deliver any value to the customer.

Salespeople fail to articulate value when they commit the
three deadly sins of sales messaging:

Providing too much informationNot describing value from the buyer’s
perspectiveFailing to identify what’s different about them

A lot of SVP development advice reads like Mad Libs for business—a fill-in-the-blank formula or template that looks something like this: 

[Product] is a [description] that [what it does] for [target audience] who need to [do something/solve a problem]. Unlike [alternative], it [differentiator].

But a formulaic approach creates a formulaic result.

Alternatively, some companies take a persona-based approach,
where they define characters (personas) with names, demographic attributes,
attitudes, and behaviors to help frame and target messages, including their value
proposition for sales. But when used as a superficial profiling approach,
personas can lead your messaging astray.

The result? Everyone follows the same approach, so
everyone’s SVP sounds the same.

To stand out, you need to understand why your value proposition is coming up short. And that means changing the way you build and deliver it.

How to Build a Powerful Sales Value Proposition

There’s a better way to create a value proposition that actually communicates value and sets you apart from your competition. And it starts by finding your Value Wedge.

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Most people build messages that unwittingly put them in the center of this Venn diagram. This area of Value Parity is the overlap between you and your competitors. Focusing here won’t communicate any real value for the customer—you just end up saying a lot of “me too” statements about your offerings that sound like everyone else.

Your best opportunity for differentiation is to focus on
what you can do for the prospect that’s different from what
the competition can do. This is your Value Wedge—this is where you find your
distinct point of view.

To create a sales value proposition that sits in your
Value Wedge, you need to:

1. Identify Previously Unconsidered Needs

Show your prospects a previously unconsidered, undervalued,
or unmet need that’s relevant to them and puts their status quo in jeopardy.
Revealing this inconsistency in their current model, in a way that’s different
than what they’ve heard before, can motivate them to care about doing something
different from what they’re doing today.

2. Attach the New Needs to Your Unique Strengths

Tell a compelling story that clearly shows the contrast
between the gaps and deficiencies in the way your prospect is doing things
today, and how those issues will be resolved with your new approach and unique
strengths.

3. Defend Your Story

Arm yourself with proof points of times when comparable
companies have identified the stated challenges, agreed to make the changes you
recommend, and come out the other side with documented success. These proof
points help defend your story as being different from your competitors and
underscores the positive business impact you’re claiming.

When you create a value proposition that’s unique to you, important
and relevant to the customer, and defensible, you have a powerful value
proposition that actually communicates real value to the
prospect.

In fact, the Value Wedge is designed to overcome all three
of the deadly sales messaging sins mentioned earlier in this article. It helps
you identify and focus on the unique strengths that only you can offer your
buyer.

How to Deliver Your Value Proposition More Effectively

Once you have a well-crafted value proposition for your
sales conversations, you’re still only halfway done. You need to
understand how and—more importantly—when to deliver it.

Most salespeople lead with a sales pitch value proposition
right away. But most prospects aren’t ready to hear it yet. Before you start
talking about why they should choose you—your value proposition—you need to
establish a Buying Vision which makes the case for why they need to change.

Why? Because your competitors aren’t the only thing standing
in the way of your sale. Studies show that at least 60 percent of deals
in the pipeline are lost to “no decision” rather than to competitors.
Most customers you engage with are still trying to determine whether they
really need to do anything different.

This means that despite what your buyers are telling you
they want, you need to take a step back and make sure your prospect:

Is convinced that they can no longer stick with
their status quo Understands the needs and requirements they
should be considering Appreciates the urgency of the situation, and Knows what capabilities and strengths they
should be looking for

To make it happen, you need to grab the prospect’s attention, challenge their current assumptions, and persuade them to consider making a change. Only then—when your prospect cares enough to do something different—can you effectively introduce your value proposition and start leading them on a path to choosing you.

Want to improve how you develop and deliver your sales messages? With Corporate Visions sales training and messaging solutions, you can arm your sales reps with the research-backed selling techniques they need to effectively create value and close more deals across the entire customer lifecycle.

Thank you for reading this post from Corporate Visions - Differentiate Your Marketing Messages and Sales Conversations.

How Science Can Save the Lost Art of Direct Response Copywriting

The post How Science Can Save the Lost Art of Direct Response Copywriting by Steve Jones appeared first on Corporate Visions.

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Back in my day, I had to walk ten miles uphill each way in three feet of snow to get to and from school (even though I lived in the California Bay Area). When I finally got home, I’d have to listen to music on a record player with vinyl albums that warped, scratched, and skipped (oh, sorry—for some reason that’s cool again).

Anyway, the other thing I remember about olden times was that demand generation and marketing campaign professionals used to be experts at direct response copywriting!

We didn’t have 7,000 different marketing technologies to master. We couldn’t assume if the campaign was programmed right, it would work. We focused on writing a punchy, compelling story with a powerful call-to-action, walked to our nearest mailbox or fax machine, and sent that message out.

Do I sound like a cranky old marketer yet? Well, that’s how
I choose to remember the “good ol’ days.” In reality, my wonderful mother drove
me to school every day and when I got home, I actually spent hours listening to
state-of-the-art sounds on clear, indestructible CDs. (It’s fair to say that as
you get older, you tend to exaggerate most things from your past). 

Unfortunately for many demand generation professionals today,
their inability to write a compelling, cohesive story is no exaggeration.
Somewhere along the way, direct response copywriting became an underdeveloped
and underappreciated marketing skill. But it’s not necessarily their fault.

Keeping Up with Complexity in Direct Response Copywriting

Campaign Managers’ jobs have become increasingly complex
over the years. They need to keep up with ever-changing marketing automation
solutions, CRM systems, social media monitors, buyer intent data, digital
marketing platforms, analytics tools, and much more. And on top of that, you’re
likely asking them to carry some form of “quota.” Maybe not a bookings quota
like a sales rep, but make no mistake about it—most have Inquiry, MQL, SAL, and
SQL targets they absolutely must hit.

With so much being asked of them, it’s no wonder campaign
managers don’t spend time honing their writing skills. But in the face of ever-increasing
pipeline goals and revenue targets, the question becomes, can they afford
not to?

Don’t get me wrong; technology is critical. It enables your campaign
managers to work more efficiently, allowing them to get in front of more
qualified buyers than ever before. But if you aren’t telling the right story,
at the right time, in the most compelling way possible, then technology really only
helps you get your bad message out to the exact prospects you simply cannot
afford to whiff on.

