It’s a given that the sales environment is evolving rapidly, and it can be challenging to stay on top of how best to use digital tools and technology to unlock efficiencies and drive results. Having the right partners to support you in this is essential.
To discuss how sales leaders should be thinking about strategies for success in an era of artificial intelligence and innovation, Raconteur’s creative director for branded content, Tom Watts, sat down with Alyssa Merwin, VP of global sales solutions at LinkedIn.
To kick us off, Alyssa, what do you think makes a successful sales leader, and how are you driving your team to success in the current environment?
The success of a sales leader in this environment lies in first recognising the moment that you’re in, how things have changed, and if so, what do you need to do to meet the moment. From my own experience we were coming out of the sort of ‘sugar rush’ of the pandemic, when all companies were thinking “we need to invest in technology, we need to figure out how to adapt to a digital or virtual selling environment”, and our win rates were up and conversion rates were up - everything was up and it was a fantastic environment to be in for technology and SaaS sales.
Now, we’re in a period where everyone’s sort of coming out of that and reevaluating and making sure that they have the right tech stack and the right investments. Everyone’s feeling a bit more pressure because of the macro-economic environment, so it’s a different selling and buying environment. I think for a lot of companies, the customers they have, you can’t count on that. They’re not just going to be customers for life, because everyone’s constantly reevaluating investments. So, it’s really figuring out what is needed, what behaviour changes do we need to make to meet the moment?
I realised that the volume of customer outreach that we were doing before wasn’t going to get us to the outcomes that we needed in this environment, and so I introduced something that I termed the 150% mindset. In a normal sales environment, you hit 100% of you’re quota and you are over the moon. But in this environment, I realised that if we were aiming for 100%, we were probably going to fall short.
I wanted something a bit aspirational, maybe a bit aggressive, but if we aim for it, we’re likely to land above what we need to. That meant embracing the right mindset and energy. It meant doing 150% more customer outreach and engagement, same with pipeline. And that’s what was needed in this environment, and that was exactly what it took for us to be winning today. It’s about figuring out what the moment we’re in is, and what do we need to adapt and change and maybe do more or less of to win.
It’s quite an aspirational approach especially as it’s been quite a challenging environment over the last couple of years. So, I wonder, from a sales success perspective, what do you think it takes to implement more effective sales strategies, and what does that require of leaders, teams and the business?
It’s an interesting question, because the way we’ve always done sales hasn’t really changed, and the core fundamental parts of a sales process remain important, but buying behaviour has changed significantly.
Customers today are getting 95% of the way through the evaluation process before they’re really talking to a salesperson, because there’s so much information available on the internet, right? You can call up a friend. You might be using a product or a service. You can get a referral. You really are pretty far down the path before you need to engage with the salesperson. And so, when salespeople are getting involved, they’re having to show up and make a really, really big impact to help the customer validate that decision, or to change a decision.
Revenue teams need to be thinking about how they are doing when it comes to the different stages of the sales process? Because there are important moments in the sales process that matter - how do I find people? How do I engage them? Am I making my shot count? Different commercial teams struggle with different parts of this.
Sales teams need to figure out how to get in front of people and cut through the noise. If you’re in a competitive space and you’re taking the same approach to outreach like everyone else, then it can be hard. As a revenue leader, it’s about figuring out which prospects are the most important and then figuring out a strategy to address them. You have to really sit back and say which is the one that if we got it right, it would make the biggest difference to our outcomes today?
Totally - but a lot of those things are often easier said than done. How is LinkedIn looking to better enable sales teams via tools like CRM sync for Sales Navigator?
Let’s start with what Sales Navigator is as a starting point. Sales Navigator is built on top of the billion plus professionals that are on LinkedIn, and helps sales reps find the people that matter, both individuals with big titles, but also all the hidden influencers that exist that they need to build relationships with. It helps salespeople figure out how to engage them, and then how to show up super prepared.
One of the most popular features that we’ve released this year is called Account IQ. The best sales reps do about seven hours of research for an account, which means sometimes they can know the customer better than the customer knows themself if they’re doing a really good job on the preparation! So, what we’ve done through genAI is to take all that research - taking from public filings, company press releases, information on their website, LinkedIn posts by key executives and leaders, proprietary data, as well as information that exists on the web - and with the click of a button cut that seven hours of research down to seven seconds. That’s been a game changer and it’s helping salespeople show up much more well informed.
The other thing that has been really popular, and I think that our customers have really loved, is something called Relationship Map, which is like a more advanced org. chart. We know that these org. charts are important to understand influences and influencers across an organisation - who are the detractors? Who are the supporters? Where do we have relationships? Where are there gaps in relationships? And one of the things that we found is that most sales reps only have about two connections at their accounts and that is a huge risk. We really need salespeople to have deep and wide relationships, and having a network chart where we can visually see where those relationships exist and where they don’t, can be helpful. It’s also a great collaborative tool, because we’re often doing team selling.
