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Thus, many French people point to a relationship with brands that is now more fluid than before, according to the 2015 edition of the AFRC Customer Effort Barometer. And yet, French brands still seem very unconvincing when it comes to Customer Experience, as shown by the latest Customer Experience Index published by the Forrester institute... Explanation of this apparent paradox.

 

1- Simplifying the customer journey, a first step on the right track

"For 60% of French people, the customer experience in France has become simpler, for the first time in three years," says the AFRC study conducted by Médiamétrie.

 

This is really good news, rewarding the efforts of many companies committed tocontinuous improvement in customer relations !

69% of customer journeys required no particular effort, according to those surveyed. This is a clear improvement on the figures for 2014, when only 60% of French people felt that brands made their lives easier. A 9-point gain over one year is a significant improvement, and a cause for celebration!

 

Beware, however: this figure masks major disparities between sectors and according to the stage of the journey assessed. No single sector stands out as the "big winner" in this improvement trend, but several are benefiting from it, particularly in specific areas such as :

    • the use of loyalty cards for supermarket chains
    • online shopping in e-commerce,
    • activation of a bank account
    • or signing a new energy contract (electricity or gas).

 

We can see that, while companies have taken great care to reduce the effort required of customers at the subscription and purchase stages, the same cannot be said of the cancellation stage! For 41% of customers, this remains one of the most difficult parts of the process, particularly in the insurance sector!

 

2- Multi-channel is seen as an enabler, not a killer of stores

If customer journeys seem simpler today for many French people, this is due in particular to the facilitation provided by multi-channel. In 2014, the AFRC noted that omnichannel was making inroads into everyday life, but that it was giving rise to a number of fears: the disappearance of physical and local retailing, and the complication of purchasing paths due to companies' poor mastery of different channels (lack of coherence between them).

Today, these fears seem to have evaporated, and consumers are asking for more, according to Eric Dadian, President of the AFRC, speaking in the columns of columns of Les Echos newspaper :

 

" The freedom of choice has multiplied. The range of possibilities helps consumers to find the paths that are best suited to them. The barometer also reveals that a proportion of them would be prepared to pay more for better customer service ".

 

Consumers have more choice thanks to a variety of channels, but are not turning their backs on physical stores. While the web channel is cited first by 59% of information seekers, visits to retail outlets (18%) are nonetheless on the rise. This return to the store is palpable in certain sectors, notably telephony. When it comes to renewing their cell phones, the French prefer direct, personalized contact .

 

3- Yet the Customer Experience is still far from satisfactory!

Does this mean that all is well in the best of worlds? That customer journeys are at last perfectly in tune with consumer expectations thanks to multi-channel, and that their experience has been significantly enhanced as a result?

Not according to the latest Customer Experience Index published by the Forrester Institute... quite the contrary! This annual barometer ranks 203 European brands from eight business sectors according to the quality of their customer experience and consumer loyalty.

 

In France, the winners don't get off scot-free, as 55% of brands are rated "mediocre", and not a single one of them delivers a superior experience: MAIF, Yves Rocher and Crédit Mutuel Assurance, the three French brands ranking highest in the index, are gratified with a mere "acceptable". Mediocre results shared by other European countries such as the UK and Germany.

A disappointing finding, especially when you consider that 3/4 of French managers say that improving the customer experience is one of their top strategic priorities!

 

4- Why this apparently paradoxical result?

The Forrester study indicates that the most important vector for the quality of the customer experience is the emotional factor. Taking this "emotional" aspect into account in customer interactions and relationships is what differentiates the notion of customer experience from that of customer satisfaction, for example (for a reminder on this subject, you can reread our article Are you sure you've mastered the 3 key approaches to building customer loyalty? ).

 

It seems that this is where the problem lies for our companies, which have above all seized on the "efficiency" lever in their efforts to improve the customer journey. Emotion is certainly a notion they find harder to grasp: it is by definition less "rational" , and therefore seems difficult to control and measure.

And yet, it's the systematic and sustained application of this approach that produces the most tangible and striking effects in terms of customer loyalty! Some sectors have been aware of this for a long time, and are faring much better: this is particularly true of the insurance and mutual insurance sector, which accounts for 7 of the 13 top-rated brands in the Forrester index!

 

While an important step seems to have been taken in terms of simplifying customer journeys, there is still work to be done when it comes toimproving the customer experience. A challenge that presupposes careful consideration of the subject of listening to and understanding customers too: in the USA, a study published by IBM in the first quarter of 2015 thus indicated that 81% of companies surveyed believe they have a complete view of their customers, but only 37% of them confide that the company really understands them... So the gap is very real, even if the gap is narrowing.

KESTIO works with a large number of companies (from small businesses to major corporations) on these issues:

A quick reminder: Inbound Marketing is all about attracting leads and nurturing their interest and reflection throughout the decision-making process, in order to convert them into qualified leads, prospects and then customers, or even, ideally, convinced ambassadors for your brand and your offers!

 

It is based on the change in attitude observed among buyers, who now carry out most of their purchasing process independently, relying in particular on the tools offered by digital technology (websites, forums, social networks, etc.) to develop their selection criteria and make their purchasing decisions.

By its very nature, it is opposed to Outbound Marketing, which relies on more "push" strategies (advertising and mass emailing, in particular) that have now lost their effectiveness.

The funnel logic of Inbound Marketing and the steps towards conversion can be summarized as follows:

The evening's program covered the 3 main stages of the Inbound approach:

1- Attract :

It's all about attracting a relevant audience to your website - potential prospects - by offering them content that appeals to them and interests them, in line with your expertise. Several ingredients contribute to this:

    • Storytelling (Nathalie Grynbaum, IDRAC): Inbound content production means above all knowing how to tell a relevant story that will attract and convince your audience. It's all about demonstrating your expertise, but above all it's about responding in a concrete and useful way to your prospects' concerns and questions, providing them with elements that will enable them at least to fuel their thinking, and sometimes even to do some of the work themselves. You'll then be identified as a reference partner-expert, to whom they'll naturally turn when they need one.
    • S.E.O. - Search Engine Optimization (Eric Guillermain, IDRAC): putting rich, relevant content online for your target audiences also means working on your site's visibility : producing this content is often a long-term process, so it has real value, in your eyes and for your targets... It would be a shame if it didn't reach its audience! This means generating traffic to your site, preferably qualified traffic. One of the levers for achieving this is theSEO (or "natural" referencing) of your website and your digital content : this means making it easier for search engines to identify your pages and their content, by working on the meta-tags, titles and descriptions, page urls, image titles, lexical fields of texts... etc, according to their reading criteria. This optimization work is based on the study and analysis of the keywords used by your prospects in their online searches.

