How Can You Predict The Future Of Sales Ops? One of the keys to sales success is to be able to predict the future – what that other person is thinking, what they might say, what they will experience, how they will feel about the product/service. But what can you do – from a sales ops leadership perspective – to predict the future in masse of all the potential customers that will flow into and out of the sales process/funnel? That is a really tough one, but it is doable. Meeting Prospective Customers Where They Are The key is to always meet the prospective customers where they are and with the experience they hope to find. It’s a common theme now in these articles because it’s important AND widely disregarded – your potential customers do not care about you, your sales team, your company, your industry. They don’t care about your stats, your testimonials, your logos. They don’t care about your mission statement or your values. They only care about themselves. They also firmly believe that there is currently unlimited choice for any product/service, which means that everything in their mind is a commodity. Easily replaceable and interchangeable. Nothing (other than iPhones…which you can only get from Apple) is special to consumers unless they feel like it should be special. Are You Still Making It All About You? There is a good chance you are still running a marketing, sales funnel that is all about you. I bet if I looked at your company’s website that from the top down it’s all about you (the company). How great you are. What you do for people. What you have done for others. I bet if I tried to speak with your sales team, I will be made to go through your process whether I like it or not. Maybe fill out a form and wait for a response. Or made to call into a toll free number, even though I don’t want to talk to someone yet. Or made to use a chat widget on a site to get started. I bet when I speak with your sales team, 70-80% of the conversation will be about them, your company, and how amazing you all believe you are. This is all fair. No one starts a company to be mediocre. The goal is to provide value and make money. The missing piece, again like I said above, is no one cares about your goals. They only care about themselves. Predicting What Customers Want From The Sales Experience Back to your mission as sales ops leader – predict what massive amounts of prospective customers are going to want from the Sales Experience. It’s why I wrote about it last week and even offered up a book for free to help in any way that I can. To succeed at your mission, you have to stay ahead of the curve of what the public, and specifically – your buying demographic, psychographic, and valuegraphics, want from that experience. Key Questions To Shape The Sales Experience Do they want to call, text, email or chat? Probably all of them…so can you offer each one? (Don’t make someone decide if they want to go through your hoops…remove all the hoops) Do they need to see pricing online – should it be available and transparent? (In most cases, yes) What sales process will be ideal for moving the most people through the sales conversation to a successful outcome? (More discovery, empathy, active listening. More front-loaded about them, not you. Use the Authentic Persuasion Pathway as your model) Who are the decision makers? Is that individual going to decide or do they need to check with others for approval? (Set them up for success, and don’t force them to make a decision in the moment – you will just lose the potential sale) What type of follow up do they want and need until they make the buying decision? What type of post-purchase follow up would go above and beyond a) their expectations and b) what others in your industry do? If there is an ‘onboarding’ stage after the sale – how can you make that actually customer centric and successful? (It is rarely both) Can You Stay Ahead of the Curve? Remember – evolution is natural. The buying public is always evolving their desired sales experience. Can you predict the future of what they want so that when they encounter your company it matches what they were hoping to find – both in the experience and the solution to their need?

How do you, as a sales leader, help your team become Oracles that can predict the future? [make sure to read the Selling Effectiveness article this week https://go.sellingeffectiveness.com/LI.2.25.AM ] There are five ways to facilitate their Oracle-ness. Be Present in the Moment First, you have to get your salespeople to be in the moment. The challenge that most salespeople (and…humans, for that matter) experience is they are always thinking ahead. Salespeople default to thinking about what they will say next. The next part of their script or process. The next question they want to ask so they can get through discovery. The next part of the agreement they need to discuss and review. Their mind is too busy thinking about what they are going to say and do next, that they aren’t present. As weird as it sounds, if you want to predict the future you must be present. I have said this for decades: the moment you no longer need to think about what you are going to say/do next and can actually be present with your prospect and truly listen to what they say (and don’t say) – you will become a sales professional. Master Active Listening Second is Active Listening and paying closer attention. It’s actively listening…it’s taking what I mentioned above and putting into place. First step is to be present, second is to actually listen. For what they say. For what they aren’t saying. For changes in their tone. For when they are talking to someone on the side – who are they talking to, and is it about your sales conversation? If you sell in person, reading their body language and facial expressions. You must help them develop an almost sixth sense of listening (and yes, I know hearing is one of our senses…but this goes beyond hearing…it’s truly, deeply listening). Ask Better Questions Third, is to help them ask better questions. So many people in sales ask the discovery questions they are required to ask in order to check the discovery ‘box’. Or, they have done sales long enough they know all the answers, they think they know what everyone wants and why, so no reason to even ask questions. [Note – this type of salesperson thinks two dangerous things: 1 - everyone is the same and wants the same thing, 2 – people like to be sold to.] When your team asks better, deeper discovery questions with a focus on uncovering the what and the WHY, they will get better answers. Remember this – when you ask the right questions and you listen close enough, each prospect will tell you EXACTLY how to help them buy. Build Up Experience Fourth, build up experience. If you want to predict the future it comes from enough experience to know the probability of what will happen. For example, when I am in a season of commuting from home to an office, I am the type of person that can predict exactly what will happen on the freeway. Which lane is always faster around certain exits, which lanes always slow down, how much leaving five minutes later can make the drive suck a lot more. How do I know what will happen on a freeway with hundreds and hundreds of random people? Because of experience (and the fact that most people are just going through the motions in life so they become predictable). The more experience your team has with sales scenarios, they more they can predict the future. I generally see that it takes about six months for most people in a new sales role to have seen enough scenarios where they can start to know what will come next before it happens. Trust Intuition The fifth and final trait to help them with is intuition. One definition of intuition is “a thing that one knows or considers likely from instinctive feeling rather than conscious reasoning.” It’s that feeling you get when you know something, even if you cannot explain it. It’s what Malcom Gladwell wrote about in Blink! It’s what we do very well as humans, even if we don’t listen to it. The more you can help your team tune into their intuition and listen and trust it – the better they will do in helping persuade that other human. This goes back to the first suggestion – about being present. When your team trusts they know what to do and say next and they are mentally living in the moment with that prospective client, they can let their intuition guide them. Conclusion When I do trainings, public speaking, facilitating meetings, interviews, and sales – this is my main key to success. I trust and know that I have the experience to handle whatever comes my way in the present moment, while also knowing the destination I am heading towards. I can be present, let that experience and my intuition guide me instead of getting stuck in my head and worrying about what I will say next. Get your team to do some or all of these five steps – and they will become an amazing Oracle.