If you really want to generate more marketing qualified
leads and build a growing pipeline, don’t look for yet another shiny new
software tool—get back to basics. Help your demand generation team improve their
results with these copywriting tips.

Science-Backed Direct Response Copywriting Tips



“You” phrase your campaigns

Can a single word impact how your prospects react to your
messages? Specifically, should you use the word “we” or “you” to in your
campaign messages?

Even the most seasoned writers might deliberately use the
word “we” to establish a sense of shared purpose with their audience. And in
theory, it makes sense. You try and show that you understand your prospect’s
world and you can be trusted as a member of their tribe.

But according to our research, we-phrased messages are considered less thought-provoking and less engaging than you-phrased demand generation messages. The study found that your prospects feel more personally responsible for solving the identified problem from a you-phrased message, as opposed to a we-phrased message.

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This is crucial because you want your prospect to take ownership of the issue and be willing to champion the opportunity. So, the next time you write an email, write with you-phrasing. It’s a small change. But it makes a big difference.

Learn more about you-phrasing in our State of the Conversation Report,The Impact of You-phrasing on Customer Conversations.

Get smart about personalization

With more sophisticated technology driving an ever-swelling sea of customer data, you may have a natural temptation—even an organizational imperative—to use it all, every time. After all, those systems cost money and promised big ROI. But at what point do the scales tip back? Is there such a thing as too much campaign personalization, specifically as it pertains to Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?

A recent Corporate Visions field test shows that you don’t
need to hyper-personalize every email campaign. According to the study results,
open rates were higher when using more personal details about the prospect, but
the opposite was true for click-throughs. Personalizing
by industry (without personal details) returned a 24 percent
higher CTR than the company + personal details treatment.

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By focusing on the approaches that drive the most meaningful
results at the first touch, you can scale more quickly and effortlessly—while
delivering even better results to your sales teams.

Read our e-book, Putting Personalization to the (Field) Test, for more details and example emails from the study.

More Quick Tips

In addition to the research above, you can also brush up on
these direct response copywriting tips.

Lean into the tension. Highlight common trends and
challenges that keep your prospects from achieving their goals

Make your copy strong and active. Use powerful verbs
and active voice. 

Connect their pains to your solutions. Create a
coherent transition from your prospects’ pains to how your solutions can help solve
them.

Don’t be afraid to sound human. Avoid filler words,
fluff, and buzzwords.

Close with clear next steps. Make sure you close by
giving your prospect a clear, well-defined, and—most importantly—EASY way to
take the next step. 

In Conclusion

As technology progresses, campaign managers can generate leads more efficiently than ever. But direct response copywriting is still at the core of every successful demand generation campaign. If your campaign managers aren’t telling a compelling story that makes your prospect want to take immediate action, you’re likely missing out on leads, pipeline, and ultimately, revenue.

With Corporate Visions skills for marketers, you can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your messages, content, and campaigns through decision science-based consulting and training programs:

Tested and Proven Messaging Skills Training for Marketers Message Consulting and Marketing Content DevelopmentSales Message Launch, Practice, Coaching, and Certification

Contact Us to Learn More.

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20 Selling Techniques That Will Actually Improve How You Sell

The post 20 Selling Techniques That Will Actually Improve How You Sell by Tim Riesterer appeared first on Corporate Visions.

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Who couldn’t use an arsenal of effective selling techniques? If you truly want to improve how you sell, look no further than this research-backed collection of the very best B2B sales techniques, as well as four ineffective (but popular) ideas for how to sell.

Keep reading for the complete list of selling techniques. Or, you can jump to a specific section using one of these links:

Sales Prospecting TechniquesSelling Techniques That Create ValuePhone Sales TechniquesSales Closing TechniquesHow to Sell to Existing Customers and Expand ValueSales Techniques That Don’t Work



Sales Prospecting Techniques

Grabbing your buyer’s attention and opening the door to more
fruitful sales conversations is the key to effective sales prospecting. Use these
three sales prospecting techniques to build your pipeline and have more
productive conversations with your prospects.

Make Your Customer the Hero

There’s a large body of research about the cognitive effects of stories for motivating behavior change. And in a selling context, stories are a powerful way to illustrate the value of your solution to your prospect. Every story needs a hero—someone you relate to as they overcome obstacles on their journey toward happily ever after. But who’s the hero of your story? If it’s your company or your solution, you need to rework your story and make the customer the hero.

A typical hero’s journey goes something like this:

The hero is a character who struggles with a
problem The hero meets a wise mentor who understands their
problem This mentor gives the hero new insight, provides
a plan, and drives them to actionArmed with newfound confidence and a plan, the hero
faces their problem The hero overcomes the problem, realizes their
potential, and reaches their goal

In your story, the customer is the one who needs to save the
day, not you. Your role is that of the mentor. You’re there to help your
customers see what has changed in their world and how they can adapt to better
survive and thrive.

Don’t Over-Personalize Your Campaigns

Most marketers and salespeople believe the more personalized
your outreach, the better your results. But you may be surprised to discover
that highly personalized outreach isn’t as effective as less time-intensive
personalization.

In a recent B2B personalization study, we tested the effectiveness of four different email personalization methods with 7000 prospects to determine which treatment worked best. We used four different personalization conditions—industry only, company only, industry + personal details, and company + personal details. The results? While open rates were higher when using more personal details, the opposite was true for click-throughs. Personalizing by industry (without personal details) returned a 24 percent higher click-through rate than the company + personal details treatment.

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People may initially open an email that appears to speak
directly to them. But they’ll feel let down when they discover it’s only a
clever gimmick to grab their attention. On the other hand, when you share a
story about how a similar company struggled and solved a common industry
concern, your prospect is better able to project themselves into the story.
They may even be eager to find out what happened next.

Learn more about the most effective approach to B2B marketing personalization in our e-book, It’s Not Business, it’s Personal.

Use “You” Phrasing, Not “We” Phrasing

It seems well-intentioned and inherently logical: Show your customers you understand their world by positioning yourself as a member of their tribe, hoping to establish a collaborative experience. The word “we” implies the supplier and the buyer are “in it together.” The problem is, using this type of we-phrasing is actually hurting your ability to move your prospect to take action.

Corporate Visions ran two studies to test the effectiveness of you-phrasing versus we-phrasing. The studies found that you-phrasing is exponentially more effective at moving prospects to take personal responsibility and feel like they must take action. You-phrasing compels your prospect to question their status quo, paints an achievable buying vision, and holds your prospect’s attention in a way that separates your message from the competition.

