The document discusses the transformation of the sales enablement landscape due to the empowered modern buyer who relies on online resources and has changed how they engage with sales teams. It emphasizes the need for updated sales onboarding, training, and enablement tools that focus on buyer personas, personalized experiences, and seamless integration across various channels. The overarching theme is the necessity for sales teams to adapt to this new, faster sales cycle by fostering meaningful relationships with prospects and utilizing technology effectively.

1. An Integrated Sales Enablement
and
Marketing Automation Platform

2. How the Buyer’s Journey has Changed and
Impacted Sales Enablement…
EMPOWERED BUYERS
SHORTER SALES CYCLE
THE INTERNET
THE NEW PHASE OF SALES
ENABLEMENT

3. The traditional sales cycle
• Buyers actively contacted sellers
• Purchase decision was made based on information provided by salespersons
• Sales and marketing teams’ roles were clearly demarcated

4. The modern sales cycle
• Empowered buyers with access to product/service reviews on the internet
• Buyers pretty much make up their mind even before contacting the seller
• Interacts with the seller via multiple touch points
• All through this new buying process, salespeople get very little time and hardly any chance to
make an impact
57% of the buyer’s journey
is completed before the
buyer talks to sales -
Corporate Executive Board
81% of shoppers research
online before making a
purchase
40% of smartphone
owners compare prices in-store
on their mobile
device
90% of buying decisions
are influenced by reviews
available online

5. What does this mean for channel sales?
The need to change on-boarding, training and sales support tools and
processes

6. On-boarding: Then Vs. Now
Traditional sales on-boarding
• Focuses on the salesperson , sales
tactics and the company’s
offering
• Provides the salesperson with
documented best practices , sales
scripts, sales process, demo
recordings, checklists, etc. which
may or may not have been
updated
• Salesperson is given a lot of
‘ramp-up’ time
Next-generation sales on-boarding
• Focuses on prospects and
customers , helping the
salesperson understand the buyer
persona
• Involves providing the
salesperson with latest and ‘live’
versions of key assets such as
playbooks, case-studies, process
documents, checklists etc.
• The concept of ramp-up time is
virtually non-existent due to the
new, compressed sales cycle

7. Training: Then Vs. Now
Traditional sales training
• Looks at selling in isolation and the
responsibility of closing a lead is
purely on sales
• Salesperson is urged to SELL and
gaining prospect’s trust is not on the
agenda
• Aim is to ensure the sales target are
met, maintaining relationship with
customer post-sales is not stressed
upon
• Assumes that the buyer will go
through all the stages of the typical
sales cycle and provides the
salesperson with standard sales
collateral for those stages
Next-generation sales training
• Adopts a holistic , company-wide
approach to selling—sales is not just
the salesperson’s job
• Focuses on how the salesperson can
build a relationship with the prospect
by becoming a trusted advisor and
subject matter expert
• Aim is to ensure that the salesperson
is able to match steps with the
modern buyer
• Teaches the salesperson to anticipate
prospect moves and adapt their sales
strategy and communication
accordingly

8. Sales tools: Then Vs. Now
Traditional sales tools
• Traditional sales tools were very basic
and not very sales-specific or user-friendly
• Salespersons were given access to
spreadsheets, word processors and
presentation software programs to
use as sales tools
• Salespersons would use a CRM tool
to manage their leads—that’s the
closest they came to automation
• The traditional sales tools gave
salespersons little or no flexibility in
terms of sales collateral creation
• Made sales heavily reliant on
marketing
Next-generation sales tools
• Truly empower the salesperson by
giving them control over various
elements of the sales process such as
sales collateral creation, lead
management and segmentation,
prospecting, etc.
• Since these tools are meant to be
used by salespersons and have very
specific purpose, they are more user-friendly,
flexible and effective than
traditional make-shift sales
applications such as Excel or Word
• Integrate seamlessly with the CRM
that is in use
• Cater to modern customer touch-points
such as social media and SMS

