How to Transform Sales in the Customer Engagement Economy

THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES

THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 2

OF CEOs CITE CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT AS THEIR PRIMARY INITIATIVE, YET MOST BUSINESSES CAPTURE ONLY A FRACTION OF THEIR OPPORTUNITIES FOR CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT.

1

We have entered into a new era of business.

Information and technology have empowered

buyers to take the driver’s seat. Mobile and

social media are catalysts for creating a new

connected customer experience, giving them

more power than ever and making every

customer moment count.

For sales, growth and competitive

advantage are no longer tied to productivity

and efficiency alone. A new driver has risen

to the top: customer engagement. In the

coming years, customer engagement is set

to overtake productivity as the primary

driver of profitable growth.

In the Customer Engagement Economy,

profitable growth starts with aligning processes

and technology to both your customers’ and

employees’ needs. However while 90% of CEOs

cite customer engagement as their primary

initiative, most businesses only capture a fraction

of their opportunities to increase it.

In this guide, we will discuss emerging

market trends and three ways Sales leaders

can rapidly increase customer engagement

within their organizations:

1) Engage Your Employees,

Engage Your Customers

2) Inject Customer Obsession

into Your Sales Process

3) Make Sales Social

INTRODUCTION

LET’S GET STARTEDFor sales, growth and competitive advantage is no ORQJHU�WLHG�WR�SURGXFWLYLW\�DQG�HŧFLHQF\�DORQH��$�QHZ�GULYHU�KDV�ULVHQ�WR�WKH�WRS��FXVWRPHU�HQJDJHPHQW�

Often it’s easy to miss customer

engagement moments in an organization.

They happen without you. Bluewolf helps

you identify these moments, and then

optimize them.”

–Joanna Sohovich • President IAR • Stanley

Read the Case Study

ENGAGE YOUR EMPLOYEES,

ENGAGE YOUR CUSTOMERS

part 1

70% OF EMPLOYEES ARE DISENGAGED AT WORK2

FULLY ENGAGED CUSTOMERS DELIVER

A 23% PREMIUM IN SHARE OF WALLET,

PROFITABILITY, REVENUE, AND RELATIONSHIP

GROWTH3

ENGAGED EMPLOYEESCLOSE 33%

MORE DEALS 4

STATSquick

ON ENGAGEMENT

THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 5

Employee engagement may not be at the top of

many executives’ lists, but it should be. Engaged

employees are more productive, have better

relationships with customers and are more

innovative. Furthermore, they are willing to put

in the extra effort that keeps customers coming

back for more.

Additionally, customer engagement is formed

and nurtured by interactions with your sales

team. According to Gallup, 70% of workers

are disengaged at work.5 If your people are

not engaged, you are most likely missing out

on new revenue opportunities. Worse yet, you

are wasting your company dollars due to lost

productivity and poor performance.

Here are the three steps to increase employee

engagement within Sales organizations:

1) GET IN YOUR EMPLOYEES’ SHOESBefore you begin to address the different ways

to increase employee engagement within your

organization, you need to identify your sales

teams’ pain points firsthand. Don’t assume,

spend time alongside them. Take a “rep ride” to

understand intimately how they interact with

your customers. Go from account to account

with them and get the kind of understanding

that only comes to one who has lived it.

By going on a few “rep rides” you’ll learn the

ins and outs of how your salespeople really do

their jobs. You’ll discover bottlenecks. You’ll

uncover priceless insights into how to help

them sell more effectively. And you’ll open

valuable channels of communication between

you and your reps.

ENGAGE YOUR EMPLOYEES,

ENGAGE YOUR CUSTOMERS

1 How are your sales reps

engaging with customers?

2 Is their process efficient?

3 How can you help them be

more productive?

4 Are they leveraging technology

the right way?

Success T ipsWhile shadowing your reps, observe

and ask yourself these questions:

Sales leaders today are being asked to SULRULWL]H�RQH�DVVHWŎWKHLU�SHRSOH�

–Bill Nelson • EVP Worldwide Sales • Nuance

THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 6

2) MAKE CRM TECHNOLOGY EFFORTLESSThere is a definitive link between having the

right tools for business and employee

engagement. Why? Because employees are

also consumers and expect to have cutting-edge,

easy-to-use tools in the workplace, just as they

do in their personal lives.

