BY GEORGE BRONTÉN for the Art & Science of Complex Sales
Everyone inside a company has their own point of view, but when we talk with executives, sales professionals, customer success team members, and everyone in between, there is one thing many of them seem to have in common:
They’re frustrated with sales but don’t really know why.
The CEO is frustrated because he can’t see why sales is performing like it should. The VP of sales is frustrated because he’s not getting the results he thinks he should. The managers are frustrated because the salespeople aren’t doing what they think they should be doing. And the salespeople are frustrated because they feel that goals are unrealistic and they’re not getting the support they need.
It’s not clear to anyone where exactly the bottlenecks are. Is it because salespeople don’t have skills or motivation? Or because we’re selling in the wrong way, or the wrong product, or focused on the wrong problem? Maybe the customer is to blame or the marketplace in general.
From any one person’s position in the company, it’s easy to see individual problems but difficult to see what the underlying issues are. There are too many trees and not enough maps of the forest.
You Need Satellite Images and The Ability to Drill Down
Until recently, there haven’t been really good tools to solve the overarching problems inside the sales organization. Instead of visibility, we’ve had black boxes.
Sales enablement tools came on the scene, promising to make content available to salespeople when they need it. Alone, that just encourages salespeople to push content.
Sales call recording technologies came on the scene, promising to make it easier for managers to coach sales calls. Alone, that just gives managers one more way to solve “trees” without solving the bigger forest problems.
It’s a sad fact that most of the sales industry has been stuck in a rut for decades.
It’s like trying to navigate a forest by walking from one tree to another, without a clear picture of the overall layout and without the ability to zoom in on the path. Before close-ups of individual trees can be useful, you need a satellite image of the area, a map, and the ability to zoom in on the path so you can see it clearly.
Membrain Elevate Gives You Unprecedented Clarity
Membrain Elevate (coming soon) was originally designed as a coaching tool, to make it possible for sales managers and salespeople to see clearly what they need to know to improve performance.
But we knew all along that no sales tool can be effective if it’s not integrated and coordinated with your way of selling. And as we built the tool, and as it began to be tested by partners and select customers, it became clear that Membrain Elevate was a much bigger breakthrough than we initially realized.
Membrain Elevate allows you to get in close to each salesperson, to see what they are succeeding with, where they need help, how they are performing against their own goals as well as the goals of the company.
But it also enables you to see what is actually working within your sales organization, and what’s not. To see where you have people problems and where you have process problems, and which is which. To measure your actual effectiveness and identify cleanly where bottlenecks are preventing improvements.
It shows you what needs to be fixed, what needs to be changed, and what needs to be repeated elsewhere in the organization.
It also allows you to measure directly the impact of changes within the organization, so you can see what’s happening and course correct as you go.
Membrain Elevate Creates Competitive Edge
It’s a sad fact that most of the sales industry has been stuck in a rut for decades. Though technology has exploded, sales effectiveness hasn’t. It’s remained more or less the same.
Point solutions can’t solve this. AI alone can’t solve this. What companies need in order to gain a competitive edge, is a better way of selling.
Membrain Elevate lets you get in close at every stage of your sales and customer success cycle, to see exactly what’s happening and adjust. It gives you laser focus into what needs to change in your strategy, your process, your methodology, your sales skills, your activities, and your coaching.
Like all of Membrain’s products, it is customizable, beautiful, and process-based. It is fully embedded within the Membrain platform, ensuring complete integration with all the existing process-based data you collect there. And it will enable you to move forward more effectively than you ever have before.
