march 2023

5 days.

It will have taken ChatGPT 5 days to reach one million users, in December 2022.*
By comparison, Facebook reached the same figure in 10 months and Netflix in 3 and a half years!

So you probably couldn't miss the real craze surrounding this conversational artificial intelligence.
By asking a simple question, ChatGPT will search and gather the maximum amount of information available on the web to provide you with the most appropriate answer.
This chatbot offers its users an infinite number of possible uses

But just a few months after all this excitement, what can we learn from ChatGPT? How can you really use it in your day-to-day business to optimize your sales and marketing performance?

We use it on a daily basis at Kestio and would like to share our experience with you, as it can save you a lot of time and help you with key marketing and sales activities!

*Source: Sam Altman, 2022

KEY No. 1 - Master the prompt

As we explained earlier, ChatGPT is a conversational artificial intelligence. Its mode of operation is therefore based on the question or query you share with it.

If, when you tried out the chatbot, you were disappointed by the answers you got, it may be because your initial request wasn't clear enough!

Our advice for making the most of ChatGPT's features is to work on your requests. This is what we call " prompt engineering ".

The request you make to ChatGPT is called a " prompt". 🔍

Sharing a good "prompt" with ChatGPT is all about giving it context.
Do you want the tool to respond to you as a...

- Marketing specialist?
- SEO expert?
- Are you an ESN professional?

By giving as much context as possible to your search, you'll guide ChatGPT towards the type of response you're looking for.
Don't hesitate to specify the format and length of the expected result. 🛠

Example query

As content manager for a CRM solutions company, can you write a 150-word article on the different types of CRM available?

If, despite these recommendations, you're not satisfied with the answer you get, don't hesitate to refine your request by adding new instructions and telling the tool how it could correct itself.
Based on machine learning, ChatGPT will take your feedback into account to adjust its proposal!

The aim of ChatGPT is to replicate a conversation with a human. All you have to do is tell it which human you want it to be!

To help you optimize your queries, discover our webinar dedicated to thethe art of questioning.
Because with ChatGPT, as with any prospect, questioning is key!

KEY No. 2 - Perfect your marketing performance

How can you use ChatGPT in the marketing business to improve your company's performance?

ChatGPT will actually SAVE TIME!

The first way the tool can be used to improve marketing performance is on copywriting.
ChatGPT can help marketing professionals by providing a solid foundation for content creation.

✒️ Copywriting: articles, emails, social network posts, ideas for content, titles, subject lines, subject monitoring, SEO keyword research, text enrichment, popularizing a subject, rewording, etc.

The quality of the response proposed by artificial intelligence depends on the relevance and clarity of the prompt (the query).

Be sure to position the tool as an activity specialist, for example by asking questions such as:

The second way ChatGPT can be used to improve marketing performance is by understanding personas.

It can help marketing professionals better understand the personas they are addressing by providing answers to specific questions about their behaviors.
For example: "As a marketer, what are the challenges facing Marketing Directors in industrial companies? "

⚠️ It's important to note that using ChatGPT should not be seen as simply replicating or copying its content.
Instead, it can serve as a framework and structure for content creation, which can then be customized with the author's point of view and beliefs!

Content creation is a discipline that requires expertise and, above all, time.
At Kestio, we can help you make the most of your time and gain in productivity and visibility!

Click on the button below for a 15-minute exchange with

an expert in digital presence.👇🏻

KEY No. 3 - Perfect your sales performance

ChatGPT can have a significant impact on sales performance, helping you to better understand your target audience's issues and prepare your sales meetings effectively.

🎯 Indeed, by asking questions about the target company's business, activity or specific market issues, you can obtain useful information to better understand their needs.

This will enable salespeople to prepare their presentations and deliver more relevant solutions tailored to the customer's specific needs. 💥

For example, by asking questions such as:

ChatGPT is therefore useful for helping sales professionals write e-mails, sales proposals and call scripts.

As a conversational assistant, artificial intelligence can help professionals save time and deliver more personalized solutions, which can lead to an overall improvement in sales performance. 💬

To take your sales preparation one step further, we suggest you watch our video "Sales interview checklist", followed by a quiz on the subject. Click below to find out more! 🎲

KEY No. 4: Expert advice

32%.