9. Sales enablement: Then Vs. Now
Traditional sales enablement
• Focused primarily on automating
sales collateral creation
• Entailed investing in a sales portal
that served as a storage vault for all
sales collateral
• Salespersons are given access to
standard sales materials and as a
result they take the pains to
‘personalize’ them to suit their
prospects
• Adopted a top-down approach to
sales enablement providing
salespersons with collateral the
management considered was
essential
Next-generation sales enablement
• Encompasses a lot more than just
sales collateral creation to include
content/assets, process, people &
skills, technology and measurement
• The sales portal is on the cloud
allowing any-time access to sales
materials
• Has better version control tools so
that the sales team has access only to
the latest collateral
• Adopts a bottoms-up approach to
sales enablement taking into account
past buyer experiences and input
from frontline salespersons, industry
trends and competitors

10. Sales enablement: Then Vs. Now
Traditional sales enablement
• Follows an inside-out approach to
sales collateral storage where-in the
assets are stored based on date
created or file-type
• Often times results in salespersons
sending irrelevant materials to
prospects
• Looks at each prospect interaction in
isolation and this often results in
fragmented communication between
the sales team and prospects
Next-generation sales enablement
• Follows and outside-in approach to
sales collateral storage which maps
sales collateral to buyers’ journey and
position in the sales cycle
• Studies buyer persona and buying
stage and optimizes the sales
collateral automatically, in real-time,
ensuring only relevant content is
shared with prospects throughout
their buying journey
• Uses a 360° prospect view to adopt a
holistic approach to prospect
interaction ensuring consistency and
unification of content across all
channels

11. Impact of the internet on consumer education at
pre-sale stage
• 59% of U.S. smartphone owners use their devices to research an item before
purchasing it
• Mobile devices will account for 30 percent of global retail e-commerce
spending by 2018
• After they make purchases, 26 percent of smartphone shoppers comment on
their purchases using social media.
• 70% of mobile searches lead to online action within an hour
Companies now have zero control over the sales cycle. It is the buyer
calling the shots now
Buyers know what they are looking for, conduct web searches, study the
various options available, compare them and then decide where to invest
Thanks to this power-shift, sales and marketing teams have little
opportunity to add value to the prospect at this stage or to influence their
purchase decision in this new sales cycle

12. Need for a smarter sales team that is more
connected with the buyer
• With buyers becoming smarter, thanks to the wide availability of information
at their disposal and the newly compressed sales cycle, the need for a smarter
sales team is being increasingly felt
More and more companies are realizing that
despite their high investment in their sales teams
and sale channels, the returns are not really
measuring up…

13. Internet has changed the selling landscape
• Need of the hour…A sales team that is connected to the prospects at
every stage of the purchase cycle, through every medium

14. Did you know…?
81% prospects are willing to
pay more for a superior
prospect experience—Oracle
70% of buying
experiences are based
on how the customer
feels they are being
treated--Source:
McKinsey
78% of consumers have
bailed on a transaction
or not made an
intended purchase
because of a poor
service experience.--
Source: American
Express Survey
3 in 5 Americans (59%)
would try a new brand or
company for a better
service experience--
American Express Survey
86% of
consumers quit
doing business
with a
company
because of a
bad customer
experience--
Source:
Customer
Experience
Impact Report
by Harris
Interactive

15. Customer experience is the key
• In the new sales cycle, it is not just
about price, quality or product/service--
now it is all the about the prospect
experience
• Making the prospects happy and
building a personal relationship with
them
• Customer delight is the key to closing
sales in this new sales cycle

