SALES TRANSFORMATION: THE NEXT DIGITAL IMPERATIVE · SALES TRANSFORMATION: THE NEXT DIGITAL IMPERATIVE 02. ... delivering business results. Marketing and sales teams need common understanding,

SALES TRANSFORMATION:THE NEXT DIGITAL IMPERATIVEExecutive Summary: Altify Business Performance Benchmark Study, a barometer of business leaders and the issues they face today.

Content 03 Introduction

04 Top Three Strategic Goals for Businesses in 2018

05 Disruptive Forces Loom Large

06 Sharp Decline in Sales Best Practices

07 Mind the Gap Between Marketing and Sales

08 Focus on Front Line Sales Management

09 Understand the Customer; Unlock Sales Velocity

10 Make It a Big Deal

11 Gaining Trust Becomes Increasingly Difficult

12 Buyers Prefer Advice from the Outside

13 The Dividends of Diversity

14 Who We Surveyed

15 A Customer First Approach Drives Business

16 The Digital Transformation Imperative

SALES TRANSFORMATION: THE NEXT DIGITAL IMPERATIVE 02

Digital trends and disruptive technologies are transforming customer expectations. Businesses of all shapes and sizes must innovate to stay relevant and keep pace with known and unknown competitors.

Against this backdrop, the sales function is undergoing a massive reinvention out of sheer necessity. Faced with constant pressure to deliver top-line revenue growth, sales leaders must adapt to become more agile, insight-driven and valuable to already impatient customers.

So what are some of the key challenges sales teams are facing? What should sales leaders focus their efforts on? And what roadblocks prevent them from embracing change?

To support sales teams in their digital transformations, Altify researched 422 enterprise-level executives and sales leaders worldwide. The goals of the research are to:

Provide insights into the state of mind, outlook and goals of business and sales leaders around the world in 2018.

Gain a deeper understanding of the priorities and challenges businesses are facing in an era of intense disruption.

Discover how prepared sales organizations are to take advantage of the opportunities created by digital technologies.

Demonstrate the impact of digital tools on sales and business performance.

Explain how enterprise corporations and their sales teams can use digital sales transformation to win bigger deals and retain customers.

The digital revolution has fundamentally changed the way we live, work, play and, yes, how we sell.


Top Three Strategic Goals for Businesses in 2018

82%71%

87% TakeawaysCustomer retention is the top strategic goal for businesses and is more important compared to a year ago.

Communicating a shared plan with customers and keeping your promises, earns their trust and keeps them coming back.

To accomplish this, sales teams need to be armed with facts and deep knowledge of the customer.

CUSTOMER RETENTION REVENUE GROWTH PROFIT GROWTH

What are your top strategic imperatives for 2018?

04SALES TRANSFORMATION: THE NEXT DIGITAL IMPERATIVE

2017 2018 2017 2018 2017 2018

6%

5%

TakeawaysDigital and AI are poised to spur massive waves of innovation and disruption across all industries.

Early adopters expect to see tangible results throughout all levels of their organizations.

Sales teams must act with urgency to develop strategies and accelerate their own digital transformations.

26%32%

27%22%

48%

55%

Disruptive Forces Loom Large

7%

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CURRENCY VOLATILITY

What will disrupt your business and industry in 2018?


Sharp Decline in Sales Best Practices

2017 2018 2017 2018 2017 2018

TakeawaysSales leaders must act now to stem the decline and capitalize on a robust economy.

Sales leaders across all industries need to invest in technology and methodology solutions to embed best practices and enable their teams at every stage of the sales lifecycle.

Employing sales best practices resulted in a forecast accuracy increase of over 250%.

69%

59%

48% 46%

63%59%

Relative to 2017, there is a decline in the execution of key sales best practices.

FRONTLINE SALES TEAMS ABLE TO EFFECTIVELY DO THEIR JOB

SALES PROCESS MAPPED TO CUSTOMER

MAXIMIZING THE VALUE OF EACH DEAL

4% 10%

2%


07

TakeawaysUnderstanding the customer value is key to revenue success, but the sales team lacks confidence in marketing’s knowledge.

Focusing on customer needs is key to bridging the sales and marketing divide and delivering business results.

Marketing and sales teams need common understanding, definitions and applications to align with the customer, understand their needs and position solutions.

55%

Mind the Gap Between Marketing and Sales

MARKETING SALES

Marketing clearly understands our customer

55%Sales and marketing are working well together

74% 44%

71% 59%AGREE AGREE

AGREE AGREE

SALES TRANSFORMATION: THE NEXT DIGITAL IMPERATIVE

Companies with effective front line sales management report:

Focus on Front Line Sales Management

TakeawaysSuccess in driving increased sales rests not in the executive suite, but on the front line.

The most successful sales leaders coach their teams with insights and buyer-specific guidance.

Front line sales leaders need tools, process and methodology to effectively coach their teams, which drives disciplined sales cycles and consistent performance improvement.

AVERAGEDEAL SIZE

DEAL SIZE WITHEFFECTIVE FRONT LINESALES MANAGEMENT

SALES CYCLE WITH EFFECTIVE FRONT LINESALES MANAGEMENT

larger deal sizes56% 12% shorter sales cycle


Companies that effectively map their sales process to their customer’s buying process report:

Understand the Customer; Unlock Sales Velocity

TakeawaysVisibility into the sales pipeline and consistent sales process and approach are critical to determining where to focus for maximum impact.