So, the next time you’re talking to a potential buyer, use
you-phrasing. It’s a small change. But it makes a big difference.

Learn more about you-phrasing in our State of the Conversation Report, The Impact of You-phrasing on Customer Conversations.

Sales Techniques that Create Value

Use these four techniques during sales conversations to show your prospects why they need to change their situation, create urgency, and persuade them to choose you over the competition.

Challenge Your Prospect’s Status Quo

Many salespeople see the sales process as linear. At some
point, it has an end—the prospect will choose either you or your competitor. T­he
truth is that those aren’t the only two endpoints. There’s another option—no
decision—which is chosen all too often.

Studies show that at least 60 percent of deals in
the pipeline are lost to “no decision” rather than to competitors. That’s
because of something called Status Quo Bias—your prospect’s natural aversion to
doing something different than what they’re doing today. It’s only by disrupting
their status quo that you can persuade your prospects that their current
situation is unsafe and unsustainable.

Keep in mind, however, that this conversation is about why
your buyer needs to change. It’s not about introducing your solutions’ features
and benefits. At this point, focus on creating the urgency to change by
establishing that your prospect’s status quo situation is preventing them from
reaching their most important business goals.

Learn more about when you should (and shouldn’t) challenge your buyer’s status quo in our e-book, To Challenge or Not to Challenge.

Introduce Unconsidered Needs

Too often, salespeople base their messaging on the needs
prospects tell you they have. When you do that, you’re then inclined to connect
those identified needs to the specific capabilities that respond to those
needs—in the standard “solution selling” fashion.

The problem is, you end up delivering commodity messages that won’t differentiate you from your competitors—because they’re likely constructing a similar value message in response to the same set of inputs. And because every option sounds the same, your prospects become indecisive. To create the urgency to change and overcome Status Quo Bias, you need to introduce prospects to Unconsidered Needs—problems or missed opportunities they’ve underappreciated or don’t even know about. In fact, research conducted by Corporate Visions found that a provocative messaging approach that begins by introducing an Unconsidered Need enhances your persuasive impact by 10 percent.

Find Your Value Wedge

When you present your value proposition to prospects, how much overlap is there between what you can provide and what your competition can provide? Most B2B salespeople admit that overlap is 70 percent or higher. So rather than competing within that “value parity area,” focus on what you can do for the customer that’s different from what the competition can do. This is called your Value Wedge.

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Your Value Wedge must meet three important criteria:

It’s unique to you. This is a message
that’s completely different than your competitors.It’s important to the customer. Provide
value by highlighting gaps in the way your prospect is doing things today, and
how your approach will resolve those issues. It’s defensible. Document proof points of
times when other companies overcame similar challenges by adopting your
proposed solution.

And when you create something that meets those three criteria, you have a value proposition that sets your solution apart from the competition and communicates real value to your prospect.

When you connect your prospect’s Unconsidered Needs to your differentiated strengths, you break free from value parity and commodity messaging to create the urgency and differentiation needed to overcome your prospect’s Status Quo Bias.

Tell Compelling Visual Stories

“Death by PowerPoint” is a common way to describe the mind-numbing
experience of sitting through a long slide presentation filled with bullet
points and clip art. Yet, most sales reps continue to fall back on this tired
and unoriginal method of pitching.

Unfortunately, research proves that effective sales presentations need to go beyond just a list of bullets. A research study we conducted on using visuals in B2B sales revealed that simple, concrete, hand-drawn visuals on a whiteboard outperformed two types of PowerPoint presentations in the areas of recall, engagement, presentation quality, credibility, and persuasion.

Sales presentations should be a compelling visual narrative designed to showcase your products and services and how they deliver unique value. And regardless of whether you use a whiteboard, a flip chart, the back of an envelope, or a tablet, using visual stories is a powerful differentiator in competitive and complex selling environments.

Phone Sales Techniques

Most of the selling strategies in this article are still effective
when you’re selling over the phone, but here are two specific phone sales
techniques that close more deals.

Tailor Your Message for Virtual Sales

Many companies are expanding inside sales teams. In fact, a majority of B2B salespeople we surveyed conduct more than half of their sales calls in non-face-to-face environments. But for all the potential cost savings and productivity gains, inside sales can create engagement challenges due to the virtual barrier between seller and buyer.

In a face-to-face meeting, you likely have your prospect’s
full attention. But over the phone or in a virtual meeting, there are plenty of
other competing priorities that will easily distract them. They may be taking
your call, but unless they value what you’re offering, they can easily
disengage and continue working in other apps or checking email while you’re
presenting your pitch.

That’s why you need to tailor your delivery for the specific
situation they’re in. They’re short on time, so get right to the point. They
want to know what you can offer, so introduce Unconsidered Needs to grab their
attention. Tell a compelling, relatable story and use visuals to hold their
attention while you illustrate the value of your solution.

Encourage Your Prospect to Participate

One underappreciated yet highly effective technique for phone sales is using interactive visuals. As mentioned earlier, there are clear benefits to using hand-drawn visuals over the typical PowerPoint presentation. And you can apply this concept to phone sales by getting your listener to participate in some way—whether by taking notes or by drawing a simple, concrete visual as directed.

In fact, Corporate Visions research reveals that using this approach to interactive visual stories is vital to engaging your audience, increasing favorable attitudes toward your story, improving recall, and making prospects more likely to meet with you.

But, be warned. Incorporating these storytelling techniques
into your virtual sales calls is going to demand some behavior changes from
salespeople. Many of the sales reps we worked with thought that using
interactive visuals on sales calls created “too much friction” that would
negatively impact the call. But after putting this technique into practice,
they saw an immediate positive impact relative to their previous verbal-only
approach.

Learn more about engaging your prospects with visuals in our State of the Conversation Report, The Next Best Thing to Being There.

Sales Closing Techniques

Convincing your customer to change their status quo and
choose you isn’t enough to close the sale. Use these four sales closing
techniques to create urgency, drive consensus among stakeholders, and convince
your buyers to take action now.

Tell Stories with Contrast

Messaging is about telling your company’s story in a
way that attracts prospects to your door and turns them into customers.
The challenge is that, if you’re like most companies, you tell your story in a
way that doesn’t differentiate you much, if at all. But to create a powerful
perception of value, you need to tell both the “before” story and the “after”
story—you need to tell customer stories with contrast.