Take, for example, the varying adoption

rates of enterprise Customer Relationship

Management (CRM) systems within

organizations. According to a recent Forrester

study, only 41% of organizations fully achieve

or exceed expected business results from

their CRM deployments. In many cases this is

attributed to the solution not being configured

in a way that keeps up with how salespeople

sell and changes in the business over time. The

result: low adoption, diminishing ROI and an

ineffective tool for both reps and managers.

Achieving technology ROI starts with the

deployment of solutions that your team will use.

IT doesn’t own business technology. Neither

does the executive team. Your workforce does.

Involve your users from the start and switch from

an “on-time, on-budget” metric from IT, to one

that values sales engagement and ROI.

This will not only lead to great system design,

technology adoption, and dashboards that

actually work, you’ll have kickstarted behaviors

that create lasting business results. You’ll also

have a workforce vested in helping you innovate

on the solution and your technology and

processes will be in lockstep with your business.

Mobility has the biggest impact on our

customer experience because it gives

sales reps the ability to spend more

quality time in front of the customer,

with quicker responsiveness.”

–Bill Nelson • EVP Worldwide Sales • Nuance

Read the Case Study

THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 7

3) GO MOBILEFrom our experience doing “rep rides” on

behalf of our clients, we’ve discovered that

another way to increase employee engagement

and streamline workflows is to provide mobile

apps that extend Salesforce™ functionality

into the field.

For field sales, the desktop is dead. How many

sales directors want their salespeople sitting

in an office on their computer? Zero. Sales

managers want their team to forecast and

update activities in their CRM system, but not

at the expense of face-time with customers.

Providing an easy-to-use mobile solution is

a smart way to keep sales teams in front of

customers, while still getting opportunities

updated in real-time and on the road.

By “getting in the shoes” of your salespeople,

aligning technology and processes around

making their jobs easier, and providing mobile

apps that extend sales technology into the field,

you free your employees to focus on doing what

they need to do best: selling to customers.

6

1 Lead with the right use case

2 ID common actions that would

benefit from mobile sales

3 Design with users in mind

4 Intuitive interface, ease of use,

few clicks, speed

5 Get feedback and iterate

Success T ips5 Tips for Successful

Enterprise Mobile Strategy

Learn more! Read “Building An

Enterprise Mobile Strategy: 5 Tips

For Success”

MOBILE ENABLED REPS ARE

Read the Blog

THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 8

BLUEWOLF CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT

Free with existing Salesforce license.

“SALESVISIT” iPHONE APPTo identify opportunities for enhanced

employee and customer engagement at one of

the world’s largest food distributors, members

of the Bluewolf team did “rep rides” with

the company’s top sales reps on their visits

to customers. By “getting into the shoes of

employees,” the Bluewolf team was able to

understand the unique interactions between the

company’s employees and their customers. As a

result, Bluewolf made recommendations on how

processes and technologies could be enhanced

and developed a simple mobile app that the

reps could operate with one hand, to limit

interruptions on sales calls.

CHALLENGES• Sales reps worked out of their cars to service

their accounts in any given region.

• Reps had to dial in to a slow VPN to access

Salesforce and had to work with a laptop and

phone as well as iPads.

• Accounts and activities were not getting

logged properly or on time, resulting in

missed sales opportunities.

SOLUTIONSalesVisit provides real-time, mobile access

to the items most commonly used by a sales

rep during a customer visit. From opportunity

management, to easy activity logging, SalesVisit

increases sales productivity with Salesforce.

• Bluewolf built a custom mobile field sales

application for the iPhone.

• The app has a geo-location feature for reps

to see all accounts in the area and log calls,

activities, and notes with location data.

• The voice activation feature allows reps to

type while driving and on the go.

RESULTSThe app allows reps to easily track and log

information, making the sales team more efficient.

