SalesLoft Survey Uncovers What Buyers and Sellers Really Need for a Better Sales Experience
New Data Identifies Pain Points and Satisfaction in Meeting Engagements
ATLANTA, September 20, 2018 (Newswire.com) - SalesLoft, the leading sales engagement platform provider, today released the results of a new survey which looked at the top pain points of buyers and sellers and what might improve the sales meeting experience for all parties.
The survey of more than 400 professional buyers and sellers, conducted by Propeller Insights on behalf of SalesLoft in August 2018, was released in tandem today with SalesLoft Meeting Intelligence, a new technology natively built into the SalesLoft platform to give buyers a superior sales experience and sales organizations unprecedented visibility into sales conversations.
“What we learned is that for buyers, it’s all about time efficiency; for sellers, it’s the value of a well-trained team,” said Kyle Porter, co-founder and CEO of SalesLoft. “Leveraging video-based meetings can satisfy both of these needs and many others. We launched Meeting Intelligence to improve communication between buyers and sellers, to make the time they spend together more meaningful, and to make sure sellers can avoid wasting buyers’ precious time.”
Selling Is Hard
Both buyers (70 percent) and sellers (75 percent) agree that selling is a tough job.
The number one reason why both buyers (55 percent) and sellers (58 percent) believe it’s hard is due to the increase in the competitive landscape. Almost half of the sellers (49 percent) also complained about the difficulty connecting to prospective customers.
Both buyers and sellers spend a lot of time in sales meetings: a majority — about 62 percent — have at least three sales meeting each week, while 8 percent of buyers and 14 percent of sellers have 10 or more.
When asked why most sales meetings provide no value, the number two answer from buyers was that meetings are too long (45 percent), just behind sales reps being too pushy (47 percent). When it comes to follow-up, buyers prefer email (30 percent).
Buyers to Sellers: Please Don’t Waste My Time
Time efficiency was a recurring theme for buyers, and it came up again when the survey got into the value of video sales calls. A vast majority of both buyers (93 percent) and sellers (92 percent) like them, and buyers (18 percent) were about twice as likely as sellers (9 percent) to prefer them to other kinds of sales meetings.
The number one reason was that they are time-efficient:
Buyers: Sellers:
Time-efficient 64 percent 46 percent
More convenient 63 percent 54 percent
Easier to add people 52 percent 40 percent
Salespeople Use Video As a Powerful Training Tool
Meanwhile, 30 percent of sales professionals also value video calls for their coaching and training utility. This speaks to the top three things salespeople said would make them better at their jobs: better training, a stronger support team, and the ability to review how they performed during pitches.
A vast majority of sales professionals (83 percent) already watch recordings of themselves to improve future pitches, and even more companies (88 percent) either regularly record reps during sales pitches to help them improve or would like to.
However, the survey also revealed that this process can be a bit painful — about three-quarters (73 percent) of salespeople have felt surprised when seeing videos of themselves delivering pitches, and most dislike:
- The sound of their voice — 34 percent
- That they say repetitive words like “uh” — 27 percent
- That they look fat on camera — 26 percent
- That they repeat themselves — 22 percent
- Their awkward movements — 21 percent
“Our technology can’t help reps with the way their voices sound, but it can help with just about everything else — in other words, everything that matters,” added Porter. The new Meeting Intelligence capability will be demonstrated at Dreamforce 2018 in San Francisco. Visit SalesLoft at booth #2024.
About SalesLoft
SalesLoft is the leading sales engagement platform, helping sales organizations to deliver a better sales experience for their customers. More than 2,000 customers use the company’s category-leading sales engagement platform to engage in more relevant, authentic, and sincere ways, including Square, MuleSoft, Alteryx, and Dell.
Based in Atlanta, Georgia, with additional offices in San Francisco and New York, SalesLoft has more than 300 employees and was recognized as the #1 best place to work in Atlanta. The company was also named the 7th Fastest-Growing Technology Company in North America by Deloitte. For more information on SalesLoft and how to deliver a better sales experience, visit https://www.salesloft.com.
Contact:
Nancy Sheffield for SalesLoft
408-410-9928
Source: SalesLoft
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Tags: Meeting Intelligence, Sales Engagement, SalesLoft