When you tell customer stories, don’t be afraid to link data
with emotion. Often the best way to do that is to talk about the people who
were affected by the challenging environment they were working in. Then talk
about how their lives became better, easier, more fun, or less stressful after
using your solution.

Highlight the Risk

There’s a longstanding myth that executives are strictly
rational in their decision-making, influenced only by the hard ROI story you
can tell. But that’s simply not the case.

Corporate Visions research found that executive decision-makers are just as swayed by emotionally charged factors as anybody else. In fact, executives are more than 70 percent more willing to make a risky business decision, such as leaving their current situation to try a risky alternative, if you frame their status quo in terms of what they stand to lose by not making a business change versus what they stand to gain by following through with one.

The study demonstrated the impact of Loss Aversion, a
concept important to Prospect Theory. Pioneered by social psychologists Amos
Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, Prospect Theory states that humans are 2-3 times
more likely to make a decision or take a risk to avoid a loss than to do the
same to achieve a gain.

Protect Your Value

Buyers today have all the power in sales negotiations. They know it, and so do salespeople. According to our research, 72 percent of B2B salespeople report that buyers have grown more powerful over the last several years. They have the confidence to demand discounts—and walk away when they don’t get them.

The problem is, many salespeople unknowingly make concessions throughout the sales process—value leaks that make it more difficult to close the deal, which, in turn, makes it more difficult to protect your margins during late-stage negotiations. Value leaks happen as the buyer tries to gain consensus among other stakeholders in the organization. They flex their power and start making additional demands for your time, your resources, and of course, for discounts. And you may not even be aware that it’s happening.

How do you protect your value? When managing multi-party
decisions, consider who in the organization knows about the decision, who cares
about the decision, and start targeting those stakeholders in your
conversations. When you address the business impact for each key decision-maker
involved in the purchase, you can drive consensus faster.

Leverage Pivotal Agreements

As deals get increasingly complex, late-stage negotiating
tactics become increasingly irrelevant. And your ability to create a profitable
outcome depends on how deftly you navigate critical moments of the sales
process—moments that have the potential to change the nature of your
opportunity and recast the buyer’s perception of your influence.

To help you do all this from a low-power position, consider the concept of Pivotal Agreements. The five types of Pivotal Agreements are value-based exchanges that you can use to advance your deals while protecting your value.

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The idea is to proactively decide what you need from the customer during the buying cycle to get the most positive final outcome. In other words, you capture the value and protect your margins by executing a series of Pivotal Agreements throughout the buying process, rather than one grand compromise at the end.

Learn more about Pivotal Agreements in our webinar, There’s an Unlimited Demand for Free.

How to Sell to Existing Customers: Sales Techniques to Expand Value

The sale isn’t over just because your prospect becomes a customer. There’s still ample opportunity to drive growth from customer expansion opportunities like renewals and upsells. Here are three research-backed techniques for selling to your existing customers.

Defend Your Customer’s Status Quo

When you’re engaging new prospects, it makes sense to use a provocative, challenging approach that introduces Unconsidered Needs, disrupts their status quo, and persuades them to choose you. As the outsider, you want to frame their current situation as risky and unsafe and introduce your solution as a better, safer alternative.

But when you’re the insider, defending your incumbent position to existing customers, you often need to reinforce your value and highlight the reasons why you’re still the safest choice. Because you are your customer’s status quo, you can use their natural Status Quo Bias to your advantage during renewal and expansion conversations.

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To your existing customers, you are their status quo. And research shows that using a provocative, challenging message when you’re trying to renew or expand business with them will increase the likelihood that they’ll shop around by at least 10-16 percent.

Find out when you should (and shouldn’t) defend your buyer’s status quo in our e-book, To Challenge or Not to Challenge.

Upsell by Reinforcing the Relationship Sales Technique

Certain sales conversations with your customers require more finesse than others. Expansion conversations, for example, walk a thin line between persuading your customer to buy more and convincing them to stay with your solution in the process. If you succeed, you lay the groundwork for a long-lasting partnership. But if you stumble, your partnership stagnates, your revenue plateaus, and your customer becomes vulnerable to getting picked off by competitors.

When it comes to winning upsell conversations, our research found that reinforcing the emotional aspects of the customer partnership was most effective in persuading customers to make change seem safe as long as they’re changing with you, not away from you. In these situations, don’t be afraid to use emotional language to lean into the relationship between you and your customer’s company. Then, leverage that relationship to have a frank conversation about challenges and opportunities befitting a long-term partnership.

Buyers are naturally more inclined to remain with their
status quo than change to a new solution. But that doesn’t mean you should take
your relationship for granted. Your customers are constantly being pitched by
outside vendors who are eager to win their business. Don’t give them the
opportunity.

Learn the science behind an effective upsell message in our State of the Conversation Report, Why Evolve? Determining the Most Effective Upsell Message.

Know How to Apologize

In a perfect world, you would never need to apologize to your customers. But service failures are inevitable. And mishandling these pivotal moments can put your customer relationships, retention, and future revenue at risk. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

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Apologizing to your customers the right way can not only recover the relationship but actually improve their loyalty going forward. Using a concept called the Service Recovery Paradox as a foundation, our research found that a specific apology message framework improved the chances of your customer recommending your product and buying more from you after a service failure.

Learn more about how to effectively apologize to your customers in our State of the Conversation Report, Sorry Shouldn’t Be the Hardest Word.

Sales Techniques that Don’t Work

There’s a lot of “conventional wisdom” for how to sell out
there that, in reality, doesn’t actually help you make the sale. Here are four
classic go-to selling techniques that may, in fact, be hurting your sales.

Don’t Focus on Selling Benefits as a Sales Technique

Everyone knows how to sell benefits and not features, right?
Well, no. If you start your customer conversation with benefits, you’re jumping
the gun when it comes to how most prospects are looking at their first
interactions with you and your company.

Remember that up to 60 percent of pipeline deals are lost to
the status quo. That means that you need to learn how to sell by establishing a
buying vision—the case for why the prospect needs to change—before your
solution’s benefits will resonate. That means you need to effectively challenge
the status quo and show how the prospect’s world can change for the better.

Don’t Compete in a Bake-Off

When you position yourself against your competitors, you’re
competing in a vendor bake-off. It’s a “spec war” and you might gain the upper
hand with one feature, but then the competition meets your feature and raises
another.

In the process, you and your competition are often having a
very similar dialogue with the prospect, leading to the dreaded “no decision.”
Instead of talking to the prospect about “why us,” focus instead on challenging
the status quo by getting the prospect to think about “why change” and “why
now,” and demonstrate the truly unique value of your solution.

