EXECUTIVE STRATEGY SERIES. SALES Customer Experience: Empowering People. Powering Brands. With Oracle Sales Solutions.

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1 EXECUTIVE STRATEGY SERIES SALES Customer Experience: Empowering People. Powering Brands. With Oracle Sales Solutions.

2 Introduction The new rules of customer engagement have had major implications on the way your customers do business with you. While much of that impact has been felt in consumer buying, B2B (business-to-business) organizations are also undergoing major changes in managing customer experiences. Most interactions during the B2B buying process happen between a salesperson and a prospect, but this is quickly changing. We have entered the age of the customer where they have more choices, higher expectations, and more influence. Historically, the B2B selling process has been very fragmented with the use of highly customized and siloed applications, leading to broken channels of communication. CEB, a leading member-based advisory company, published The Challenger Sale in 2011 showing that that 57 percent of B2B buying steps are completed before a buyer even connects with a salesperson. With an abundance of information available on the Web and via social networks, B2B buyers today can leverage multiple sources to find out more about your products or services. CEB s research and analysis also shows that 53 percent of B2B customer loyalty is driven by the sales experience. The role that the sales organization plays in B2B buying cycles has become even more critical. Consistency is necessary through every customer touchpoint and forms the basis for great customer experiences. In this executive strategy brief, we will explore customer experiences throughout the selling process, how sales must adapt in the age of the customer, and ways to improve sales performance that will positively impact the customer experience. EXECUTIVE STRATEGY SERIES AUGUST

3 The hardest thing about B2B selling today is that customers don t need you the way they used to. Harvard Business Review, The End of Solution Sales, July/August 2012 Customer Experience and Sales Customer experience is the customer s perceptions and related feelings caused by the one-off and cumulative effect of interactions with a supplier s employees, channels, systems, or products. 1 The customer determines how this experience is measured, rated, and evaluated. Positive B2B customer experiences are directly affected by a seamless and engaging sales process. The Value of Customer Experience Customer perceptions have a profound impact on business metrics, ranging from increased revenue to customer loyalty and brand equity, to cost savings and operational efficiencies. The value of customer experience is defined in three categories: Acquisition. Salespeople have the responsibility of taking qualified prospects from the top of the sales funnel and converting them into new customers. The sales experience must be connected to the rest of the brand experience and seamlessly carry the customer from being a buyer to an owner. Retention. Equally important to sales is retaining those customers and continuing to have them engage with your brand to drive lifetime value. Loyal customers buy more so it is important that your sales force stay connected until the deal closes. Connecting sales representatives with postsales customer interactions such as service and support is key for increasing sales from existing customers. Efficiency. The sales organization strives for greater efficiency and effectiveness in achieving revenue targets in a profitable manner. Efficiency and effectiveness not only result from having the right people, processes, and technology in place, but also from having the right information about your customers at the right time. 1 Gartner Webinar Presentation, Customer Experience Driving Value, Gene Alvarez, July 5, EXECUTIVE STRATEGY SERIES AUGUST

4 Increasing Complexity and Challenges B2B selling typically involves more-complex and longer buying cycles, and higher-priced products than in business-to-consumer (B2C) situations. Every stage of the buying cycle involves collaborative decisions by multiple parties within your company and within the prospect s company and often their partners. Due to this complexity and the number of sales and marketing interactions, it becomes even more important for companies to provide a consistent and relevant customer experience throughout the buying process. Sales executives cite several challenges in adjusting their B2B sales strategy and execution at a time when customer expectations and influence are rapidly increasing. These challenges include: Bigger quotas, same number of reps. Quotas increase, but hiring more salespeople is not always an option. Many sales reps struggle to meet their existing quotas under these constraints. Lack of quality leads. Too much time is spent trying to determine which leads to pursue or chasing unqualified leads, while at the same time other opportunities go stale. Outdated and disparate systems. Customer information and sales processes are often fragmented across applications, data sources, and now social networks. Proliferation of data. Data about customers, the market, and competitors is growing exponentially, making it harder to capture and disseminate insightful sales information. Inefficient processes. Manual data entry into spreadsheets is often used for most sales planning activities, which can result in delays and lost opportunities. Also, individual salespeople many times lack automated ways to nurture prospects and keep them engaged. Adjusting Your Sales Strategy In addition to the challenges described above, customers employ several touchpoints before they make a B2B purchase, often coming to a supplier already armed with critical information, such as product and pricing details. This level of knowledge has shifted the balance of power where prospects and customers now drive a buying cycle rather than just participating in a sales cycle. As such, it is imperative that sales executives adjust their strategy to get ahead of buyers. Adjusting your B2B sales strategies in a customer-driven era is a necessity as focusing on customer experience is how your company will differentiate and thrive. Sales success must go beyond sales automation to better manage sales performance. Improving sales performance and creating great customer experiences includes three key elements: EXECUTIVE STRATEGY SERIES AUGUST