 

2- Engage

Being able to produce content that's interesting (to your target audience) and representative of your expertise enables you to attract strangers and turn them into visitors to your website. Once you've achieved this first objective, however, there's still a lot to be done to really reach your goal: ultimately, it's all about selling your product or service offering! To do this, you need to work on engaging this audience.

 

    • Engagement and social networks (Fabian Innocenti, PUBLIC ACTIF): This crucial stage consists of getting your visitors to take their relationship with you a step further. To achieve this, you need to provoke interactions with your prospects that will lead them to invest (time, energy... and above all, affection!) in a process that links them to your brand. One of today's most effective vectors in this field is social networking: animating a community through the dissemination of viral images, gaming, direct online access to services and products, the ability to personalize or even co-design products... All this plays a key role in engagement. It allows us to broaden our audience, to get to know them better, and above all to really "meet" their interests, expectations and purchasing behavior.

 

3- Transforming

If you already have a qualified audience engaged in a relationship with you, you've come a long way. However, your entire audience represents a mass of contacts too large for your sales force to handle effectively. What's more, not all visitors to your website or social networking pages are necessarily in the buying decision phase! It's up to you to get them there, or to identify those who are already at a level of maturity that can be exploited by your sales force...

    • Lead nurturing and lead scoring (Olivier Prost, KESTIO): the aim of this patient work is to generate qualified, mature leads that can be passed on to our sales teams ! This involves a "nurturing" process, which consists in "nurturing" your visitors' thoughts and getting them to mature their purchasing project (for example, by offering them white papers, providing them with benchmarks, or inviting them to take advantage of a free trial...). The design and provision of this rich content is the subject ofa close collaboration between Marketing and Sales, to align and coordinate objectives and the tempo of operations. The interactions proposed to prospects and their reactions enable us to establish a "scoring" system designed to identify "mature" and interesting prospects. The score is established according to criteria such as the prospect's characteristics (scale, sector...) and his or her level of progress in the pre-purchase process (general information, definition of choice criteria...). At the end of the process, only leads that have reached the required score are passed on to sales reps, so that they can efficiently feed their pipeline and maximize their chances of success (optimizing conversion rates and sales effort allocation).

 

The conference demonstrated the effectiveness of this new marketing approach, and the need to master all its facets in order to implement it effectively. It was well attended by entrepreneurs, managers, marketing and sales professionals and students alike.

What about you? How are you approaching the implementation of Inbound Marketing in your company?

 

 

To stay competitive and maximize your chances of converting your leads into future customers, it is important to optimize the performance of your sales assets. Find out how by watching this webinar:

Generating and exploiting qualified inbound leads is our business. For the past 10 years, KESTIO has been helping companies (from SMEs to major corporations) to acquire and retain customers.

 

According to a study carried out by IKO system in 2012, 59% of a salesperson's working time is not devoted directly to sales! A stinging observation, which reveals the weight of numerous time-consuming ancillary tasks: internal meetings, administrative tasks, transport...

 

Restoring sales to its rightful place at the heart of the sales force's activity is therefore a major challenge for sales managers, and a necessity for the company if it is to develop its profits and optimize the use of its resources.

 

So how do you turn this a priori unfavorable situation into an opportunity? For example, by exploiting the potential for optimization available through CRM!

 

These figures, taken from the very interesting study by IKO system [1] "Action commerciale: 66 statistiques et infographies" (Sales action: 66 statistics and infographics), highlight the unproductive or excessively time-consuming tasks that make salespeople's lives miserable:

 

Is time wasted on these non-core tasks inevitable for salespeople? Fortunately, no!

 

Here are 4 ways CRM can help you:

  • Improve the productivity of your sales teams (and therefore their results)
  • Saving your sales staff from a nervous breakdown!

 

1. Optimize unproductive time

An obvious first priority is to optimize all unproductive time!

This means working in a cab, on the metro, waiting for a plane or train, for example, and treating all this unproductive time as an opportunity.

 

To do this, some CRM solutions offer 2 possibilities:

    • mobile applications
    • the ability to work offline

 

ZohoCRM, Sugar CRM, Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, for example, offer mobile applications that can be enhanced by customization.

 

Off-line versions of CRM solutions, on the other hand, are generally based on a strong integration with Outlook.

These are all opportunities for your sales reps to capture their activities, verbatims from their interviews, or set up follow-up and reminder tasks at previously unproductive moments.

 

2. Enrich customer / lead data

All CRM solutions facilitate the enrichment of customer data in a variety of ways:

    • standardizing this data (for example, defining and standardizing the address format) to facilitate its use (generating reports, setting up marketing campaigns, etc.)
    • by checking the consistency of these data, using functions to verify the existence of addresses or telephone numbers.

 

Two major innovations take this logic a step further for BtB and BtC:

The first is the complete integration of data from specialized external databases. This can involve the use of dedicated interfaces (such as Zebaz, which works with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Yellowbox, Easiware, Marketo, Eloqua or Digatelo solutions) or the provision of specific modules: Data.com or Amabis, for example, have created a CRM solution around their company directories (Data is therefore their core business, but these companies have understood the importance of directly offering the technical solution to exploit them). Another example is B&C Technology's 2I solution, which offers a single, enriched customer view.

 

In both cases, interfacing enables automatic, simplified import of data, which is directly linked to existing accounts in the database (no duplication, thanks to a similarity search system with equivalence rates). Updates are made automatically and in real time.

