For sales teams, productivity and efficiency have long been the trusted drivers of growth and competitive advantage. However, there’s a new kid on the block—customer engagement. The ability to proactively listen, relate, influence, and engage with your customers is crucial for building relationships, not just closing one-off deals. For Sales, this new approach presents both challenges and opportunities to get closer to customers and deliver a differentiated customer experience. One that ensures that your customers come back for more.

Customer engagement through employee engagement

While employee engagement may not be top of mind for Sales executives, it should be.  Engaged employees are more productive, have better relationships with customers, and are more innovative. According to our recent Changing Role of Sales Guide, engaged employees close 33% more deals, and customers who are engaged deliver 23% more in wallet share.

These two stats can’t be ignored. Often when you hear the word engagement, you think of employee motivation, coaching, and HR. But remember, customer engagement is formed and nurtured by interactions with your sales team. Here are three ways you can increase sales team engagement to increase customer engagement:               

1. WALK IN YOUR EMPLOYEES’ SHOES
   
   Before you address the different ways to increase employee engagement within your organization, you need to identify your sales teams’ pain points firsthand. Don’t assume anything, spend time alongside them. Take a “rep ride” to understand intimately how they interact with your customers. Engage with their accounts to get the kind of understanding that only comes from someone who has lived it.
   
   By going on a few rep rides you’ll learn how your salespeople really interact with their customers. You’ll discover bottlenecks and pain points. You’ll uncover valuable insights to help them sell more effectively. And you’ll open essential channels of communication to your reps.                                             
2. MAKE CRM TECHNOLOGY EFFORTLESS
   
   There is a strong link between having the right business tools and employee engagement. Why? Because employees are also consumers, and expect to have cutting-edge, easy-to-use tools in the workplace, just as they do in their personal lives.
   
   Achieving technology ROI relies on the adoption of the new solution. Your IT department doesn’t drive adoption, nor does the Executive team; it is your workforce. Involve your users from the start and switch from an “on-time, on-budget” metric from IT, to one that values sales engagement and ROI.
   
   
   
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   This will not only lead to great system design, technology adoption, and dashboards that actually work, you’ll have kick-started behaviors that create lasting business results. This helps engage your workforce, ensuring their participation as you innovate on your solutions, technologies, and processes. 
3. GO MOBILE
   
   With enterprise mobile strategies becoming a critical factor for employee and customer engagement, organizations need direction for mobile app development. Employing an effective mobile strategy can improve collaboration and knowledge-sharing among your employees, and help them engage with customers more effectively.
   
   For field sales, the desktop is dead. Sales managers want their team to forecast and update activities in their CRM system, but not at the expense of face-time with customers. Providing an easy-to-use mobile solutions that streamline their work and shorten sales cycles is a smart way to keep sales teams in front of customers, while data updated in real-time and on the road.

For more information on the shifting Sales landscape, download our free guide: The Changing Role of Sales.