Lindsey Chambers, Regional VP of Sales – US, Exclaimer dives into the factors that modern B2B tech sellers need to focus on more to create better customer impact:

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Welcome to this SalesTech Series chat, Lindsey, tell us about yourself and more about your role at Exclaimer…

Thank you for having me! Before joining Exclaimer as the RVP of Sales, my background was in the no-code space, so I have over 15 years of experience in software and technology sales. I’ve worked as Channel Sales Manager for Xerox, where I oversaw and expanded their Software Sales & Professional Services division, and helped develop a software solutions suite that generated new revenue streams and market share. Prior to Xerox, I spent five years at Formstack and became their VP of Sales, where I achieved more than 70% revenue growth from 2017 – 2021 and maintained an average of 40% APR revenue growth YoY. I’m now part of the team at Exclaimer, where I oversee enterprise and commercial sales for the U.S., Canada, and South America markets.

When shaping a sales team (in terms of process/structure and skills you look for): what are the fundamentals you follow? 

You often have two audiences when it comes to sales: the department who uses the solution and the department who manages the budget — and those two audiences rarely have similar objectives.

For example, one common challenge is that the IT department has to approve anything the marketing department wants to implement, and they don’t always see eye-to-eye on what is most valuable in terms of ROI.  Because of this, I like to take a team-selling approach to sales — where two salespeople team up to target both personas. By sending in a team where one person targets the IT decision maker (i.e. the one in charge of the budget) and one person targets the marketing decision maker (i.e. the person who will be using the solution), you can demonstrate value to two different personas at the same time, leading to a sale where all parties involved see the benefit.

That’s why I like to build my team with people who are adaptable, team players, and who have a variety of skills and backgrounds to ensure there is always someone with the knowledge and understanding of the different personas we sell to.

What should today’s seller be more focused on, to help ensure better sales cycles and output?

To ensure better sales cycles and output, today’s seller should focus on creating a sales strategy that is tailored to their target customers and selling channels. A sales strategy sets a path to hit revenue targets by identifying target customers and the most relevant selling channels, then creating a sales process to match.

The most important thing to remember is that a sales strategy is never finished, it is always evolving. It needs to continually adapt to business and market changes, always seeking to do more with less.

Read More: SalesTechStar Interview with Joe Rohrlich, Chief Executive Officer at Recurly

As a regional sales head: how do you collate and track individual sales contributions, conversations: what salestech do you use to align efforts and measure output at the individual, team and business level?

As a regional sales head, it is important to track individual sales contributions and conversations to align efforts and measure output at the individual, team, and business level.

Sales Technology is a crucial aspect of this process because it helps reps to develop a customer centric approach to selling that balances automation with personalization while also improving productivity, communication and leading conversion – all of which helps reps to move prospects through the funnel faster. At Exclaimer, we rely on:

• CRM Hygiene – To ensure that every lead and activity is measured across the sales cycle, we invest a lot of time and resources into Salesforce automation and hygiene.
• Outreach Sales Automation – To ensure that we are using consistent messaging throughout the sales cycle.
• Zoominfo – To develop strategic insights about both our inbound prospects, in the form of pre-call planning as well as strategic outbound.

If there were five best practices for everyone in B2B sales to follow across the hierarchy: what in your view would those fundamentals best practices be?

In general, there are several best practices that can be followed by everyone in B2B sales to improve their performance. Here are five of them:

Understand your prospect’s pain points and goals: To be successful in B2B sales, it is important to understand the needs of your prospects and empathize with their challenges. This will help you tailor your pitch to their specific needs and increase the chances of closing a deal.

Build relationships with the top decision-makers: Rather than spend valuable time making connections with people who don’t have the authority to make purchasing decisions, focus on building relationships with the key decision-makers. This will help you get your foot in the door and increase the likelihood of closing a deal.

Sell actual business results and value: B2B buyers need to understand the potential return on investment (ROI) and how a product or service will ultimately benefit their business before they move forward with a purchase. Therefore, it is important to focus on selling the actual business results and value that your product or service can provide.

Personalize the customer journey: Personalizing the customer journey can help you build stronger relationships with your prospects and increase the chances of closing a deal. This can include everything from personalized emails to customized product demos.

Invest in customer experience training: Providing excellent customer service is key to building long-term relationships with your customers. Investing in customer experience training can help you and your team provide the best possible service to your customers.

CATCH Episode 186 of The SalesStar Podcast: Using Email Signatures to Drive Marketing and Sales with Carol Howley, CMO at Exclaimer

 

If you had to share a few AI trends that will lead the salestech-martech space in 2024 and beyond, what would you talk about? 

Gen AI adoption – Tools like Jasper or Chat GPT will really help sellers save time and provide consistently professional messaging to prospects and customers.

Conversational Intelligence – Tools such as gong help sellers identify the challenges that are critical to an ever-changing customer base.  Identifying these challenges helps sales leaders tailor training and GTM strategies around the issues our customers face.

Read More: Leading Remote Sales Teams and Maximizing Global Sales