Utilizing Presentation Software to Boost Outside Sales Success – Part Two

By Ingage.  

The experts at Ingage share why utilizing presentation software in outside sales can significantly increase a sales representative’s success!  

In part one, we talk about how to utilize presentation software to boost outside sales success. In part two we share how to leverage presentation performance analytics 

Closing an outside sale call can be a challenge. But with the recent increase in new technologies coming out and being utilized for sales, finding a way to implement them can greatly benefit a sales rep’s chances of closing deals that were otherwise impossible! Providing a sales team with quality presentation software as an aid in outside sales calls, reps can better communicate with and persuade customers to give them a chance. Presentation software users can also leverage their presentation performance data to better get an idea moving forward of what works best with certain customers. 

Leverage presentation performance analytics 

Plenty of managers would like to claim that they are guided by their intuition, that they just “have a nose for the right move.” While sometimes you get lucky, the truth is that such an approach is essentially just flying blind. Humans are fundamentally biased creatures. Accordingly, we very often seek out data that just confirms our bias. This is why it’s important to guide your business moves with impartial, outside data. 

This is especially true in sales. Your team probably has 20 different opinions as to why a deal sank, or conversely, why they sealed it. However, these are all just assumptions. Turning to the cold, hard analytics data on the other hand can give you a clear picture of exactly what did or did not work, free of confirmation bias. Use this information to formulate your winning strategies going forward — because it’s the reality of the situation, not a perception. 

Data on presentation engagement — what resonated and what didn’t — helps your marketing team construct better collateral. Likewise, it informs your sales reps as to which areas of a presentation drew the most attention or the least. They may be in the room giving the presentation, but they don’t know what’s going on in their viewers’ heads. Analytics is about as close as one can get to that valuable information. 

On a larger scale, analytics data also helps managers assess staff performance, out in the field and in training. One can see which sales reps have the most positive engagement in their presentations, and which reps might need a little coaching. During training, tracking engagement is a great way to follow a new hire’s progress. Analytics data can be used in so many ways, because at the end of the data, it’s the facts of your business, laid out in numbers. Analyze those numbers and use the insights to power your operations to better numbers in the future. 

The importance of a software with analytics tracking 

Tracking analytics offers companies so many benefits. As just a small snapshot, analytics data can help businesses: 

• Accurately track regional sales performance 
• Break down individual reps’ sales performances, in detail 
• Better understand your quote-to-close ratio 
• Accurately assess average purchase values 
• Gain insight into the health and growth of your company sales increment 
• Understand the performance of sales targets, sales opportunities, sales to date and product performance 
• Gain insight into the cannibalization rate of current vs. new products 

While the concept of measuring analytics may seem straightforward, any professional who has tried keeping on top of all available data, while still doing their day job, knows just how difficult this can be. Integrating a software solution to assist with this process can eliminate some of this hard work. This allows you to focus on the results and the tasks that really matter — like turning the findings into a forward-thinking strategy. 

Ingage’s results-driven platform provides an array of options to help you stay on top of data management. Ingage Analytics offers detailed reports on presentation engagement on both a presentation-wide and individual-slide scale. This gives you practical insights into how your corporate presentations are received in the marketplace, and how well your sales agents are performing in the field. 

Using Ingage also makes long-term report management easy. Save pulled reports for reference and record-keeping, so that you can use these lead and interaction analytics to exceed your sales goals in the future. All of this data will help you strategize growth and improve conversions. Formulate smarter marketing strategies guided by the indirect feedback your advanced analytics software uncovers. 

Bring the best out of every field sales rep 

No matter how powerful your collateral is, the fact remains that any sales material is only as convincing as the person delivering it. Your marketing team can create dazzling, award-worthy slides and brochures. But if the sales rep conveying the presentation is an inadequate presenter, the brilliance of your design work is sure to pass your audience by unnoticed. 

This is why it’s integral to give your sales team the proper training and resources they need to shine in the field. This means using the best tools around — like the Ingage presentation platform — and providing them with the training they need. It’s simple to use the platform as a training resource, showing reps exactly how to present using the exact tool they’ll be presenting on. 

Thankfully, Ingage’s analytics data will help you track exactly which team members are excelling, and which may need more training and where. With detailed engagement metrics like presentation views, slide views and duration spent on each, you can see which parts of every presentation resonate with the audience. If a certain team member’s engagement numbers are lacking, you can confer with them and establish whether it is a problem of collateral, or if your rep needs more training in a particular field. 

Your sales team wants to excel at what they do — selling to customers. But even the best sales reps can be hamstrung with insufficient resources or exact training. For the sake of both your marketing team’s hard work making collateral and your sales team’s efforts in the field, it’s important to make sure they have every possible advantage in the field. Empowering employees with the tools and training they need is essential. 

Original article source: Ingage