On this week in sales we’ll be looking at: 

* Outreach proclaiming that email “open rates” and “reply rates” don’t matter anymore. * How only 25% of sales organisations have defined their own sales metrics. * If Will’s beard make him a better salesperson than Victor? 

And much more!

This Week In Sales hosts:

* Will Barron – Salesman.org/Youtube* Victor Antonio – Youtube.com/user/salesinfluence

TOPICS:

Zendesk Becomes First Customer Experience Platform to Join Unity Verified Solutions Partner Program

* Zendesk, Inc. (NYSE: ZEN) is building on its customer experience (CX) leadership by becoming a Unity (NYSE: U) Verified Solutions Partner. Being a Verified Solutions Partner (VSP) means Zendesk has been verified by Unity to ensure its SDK is optimized for the latest version of the Unity editor, providing a seamless experience for Unity developers.* This partnership enables players to get immediate help without having to leave the game or interrupt their experience. The partnership with Unity, the world’s leading platform for creating and operating real-time 3D (RT3D) content, will provide integrated customer support functionality that can be set up in minutes, directly within some of today’s most popular games, such as Angry Birds 2 and Pokemon Go .

https://www.zendesk.com/company/press/unity-zendesk-partnership/

Outreach – Buyer Sentiment Analysis

Customers buy on emotion and justify their decisions with logic. According to a Harvard study, 95 percent of purchasing decisions are subconscious. So, why rely solely on “vanity metrics” — like click, open, and reply rates — to tell us whether our selling efforts work for buyers?

To solve this challenge, Outreach is excited to introduce Outreach Insights featuring Buyer Sentiment Analysis, a first-of-its-kind machine learning technology that classifies buyer emotions and signals to accurately measure sales engagement.

https://www.outreach.io/explore

Whatfix Is Recognized in Gartner’s Latest Report on Digital Adoption Solutions

* Whatfix, the leader in Digital Adoption Solutions (“DAS”), today announced it has been included as a “Sample Digital Adoption Solution Vendor” in the Gartner report titled, “Improve Employee Usage, Engagement and Productivity With Digital Adoption Solutions” 

https://salestechstar.com/predictive-ai/whatfix-is-recognized-in-gartners-latest-report-on-digital-adoption/

New research finds if you grow a beard, you can grow your sales

“It Grows on You: Perceptions of sales/service personnel with facial hair” was just published in the Journal of Business Research.

The paper reports on five studies that tested the “power of the beard” in the workplace. They found that customers consider bearded salespeople to have greater expertise and, therefore, more trustworthiness than mustached, clean-shaven, or stubbled coworkers. This was true regardless of race, ethnicity,