In B2B sales, it’s easy to get impersonal. The very name, business-to-business, replaces individuals with larger entities. But as with any sales process, B2B deals rely on small-scale personal interactions: individual sales reps speaking with individual buyers. In the increasingly digital realm of B2B sales, customer experience testing is as important as ever.
To deliver the best experience to your customers—and, as a result, close more deals—you need to regularly evaluate and improve the buyer’s journey. It can be a slow, painstaking process, but it’s worth it. And in this blog series, we break it down for you.
Our first post in this series covers the first stages of the buyer’s journey, from prospecting up until the lead has been passed to an account executive. This post—part two—covers the next stage: closing.
Once an AE takes over a lead, your prospect has reached a crucial point of the buyer experience. It’s do or die. Either the AE effectively addresses the buyer’s pain points and makes a sale or they don’t, and the deal never leaves the pipeline. Because there is little room for error, customer experience testing is especially important at this stage of the buying cycle.
Through each stage of the buyer’s journey, your testing methodology stays fundamentally the same. In the closing stage, apply the same strategies you used to evaluate SDRs in presale to monitor your account executives.
Review discovery calls
The discovery call is the weakest part of the sales process for many reps. During this call, reps try to understand a prospect’s pain points and to position their product or service as the best solution. It’s a crucial part of any sale.
Naturally, you’ll want to monitor your reps discovery calls to ensure they’re providing the best possible service. Here’s the problem: Balancing the two elements of a discovery call is tricky under the best circumstances—you’re not doing your reps any favors lurking over their shoulders to listen in.
Just like you did with your SDRs, record all of your reps’ discovery calls. Randomly select a few to review in 1:1s or group training. This method allows you to evaluate discovery calls without throwing your reps off their game.
As you review these calls with your team or individual reps, keep the conversation constructive. Asking the following questions can help you and your team think critically while keeping the focus on improvement.
1. Does the rep stick to a consistent framework?
If your sales organization has an established framework in place, reps should consistently follow those guidelines. Each call will, of course, vary to fit the client’s needs, but the general structure of discovery calls should remain the same.
As you review calls with your team, adjust the framework based on feedback from representatives and customers. If your sales org doesn’t have a framework, work with your team to develop one as you review calls. As you build out a set of guidelines, keep your company’s target customers in mind.
2. Has the rep asked enough questions?
No two prospects are exactly alike. To understand each prospect’s unique pain points, reps need to let the customer do the talking. Asking a series of questions, especially at the beginning of a call, can help a rep get the customer talking and quickly uncover their primary business problems.
In a study of 519,000 recorded discovery calls, Gong.io found that successful sales reps ask between 11 and 14 questions per call. When reps asked six or fewer questions, the success rate dropped from 74% to 46%.
As you review calls with your team, keep a tally of questions the rep asks. Invite team members to identify places in the call where a follow-up question could have added additional clarity.
3. Is the rep actively listening to the prospect and giving them time to talk?
While reps should be asking questions, they should tailor those questions to each specific prospect. “If you’re too focused on what you’re going to ask next, you aren’t having a conversation,” explains Dan Smith of Winning by Design. “You’re running through a checklist.” Look for signs that your reps are listening. According to Gong.io, top-performing sales reps talk only 46% of the time.
4. Has the rep done their homework beforehand?
A rep should never have to ask a prospect about their job title or what their company does. Such questions can easily be avoided with a quick google search or review of the SDR’s notes prior to the call. This information should also be readily available via account maps and other visual tools. By eliminating these basic questions, your reps can dive right into the conversations that lead to sales.