• Greater visibility into sales and pipeline

• Easy activity capture

• GPS-enabled account finder

• Intuitive pipeline management

INJECT CUSTOMER OBSESSION INTO

YOUR SALES PROCESS

part 2

53% OF CUSTOMER LOYALTY IS ATTRIBUTED

TO THE SALES EXPERIENCE 9

70% OF THE BUYING PROCESS IN A

COMPLEX SALE IS ALREADY COMPLETE BEFORE PROSPECTS

ARE WILLING TO ENGAGE WITH A LIVE

SALESPERSON7

ON THE NEW SALES EXPERIENCE

55% OF BUYERS THINK SALESPEOPLE

ARE NOT ADEQUATELY

PREPARED FOR INITIAL MEETINGS8

STATSquick

THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 11

The explosion of the social web and mobile

devices has fundamentally changed the way

people interact with organizations and buy

products and services. Unlimited access to

information helps customers diagnose problems,

identify solutions, and allows them to make

buying decisions without ever speaking to a

salesperson. By the time they engage with your

sales team, if at all, the last thing customers want

is to be blindly pitched to and sold to.

Organizations are realizing that the sales

experience is more important than product

features and benefits combined. Progressive

sales organizations are obsessed about knowing

what their customers want before they know

they want it. This customer obsession is the

driver for customer engagement.

UNDERSTAND YOUR CUSTOMERS’ BUYING JOURNEYIn the past, Sales singlehandedly took prospects

from awareness to action, controlling the

sale every step of the way. Today, the buying

process has become increasingly nonlinear. Your

customers are entering and exiting the sales

funnel at different stages and Sales is no longer

the only one in control.

In the new Customer Engagement Economy,

every customer touchpoint and interaction is

an opportunity to increase revenue. Because

customers are more informed, your salespeople

need to be savvier and have the right knowledge,

tools, and resources to proactively engage and

capitalize on any customer interaction.

INJECT CUSTOMER OBSESSION INTO

YOUR SALES PROCESS

1 Nobody owns the customer,

but someone always owns

the moment.

2 Know what your customers

want before they do—and

act on it.

3 Customers are people, not

transactions.

3URŤOH�RI�D�Customer-Obsessed Enterprise

Organizations are realizing that the sales experience is more important than product IHDWXUHV�DQG�EHQHŤWV�FRPELQHG�

LEARN HOW TO GET CUSTOMER-OBSESSED

View the Infographic

THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 12

POSITION SALES AS THE TRUSTED ADVISOR In the new Customer Engagement Economy,

the disruption to the traditional buying

process has caused relationships to be more

important than ever. The overwhelming amount

of information at your buyers’ fingertips has

created the need for your salespeople to create

value, build trust, deepen relationships and

differentiate your brand and products through

the sales experience.

More akin to management consultants,

today’s most effective salespeople know what

their customers want before they do. They

understand their customers’ customers, speak in

terms of business impact, and help turn disparate

information customers have into competitive

differentiators. In the past, customers came

to sales to get key information. Today they

come for best practices, industry insights and

strategies to achieve greater business outcomes.

KNOW CUSTOMERS AS PEOPLE, NOT AS TRANSACTIONSProactively solicit opinions and information that

sketch the stories of customers as individuals,

rather than relying on anonymous data to inform

strategic decisions. Customers are truly engaged

when they feel known.

The guiding principle of customer obsession is to

know your own customers intimately, but also to

understand your customers’ customers. Cloud,

mobile, and social technologies give you access

to the right customer information at the

right time. These tools enable you to meet

customers where they’re at, learn what

they want, and proactively meet their

needs. Customer obsession drives customer

engagement. You become the default buying

choice for your customers. They’re loyal. They’re

advocates for your company. Other customers

choose you because of your reputation.

Only companies that fully embrace customer

obsession from the top will succeed in the

Customer Engagement Economy.

We now have a system that encourages

proactiveness with our customers

because our Sales team has all the

information it needs at its fingertips to

address buyers needs.”

–Tony Ball • Senior Vice President • HID

Read the Case Study

THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 13

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) wanted to develop a

strategy that would enable its sales representatives

to better engage and nurture relationships with

physicians. Bluewolf custom-designed the Koach

iPad app that makes it easy for sales reps to access

Salesforce customer data and real-time product

information while in the field. This has elevated

GSK’s reputation and improved engagement with

its physician customers.