This makes it possible to update administrative data (address, SIRET...) and qualitative data (activity, sales, headcount...), but also to enrich contacts: functions, organization charts... with rich, high value-added data for salespeople!

 

The second is the integration of professional or personal social networks directly into the contact's CRM file. This makes it possible to keep track of contacts centrally in the tool, without having to disperse the information, and thus to increase the relevance of exchanges (tracking news about the person and their company, knowing their centers of interest and identifying their networks of acquaintances for possible contacts and recommendations).

IKO System, on the other hand, offers intelligent alerts on your prospects, customers or competitors to increase the responsiveness of your sales teams.

 

3- Qualify and score leads

In addition to the integration solutions with external databases already mentioned, which facilitate lead retrieval and the import of rich data into the CRM, the major innovation of recent years has been the explosion of marketing automation modules.

These more or less functionally rich (and more or less costly) modules can be used to implement nurturing policies, i.e. to propose personalized content (messages, offers) and encourage interaction with identified leads (based on Inbound Marketing scenarios) through different channels.

 

This process enriches the database with usable behavioral data and enables :

    • nurture a prospect's interest in your company/offers
    • develop and deepen your relationship with him over time
    • identify interests and habits (behavioral data)
    • support them as their project matures and as they make their purchasing decision
    • establish lead scoring based on the various interactions to identify hot prospects and deliver them to sales at the right time

 

This marketing channel therefore ultimately feeds the leads available to sales reps, who then have a base of qualified contacts with a history of interactions. The list of solutions is long and varied: Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot, Exact Target, Silver Pop, InfusionSoft, Koban, Act-On, SalesFusion, Click Dimenson....

 

4- Sharing knowledge and working together

As is often the case, this innovation comes from Salesforce, and has been adopted, complemented and adapted by the majority of CRM solutions on the market.

The idea is to consider each entity as a Facebook page: an account, a contact, an opportunity.... What may seem anecdotal at first glance, above all, is the ability to store unstructured data on accounts and contacts instead of sharing them by email, thus avoiding the loss of information and enabling a newcomer to integrate customer knowledge beyond the numbers.

 

By unstructured data we mean: interview verbatims, organization charts, data relating to the customer's market and its offers (in a BtoB context)... In other words, data that doesn't fit into standardized "dedicated fields" and can't be imported automatically.

 

By allowing them to be stored and displayed on the page dedicated to the account or contact, CRM meets several needs:

    • Keep track of this information and archive this knowledge, which comes under the heading of Business Intelligence and has a high added value in the sales process.
    • Share it, so that different players can contribute to and enrich it (a member of the customer service department or a project manager can glean key information about the customer's decision-makers or projects from his or her exchanges with the customer, which will be of great value to the sales person).
    • Historicize" it: link the rich information thus obtained to the history of interactions between the company and the customer, and thus enable any person taking over the file to quickly get up to speed with this information and take account of the customer's history

 

 

The ability to subscribe to "feeds" to follow the "news feed" of a contact or an account can enable a manager to monitor the activity of his sales force, a sales person to follow the news of his customer... or several members of a team to work together (sales people working together on the same account, sales + marketing + customer service teams).

 

This also avoids a dramatic pitfall often encountered by teams not using a CRM: the outright loss of information, or its control by a single person (likely to leave the company).

 

CRM is therefore a real goldmine for optimizing your sales force and developing a more collaborative approach within your company... Provided you choose it well, and make sure it's actually used! Two essential elements on which we work on a daily basis with customers of all sizes from a wide range of sectors, such as :

    • healthcare: BIOMNIS
    • leisure and events: STADE DE FRANCE
    • industry: GPN (Total Group), GEMALTO
    • services: GL Events, APICIL

 

How are your teams using CRM tools? What benefits have you seen, and what difficulties have you encountered in implementing such a tool?

 

 

To find out more about our CRM solutions and how we can help you, click here:

 
 
Choose my CRM.com

[1] http://go.iko-system.com/rs/ikosystemtrial2/images/eBook_statistiques_action_commerciale_2012.pdf

On this occasion, he was interviewed by KOBAN, the organizer of the evening. To give you a sneak preview of what promises to be a very interesting evening. We in turn publish this interview, which originally appeared on the KOBAN website.

 

What will be the key messages on the evening of December 14?

Inbound marketing and its accompanying tools now provide the means for marketing and sales to work together. The fact that these 2 departments complement each other seems obvious, and yet... the reality in companies is that they are still often poorly connected. For us, this is essential, and is part of the best practices to be implemented for greater efficiency.

 

So we're going to be talking about lead follow-up and qualification?

Yes, because when marketing identifies a lead, it's counter-productive to pass it on to sales right away. There's still too much of a tendency to generate a volume of leads, rather than work on qualifying and profiling them. Lead scoring and lead nurturing methods enable us to provide the sales force with useful leads, and put sales energy in the right place at the right time. At the same time, we'll be discussing the role of organization and processes in ensuring smooth communication between marketing and sales.

 

A few words about KESTIO and your expertise

KESTIO is a consulting and training company focused onimproving Sales Performance and Customer Experience. We employ around twenty people, based in Lyon and Paris. We support companies and their managers through 4 main areas of expertise:

-Sales performance
-Customer experience
-CRM tools tools
-Experience and the digital transformation of companies

 

Our approach is based on viewing a company's customers as its most important asset.

All the levers we can help them use tooptimize customer acquisition and loyalty.

This evening will provide concrete action keys for implementing and working towards an Inbound Marketing strategy.

To discover even more content created in collaboration with KOBAN, download the white paper "How to optimize my business model".

Download the white paper

While this may seem obvious to everyone when it comes to consumers, and therefore the BtoC sector, it's less common to mention the fact that this trend is also affecting corporate buyers, with a direct impact on the business of companies operating in the BtoB sector. And yet, this is what has led a Forrester1 study to announce the imminent death of the BtoB sales function! (On this subject, see our article The salesperson is dead. Long live the sales consultant!)

Ignoring these changes, or misunderstanding their meaning, means running the risk of (continuing to) offer sales systems that are ill-suited to today's reality and your customers' expectations... A pointless and dangerous risk!

