We are constantly looking to help companies improve their customer experience (CX) here at Vtiger. Our CRM platform is optimized for all stakeholders within the organization to have a 360-degree view of customer data based on a single source of truth with our OneView architecture.
But we started thinking about the customer herself? Deals, especially in B2B, are not closed overnight and the person the salesperson is talking to won’t be the only person involved in making the decision. Gartner says that the typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves six to 10 decision-makers and the buying process itself is anything but linear. From solution exploration to consensus creation, the process involves navigating through multiple hoops and decluttering complex internal dynamics and getting everyone on the same page. In fact, according to a survey conducted by CSO Insights, approximately three-quarters (74.6%) of B2B sales to new customers take at least 4 months to reach closure. Almost half of the deals (46.4%) end up taking 7 months or more.
Deal Room: Create an awesome buying experience
Introducing the all-new Deal Room capability in Vtiger One CRM. While it was easy for teams within the organization to have a complete view of customer data, so far the customer herself was not able to access communication, documents, and deal progress information.
With sales cycles being as long as they are and the need to get multiple stakeholders involved, email and linear fragmented communication involving searching for and forwarding information back and forth is suboptimal. If people involved in the conversation change along the way, as often happens, locating past communication can be quite a nightmare.
The Deal Room changes all that. You can now create a single place where all communication and documents are shared, send your prospect a secure link to access this information, and also share with other stakeholders.
Think of it as a personal secure microsite shared between your team and the prospect designed to be a collaborative hub thus reducing the friction that typically plagues an extended complex sales cycle.
Excited? Let’s take a closer look at how Deal Room works. In case you would like to do a walk along of the deal room capabilities while you go through this post, sign-up for a free 15 day all-access trial of Vtiger One CRM.
Your deal room has the following tabs
- Next Actions
- Questions
- Documents
- Timeline
- Team
Between these sections, you can easily get a comprehensive view of all aspects of the deal.
Next Actions: Break it down into clear steps
The next actions tab lists down all the actions in order and the current status. This ensures that everyone is on the same page as to what steps are going to be taken next, by whom, and when. This helps remove all ambiguity around actions that need to be taken and keeps the process moving forward smoothly.
Questions: Effective collaboration, no more lost emails
The questions tab is the collaboration hub for stakeholders. Instead of sending emails back and forth with an ever-growing list of recipients using the collaboration hub makes asking questions, getting clarifications, and tracking tasks to closure seamless.
Think of the Questions hub as a private Slack channel where the team involved in the deal can communicate on all matters related to the deal and ensure that responses are recorded for future reference as well.
Documents: A single location for all information related to the deal
The deal room becomes a shared repository where all communication and documentation is stored and visible to stakeholders. This makes it easy to ensure that everyone has access to the latest information. Say goodbye to forwarding email threads with outdated information. Even if someone involved in the deal leaves the organization, having a deal room ensures that all information shared is available without having to worry about recovering past communication.
Timeline: Single point of reference for deal status
The timeline tab gives a list of activities and milestones in chronological order. It serves as a single point of reference where everyone can see how the progress is compared to the plan. When all stakeholders are looking at a single source of information, collaboration is more effective, blockers can be resolved quicker and things move faster.
Team: Stakeholders involved in the deal
The team tab is the place where stakeholders can be added to the deal room. They can be tagged with their role in the deal which makes it easier to identify what part they play in taking the deal to closure.
Members, within the organization and in the prospect’s company, can be easily added and removed from this tab which makes it super easy to share information with those who need to have access while restricting it to people who might have moved out of the deal process. This ensures that information being shared is available only to the stakeholders who need to have access to it and also ensures that any gaps in identifying stakeholders are easily identified.
Making the most of Deal Room
Deal Room is the perfect way for you to help your customer champion to advance through the complexities of selling your offering internally within her organization. The B2B buying process is more of a looping convoluted process far removed from the neat sequentially funnel portrayed in textbooks. Requirements evolve, stakeholders change, industry and external environments influence requirements change mid-way through the deal evaluation, your product and capabilities evolve and are better suited to meet the customer requirements.
Gartner’s research found that customers who perceived the information they received from suppliers to help advance their buying jobs were 2.8 times more likely to experience a high degree of purchase ease, and three times more likely to buy a bigger deal with less regret.
The current approach creates an information wall between the internal and external view of the deal, and there is often no common understanding of the deal status. Deal room enables you to bridge that gap, provide the right information to drive purchase-ease and deliver an amazing buying experience to all your prospects.
Check out the Deal Room and other` cool sales capabilities today with a 15 day free trial of the Vtiger One CRM today.