CHALLENGEAs medical professionals are typically busy, they

don’t have a lot of time to spend meeting with

reps. GSK wanted a mobile solution that would

provide their reps with the ability to access

information and resources while onsite with

customers, enabling them to focus on the sales

areas most likely to have the greatest impact.

Some factors which determine what material

the rep is going to “pitch” include the doctor’s

“personality type” and level of brand loyalty.

The ultimate goal for GSK was to deliver

more intelligent and effective selling,

matching each medical professional with

his/her ideal products as well as increasing

doctor-to-patient recommendations.

SOLUTIONBluewolf built an award-winning Visualforce

iPad application that incorporates a complex

matrix of situational criteria (e.g. brand loyalty,

personality type, practice specialty, etc.) and

matches the drug(s) the doctor is most likely to

accept, approve, and recommend. The app pulls

information from a set of custom objects, which

house various types of information (e.g. research,

sales tools, situation- or product-based lists of

questions to ask doctors based on personality

type, etc.) to help coach reps on effective,

customer-focused selling.

THE RESULTS• Increased doctor-to-patient recommendations

• Improved the reputation of GSK’s brand,

increasing its credibility and revenue

• Enabled sales reps to strategically target leads

with specific products

• Increased “brand loyalty” of GSK

customer base

BLUEWOLF CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT

“KOACH” iPAD APP

MAKE SALES SOCIAL

part 3

56% OF BUYERS FEEL STRONGER

CONNECTIONS TO BRANDS THAT ENGAGE

WITH THEM ON SOCIAL 10

70% OF B2B DECISION MAKERS USE SOCIAL MEDIA SOURCES OF

INFORMATION 11

85% OF IT DECISION MAKERS USE AT LEAST ONE SOCIAL NETWORK

FOR BUSINESS12

ON SOCIALSELLINGSTATS

quick

THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 16

Profitable sales teams are using the

power of social media to differentiate the

customer experience and stay one step ahead

of their competitors.

Social selling is critical for both for B2C and B2B

companies. Bluewolf recently surveyed a cross-

section of B2B and B2C executives to find out

top priorities for using social for business. These

executives cited employee productivity, getting

closer to customers and internal collaboration as

the key business drivers of social selling.

Are you using social media to influence

customers? In today’s business environment,

your salespeople need to leverage every possible

channel to get closer to customers. Enabling

your sales team to actively participate in social

selling provides a powerful and efficient new way

to engage with prospects at the right time in

their buying journey, spur internal collaboration,

shorten sales cycles, and increase revenues.

We partnered with Bluewolf to introduce CRM and social tools and processes

that help us understand our customers better and share internal knowledge

more effectively, in order to deliver the best solutions to our clients globally.”

–Debora Rustemeyer-Brown • Global Commercial Programs Manager • ERM

View the Success Story

MAKE SALES SOCIAL

Success T ips1 Don’t be too quick to “connect” with your prospects. Make sure you

have a purpose in connecting and the relationship built is strong enough to

withstand someone poaching that contact.

2 Listen and share. Keep up with your industry and your customers industry

and demonstrate thought leadership.

3 Manage your connections. You may think that having 500+ connections is

great, but like all things of value, you must take care of them regardless.

4 Don’t be abusive. Social networks are for connecting and collaborating,

not for stealing and pestering.

5 Deliver an excellent customer experience via social throughout the cycle.

THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 17

THE RELATIONSHIP BUILDER VS. THE CHALLENGER SOCIAL SELLING

By Andy ThoeEnterprise Sales • Bluewolfbluewolf.com/people/andrew-thoe@AndyThoe

Statistics show that the most valuable trait

that sales reps have is the ability to listen to a

customer’s problem and challenge them on how

to most effectively solve it. Statistics also tell us

that the least successful sales rep is the one that

solely focuses on building relationships.

The truth is that in today’s “always on and

always connected” Customer Engagement

Economy, sales reps need to be both. Here are

the steps to most effectively marry the two

behaviors at the start of a cycle:

1) UNDERSTAND YOUR AUDIENCETake the time to check out your prospect on

various social networks. Look for things like the

groups they follow, tweets they posted and prior

jobs they have held—this will tell you what they

really know.