 

Do you have the right sales system in place, or are you lagging behind your buyers when it comes to boosting your sales performance? Read on to find out.

 

1- What has changed, and why

But what are these changes in professional purchasing behavior, and what are their underlying factors?

There are 4 main trends:

 

1.1. A change in audience and buyer generation :

According to the "Demand Gen Report" and the "B2B Path To Purchase Study 2014" by Google and Millward Brown Digital, Generation Y, born with the Internet, is now at the forefront of B2B purchasing potential.

 

46% of today's professionals are from Generation Y, an increase of 70% in three years!

 

Young, dynamic, more intrepid and, above all, completely immersed in digital technology, the growing presence of "digital natives" partly explains the importance of social networks and new technologies in the purchasing process.

And make no mistake about it: despite their young age, these professionals now have real decision-making power: still according to the same study, 81% of them are in charge of purchasing decisions concerning their perimeter.

The profile of BtoB prospects has therefore evolved considerably.

 

1.2. The supremacy of the Internet in the information process :

What does this evolution of your audience mean for you? First and foremost, the way they access information about your offers.

 

According to a survey published by Fevad and QualiQuanti (a marketing research institute), the majority of professionals now use the Internet to prepare their purchases. 55% of them report a growing predilection for the web: search engines (by a large majority), supplier websites and social networks are now among your buyers' primary sources of information about your products and services.

Another important aspect of their behavior is that they avidly consult expert and/or peer opinions before making any purchase. The "official" information circulated by suppliers is therefore analyzed and weighed up against the testimonials and feedback of their customers.

B-to-B buyers, who once favored face-to-face and telephone channels, now favor responsiveness and the plurality of possibilities offered by the web.

 

They no longer need the supplier's help to initiate or even finalize their purchasing process, as the Forrester study shows: 93% of B2B customers prefer to buy online "once they've decided what to buy".

 

Thanks to the Internet, every customer has independent access, from any place and at any time, to advice and opinions on how to solve the problems they encounter, as well as information on the products and services that interest them.

The other side of the coin for him (and for you): today's BtoB buyer is overwhelmed by content from various service providers, partners and analysts. Their search for relevant information means they have to be highly selective, and quickly get rid of advertising content.

 

1.3. The growing importance of social networks

72% of BtoB buyers use social networks to find out about products and services beforehand. Of these, only 22% then contact the supplier directly.2

 

Executives and prospects have a clear preference for LinkedIn, a professional network, and blogs, which provide a more detailed opinion on a subject.

There's nothing easier for a buyer than to log on to discussion and self-help forums to collect best practices or standard specifications. These collaborative BtoB modes are booming, with advice and recommendations (from suppliers among others) becoming increasingly powerful.

 

The expansion of the buyer's network has truly changed his traditional decision-making model.

 

The social networking giants have also geared their advertising offerings to target the BtoB sector. Facebook, for example, is working hard to develop its own professional network, "Facebook at work". Even if it is still struggling to win over this sector, it is already available on the Apple Store.

 

1.4. Increased risk perception, a longer and more complex decision-making process

Risk is still a predominant factor in purchasing decisions. Tense economic conditions and uncertainty about the future are all factors that drive buyers to pay close attention to cost and value.

They put pressure on suppliers to lower the price of their solutions and demonstrate their added value and return on investment to all decision-makers.

Buyers' perception of risk is taking on such dimensions that the result is increasingly long sales cycles and a multiplication of interlocutors who share responsibility for the decision and, consequently, the potential risks.

Buyers therefore spend more time in the information phase. They take the time to compare services, call or meet suppliers, and examine all possible solutions.

 

When they enter the purchasing process, they expect salespeople to support them in their analysis and reflection, helping them to clarify their needs, determine the key success factors and challenge competing solutions to enable them to make the most appropriate choice in light of their challenges and objectives.

 

2. How to get on board

Faced with these rapid and radical changes, suppliers absolutely have to upgrade their sales processes!

Generation Y buyers, the explosion in web usage, the advent of social networks and the desire to control risks have permanently altered the situation: increasingly autonomous in their purchasing cycle, BtoB buyers have developed new reflexes.

Of course, the diversity of products and services offered to professionals (from ink cartridges to airliners) makes it impossible to model a desirable evolution applicable to all.

 

However, 2 main models can be distinguished:

 

2.1. Your company sells "everyday" products

In the case of "commodity" products such as ink cartridges, the added value is so low (which is not to say that the product is of poor value!) that online sales, without a sales contact, will become the rule. The challenge is essentially e-marketing, and involves offering customers the benefits they associate with using the web channel:

    • Time-saving: immediate, real-time information on products and their availability, access to order history, ease of ordering, etc.
    • Reliable product information : easy-to-access, clear and comprehensive information on product comparisons, prices, delivery times and test samples.
    • Order tracking: real-time tracking of orders, with direct dispatch of useful information at each stage of processing, and additional functionalities such as SMS alerts.

 

2.2. Your company sells high value-added products and services

When it comes to high value-added products or services, such as airliners or enterprise software, it's no longer a single salesperson who makes the sale, but a whole team, whose size and areas of intervention are expanding (marketing, digital, sales, pre-sales research, development, customer relations...).

 

The challenges are to detect qualified leads, support customers in analyzing their problems, determine the most appropriate solution with the prospect's or customer's entire sphere of influence and decision-making, and be able to provide maximum value throughout this pre-sales phase.iétés to adapt an effective sales strategy.

 

To meet these challenges, we work closely with our customers on :

    • Changes in sales practices: sales management needs to be adapted to encourage salespeople to change their approach to prospecting, conducting interviews and co-constructing sales proposals with their customers.
    • The implementation of a sales coverage and intensity management system for the various customer segments, which puts the number of appointments indicator into perspective.
    • Recruiting sales staff with new skills
    • Development of management and control tools (e.g. CRM)
    • Improving customer pathways and ensuring consistency between different sales channels 
    • Developing effective cooperation between sales, marketing, customer relations and pricing teams...

