The sales network you had in 2019 is different today, and it may need rebuilding. Salesloft provides a robust set of capabilities to help you both manage your connection’s information, and mobilize those people with coordinated activities. Use these features in Salesloft to refresh and reestablish your sales network.
A Game of Guess Who?
The social network you had in 2019 has changed dramatically. This past year forced many people to pause and ask “Is this company/role/team the right fit for me, now?” And even more of the people in our networks were impacted by layoffs or forced to transfer to different positions within the company.
Seasoned sellers know that having an expansive sales network is critical to reaching prospective customers. Yet, as this past year has taught us, the efficacy of your network is much more impactful than the volume of people within it. This efficacy relies on your abilities as a seller to engage and manage your network in ways that build pipeline and accelerate the various stages of a deal. In the wake of last year, it’s important to rebuild your sales network.
A Network for Every Deal Stage
This quote from a 15-year-old article in the Harvard Business Review could not be any more relevant to today’s seller relationships:
“Different configurations of networks produce different results, and the salesperson who develops a nuanced understanding of social networks will outshine competitors.”
Additionally, “as a sale progresses through its four stages, the salesperson uses different kinds of social networks, and his or her job gradually shifts from gathering information to coordinating people’s actions.”
During the first stages of the sales cycle when a rep is identifying prospects and gaining buy-in, the rep spends much of his or her time managing information and leveraging the broader sales network to break into an account. During the latter stages when reps are structuring the solution and closing the deal, reps rely on their contacts within the customer organization and their own customer network to build influence that accelerates the sales cycle.
Have You Checked In with Your Network Lately?
As you play the game of Guess Who? and rebuild your sales network of prospects, influencers, partners, and customers, use these 10 capabilities in Salesloft to rebuild lost connections and act on signals of potential engagement from contacts who have likely changed companies, roles, or teams during the past year.
Managing Information
The People Page is your modern-day contact Rolodex. It includes your network of connections. New filters and sorting options enable you to quickly view People in your sales network based on the criteria that are most important to you. Filter and sort by a robust set of fields like Account, Job Seniority, and Person Stage, and create saved views to quickly return to filtered lists.
Use the Create Person option to manually add a Person and their primary contact information into Salesloft as you’re introduced to new contacts within a company, or identify a new person in a role at one of your target accounts.
Intelligent fields such as the Job Seniority field automatically identifies a person’s job seniority using our AI-powered Job Seniority algorithm. The time zone field auto-populates based on the location of the person.
Not sure if a contact has moved to a new role, or is no longer with the company? Start with the Activity Panel on the Person Profile page. Review past activities with each contact, such as email opens and replies, connected calls, and upcoming and past Cadences, to gain a full understanding of their engagement over time with your organization. No activity here could indicate the person has changed roles. Keep better track of your notes with pinned notes (coming soon!). This panel is even integrated with our Conversations product so that you can listen to past call recordings and see upcoming meetings.
Also on the Person Profile page is the People at Account Panel. This panel is helpful to ensure you’re considering and coordinating your account-based efforts across your buying committee. Use this to see all the contacts you have at a specific account, and ensure you have identified each important stakeholder, including the often forgotten ratifier.
As you discover that your network has changed jobs, quickly search and update fields on Person and Account Profile pages. Easily search fields with Salesloft field search and edit fields directly in-line from the Person & Account Profile views.
Mobilizing People and Coordinating their Activities
Now that you know you have the right contacts at an account, you can focus your sales efforts on those specific accounts. Add your customer champion to Cadences that help them lobby for you internally. With Group Cadence Steps by Account, you can build your daily punch list and execute account-based plays, hitting your priority accounts first.
Likewise, if you have added new or refreshed contacts to a Cadence focused on introducing yourself and familiarizing them with your product, you may want to prioritize executing steps for those specific Cadences. Group Cadence steps by Cadence name, Cadence priority, or the number of steps due to help focus your efforts.
When you’re ready to engage a new contact, the ‘Run Step’ button within the Activity Panel helps you easily execute your Cadence steps. Take action in the context of a contact’s most recent activities. Easily view these from the Activity Feed on both the Person and Account Profile pages.
Now that you have your updated network added to your various Cadences, use Cadence Metrics to easily evaluate Cadence outcomes and quickly understand how your Cadences are performing. Gain clarity on Cadence Structure, Effort, and overall Engagement from both the Cadence Overview and Cadence People pages.
Easily evaluate Cadence output and performance.
From here, you can dive deeper into the performance of specific Cadence steps within the Cadence by selecting ‘View Step Analytics.’ Cadence Step Analytics helps you find the steps and channels generating the most successful outcomes. You’ll also have visibility into both where and why contacts are dropping out of a Cadence. Low numbers here can be a symptom that you have the wrong contacts in your Cadence or your messaging needs adjustment.
Ready to learn more?
Leveraging your sales network effectively during the various stages of the deal cycle requires having accurate information about your contacts and engaging them at the right time. The events of the past year have reduced the availability of accurate information, and it falls on reps to clean up the mess and rebuild your sales network so you can efficiently mobilize their sales network.
We’re here to help! Contact your Customer Support Manager to learn more about how your team can adopt these new features. And, check out our latest product innovations from the Spring ‘21 launch.