As the leader in enablement, we’re often asked how the Seismic team uses…Seismic. If you’ve ever wondered this yourself, today’s your lucky day. The truth is, everyone from our SDRs to our VP of Enablement drinks our own champagne.
But we believe there’s different champagne for every occasion. For instance, in the world of digital-first selling, the way that you engage your customers and prospects is different than in person. For us, we opt for digital sales rooms (DSRs) to engage our open opportunities – and to great effect.
When we introduced DSRs in October 2021, our sales reps jumped in head first. They use digital sales rooms to best support buyers throughout multi-stage deal cycles. DSRs allow reps to create a central location to share content and collaborate with buyers. The results have been eye-popping.
Digital Sales Rooms are buyer enablement
To learn how we use DSRs internally, we spoke with one of Seismic’s Senior Directors of Enterprise Sales, Nick McCarthy. Nick is responsible for managing deal cycles from the earliest stages of pipeline generation, all the way through to closing deals.
He typically creates digital sales rooms for buyers after they’ve had an initial evaluation call. He views them as enablement for buyers and sellers alike. “Internally, digital sales rooms are often thought about from a seller efficiency and production perspective, but it’s really about enabling potential buyers to access everything they need throughout the deal cycle, creating buyer enablement.”
Digital sales rooms are impactful for our sellers and prospects because they simplify the buyer’s journey. They reduce the number of locations where buyers access materials, lower the number of emails sent, and shorten the length of said emails. “The biggest benefit for the buyer is the length of follow-up emails,” said Nick. “With digital sales rooms, you can provide context with content. A customer can easily check out the resources they’re interested in, whereas it may get lost in a long email thread.”
Enable more productive conversations with buyers
Personalization is important in every deal cycle. Sellers who share personalized content make it simpler for prospects to navigate the buyer journey.
This personalization means that digital sales rooms allow reps to have more targeted conversations with their prospects. For example, when Nick sees that a prospect does or doesn’t interact with an asset that he added to a DSR, he can plan to incorporate it into their next conversation. “If a buyer asks for integration documentation but doesn’t look at it, I know that I still need to discuss that content. I can use that data to ask relevant questions.”
Buyer behavior in DSRs also helps sales reps better understand intent. For example, if a buyer is inactive in the DSR that may indicate that they aren’t interested at the moment. On the other hand, sales reps can also gauge how serious a buyer is based on their actions. “Nine-times-out-of-ten, buyers will look at a proposal and jump right into pricing documents. That way, I know that we can discuss costs in our next meeting.”
The numbers don’t lie
Now that we know a little more about how Seismic reps use DSRs, let’s talk numbers. According to Seismic Vice President of Enablement & Process Excellence Irina Soriano, our enablement team measures how building effective DSRs for opportunities impacts close rates and increases revenue. “Seismic analytics allows us to track our sellers’ activities on enablement and marketing content so we can compare this behavior to business outcomes,” she said.
In order to understand the internal impact of DSRs, we compared our sellers who hit 100% or more of their quota with the sellers who didn’t hit their numbers. According to our research, our sales reps who hit their quotas created 150% more DSRs for their active opportunities. They also achieved 120% higher engagement on LiveSends and content views.
We also found that DSRs have a significant impact on our business outcomes. When Seismic reps share digital sales rooms, prospects respond well. And, our reps who met or exceeded their quotas had 500% more opportunities where they used DSRs in the sales process. These quota hitters have made a mark on our bottom line and generated 420% higher net new revenue for all opportunities that have a.
Words of wisdom:
As Nick mentioned, DSRs are a form of customer enablement. He noted that it’s important to treat your customers the way you want to be treated. “You would be frustrated if a sales rep pointed you to 20 different locations to find information.” Instead, he recommends that you “make your buyer’s life easier by giving them everything they need in one place, and tailor conversations to what is top of mind for them.
If you’re interested in learning more about how your organization can use digital sales rooms to improve buyer engagement, please reach out to your customer success manager.