How Guru Helps Sales Teams Close More Deals

Guru brings key knowledge to your sales team when they need it, and keeps it up to date. Find out how it can help your sales team close more deals, faster.
Table of Contents

With so many solutions available today to help sales teams execute better, how do you know what is best for you? Without even looking hard you can find products that:

  • Help you manage and forecast your pipeline
  • Reduce/eliminate data entry into CRM
  • Predict which deal you should work on next
  • Help you run effective web meetings
  • Track emails and documents you send to customers

And so much more! But...what about the actual conversations your team has with your customers? Do your reps know everything they need to represent your products effectively? As you release new products or features, how does your team keep up? When your competitors release new features, what does it mean to your team? How do you leverage this information efficiently? How do you ramp new sales team members as fast as possible and ensure they are using the right messaging?

This type of learning and knowledge management is pretty important. Just how important? According to AA-ISP, it was the top concern for sales leaders in 2015:

"Training & Development was the clear “Top Challenge” in 2015. The skills, competencies, and sales experience required for Inside Sales roles has outpaced our ability to develop individuals quickly enough."
Screen_Shot_2016-02-04_at_1.16.45_PM-190759-edited.png

Source: "2015 Inside Sales Top Challenges & Sales Trends" - AA-ISP

Despite how important this problem is to sales leaders, most research doesn't even identify it as a category yet!

Where's the "Training and Development" box? Shockingly, this is handled today in a very manual process. Documents are created and then forgotten about or lost, one-off questions are asked via email, locked away in that one on one exchange. Even when messaging apps are used, it is very difficult to find the right answer later, because it’s now buried amongst a sea of conversations. A Wiki was created, but no one is really reading it and its gone stale.

Clearly these approaches aren't working. It would be like trying to managing your pipeline via an excel spreadsheet! The main problem is all of the “solutions” described above weren’t built for sales teams. They were built as a way to store documents and content, not as a way to help sales teams sell better, eliminate the need to shoulder tap an expert on the team, or improve the relationship they develop with their customers. And that’s where we come in. Guru is a layer of knowledge on top of the apps your team already uses. Guru brings key knowledge to your team as they need it, and keeps it up to date by having experts on your team verify its accuracy. Its built right into your browser, so no more logging into slow portals and searching around for stale content.

As we have seen how customers succeed with Guru, here are some of the ways we help.

1. Replicate your best performers

As your team grows, you quickly learn which reps perform best. There are many reasons they perform well, but one of them is to understand what they are saying to your prospects to get them to buy. With Guru you can capture and track all content usage by rep so you no longer have to guess at this. Turn this insight into action by reinforcing this effective content with the rest of the sales team to help them up their game.

2. Work on more deals

When a rep is not selling, they spend 30% or more of their time looking for information to move their deals forward. Guru drastically shortens the time reps spend looking for the information they need to do their jobs. Whether it's an answer to a technical question, a relevant case study, or how to position against a competitor, with Guru reps find what they need quickly. They also don’t have to wonder if it’s accurate as all content in Guru is verified and kept up to date by an expert on your team, so they can always trust in Guru as a source of knowledge.

What would it mean to your company if each rep had even a few hours back a week to work on more deals or progress their existing deals faster?

3. Increase your win ratio

If you are selling into a big and growing market, you are not alone. Many deals are won and lost purely on the execution of the sales team. Guru makes your reps perform at their best because all of the expertise they need access to is just a few clicks away. Having this expertise right at their fingertips allows your reps to effectively add value to every sales cycle, which is one of the best ways a rep can increase their win ratio and improve their sales effectiveness.

What would it mean to your company if each rep on your team could improve their win ratio by even a few points?

4. Close deals faster

Any opportunity to reduce the time it takes to close a deal increases the velocity of your sales team. With Guru, sales reps can address questions right away while on the call with the prospect vs. having to follow up later. Not only can they find what they need quickly, they know it’s right because Guru reminds subject matter experts to keep their content up to date so you don’t have to.

What would it mean to your company if your average sales cycle dropped, even if only by a few days?

5. Onboard team members faster

Growing your sales team? Then you know the faster your new hires can start selling the less risk you have in hitting your plan. With Guru, sales reps can browse expert-curated content about the products they need to sell, competitive positioning, sales process, and much more. And more importantly, all of this knowledge is suggested by Guru based on what your rep is doing. Selling to a prospect in financial services? Let Guru automatically suggest the right messaging, case studies, and key competitors to be aware of.

What would it mean to your company if your new sales reps started building pipeline in half the time it used to take them? Here is a great post from one of customers on how they reduced new rep onboarding by 60% using Guru.