32% of French SMEs do not use CRM software*.
Many companies still use Excel, e-mail or shared files to manage their customer relations.

What about you?

*Independent.io, 2022

The use of a CRM represents a strategic challenge for acquiring and retaining new customers.

But many of the companies we work with tell us that they find it hard to get their teams to adopt their CRM solution.

Today, we're giving you 3 keys to initiating change management in your organization and optimizing the use of your CRM!

KEY No. 1 - Communicate internally

What do your employees gain from using your CRM? What does CRM do for them?

The effective use of CRM by your internal teams can bring many benefits to the company, such as time savings, better management of customer data, improved internal collaboration and increased sales. However, for internal teams to use CRM effectively, it is important that internal communication is optimized.

Internal communication is essential to raise awareness and overcome team resistance to CRM use.

Your teams may be reluctant to use a new tool if they don't understand how it can help them in their day-to-day work. By explaining the benefits of using CRM and showing how it can help them manage their work more effectively, usage can be greatly optimized.

At the same time, it's important to train teams on how to use the tool, and to communicate regularly on new CRM features and updates.

Last but not least, don't forget to have someone in the company who will be responsible for the tool, managing questions and helping employees to improve their skills. This person needs to have a good understanding of the business in order to understand the challenges faced by users, and the technical expertise to configure the CRM.

If you're looking to optimize the use of your CRM and benefit from all the advantages it can bring to your business, it can be useful to talk to an expert in the field. He or she will be able to help you raise awareness of CRM and train your staff, while guaranteeing ongoing technical support.

Click on the button below to discuss your CRM needs and see how we can help you maximize your return on investment.

KEY No. 2 - Gather feedback

It's the people who use your CRM on a daily basis who are best placed to identify the levers for optimizing your solution.

Get their testimonials!

Ask your sales people, your marketing teams, your Customer Success teams... all the regular users of your tool:

This information gathering will enable you to list the strengths of your CRM and the various optimizations to be implemented.

This will enable you to make better use of your CRM in a number of ways:

Improved customer satisfaction Using the tool on a daily basis, your teams can identify how it can best meet your customers' needs.

Optimizing productivity & reducing costs Feedback: you can use this feedback to identify the features that are slowing down your staff and consuming unnecessary resources. That way, you can devote more of your budget to CRM features that really help your teams!

Innovation User feedback can help you identify market trends and your customers' future needs.

If your " user feedback" reveals more negative than positive points, it may be time to consider a change of CRM tool. To do so, discover our webinar with 5 questions to ask yourself in order to choose the right CRM!

KEY No. 3 - Get involved

The involvement of company management is essential to optimize the use of CRM by internal teams. It's important that you see CRM as an integral part of your company's strategy and not just as a tool used by your sales team.

To ensure that CRM is used effectively, you need to allocate a budget for deployment, implementation and user training. It's also important to anticipate the impact on users in terms of costs, processes and resources.

By measuring the impact on users, you can better understand the resources required for a successful CRM implementation.

It's essential to set aside an annual budget to ensure ongoing use of your CRM, as well as to enable your staff to be trained in the tool's new features. In this way, you can ensure regular, effective use of CRM.

If you'd like to find out more about optimizing the use of CRM in your company, download our free study featuring feedback from over 150 companies that have implemented a CRM project.

Click below to download the study now!

KEY No. 4: Expert advice

35%.

Amazon generates 35% of its sales through additional sales!*

Cross-selling and up-selling can therefore represent a real growth lever for your company, even if you're not a web giant!

*Source: The Future of Commerce

Cross and up-selling, what are they?

Cross-selling is a sales technique in which customers are invited to buy products or services that complement those they have already purchased or are in the process of purchasing.

Up-selling, or additional selling, is a sales technique in which a customer is offered the opportunity to buy a product or service of a higher range (and therefore more expensive) than the one they were initially considering.

Without even realizing it, you're confronted with these techniques on a daily basis! "And with this?" when you buy your baguette, "En menu maxi best of?" when you order your favorite hamburger...

But cross- and up-selling don't just apply to the B-to-C sector.
This sales strategy can be applied in B-to-B, whatever the sector or size of your company.

