Common characteristics of "salespeople who have gone digital but are not getting results" - customer touchpoint

Corporate sales are in crisis

Chiba: For the past 10 years, "sales and market share expansion" has been one of the top three management issues for companies. On the other hand, the number of salespeople has decreased by more than 1.2 million over the past 20 years(*1). Management wants to increase sales, but the number of bearers is decreasing, so raising the productivity and quality of the sales force is an urgent issue. However, not many companies have succeeded in doing so. What do the two of you, who are familiar with the sales frontline, see as the bottleneck?
1 Source: "Daily Labor Force Survey, Number of Employees by Occupation (Salespeople)," Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications

Kaneki: While the number of salespeople is decreasing, the means of communication with customers have become more complex and diverse. Creativity is required, as one of the differentiators is to make contact with customers at the right time. Organizations that do not have this are finding it difficult to achieve results. We feel that the need for traditional go-to type salespeople is decreasing, and the ability to generate proactive customer touchpoint

Oka: I agree. How to bring customer touchpointto the optimal moment is important. It is actually true that "contacting that customer at this moment will resonate with them". On the other hand, I also feel that the busyness of salespeople may be a bottleneck. I think the reality is that they spend more time creating reports, inputting data into CRM and SFA, and coordinating internally, which means they cannot spend time on customer touchpoint.

Kaneki: I think it is really hard to enter data into a CRM. You may spend a lot of time creating reports to report to your manager, and the manager may be happy, but it is not directly related to providing value to the customer, is it? Moreover, the manager also has to summarize and quantify that report and enter it into the CRM separately. It is not very productive.

The negative effects of digitalisation on customer contact points

Chiba: There is an interesting statistic regarding CRM. In North America, CRM has been implemented quite well, but salespeople in companies that have implemented CRM spend less than one-third of their day, or 27% of their time face-to-face with customers (*2). But they spend about 40% of their time on CRM registration and updating. From the customer's point of view, this means that they are supposed to be in charge, but they are only doing internal work and not thinking about us at all. From the sales person's point of view, the CRM was introduced to improve work efficiency, but the reality is that the burden is increasing.
2 Source: Document "Why Sales digital transformation Fail? Sales digital transformation: The Key to Success in an Era of Change!

Kaneki: In the first place, inputting information into CRM is not a sales person's primary job, but if the time spent on CRM is reduced to the point where he/she cannot spend time with the customer, it is a complete waste of time. CRM should not be a management tool, but a tool to enable repeatability under the customer engagement strategy. CRM should not be such a management tool, but a tool that can be reproduced under a customer engagement strategy.

Oka: I think you are right. Many companies still have a long way to go in terms of using data to strengthen sales.

Chiba: Actually, even in North America, a CRM advanced country, the problem is that CRM is not well used. What is needed is to improve the UX (user experience) to make CRM easier to use. Tools for "sales engagement" that reduce the burden on frontline salespeople and provide appropriate insights to improve customer engagement are becoming a global trend.

In times of shortage
How should sales organizations respond?

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The future of customer touchpointthrough sales engagement

Kaneki: Our sales support SaaS, UPWARD, is a solution based on this concept of sales engagement. Combined with advanced location-based technology, it automatically detects sales activity data and sends it to login CRM for automatic notification of the most appropriate approach.
Perhaps the top players are already unknowingly practicing what "UPWARD" can achieve. They deepen their relationships with customers and develop the right proposals at the right time, following a well-defined strategy. But I think that just by raising the level of those who do not, who make up the majority, the results will be very different. In the past, such information sharing would not have been easy, but with the spread of smartphones and other devices and the evolution of technology, sales engagement has quickly become a reality. It's not just a matter of skills, but it also helps you find the people, things, and information you need. For example, if you have just changed jobs, you don't know where to find such information. However, when "UPWARD" provides insight as appropriate, it also deepens customer engagement.

Chiba: UPWARD will be integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM and Microsoft Teams collaboration platform from 2022. What kind of worldview will be realized when Dynamics 365 and Teams users use UPWARD?

Oka: At Microsoft, our philosophy is "Do more with less," and we aim to maximize results for our customers with as little cost and effort as possible. To this end, it is very important that Teams as a communication platform, Dynamics 365 for managing sales data, and UPWARD for delivering insights to the sales frontline work in unison. In addition to data integration between the products, we are also working on automation to reduce the burden on salespeople. For example, with the recently announced Viva Sales, when an email comes in, you can see the details of the customer and the deal in Outlook without having to open the CRM, and when you are in a meeting with a customer on Teams, the same information from the CRM is provided on the spot, and the AI provides automatic transcription and suggestions for next actions. Using UPWARD, we can deliver the necessary insights directly to salespeople in the field, which directly improves sales efficiency. We believe that UPWARD will contribute to increased customer engagement by eliminating wasteful work and enabling more data-driven actions.

Kaneki: I think it is very meaningful to link directly with Teams, which has now become the interface for business people around the world. Even field salespeople who don't carry around a computer or who are not very IT literate can use it just as if they were using a smartphone, and it is easy to use because it provides insight on the next action to take, just like having a secretary with you.

Chiba: The combination of user-friendly UPWARD, Dynamics 365, and Teams will enable salespeople to develop sales activities while gaining a deeper understanding of their customers. It also has the potential to change the way sales activities are conducted, for example, by visualizing the best practices of top players that were previously invisible. If you are considering leveraging your sales force by reviewing your sales organization, please refer to my book, "Why Sales digital transformationFail," which touches on these changes in the sales engagement environment. Sales digital transformation: The Key to Success in an Era of Change! which also touches on these changes in the sales engagement environment.