Don’t Sell to Personas

Many salespeople and marketers use personas to develop messaging. And, on the face of it, it seems to make sense: defining the profile of your prospect will enable you to develop messages targeted to that profile.

The problem is that personas are typically defined by who
the prospect is – demographics and behaviors. But the need to change is
not driven by a persona. The fact that a prospect shares similar
characteristics with the persona isn’t what causes them to re-think their
current approach and consider your solution as a new way to solve their
problems.

Instead of developing messages based on personas, focus on
how to sell by convincing prospects that the status quo they are standing on is
“unsafe,” then show them how life is better with your solution.

Don’t Rely on a Standard Elevator Pitch

An elevator pitch is a short summary used to
quickly and simply define a product, service, or organization and its value
proposition. And just about every sales organization under the sun spends a lot
of time trying to perfect that pitch.

The problem is that the standard elevator pitch tells your
story—not your prospect’s story. So instead of spending time refining your
elevator pitch, focus on building the story that features your customer as the
hero and illustrates the unique value you can offer them.

Closing Thoughts on Sales Techniques

There you have it. These 20 selling tips and techniques are proven to help you in all areas of your sales strategy, including prospecting, communicating value, creating urgency, closing the sale, and expanding with existing customers. With these approaches in your arsenal, you’ll be well equipped to handle even the toughest sales conversations.

If you found this article helpful, read our collection of research-backed sales training techniques to discover even more ways to improve your team’s performance.

Looking for more research-driven strategies for how to sell? B2B organizations around the world use Corporate Visions’ portfolio of solutions to develop and refine sales skills and sales techniques that are proven to work across the entire customer lifecycle. Contact us to learn more.

Thank you for reading this post from Corporate Visions - Differentiate Your Marketing Messages and Sales Conversations.

Four Tested and Proven Sales Training Techniques You Need to Know

The post Four Tested and Proven Sales Training Techniques You Need to Know by Anton Rius appeared first on Corporate Visions.

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A key part of developing a successful sales team is using sales training techniques that actually work. But for many B2B organizations, making lasting performance improvements through training is surprisingly difficult.

With that in mind, here are four tested and proven training techniques for sales teams—backed by original research—to help your reps reach peak performance and drive lasting behavior change.

Sales Training Techniques to Improve Your Team’s Performance



1. Flexible Sales Training Formats

A survey of 300 B2B companies revealed that nearly four out of five (79 percent) aren’t training the right number of salespeople on the skills they need each year. The top reason, cited by more than half of the organizations, is pressure on managers not to take their salespeople out of the field.

Live classroom workshops and facilitated training has long been heralded as the gold standard of sales training. But with more companies moving to flexible work arrangements, ongoing improvements to mobile technology, and remote selling becoming the norm, sales training methodologies need to start adapting to field demands.

The good news? A recent field trial with Fortune 250 software company identified a flexible model for online sales training that gave reps more confidence and resulted in more pipeline creation, compared to live classroom training.

On-demand, flexible training formats allow you to quickly deploy and scale the training your salespeople need to meet the strategic demands of your organization, without taking them out of the field.

2. Personalized Learning Paths

Despite the best efforts of training organizations, most
learning paths follow a broken model. The paths are either determined
automatically by role or tenure, which by their nature don’t discern
differences in the existing skills of the people forced to follow them. Or, the
paths are determined by a manager or sales rep’s intuition around what skills
the rep needs to work on—an intuition that often fails, because reps and
managers don’t know what they don’t know.

The truth is, those used to be the only available options. But nowadays, you can find performance data about your sales reps in the software they use every day. This performance data can show where salespeople don’t have enough pipeline to hit their numbers. It can indicate those reps who seem to have a lot of deals getting stuck at the proposal stage. And, you can find those salespeople who tend to produce the least profitable deals.

Using this data, you can prioritize and train your salespeople based on these performance indicators and support each of their training needs with a customized plan.

Learn more in our State of the Conversation Report, B2B Sales Training Trends Beyond the Classroom.

3. Recorded Practice Assignments

In a typical classroom setting, salespeople seldom get to practice their newly learned skills in front of others. And if they do have the opportunity, there’s usually little time for personalized feedback and improvement. But requiring reps to record and submit practice assignments ensures every individual reaches a standard of proficiency that just isn’t possible during a live classroom training.

A recent field test found that reps who completed these kinds of practice assignments feel twice as confident when talking to executive decision-makers, compared to reps who went through a classroom training event. Why? It comes down to practice, feedback, and accessible peer examples.

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On average, we see reps practice an average of six times before submitting a recorded assignment for review. This means your salespeople are able to practice and refine skills more than if they’re simply giving a single presentation in front of their peers. Practice assignments are then reviewed by trained coaches, who provide individualized feedback for improvement. And the very best peer examples are made available for others to watch and learn from. 

Learn more about this approach to online training in our State of the Conversation Report, Can Virtual Training Be Better Than the Classroom?

4. Ongoing Coaching Reinforcement

A live training event will help your reps understand and learn new skills, but you can’t expect your reps to walk away from training and immediately feel comfortable applying the new techniques. Refining and improving on those skills is an ongoing effort that requires effective sales coaching and continuous reinforcement. Otherwise, you run the risk of letting the new information fall by the wayside, allowing your reps revert to old habits, and missing the vital step of applying what you set out to learn in the first place.

To make new behaviors stick, set ongoing goals with your
salespeople, so they can practice the new skills after the training. With more
practice, individual feedback, and positive reinforcement, your reps will gain
the confidence needed to apply what they’ve learned in the field.

Build Lasting Proficiency and Confidence

Behavior change takes time. And salespeople need more than
just a single event or workshop to gain proficiency and confidence in their
newly learned skills. They need more individualized training paths, flexible
learning options, and ongoing coaching and skills reinforcement. Only then will
your sales team gain the situational fluency needed to successfully navigate
even the most challenging selling conversations.

If you found this article helpful, read our collection of research-backed selling techniques to discover even more ways to improve your team’s performance.

Looking for more research-driven sales strategies? B2B organizations around the world use Corporate Visions’ portfolio of solutions to develop and refine sales skills and sales techniques that are proven to work across the entire customer lifecycle. Contact us to learn more.

Thank you for reading this post from Corporate Visions - Differentiate Your Marketing Messages and Sales Conversations.

Can Online Sales Training Work Better Than the Classroom?