We’ve also just introduced CRM Sync, which is proving valuable to sales teams. Whether you’re on Salesforce or Dynamics, being able to take that relationship map or org. chart as well as some of the Sales Navigator intelligence and having it show up in your CRM can make your sales efforts much more impactful. And that kind of integration is powerful because in today’s world, one of the things that I hear all the time from revenue leaders is that they want their sales team to be in fewer tools and fewer tabs. So now, with CRM Sync, sales teams can have that incredible navigator intelligence - which is something they can’t get elsewhere - in the tools where they’re already spending time, like a CRM, and that has been another game changer.
It’s clear that technology is essential in augmenting the success of sales in the modern world. You mentioned genAI there too, Alyssa - how is LinkedIn thinking about genAI and how is that flowing through into your solutions you provide to accelerate sales success for clients?
AI has always been the bedrock of Sales Navigator since we built the solution a decade ago, but genAI is taking it to a completely new level. We’ve been thinking about it in three ways: In every role there are parts of the job and tasks that can be completely automated, there are parts that might be partially automated but still require a little bit of human intervention and oversight, and then there are parts of the role that won’t be automated at all through technology. What’s interesting about sales is that there’s probably up to two-thirds of the job that can be automated through things like genAI, for example, being able to click a button and do account research, rather than having to conduct hours of research on 20 different websites.
Having the tech is one thing but being good at using it is another. Do you think that it requires a mindset shift in how sales think about technology and the role it can play in building accounts and generating the information they need to drive sales?
It is a bit of a shift because sales is science and art. At the end of the day, you need a repeatable, standardised process, and that needs to be the bedrock of your sales process. Whether it’s a new skill, a new technology, or a new message, it all needs to be built into every step of the sales process. You need to think about the role that everyone in the organisation plays, from leaders to managers to frontline reps themselves, and how to drive consistency and accountability.
I really think that the best sales organisations in the world approach things as a bit more of a science than an art. The flip side of that is that buying behaviours have shifted. People have less risk tolerance, and so they want to pilot something which is totally reasonable. We’ve adapted our own sales process for that, but at the end of the day, you pilot to then buy it for everyone. You don’t pilot it to buy it for ten percent of the company.
That’s a big shift away from what one client referred to as the pandemic ‘sugar rush’. And I think that was such a good characterisation of where we were. Now everyone’s asking, do we really need this?
Technology is key, but getting your sales tech stack right is essential. With innovation moving so quickly, and genAI moving to the forefront, what does that mean for sales teams and sales technology?
I feel like I’m more of an essentialist. There’s so much sales tech that exists that my advice to any sales leader is that you absolutely need to figure out the right tech stack. I tend to think fewer things are better than trying to invest in everything. The tools must work together. Think about what’s the backbone or foundation, which is generally going to be a CRM and Sales Navigator. Then there might be other tools that have specialised roles that you might plug in, but you really want to figure out what the most essential things are so that your reps are not having to go to 20 different tabs and tools to get their tasks done.
But even with the right tech stack, the thing about sales that I think will remain true for all of time no matter how great the technology gets, is that at the end of the day, high consideration, B2B decision-making and sales decisions are always going to come down to trust and relationship building. It’s going to be the human-centred skills that are going to really differentiate and allow companies to thrive. I think genAI will help companies and sales reps be more productive and more efficient. But at the end of the day, it is the human skills, and the soft skills that are going to be the things that companies really need to invest in.
Perhaps one of the unforeseen knock-on effects of AI-powered tools is that it frees up people to focus on developing essential soft skills. So, what do you think are the key soft skills required of sales leaders?
There’s no question that the ability to connect, to inspire, and to build trust are as important for a sales leader as they are for a sales rep. They’re the kinds of things that will never be replaced by technology. But they are harder things to level up because people tend to have them a bit more innately or not. It’s a little bit like determination and hard work, they’re incredibly important assets but harder to train people in them.
We’ve talked about quite a few aspects of sales strategies, technology, and the value of trust and human relationships. If we look ahead to the next six months of the year, what would your advice be for sales leaders looking to drive sales success and help their business to thrive?
There are two things that I would suggest. The first is, I would encourage sales leaders to think about their sales process and what is left for them to unlock. Is it getting more high-quality conversations with the people that matter? Is it getting in front of more customers? Is it making sure we’re showing up well? Is it ensuring that we’re not losing customers through attrition?
Depending on what part of the sales process is most important, there’s probably a technology to be able to tap into, such as Sales Navigator or Account IQ. There are also skills that you might want to think about developing. When I think about the way that I run my team, it’s always about trying to get to the most essential thing that we can do that will have the biggest impact. That’s the first one
The other is, and I often get asked the question, you know, will genAI allow us to be so productive as a sales force that we need fewer salespeople? And I think the question that sales leaders should be asking instead is, if you have an amazing product, a big addressable market, and salespeople working much more efficiently - how many more salespeople can we hire to help us to go after opportunities faster? It’s about figuring out how you can start to tap into genAI and the technology that exists today to accelerate your opportunities to win.
To find out more about how to drive and enhance sales visit the LinkedIn Sales Solutions homepage
