Keeping your prospects engaged throughout a lengthy deal

The challenges facing sales teams

The facts: your prospects disengage (too often!)

60%. That's how many deals B2B sales teams lose because their prospects disengage (1).

That's a lot!

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If you're a sales person, you're probably familiar with this bitter experience: your deal gets off to a flying start with a highly motivated champion. But the more time passes, the less your prospects get involved: they respond late, don't send you back the requested elements, and so on.

Even though your solution meets their expressed need, your deal gets bogged down...!

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Result: you loose deals, sometimes very late in the process 🤯

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Above all, you're wasting precious time that could (or should) have been spent on more promising deals.

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The cause: B2B buying paths have become highly complex

Most salespeople believe that prospects disengage when salespeople fail to provide them with sufficient added value.

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But studies show a very different reality: the main reason for prospects' disengagement is actually their difficulty in managing the growing complexity of their own buying journey.

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According to Gartner: "As hard as it has become to sell in today's world, it has become even harder to buy. The biggest challenge in sales today isn't selling, it's actually our customers' difficulties in buying" (2).

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Covid has only accentuated this reality by further fragmenting the buying journey.

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In fact, 77% of B2B buyers consider their last purchase to have been very complex and difficult (3). A look at a typical B2B buying journey is all it takes to understand why:

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The solution: help your prospects make the right decision

Faced with this growing complexity, buyers now expect their sales people to guide them effectively through their buying journey and make their decision easier.

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This requires a profound change of posture on the part of sales, but it's well worth the effort: when B2B buyers consider that their sales people have helped them make progress with their purchase, they are 2.8x more likely to buy fast and 3x more likely to buy big (4)...

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Sales best practices

1. Align your interests with your prospects

Agree with your prospects on the process they will follow to evaluate your solution. Take (real) time to adapt your sales process to their constraints, and commit them to shared success.

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By being sure of deriving maximum added value from exchanges, your prospects will become all the more strongly involved and drive your deals.

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💡 Transcribe the buying process worked out with your prospects into a Mutual Action Plan. This document clarifies everyone's commitments by summarizing the stages of the purchasing process, the actions to be carried out by the parties involved, and the deadlines.

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Derived from the Sales customer centric selling method, this document is used today by many companies with complex sales cycles, such as Stripe, Dataiku, etc.

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2. Communicate the progress of your deal

Make it a habit to regularly inform your prospects of the progress of your deal, in addition to your "operational" discussions (and mark the occasion whenever a major milestone is reached).

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By showing that your deal is moving forward, you'll make them want to get involved!

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💡 Schedule a "calendar" update every 15d or so (by visio or email) and make it a routine. Also take a few moments at the start of your meetings to remind where the deal stands.

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💡 Don't forget to keep the Decision Makers informed of deal developments, either directly or via your champion. As they are absent from operational discussions, they often lack visibility (even though the final decision is in their hands!).

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3. Increase interaction with your prospects

Many sales reps don't engage their prospects enough, fearing to create too much friction in the process. Yet this is a sine qua non for effectively engaging your prospects in your sales: a top performer generates on average 5x more interactions with his prospect than a poorly trained salesperson (5)...

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"Activate" your contacts by regularly giving them a hand with specific tasks.

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In particular, make sure your champion is fully invested in the deal. He's your centerpiece for keeping all stakeholders involved on the prospect's side.

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💡 To effectively engage your contacts, involve them gradually:

Start with small, non-committal tasks (examples: getting feedback from their team, passing on an internal presentation to you). Then gradually increase their level of responsibility (e.g. get them involved in a pitch of your solution to the purchasing committee).

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How does Katalyz help you keep your prospects more engaged?

1. A collaborative platform dedicated to buying your prospects

Being a sales person means constantly fighting for your prospects' attention. When you communicate via "traditional" email-type tools, you're in constant competition in your prospects' mailbox with all their other concerns (and of course with your own competitors).

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With Katalyz, you break out of this traditional sales logic to create a radically more engaging buying experience: you collaborate with your prospects on an online platform 100% dedicated to their opportunity (the dealroom).

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🔎 Are you already using Mutual Action Plans, Notion or other sales engagement tools?

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In practice, these solutions are certainly useful to better engage your prospects, but often insufficient to (really) bring your deals to fruition.

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Why not? These tools don't facilitate collaboration between deal participants (for more details, read Collaborating effectively with multiple interlocutors during a deal). And yet, in a context where buying paths are becoming increasingly complex, this has become essential for your prospects.

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The result: your prospects disengage as quickly as they engage.

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This is one of the reasons why we created Katalyz.

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2. Never loose sight of the essentials

In your dealroom, your contacts always have an overview of their deal (in the form of a dashboard).

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This way, your contacts never lose sight of the purpose of your collaboration and the benefits of your solution.

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Because your deal evolves over time, you can amend the overview so that it always fits your needs as closely as possible. Simply pin the elements to which you want to draw your prospects' attention.

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Your prospects stay on the page and are automatically informed of the deal's progress.

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3. Create only high value-added interactions

Thanks to your dealroom, you can engage your prospects in an ultra-targeted way: you only solicit relevant contacts when necessary.

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Katalyz automatically sends them a notification when :

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• An action is assigned to them, or an action in which they are participating is validated.
• A deadline for which they are responsible is approaching (or has passed 😡).
• They are mentioned by another stakeholder in the deal.

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With no extra effort on your part, you multiply high-value-added points of contact with your prospects. As a result, they stay sustainably involved, and your deal remains the focus of their attention.

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Summary

✔ 60% of B2B deals are lost because prospects disengage. As buyers find it increasingly difficult to buy, Sales must now guide them through the buying journey to sell.

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✔ Keeping prospects sustainably engaged requires:

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• Keeping your prospects' interests aligned with your own by integrating their constraints into your Sales process.
• Regularly communicate deal progress, including to decision makers.
• Operationally involve your prospects and in particular your champion.
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✔ Thanks to Katalyz:

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• You engage your prospects more strongly thanks to a dealroom dedicated to their purchase.
• Your prospects keep in mind the benefits of your solution and are informed of the deal's progress in real time.
• You create higher value-added interactions by involving your prospects in an ultra-targeted way in your sales cycle.
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_{(1) CSO Insights}

_{(2) Brent Adamson, Distinguished Vice President, Consulting, Gartner}

_{(3) Gartner}

_{(4) Gartner}

_{(5) Modjo}