SalesTechStar Interview with Scott Yelle, Chief Sales Officer at Vivantio

It is more crucial now than ever before to make the post-sales journey as seamless as possible, Scott Yelle, Chief Sales Officer at Vivantio shares some tips:

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Hi Scott, we’d love to hear about your journey in sales through the years…how are you seeing the role of the typical salesperson in this market change today (because of the pandemic or even otherwise).

Well the journey has been 25 years plus, so I’ve seen plenty of change. Today’s sales person has to effective in communicating in a virtual way.  The pandemic has forced everyone to communicate in a different fashion.  The other big change in my mind is customers have done so much research on a company before they engage with them.  They really want to know how you can help solve their challenges and get them to a preferred future state.

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Take us through some of your biggest sales learnings from your time in tech: a few biggest moments that drove key sales learnings during the pandemic as well?

It is a noisy world out there!  More personalization is needed to stand out.  Lesser of the canned email campaigns are better! Cold calling is the rarity today.  Meaning everyone can send hundreds of emails each week but very few people still cold call.

It is critical to make that post sale experience impactful.  People need to feel they are getting an ROI on their investment.  We need to keep listening to our customers, even when we can’t get together.

How do you feel today’s sales leaders need to revisit their sales processes and choice of salestech to empower their teams more while being remote?

The question I constantly ask myself is, “How can I continue to remove obstacles, make the team more effective all while not seeing them everyday?”  Is there technology that will help with this as we work remotely?  Does our sales process have the right automation to support the buyer’s journey in this DIY world?  I spend approx. 2 hours a week researching other tech to see if we can get an edge if we invested in something to improve our process while making it all work seamlessly!  

Can you talk about some of the top sales solutions over the years (sales technologies) that have helped you drive better business outcomes?

Tools to empower the sales to team to reach out in a more productive fashion; ability to control their own email campaigns and outreach time while automatically recording the info into the CRM.

Sites where you can research people/companies to learn more about them before reaching out are important as well as data to help personalize messages to them.

Video messaging to make things more personal and to stand out from the noise is crucial today!

How according to you will the future of customer engagement and sales engagement in a digital buying world start evolving…to change the face of customer engagements as we see it today?

Simplicity – Customers are looking for simple solutions to potentially complex problems. Can we show that in the education stages of a process while still providing excellent customer service?  I believe customers will continue to want to do as much as possible themselves and be in control.

A few thoughts on what you feel today’s sales leaders need to do to motivate, train and uplift their teams to optimize business and sales performance?

We must stay connected even if we are not in the same room.  1-1 sessions, group training, but also fun things like virtual scavenger hunts, etc.  People still want to belong and feel part of something bigger.

I’d say, continue to train around the technology you provide. Have sales listen to customer engagement forums to understand how the product is used but always in new ways that you might not have considered. Review support calls to understand what common questions come up in using your product. 

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