The Ultimate Sales Setup

Growing up I played soccer with my brothers and friends outside. Soon Atari changed the way I played — many old people say, that it is not the same.

Virtual Engagement is Real Engagement

Today I see my son playing on his xBox, and yes it may not be the same but I love to hear his laughter fill our house, and screams of excitement. It is truly great to see him engage with different cultures around the world or be a team leader providing instructions to other team mates (Call of Duty). It may be virtual but it is real engagement!

From one-screen to multi-screen

If one screen is engaging. Then two screens must be even more engaging! Look around you and you see multi screen setups everywhere. The person at the front desk lobby has a two screen setup, the finance team members have multiple screen setups, engineers go even crazier with multiple vertical screens.

Hedge fund manager Adam Sender’s office and futuristic trading station setup. What’s on all those screens?

Real-time Insights

For the past weeks I have been taking pictures of different setups of a number of sales people. In the picture below you see two examples of sales professionals using multi-screen setups and what they are doing with it.

Ryan Mendez on the left has a more traditional setup using his computer plus monitor screen at the same time, but what stands out is the additional notes that he added and the quality of detail to guarantee a great client experience;

• Value proposition per role
• Checklists of what to do in different circumstances
• Key questions to ask + highlighting the best questions to ask and
• Post-it notes of the latest info received during the morning briefing

Johannes Zadronzy-Suarez on the right uses multiple screens including the vertical monitor. In this setup he gets;

• Real-time information on a client he is on the phone with
• Uses his screen for an online demonstrating, and
• Reviewing historic information from the CRM during the call
• He has a coaching card printed (in orange) with key persona’s etc.

Putting these two together into an artistic rendering gives us an idea of what is possible.

The Ultimate Sales Setup

Let keep it real… The absolute best sales setup is when you are sitting next to your client, and working with them on a white board elbow to elbow. Working together; identifying and establishing a solution!

However that is not feasible with most SaaS businesses as the price of the service does not leave enough room to invest in a customer visit. On a minor note a lot of clients today rather see a demo right now vs. wait for 3–4 weeks until you visit them on-site.

In an attempt to give a client a quality experience, I have envisioned the ultimate setup to help a customer thousands of miles away. This setup looks something like:

Screen 1: Live Customer Video: Instead of the in-person meeting or just having a phone conversations we can clearly see all the people attending the call. Even those attending from a single room will switch on their individual video to create equal nose-to-nose distance between all attendees.

Screen 2: Live Demonstration: You will share your screen as you diagnose, demonstrate options, share stories etc. Every attendee can clearly see what you are talking about.

Screen 3: Real-time Checklists: On your left hand you will find a screen for real-time checklists; what are the best questions to ask at this point of the conversation etc. These lists is dynamic; as the customer says “we are also looking at your competitor ACME” the system responds and key trade-offs are presented between your company and ACME with a series of suggested questions.

Screen 4: Real-time Customer Insights: On your right hand you will see a real-time feed of customer insights such as relevant information gathered from social media, CRM, structured by attendee on the call, company, solution and/or problem.

Screen 5: Real-time Coaching: On the right upper hand, there can be voice analysis, are you speaking too much, too slow, etc. This provides real-time call analysis integrated with recommendations — such as a bright blinking red light telling us to Shut Up.

Screen 6: Dynamic Sales Process: On the left upper screen will be a visualization of the journey, which step/experience are you, and what is next? This journey can be updated as you purposely skip a step, or redo a step in the process. This of course will dynamically change the other screens.

What is Your Ultimate Setup?

Some of you may already have some pretty advanced multi-screen setups that come close to this. If so I’d love to see it! Can you send me a picture of your setup via @IndoJacco #UltimateSalesSetup