2) HAVE A MEANINGFUL FACE-TO-FACE THEN MAKE THEM PART OF YOUR SOCIAL NETWORKA core tenet of the challenger sell is building

trust by relating and helping a customer

identify gaps in their perceived solution. Telling

someone what they need to do over the phone

is not going to cut it. After you have a great

challenging conversation, make them part of

your professional social network.

3) BRAINSTORM WHAT CHALLENGES YOU HAVE HELPED SIMILAR CUSTOMERS OVERCOMEThere is a lot to be learned by understanding the

point of view of the individual you are meeting

with. For example, they probably care about

integration and reports if they have spent their

whole career in data warehouse jobs.

4) FIND THE CONNECTIONNow it gets tough. Once you are underway with

your cycle, try to find soft connections between

your prospect and your other relationships. For

example, if the prospect is a salesperson, maybe

their top customer is an existing customer of

yours. Once you find this link, you can skip a few

steps in the sales process.

THE CHANGING ROLE OF SALES 18

In the new Customer Engagement Economy,

leaders must be focused on driving customer

obsession across their organizations to sustain

profitable growth. Your customers aren’t

transactions, they’re people with stories. Your

willingness to invest in your employees’ ability to

understand and respond to those stories affects

your customers’ decisions to buy.

Empower and engage your employees to seize

every customer moment. Understand your

customers’ pain points and equip your sales

team with the right technology and processes

to stay one step ahead of them. Whether it’s

through selling strategy, mobile technology, or

building out functionality beyond core CRM, the

results will quickly show up in your company’s

bottom line.

CONCLUSION

SALES TEAM ENGAGEMENT +CUSTOMER OBSESSION =CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT

Business Process

Consulting

Technology Roadmap

and Implementation

Mobile Field Sales /

Custom Development

Executive Dashboards

and Coaching

Salesforce Training

BLUEWOLF SALES TRANSFORMATION

SERVICES

Bluewolf is a global business consulting firm.

Companies across the world choose Bluewolf

to help them engage their customers and

drive more sales. As the first global business

consulting firm born in the cloud, Bluewolf’s

strategic consulting, implementation, training,

and cloud management services realize business

outcomes in weeks, not years.

Our proven Agile Business Transformation

methodology helps clients rapidly innovate their

business processes and technologies to get

closer to their customers. And our people are

recognized for having the competencies and

entrepreneurial energy to shape agile,

customer-obsessed enterprises that sustain

profitable growth in competitive markets.

CONTACT BLUEWOLF1RUWK�$PHULFD�� +1.866.455.WOLF

United Kingdom +44 (0) 207 643 2749

France +33 (0)1 70 61 83 98

$XVWUDOLD +61 (2) 9006 1696

CONNECT WITH USWebsite bluewolf.com

Blog bluewolf.com/blog

Twitter @bluewolf

© 2013 Bluewolf, Inc. All rights reserved.

ABOUT

BLUEWOLF

SOURCES1) IBM, CAPITALIZING ON COMPLEXITY: INSIGHTS FROM GLOBAL CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER STUDY, 20102) GALLUP, “CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT—WHAT’S YOUR ENGAGEMENT RATIO?”, 20093) GALLUP, “CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT—WHAT’S YOUR ENGAGEMENT RATIO?”, 20094) BLUEWOLF, “INFOGRAPHIC—CUSTOMER SERVICE: THE NEXT BATTLEGROUND”, 20125) GALLUP, “CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT—WHAT’S YOUR ENGAGEMENT RATIO?”, 20096) COMSCORE MOBILE METRIX, MARCH 20127) SIRIUS DECISIONS WEBCAST, “THE MARKETING ORGANIZATION IN 2017”8) IDC “WHAT’S KILLING THE TRADITIONAL SALES FUNNEL?”, 20119) CEB SURVEY, 201210) CONE INC.11) FORRESTER, “LISTENING AND ENGAGING IN THE DIGITAL MARKETING AGE”, 201212) LINKEDIN, FORRESTER AND RESEARCH NOW, “IT PURCHASING GOES SOCIAL”, 2012