The new reality for B2B sales is only now coming into effect with the rise of AI and the commoditization of nearly everything. Then add in the recent economic impacts and the business and economic challenges for many companies. The era of “never normal” is upon every sales team or sales organization. There are now three waves of impact for B2B sales teams, which are the Now, the Next and the Never Normal.
The Now is concerned with supporting salespeople, customers and partners. The “Next” will entail how sales teams are equipped to deal with new market threats and identify new sales opportunities. And the “Never Normal” will impose on sales leadership to navigate the rapid shifts in business preferences, values and behaviors.
B2B Sales: Respond, Align, Rise
Now is the time to respond and prepare for the future. CEOs, leadership and sales management will have to rethink their sales strategy and business model. The time to shape a mindset of business transformation supported with differentiated business models and go-to-market sales tactics is underway.
We know that customer buying power is shifting fast as social media, AI and the use of digital channels shape their vendor and purchasing preferences. As stated at the opening of this article, in B2B sales the risk of commoditisation across a whole spectrum of products is higher than ever. Leaders must respond and align their organisations to retain customers, appeal to non-customers, drive revenues and rethink all go-to-market plans. These challenges will give rise to new opportunities that propel the business forward.
B2B sales organisations that respond quickly, align their resources and rise to a higher level of performance must be able to answer the following questions:
NOW
- How do we respond to changing customer preferences?
- How do we align our selling process that drives performance?
- How do we ensure our sales teams are correctly aligned?
NEXT
- How do we rise our offering to differentiate from the competition?
- How do we align all our sales channels?
- How do we capture customer moves and signals?
- How do we give rise to a B2B sales team that leads with value?
- What strategies will we leverage to increase returns?
- What tools will the sales team need for this never normal future?
For sales leaders preparing for the next wave, think about these B2B sales dynamics.
- Engage with your customers. Be close to be relevant.
- Align the sales team. Map out all sales journeys.
- Rethink the value propositions. Embrace new messaging and approaches.
- Revisit the sales steps. Measure return on sales effort.
- Upskill or reskill the sales team. Make it easy and doable.
1. Engage With Your Customers. Be Close to Be Relevant.
All that matters is the here and now. Past sales performance can only provide you with limited insights, as B2B buyer priorities are changing completely. Tighter budgets and more considered (longer sales cycle) investments are driving buyer change. The time to respond is now, and it begins with engaging with and understanding customers’ needs. How? By proactively reaching out with high-value customised messaging and aligning all sales efforts to turn customer needs into value-driven performance improvement solutions. The sales leaders of tomorrow are reprioritising their sales priorities using a blend of consultative approaches, insightful communication, capturing customer preferences and market predictions using AI. In these never-normal times, meaningful customer engagement and relevant conversations that drive improved business performance are critical to thriving into the future.
How to Respond
Engage with your customers, align to their new needs and rise up to delight them.
- Dump the old sales playbook. Get to know your customer again; work with them as a partner to identify their most pressing needs in this never normal era.
- Empower The Sales Team. Level up the expertise of the sales teams with critical, relevant data, market trends and specific customer insights.
- Provide clarity. Sales management and salespeople have clarity on sales activity and have the correct sales skills and access to the latest sales techniques.
- Sell To Whom You Can Sell To. Target the right set of customers with the high-value messages; communication is relevant, reflective and customised to each customer’s unique situation and needs.
- All aligned. Maintain alignment across sales, marketing and partners using a blend of social, digital, remote and face-to-face interactions.
- ROSE – Return On Sales Effort. Refocus on new customer acquisition and align salespeople on the most important prospects and customers.
- Respond with agility. Improve responsiveness to customer enquiries, whether product, sale or service questions.
2. Align the Sales Team. Map Out All Sales Journeys.
Future-thinking B2B sales organisations are aligning resources to boost the effectiveness of their sales teams. They are completely redefining their sales journeys from A to Z. In the process, they are discovering new moments that unlock opportunities and streamlining their sales process to deliver more impact to all customer conversations.
The reality is that more and more interactions with customers and partners are going virtual. This rapid switch to a digital-first preference has fuelled an increase in how savvy B2B selling teams are becoming. This inflection point is ripe with the potential to drive performance improvement and engagement. In this never-normal era, salespeople are getting used to connecting with customers virtually and using remote selling as a tool to improve ROSE.
How to Respond
Prioritise the strongest market and customer segments, remap out all the buyers’ journeys and rise to the challenge of increasing engagement.