5 Companies without aggressive plans for managing and exploiting the explosion in data report they are losing an average of US$71.2 million per year. Oracle report, From Overload to Impact: An Industry Scorecard on Big Data Business Challenges, July 2012 Connect and engage. In addition to ensuring that your customers can reach you whenever, however, and wherever they desire, you need to ensure that your sales force is able to connect and engage internally and externally across different types of devices. Embed social capabilities into your sales systems that include discussion forums, real-time feeds and alerts, and integration with popular social networks. Enable salespeople to create personalized campaigns to nurture prospects throughout the buying cycle. Know more. Provide as much information as you can about your customers prior to their initial interaction, and centralize this information for consistency throughout the customer engagement. Recommend the best prospects and the products and services to sell to improve your win rates. Embed competitive intelligence and customer reference management so your sales force is proactively engaged in the buying cycle. Make it easy and rewarding. Improve efficiency and accuracy with integrated sales planning that includes territory management, quota management, incentive compensation, sales forecasting, and partner management. Deliver sales systems and information in a single environment that automates sales activities. That way, your sales force focuses on selling and not on manually updating spreadsheets or searching for missing data. Oracle s Approach Oracle can help your sales organizations succeed in a customer-driven era through more-relevant insight, higher-quality leads, and better sales planning and execution. All of these variables directly impact sales performance and your ability to achieve revenue targets. More-Relevant Insight The amount of collected customer data has escalated with the increase in customer and partner touchpoints. Usage and analysis of this customer data can be complex as well as essential in gaining a complete view of your customers. The convergence of both structured and unstructured information requires a common data management system and analytics platform. This platform enables salespeople to provide more-targeted and relevant interactions, which can eventually lead to an improved customer experience. With data collection comes the challenge of data quality and keeping up with data governance. By providing a single view of the customer, salespeople can target the best sales opportunities, reduce administrative burdens, and improve customer satisfaction. All users from sales executives to front-line sales representatives to channel sales managers can benefit from up-to-the-minute, complete, and in-context insight that is personalized, relevant, and actionable. EXECUTIVE STRATEGY SERIES AUGUST

6 We wanted to put the information our sales team needs at their fingertips, enabling them to make the most of the time they have in front of current and potential customers. Jay King, Vice President, Marketing and Sales Processes Services, Dresser-Rand By customizing and streamlining data, salespeople have access to timely, factbased insight into sales and marketing processes. Dashboards can be created for salespeople based on their individual roles and responsibilities. Higher-Quality Leads One of the key factors in generating higher-quality leads is having your marketing systems integrated with your sales systems to gain transparency and a single view of the customer. Lead nurturing and lead scoring should happen before and after the lead is handed off to sales. Once a lead is passed to sales, it is important that sales reps have a way to nurture a prospect and analyze their opportunities. Campaign management should be available to sales reps where they can generate targeted campaigns in a few easy steps and then measure the effectiveness of those personalized campaigns. An opportunity landscape will also help each sales rep identify the best prospects in their territory so they can focus on leads with a higher probability of winning. Another key factor in generating higher-quality leads is the underlying customer data. As we discussed in the previous section, relevant insight at the right time is necessary for great customer experiences. Expanding the customer profile with deep, rich, and actionable information from social media and other sources empowers salespeople to provide the right content, promotions, and offers to their customers and prospects. Better Sales Planning and Execution Forecasted B2B sales win rates declined from 50 percent to 45 percent over the last five years while loss rates remain unchanged at approximately 30 percent over the same period. CSO Insights, 2011 Sales Management Optimization Key Trends Analysis, 2011 Successful selling starts with a plan that drives alignment and results. Planning should not happen in isolation where territories, quotas, incentives, and forecasting are managed in separate processes and locations. Each sales planning component should be integrated to drive the sales planning process. The last thing you want is for your sales force to sit around and wait for territory assignments, quotas, and compensation plans and then become frustrated once those plans are executed. The best sales planning solutions give you leeway to model different sales plans and choose the best plan for your business or change that plan should business conditions change. By bringing all of these components together, you are better prepared to incent the right sales behavior. The optimal territory coverage for existing and new markets will help you reduce sales cycles and ensure moreevenly distributed opportunities. Integrating your territory plans tightly with quotas and incentive compensation ensures that you can quickly adjust territory assignments if there are any changes in your business conditions all without impacting current sales operations. EXECUTIVE STRATEGY SERIES AUGUST