The post Can Online Sales Training Work Better Than the Classroom? by Tim Riesterer appeared first on Corporate Visions.

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When it comes to creating lasting behavior change, most sales leaders assume that online sales training is just a pale imitation of the in-person classroom. But what if you could roll out an online sales training program that was proven as effective—if not more effective—than classroom training?

It’s not just wishful thinking. Corporate Visions recently
partnered with a Fortune 250 software company to put online training and
traditional classroom training head-to-head.

So, what are the pros and cons of online training versus classroom training? And how do you know whether online sales training will actually drive better performance from your team?

Training Online versus Training in the Classroom

An industry survey by Corporate Visions identified that 65 percent of companies plan to increase their investment in virtual training alternatives (while classroom training investments remain flat or slowly decline).

However, only 10 percent believed virtual training could
be as good as live, instructor-led classroom events when it comes to
behavior change.

This begs the
question: Why buy more if you
believe it’s not as effective?

The research revealed that time-out-of-field (TOOF) pressure from managers is the biggest concern. In fact, they ranked it twice as high as budget concerns. Which means many are willing to plug their nose and dole out online training to appease field concerns while keeping their fingers crossed that it will actually do some good.

Something is better than nothing, right? Not anymore.

A new, controlled field trial finally proves the power of online sales training in creating better outcomes, not just offering a more cost-efficient alternative.

Research Proves the Power of Training Sales Reps Online

You’ll find several studies promoting the benefits of online classes in academia. One such study from MIT showed “improvement among online students that is equal to or better than in any of the previously studied traditional classes.”

But, until now, there’s been very little research into the power of online training in a B2B sales context.

We partnered with a Fortune 250 software company to conduct a controlled sales training field test, using B2B sales teams in the same market segment over the same time period. Sales reps were randomly selected to be part of one of three groups:

No TrainingLive Classroom TrainingOnline-Only Training

Each of these teams was exposed to the exact same training content. The only difference was whether the training was delivered live or in a recorded online environment.

After they completed the training, Data scientists tracked each groups’ sales performance results in terms of building pipeline and the annual contract value of their deals.

The results?

Sales teams who completed online training delivered 23.2 percent more pipeline than similar teams who received live classroom training.

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The online participants showed a slightly lower annual contract value (6.1 percent) than the live, classroom-trained reps. But still a significantly higher (85.2 percent) improvement over those who received no training at all.

[image error]

The company conducting the test considered the 6.1 percent
difference to be “close enough” to convince them they can scale programs more
efficiently and effectively using online as an alternative to classroom
training.

And it gets better:

Sales reps who completed online training experienced twice the boost in confidence levels when engaging executive decision-makers, compared with those who attended live classroom training.

[image error]

This kind of confidence boost is a key qualitative indicator
of how your salespeople engage with the training. When they’re actively
engaged, your reps walk away with both newly learned skills and the
confidence to immediately apply those skills in the field.

But why such a drastic improvement? The self-paced,
flexible, and highly individualized experience of online training is simply not
possible in a classroom setting.

6 Benefits of Online Sales Training

Here are six noteworthy advantages of training your sales reps online versus using a traditional classroom training model:

1. Flexible Learning.

In an era where self-pacing, flexibility, and individualized learning are increasingly favored, the time-bound classroom environment struggles to deliver. Learning in an online recorded environment is self-paced and flexible, so your reps can gradually acquire and retain critical skills. Best of all, this model doesn’t interfere with your day-to-day workflow.

2. More Practice.

One of the most profound factors in creating behavior change and instilling deep skills knowledge comes from the opportunity to practice in a stand-and-deliver environment. In an online training environment, analysis shows that salespeople typically practice six times before submitting their assignment. Which, arguably, is much more practice than you get in a live or virtual classroom.

3. More Complete Assignments.

Often, participants in live events are part of teams and only get to experience part of a role-play. Or, they miss a chance entirely when time is up in the room. In the online recording approach, everyone must practice and complete an assignment to demonstrate proficiency.

4. More Useful Coaching.

In the classroom environment, instructors are hard-pressed to give instant, meaningful feedback on the participants’ incomplete performances. Also, no one is taking notes to capture the coaching. Online recorded assignments, on the other hand, receive scoring against a documented rubric and detailed, written coaching notes with explicit recommendations for how to improve.

5. Better Peer Examples.

Watching your peers in a live or virtual classroom can be a painful exercise. Everyone is fumbling through their practice sessions with only the occasional star performance. In the online recorded environment, however, you can see and learn from only the best of the best examples among your colleagues.

6. More Scalable.

In-person training requires careful coordination of travel and scheduling time out of the field. But online training enables you to quickly respond to your strategic needs and execute large-scale program rollouts in weeks vs months (or years) across your remote or global salesforce. It certainly beats the plodding roadshow of visiting every individual location.

Your ultimate goal of sales skills training is behavior change. To that end, there’s no substitute for observable practice time and demonstrated proficiency.

Final Thoughts and Your Next Steps

The emerging online environment shifts away from the traditional
classroom setup and its inherent limitations to place a heavier emphasis on the
practice and coaching components—both so essential to instilling lasting behavior
change in your reps.

With a flexible, online environment, you provide your sales team with training that works inline with the workflow of each participant. You won’t need to take them out of the field. You can more quickly deploy and scale just-in-time training to meet the strategic demands of your organization. And, you can now feel confident knowing you’re going to deliver the same or better results as an in-person classroom.

For more details about this research and how online training works, download our State of the Conversation Report: Can Virtual Training Be Better Than the Classroom?

Thank you for reading this post from Corporate Visions - Differentiate Your Marketing Messages and Sales Conversations.

Can Online Sales Training Be Better Than the Classroom?

The post Can Online Sales Training Be Better Than the Classroom? by Tim Riesterer appeared first on Corporate Visions.

[image error]

When it comes to creating lasting behavior change, most sales leaders assume that online sales training is just a pale imitation of the in-person classroom. But what if you could roll out an online sales training program that was proven as effective—if not more effective—than classroom training?

It’s not just wishful thinking. Corporate Visions recently
partnered with a Fortune 250 software company to put online training and
traditional classroom training head-to-head.

So, what are the pros and cons of online training versus classroom training? And how do you know which sales training model will actually drive better performance from your team? You’ll find the answers in this article.

Training Online versus Training in the Classroom

An industry survey by Corporate Visions identified that 65 percent of companies plan to increase their investment in virtual training alternatives (while classroom training investments remain flat or slowly decline).