Today, we'd like to show you how to initiate this process in your organization.

KEY No. 1 - Gathering information

After several exchanges with your customer, you often think you know him. You may even be able to find out their next vacation destination!
But in reality, your customer rarely shares more strategic information, specific to the running of their business. And it's this kind of information that's needed in a cross- and up-selling strategy.

You need to take advantage of the fact that you're already in contact with your customer to gather as much useful information as possible for your sale.

By gathering as much data as possible about your customer, his company and his environment, you'll be able to identify his objectives and the weaknesses that are preventing him from achieving his goal... and you'll be able to demonstrate how your new offer could solve his problems!
This information gathering will help you to create an awareness in your customer's mind: an awareness between what he's doing now and what he could be doing, and therefore an awareness of new needs!

To do this, you need to go further than the simple functional need expressed by your customer.
Go to the "Why?" of his action, challenge him!
You'll then be able to question the initial system imagined by your customer in order to propose a more suitable solution, and therefore sell more and bring more value!

For example, for a professional training organization:

A Sales Director who uses Excel files for his customer relationship management won't necessarily be aware that his organization could be optimized. He's happy with the current situation!
It's by asking him about his practices that you can suggest that training in a CRM tool will have a better ROI than simply training in Excel. It's the kind of thing that will raise their awareness!

A variety of sales techniques and marketing tools are available to help you gather as much information as possible about your contacts and get them to ask questions about their uses and needs.
Chez Kestiowe train our customers in theart of questioning, in order to raise awareness among their prospects. We also use various data enrichment tools to obtain relevant information during our exchanges.
If you'd like to find out more about these methods and tools, we 'd be delighted to hear from you !

KEY No. 2 - Added value

The second key to encouraging cross-selling and up-selling is to offer the prospect of added value that complements a service available to the customer. In other words, you need to make the ROI clear by showing the prospect of gain.

Setting the scene & example

For example, if you propose a solution that solves a major problem, such as the time wasted by a manager manually dispatching alerts, you can show how your solution can improve productivity, the process and overall results.

By giving concrete examples of how your solution can help solve your customer's problems, you can convince them of the importance of your offer. Continuing with our example, you can explain how the solution's settings enable alerts to be dispatched automatically to people according to certain criteria, leading to greater customer satisfaction thanks to faster processing of alerts and a better distribution of work among employees.

In short, the key here is to show your customer how your additional solution can add real value to their business, enabling them to accomplish something more, optimize their time and better distribute their work.

We explained how to initiate this process during the webinar on Thursday, March 16 at 2 p.m.. This d webinar focused on the techniques you need to put in place to initiate a cross- and up-selling strategy. Click on the button below to watch the webinar again.

KEY No. 3 - Personalization

Adapt your sales pitch to your customer's profile! It's important to understand that every customer is different and has specific needs. To sell effectively, it' s essential to know your customer's personality profile, so you can present your cross- and up-sell from the right angle.

The advantage of cross- and up-selling is that you know your customer better, you've had several meetings with them and you potentially work with them, so you need to exploit this knowledge of the profile and adapt your sales pitch by highlighting the elements that speak most to the person in front of you.

For example, if we use the personality styles of the DISC model, which presents 4 main emotions through a composition of colors:

D - Dominance
I - Influence
S - Stability
C - Compliance

For example, the proposal for an automated prospecting service will differ according to profile: for a blue profile, we'll focus on improving the process, for a red profile, we'll insist on better target achievement, while for a green profile, we'll emphasize a better experience for employees.

As well as knowing the customer's personality profile, it's important to constantly gather information to understand how they're organized, what they want to achieve, and identify gaps that your solution could fill. Commercially speaking, information is always key!

Ultimately, there are two levels to consider in order to sell effectively:

What do you need to do to attract the customer's attention?
Once he's interested, what do we need to sway the decision?

Would you like to find out more about the DISC model, so you can adapt your communication to your interlocutor's profile, and better understand how he or she thinks, feels and operates? Click on the button below to view our webinar on the DISC profile.

KEY No. 4: Expert advice

Do you know the average B2B e-mail open rate? It is 15.1%*in decline year after year.

