Customer Engagement in Sales: What It Is and Why It Matters

Customer Engagement in Sales: What It Is and Why It Matters

Learn how to meet your customers where they are and create deeper relationships.

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In the sales world, it can be tempting to think of the famous scene from "Glengarry Glen Ross," when "Blake from downtown" dresses down a room of salespeople, admonishing them to "always be closing." While closing deals is important, there's something else many salespeople overlook: customer engagement. It's a critical element of attracting and keeping customers long after the deal is inked.

A well-executed strategy can mean the difference between leading the pack or watching valued customers drift away. If you're wondering where to start, you're in the right place to learn. We'll examine what customer engagement in sales is, how to measure success, and how to use technology to build better customer relationships.

What you'll learn:

• What is customer engagement in sales?
• Benefits of strong customer engagement in the sales process
• Building an effective customer engagement strategy for sales
• How to measure customer engagement in sales
• Leveraging technology for enhanced customer engagement in sales

What is customer engagement in sales?

Customer engagement in sales means creating seamless, highly personalized experiences for customers that meet them where they are - whether that's on social media, a company's website, or events. It can be helpful to think of customer engagement in sales as an ongoing conversation, one that continues long after a prospect signs on the dotted line. Like any good conversation, it's a two-way street, and a crucial part of it is paying close attention to what customers tell you about what's important to them.

Benefits of strong customer engagement in the sales process

Building customer engagement takes time, but it can be well worth the effort. Here are some of the top benefits to consider:

Higher customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is now front and center as companies begin to focus on long-term relationships rather than short-term wins. By leaning into customer engagement, sales teams can build trust with their clients - as 80 percent of sales reps say maintaining customer relationships after the close is increasingly important.

Increased revenue potential

Customer engagement in sales can play a significant role in boosting revenue far beyond the current quarter or fiscal year. When a sales team creates a customer experience that truly engages customers, they're showing just how valued those clients are. Customers will notice that personalized touch, and they'll repay those efforts with long-term loyalty - perhaps becoming the kind of fiercely engaged client known as a sticky customer. Those loyal customers, if engaged properly, serve as more than reliable, long-term sources of revenue. They can also become brand ambassadors, spreading the word about your products and services, which will help land new business.

Like the old saying, "A rising tide lifts all boats," a strong customer engagement process in sales can have wide-ranging positive effects on the bottom line. Consider what Bain and Company found when it researched customer loyalty in the financial services sector: improving customer retention rates by 5 percent lead to an astounding 25 percent increase in profits. And given that the process of attracting new customers can cost anywhere from five to 25 times the effort to retain existing ones, it makes sound business sense to invest in customer retention.

Upsell and cross-sell opportunities

While that investment can go a long way toward reducing churn rates - resulting in greater customer lifetime value and lower acquisition costs - it also opens up other avenues to creating more revenue. Take upselling and cross-selling, for example. When you have developed a robust customer engagement in sales motion, thus earning trust and loyalty, your clients will become increasingly receptive to purchasing more. That means greater expansion rates as well as broader adoption of other products your business offers, including ones from other brands in your portfolio. The result? Increased short-term and long-term profits. Simply put, by building a strong customer engagement in sales strategy - and crucially, providing sales professionals with robust sales engagement tools - you can both boost customer lifetime value while outflanking the competition.

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Building an effective customer engagement strategy for sales

No customer engagement strategy will be effective without accurate, timely data. If your sales organization has just begun to lay the groundwork for an engagement strategy, the first step will be to employ a solid CRM. That platform will be your source of truth, a wellspring of actionable information that will show your team where your customers are, who they are, and what they're buying - or not buying. It will also be a key data source about customer pain points.

But a word of caution: just because you know where your customers' purchase history and support trends doesn't mean it's okay to bombard them with messages. A sound customer engagement strategy in sales requires knowing when and where to reach out, and no more. The goal here is to deepen relationships, so a sales organization must review data carefully to understand how to strike the right balance between too much and too little communication.

Finally, customers realize that the companies they patronize have significant amounts of their personal data on hand, and they increasingly expect those businesses to use that information to provide a personalized experience that speaks to their needs. There is perhaps nothing more frustrating for a customer than spending thousands of dollars with a company only to feel like they're viewed simply as a transaction. This is why delivering personalized experiences - backed by data and executed with care - can be such a powerful driver of customer loyalty.

