Good Presales Consultant : The Missing Link To A Strong Sales Funnel
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“We get a lot of leads through the online channel. We don’t know what goes wrong after that”
“Most of them are probably not qualified”
“Very few of these convert. The cost of acquisition is high”
“Our field sales team is underutilized. They are unable to build a pipeline”
If these are issues you’ve faced as an organization, presales might be the solution you are looking for.
To understand the role of the pre-sales process or how a presales consultant or expert can add value we need to first understand the buying process of online leads and the reasons for poor conversion and the importance of b2b demand generation.
Online leads are very early in their buying journey
Online research is typically the first step in the buying process or sales funnel. Buyers are at the initial stages of their journey. This has two implications for organizations. First, some of these buyers will decide to not purchase or postpone their purchase after their initial research. This is part of any sales funnel and unavoidable. Second, in initial sales funnel stages, the buyer is looking for more information about the problem she is facing, learn about the solutions available, explore options and be educated on the topic. Quite often she is not ready for a ‘product pitch’ yet.
Field sales teams don’t handle online leads well
Field sales teams have monthly and quarterly targets. Even in organizations that track input metrics as KRAs for the sales team, the weightage for closures and revenue far outweighs any weightage given to input metrics. This makes sales teams adept at qualifying leads, pitching their product, negotiating and generally what’s referred to as closing deals. Educating the client in early stages requires a different skill set and a different mindset. Though it might come as a surprise to some, most field sales people fare poorly at educating clients, patiently answering their questions and end up disqualifying them prematurely or generally providing a subpar experience.
So what does one do with these early stage leads?
Online leads need to be managed through a robust sales funnel management process. This is typically a combination of a well trained inside pre sales team and a strong drip content campaign. There are successful b2b lead generation companies in India that take care of it completely.
But we have a presales team. And that hasn’t helped either
It’s true that presales and inside sales teams have become common in most organizations. These organizations have seen improvement in the top of the funnel, but haven’t completely solved the issue. We look at three common mistakes that lead to poor outcomes in spite of pre sales teams being part of the sales funnel.
Pre sales teams are evaluated on Efficiency and utilization
Presales teams are frequently evaluated on the wrong metrics which have been borrowed from call centres often taking support calls. Number of calls made in a day and average handling time are examples of poor metrics which are unfortunate remnants of this transition. Presales teams that are evaluated for efficiency and utilization rarely provide good outcomes.
Pre sales teams is disproportionately focussed on qualifying the customer
Pre-sales teams often believe their primary role is to ‘qualify’ customers. Such teams typically end up barraging the customer with a long list of questions without providing any useful information to them. The customer often feels interrogated and gets little value from this first interaction with the organization. Not surprisingly, they drop off from the sales funnel.
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Pre sales teams are understaffed and under trained
Pre sales unfortunately is considered a lower skill job role than field sales. It is typically reduced to reading out a pre-defined and organization centric ‘script’ which has little concern for the buyer’s requirements. Such teams usually go through the motions of processing a large number of leads by making record calls with little outcomes. This is also evident from the vast difference in performance between top pre-sales team members and the rest. Unfortunately in several cases such people are moved into field sales.
Pre sales teams are not equipped with the right sales collateral
Interacting with a buyer remotely is more challenging than when you meet them in person. Attention spans are much lower and it is difficult to get across a point without visual aids. Unfortunately most pre-sales teams are left to fend for themselves with little collateral support in terms of brochures, videos, case studies that they can share with clients. Even today, most organizations do not have a drip campaign to support pre-sales.
Building a strong pre sales process based on customer journey
We rely on a deep understanding of the customer journey and the inherent advantages of a pre- sales team to improve your sales funnel, especially the top of the funnel.
A comprehensive study of initial interactions helps us understand the questions that clients are asking and what ideal responses are likely to move them forward in the sales funnel. It also provides us an understanding of what mode of communication is preferred by different buyer personas.
We then move on to design a comprehensive multi pronged pre-sales process spanning across phone interactions, emails and other modes like whatsapp.
The first step is to identify the various sales funnel stages. Quite simply this is categorizing our inbound leads based on how much information they already have and what information they are looking for.
The second step is to understand the buyer personas we are dealing with. Some buyers are likely to be more savvy, prefer educating themselves through online videos, trials while others might prefer a human interaction.
Our pre-sales process develops response sequences for each combination of sales funnel stage and buyer persona. In our experience, only a well designed process based on these parameters is likely to change outcomes. Any kind of ‘one size fits all’ approach is bound to fail with today’s buyers.
If you’d like to understand our approach to presales, please drop us a line here and we’d be happy to take you through the process.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What are the tasks and roles of a presales consultant?
A presales consultant should be able to ensure a healthy top of the funnel. One way of measuring this is the number of meetings or conversations set up for the sales team. A presales consultant usually achieves this by setting up a good pre-sales process to nurture leads using several tools that are at the team’s disposal. Suffice to say, they play a very important role in sales process improvement.
2. How important are presales in B2B sales?
B2B sales are long-cycle sales. In fact, sales process improvement isn’t possible without presale. The first few stages of the sales funnel are primarily about educating the client. This aspect is often ignored and can be seen in the sales funnel as a huge drop off after the demo stage. Typically these are cases where the discovery & solution was ignored and the salesperson jumped to the demo stage.
3. Isn’t presales just a part of sales?
Short answer: Not if you want to build a scalable sales process. Traditionally presales are done by field salespeople who not only scout leads and approach them, but also nurture them till they are ready to buy the product. However, this leads to prospecting being ignored as salespeople concentrate more on immediate closures. Any reputable firm that offers sales consulting in India will tell you that stronger sales funnel management is better with an independent pre-sales team and well-defined metrics.
4. Do you need a different skill set for presales?
It varies slightly from conventional lead generation in two primary ways. One, since the offering is usually cloud based, buyers are more likely to explore it over a video call through a demo rather than a physical meeting. Secondly given that most SAAS companies usually have a premium model, it is easier to get the prospect to try out the offering themselves.
Absolutely. Presales requires a prospecting mindset. According to most revered firms that offer sales consulting in India, the objective in presales is to understand the client's issues and provide information about the multiple solution options available to the client. Your product pitch is only a part of this conversation. The presales process also focuses more on advancing the client in their buying process or the sales funnel instead of merely explaining the features & benefits of your product or solution. Overall presales are more about educating the client than convincing them to buy your product.