 

There are so many facets to this transformation that it can be difficult to master.

However, the slow pace of change in sales processes is leading customers to eliminate certain market players who have failed to jump on the bandwagon... This means that sales systems (too) are not immune to the tsunami of "uberization"!

Only companies that rise to these challenges will be able to stay at the forefront of sales efficiency, or conquer it! 

 

What about you ? How are you adapting your sales systems to meet or anticipate your customers' purchasing expectations and practices?

 

Discover a tool to test your sales effectiveness. Just click on the link below to find out how dynamic your sales are, free of charge: 

Get your score

Sources :

1 Death of a (B2B) Salesman" by Forrester Research
2 Demand Gen Report
3 Key figures 2014 distance selling ECommerce

Collecting customer data is no longer enough - you have to act on it!

 

"2016 promises to be a lively year when it comes to customer relations. It will be a year in which companies that develop real efforts to improve customer relations will be rewarded, while those that have been downplaying their customers' needs for years will begin to wither away," confides Forrester in its study " Top 10 Success Factors to Determine Who Wins And Who Fails in the Age of the Customer " (1).

 

According to the report, customers will reward companies that anticipate individual needs and make use of the data they collect. On the contrary, companies that constantly have to ask for basic information, and are unable to "recognize" a customer, will start to lose them.

 

In short, Business Intelligence must create added value! Data collection must truly serve the customer experience!

 

Customers will no longer tolerate companies with amnesia when it comes to knowing their preferences.

 

explained Gene Alvarez, managing vice president at Gartner, at the Gartner Customer 360 Summit in September 2015 (2). It is therefore imperative for companies to recognize their customers and provide them with relevant content that demonstrates real effort.

 

Respect for confidentiality and privacy as a differentiating value

Consumers are used to brands collecting data, and are more or less in favor of it... But one thing is certain: if personal information is collected, then these consumers expect it to be useful!

 

Consumers demand that brands use data before they interact! All your customers know that you collect data, and they'll accept the idea more readily if it serves the experience they have with your brand.

 

To act, you need data. But be careful how you collect it. Data confidentiality and privacy have become key issues. We can no longer confine ourselves to the simple "legal" aspect, or even see data collection as a risk. Quite the contrary, in fact. It's a real opportunity to stand out from the crowd. We need to explain what the data collected is used for, and how it can be used to personalize our offering.

 

Customer involvement will thus become a lever for improving the relationship! In other words? According to Forrester, brands that get their customers more involved - through their loyalty programs, for example - will see the benefits.

 

Companies that launch customer-focused operations will gain real and lasting differentiation. Business as usual is doomed to failure.

 

Customers need to be involved in defining the brand and designing its products and services: who's in a better position to know their needs than they are? This is something our customer Castorama has understood very well: by means of questionnaires delivered via in-store touch-screen terminals, some of its sales outlets collect the opinions of their customers directly. This has enabled them to adapt the working hours of their teams, further improve customer service and develop new ideas based on reliable data obtained in real time.

 

Since the heart of customer relations is based on the personalization and contextualization of the offer, the consumer must be strongly involved, ideally at a very, very early stage. This is what our consultants contribute to, particularly when they implement a customer experience improvement coaching program .

 

Are you ready for these changes?

Sources : 

(1) Forrester study: https://solutions.forrester.com/aoc-predictions

(2) Gartner study: http://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/the-customer-experience-in-2020/

(Those who already know KESTIO will recognize in these actions our values: # 2 Act as an agent of change, #5 Promote the transmission of knowledge and #7 Be passionate and proud of our profession as consultants!) To tell you more about the activities of this international organization, we've asked Maylis Portmann, Fellowship Manager at Ashoka, to take the floor.

 

  • Can you tell us a little about Ashoka?

Ashoka is the world'sleading network of social entrepreneurs.

Founded 30 years ago by the American Bill Drayton (formerly of Mc Kinsey and head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), the association is now present in 80 countries, supporting 3,000 social entrepreneurs in the realization of their projects. These are innovative projects with a real social impact.

 

Currently, for example, we support projects as diverse as :

    • The development of digital tools and edutainment content to enable autistic children to develop their potential, and to provide appropriate support for those involved in their education (parents, teachers, specialized educators, etc.): LearnEnjoy project, which democratizes access to the best educational strategies, so that all children with special needs have the right to them without discrimination, led by Gaele Regnault.
    • The fight against cultural isolation and lack of information in difficult or extreme situations (refugee camps, developing countries) through the "IdeasBox" concept (Media library in tent "kit": multimedia tools and library, 100 m2 space assembled in flight cases held on 2 pallets, designed by Philippe Stark). Project led by Jeremy Lachal and the association Bibliothèques sans Frontières (co-founded by historian Patrick Weil).
    • The implementation of adapted physical activity programs as a genuine preventive therapeutic tool in the service of Sustainable Health for sensitive target groups: the elderly or disabled, physically demanding professions, to help them maintain their health and autonomy and prevent chronic pathologies. Siel Bleu project supported by Jean Michel Ricard.

 

Our mission: to identify and support innovative social entrepreneurs, to foster encounters and collaboration between these social entrepreneurs, public institutions and the business world, and finally, to contribute to the emergence of the next generations of change-makers through an "education" component.

 

For the mobile application project to track and manage water consumption, for example, one of the elements of our support program was to put the project leaders in touch with KESTIO consultants to help them approach and convince their potential prescribers (in this case, major companies in the insurance sector, in particular) to encourage the development of sales of their product.

  • What is a social entrepreneur?

When we talk about social entrepreneurs, we mean the word "entrepreneur" in the broadest sense, i.e. independently of the notion of a company's legal status. We support projects with associative or foundation status, as well as companies in the strict sense of the term.

 

A social entrepreneur, as we understand it, is first and foremost an innovative project leader whose idea is strong enough to make a difference in his or her field. What counts is the project's interest, its innovative character and its anticipated impact, i.e. its potential capacity to solve a large-scale societal problem.

 

In practice,the sectors most often concerned are education, health, human rights, sustainable development, integration and the fight against exclusion...

