Stunning ways to generate sales

A three-part mini-series to help you generate sales through smart technology and stunning presentations – introduced by Greg Ellis from creative sales agency STUN – specialists in winning presentations.

PART 3: How analytics are changing the way the best businesses are selling.

In past decades there have been plenty of analogies between leadership in business and sports coaching, but one part of the analogy that gets left behind is the analytics. 

Stun’s Greg Ellis explains that the analytics used in business can be quite crude and normally relate to how a brand is performing or the way finances are tracking. 

Outside online advertising there is little measurability of traditional sales material. How is a particular brochure doing? What parts of a slide deck are most useful? What pieces of collateral are high performing sales people using? 

These sorts of questions aren’t being asked, says Ellis. “But when an awful lot of money is poured into collateral it makes sense to measure how useful it is – to the client and to your own people. 

“When a business can monitor the performance of their sales material they can create more material that is useful and waste less money and effort on things that don’t get results.”

In the past sales managers have often worked on gut instinct – because something has worked before or because they think customers will respond well to something. 

“Often it’s only guesswork and you can end up with stacks of brochures that miss the mark or a presentation that bores rather than excites,” says Ellis. “Now that things are becoming more digital there is more agility built in. It’s easier to change a digital brochure when you don’t have boxes of physical copies that you’ve invested in. 

“So having statistics to back up your hunches allows you to fail fast and move on, or double down on something that’s working.”

How STUN’s toolkit uses analytics to
gauge sales performance

With STUN’s digital sales toolkit every user can see what they are using. They can identify their go-to sales tools and see what they are neglecting. They can also share sales material directly from their toolkit by email to a prospect or client. They are then alerted when the target opens that material and can see what that person then does with the material. A printed brochure can’t do that. 

“It’s also really easy to change material if it’s not working or needs updating,” explains Ellis. 

“By dragging and dropping a file in the back end it is instantly updated throughout the team. Everyone has the latest versions instantly. You can be confident knowing you have the latest and best material for any situation. 

“Our digital toolkits also allow you to carry and access a lot more information than you could with traditional methods. That means that if your sales conversation takes a different turn you can instantly access material without needing to run back to the car or trawl through your file system.”

Client results speak for themselves

Ellis says some of STUN’s US clients are using the digital toolkit’s analytics daily to measure team and client engagement for a range of content. What gets used and shared is optimised, what doesn’t get attention is deleted. 

It becomes a system of continuous improvement, he says, both in effectiveness and cost, measured in real time. “No other sales system can do that.

“We’ve also got a couple of clients in New Zealand that have had great results through engaging their clients with the toolkits and now want to use them internally for engaging staff outside their sales team.” 

STUN can be found at: www.stun.co.nz