7 With Oracle, Banco Espírito Santo significantly increased sales of its new financial products across all channels by up to 25 percent. João Manaças, CRM Manager, Banco Espírito Santo Coaching and collaboration has a profound impact on your ability to win deals and deliver great customer experiences. Sales teams should have access to step-by-step coaching that is aligned to specific sales stages, thereby improving their knowledge and standardizing their interactions with customers. Discussion forums and group spaces further boost productivity and the quality of deals by leveraging expertise and experiences across your organization. Sales reps are able to respond to customer needs faster through built-in, real-time collaborative tools that enable them to leverage the intelligence of other team members and partners and other experts that are relevant to the deal. Oracle s Sales Solutions Oracle provides comprehensive solutions that enable your sales force to win more deals while at the same time providing great customer experiences. Build the right foundation for selling. Ensure you have the right foundation to automate and standardize common sales tasks, provide visibility, and maximize revenue opportunities. While your sales force will never rid themselves completely of updating their accounts and opportunities, you can increase their productivity through mobile access, social network integration, alerts and notifications, discussion forums, streamlined contracts management, and access to internal and external data sources. Customer visibility is necessary for sales to know their customers better and tailor the buying cycle appropriately. Unify customer data across multiple business units and disparate systems for a single source of customer information. That way, your sales force can make informed decisions based on data rather than instinct. Visibility of sales performance is also critical for a strong sales foundation with the ability to see general pipeline activity and specific sales opportunities. More of your sales reps can hit their quotas by targeting opportunities they are more likely to win. Make the right impact on customers and sales. Today s customers expect personalized content that is relevant and tailored to their specific needs. This level of customer impact is addressed with campaign management. Your sales force can tailor programs to individual prospects and provide consistency and alignment with other customer touchpoints. The right impact with sales is also important, which is why you need to quickly deliver sales plans and execute on them. You can further improve the impact with your sales force by providing coaching. This type of instruction improves a salesperson s knowledge and helps ensure that your customers get a consistent experience when interacting with your sales force. Through discussion forums, salespeople can leverage the intelligence and success of the entire sales force, partners, and other experts so they have the right answers for customers at the right time. Partners are an important extension of your sales force and should also be effectively managed to provide consistent customer experiences that are aligned with the overall sales force. Plan for future sales success. When you develop territory plans, quotas, incentives, and forecasts in conjunction, you can better align with your EXECUTIVE STRATEGY SERIES AUGUST

8 Contact Us To learn more about Oracle s customer experience solutions, please visi oracle.com/cx or call ORACLE1 to speak to an Oracle representative. OUTSIDE NORTH AMERICA Visit oracle.com/corporate/contact/ global.html to find the phone number for your local Oracle office. business strategy and goals and meet your overall sales goals more predictably. Model sales plans with what-if scenarios so you have flexibility in choosing sales plans that are optimal for your business. And, if you need to change plans, you can do so without disruption. Improve your sales reps success by providing them with a prioritized list of product offerings tailored to a customer s needs. Maximize your up-sell and cross-sell revenue with product recommendations on the next-best product to sell to each customer. Integrate sales with the rest of the customer lifecycle. While the sales organization has a big influence on the customer experience, other functions also impact customer perceptions. Service and support, marketing, commerce, and finance all come into contact with your customers. Integration with service and support solutions will allow sales to recognize up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. Sales and marketing integration enables marketers to know where to invest and drive more revenue for better-quality leads and increased lead conversion rates. Integrating sales solutions with commerce solutions provides consistency across customer touchpoints. Sales and finance integration helps customers streamline their credit-to-cash process. That way, the entire organization is focused on positive customer experiences that drive more revenue rather than just adding to the silos of lost information. Summary We have now entered the age of the customer, in which customers are making decisions that often bypass your sales organization. Customers are interacting directly with their peers and social channels, while researching on their own via mobile devices. Your customers expect a consistent, relevant, and personalized buying experience, and internal applications and systems need to support it. Oracle s customer experience solutions support every step of the customer journey by delivering interactions that are more relevant and efficient, whether for internal use or Web self-service. Creating great customer experiences starts with knowing exactly who your customers are and their needs, and providing the best recommendations based on their history with your company, as well as what you have learned through their social presence. You need to connect and personalize their experiences as they travel across touchpoints and engage with your brand. With a comprehensive suite of solutions and technologies for commerce, service and support, sales, insight, loyalty and marketing, and social media, Oracle can address the entire customer lifecycle. You will be able to simultaneously connect and engage customers, learn more about them, and make it easy and rewarding for them to do business with you. Oracle customer experience solutions enable you to deliver great customer experiences and profitable customer journeys. EXECUTIVE STRATEGY SERIES AUGUST

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