On July 7, 2022, Fire Tiger was present at the BtoB Summit, to witness new and persistent issues that echo its values
On July 7, 2022, Fire Tiger was present at the BtoB Summit, to observe new or persistent issues that echo its values: employee engagement and loyalty, team synergy, simplicity, usability and adoption of outlls, managerial posture, customer experience...
"There's a problem when only 60% of teams use their CRM."
Julia Cames, Hubspot
After a decade of dazzling technological advances, CRM has consolidated its place at the center of the business, but it must face major challenges:
For Melanie Jonniaux, CMO of Sellsy, the future of CRM is integration. We need to aggregate data in a single tool for sales, marketing and customer relations teams.
For Loïc Deo Van, CEO & Founder of EverReady, the CRM must be transparent, ergonomic, simple, for more information with less use.
For Julia Cames, Hubspot's Marketing Director, we need an all-in-one platform, but not a behemoth. Today, too few people use their CRM because it is too complicated. It must therefore be easy to use and customizable.
For Benjamin Perrau, General Manager of GetAccept France, the CRM must not be a simple dashboard. It must be the link between the customer and his client, and offer a real experience to its users.
For Melanie, AI and predictive will limit human bias and enable the right decisions to be made based on sound data.
Benjamin replies that sometimes the most accurate forecasts are still those provided by the salespeople themselves and not the tool.
Julia notes the following problems and draws from them the questions to ask: on the one hand, we have too much data. How can we process it? On the other hand, there are silos. How to align the teams?
Finally, Loïc is thinking about using AI to identify and replicate good practices. Analyzing data with AI would allow the tool to make recommendations. But what data to share to make it actionable?
"Only 40% of companies report a CRM adoption rate above 90%."
CSO Insights
Faced with this problem, Melanie recommends supplementing the CRM with specific business tools. Sellsy has a store of partners that are offered to their customers according to their needs.
Hubspot also seeks to get closer to its customers' needs by offering more than 1,200 APIs, and this year launched the "App Accelerator Program": customers suggest connections that Hubspot will develop.
Loïc concludes by reminding us that adoption is THE major "bread and butter" of CRM today.
"There is a shortage of more than 200,000 salespeople in France."
Michael Page
More than ⅔ of B2B buyers make their buying decision before they even meet with a salesperson. Faced with the emergence of a hyper-informed, autonomous and demanding super-buyer, salespeople are sometimes reduced to negotiating prices and sending quotes. At the same time, the shortage of sales profiles is getting worse. How can this structural shortage be explained?
Michel Granseigne, Local Area Manager at Petit Futé, gives us some advice on how to attract salespeople. It's about showing what the company has to offer, its way of working, beyond the pay.
Roman Zacaï, Sales Director at Page Personnel, explains that the shortage of salespeople is mainly due to the fact that business schools are more about training in management, finance, marketing, etc. than in sales.
Romain Franczia, VP South Europe at Seismic, adds that the salesperson still suffers from a degraded image. In BtoB in particular, this image is amplified by a generally disastrous customer experience, with an overly cumbersome and redundant purchasing process, and an intervention by the salesperson that is not always relevant and efficient.
For Guillaume Legendre, CEO of Touch & Sell, this crisis will be stopped if we restore the confidence of sales people. For that, they need to be trained and coached, and marketing needs to support them.
Michel rebounds by pointing out that Petit Futé offers regular training to its sales staff.
"The human side is essential: the sales person must feel good to be loyal. For that, he or she must be trained and incentivized."
Michel Granseigne, Petit Futé
According to Romain Franczia, the salesperson must regain his or her place in the buying process when faced with a hyper-informed super-buyer. The salesperson needs to know what the buyer's experience was before contacting them. Since the ⅔ of the buying decision was made before this contact, the sales person must take over and become a "trusted advisor" for the buyer. Thus, he will give meaning back to his intervention and stop being simply the person who places the order.
Romain Zacaï concludes by specifying that the skills expected of a salesperson depend on the product sales cycle. In any case, the fundamental expectations are active listening, soft skills and situational intelligence. We are far from the image of the salesman of the past!
"36% of salespeople leave their position during their first year of contract."
Sylvain De Ly, Call of Success
Some of these issues were taken up in another roundtable discussion with Aurélien de Nunzio, CEO of Algar, and two people from Call of Success, a company that offers outsourced sales forces: Lucie Rieucros, COO & Partner, and Sylvain De Ly, CEO & Co-Founder. They have noticed that the time to recruit a salesperson is getting longer: today 60 to 90 days are needed, with a high risk of the salesperson leaving within the first year. These figures unfortunately generate a huge cost for the company.
Aligning yourself with the expectations of the super-buyer, overcoming shortcomings in data*, keeping up with increasingly volatile markets, finding your bearings in a hybrid sales configuration... The salesperson's daily life is punctuated by major tactical and operational challenges. This round table, moderated by Jean-Philippe Cunniet of Tech et Mat, drew up an operational map of sales, discussed the Quick Wins to be obtained and the actions to be taken over time to boost sales performance.
*According to Gartner, sales people are the least trained in data in the company.
For Annie-Paule Abihssira, CEO Development & Franchising at Booster Academy, the central issue is the marriage of Marketing and Sales: both teams must work together in an orderly fashion towards the prospect. Annie-Paule adds that in the past, the Head of Sales had to have hard skills and deploy results through Excel files. Today, he has become a manager-coach who listens, and has above all soft skills.
"The Head of Sales must be a manager-coach"
Annie-Paule Abihssira, Booster Academy
Aurélie Meslage, National Sales Force Director at Orangina Suntory France, confirms this new sales profile. It has been imposed by changes in the market. Indeed, Orangina has observed two recent changes among its main customers, the supermarkets: increased pressure on profitability and increasingly severe competition. As a consequence, the customer's trust must be won in a very short time. In 10-15 minutes, the salesperson must have closed the sale. The salesperson must therefore show great relational intelligence to gain the customer's trust quickly.
Georges da Silva, COO of Salesapps, also insists on the human qualities required for sales. He also confirms the need for convergence between the Marketing and Sales teams, and has noted a strong need for "translation" of Marketing content for the sales teams, which has led Salesapps to create a new position of Sales Enablement Manager. At Orangina, they call him the "translator"!