16. Prospects demand an unified experience across all
touch-points
• Today’s buyer interacts with seller
through multiple touch-points
• Chances are, the seller is caught
unaware of this interaction Eg.
Website visit, social mentions,
etc.
• Even if the seller tracks the
interaction across multiple
channels, many a times the
information is stored in silos,
where-in prospect data from one
source doesn’t talk to another
• Having a single, consolidated,
360-degree prospect view is key
to ensuring a smooth, consistent
and positive buyer experience
Store walk-ins Tradeshows/Events
360° prospect view is a must to
ensure a consolidated, positive
prospect experience
Asset
Download
Past
purchases emails Website
Landing
page
Mobile Social
media
PPCs Form fills Call
center

17. The power of personalization
• The modern buyer doesn’t
tolerate irrelevant/unsolicited
marketing and sales campaigns
• Sellers need to reach out to
prospects with relevant messaging
and product/services
• There is a need to optimize sales
and marketing content to suit the
prospects
• Personalization of sales
communications based on
prospect data allows the seller to
build a strong personal
relationship with prospects that is
based on mutual trust
• A survey by Wharton Business
School and its research associates
revealed that personalization can
shorten the sales cycle and
increases customer retention and
revenue by over 40%
• Retail giant Macy’s managed to
reduce its unsubscribe rates by
20% with a simple shift from
generic to more targeted email
marketing
• Over 90% of email subscribers
unsubscribe in a few a months

18. Takeaways…
• The traditional sales cycle has undergone a paradigm shift that is
characterized by the new, empowered buyer
• Mobile internet enabled devices are playing a key role in today’s sales
cycle
• The new sales cycle is shorter and the seller has lesser opportunities to
influence the buyer
• All of these call for drastic change in sales on-boarding, training and
enablement processes and tools
• Buyers should focus on creating a personalized, positive buyer experience
across all channels
• At the end of the day, a sales team that is truly connected with the buyer
in real-time, across all touch-points will emerge as the winner

19. This webinar was
brought to you by…
Mindmatrix

20. About us
• Founded in 1998, Mindmatrix is the
leading provider of Sales Enablement and
Automation tools
• Sales Enablement is using technology to
empower the sales team and reduce their
research efforts allowing them to spend
more time “selling”
• Sales Enablement is providing the sales
team with the content to make them
independent of the marketing team; yet
at the same time promote a seamless
marketing-sales alignment that improves
sales effectiveness

21. What do we do
• Mindmatrix enables sales and marketing teams to be more effective
through a combination of asset management, automation, sales
enablement and channel enablement functionality
• Mindmatrix empowers sales and marketing teams to engage with
customers and prospects through both direct and indirect channels
and seamlessly across a combination of online, social, mobile and
offline media

22. Our Clients

23. How Mindmatrix can assist you
• Increase Revenue by running corporate ad
campaigns with local lead capture
• Increase sales productivity by providing sales
and product coaching
• Leverage social selling to connect to buyers
earlier in buying process
• Onboarding new sales people
• Internal and External New Product Introductions
• Make more of your leads by optimizing follow
through from events
• Leverage mobile to be more effective
announcing new products
• Improve communication with channels by using
mobile for weekly updates
• Increase close rates by automating routine sales
and marketing processes
• Improve your giveaways and contests by using
mobile
• Increase revenues by using mobile retail sales
alerts
• Increase Warranty Renewals with Personalized
Messaging
• Reduce printing costs with personalized product
catalogs
• Use customer data to target new products and
cross sell
• Local Marketing With National Brand Control
• Save money by decreasing the workload on
marketing
• Increase revenues by improving sales processes
• Save money by making local marketing easier
• Get more out of your marketing time by
optimizing Marketing’s Time
• Assist channel partners with centralized local
marketing
• Close more business with 5 Minute response
time to incoming leads
• Increase the amount of time sales spends selling
• Make it easier to run event campaigns
• Automate your nurturing of leads
• Automate the capture of customer referrals and
testimonials
• Create sales enablement in a box
• Automate the capture of feedback
• Deliver the right leads to sales at the right time

24. Thank you
Mindmatrix
2403 Sidney Street, Suite 150, Pittsburgh, PA 15203
Phone: 412.381.0230, Fax: 412.774.1992