Shortening sales cycles and closing larger deals requires teams to spend time with the right people, understanding their problems and aligning solutions to how the customer wants to buy.

The job of modern sales teams is to help the customer buy, not to sell to them, and to understand your customer’s plan and their approach to plot a way to success.

AVERAGEDEAL SIZE

DEAL SIZE WITHSALES PROCESS EFFECTIVELY

MAPPED TO BUYING PROCESS

SALES CYCLE WITHSALES PROCESS EFFECTIVELY

MAPPED TO BUYING PROCESS

increase in deal size16% 23% shorter sales cycle


Companies that effectively maximize the value of their deals have:

Make It a Big Deal

TakeawaysSuccessful companies maximize deal value by taking a customer first approach.

Access to key players during the sales process and effective use of call planshelps companies deliver the greatest value to customers.

A complete understanding of the customer's problem is critical to maximizing deal value.

KEY PLAYERS BUSINESS PROBLEMS

greater access to key players80% 56% better ability at uncovering

customer business problems


Compared to 2017, trust in corporations and government declines.

say they have less trust in corporations than a year ago

say they have less trust in their government than a year ago

CORPORATIONS GOVERNMENT

TakeawaysSkepticism reigns supreme; earning people’s trust and loyalty has never been more difficult.

Building trust requires a customer first approach before, during and after the sale.

Sales teams need to consistently create value and deliver insights at every touch point to build trust and achieve trusted advisor relationship status.

Trust Less

50%17%15% 42%

2% 8%

2017 2018 2017 2018

Gaining Trust Becomes Increasingly Difficult

50%17%


Buyers Prefer Advice from the Outside

TakeawaysCorporate buyers are twice as likely to trust advice from a peer than the CEO of the company they are buying from.

The most effective sales teams build trust by understanding their customer, having a joint view of success, and keeping their promises.

The most successful sales teams are those who benefit more from their Customer’s Network Value than the outmoded measure of Customer Lifetime Value. You need to put every customer at the center.

SOCIAL MEDIA

THE SELLING COMPANY’S CEO

INDEPENDENT EXPERT

PEERS IN OTHER COMPANIES

43%27%13%

53%When making a purchase,whose advice do you trust?


The Dividends of Diversity

TakeawaysA company’s track record on diversity impacts one-third of purchase decisions.

Diverse companies (gender and ethnicity) appear to be better able to win top talent and improve customer centricity.

More inclusive workforces better understand customers and outperform the competition.

Sales organizations that embrace diversity have a more solid footing in the market and win more vs. the competition.

AVERAGE SALES CYCLE

AVERAGE SALES CYCLE

VS.114 DAYS

Companies with a “Good or Great” track record in diversity

174 DAYS

Companies with a “Very Poor” or “Poor” track record


High Tech

Manufacturing

Telecommunications and Media

Financial Services

Healthcare

Professional Services

Retail and Consumer

Other

Industry

Who We SurveyedEvery sales organization, regardless of size, industry or complexity, must prioritize digital transformation. Customer engagement is the calling card for sales teams that have already begun their digital journey. These elite teams are able to consistently communicate the impact, the outcomes and the business value of their solutions on the customer’s business.

EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT

EMEA AMERICAS REST OF THE WORLD

43%182

40%167

INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTOR

48%203

45%188

7%31

17%73

Role

Region


High Tech

Manufacturing

Telecommunications and Media

Financial Services

Healthcare

Professional Services

Retail and Consumer

Other

A Customer First Approach Drives Business

3 Cultivate your culture.

Success ultimately hinges on overcoming resistance to change. Sales leaders must build diverse, motivated, tech-savvy teams with a

desire to shed old processes.

4 Enable your sales team.

A digital sales transformation platform deployed in support of the previous three fundamentals can produce massive, sustainable results in the form of stronger customer relationships, shorter sales cycles and higher net margins.

The data paints a clear picture. Most sales organizations are not generating the results they need. The chief barrier to success is that salespeople are unable to effectively earn customer trust and build loyalty by communicating insight and value.

The most successful sales leaders in 2018 will be those who take a customer first approach and seek to deliver optimum value. This will require execution on four fronts:

1 Know more, win more.

Arming sales teams with the tools to deliver detailed, complete customer insight enables them to expand their customers’ understanding of their business problems and create a mutual vision of success.

2 Focus on value, not product.

Sales teams must earn customer trust and interest with high-value insight that makes them feel less like they are being “closed” and more like they are being helped.


The Digital Transformation ImperativeAltify is the digital sales transformation software company, helping sales teams win the opportunities that matter, grow revenue in their key accounts and improve sales execution with guided selling. Built natively on the Salesforce platform, Altify helps salespeople, sales leaders and executives achieve sustained revenue growth and sales success.

To see how our applications have enabled many of the world’s most successful sales organizations to reinvent themselves, visit us online at Altify.com

Visit Us Online

SALES TRANSFORMATION: THE NEXT DIGITAL IMPERATIVE — © 2018 ALTIFY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 16

Notes

SALES TRANSFORMATION: THE NEXT DIGITAL IMPERATIVE — © 2018 ALTIFY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 17

DIGITAL SALES TRANSFORMATION

www.alt i fy.com | +1 866 570 3836 (San Jose, CA) | +353 (0) 1 6788 900 (Dublin, IRL)

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SALES TRANSFORMATION: THE NEXT DIGITAL IMPERATIVE · SALES TRANSFORMATION: THE NEXT DIGITAL IMPERATIVE 02. ... delivering business results. Marketing and sales teams need common understanding,