New Survey Uncovers Best Practices To Communicate With Sales Professionals
What are the best methods to effectively communicate online with Sales Professionals?
A Q4 ’09, “website enhancement” survey from SalesProfile.com, confirmed that sales professionals in the U.S. prefer to read their online content, versus listening or watching. Sales professionals also value variety, quality, and relevance.
SalesProfile.com is an evolving tool for sales professionals and businesses and was founded in 2009 by Jason Dumois and A.J. Conyers IV.
In November and December 2009, SalesProfile.com surveyed 100 sales professionals and entrepreneurs in the Unites States to gather feedback on how the website could be enhanced to add more value. Questions were focused in three areas:
- Website content
- Content delivery
- Website features/functionality
The goal was to uncover what sales professionals find most valuable and how they prefer to access their online content. The 100 people that participated in the survey were a combination of field sales reps, inside sales reps, sales managers, sales executives, and entrepreneurs.
Survey Conclusions
1) Website Content: Sales professionals were asked to provide input on what type of online information and content they find most interesting and valuable.
The survey showed that sales professionals value variety, quality, and relevance. The specific content categories that received the highest ranking in terms of interest were:
√ Sales Tips & Advice
√ Sales Information by Industry
√ Access to a Database of Business Profiles
√ Sales Operations Information
When asked to provide qualitative comments about content, sales professionals continually reinforced that high quality and relevance is most important. There was also particular interest in accessing information on sales compensation plans and best practices.
2) Content Delivery: Sales professionals were asked to provide input on how they like to receive or view their online information.
Overwhelmingly, sales professionals prefer to read their content, versus listening or watching. There is particular interest in receiving content via email. Here is a recap of specific survey data:
√ 77% prefer Email
√ 69% prefer Articles
√ 49% prefer Websites
√ 48% prefer Groups/Forums/Discussions
√ 46% prefer Blogs
√ 40% prefer White Papers
Delivery methods that sales professionals gave the lowest rankings to were Text Messages, eBooks, Podcasts, Status Updates, Tweets, and Videos.
3) Website Features & Functionality: Sales professionals were asked to rank their interest level in a variety of website features, functions and technology.
The survey results indicated that sales professionals most value features that would allow them to interact with other sales professionals, save them time, help them sell more, and develop their skills and abilities.
Overall, the website features that garnered the most interest were the ability to exchange sales referrals, the ability to contact other sales professionals and the ability to participate in eLearning and mentoring programs.
When discussing their sales profile features and functions, survey participants were very interested in the ability to automatically populate their sales profile information and sync status updates with other social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. There was also significant interest in the ability to showcase their product(s) and/or service(s), such as adding images, descriptions, links, and demos.
Interestingly, there was very little interest in including a video or audio clip in their individual sales profile. This is somewhat counter-intuitive, since sales professionals tend to be very outgoing and spend much of their professional time talking or presenting to clients.
SalesProfile.com Co-Founder, Jason Dumois, shared that “We are very satisfied with the results of our survey. We plan to use this information to make enhancements to our website and service offerings. We want our website to add tremendous value to sales professionals and businesses and are thankful for the wonderful feedback we received from each and every person who completed our survey.”
For more information about the Q4 ’09 ”website enhancement” survey or to provide additional suggestions/ideas, please contact Jason Dumois at jason@salesprofile.com.
I am excited to announce that the new eBook, “Sales Contestology, A 7 Step Guide To Sales Contests” is now available for a free download at www.sales-contest.com. I co-wrote this book with Mark Repkin, an incentive and recognition industry leader, also a senior executive at the company, Certifigift.
A lot of the traffic I receive at the Sales Operations Blog, is the result of sales leaders searching for information on sales contests. Before the creation of this eBook, the only contest resources online were a few blog posts. Mark and I have addressed an un-served need for sales professionals, by publishing this free eBook.
Sales Contestology covers the seven steps we think are most critical when planning and implementing a successful sales contest:
- Step 1: Set your sales contest objective
- Step 2: Decide how to measure your sales contest
- Step 3: Define the criteria for choosing the contest winners
- Step 4: Select Contest Prizes
- Step 5: Plan, communicate and roll-out the sales contest
- Step 6: Announce Winners/Earners | Determine contest ROI
- Step 7: Maintain control, i.e. Continue to use the Sales Contestology process
During my sales and operations career, I have created and implemented hundreds of sales contests. And, I have been a participant or supporter of contests created by colleagues and bosses.
In my experience, the sales contests that were carefully designed and implemented considering the aspects discussed in the seven steps, were far more successful that the contests that were thrown together at the last minute.
Here are some other key highlights from the book:
What is the best way to measure a contest?
- Choose the one or two metrics that will have the biggest and most direct influence on achieving your contest objective.
- A contest is not the time to introduce a new metric. Use measurements that your sales teams know how to influence and metrics where you already have baseline results. You want to be able to track the improvements or changes in the baseline metrics.
- Don’t rob Peter to pay Paul… in contest language the means that you don’t want one metric to go up while another metric goes down, so in the end you have experienced no sales lift.
- Make sure you can track and report on the contest results. Talk to your sales operations and finance partners during the planning process.
- A sale is not always a sale. In most companies there are different ways to measure sales, for example booked sales, shipped sales, top line or bottom line. Be sure to clearly spell out the definition of a sale for your contest.
Move The Middle
Design your contest in a way that motivates and influences the middle performers on your team. In most cases 10% of your team are considered top performers, 10% are new hires or poor performers, and the remaining 80% are your reliable or average performers. Getting 80% of your team to produce more, will have a much bigger impact than only motivating your top performers.
When choosing contest prizes consider….
- The budget and contest return on investment (ROI). As a general rule, the incremental sales that you plan to generate from a sales contest should help offset the cost of the contest itself.
- The size or value of the prizes in comparison to your sales team’s incentive or commission plan.
- Whether to use cash or non-cash prizes. The eBook covers some very interesting considerations and pros and cons, comparing cash and non cash.
When rolling out your sales contest:
- Incorporate a fun theme to make the contest more engaging and memorable.
- Gather feedback from key stakeholders before the contest is finalized and communicated.
- Provide contest participants with frequent status updates and positive reinforcement.
For more information and to download the free book, please visit www.sales-contest.com.