This figure reflects an evolution in marketing practices, and in particular an over-abundance of incoming e-mails (an observation I'm sure you share!).
But e-mail remains one of the most effective communication tools for a company, enabling easy and cost-effective contact with prospects.

So how do you make the most of it?
Today, we're giving you 4 key points to bear in mind to ensure the success of your e-mailing campaigns!

*Source: Le monde du mail, 2022

KEY No. 1 - Be more interesting than interested

When you send a message (e-mail, text message, handwritten letter...) to a friend or family member, do you take the recipient into account when adapting the content?
The same goes for business!

The main pitfall in writing commercial e-mails is to contact all your prospects in the same way, talking about one and only one thing: yourself.

The aim of your contact should be to respond to a challenge faced by your prospect, not to sell your offer directly to them.

Before writing any e-mail, we advise you to refocus on your target and your persona :

What's its profile?
What are its expectations?
What are its communication and consumption habits?

The empathy card

To help you decipher your target, use the empathy map!
Complementing the persona, the empathy map is a visual tool that lets you put yourself in your target's shoes to better understand their emotions and needs.

The card is based on 6 simple questions to ask yourself about your ideal customer:

What does he see? 👀
What does it mean? 👂
What does he think? 🧠
What does he say and do? 💬
What does he fear? 😱
What does he hope for? 🤞

Thanks to this precise definition of your target's behaviors and needs, you'll be able to identify more easily how your offer can help them in their daily lives.

This will form the theme of your sales e-mail!
By providing a solution to a problem experienced by your prospect, you'll attract their attention and optimize the chances that they'll want to work with you.

KEY No. 2 - Work on your copywriting

Copywriting is theart of writing persuasive content to grab your audience'sattention and convince them to perform a specific action. Good copywriting is therefore essential for maximizing the impact of your e-mail marketing campaigns and boosting audience engagement.

Structure your message

As seen above, it's important to understand who your target is. You need to know what motivates them, their needs, their pain points and their aspirations. Next, it's a good idea to choose a common theme or thread per e-mail that addresses one of your target's pain points or needs. This will make your message easier to read and understand.

The structure of the message should be clear and concise: headings, sub-headings and bullet points can help improve readability and guide the reader through the message.

Apply the AIDA method

The AIDA method is the most widely used copywriting method for converting a prospect into a customer. It consists of 4 distinct stages that guide the reader through the conversion process: Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.

To grab the reader's attention, use impactful elements such as the design, the title or a punchy catchphrase.
Once you've got the reader's attention, get them interested in your solution by clearly presenting the benefits it offers.
Stimulate the reader's desire for your solution by showing how it can solve their problems and why it's the best option.
Finally, encourage the prospect to take action by offering to buy your product or service, or to sign up for your newsletter to receive more useful information.

Use storytelling

The choice of words and the emotions they evoke also play a powerful persuasive role. Tell a story to engage your target audience, using words that evoke emotions (positive or negative). You'll be able to create an emotional connection with your audience.

Think about the subject line and pre-header

The subject line is also crucial to ensure maximum open rates, as it's the first thing recipients see when they receive your e-mail marketing. It needs to be clear, impactful, specific and short. The subject line should give a clear idea of the e-mail's content and encourage recipients to open it. Avoid vague or generic subjects, and be as specific as possible.

For example, instead of using "Company update", use "5 new features to improve your user experience". Also be sure to avoid "spamwords", i.e. generic words that could send your message straight to spam.

In addition to the subject line, the pre-header is another element to consider. This is the introductory text visible before you open the e-mail. It should be used strategically to give an overview of your message and arouse the interest of your recipients.

KEY No. 3 - The alliance of marketing and sales

Collaboration between marketing and sales is essential for the conversion of leads generated by e-mail marketing. Marketing is responsible for creating content and sending emails to attract the attention of prospects, while sales is responsible for turning these prospects into customers. When marketing and sales combine forces, they can leverage each other's constructive feedback to maximize lead conversion.

Sales reps can provide valuable information about prospects, such as their interest level, budget and specific needs, which can be used by marketing to personalize emails and increase engagement.

In return, marketing can provide sales with prospect data, such as website page views, emails opened and clicks, which can help sales understand prospects' interest and personalize their sales approach.

