How to Motivate Your Sales Team & Improve Your Customer Service Experience with Dionne Mejer, #224

There's a seismic, yet quiet, shift that's taking place within the sales industry. Not only are modern buyers becoming more sophisticated and harder to sell to, but the modern seller is also evolving.

The demographics of who is entering the sales industry is quickly changing, which is making it clear that a one-size-fits all approach to sales training won't work.

That's why those B2B organizations that have been able to enhance how their sales leaders show up in the workplace and how they keep their sales teams continually motivated are silently carving out an impressive competitive advantage.

Because when you have a highly motivated (and effective) sales team, then the customer experience is often better streamlined and supportive – helping to turn first-time customers into lifetime customers.

And, what sales leaders must do to keep their sales teams motivated and improve their customer service experience are exactly what we dive into in this episode of The Modern Selling Podcast.

Our guest is not only an expert in this field, but her insightful new book is poised to give sales leaders a much-needed new perspective and tangible strategies to use to elevate how they lead and inspire their teams.

Dionne Mejer is the Founder & CEO of Inside Sales by Design and author of the highly anticipated book, The Stepped Approach: Onboard Better, Systemize Smarter, and Bring Out the Best in Your Sales Team. Her innovative inside sales training tactics and proven approach gets her clients results every time. As a 20+-year Inside Sales veteran and executive, Dionne specializes in establishing and growing inside sales teams at mid-sized companies. Her intimate work with sales teams of all sizes and experience levels allows each of her clients to thrive as they discover their own voice in leading their Inside Sales team or rep in shepherding clients to a positive outcome.

Her global client Rolodex is equally long as it is impressive, with her clients consistently enjoying a 25% uptick in their funnel activities and a 30% increase in deal closings, as a result of working with her.

Listen to the full conversation to hear what Dionne recommends sales leaders do today to revamp how they're onboarding, training and motivating their staff.

What should sales leaders be doing today?

The pandemic has, in many ways, fundamentally shifted how modern buyers buy. The modern buyer is more informed, harder to reach, and is not easily sold on just features alone. All of these buying complexities make the job of a salesperson even harder.

I wanted to hear Dionne's perspective on what sales leaders can and should be doing right now to combat the high sales rep attrition that's taking place.

She shares, "The challenge is that we have multiple generations of sales people within our organizations. So, the question must become: How do we take this diverse group of folks with different experiences, different perspectives, different mindsets, and different experience levels, and bring everybody together to have a really, really good customer experience?"

But, the key here is that to have a great customer experience, requires that every customer touchpoint (even with sales) is strategic, aligned, and productive.

I've had my fair share of "sales fumbles", where as a potential customer, my needs were never asked or even remotely acknowledged. So, in many ways, if B2B organizations aren't careful how their prospecting and sales processes are set up, they could easily (and accidentally) be working against both their sellers and their potential buyers.

I asked Dionne to dive deeper into what challenges she's seeing right now in this space.

Her insights were so good, "A lot of what needs to happen now is around how do we, as sales leaders, manage in a remote environment? How do we have a good customer experience? How do we have conversations? How do we set the stage and have expectations for our teams in this new world order, where we have four generations in the workplace and everyone may be working remotely?"

Tune into this episode to hear what Dionne says sales leaders can do to answer all of those questions and craft a seamless sales training experience that empowers sales teams to improve how they handle prospects and customers.

How should sales leaders train to improve the customer experience?

This is a hot topic in many of the sales leadership circles that I'm in, which is why I had to ask Dionne her perspective.

In many cases, B2B organizations are leaning in on following sales processes and protocols which often leaves little to no room for actual, valuable conversations that nurture the prospect. Instead, the focus is solely formulaic and too rigidly linear that it leaves many buyers turned off from the sale, with even the first email outreach.

I know this space is Dionne's zone of genius, so I ask her to share what she's seeing right now:

"In order to give a good customer experience, you have to review and often change your internal processes and/or your external ones. Too often sales teams are told to follow a specific sales cadence – without fail. The problem with that is if you start to systematize too much, then you make it harder for your sales teams to have the value-driven conversations they need to provide an exceptional customer experience."

Download this episode and listen in for the powerful example of what not to do during a demo call and why how you handle a sales rep switch is so important for building trust.

What can companies do to create a motivating sales environment that benefits customers?

It's one thing to "talk" about what a good customer experience is, but it's an entirely different story to define what that looks like for your sales leaders and reps.

Here at Vengreso, our employees are spread out across the globe, so keeping those authentic touchpoints can be hard.

We're very initial with building a rock solid team atmosphere – even virtually – where everyone feels supported and personally developed toward their individual career goals.

But, I know this is not the case with many other B2B and B2C companies. I ask Dionne to walk us through what companies can do to build truly engaging, inspiring, and motivating environments so that their sales teams want to sell and enhance the customer experience.

She explains, "This doesn't have to be complex. Building the right environment to promote positive customer experiences, starts with being clear with expectations. Sales leaders need to have that conversation with their team: What does a good customer experience look like and how do we consistently achieve it?"

Dionne teaches sales organizations and leaders to take these three steps:

1. Create a purpose statement – this is your guiding North so that everyone understands why you do what you do and what you are trying to collectively achieve.
2. Put the right tools and systems into place – by having systems, you can automate steps that would free up your sales team's time to focus on building relationships with your customers.
3. Give your team responsibility in the process – when you disconnect the team from having a say in the purpose of the team or action, then you open up the opportunity for them to disengage from their work.

Listen into the full conversation to hear what other key steps and actions sales leaders need to take to uplevel their team interactions to skyrocket their customer service experience.

This episode of the Modern Selling Podcast is brought to you by Korn Ferry. Korn Ferry transforms sales teams using their world-class Miller Heiman, methodology, employee assessments, benchmarking and talent advisor capabilities to increase win rates and quota attainment. Korn Ferry offers Korn Ferry Sell, a sales effectiveness app available in App Exchange and app source that helps your sales team develop and replicate powerful sales strategies that help sellers win more deals and crush their quotas. Learn more at kornferry.com/saleseffectiveness.