Sales Assembly’s RevOps Roundup is a monthly collection of tips, trends, and tactics to help you navigate the wild west of Revenue & Sales Operations – featuring yours truly, Sheriff Brad Rosen, President and Head of Revenue Operations here at Sales Assembly. 

Let’s get into it.  Yippee Ki Kay!

Have you ever tested your own sales process?  If so, when was the last time you went full secret shopper from beginning to end?

From the inside, many companies think they have a smooth sales process down.  Any “hot” inbound lead is routed perfectly to a BDR/AE and the prospect is taken through a seamless sales cycle that gives them all the information they need when they need it.  But how do you know it’s actually functioning as designed?

I recently inquired about two different pieces of software that I was pretty familiar with and relatively intent on purchasing.  Here was my experience:

  1. Software Purchase #1: We are a current customer of this software – I inquired about upgrading to a new feature set.  After filling out a form, I received what was most likely an automated email from a sales rep asking for my information and what product I was looking to understand more about (all information I had already provided in the form).  I’ve yet to hear back from this vendor after responding to the automated email. 
  2. Software Purchase #2: This was a new piece of software for us but the software is well known for addressing some of the gaps currently in our tech stack.  I inquired about 1 specific module of their offering.  After a month+ of the sales rep working with me on our specific use case, bringing in experts to make me feel comfortable with the offering, and keeping me posted on the progress every step of the way, I purchased the product and even another module I never imagined we needed!

While these two stories seem very polarizing and obvious, unfortunately, more sales processes fall into the Software Purchase #1 category than you would think.  So what can you do to find holes in your current Buyer’s Journey?  Be the secret shopper!

  • Submit two inbound leads – one that seems like a great prospect and one that is less enticing
  • Test what the response time and follow up is for each scenario
  • Audit the different ways someone can become a lead and see how the outreach differs (register for a webinar, download a whitepaper, fill out a form, chat, email sales@, etc.)
  • Have a friend jump on a call and ask hard questions – does the rep lean in and do everything they can to determine if your product is a good fit?

We are constantly worrying about generating more leads.  Just be sure not to neglect the leads that are already coming in! 

Map the Process

Picture this: you want to map out the customer journey process but shocker, your employees are not all working in the same place.  That’s where collaborative whiteboard software can help.  Tools like Miro, Mural, and Lucidchart allow you to share brainstorming ideas, strategy sessions, and agile workflows digitally.  

Dubbed the “whiteboard of the future” these tools are only going to become more important as you scale.  Oh, and they’ve raised over $600M combined this year! 

Get the Details

If you really want to understand which vendor is right for you, you may want to engage in an RFP (Request for Proposal) process.  This is a longer process that requires coming up with standardized questions typically pertaining to project requirements, project pricing, and background information about the vendor.  While some vendors are hesitant to engage in an RFP process – mainly due to the time-consuming nature of the request – this often can be a great way for a buyer to determine the best partner for their project. 

Utilizing RPF software can help to provide templates for RFP documents, organize the documents, get quotes based on the information in the documents, and integrate with CRM tools to help automate the process.  Tools such as Loopio, RFPIO, and RFP360 can ensure your RFP process is streamlined.

Below are a few insights from leading RevOps pros throughout our awesome community:

Kyle Himmelwright, Director of Revenue Operations, Yelp

Q: How do you think about your customer journey?  

A: When I think about our customer journey, at a high level I view it as the aggregate of experiences that our customers go through when they interact with our company and brand, from the first moment of interaction through the last.  I think about how each of those moments of interaction must feel cohesive and consistent, speaking to the customers’ needs and ultimately building the momentum necessary to establish and sustain a fruitful partnership.  Finally, as any good operator does, I try and apply a data-driven approach to it.  However, I think that only once you have the customer journey well understood and mapped, should you layer in measurement and data, allowing for iteration and improvement.

Q: What tools/processes do you use to identify gaps in the overall experience?

A: One of the best processes for identifying gaps in the overall customer journey is by literally doing a customer journey map, which involves a variety of things.  Understanding the touchpoints, customer buying personas, common pain points, the list goes on and on, but I find if you visualize the journey, it really helps you to understand where you are lacking in process, in technology, in people, whatever.  To actually map the process, Lucid chart is a great tool for visualization that allows you to easily and very cleanly map it out.  Once you’ve gotten the journey mapped, you’ve elicited feedback from stakeholders, etc, hopefully, then your sales process is layered on top to match the needs, which should be reflected in your CRM.  You can start to then look at opportunity velocity from stage to stage, to begin to further understand where bottlenecks might exist, or issues may be occurring, which could point to a disconnect in your customer journey. 

 

Did you know that…

The average lead response time is 42 hours

Even more astounding is that…

Less than half of B2B companies respond to inbound leads within 5 days, and 58% never even respond!

No wonder it takes so long to purchase software…

The average length of a sales cycle (regardless of deal size) is 84 days.

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