The Customer Journey, Part 1: The Challenge
You have to assume that your current job or function will be impacted — if it already hasn’t — in some way by new innovations. In the enterprise, we’ve seen an explosion of tools related to AI. Everywhere you look, whether you’re an investor or buyer, “AI for X” continues to pervade the enterprise space at a relentless pace. In this blog we’ll focus on how the sales organization is being transformed by technology and why so many of the available tools are making very marginal differences in the lives of those sales resources.
When you consider some of the macro changes taking place you realize that growing competition, information-empowered consumers of enterprise technology, and the digitization of sales and marketing create a ton of challenges for the Chief Revenue Officer who is used to managing a traditional sales pipeline and model, placing a tremendous amount of pressure on margins and the “effectiveness of sales organizations”.
In our discussions over the last year we’ve seen, and validated, that companies are trying to empower their teams with as much data as possible and the easiest way for them to do this is by purchasing one of these “AI for X” tools that exist. Because, why not? AI has been the buzzword that investors loved, writers discuss ad nauseam, and naturally people gravitated toward. So with that came additional purchases and tools being added to the expanding sales technology stack that already included platforms like Salesforce, tools that plug into Salesforce, Slack, tools that plug in to Slack, data analysis tools and click tracking tools, to name a few.
And many of these tools require engineering resources to implement which everyone knows is not an easy ask coming from a sales team, and rightfully so.
What we can confirm is that technology and sales leaders are at an inflection point demanding intense levels of change and a modification to traditional ways of ‘doing business’. Failing to adopt new methodologies and or “new ways of working will result in falling behind, in alarmingly accelerated ways”.
What we can confirm is that technology and sales leaders are at an inflection point demanding intense levels of change and a modification to traditional ways of ‘doing business’.
The speed and agility required of sales teams is also intensifying as the enterprise buyers’ knowledge of vendors’ products is the greatest it’s been ahead of a product evaluation (eg. trial, POC, etc.). Additionally, the prospective buyer’s expectation for a seamless experience with the vendor’s product and the team is at an all time high. If this trend seems familiar, that’s because it is.
When we take a step back we notice that there are a growing number of similarities with the consumer market. Take for example, the phone. The end user begins their ‘evaluation’ process with research, scouring the internet and social media for reviews and user feedback, asking peers and friends whether or not they own a particular model. “Does anyone have the Google Pixel? I’m thinking about finally making the switch from Apple?”, you read from your Facebook feed. After piecing together enough information, the end user will then take the plunge and head over to their carrier’s location to further inquire with a sales rep. Already 90% of the way to a final decision.
A variation of this same process is happening on the enterprise side as well. In fact, according to a recent Forrester report, 56% of B2B buyers make half or more of their purchase decisions online.
Similar to eCommerce, enterprise buyers are pressed for time, with an abundance of choices, and have come to demand the simplicity they are accustomed to in their day to day lives.
This is the consumerization of the enterprise and its in the early innings of a much larger transformation that is customer experience and success focused.
Designing Enterprise Tech for Consumers
I remember first experiencing this consumerization and design of enterprise technology around 2007, when smartphones and apps really started gaining acceptance, the actual look and feel of enterprise software started to adopt an aesthetic similar to the apps you used on your smartphone. What we’ve seen since then is a continued, very intense focus on design.
All of this coincided with some breakthroughs in AI and data analytics, making it much easier for end-users to visualize massive sets of data, near real-time.
More recently, a lot of these tools have shifted their focus a bit, adding another layer of data and less on the behavior(s) of the end user. And what we’re finding is that the data these tools expose tend to be less helpful and more inaccurate than anything else, leading reps down the wrong path, which can be detrimental to closing a deal. A VP of Sales that I recently spoke with echoed this sentiment, describing a predictive analytics tool they use, “it’s polishing a turd”. Clearly missing the mark.
Management threw another data tool into the mix but didn’t necessarily make the process of managing the customer lifecycle or evolution exponentially easier for the company.
Since 2013, we’ve seen a lot of tools come to market in the “Sales Acceleration Space”. Some of these categories include, coaching tools, configure price quote, email tracking, lead prioritization, engagement software, and Salesforce automation, to name a few.
A Design Flaw
At the core of the sales technology stack, there is a serious design flaw, one in which there doesn’t seem to be a grasp of the employee experience, behaviors, and the principal points of friction for sales organizations. The technology community focused on buzzwords like AI and not solving actual problems.
As Ken Krogue of InsideSales.com stated, “Everyone claims an AI angle for their sales software or service offering. But from marketing automation to CRM to sales cadence tools, these claims are thin”. For the sales executives, buzzwords are useless.
In 2018 and beyond, customers will demand a lot when interacting with your business. They want the same personalized experience you’d expect when purchasing a consumer product. In a 2016 TechCrunch article, Trinity Ventures Managing Director, Karan Mehandru, pointed out that this type of model requires a platform that codifies and programs sales organizations’ behaviors and allows users to A/B test best practices to see what is most effective. Keeping in mind that these plans might be unique for each customer, so it’s a requirement that platforms scale and adapt to these real-time changes while maintaining the same end user experience throughout the customer lifecycle, from prospecting to nurturing, to closing. It’s also worth noting that when building these platforms you understand the immediate need and long term implications of new technology and how sales organizations will be impacted in 3–5 years.
Integrating these ideas and methods across the business will allow for the greatest impact on the a vendor’s sales, retention, and upselling opportunities. Successful companies are and will continue to cultivate a culture that is centered around the customer experience, before the customer purchases your product.
Our Focus
At Mergeable, we’re not focused on what the sales teams are using — we’re building a platform that facilitates this integration of teams (sales, OPs, sales engineering, customer success, and post-sales) by focusing on what the individual teams are trying to do for their customer and the evolution of that customer. How can we simplify that process and automate the tasks that require real-time reactions, so that the pre and post sales organization can focus on customer experience from day 1, when the prospect first comes to your website? We’re not adding another layer of data, we’re looking at the actual data, in real-time as it’s being produced by the end user. This is where a lot of platforms and tools drop the ball and we’re finding that sales teams are being forced to supplement a standardized suite of sales acceleration tools, specifically data analytics, or social collaboration software with hacked-together solutions they have created to extend the process even more.
Our next piece will focus on how we plan on doing this. We look forward to building an end-to-end customer evolution platform that can help take enterprise technology organizations into the next decade. Thanks for reading and please feel free to comment, clap, and or share!
Want to learn more about Mergeable? Head over to our website (mergeable.io) or send me an email (edward@mergeable.co).
If you’re interested in applying for early beta access, you can sign up here: https://mergeable.io/beta/
Linked Articles:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/enterprise-ux-past-present-and-future/
http://www.zdnet.com/article/research-44-percent-say-ux-lacking-with-enterprise-software/
http://www.techproresearch.com/downloads/research-the-evolution-of-enterprise-software-ux/
https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/26/a-new-sales-technology-stack-is-coming/
