The Value of Relationship Intelligence in Account-Based Selling with Jaxson Khan

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Account-based selling is experiencing a surge in popularity in B2B sales due to changes in technology that have appeared over the past few years. One of those technologies is what is referred to as “relationship intelligence.” In this conversation, Jaxson Kahn describes how marketing can leverage relationship intelligence to more effectively collaborate with sales and how managers can use relationship intelligence to enable customer success across the board. Relationship intelligence one of the new technologies that is changing the way sales is done - and it provides huge benefits for every sales role throughout an organization.

Jaxson Khan is Head of Marketing at Nudge.ai, a relationship intelligence platform. Nudge.ai helps companies establish new accounts and analyze the risk of their deals with those accounts based on the strength of the relationships they have. The goal is to help sales professionals and sales leaders improve their process by integrating relational information with other sales tools that are being used such as Gmail, Salesforce, Outlook, and more.

Jason has a great deal of insight into how relational intelligence can improve the sales cycle at every step, so don’t miss what he has to share.

This episode is sponsored by SAP. Download the ungated case study titled, “Savvy Social Selling the SAP Way.” You’ll learn how SAP sales reps fill their sales pipeline with deals that are 560% larger on average when using social selling techniques. Download the case study without a form to fill out. It’s ungated. Personalizing Account Based Sales Efforts Produces Better Results

You will often hear people say, "Personalization will increase the effectiveness of outreach by X percent," or "Personalization will double your success," but Jaxson Kahn explains that those claims are only true if a DEEP personal connection is made. In this conversation, he details the basic requirements needed to successfully personalize a message in a way that fosters the development of deep connections.

As an example, Jaxson asks a fundamental question to highlight whether or not a sales team is even taking the first steps to connecting with buyers in a relational way:

“Are you searching for unique pieces of content about a contact before reaching out to them?”

If you aren’t, you’re missing a great opportunity to be relevant to the buyer immediately. You might even be reinforcing the negative stereotypes many have about sales professionals because of the "hard-driving" approach that has been prevalent in the past. Learn how taking that one, simple action enables you to approach buyers in a “warm” way that opens the door to a relationship more quickly, on this episode.

Relationship Intelligence Makes Sales Roles Throughout The Pipeline More Effective

Given the “newness” of the technologies spoken about on this episode, it’s easy to be confused about how to apply them to the variety of roles that exist in the average sales process. For that reason, Bernie asked Jaxson to explain which sales roles can best use relationship intelligence in an account based sales approach.

First, those involved in sales development can utilize relational intelligence tools to gain insights about prospects that enable them to do outreach in a “warm” way. This may happen through understanding the things the prospect is dealing with currently, or through analyzing the prospect’s existing connections and colleagues to discover common connections.

Account executives can also benefit through being enabled to see how strong a relationship is from the start, to identify their top tier accounts and assess the level of "relational health" in that connection, and to establish an intelligent follow-up cadence that is based on multiple relationships within the company.

Sales managers are able to use relationship intelligence to know the status of relationships across accounts. It’s a powerful understanding that can enable more accurate forecasting and the ability to equip team members in a more effective way.

How AI Can Help Marketing in Account Based Selling

Given that account based sales strategies have picked up quite a bit over the past few years, there is a greater need for marketers to understand how strong relationships with potential buyers really are, over time.

Examples of the things that are important to know:

Which accounts have strong existing relationships? Which accounts don’t? Does the ability exist to build relationships with influential buyers or those who have connections to them?

Relationship technologies like Nudge.ai enable the marketing department to effectively answer those questions, and in so doing, come into alignment with the sales department to a greater degree. This enables marketing to produce relevant content and to market in a way that is cohesive with the messaging sales is communicating to buyers later in the process. This keeps relationships with buyers in growth mode, from step one all the way through to the point they become customers and into the post-purchase phase of the relationship.

Using the data provided by these newer tools, the focus can be shifted from “how to sell and how to market” to thoughtful and intentional personalization that reaches prospects and clients alike, on a human level.

Culture Is The Starting Point For Relationship Intelligence

It’s an undisputed reality that we’ve built a sales culture that is hustle driven. Because of it, we’re in danger of buyers tuning out our marketing and sales messaging because we’re too focused on making deals happen and not focused enough on building caring relationships with buyers.

A culture change is in the works - we’re seeing it all across the sales industry. Relationships are the new avenue to more sales. With the culture change, A.I. technologies can plug into existing CRMs to provide an additional level of insight into existing relationships - the very thing we need to focus on - so that they can be strategically built over time.

You may see the need to prioritize relationships in your sales process, but do you know how? Do you have the tools needed to do it effectively? The starting place is to put yourself in your buyer’s position to discover how buyers are actually making buying decisions. To help you know how to build relationships with buyers, Jaxson has a free resource: #HowIBuy - a guide to help you understand how prospects are actually buying. Find out how you can get a copy by listening to this great conversation.

Featured on This Episode Nudge.ai Find Jaxson’s guide for free, #HowIBuy https://nudge.ai/how-i-buy-vol-1/ Follow Jaxson on Twitter: @Jaxson Follow Jaxson on Facebook Follow Jaxson on LinkedIn Outline of This Episode [0:40] Who is Jaxson Khan? - Learn more about relationship intelligence and how it can be leveraged for sales [3:22] Personalization – Why sales professionals need to be personalizing their efforts using digital tools and tech [5:53] Personalization - How sales professionals can achieve a good level of personalization and how to drive it towards relationship intelligence [9:51] The insights you need about prospects are the kind that drive relationships [14:22] The type of sales roles that are helped by relationship intelligence [17:290] Is marketing involved in this or is this strictly a pure sales leadership play? [19:47] What role does sales culture or process play in relationship intelligence? [23:26] Bernie's summary: harnessing relationship information for better sales leadership [28:23] Jaxson's tips and 50-page guide entitled "#HowIBuy" [29:55] It all boils down to "empathy" [31:36] Bernie's takeaway: The value of understanding relationships at scale Resources & People Mentioned

SPONSOR: Be sure to download the case study that accompanies the podcast series - Social Business Journal Volume 11. It weaves together the narrative of social selling success factors at SAP. It’s available for download, ungated here.

Salesforce Gmail Gary Vaynerchuk Grab your copy of “Savvy Social Selling the SAP Way” The Selling With Social Podcast with Vengreso CEO, Mario Martinez, Jr Connect With Bernie and Social Business Engine https://www.facebook.com/socialbusinessengine/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernieborges/ https://twitter.com/bernieborges https://twitter.com/sbengine

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This podcast originally appeared on Social Business Engine