In an era of seemingly shorter attention spans—in which audiences only tend to skim information—sales teams must embrace new technologies to capture a client’s eye and cut through all the fluff.
Luckily, salespeople have one big asset: they’re human beings. While door-to-door sales may be a tactic of the past, it’s hard to beat a personalized phone call with a professional who knows their client’s business inside and out or a well-crafted video conference pitch from a live sales team. One study from Gartner found that 86% of B2B buyers expect service companies to be well-informed about their company’s personal information. To make the greatest impact, sales teams need to balance the old-fashioned soft skills of the storybook “salesperson” with the innovative technologies that provide and showcase hyper-specific knowledge.
These four technology solutions can help your sales teams save time, prepare for every customer interaction, and see better results.
1) Digital briefcase
A digital briefcase is a collection of digital sales materials that your sales teams can open at the touch of a button. You can think of it like a miniature CMS, one designed for the unique responsibilities and clientele of your various sales teams.
While just about any sales team could use a digital briefcase to curate their resources, your organization can get additional value if any of the following fit your experience:
- Your salespeople and/or management team have a high turnover rate.
- You need to consolidate your messaging across various teams and channels.
- Many of your products/services have confusing or ever-changing pricing structures.
- Your salespeople are underutilizing cross-selling opportunities.
Designed for both laptop and mobile viewing, a successful digital briefcase is modular; your sales teams should be able to pre-select the materials that best fit their need for that day or week. When designing a digital briefcase, consider compiling the related materials that will help your teams learn the client, pitch the client, or follow-up with the client. We recommend including materials such as:
- Product and client overviews
- Informational or eye-catching videos
- Case studies and customer testimonials
- Pitch decks
- Virtual tours
- Searchable lists
Weber has created digital briefcases for several clients that feature a wide range of tools and functionalities. From pricing calculators to customizable presentations, our digital briefcases are ideal for shoulder-to-shoulder client meetings.
2) Live call support
Sometimes called “call analytics” or “sentiment analysis,” live call support encompasses any tool designed to support your salespeople during live sales calls. These tools analyze the content and quality of an ongoing call to provide information, suggest tactics, and request support in real-time.
Live call support tools function the same way an in-person sales manager provides support when standing over a newbie’ shoulder, helping nudge your team members mid-call to adjust their tactics and ultimately interact more effectively with the client. Although every tool is unique, here’s how they can help your teams:
- Provide information: If a customer asks a tricky question over the call, the support tool can scan previous conversations or search the web for a possible answer.
- Read the room: Many tools provide sentiment analysis throughout the call, gauging your customer’s mood or engagement through vital sections of the pitch.
- Suggest support: If a call isn’t going so well, call support may suggest you call in a manager to provide support.
3) AI research tools
While we don’t recommend handing the wheel over to artificial intelligence entirely, AI research tools can supplement the great work of your human sales teams as they formulate the next sale.
You can’t make a sale without first knowing your potential customer’s business, including their general history, pain points, and industry trends. To help your teams cover all this ground, AI apps and browsers such as ChatGPT and Consensus can do the job quickly. Rather than scroll through pages of Google results, these apps answer direct prompts to help sales teams gather context, ideate on direction, and find sources for more information.
4) AI chatbots
According to Convolo, 78% of customers purchase from the first company to respond to their query. Rather than waste a salesperson’s talent on glueing themself to your website’s submission form, AI chatbots can do this work for you.
AI chatbots use large language models (LLMs) to respond to customer’s text questions. These chatbots are excellent at answering simple, FAQ-style questions, but aren’t quite sophisticated enough to problem solve or build off your current customer-to-seller relationship. They are best used as a kind of “first line of defense” for your website, fielding simple questions where possible and teeing up conversations with live salespeople or customer support for everything else.
The nature of sales is always evolving, but the confidence, creativity, and applied knowledge your salespeople bring to client interactions will always be valuable. By implementing these four tools, your sales teams can find the time, information, and support to provide value to your company and, ultimately, to your customers.
