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    How to stop dropping the ball and start engaging more effectively

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    Keeping track of, and nurturing, key relationships is critical to growing business within key accounts and selling to new customers in a complex b2b environment.

    Sales and customer success (CS) teams need to know which relationships to nurture, who has been engaging with these people (and who hasn’t), who already has relationships with someone else in the company, and which contacts are, or can become, “ambassadors” within our prospects’ and customers’ organizations.

    Which people are we engaging with the most? Are they the right people?

    Most CRMs do not provide easy visibility into these questions and, as a result, key relationships get dropped or ignored, while salespeople and customer success representatives waste time on the wrong people and wrong conversations.

    We wanted to put a stop to the waste and build powerful tools to manage key relationships

    So we envisioned a new tool, one that would allow salespeople and other stakeholders to get an at-a-glance view of everything they need to know to make intelligent decisions about where to spend time, and how to engage.

    We call it the Contact Engagement Matrix, and it’s about to rock your world.

    We started with some big questions that you probably ask yourself as well

    When we sat down to build the Contact Engagement Matrix, we had big questions. They’re the same questions almost every complex b2b sales professional wrestles with:

    • Do we have good relationships with the right people at the right levels? Are there any gaps and where are they?
    • Are our people engaging in the right ways and with the right frequency with the right people at the right customers?
    • Which contacts are our strongest supporters and champions within our customers and prospects?
    • Which people are we engaging with the most? Are they the right people?
    • How do we currently interact with them and how should we be interacting with them?
    • How do we know which people we already have strong relationships with?
    • Which of our people have engaged key stakeholders? Should we make new connections between internal and external contacts go strengthen the relationship?
    • What kind of engagement is necessary to sustain a good relationship with each person?

    We spent time brainstorming and analyzing what sales and customer success teams need to know in order to answer these questions. We asked what kind of data would help, and how it needs to be analyzed and visualized. We thought about how this information could be fed into a tool that would allow users to see everything they need to know at a glance.

    Then we got to work building that tool.

    One glance to know who’s who and where and how to engage

    The Membrain Contact Engagement Matrix within Membrain’s Account Growth workflow is the only built-in visual we know of that enables sales professionals to answer all of these questions at a glance, and get right to work engaging key contacts in the most effective way possible.

    In the matrix, you will be able to quickly see who’s who and what level of engagement they’ve had with whom. You can view by engagement type (digital, IRL, etc.) and engagement direction (you contacted them, they reached out to you,) and you can easily edit columns to show exactly the information that matters most to you.

    The matrix enables fast and effective decision making and prioritization. Then it allows you to take action directly from the list, such as setting up appointments, sending emails, making calls, and executing “plays.”

    To make things even easier and more intuitive, you'll be able to set up rules to trigger events and alerts if you are not engaging at the levels you should.

    We’re really excited to launch this tool soon and continue to build on it to improve your ability to track and manage contact engagement. I’d love a chance to show it live in action, if you’d like to schedule a demo.

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    George Brontén
    Published June 30, 2021
    By George Brontén

    George is the founder & CEO of Membrain, the Sales Enablement CRM that makes it easy to execute your sales strategy. A life-long entrepreneur with 20 years of experience in the software space and a passion for sales and marketing. With the life motto "Don't settle for mainstream", he is always looking for new ways to achieve improved business results using innovative software, skills, and processes. George is also the author of the book Stop Killing Deals and the host of the Stop Killing Deals webinar and podcast series.

    Find out more about George Brontén on LinkedIn