Opinion
Defining the new sales experience
Raoul Monks, founder and director of Flume Sales Training, leads
the charge for sales excellence in the global events industry
This crisis has fundamentally changed
the way buyers behave and rendered
traditional sales approaches ineffective.
If our sales teams are to succeed in
this new environment, sales excellence
needs to be re-defined. So, what does
the future of sales look like? What are
the implications for sales professionals
and sales leaders? In our series of
summits, we discussed this challenge
with some of the industry’s finest sales
leaders. Here are the key takeaways:
You are selling results, not events
Clients have never bought into our
events because they love events. In
fact, according to recent research
from Explori, the average NPS score
for individual shows last year was -15.
That’s not good. What they have always
cared about, however, is results. Our
clients came into 2020 with specific
marketing objectives and events were
just one channel on their plan. With
that channel currently unavailable,
they are looking for alternatives. If
salespeople are to sell right now, they
need to think like marketers and
understand why the client was investing
in live events in the first place. Then
they can start to position their new
products as an alternative means to
get there. Fergus Gregory, director at
Collingwood Advisory, put it neatly:
“The product you’re selling is the
audience and your ability to engage with
them. All the rest is just channels…”
Clients need to be 100% confident of ROI
Businesses are under huge pressure and
any spend is being scrutinized at a more
senior level. This makes the buying
process both challenging and risky for
clients. It takes a very brave client to
go to the board and ask for money right
now, so they need to be 100% confident
that your solution is going to work.
Today’s strongest salespeople give
clients compelling reasons for change
before providing them with criteria for
safe decision making. Only then do they
discuss their own solutions.
De-risk the process
We’ve all seen clients fail to make the
most of our events. They don’t engage
with the audience pre-event, they
spend the event sat down looking at
their phones and they fail to follow
up on leads. Then they complain that
the event wasn’t very good. We can’t
let that happen. Sophie Holt, Global
Strategy Director at Explori, has clear
advice for salespeople: “Don’t leave it to
chance that the client will get ROI, work
with the client to help them drive ROI
through your solutions”. A commitment
to driving ROI needs to be hard baked
into our sales approach and every other
aspect of what we do.
Salespeople need help
Our salespeople need our help. Katie
McBride, sales director at DMG Events,
put it like this: “We have to make it easy
and enable our sales teams to be able
to sell. Give them the toolkit.” Greg
Sewell, group commercial director at
Clarion Events, added: “Now is the right
time for managers to take a good hard
look through their teams. If you’ve got
those good old traditional sales dogs in
there who are not thinking about that
customer perspective, more than ever
it’s time to help them learn a new skill
set…”
Following three summits in their Future
Sales Lab Series, Flume has created an
industry Benchmark for Sales Excellence
in a changed world. You can download the
Benchmark here: https://flumetraining.
com/resources/downloads/
The Name in EVENT HIRE
0800 458 5701 [email protected]
Charles Wilson Engineers Ltd
August — 15