Ashoka's core business is to identify, select and support these potential companies, to give them a real boost to their development and ensure the conditions for their "spin-off".

 

  • What is your role within Ashoka?

I'm in charge of managing the Fellows program (the name we give to the social entrepreneurs we support) for France, Belgium and Switzerland.

I organize the actions put in place with the "Pro-bono1 " partners of which you are a part, i.e. the various players (public authorities and private companies) ready to commit to giving their time and sharing their expertise in a co-construction approach with social entrepreneurs and members of civil society to move their projects forward.

 

In concrete terms, this translates into the organization of themed meeting days or regular workshops , during which fellows benefit from expert input on various subjects (legal, commercial, HR, communication, know-how, etc.) and role-playing exercises enabling them to co-construct with the partners present.

 

During the weekend recently held in Lyon, for example, the fellows worked with KESTIO on best practices for approaching a partner or customer and presenting their project or solution. They also took part in workshops led by SIMPLON on design thinking, or in a Lego Scrum to learn in a fun, team-based way how to manage a project and meet their customers' expectations.

 

  • How do you measure the impact of your work with Fellows in the field?

To measure the impact of our actions, we evaluate the spin-offs of the activities of the social entrepreneurs we support and their evolution over 5 and 10 years (impact studies, etc.). Measuring Effectiveness).

 

This allows us to know, for example, that 94% of the social entrepreneurs selected by Ashoka continue to develop their project 5 years after joining the network: a sign of their viability and the relevance of the development conditions implemented at the outset.

 

Such a "success rate" is no coincidence: Fellow status is obtained after a demanding selection process, lasting 6 to 8 months! But it is then "acquired for life".

 

Two other figures that make us particularly happy and proud: 91% of these projects are replicated (in other countries, for example), and 54% of them have an impact on policy in their own country! This is proof that they provide an effective response to real, shared social challenges.

In very concrete terms, when we support the C&A Foundation, for example, which researches and identifies players in the textile value chain who implement production conditions that respect the environment and people, we are actively helping to advance issues relating to health, respect for human rights, social and economic development and respect for the environment!

 

From a more qualitative point of view, the impact study carried out among fellows in France, Switzerland and Belgium by MFR Consulting reveals what Ashoka represents for them : a "gas pedal" to maximize the potential of the business and its creator; a community of peers and expert resources; and lastly, a place of trust, support and experience that enables them to avoid the pitfalls that are sometimes fatal to this type of project.

 

1 Pro Bono: abbreviation of the Latin expression "pro bono publico", meaning "for the public good". Pro bono refers to the commitment of volunteers who give meaning to their work by getting involved in initiatives of general interest free of charge.

To find out more about the organization's actions and projects, take a look at the Ashoka website!


Want to take your values to the next level? Support Ashoka or Become a Pro-bono partner
Do you know any innovative social projects? Propose a Fellow

We thought it only natural to share this point of view with our own readers!

 

What role does CRM play in your customer approach?

Dominique Seguin: CRM is an essential part of customer relations. You wouldn't think of working today without smartphones, e-mail and other time-saving tools! CRM, the application for managing customer relations, enables much more than the technical and prohibitive image that salespeople have of it: you can manage your follow-ups, analyze your figures, do emailing, store your customer data for other departments in the company, evaluate your sales performance...

 

Salespeople don't like CRMs because they feel they have to re-enter their working days to fill in tables that nobody really reads. Like any tool, it has its constraints, let's face it, but we've observed among our customers that no experienced salesperson would dare to manage their opportunities on Excel, their reminders on a notepad, or their forecasts on a blank sheet of paper. The challenge of getting teams to take ownership of the system is therefore particularly high, and this requires a genuine perception of the associated benefits!

 

The subject isn't new (we even carried out and published a study in 2012 entitled: "Sales reps and CRM, why so much hatred?"), but it remains topical.

 

Our advice: seize this tool as an opportunity and make the most of its features!

 

In today's digital age, how do you interest prospects over the phone without sounding intrusive?

Dominique Seguin: The rules don't change! If we're interesting, people will be interested! If not, they tell us very simply: "I'm not interested".

How do we interest our prospects? By telling them about THEIR concerns. Either we find material available on the web and use that as a hook, or we bring in one or two topics specific to the target market and see if they bite.

Don't get your hopes up about call-to-appointment rates: the average is less than 10%. But if you prepare well with the right pitch, you can double your performance.

 

What role do you see for social media in boosting sales? 

Dominique Seguin: Let's just say that the sales function is on the verge of uberization!

 

50% of the purchasing process takes place without a salesperson. Digital technology has become this profession's main competitor.

 

How can you hope to be more relevant and demonstrative than a 2-minute 3D Youtube video that highlights all the product's features with a nice soundtrack, just when you need it? You have to create value elsewhere!

 

Be even more differentiating in your understanding of the customer's issues (stop asking them what they want, ask them why they want it!), put a value on the cost of the current situation and the dysfunction observed, and finally stay present in their minds after you've left their office.

Social media is a fabulous opportunity to stay in touch with the customer after the appointment stage.

 

It used to be the brochure that did the job, but now you can showcase your track record, your expertise and your latest news with up-to-date, interactive tools.

In other words, you can influence and promote your recommendations. In short, if this is the end of the brochure, it's the beginning of sales 2.0, and it makes the job even sharper and more exciting!

 

Beyond the tools, what makes a salesperson a top performer? 

Dominique Seguin: Method, method and method! Beyond the reputed innate sales "talent", it's the method that makes the difference. In sales, as in any other profession, method is key.

Do you think a baker wonders every night how to make good bread? No, he follows a tried and tested recipe every night. It's less tiring, and he's sure to be able to serve his customers in the morning!

Good salespeople don't reinvent the wheel every day, hoping to get the right smile at the right time, or the right formula, or the right product...

The bait is less important than the trap itself! It's a bit of a stiff mantra, but it's so true. The trap is the sales techniques that are repeated every day to constantly improve the gesture.

 

Very good salespeople, well versed in these principles, sometimes fall flat on their faces in the negotiation phase... Why is this and how can it be avoided? 