These are all examples of one of our core principles behind Guru; we believe that everything we do should help a business execute better in a meaningful and measurable way.

With so many solutions available today to help sales teams execute better, how do you know what is best for you? Without even looking hard you can find products that:

  • Help you manage and forecast your pipeline
  • Reduce/eliminate data entry into CRM
  • Predict which deal you should work on next
  • Help you run effective web meetings
  • Track emails and documents you send to customers

And so much more! But...what about the actual conversations your team has with your customers? Do your reps know everything they need to represent your products effectively? As you release new products or features, how does your team keep up? When your competitors release new features, what does it mean to your team? How do you leverage this information efficiently? How do you ramp new sales team members as fast as possible and ensure they are using the right messaging?

This type of learning and knowledge management is pretty important. Just how important? According to AA-ISP, it was the top concern for sales leaders in 2015:

"Training & Development was the clear “Top Challenge” in 2015. The skills, competencies, and sales experience required for Inside Sales roles has outpaced our ability to develop individuals quickly enough."
Screen_Shot_2016-02-04_at_1.16.45_PM-190759-edited.png

Source: "2015 Inside Sales Top Challenges & Sales Trends" - AA-ISP

Despite how important this problem is to sales leaders, most research doesn't even identify it as a category yet!

Where's the "Training and Development" box? Shockingly, this is handled today in a very manual process. Documents are created and then forgotten about or lost, one-off questions are asked via email, locked away in that one on one exchange. Even when messaging apps are used, it is very difficult to find the right answer later, because it’s now buried amongst a sea of conversations. A Wiki was created, but no one is really reading it and its gone stale.

Clearly these approaches aren't working. It would be like trying to managing your pipeline via an excel spreadsheet! The main problem is all of the “solutions” described above weren’t built for sales teams. They were built as a way to store documents and content, not as a way to help sales teams sell better, eliminate the need to shoulder tap an expert on the team, or improve the relationship they develop with their customers. And that’s where we come in. Guru is a layer of knowledge on top of the apps your team already uses. Guru brings key knowledge to your team as they need it, and keeps it up to date by having experts on your team verify its accuracy. Its built right into your browser, so no more logging into slow portals and searching around for stale content.

As we have seen how customers succeed with Guru, here are some of the ways we help.

1. Replicate your best performers

As your team grows, you quickly learn which reps perform best. There are many reasons they perform well, but one of them is to understand what they are saying to your prospects to get them to buy. With Guru you can capture and track all content usage by rep so you no longer have to guess at this. Turn this insight into action by reinforcing this effective content with the rest of the sales team to help them up their game.

2. Work on more deals

When a rep is not selling, they spend 30% or more of their time looking for information to move their deals forward. Guru drastically shortens the time reps spend looking for the information they need to do their jobs. Whether it's an answer to a technical question, a relevant case study, or how to position against a competitor, with Guru reps find what they need quickly. They also don’t have to wonder if it’s accurate as all content in Guru is verified and kept up to date by an expert on your team, so they can always trust in Guru as a source of knowledge.

What would it mean to your company if each rep had even a few hours back a week to work on more deals or progress their existing deals faster?

3. Increase your win ratio

If you are selling into a big and growing market, you are not alone. Many deals are won and lost purely on the execution of the sales team. Guru makes your reps perform at their best because all of the expertise they need access to is just a few clicks away. Having this expertise right at their fingertips allows your reps to effectively add value to every sales cycle, which is one of the best ways a rep can increase their win ratio and improve their sales effectiveness.

What would it mean to your company if each rep on your team could improve their win ratio by even a few points?

4. Close deals faster

Any opportunity to reduce the time it takes to close a deal increases the velocity of your sales team. With Guru, sales reps can address questions right away while on the call with the prospect vs. having to follow up later. Not only can they find what they need quickly, they know it’s right because Guru reminds subject matter experts to keep their content up to date so you don’t have to.

What would it mean to your company if your average sales cycle dropped, even if only by a few days?

5. Onboard team members faster

Growing your sales team? Then you know the faster your new hires can start selling the less risk you have in hitting your plan. With Guru, sales reps can browse expert-curated content about the products they need to sell, competitive positioning, sales process, and much more. And more importantly, all of this knowledge is suggested by Guru based on what your rep is doing. Selling to a prospect in financial services? Let Guru automatically suggest the right messaging, case studies, and key competitors to be aware of.

What would it mean to your company if your new sales reps started building pipeline in half the time it used to take them? Here is a great post from one of customers on how they reduced new rep onboarding by 60% using Guru.

These are all examples of one of our core principles behind Guru; we believe that everything we do should help a business execute better in a meaningful and measurable way.

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