Note the emphasis on data. A customer engagement in sales strategy must include clear plans for leveraging information - which is often stored in disparate systems - wisely. Remember, a good relationship is built on trust, and customers need to feel confident that their personal data is safe, secure, and used only to provide personalized experiences that will improve their lives.

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How to measure customer engagement in sales

It's not enough to form a customer engagement strategy-to achieve true success, a sales organization must define its goals and implement ways to track and measure its efforts. Doing so ensures that resources aren't wasted and any obstacles to strengthening customer relationships are promptly identified. There are few instances in business when a team can adopt a "set it and forget it" process, and customer engagement strategies are no exception. Here are few things to consider:

• Identify relevant customer engagement metrics and define what success looks like. It's important to measure certain metrics such as customer satisfaction, sentiment, and customer referrals - and a good CRM will help you understand how your sales team is doing. But beyond those big picture metrics, you'll want to drill down into the nitty gritty of engagement. How are your customers responding to your engagement efforts? Are they consuming white papers and long-form reports, or are they eschewing those in favor of short videos shared on social media? And don't forget to measure frequency - if customers initially respond but then start to tune you out, they could be overwhelmed by the amount of information or its relevance. All of this data can help you fine-tune your engagement strategy so you're maximizing its impact as well as your resources.
  
• Set how and when data is shared within the organization. Sharing and reporting data from your customer engagement in sales program will help your organization reach a state of continual improvement. Be sure to create dashboards and other regular reports, and identify the stakeholders who need that data. Once you have determined the means and frequency of reporting, set regular team meetings to discuss what's working and what isn't.
  
• Monitor areas for improvement and create a process for addressing issues. Areas of improvement will become crystal clear, and your sales organization will need to set the stage for turning things around. For example, that can be a tiger team of experienced sales experts who can formulate plans for improvement and track progress. They might even identify specific personas that can be targeted with customized customer journeys, a motion made easier by a CRM and other tools such as marketing engagement platforms. This will be an ongoing process as your customer base grows and evolves.

It's important to experiment with various tactics for measuring customer engagement - for instance, some companies use a point system. Let's say a customer downloads a white paper: that might generate one point, where a deep, meaningful conversation with a sales representative could earn 10 points. Also, be sure to pay attention to metrics such as customer lifetime value, customer lifecycle, and, crucially, the quality of interactions.

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Leveraging technology for enhanced customer engagement in sales

If enhancing customer engagement in sales is your goal - and it should be - putting the right technology in place for your organization will be of utmost importance. These tools should work together, integrating seamlessly so customer data can be easily accessed, analyzed, and shared.

• Start with a world-class CRM. As the central repository of your customer data, a CRM will play an outsize role in helping your sales organization make sound decisions about customer engagement. It will provide the means for gaining a true understanding of your customers, what resonates with them, and even how often you should engage. Ideally, your CRM should easily integrate with your phone system - recording customer calls, whether service or sales-related, can unveil valuable insights about how your customers feel about your products and services.
  
• Leverage a marketing platform. You'll want one that excels at producing good engagement and connected customer journeys. So if a CRM provides you with the data and context needed to understand your customers and the level of engagement that will resonate with them, a good marketing platform is the tool that will help your organization deliver personalized experiences that will build loyalty and drive customer satisfaction.
  
• Lean on AI for insights. Don't rely on handwritten notes to guide customer conversations. Look for a tool that gives you step-by-step guidance grounded in customer data. When you have an AI-powered CRM, you'll have customized action plans tailored to every customer.

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Begin building your customer engagement in sales strategy today

The benefits of building a customer engagement strategy are clear. By creating a thoughtful, data-driven plan for deepening customer relationships, your sales organization will lay the foundation for future success and insulate your company from the ups and downs of an uber-competitive marketplace. It might seem daunting at first, and you will need to adjust as you discover what resonates with customers.

If you start with a powerful, highly customizable CRM platform - augmented by a marketing platform and survey tool - your sales organization will gain crucial insights about how to deliver consistent, effective personalization. And when you understand your customers and deliver the kind of warm, personalized experiences that makes them feel seen and valued, powerful results will follow.

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Erin Hueffner is a writer from Madison, Wisconsin. Her career spans two decades in tech, journalism, and content marketing. At Salesforce, Erin's work focuses on sales fundamentals and best practice content for Salesblazers. Erin has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of... Read More Wisconsin-Madison.