In this issue, we’ve tried to give the sales experts as much voice as possible, after all, they are the experts. And Shawn Peterson is nothing short of a sales expert. He has been a salesperson himself, he has led sales teams as a Senior Vice President of Sales, he has led teams as a Chief Executive Officer and now he is working full-time on his business Quantum Business Solutions.
We sat down with Peterson to pick his brain on what upcoming trends he sees in the sales world.
What are some of the most helpful things in the automation space these days?
I personally think the most helpful automations are coming out of HubSpot which offers the ability to mirror and emulate your best sales rep and their processes with automation. If your best sales rep would send a handwritten thank you note on day one, a gift on day five and call on day seven, that can be automated. That way your mediocre salesperson is doing the same thing as your best salesperson.
The HubSpot space is supposed to triple in the next three years. Their revenue is about to go from 1 billion to 3 billion. The ecosystem is going to go from 4.8 billion to 19 billion. That shows you that if you’re not going towards automation, someone else will. Your competitors will.
I call this outbound inbound. What you’re trying to do right now is personalize things, but on a mass scale. The ability to mass personalize is a huge trend right now.
The ability to automate the client experience and systemize it out is helping to reduce churn, build up the client experience and build referral networks.
Is there anything you wish you could automate in the sales process right now but can’t?
The only things that can’t really be automated right now is emotional intelligence and business acumen. That’s where the training of your sales professionals comes in. The idea is to get the right product in front of the right person at the right time with the right margin and to have your salespeople trained well enough to close the deal.
Then, you want to have a systemized process for the client following the sale so you can ensure that they are getting a certain experience from the organization.
“70% of what a salesperson does today can be
automated. From list building to prospecting, outreach,
texts, emails, followups and videos, all of it can be
automated. There are a lot of ways to multiply oneself
and improve processes.”
-Shawn Peterson
So the biggest gap you are seeing right now is actually coming after the sale?
No, I’m just saying that the only things you can’t really automate right now are the emotional intelligence piece and the business acumen piece.
However, there is AI software out there right now that can feed you information right before a meeting about any news updates from that company, how to sell to that type of position. Things like that.
With Quantum, Peterson is offering his clients two distinct services with the goal of improving revenue generation.
- Virtual Chief Revenue Officer
- Implementation of automation software and artificial intelligence software.
What pieces of software have you found most helpful during your career?
Kixie, Hubspot and Seamless.AI. They’re all really strong and they have a good price point. They’re also, from a complexity standpoint, at a point where most people will be able to execute on them.
The other great this about them is that they can all automate with HubSpot.
How recent are some of these trends?
I would say it has been around for a while, but the adoption is starting to go from leading edge to cutting edge. What I mean by that is that the companies who hop in now are going to have a major advantage.
Let’s say you wait one year to build some of these things out but your competition starts building things out today, they’re going to have a major competitive advantage over you.
Do you see most companies starting to use these things yet?
No, most aren’t using them yet.
All Amazon is is a platform, but think about how many companies they have put out of business. Technology can change a lot of things very quickly and you’d rather be in on it early trying to figure things out instead of playing catch up.
If they aren’t using it yet, they should.
Do you have any other advice on how businesses can switch their mindsets for this?
You’re going to want to start looking at having a buyer-centric sales process as a company. Most companies have a seller-centric process. They sell things the way they want to do it. But buyers are getting used to a certain experience because of the way retail is heading. So, you have to change your sales process to accommodate your customers. You want to make things as easy as possible for your buyers.
What other advice do you have?
It’s very important to try to provide value to your clients in the form of information. You want to educate them not on your product but what they need to know from a business perspective to be interested in your product.
Have questions for Shawn?
Reach out at
[email protected]
