Why revenue teams need a digital sales room

Today’s world of B2B sales is ever-changing, exciting, and oh-so challenging. 

Gone are the days when making a sale came with a handshake, and most sales professionals never even get to meet their customers in real life. 

Convenient as digital sales may be, everyone's still learning to adapt. Why? Sales teams are embracing more and more virtual tools and figuring out how to meet customers where they are – in the digital space. 

However, keeping up with “the new normal” takes time and effort. It doesn’t matter if there’s a magic bullet when you’ve been looking in the wrong place all along. 

If you work in a revenue function, you’ve finally come to the right place. Below, we will explain why digital sales rooms are the solution you didn’t know you needed.

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Imagine entering a room where revenue is just a few clicks away, but four walls don’t confine you – that’s what a digital sales room (DSR) is.

Digital sales rooms help you through the whole sales cycle, from an opportunity to a signed deal, while creating the best buyer experience for your customers. It’s convenience and efficiency combined, allowing sales teams to share sales collateral, record videos, chat directly with customers, and even close deals – without ever leaving their browsers. 

For sales professionals, DSRs can help to alleviate a number of the pains and challenges that they experience daily. From meeting tough sales targets and managing online communications with potential buyers to ensuring that teams use their resources effectively, the right tool can offer the perfect solution.

But it’s not just about making life easier for sales teams. It’s also about meeting customers in the digital spaces they’re already using. With buyers now preferring quick and seamless online interactions, having a digital sales room isn’t just a nice to have – it’s a must-have.

So, since we all love numbers, let’s dive into some staggering figures that show us the real-life challenges revenue teams struggle with daily (and how a DSR could solve them).

Sales quota pressure: Account Executives

These sales heroes are the ones who bridge the gap between your product/service and its potential audience, constantly focusing on targets while trying to reinvent themselves in an environment that’s shifting under their feet.

Customer expectations, engagement, analytics, and trying to do everything with a smile! Let’s see what the numbers tell us about what AEs are up against in the digital-first sales world.

1. Imagine trying to hit a target in this competitive and resource-restrained world. 69% of sales professionals feel like their job is just getting tougher. 
2. But it's not just sales reps feeling the heat. Buyers are also switching lanes. 70-80% of B2B decision-makers prefer remote interactions and purchases over face-to-face interactions. This is yet another reason for all sellers to go digital.
3. Keeping people interested in what you’re selling? That’s another mountain to climb, with 91% of sellers struggling to keep buyers engaged.
4. Salespeople are supposed to be productive all the time. One of the biggest hindrances besides too much admin is content search and utilization. 84% of sales executives name this as the top productivity improvement area.
5. And while we all have gotten used to virtual meetings, only 33% of salespeople really shine in digital sales.

These numbers highlight a need for something that ties all the pieces together. And that’s why a digital sales room could be a game-changer. 

The all-in-one platform allows for a repeatable sales process that helps every seller thrive in a digital environment. Sales teams and customers come together in one place to collaborate, engage stakeholders, share proposals and relevant sales collateral, and chat in real time.

This streamlines the sales process and provides a modern buyer experience, meeting customers and their needs wherever they are. With a digital sales room, AEs can efficiently manage and utilize their time to improve their sales strategies, making their roles more effective.

Navigating through challenges: VP/Head of Sales

Sales leaders must ensure their teams not only meet but exceed the revenue targets. These goals often seem impossible since so many fail to hit their quotas in the current macroeconomic environment.

While buyers are more open to conducting business online, that also comes with new challenges and learning curves. Leaders must ensure the team is always one step ahead, keeping up a constantly packed pipeline and balancing the team, technology, and targets. However, numbers show that it’s easier said than done. 

1. 41% of sales leaders report that their customers want more digital interactions. This figure shows evolving buyer preferences that bring new challenges to keep digital communications as impactful as in-person ones.
2. Oh, the relentless pursuit of revenue targets! Over 40% of sales leaders missed their targets in 2020. This number highlights the immense pressure to pivot and adapt strategies quickly. 
3. For almost 30% of sales leaders, efficiency and streamlining sales processes are the focus of 2023, which underscores a collective push towards smarter, more streamlined operations. 
4. Another reason for efficiency and streamlining processes is the increased length of the average B2B sales cycle, which has seen a 22% increase over five years.
5. However, without establishing clear next steps from the get-go, closing rates plummet by 71%. Sales leaders must coach reps to keep the deal momentum. Follow-up actions must be in place for every deal in the pipeline.

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These figures illustrate a complex dance of managing timeframes and ensuring meticulous follow-through. The need for integrated and efficient solutions is more important than ever.

Digital sales rooms serve as a complete solution to simplify these complicated processes. Leaders can more effectively manage their teams by centralizing communication, content, and sales activities within a single digital space, ensuring that each member operates efficiently.