However, only 10 percent believed virtual training could
be as good as live, instructor-led classroom events when it comes to
behavior change.

This begs the
question: Why buy more if you
believe it’s not as effective?

The research revealed that time-out-of-field (TOOF) pressure from managers is the biggest concern. In fact, they ranked it twice as high as budget concerns. Which means many are willing to plug their nose and dole out online training to appease field concerns while keeping their fingers crossed that it will actually do some good.

Something is better than nothing, right? Not anymore.

A new, controlled field trial finally proves the power of online sales training in creating better outcomes, not just offering a more cost-efficient alternative.

Research Proves the Power of Training Sales Reps Online

You’ll find several studies promoting the benefits of online classes in academia. One such study from MIT showed “improvement among online students that is equal to or better than in any of the previously studied traditional classes.”

But, until now, there’s been very little research into the power of online training in a B2B sales context.

We partnered with a Fortune 250 software company to conduct a controlled sales training field test, using B2B sales teams in the same market segment over the same time period. Sales reps were randomly selected to be part of one of three groups:

No TrainingLive Classroom TrainingOnline-Only Training

Each of these teams was exposed to the exact same training content. The only difference was whether the training was delivered live or in a recorded online environment.

After they completed the training, Data scientists tracked each groups’ sales performance results in terms of building pipeline and the annual contract value of their deals.

The results?

Sales teams who completed online training delivered 23.2 percent more pipeline than similar teams who received live classroom training.

[image error]

The online participants showed a slightly lower annual contract value (6.1 percent) than the live, classroom-trained reps. But still a significantly higher (85.2 percent) improvement over those who received no training at all.

[image error]

The company conducting the test considered the 6.1 percent
difference to be “close enough” to convince them they can scale programs more
efficiently and effectively using online as an alternative to classroom
training.

And it gets better:

Sales reps who completed online training experienced twice the boost in confidence levels when engaging executive decision-makers, compared with those who attended live classroom training.

[image error]

This kind of confidence boost is a key qualitative indicator
of how your salespeople engage with the training. When they’re actively
engaged, your reps walk away with both newly learned skills and the
confidence to immediately apply those skills in the field.

But why such a drastic improvement? The self-paced,
flexible, and highly individualized experience of online training is simply not
possible in a classroom setting.

6 Benefits of Online Sales Training

Here are six noteworthy advantages of training your sales reps online versus using a traditional classroom training model:

Flexible Learning. In an era where self-pacing, flexibility, and individualized learning are increasingly favored, the time-bound classroom environment struggles to deliver. Learning in an online recorded environment is self-paced and flexible, so your reps can gradually acquire and retain critical skills. Best of all, this model doesn’t interfere with your day-to-day workflow.More Practice. One of the most profound factors in creating behavior change and instilling deep skills knowledge comes from the opportunity to practice in a stand-and-deliver environment. In an online training environment, analysis shows that salespeople typically practice six times before submitting their assignment. Which, arguably, is much more practice than you get in a live or virtual classroom.More Complete Assignments. Often, participants in live events are part of teams and only get to experience part of a role-play. Or, they miss a chance entirely when time is up in the room. In the online recording approach, everyone must practice and complete an assignment to demonstrate proficiency.More Useful Coaching. In the classroom environment, instructors are hard-pressed to give instant, meaningful feedback on the participants’ incomplete performances. Also, no one is taking notes to capture the coaching. Online recorded assignments, on the other hand, receive scoring against a documented rubric and detailed, written coaching notes with explicit recommendations for how to improve.Better Peer Examples. Watching your peers in a live or virtual classroom can be a painful exercise. Everyone is fumbling through their practice sessions with only the occasional star performance. In the online recorded environment, however, you can see and learn from only the best of the best examples among your colleagues.More Scalable. In-person training requires careful coordination of travel and scheduling time out of the field. But online training enables you to quickly respond to your strategic needs and execute large-scale program rollouts in weeks vs months (or years) across your remote or global salesforce. It certainly beats the plodding roadshow of visiting every individual location.

Your ultimate goal of sales skills training is behavior change. To that end, there’s no substitute for observable practice time and demonstrated proficiency.

Final Thoughts and Your Next Steps

The emerging online environment shifts away from the traditional
classroom setup and its inherent limitations to place a heavier emphasis on the
practice and coaching components—both so essential to instilling lasting behavior
change in your reps.

With a flexible, online environment, you provide your sales team with training that works inline with the workflow of each participant. You won’t need to take them out of the field. You can more quickly deploy and scale just-in-time training to meet the strategic demands of your organization. And, you can now feel confident knowing you’re going to deliver the same or better results as an in-person classroom.

For more details about this research and how online training works, download our State of the Conversation Report: Can Virtual Training Be Better Than the Classroom?

Thank you for reading this post from Corporate Visions - Differentiate Your Marketing Messages and Sales Conversations.

A Flat Tire, A Moment of Need, And A Skills Training Revolution (Updated July 2019)

The post A Flat Tire, A Moment of Need, And A Skills Training Revolution (Updated July 2019) by Tim Riesterer appeared first on Corporate Visions.

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I had to change a flat tire on my daughter’s car the other day. This forced me to pop open the owner’s manual because I hadn’t changed a tire since … I can’t remember when. So what does this have to do with sales manager skills training?

I’ll get to that in a second.

Unsurprisingly, I didn’t memorize the owner’s manual when I bought the car. Nor was I paying much attention as the salesperson walked me around the car and showed me where the jack was.

What I was up against was something most of you have probably experienced at one time or another – a knowledge deficit. Thankfully, this is exactly the kind of situation where you and I learn best. It’s that tense, back-against-the-wall moment where you have no alternative but to learn—where you need to know something, now!

Salespeople face this every day. They don’t remember your product launch or sales training event days too long after they happen, let alone months later. They are just-in-time, situational learners. My latest CMO.com column shows you the convergence of marketing messaging, content and sales skills training into a single, integrated learning experience—available in that moment of need!

Specifically, I explore what it takes to make situational, in-the-moment learning possible – and effective – today.

When Marketing Stories And Sales Skills Converge

All kinds of tools and apps promise to help your salespeople “in the moment” across the different types of selling situations they face. However, the marketing messaging, content assets, and sales manager skills training needed to take advantage of these situational sales enablement technologies have not been ready, leading to many technology failures due to lack of adoption.

That is changing—and fast. Here’s a quick look at three trends happening right now that are making it possible to provide just-in-time, situational messaging, content assets, and skills training to enable salespeople to have the right conversations at each stage of the customer life cycle.