Dominique Seguin: The main problem is lack of preparation. Hard training, easy war! Most salespeople prepare by applying the handbrake. That's a recipe for failure, and the good old way of resorting to the salesperson's weakness, begging his manager for a price cut.

Good salespeople are seen in the bends, not the straights. Negotiation has nothing to do with sales. Great negotiators are not salespeople. And the reverse can be true.

 

A good negotiator will be able to create a new territory for both parties that does not exist at the start of the negotiation, with each party initially intent on protecting its own.

 

The challenge is to move away from this vision and towards the search for a new configuration. Otherwise, we're left counting the points, and in this game, it's often the customer who wins!

Let's change the frame of reference. The real issue for a customer is not winning the negotiation, it's taking advantage as quickly as possible of the benefits brought by the coveted solution that justified the purchase, to solve the identified problem (expensive machine, service too slow, inefficient process...).

 

You've been a Sales Performance Consultant with KESTIO for almost three years now. How would you sum up these years?

Dominique Seguin: After 18 years in operational sales, from the field to managing a P&L of 180 million euros, I thought the changeover would be easy.

I can say that my best decision after 6 months was to wipe the slate clean and learn a new trade, one where you first think before you act, where you study before you decide.

 

Our job is to help our customers approach their challenges differently, because our time is not theirs, and that's what we bring them.

An operative doesn't need a consultant to ensure day-to-day execution, he knows how to do it very well and is the man of the art. We'll never know our customers, their teams, their culture, their history, their own customers as well as we do....

 

The consultant brings the ability to make complexity simple, to bear witness to best practices in all sectors, to identify what causes failure, dysfunctions, to find the right balance to calmly tackle bottlenecks, and to bring about change in employee practices through genuine, long-term support, without the pressure of numbers.

 

We help our customers find space in their day-to-day lives, so they can better prepare for the future and enable their teams to stay ahead in their markets.

My operational background is of great use to me because I understand my customers' lives, I know their doubts, their desire to succeed, the incredible energy they put into achieving their objectives every day with their teams, and we often provide the little spark that makes everything move...

 

Maybe also because at KESTIO, we don't take ourselves too seriously, and that makes all the difference when a Comex entrusts us with a serious subject. They don't need any more complication than their subject already gives them!

 

What's your favourite mobile application?

Dominique Seguin: I love Pocket because, being an infovore, I like to eat content all the time. Between newsletters, monitoring, blogs and news sites, how can I find an application that brings together all my playlists easily and intuitively? Pocket does it so well, I can't do without it.

 

KESTIO supports companies (from SMEs to large groups) in acquiring and retaining customers, through its dual expertise in Sales Performance and Customer Experience.

Discover our solutions

A recent study published by the American consultancy Forrester predicts the imminent death of the field sales profession in the face of e-commerce. However, a different outcome is possible for BtoB field salespeople, provided they rethink their positioning and adopt a consulting posture, notably through the quality of their questioning and a more "customer-centric" approach.

What are the other components of the sales consultant posture, and how can you make them your own? That's what we'll be looking at in Part 2.

 

Position yourself as an expert

While listening is the key to creating the conditions for a relationship of trust, you also need to know how to demonstrate your added value.

In the corporate world, the formalization of a project often proves delicate and complex. Even though they are becoming more and more knowledgeable and autonomous, customers still expect their sales representatives to have the cutting-edge expertise they need to refine the contours of their project.

 

Buyers are looking for sales people capable of challenging them: analyzing a situation, carrying out a diagnosis and modeling the data collected. This will enable them to formalize and synthesize the guiding ideas of their project, and thus help them to "sell" it internally.

 

The sales consultant must be perceived as an expert, from whom the customer expects advice. But be careful not to confuse "advice" with "solution proposal"... That would again be tantamount to trying to sell something!

The expert salesperson must express and take responsibility for his or her convictions on a given subject, and lead the other person to react in turn. They must be able to deliver a point of view and develop it, not to convince, but to shed factual light on their customer's concerns.

 

The salesperson's contribution to value can also be measured by a "profitability" approach.

 

All companies are concerned with return on investment. The sales consultant's job is to help the customer bring his idea to fruition, so he needs to offerindicators to measure the effectiveness and profitability of his solution - the famous ROI.

In this way, the customer is no longer focused on the cost of the solution, but on the financial gain or savings it will bring.

 

Rely on reformulating the customer's issues

Last but not least, sales consultants demonstrate their value by their ability to integrate and reformulate the issues and concerns of their contacts.

On the one hand, reformulation helps to avoid misinterpretation: if the sales rep has missed something important, the other person will have the opportunity to clarify it without feeling attacked. On the other hand, a well-mastered reformulation demonstrates professionalism and leads the other person in the desired direction. Last but not least, rephrasing the issues at stake will give rise to new questions that will allow the introduction of new ideas, suggestions or proposals.

 

By bringing together all the components mentioned above (quality of questioning, contribution of expertise, demonstration of the added value of his solution, reformulation of the customer's challenges, etc.), the sales consultant creates the conditions for a state of mind based on collaboration and partnership.

 

Register as a partner

The advisory role requires us toact like a consultant,adopting a benevolent attitude towards our customers to help them define their needs, move their project forward and make it a reality.

In a company, it's a good idea to be accompanied by an outside consultant to help you "sell" your idea internally and convince the forces involved and concerned.

It's important to partner with him in the success of the project, and to offer to act as an orchestra conductor for the various teams, making him understand - tactfully - that salespeople and customers share the same interest: the progress of the project.

 

Identify decision-makers

In this pre-sales/sales phase, the salesperson also needs toidentify the people involved in the decision, and then gather their vision of the process underway. This step will enable the salesperson to remove any obstacles, give meaning to the process, encourage buy-in, and begin to commit all parties to the decision. Naturally, he will keep his privileged interlocutor informed of the progress of his contacts to consolidate the relationship of trust.

 

The sales consultant may propose "working meetings", or "co-construction workshops", or even a "meeting to summarize understanding of the issues".

