1. Tell us about the highlights of your digital sales career to date:

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Without a doubt, working with sales teams in high growth environments. These environments are conducive to regular experimentation within the sales process, a constant drive for improved performance and better understanding of customer behaviour trends and decision-making. I've worked with some of the brightest sales minds over the last 15 years, many of whom have become long term career contacts, friends or customers.

 

2. Why did you choose to enter the world of digital sales?

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I'd say because of the fast-paced, dynamic and customer-focused nature of the role. I think people naturally gravitate towards career roles which encompass their strongest capabilities, and for me having a natural sense of curiosity around products, customer needs and problem solving meant the world of sales was a natural fit.

 

3. What is it you love most about working in the digital sales industry and why?

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Digging into the intricate details and insights around consumer buying behaviour, and unlocking value for the company as a result. The increased availability of data, which in many cases now, is obtained in real-time, has only compounded my interest in the industry - never have we lived in such an information rich era where data and customer insights can unlock such signifiant value for firms.

 

4. Are there any important tips you would give to digital sales professionals looking to take their careers to the next level?

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Listen and be curious, when it comes to customer interactions. Customers remember how they feel leaving a sales interaction, and not the 101 'incredible' product features a company may have to offer.

 

5. What would be your motivational advice to digital salespeople that are going through a bit of a slump?

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Work with your manager and team top performers to conduct a forensic analysis of your sales process. This should include evaluating all outreach, consultation and closing activities to determine if anything has shifted from previous process. Follow up discussions on what's changing in the industry can also prove fruitful, many times short-term slumps in performance can be related to changes in competitor offerings.

 

6. Do you recommend any useful digital sales tools, platforms or sales training courses that can help sales professionals raise their games?

 

Having used a variety of CRMs, I am a big advocate of Hubspot's offering in the space. It's critical sales professionals fully understand how to get the most value from their CRM both from sales growth and automation perspectives, and how the input of certain information contributes towards sales team and organisational level initiatives. I'm working on an exciting project with our Marketing team at the minute whereby we're strategising how to map back all sales to individual PPC campaigns within the CRM, so as to optimise marketing budget allocation towards achieving higher quality leads, which we look at by assessing the 'revenue-per-lead' for the business - this wouldn't be possible without good CRM knowledge from the sales team.

 

7. In your opinion, what are the 3 most important traits that make digital salespeople successful?

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1. The ability to listen 2. To be curious 3. Empathy.

 

8. What do you feel will be the future key trends that digital sales professionals need to adapt to and be ready for?

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Without a doubt, how best to use technology to garner superior customer and sales insights. AI is revolutionising the sales industry primarily due to the technology's capabilities in presenting immediate and more insightful performance and customer information on a real time basis for better decision-making, and also allows for far greater automation and sales enablement capabilities within a firm - sales professionals who are constantly 'curious' about how best to use technology will outperform those who fail to evolve.