Situational messaging frameworks: One-size-fits-all messaging is being replaced with tested, proven frameworks for creating messages that work for different moments of truth in the customer life cycle.


Situational skills training: Standalone skills training over the course of days in classrooms is being replaced by short, compelling video-based skills coaching modules that are aligned to the various selling scenarios.


Integrated, interactive online experiences: Static playbooks are being replaced with interactive mobile experiences that combine your stories and your skills in one situational messaging and coaching experience.

Click here to read the full column at CMO.com!

Thank you for reading this post from Corporate Visions - Differentiate Your Marketing Messages and Sales Conversations.

How to Drive More Growth from Customer Expansion Conversations

The post How to Drive More Growth from Customer Expansion Conversations by Anton Rius appeared first on Corporate Visions.

If you’re like most companies, you focus the lion’s share of your growth budget on demand generation and customer acquisition.

But the sale isn’t over just because your prospect becomes a customer. There’s still ample opportunity to grow revenue from customer expansion—nurturing your existing customer relationships, helping them see the value of expanding with your solution, and continuing to build loyalty over time.

Consider these stats:

Analysts estimate that 70-80 percent of the average company’s annual revenue comes from existing customers in the form of renewals and upsells. Yet, the majority of companies allot only 10-20 percent of their sales and marketing budgets toward customer expansion.

In other words, the majority of sales and marketing spend goes
to customer acquisition, which only amounts to 20-30 percent of your customer
lifecycle. Clearly, there’s a significant, yet overlooked opportunity for
businesses to tap into customer expansion as a growth engine.

Here are three ways to capitalize on the opportunity and
effectively keep and grow revenue with your existing customers.

1. Train Customer Success for Sales Opportunities

It’s easy for Customer Success to become so focused on the
idea of helping and supporting that they overlook everyday selling
opportunities. We recently had one such experience while cancelling a SaaS product.

We reached out to the account executive who helped us with
onboarding last year. Here’s how the conversation went:

Our email:

Not sure who to contact but we will not be renewing [product]. It’s a great tool in theory but just doesn’t fit our needs at this time.

Please let me know who to contact on your side if it’s
set up as an auto-renew.

Their response:

Sorry to hear. No auto-renew in the contract, so no
action needed on your end.  Hope you’re doing well!

What happened? The rep made no attempt to ask why the
product didn’t fit our needs. Nor did they make any effort to help us see more
value in their solution. Instead, they let a $24,000 annual contract walk out
the door. They practically held the door open for us in the process!

How often does this happen in your organization? How do your
Customer Success reps identify and manage situations like this?

Whether it’s to win a renewal, upsell a customer, convince
them to pay more, or apologize after a service failure, your Customer Success
team is on the front lines of conversations that directly impact your revenue.
And they need to learn how to identify sales opportunities, engage your customers,
and skillfully win them over.

2. Know When (Not) to Challenge the Status Quo

The biggest threat to your competitive success isn’t the
other players in your industry—it’s your prospect’s Status Quo Bias—their
preference for not doing something different from what they’re doing today.

To create the urgency to change and overcome Status Quo Bias,
you need to introduce your prospects to “unconsidered needs”—problems or missed
opportunities they’ve underappreciated or don’t yet know about.

When you’re talking to a new prospect, it makes sense to
challenge their status quo and persuade them to switch to your solution. In
fact, research
conducted by Corporate Visions found that a provocative messaging approach
that begins by introducing an unconsidered need enhances your persuasive impact
by 10 percent.

But to your existing customers, you are the status
quo. And research
shows that using a provocative, challenging message when you’re trying
to renew or expand business with them will increase the likelihood that they’ll
shop around by at least 10-16 percent.

Bottom line? Whether you’re talking to a prospect or an
existing customer, you’ll win more business if you tailor your messaging to
match the psychological drivers behind each unique buying conversation.

3. Tailor Your Sales and Marketing Messaging for Customer Expansion

The majority
of companies (58 percent, according to a Corporate Visions survey) see no need
to differentiate their messaging between customer acquisition and customer
retention/expansion.

Why? It’s mostly due to a lack of budget or resources. In an
effort to save costs, these companies recycle the same messages and content,
regardless of where the customer is in their lifecycle. However, our research
has proven that the psychology of an existing customer is 180 degrees different
than a potential prospect. And messaging approaches used to acquire a new
customer will backfire when used to renew or expand an existing relationship.

To be effective, you need to take a tailored approach to messaging
for customer expansion.

Tailoring your sales and marketing messages for existing
customers is a two-step process. First, you identify what questions your
customers are asking in key buying moments. Then, you create messages that are
most likely to boost their loyalty and persuade them to take action in each of
those moments.

Corporate Visions research has identified four critical decisions
your existing customers need to answer to renew or expand business with you:

Why Stay? Why should I renew with you? Why Pay More? Why should I pay more for
your solutions?Why Evolve? Why should I buy even more
from you?Why Forgive? Why should I trust you after
a service failure?

So, how do you build the messages and skills needed to
effectively respond to each of these questions?

We’ve built several resources to help.

Customer Expansion Resources

The First Annual Customer Expansion Marketing and Sales
Conference

Join us in London on September 25th for a
full-day event dedicated to helping you improve your customer expansion efforts.
This event will be packed with original research, scientifically-backed
messaging approaches, tips for delivery skills, and stories from real-life
practitioners. Learn more at https://cvi.to/LondonExpand2019.

The Expansion Sale, a new book by Erik Peterson and
Tim Riesterer, authors of The Three Value Conversations and Conversations
That Win the Complex Sale.

Backed by years of research into what motivates your
existing customers to buy, this book reveals a tested and proven approach to messaging
that will fundamentally change how your organization approaches customer
conversations. Learn more at http://expansionsale.com.

eBooks for Marketing and Sales Enablement

Check out our Customer Expansion eBooks to learn specific,
scientifically-proven messaging frameworks for renewing your customers, communicating
price increases, convincing your customers to expand, and regaining trust after
a service failure.

The Sales Enablement Guide
to Customer Expansion

The
Marketer’s Guide to Customer Expansion

Don’t let your renewal and upsell opportunities walk out the door. Armed with these resources from Corporate Visions, you’ll learn the messaging techniques and skills you need to keep and grow more revenue with existing customers.

Thank you for reading this post from Corporate Visions - Differentiate Your Marketing Messages and Sales Conversations.