Co-authored by Seema Jain, MURAL & Ashley Welch, Somersault Innovation
In this brave new world, many sales teams have had to shift suddenly to remote work. During a recent conversation, a friend mentioned that COVID-19 has been the single driver to her company’s digital transformation strategy!
As more companies settle into this new way of working, having the right tools in place is critical to engaging with customers with speed. Standardized, digitized sales methods enable a repeatable process that cuts prep time so sellers can spend their time where it matters most: with prospects and customers.
Transforming your sales methods into digital templates allows your sales team to collaborate with your customers in this remote environment. It may even allow them to engage more effectively than before because of the collaborative and transparent nature the technology encourages. Turn this crisis into an opportunity to leapfrog the competition by distinguishing how you sell in this new environment.
To give you a head start, check out these 3 templates that prepare sellers to engage with their customers that will drive pipeline and revenue:
Stakeholder Map
Identify influencers and key stakeholders with a Stakeholder Map. Understand how key players are connected and what kind of influence they have in an organization (decision maker, influencer, budget owner, etc).
Pro tip: you can even copy and paste LinkedIn URLs to your canvas to add more context to stakeholder profiles. Get started with this template.
Account Plans
Synchronously or asynchronously collaborate and complete Account Plans internally and/or with your partners. Go into the deal with an understanding of critical customer information, sales strategy, and alignment on how to progress the deal forward.
Pro tip: Leverage the timer function to keep activities on track and voting feature to reach consensus on priorities. Get started with this template.
Discovery Workshops
Conduct discovery with your customer to drive engagement and eventual co-creation. Standardized discovery templates make it easy for a seller to share what they have learned about the customer and ask for feedback and further input. Just the act of collaborating on a document creates connection and increases the likelihood of continuing to work together.
Pro tip: Click “create mural from template” and share the link to the canvas with your customer so they can dive in and begin co-creating with you. Get started with this template.
Tap into these existing sets of sales templates or start from scratch by building your own custom template that matches your unique way of engaging with customers. (Check out this recent backstage pass session to learn how to design and publish custom templates).
Transitioning from an office to a remote environment is challenging, no doubt about it. Implementing a set of robust sales templates and tools encourages consistency, transparency and collaboration with your customers and allows us to feel socially connected during a time of physical distance.
Tap into these existing sets of sales templates or start from scratch by building your own custom template that matches your unique way of engaging with customers. (Check out this recent backstage pass session to learn how to design and publish custom templates).
Transitioning from an office to a remote environment is challenging, no doubt about it. Implementing a set of robust sales templates and tools encourages consistency, transparency and collaboration with your customers and allows us to feel socially connected during a time of physical distance.
Learn more by joining the Design Thinking Digital Summit on April 21st, where we’ll be proving the value of design thinking in sales to create lasting, profitable customer relationships, remotely. Register here.
About the Authors:
Seema Jain is Head of Solution Design at Mural, partnering with organizations to bring human-centered design to scale through high-impact visual collaboration solutions. Seema is a certified Design Thinking Practitioner by the LUMA Institute and IBM.
MURAL enables innovative teams to think and collaborate visually to solve important problems. People benefit from MURAL’s speed and ease of use in creating diagrams, which are popular in design thinking and agile methodologies, as well as tools to facilitate more impactful meetings and workshops.