These meeting formats are far more effective and have a far greater impact than the classic "presentation meetings", "discovery meetings" and "proposal handovers", which are still the panacea of the all-purpose salesperson.

Nevertheless, customers sometimes close the door to this mode of operation. We need to analyze the real reasons for such a refusal. But very often, a blockage of this kind is a sign of a lack of desire to work together. The question then arises as to whether or not to continue discussions with the customer. In other words: Go / No Go?

 

A No Go will enable you to avoid spending unnecessary time and commercial energy on a deal that has little chance of succeeding, so that you can concentrate on more promising projects.

 

In a nutshell...!

The Consulting posture relies above all on the salesperson's ability to put aside his or her need to sell and concentrate solely on listening and advising.

 

In this way, the act of sale becomes an act of non-sale.

 

And this paradigm shift is not insignificant! Positioning oneself as an expert cannot be improvised or decreed. Salespeople wishing to adopt a consultative posture must cultivate and develop additional interpersonal skills, which have become indispensable today to win a customer's trust, including: mastering their discourse, behavior and rhetoric, and the art of questioning and bouncing back.

On this note, we wish you very fine sales ! Sorry, very good advice... ; )

 

Knowing how to reposition your business can be vital in a difficult situation. Discover the different stages of this process in this webinar:

 

1 External resources :

 

Our exclusive methods and training modules on this topic:

- La Méthode de l'Echiquer© - Key account and complex sales
- KESTIO System© sales training modules - Sales effectiveness and dialogue tools
- La Méthode DISC© - Behavioral analysis for sales reps and managers

Is the field sales "species" irrevocably doomed to extinction? Or does it have a chance to adapt and survive? Here,KESTIO gives you some keys to emerging victorious from the process of natural selection!

 

Buyer Power!

According to the Forrester1 report, this upheaval is largely due to changes in customer purchasing practices and behaviors.

They now have powerful tools at their disposal, which mean they don't need a sales rep to deliver a presentation brochure: websites, social networks, comparators, e-ecommerce platforms. It's far less costly and more effective than an interview.

The widespread use of these tools has accentuated theautonomy of customers and buyers. As a result, the perception of the value of the sales profession seems to have never been so challenged.

 

Nevertheless, meeting with a sales representative remains necessary, but for different reasons and at different stages in the purchasing and decision-making process: to be supported in your thinking and helped in defining a need or a project, to understand the specific features of a solution, to negotiate, and finally, to benefit from advice.

 

The consulting approach therefore appears to be the best possible outcome for the sales profession, as it is through the provision of advice and expertise that salespeople demonstrate their added value. So, how can a salesperson move from a Push to a Pull approach, in other words, from a "Sales" approach to a "Consulting" posture?

How do you change (or mutate?) into the "BtoB salesperson of the future"? That's what we're going to explain in this 2-part saga...

 

Is the salesperson an inveterate egomaniac?

The mountaineer who, at the foot of a mountain, focuses solely on the summit and the time it will take to reach it, loses sight of what's essential: his technique, the precision of his movements, and thus his safety.

Salespeople face the same pitfall. By focusing too much on his product and his sale, he will miss his real objective: winning his customer's trust. To achieve this, they need to focus on a single objective: the quality of the exchange with their customer.

However, many factors influence the salesperson's state of mind at the start of a relationship: the anxiety of not meeting targets on time, the obsession - conscious or unconscious - with making a sale.

These factors lead him to focus on his own objectives and to distance himself from the customer's interests.

 

The salesperson must mentally forget about closing, and set the sole aim of initiating a quality relationship, based above all on trust. The Consulting posture involves adopting a mindset resolutely focused on the customer's interests.

Let's stop thinking like egomaniacs and become " customer centric "!

 

The consulting posture: the science of listening and the art of questioning

Most of the time, people are quite willing to talk about themselves, and like to talk about their business. Customers and buyers have the same desire. So we have to be interested in them. Showing interest in the person, focusing on the quality of the relationship, demonstrating empathy... all this leads your interlocutor to open up.

But is it enough to listen to a customer to discover all their secrets, and by that I mean their needs and projects? Do you become a customer's confidant overnight?

The answer is no, at least if we remain focused on finding "needs" or "problems".

 

By definition, a customer doesn't have a problem. On the other hand, a customer - a company - may have an ambition, wish to develop a program, optimize its resources, reinforce its growth or launch a new product...

 

And when faced with such objectives, customers don't necessarily have any fixed ideas about the levers available to them.

 

The primary objective is to gather information to understand and analyze the customer's environment. Data collection is king.

The essence of the consulting posture lies in the quality of questioning and the ability to bounce back on the information gathered to broaden the scope and go deeper into the issues at hand. The sales consultant must focus solely on researching and understanding the customer's issues. The art of questioning is tomake the customer aware of his or her needs, often expressed implicitly, and to formalize them into explicit requirements.

 

From then on, the salesperson focuses on finding the causes (the "why") and not on solving the problems (the "how").

 

The consulting posture also involves stepping into the customer's shoes. The salesperson must immerse himself in the discussion as if with a friend, in a disinterested way. He must assume that he has nothing to sell; he is simply there to listen and understand.

 

For the customer, these questions of understanding are marks of interest that reinforce trust and position the sales person as an ally rather than an adversary.

 

Listening and the art of questioning are very powerful psychological levers, enabling us to uncover much broader customer issues than a single need.

However, they are not the only components of a "consulting posture". To achieve "status" as a sales consultant and prove your worth to your customers, you'll need to develop and combine other skills (providing specialized expertise, ROI-oriented approach, reformulation of customer issues and identification of decision-makers). We'll tell you all about them in the article : the salesman is dead, long live the advisory salesman, episode 2 !

 

 

Knowing how to reposition your business can be vital in a difficult situation. Discover the different stages of this process in this webinar:

1 External resources :

 

 

Our exclusive methods and training modules on this topic:

- La Méthode de l'Echiquer© - Key account and complex sales
- KESTIO System© sales training modules - Sales effectiveness and dialogue tools
- La Méthode DISC© - Behavioral analysis for sales reps and managers