Close collaboration between marketing and sales can also help improve lead quality. Marketing can adjust its strategy based on feedback from sales on the quality of the leads they receive, while sales can help qualify leads and provide information on their sales potential.

How do you align sales and marketing teams?

Harmonizing these two departments is crucial to creating robust sales processes, eliminating existing problems during sales cycles and significantly increasing conversion rates.

To find out more about aligning your marketing and sales teams, we offer you a 40-minute webinar dedicated to this topic.

KEY No. 4: Expert advice

7,2.

On average, it takes more than 7 meetings to make a complex sale, with no fewer than 6 different contacts !

But what is a complex sale?

A complex sale is characterized by two aspects:

The complexity of the product or service proposed, requiring a long sales cycle to clearly define the interests of the product or service for the prospect.
The complexity of the buying environment: a multiplicity of contacts, both in-house and with the prospect, all with a role to play in the purchasing decision. Complex sales is a real team sport!

But how can you assess your ability to win a complex sale?
How can you mobilize your various contacts to ensure the success of your sale?

Here are our 3 keys to success.

*Source: Nomination 2021

KEY No. 1 - Identify the parts

What do a game of chess and a complex sale have in common?
In both cases, there are behavioral rules and tactics for winning the game! Each move represents a cost and must produce the desired evolution.

This chess analogy is at the heart of our approach to complex sales, the Chessboard Method.

In the Chessboard Method, we compare the parties involved in a complex sale to the pieces of a chess game. Knight, rook, queen, king... all have their own specificities and their own role to play!

The first key to a successful complex sale is toclearly identify the role of each of your interlocutors and their position on the chessboard.

This analysis will enable you to :

Know when and how to address each contact
Take advantage of the role of each part to make your sale a success
Better anticipate and define the best action at each stage of the game

But this account analysis exercise requires a precise methodology and tools.
Our complex sales trainingbased on the Chessboard Method, provides you with the methods you need to successfully approach your prospects.

À l’issue de cette formation, vos commerciaux seront à même de déceler les différentes parties prenantes d’une décision et de gérer les étapes de progression de leurs affaires.

Find out more about the Exchequer Method on our dedicated page.

KEY No. 2 - Have allies

Pour gagner une vente complexe, il est crucial d’avoir un ou plusieurs interlocuteurs intéressés par votre service ou produit. Cet allié du côté du client vous permettra d’avoir accès à des données factuelles qui vous aideront à identifier les enjeux et le contexte.

So having allies in your sales is a key factor for success!

This requires identifying and understanding the interplay between the players (based on behavioral and relational aspects).

At Kestio, we help you define a strategy (the overall plan) and adopt a tactic (adapting to the terrain and the unexpected). To find out more, talk to one of our experts on complex sales.

KEY No. 3 - Balance the balance of power

In the world of complex sales, it's essential to know how to balance the balance of power to reach a mutually beneficial agreement. As in a game of chess, the winner is not the one who suffers the game, but the one who leads.

Pour établir un rapport de force sain et équilibré avec votre client, il est crucial de maîtriser votre art. Vous devez avoir le sentiment de lui apporter quelque chose d’important pour inverser la tendance et prendre la main sur la vente. Si vous ne maîtrisez pas votre art, vous risquez de subir la partie.

It's important not to try to dominate or be dominated in the seller/buyer relationship. The aim is for both parties to feel confident enough to exchange freely.

Assertiveness is one of the keys to achieving a balanced commercial relationship with your prospect. It enables you to clearly explain the importance of the exchange.

Deux conseils cruciaux :

It's important to have strong self-esteem and assertiveness to strike the right balance in the relationship with the customer, without forcing or aggressing.

It's essential to have absolute certainty that your product or service brings high added value to your customers.

How do you structure such an approach and bring everyone's efforts together?

Kestio apporte une réponse à travers un webinar faisant l’analogie avec la série « Le jeu de la Dame ». En associant les règles comportementales et les méthodes d’analyse pour prendre les bonnes décisions, vous serez en capacité de surmonter tous les obstacles potentiels lors de vos ventes complexes.

You can discover our dedicated webinar via the link below.