Guided Selling Best Practices For Sales

Sales rarely follows a linear path. As much as you prepare and strategize for every deal, things never seem to go exactly as planned. Fortunately, many sales teams are improving coaching and executing using the new Guided Selling technology. While the term is not new, Guided Selling has recently gained momentum in the B2B selling world due to its ability to adapt on demand and scale coaching across an entire sales team. This real-time guidance helps reps overcome barriers, identify gaps in their process and understand the fastest path to close. It is a must-have for every organization’s sales stack.

SiriusDecisions likens dynamic guided selling to using GPS navigation while driving. While you can likely arrive at your destination without assistance, GPS provides real-time updates and guidance that helps you avoid unforeseen traffic and arrive at your destination more expeditiously.

[Get started by downloading SiriusDecisions – Dynamic Guided Selling: An Introduction]

Machine learning speeds up the data analysis process and delivers more timely feedback than humans are capable of processing. It can unlock efficiencies you never thought possible. According to Salesforce, high-performing sales teams are 2.3 times more likely than underperforming teams to use guided selling.

Build your own high-performing team by leveraging guided selling to the fullest extent. You may notice more benefits than you expected.

Expedite the Onboarding Process

Whether you are growing your team or backfilling key roles, time to first deal is critical. Typical onboarding processes tend to throw a lot at reps at once. But key steps in the sales process as well as best practices are quickly forgotten once a rep is immersed in their territory. 

Guided selling enables you to keep reps on track by suggesting timely actions for them to take. These can be data hygiene recommendations, sales process reminders or even machine-learning driven suggestions. For example, does one of your reps have a deal set to close that doesn’t have any recent activity on it? Your guided selling solution could prompt them to schedule a follow up meeting, engage with a decision maker or acknowledge it’s the dates are off and push the close date to reflect the true status. 

Of course sales managers can still deliver personal insight as needed, but with the span of control growing, guided selling fills that gap so you can focus your time on the bigger picture.

Bring in the Big Guns

Once trained, reps are equipped to push deals forward, but often they require additional assistance to maintain momentum with a deal or to close it altogether. Guided selling provides reps with the foresight to bring in a subject matter expert or executive sponsor before the deal grows stale.

By analyzing rep activity and understanding the key buying cycle inflection points, your guided selling solution should automatically know when deals require additional insight and information to progress. Finding these key inflection points prevents conversation redundancy and delivers the necessary expertise to keep the deal moving.

Update and Scale Best Practices

You train every rep according to established best practices, but that doesn’t mean you should remain stagnant in improving your workflows and processes. By constantly monitoring sales activity via Activity Capture, your guided selling solution pinpoints valuable trends demonstrated by your top performers.

Rather than completely retrain your reps every time an adjustment is made to your sales process, give them automated, recommended actions based on your new best practices. This gets the right message out to reps immediately so they can apply them to deals without hesitation.

Adapt to the Competitive Landscape

Companies are constantly innovating and strengthening their position within the competitive landscape. Not only is it hard to keep up with, but it forces you to constantly update your own brand messaging and positioning.

Guided selling gives you an outlet to quickly update your reps of new developments and provides guidance on how to adapt your approach and messaging with customers. Every rep should be prepared for potential objections and know how to best position your product against them. It’s up to you to ensure they are set up for success.

To perform at the highest level, your team needs to execute. Every rep needs to be in the right place, at the right time, and they need to take the right approach. As a sales leader, that is all on you. It’s a heavy burden to carry alone.

Fortunately, guided selling takes that weight off of your shoulders. It allows you to stop micromanaging and start managing. It gives you the agility you and your team need to succeed. Leverage guided selling the right way and you can take your sales organization to new heights.

Ready to get started? Download this free guide: SiriusDecisions – Dynamic Guided Selling: An Introduction.

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