In this episode we chatted with Dr. Jim Karachiyal, a sales expert with a background in account-based marketing. We dove deep into sales and marketing trends, core skillsets a sales person needs and more.
During our call, Jim emphasizes the importance of deep customer understanding and relationship building for effective selling. He suggests that sellers need to focus on becoming active listeners, understanding the type of customer they are engaging with, and looking internally to identify the criteria that make their best customer.
Becoming an elite salesperson
Being a product expert is not the most crucial factor for sales professionals. Instead, Jim suggests that the focus should be on building meaningful relationships and delivering value to customers. This concept challenges the traditional notion of sales and highlights the need to prioritize connection and trust over mere transactional interactions.
One of the key aspects is the art of active listening. Jim points out that many sellers tend to listen only for trigger events that align with their solution, resulting in low enterprise win-rates.
To become a better active listener, he recommends employing the basic principles of
- Who?
- What?
- When?
- Where?
- Why?
This approach allows sellers to gain a deep understanding of their customers’ problems and needs before jumping in with prescribed solutions.
The use of AI in sales
How not to use AI in sales
When sales focuses on volume and eliminate SDR roles, which can lead to a robotic approach to the market To truly succeed, sellers need to build meaningful relationships and conversations at scale, utilizing ABM and prioritizing customer needs.
But then how to use is it well?
Sales and marketing agree that starting conversations is necessary, relying on outbound sales as a demand-generation method is outdated and expensive.
With the emergence of AI, sellers and marketers can integrate the technology into their approach and shift low-level tasks, (like documentation and automation) to free up time for human-to-human interactions with customers. Also by helping SDRs and BDMs use account-based marketing techniques even easier.
ABM methods in sales
To truly succeed, sellers need to build meaningful relationships and conversations at scale, utilizing tools like ABM and prioritizing customer needs.
“Before I even knew what ABM was, this was like a core part of what I doI’m not, I’m not calling like a thousand different companies. I’m identifying maybe 20 or 50 over let’s say a two-month period that looked viable based on the information. And then I’m having sort of one-to-one conversations across it. And then I’m having sort of one-to-one conversations across it.
So in those trigger events, maybe they attended a webinar, maybe they downloaded a white paper, maybe they did something that marketing caught wind of or drove, and then now it’s on your radar.“