- Sanitise the sales funnel. No more vanity metrics; qualify the investment in every sales opportunity. In highly competitive, budget-tight markets, quantity must shift to quality.
- Challenge the forecast. Assume any deal being forecasted (won—but not signed and delivered) could be at risk due to changes in the buying group.
- The Right Salesperson In The Right Role. Align the right sales talent for each sales role from new business acquisition to major account management.
- Focus on Selling Value. Be clear on the value you are communicating and why it matters to your customers. What stories and insights are getting their attention? Ensuring that communication is accounting for the human experience and emotions.
- Create New Lead Sources. To expand out where the sales team can identify and source new sales leads. Tap into networks, connections, referrals, dissatisfaction signals, competitor changes, etc.
- Give Them What They Want, Not Just Jargon. Give customers the interactions they want in the sales process, from digital and in-person meetings, to get closer and be more relevant to all customer interactions.
- Upskill and Reskill to Help Your Sellers Sell. Sales skills have to rise above the old FAB sales model. They need hard and soft sales skills to reflect customers’ new needs and priorities.
- Price For Once And It’s Done. Sales negotiations are not about haggling, so price your offerings to win every deal at the first pass – once and it’s a done deal pricing.
- Up Your Sales Training Programs. Continuous access to sales training and make each salesperson accountable for their own growth. Sales managers should be expert mentors and share best practises in order to help salespeople rise up to the market challenges.
3. Rethink the Propositions. Embrace New Messaging and Approaches
The now, next and never normal sales challenges have meant an unprecedented roadblock in growing company revenues. To be relevant and rise above the clatter of noise, B2B sales organisations must plan for these shifts by plotting out the changes in customers’ buyer patterns and needs. They must respond accordingly and realign their interactions, conversations, messages and offers to match this new reality.
A recent study into sales communication found that in leading sales organisations, over 93% agreed that their salespeople could effectively communicate value messages that are matched to buyers’ needs, versus approx. 43% in other sales organisations. While B2B sales organisations must not neglect developing and retaining their current customers, they also need to acquire new customers to sustain a level of growth. The messaging for attracting new customers may have to be different from that for existing customers.
How to Respond
Meet customers’ new needs by aligning value propositions and segmenting out sales messages.
- Tap Into New Signals For Changes. Continually look for trigger events (management change, strategy change) that could indicate a change in customer direction or preference.
- Tap into Intelligent Data Sources. Take advantage of customer data sources such as Cognism, ZoomInfo, Lusha, Apollo.io, etc., plus AI tools to home in on customer targeting and to uncover new contacts.
- Sell with Agility. Remove any obstacles in the way of the sales team increasing talk time with customers. Challenge internal processes and time vampires. Embrace an agile sales mindset to approach a different customer set.
- Maximise The Current Stack. Reformat current offerings into separate products or services to speed up the sales cycle or overcome budget objections.
- Partner Up to Spread Your Net. Establish new partners and complementary channel partners to scale up your brand awareness.
- Position Services to Win. Build around the Once And It’s Done offering to position new services that broaden the appeal of doing business with you.
- Master Sales Negotiation. Establish a sales negotiation team with skills across product, finance and communication to work the larger, more complex sales, increase success rates or reduce the sales cycle.
- Choose Your Key Accounts Wisely. Don’t overinvest in a KAM program. Select key accounts carefully before deploying sales resources and manage any commercial risk
- Finger on the Pulse. Customer loyalty is dropping; your customers are your competitors’ prime prospects, so have a plan to retain your most valuable customers.
- Embrace the Never Normal. Strategise and plan for the unexpected by using scenario planning; develop different paths that optimise sales performance against goals.
4. Revisit The Sales Steps. Measure Return On Sales Effort.
ROSE stands for Return On Sales Effort. Sales leaders must measure the return they are getting on sales efforts in areas such as prospecting, qualified leads, cost of sale, business development, etc. This allows for the quick redeployment or even beefing up some aspects of the sales funnel based on what the measures are telling. Also, to dig deeper on “Return On Sales Effort”, it may be necessary to revisit all the sales steps. Breaking down the sales steps and measuring what effort (resources, cost, impact) is being assigned to the step can uncover training and process improvement while reducing the cost of sale.