Moreover, the interactive nature of digital sales rooms guarantees that communication with prospects is not only maintained but also improved, adapting to the digital preferences of modern buyers. By providing a coherent and interactive buyer journey and ensuring that all stakeholders are consistently aligned and updated, digital sales rooms become an invaluable asset in preserving deal momentum.

The basis of sales efficiency: Sales/Revenue Operations

Sales and Revenue Operations find themselves in a constant balancing act of managing tools and navigating through complicated workflows to a high price point. They often work with an underutilized tech stack with too many tools, each promising to be the key to unlocking seamless operations and streamlining the sales process. The task of choosing, integrating, and optimizing them becomes a task in itself. 

The challenge doesn’t end at selection but permeates into making sure that these tools communicate effectively with one another, ensuring data flows uninterruptedly through the sales pipeline. Data management is the backbone of insightful decision-making, but transforming raw data into actionable insights is a complex puzzle to solve. 

Consistency and reliability in tool and data management are pivotal, supporting the sales machinery to run smoothly. However, these operational roles face numerous challenges.

1. Sales reps only spend 28% of their time actually selling. There’s a significant disconnect if operational aspects consume most of their time. And since sales operations are tasked with enabling reps to spend more time talking to customers, this is a shocking number. 
2. The balancing act with tools becomes evident when sales teams, on average, navigate through 10 different tools to secure deals. Overstacked and underutilized tech stacks are a nightmare for someone in a revenue operations role.
3. The previous challenge led to a near-universal movement where 94% of sales organizations aim to consolidate their tech stacks.
4. A staggering insight comes to light on the data front, with almost 50% of operations professionals saying that their processes are only moderately or scarcely driven by data. Here’s a potential area where improved data utilization could transform operations towards being more strategy-driven.
5. Last but not least, the complexity of the buyer’s journey cannot be sidelined, with a significant 77% of B2B buyers stating that their latest purchase was very complex or difficult.

These hurdles outline a landscape where sales and revenue operations try to minimize tool usage and maximize data management in an increasingly complex sales environment.

Digital sales rooms are an excellent solution for efficiency and tool management problems. The ease of using just one tool from opportunity to customer eliminates the need to constantly toggle between different applications. 

The power of a digital sales room lies in its ability to streamline operations, ensuring that sales reps can invest their time into selling rather than being tangled in operational complexities. 

Furthermore, by incorporating robust data management and analytics within the same environment, operations professionals can derive actionable insights, rendering sales processes not only data-driven but also strategically aligned with organizational goals. 

Boosting sales with the best experience: Sales Enablement Managers

Sales enablement is a crucial and multifaceted role where bridging the gap between strategy and execution is a daily challenge. 

These backstage coordinators make sure the sales team has the right tools, content, and training at their fingertips to convert opportunities into successes. Content must be relevant and utilized effectively, and technology adoption must seamlessly align with ongoing processes. 

It’s a journey of constantly aligning to the sales environment. However, despite the critical nature of their role, Sales Enablement Managers navigate through numerous challenges.

1. A mere 35% of sales teams actively track their content effectiveness. This gap demonstrates that the power of content needs to be evaluated for its impact on the sales process.
2. On a brighter note, 92% of leaders report the tangible impact of investing in sales enablement, citing a notable increase in sales performance. Going forward, organizations are keen to continue investing in enablement.
3. Balancing the financial scales, however, 37% pinpoint balancing revenue increase while minimizing costs as their top challenge.
4. A substantial 76% of professionals in sales enablement cite technology adoption as their top priority, highlighting the fundamental role of tech in streamlining enablement processes. But then again, the more tools, the more problems. 
5. There’s also a striking correlation between organizations experiencing a 48% higher likelihood of achieving increased buyer engagement when sales enablement processes have been in place for over two years, thus amplifying the need for strategic sales enablement.

As a sales enablement professional, your mission is to smooth your team’s paths, ensuring they have everything they need to succeed. 

Picture this: your marketing team sees their content put to work while your salespeople are powered to seal more deals, improving the company's bottom-line results. Simple yet impactful support from you can drive collective success.

Digital sales rooms address all these challenges, creating a unified environment focusing on content utility, tech adoption, and streamlined enablement processes. With a digital sales room, your content isn’t just stored – it’s also tracked, optimized, and easily accessible for everyone.

A digital sales room platform also offers data-driven insights that empower you to strategically tweak and tailor your processes, improving overall sales performance. 

Combining forces

A digital sales room brings everyone – salespeople, sales leaders, operations, and enablement – into one virtual space to work together effectively.

Account Executives, with easy access to resources, can quickly respond to customer needs and navigate deals with agility. Having a clear view of each deal's status, sales leaders can provide timely guidance, ensuring no opportunity falls through the cracks. Sales Operations professionals benefit by managing fewer tools, which, in turn, streamlines the workflow and reduces friction in daily tasks. Sales Enablement Managers ensure that content is not only accessible but also effectively used and continuously improved, driving up its value and impact. 

This collective and synchronized use of a digital sales room leads to a more efficient, transparent, and collaborative sales process.