Which leads on to that every sales organisation must ensure that every sales step is customer-focused and squarely aligned to helping customers solve problems, whether recognised or unrecognised. Exceeding customers’ needs and expectations is not a nice, soft metric but a critical component of retaining a customer’s loyalty. They want to know that the salesperson and their company are genuinely committed to helping navigate their own challenges. A recent study discovered that sales reps who aligned their sales steps and process to match their customers’ changing buying preferences had a near 18% higher win rate.
Remember, selling is about asking the customer to undertake a change management program, so the B2B sales teams also need to embrace change and realign their sales skills for the never-normal sales environment. Investing in gaining a greater understanding of existing customer needs and opportunities so all the sales steps are relevant is one major plank, but also motivating the sales team to better grasp concepts of value and return on sales effort will also be important.
How to Respond
Redeploy sales to maximise return on sales effort to align with changing customers’ needs.
- Rethink Your Sales Steps And Process. Every sales motion should be externally focused, and outdated internal metrics must be axed. How customers want things from sales interactions and the expected experiences. In response, organisations must adapt how they position themselves in this new climate.
- Return On Sales Effort. Understand what sales effort and costs go into every aspect of the sales strategy. Cut or reduce investments in underperforming areas or steps. Be agile so as to respond to the shifting sands of modern selling. Keep a radar on emerging trends to power long-term revenue growth.
- Respond, Not React. Don’t wait for your hand to be pushed; respond now and train the sales force to stay ahead of the curve by embracing new sales methodologies, AI and data to navigate market trends.
- Mix It Up. Shake up your sales structure or sales channel mix to get closer to a preset number of high-value customers.
- Selective Partnering. Narrow down performing partner relationships to boost return on sales effort.
- Sales Team As A Differentiator. In a commoditised world, your sales team is the best route to beating the competition. Salespeople must be experts in markets, trends, business knowledge, and sales negotiation to capture more market share.
- Align With Agility. Align all policies, resources and incentives towards a predetermined set of prospects and customers, including higher-margin sales.
- Embrace the Now and the Next. Separate out what the sales effort is doing now from what it will be doing next based on customer feedback, insights and sales performance, both existing and expected. Measure results against performance objectives such as lead generation, qualified leads, and sales funnel movement.
Be A Motivating Force. Salespeople will follow those who lead them, so a highly engaged, motivated sales force who can execute the sales vision will be critical. Don’t wait; now is that time.
5. Upskill Or Reskill The Sales Team. Make It Easy And Doable.
Customers are more demanding than ever, and even getting their attention is a huge challenge. Advancements in technology have made it so that customers can buy the products they need without you, or they can buy them from someone else without ever even leaving their office. So, every salesperson has to try to differentiate themselves. This means the needs and goals of any sales professional should be secondary to the needs of the customer.
True sales professionals know that discipline, purpose, structure, planning and actions are the template to success. Yet, many salespeople do not find these attractive in today’s world of shortcuts, hacks and instant gratification. Time is of the essence. Upskill or reskill the sales team and make it easy and doable. Every salesperson should know their ROSE, or Return On Sales Effort. The reality is not every customer has the budget, the motivation or the ability to overcome the internal roadblocks to make a buying decision. End result: they’re not a good fit for the company. Salespeople need to value their expertise and time; this includes knowing when to walk away.
How to Respond
Total clarity on priorities with everyone on the same page. Get everyone to rise up around the now, the next and the never-normal. Create a vision and become action-orientated.
- In Or Out. When it comes to the key measures in sales and marketing performance, they are either in or out. No grey areas, just a true reflection of progress against goals.
- No Time For Fluff. Time is ticking; accuracy and realism are the new normal. The sales funnel is real with no vanity fillers.
- Provide salespeople with relevant market data. Align all insights and data and make them accessible to all the salespeople, broken down by customer segments and markets and matched to existing customers and prospects.
- When You Win, Why Do You Win? Internal sharing of selling skills, what is working, what is not and a complete understanding of your defendable competitive position must be known to all.
- Keep It Doable. If it’s not doable, it won’t be done. Review all your salespeople’s competences and assess if they can rise to the challenge or if you need to hire in new resources.
- Make It Easy. Upskilling and reskilling should be easy with always-on access to sales training materials, success stories, competitor comparisons and external data sources
- Coach and coax. Develop an agile real-time sales playbook to help salespeople tap into the resources to drive sales results. Sales managers must be able to coax out higher levels of sales performance to win in the new never-normal.
To wrap up, the now, the next and the never-normal-again provides every B2B sales organisation with the opportunity to respond, align and rise to the challenges hurtling down the sales road.
